Monthly Archives: July 2018

No Easy Answers

Posted on by

It is natural for people to embrace simple answers to complicated problems, even when it is obvious that those simple answers have no chance for success. One reason is complicated solutions imply a lot of hard work. Most people would prefer as little struggle as possible, so the option that offers the least amount of effort is always going to have the most appeal. Then there is the fact that hard solutions mean hard problems, problems that change things. People do not like change, so they avoid facing reality as much as they can.

This is the heart of the current crisis. White people in America are faced with a set of facts that are immutable. Demographics is a straightforward issue. As of 2011, about 60% of the population was non-Hispanic white. The percentage of the minor population that is non-Hispanic white fell below 50% for the first time. Given current immigration and fertility numbers, America will be a majority-minority country within a generation. The crisis of our age is not just how we respond to this reality, but how we come to accept it.

The civic nationalists will move heaven and earth in order to avoid facing demographic reality. In fact, they do everything they can to avoid thinking about it. The results of the NY-14 election are a great example. The civic nationalists latched onto the socialist angle, with the desperation of a drowning man. The fact that the district is over 60% Hispanic was lost on them. Even when presented with the facts, they preferred to prattle on about “muh socialism.” The simple answer asks the least of them, so they go with that.

On the other hand, we have the recently red-pilled. Like ex-smokers, they demand action now, believing all they have to do is explain what they have just learned to everyone else, and public opinion will turn on a dime. Paul Nehlen and Patrick Little are good examples of how this works. They read Culture of Critique, had a revelation, and then found the nearest street corner on which they could preach the gospel. All of their efforts were based on the belief that the solution was simple. Just red pill everyone and the problem is solved.

Of course, the very act of running for office is a denial of reality. It assumes the system is fine, but the people are defective. This has been the guiding star of conservatives for three generations. The simple solution to the culture war is to get the “right people” in office and they will solve the problem. The fact that this has proven impossible, and that the system has led us to this point, is never considered. The possibility that liberal democracy inevitably leads to cultural suicide is unpleasant, so even the red-pilled look the other way.

It used to be a popular line on social media to comment about something being the reddest of red pills. The JQ’ers loved using that line to pose as the most “woke” people in the movement. The truth is, the reddest of red pills is accepting that there is nothing to be done, with regards to our demographic destiny. The die is cast. Barring genocide or some weird plague, the land currently called America will be majority-minority. We can seal the borders tomorrow and the facts will not change. There is no answer to that problem.

Further, liberal democracy assumes things about the citizenry that cannot be true in a majority-minority nation. The Founders saw this from the start and worried about factionalism ripping their new creation apart. Even in a completely white, English-speaking country like early America, there was lots of diversity. People putting loyalty to their tribe ahead of loyalty to their nation was a legitimate concern. The American Civil War was not fought along regional and cultural lines by accident. It was tribal warfare.

The fact is, another bit of that dreaded demographic reality is that what comes next cannot include the current system of governance. In a multicultural society, everyone’s primary loyalty is to their group. Liberal democracy assumes people are loyal to their narrow economic interests. The black guy will vote for what works for him, not for what blacks ad a whole think is in their interest. In an all-white society, this works as whites are the least tribal humans. In a majority-minority society, this cannot possibly work.

What comes next for us is what we see in the Middle East. In every country, one group dominates the rest, imposing their idea of order on society. Saddam controlled Iraq for his people. The Persians run Iran. The Muslims run Lebanon, where every hill and valley may as well be its own country. The rule in multi-cultural, multi-tribal societies is that one tribe rules the rest. That is our future. The question is which groups will come to dominate the rest and what sort of system they will impose in order to remain in charge.

 

The Globalist Cries Out…

Posted on by

One of the favorite tactics of the usual suspects is to attack the good guys in order to provoke a response. Then they use that response as an excuse to wage war against the good guys, claiming it is in self-defense. The game is to find a Fort Sumter and if one is not available, they manufacture one. That’s why the Left is attacking Trump people in public places. They hope someone will lose their temper. Then they can claim they are the victim and their crazy demands are justified.

A corollary to this strategy, one popular with so-called conservatives, is to undermine the efforts of their supporters, then claim they were justified in their reticence, because it was doomed all along. It’s a weird game of “I told you so.” The Tea Party movement is a great example. The Republicans were dead in the water after 2008, until white voters revolted and resuscitated the party on populist issues. The GOP repaid them by systematically undermining their efforts, then said “I told you so!”

It’s tempting to think this is unique to America, where our two party system forces everyone to choose between the turd sandwich and the giant douche. It means the two parties can collude with one another, without fear of a third party. As we see with the Brits, a multi-party system does not prevent the so-called conservatives from selling out their voters. After two years of foot-dragging, the Tories have figured out how to comply with the Brexit referendum, without actually doing it.

The UK position crucially “evolves” in two ways that would allow for a Norway-style Brexit deal covering at least part of the EU single market. The first is Britain’s proposal for a “free trade area for goods” involving the UK and the EU that in effect continues existing regulatory and customs arrangements for manufacturing and agricultural products after Brexit. This is achieved by the UK becoming a rule-taker, with a treaty-based commitment to “ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods”. Just as important is Britain’s concession on enforcement. UK courts would pay “due regard” to European rulings in cases relating to EU-set rules. In other words, while Britain is a separate legal jurisdiction after Brexit, the European Court of Justice would be supreme in interpreting the UK-EU goods rule book. There are caveats — for example the British parliament could veto changes to the rule book if it accepts the “consequences for market access”. But taken together, the safeguards offer no more freedom than Norway enjoys as a member of the European Economic Area. In his resignation letter Mr Davis dismissed the sense of parliamentary control as “illusory rather than real”.

The short version of this ploy by the Tories is that Britain will technically leave the EU, but continue to abide by all of the rules of the EU. It is an elaborate game of make believe, where everyone is supposed to pretend the government is complying with the will of the people, but nothing really changes. Of course, the Brexiters in government have no choice but to resign. Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned, followed by Boris Johnson a day later.

Of course, the usual suspects are out in force saying, “We told you so! Britain can’t leave Europe.” In the Atlantic, we have all the examples of the typical tactics from these guys. There’s blaming the victim, claiming the Brexiters are responsible for the failure. Then there is the claim the Brexiters are getting what they deserve. Then, of course, the claim that Brexit could never work. Since the usual suspects have had no luck with Trump, they are keeping in shape by plying their trade on British topics.

This is just another reminder that the first enemy of the populists must be the legacy conservatives, who work as bodyguards for the ruling class. The whole point of the Brexit referendum was to undermine the populists. When that failed, the Tories shifted to a policy of killing the initiative with an endless process. If the result of this is new elections, they will try to frighten the voters, by claiming Jeremy Corbyn will scuttle the whole deal, which he probably would do, if given the chance.

What needs to happen in Britain, as well as the United States, is for the conventional conservatives to collapse. What must replace it is an authentic Right that offers a reasoned and practical alternative to the neoliberal order. In Britain, it means the Tories become UKIP without the eccentrics and trouble makers. In the US, it means the GOP becomes the party of Trump. That can only happen with a populist intellectual movement to provide energy and ideas to the New Right.

The Power Of Delusion

Posted on by

Way back in the olden thymes, I was going back and forth with a liberal acquaintance about a topic related to his cult’s recent fixation on diversity. I no longer recall the details of the conversation, but at some point, he said, “The reason we moved to Arlington was so our child could experience diversity.” He was speaking of Arlington Massachusetts, one of the whitest places on earth. He had moved to honkeyville, but he had somehow convinced himself that it was a rainbow community of racial and ethnic diversity.

Being a polite person, I laughed in his face. There are limits to civility. I doubt he has ever forgiven me for not only laughing at the ridiculous claim, but then proceeding to point out the demographic reality of his new home. Arlington is roughly 85% white and 10% Asian, and those Asians will be college professors and professionals. The tiny black and Hispanic population is clustered in one area of town. You can drive around the place all day and never see a brown face that is not riding a lawnmower or leaf blower.

Now, I have no doubt that my former acquaintance and his Progressive hive-mates glorified one another on a regular basis for their embrace of diversity. You can bet they swapped stories about how their kid had a black friend at school or about their supposed friendship with the Muslim coworkers. He actually tried that one on me once. Because it was nothing but virtue signaling, they never faced any push-back. In fact, they got nothing but confirmation from their hive mates, so their delusions were always reinforced.

When people outside the hive wonder how people in the hive can believe the nonsense about diversity and the blank slate, it is important to keep in mind the power of magical thinking. They want this stuff to be true, so they tend to gravitate toward others who have the same fantasies. It is exactly how cults work. The doubt or concern of one member becomes a reason for the rest to double up on their belief. Progressives are people in search of purpose and identity, so they tend to clump together for support.

Whether you call it self-delusion, magical thinking, wishful thinking or whatever, this is powerful juju. My old Progressive acquaintance was not fazed by my mockery or the facts I later sent him. In fact, he has only grown more deluded over the years. He is now one of those old guys who still wears an “I’m With Her” t-shirt and tells people he is a moderate libertarian. It is not that he is a liar or crazy, it is that he so desperately wants this image he has of himself to be true, that he has convinced himself it is fact.

It is not just lefty cult members who are prone to self-delusion. Magical thinking is just the grease that makes the gears of life turn smoothly for people. All of us engage in some degree of it. In fact, it may be a requirement of leadership. Read the biographies of great leaders and you almost always find that they had an extreme over-confidence in their abilities. Often, they believed it was their destiny to achieve greatness. It was what pushed them to conquer the world or accomplish some great contribution to humanity.

At the same time, over-the-top belief in some cause is the driving force behind the great evils of history. Stalin was not mindlessly evil. He believed he was on the side of the righteous, just as the Nazis, Chinese communists and other murderous movements of the last century believed they were on the side of good. The Allies in World War II incinerated cities full of women and children, in order to break the will of the other side, because they thought they were fighting a just cause. The self-righteous make the best killers.

The power of self-delusion is not just the belief in some cause, but belief in the face of available evidence. It is the conflict between the delusion and reality that is the chemical reaction, releasing energy the believers harness. The American Left refers to themselves as the “resistance” even though they are in complete control. It seems that the greater the gap between observable reality and delusion, the more fanatical the believer. That conflict between reality and delusion releases energy in relation to its contrast.

This is a useful thing to keep in mind when dealing with lefty relations. Your well-intended efforts to break the spell only serve to make it stronger. It is counter intuitive, but the best thing you can do for a deluded friend or relative is to act disinterested. If you argue with them, they see that as proof they are speaking truth to power. If you agree with them, even on a small point, they see that as confirmation. Indifference throws water on that chemical reaction and robs them of the energy to continue in the face of reality.

This is why the Left forces everyone to pick a side. For example, you cannot be indifferent to the various crotch fads. You are either enlightened or a homophobe, open minded or a gender-normative bigot. There can be no middle ground, because the delusion that fuels these causes depends upon the conflict. The indifferent are the black swans of the delusional. It is not simply hive-mindedness. It is a need for the conflict between their beliefs about themselves and the reality of the world in which those beliefs conflict.

The Haunting

Posted on by

A couple of years ago, John Derbyshire talked about the sexual aspect of what ails the West. He referenced this comment to Steve Sailer, in one of Sailer’s blog posts. No doubt others have noted that women in the West seem to be the driving force behind things like immigration. The angle is always that the women are ascendant because the men have grown soft. As Derb talked about in that podcast, the girls are inviting in the swarthy foreigners, because they are dissatisfied with their men.

That is appealing to men, especially older men, as older men are always sure that the younger generation is soft. When I was a boy, my grandfather would say, “In my day it was iron men and wooden ships. Now, it is iron ships and wooden men.” I am an old man, but not so old that my grandfather lived in the age of sail. It was just his way of saying that his generation was tough, while the younger generation was soft. The thing is though, this assumes that only men have changed.

Maybe a better way of thinking about the sexual aspect of our cultural crisis is that both men and women are haunted by different specters. For instance, our women are increasingly deranged, not because men are wimps, but because the traditional sex roles no longer exist. This leaves them as free radicals, with the wacky fads out of feminism and gender studies, orbiting them like unpaired electrons. Women are like bees without a hive, so they become erratic.

Here is a good example. This woman is an angry lesbian. She has been a public nuisance for a long time, ranting and raving about homosexual causes. Self-identified lesbians are 1.3% of the population, according to the CDC. That is a small club, but not select enough, so she is now claiming her son is transgender. Like so many of our women, this woman is in a race to the most bizarre position imaginable. It is the need for attention, applied to inappropriate things.

The male side of this coin features a nostalgia for a lost future. It is a form of romanticism, where men imagine a past that led to a different present. All of those decisions by prior generations, have led to a present where there is no point to being man, because there is no role for men. The only place where men are needed is the military, but even there, the multicultural nags are ruining things. It is not a longing for the past, but a longing for a different present.

If you look at the various sub-groups within the Dissident Right, they are almost exclusively male. The alt-right certainly has a strong romantic streak. Their embrace of the fascist aesthetic was always based on an imaginary version of history. The PUA guys go the other way, embracing a cynical and callous view of women as nothing more than a game to be won. It is an absurd version of the alpha male. Weirdos like Patriot Prayer are trying to create a space for men to be men.

The result of all this is men and women are rocketing off in different directions, seeking something that fills the void left by traditional sex roles. The trouble is the current culture views traditional sex roles as toxic. That not only directs the search for biological fulfillment toward the wrong answers, but it also makes the right answer the polar opposite of what is acceptable. The result of this is blue-haired feminists screaming into the void and the cartoonish primal scream of the Bronze Age Mindset.

It is why polling on so many issues divide sharply between males and females, married people, and single people. That last part is probably the most important, as people living the traditional married life may as well be in a different country. The former have a point, while the latter are searching for one. The former see politics as a necessary burden, while the latter view it as the hunting ground for personal fulfillment. It is why Antifa is run by girls and the alt-right is run by boys.

Of course, the specter driving all of this was created in the bygone era, the one where the West still had its traditional social arrangements. The increasing animosity toward baby boomers has a lot to do with the fact that the young blame their parents and grandparents for screwing up the system. This is certainly true in America, where the boomers inherited a world of order and then set about destroying it, replacing it with a world of disorder and irrationality.

That really is the specter haunting all of us, regardless of our age. It all seems so unnecessary and pointless. What was so monstrous in the 50’s and 60’s that it spawned a generation hell bent on self-abnegation? That is the specter that haunts our age. It is as if the point of the cultural revolution were to create a society of people infected with the existential attitude. The result of the revolt was a people gripped by a sense of disorientation, confusion, and dread.

The Gangster State

Posted on by

The defining feature of gang life is personal loyalty trumps all else. This is true for low level street gangs, as well as complex organized gangs. The rules are not written down or agreed to by consensus. They are imposed top-down by a group of men loyal to one man and to each other. The head of a drug cartel has lieutenants to enforce discipline on those down the line. The rules within those groups are similarly enforced by lieutenants loyal to the guy in charge of the group.

The effect of this is a chaotic lawlessness. The punishment for the exact same transgression may be wildly different in two different cases. It all depends upon the relationship between the boss and the offender. While all criminal organizations have rules against betraying confidences, there is no fixed rule on the punishment, despite what you see on television. Baltimore gangsters rat on one another all the time to get better prison terms, with varying consequences.

Consider what we are watching with our government. News brings word that the US Attorney is dropping charges against the terrorists who went on a rampage during the inauguration last year. They announced this on a holiday week, so it would get the least amount of news coverage. Now, they certainly could have looked into who financed the riot, who helped organize it and then went after the shot callers, but they never bothered to do any of that. Instead, they dropped the case.

Now, we have mountains of laws for dealing with criminal groups. The Feds could go after a Lacy MacAuley, who details her activities on-line, in order to figure out who pays her rent. Then they could go after that person or group. This is basic police work. At the very minimum, the people financing these terrorists would know they have some exposure, but that never happens. You see, everyone knows who finances Antifa and other terrorists operations.

Here is another example. Peter Strzok is the focus of a serious criminal conspiracy to subvert the last election. A mountain of evidence pointing to his guilt has been in the public domain for a year, yet he was just recently fired from the FBI. He has not been charged with anything and it appears he will never be charged. In fact, he is now telling Congress he has no intention of testifying. In fact, he is not going to show up. Their silly laws no longer apply to people in his gang.

Again, this gets to the way in which gang life operates. There may be rules, but what matters is who enforces the rules and to whom the rules are to be applied. In this case, the wide-ranging criminal organization known as the Democratic Party will never let their people get punished by the Republicans. Those rules about complying with a subpoena from Congress only apply when the gangsters with power can enforce them and they will only enforce them when it suits their interests.

This becomes more obvious when looking at the whole criminal enterprise that is currently called the FBI. There is no question that the people at the top engaged in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to spy on the Trump campaign and engineer a criminal investigation of his administration, for the purpose of removing him from office. This is so obvious that no one bothers to deny it. Instead, the game is to avoid discussing it in public and pretend it never happened.

Lurking in the secret FBI files can be only three possibilities. One, there is proof they cooked the whole thing to help get Hillary Clinton elected. The other is some out of left field explanation for the mountain of data, that points to an innocent motive. The final option is a massive hole in the system where the damning proof used to exist but has now been destroyed as part of the cover-up. To date, the FBI and DOJ refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas to answer this question.

Again, we are back to the gangster model. The people inside these agencies have a primary loyalty to the gang, not to the laws of the country or the alleged institutions charged with promulgating and enforcing the laws. In gang life, you are first loyal to the gang and that’s what we see with this case. Rod Rosenstein was sent to Congress in order to deliver a threat. In a prior age, Devin Nunes would have found a black palm print on his door.

Of course, that seems to be what has happened to Representative Jim Jordan, who is now having to answer questions about a sex scandal from 30 years ago. He was an assistant coach at Ohio State, when another coach supposedly had homosexual relations with some of his players. The liberal media is running with it, because they are told to go after Jordan. The reason? Jordan went after Rosenstein at a hearing and his gang did not like it.

You see, Ohio State hired a law firm to investigate the matter. That law firm is named Perkins Coie, a mammoth firm with global operations. Coincidentally, they were the law firm at the heart of the phony dossier the FBI used to get secret warrants on the Trump campaign. Perkins Coie was the Hillary Clinton campaign’s firm, and they hired FusionGPS to put together the fake dossier, then gave it to the FBI, the media, and scoundrels like John McCain. It is not hard to connect the dots here.

What appears to the rest of us to be corruption and lawlessness, is actually the natural functioning of gang life, in that everything revolves around who is enforcing the rules and against whom they are being applied. The first and only question anyone cares to answer is “how is this good for us?” Everything follows from that answer. The people in the DOJ and FBI are only concerned about what is good for the gang. This is gang life and this is life in the gangster state.

Identity Politics

Posted on by

The podcast I did on the Dissident Right turned out to be a hit, so I have decided to make the single topic format a regular feature. This being a holiday week and a very slow news week, it makes sense to take another swing at the single topic format. Doing something like this, it is important to keep an eye on what works for you. My style, disposition, tone of voice and so forth will work better with some things and not so good on others.

One of things about doing a single topic show is it forces me to think a little deeper about the topic. This week, for example, I found myself a little stumped on defining white identity politics. Doing some research, I did not find a lot of easy answers either. I did the best I could for this show, but I will be revisiting the topic in the future. For that alone, I’m enjoying the single topic concept. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: Negative Identity
  • 12:00: Positive Identity
  • 22:00: Progressive Identity Politics
  • 32:00: Conservatives and Identity Politics
  • 42:00: White Identity
  • 52:00: The Road From Here
  • 57:00: Closing

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

Google Play Link

iHeart Radio

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Techno-Socialism

Posted on by

Something I noticed when I started posting podcasts to YouTube, is that copyright strikes come up automatically. Put in just a few seconds of any song, no matter how obscure, and YouTube will say the copyright owner made a claim. This is nonsense, of course, as no one could be policing this stuff and filing claims. The software scans the uploads for patterns matching something in their database. If the pattern is close enough to anything, then YouTube issues a copyright strike and puts the onus on you to dispute it.

I tested this by using some music I found on an old CD. It was from a cover band a million years ago. I took some clips and uploaded them with some talking by me. Sure enough, the clip got flagged for a copyright claim. The ridiculous part was the alleged claimant was another cover band. I tried a few more clips and no hits, but then a few more were flagged, with different claimants. The last batch of hits were completely wrong. It appears close enough is enough for them to make you go through the hassle of disputing it.

The game that YouTube is playing is both defensive and underhanded. By defaulting some copyright claim on everything, even vaguely similar to what they have in their database, they avoid being sued by legitimate copyright holders. That makes sense, given the nature of copyright laws. Of course, they are also using this as an excuse to avoid paying creators for their work. YouTube loses money, so anything they can do to avoid paying creators drops right to their bottom line. They know most people will not dispute the claims.

That came to mind when I saw this on Drudge the other day.

Ed Sheeran is on the receiving end of a monster $100 million lawsuit by a company claiming the singer ripped off a Marvin Gaye classic.

A company called Structured Asset Sales filed the lawsuit, claiming Ed’s song, “Thinking Out Loud,” is a carbon copy of Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On.”

According to the lawsuit, Sheeran’s song has the same melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bassline, backing chorus, tempo, syncopation and looping as “Let’s Get it On.”

Gaye’s song was written by a guy named Edward Townsend and Gaye in 1973. Townsend died in 2003, and Structured Asset Sales bought one third of the copyright. So, take that in … the claim is that just 1/3 of the song is worth $100 MIL!.

Sheeran’s song was a huge hit … nominated for a Grammy for Best Record, Best Performance and Song of the Year in 2016.

And, according to the docs, Ed’s single and the album it’s on — “X” — sold more than 15 million copies and the song has been played on YouTube more than a billion times.

Sheeran has already been sued by Townsend’s heirs. He called BS on that suit. No word if the Gaye family might also sue.

Now, I clicked on the story, because I was puzzled by why the estate of a long dead singer would be suing some goofy looking white kid. It turns out that the goofy looking white kid is a pop star of some note, and he is accused of ripping off Marvin Gaye. It is another reminder that I am now completely disconnected from modern pop culture. Not in a million years would I have guessed that guy was a pop star. He looks like a dork you would see working in a cubicle. I did not find his music enjoyable, but what do I know?

Of course, the idea of making a copyright claim on something you give away, by posting on the internet, is a mockery of the law. It is perfectly reasonable for a performer to complain about people ripping off their music and posting it on-line, but when the performer gives the content away, they should have no complaint. Not only that, a quick search of YouTube finds every Marvin Gaye song ever recorded, is posted multiple times. There’s even live stuff from the old days. Exactly no one is paying for Marvin Gaye music.

Listen to the songs in question and it is hard to see the similarities, at least not enough to support the claim. That is not going to be an issue, because if it goes to court, both sides will have digital experts claiming the songs are digitally the same or different, according to each side. There are only so many possible song ditties, so by now every conceivable riff has been used in a song. Using software to compare songs, it is possible to claim everything is derivative, if not a straight copy, of something else.

None of that matters. A battle of experts in front of a jury means a coin toss, so the case will be settled. It does not cost a lot to file the initial claim, but it does cost money to litigate these claims. Plus, the goofy white guy has his reputation being tarnished, so both sides have an incentive to settle. The estate of Marvin Gaye just wants money, so they will be happy to take a quiet payoff off, without the goofy white guy admitting to anything. That is the whole point of these lawsuits. The whole thing is a form of greenmail.

Copyright abuse is becoming a racket. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was intended to protect owners of digital content, but grifters have figured out how to game the system for all sorts of reasons. Video game companies will file DCMA notices against YouTubers, who post bad reviews. Hosting platforms slip language into their terms of service, to claim ownership of your content. Restaurants are suing reviewers for bad reviews. Of course, everyone can claim ownership of just about any digital content.

It is a good example of another negative outcome from the technological revolution. The ability to copy and distribute content digitally means it is easy to steal. That means people steal it. The normal way an owner protects his property is by locking it up, but in the case of digital content, which is not possible, so the state has tried to create a magical solution, which just encourages grifters and racketeers. My guess is the legal fees for copyright issues are one of the biggest cost of producing pop songs now.

The unexpected result of the technological revolution is that large swaths of intellectual property have been inadvertently swept into the public domain. In an effort to return the profits to the private owners of the content, laws have been passed, but the result is all of the costs have been swept into the public domain. The definition of the technological revolution is the socializing of costs, with the privatization of profit. Technology makes it possible to shift costs a million small ways, onto an unsuspecting public.

Fresh Out Of Patriotism

Posted on by

In the spring, I went to opening day for the local sportsball team here in Lagos. I am not a fan of the local team, but I still enjoy baseball. Opening day is one of the great traditions of old America. Like everything else in America, the oleaginous grifters in charge of us have monetize the tradition, turning it into a tacky spectacle. If you can look past that, it is a nice reminder of what it was like to have a real country. What I could not look past or even tolerate, was the endless, over the top appeals to patriotism.

Before the game, there were a number of demands to celebrate the armed forces, “first responders” and schoolteachers, of all things. The claim was that these “brave men and women defend our democracy.” Then there was the singing of patriotic songs and the playing of the national anthem. In the seventh inning, we had more singing of patriotic songs. I have always been a bit sentimental with regards to patriotism, but I found the whole thing revolting. I knew what it was like to live in North Korea or Nazi Germany.

Now, a lot of the over-the-top patriotism is the aftermath of 9/11 and the resulting culture war over the response to it. The neocons cleverly couched their schemes in patriotic terms, painting their critics as un-American. That worked, so the Left is now doing the same thing with the great replacement. After all, America is a land of immigrants! You will note that most displays of patriotism in the mass media rely on people who “look like America” by not looking anything like Americans. Patriotism has been turned on its head.

There is also the fact that the people in charge have nothing much to offer us, so like any business with a bad product, they have invested in marketing. This is a well-documented phenomenon in business. When a company’s product is not selling, they ramp up the marketing, promising that it is new and improved. That is the vibe I get with our ruling class flag waving. You will note they never sell open borders and globalism as something good for you. Instead, they appeal to your patriotism, claiming it is good for the country.

The trouble with what they are selling is it contradicts the sales pitch. If America is just a place where you earn a paycheck and buy stuff, like a big shopping mall, why have any loyalty to it? Who has ever had an emotional bond with a shopping center? If anyone can wander in, become a citizen and vote, citizenship has no more value than a validated parking ticket at the mall. In other words, the patriotism on offer just ensures that patriotism becomes increasingly worthless, along with our citizenship.

Patriotism, properly understood, is loyalty to the citizens who came before you. The emotional draw is gratitude for what they bequeathed. That implies a duty to preserve it for the next generation. If citizenship is just a meaningless transaction, then those citizens who came before us are no more important than the next guy who wanders over the border. Put another way, according to our rulers, our ancestors are strangers and so are our decedents. What possible reason would anyone have to be loyal to strangers?

It is actually worse than that. The reason America is descending into a transactional land of strangers is that our ancestors decided to piss it all away. Why should anyone feel loyalty to the people who pushed through the 1986 immigration act? Why should we want to preserve what they passed onto us? If anything, we should take this day to dig up their bones and smash them to bits on the capital mall. That sounds harsh, but is there anything more monstrous than denying your decedents a chance to live the life you lived?

There is another side to patriotism. That is loyalty to the institutions. In a liberal democracy, the citizen respects the office, even if he does not respect the man holding the office. Look around at our institutions. They are just as corrupt as the men who are in charge of them. No rational person can look at what is happening with the FBI and not think the entire political class needs to meet Madame Guillotine. After the last chop, send in the bulldozers to flatten the place. Maybe salt the earth afterwards.

For most of my life, I was an easy mark, when it came to flag waving. I believed the stuff they taught us in school and preached to us in the media. Despite her flaws, I thought the ideal of America was worth defending. The trouble is, the people in charge had other ideas. Like a lot of people over the last dozen or so years, I have reconsidered a lot of things. One of them is patriotism. You can be loyal to people, but you cannot be loyal to ideas or institutions. That is a sucker’s play, and I am not a sucker anymore.

How Not To Be Boring

Posted on by

There are few things worse than conversing with a boring person. I’m not talking about quiet people. A person who keeps his own confidence is often thought of as mysterious or complex. Their silence makes them interesting. A boring person is almost always someone who talks a lot, revealing that they are not very interesting. Boring people are such a menace, that there is a whole area of etiquette about politely getting away from the boring guy at a social event.

So, what makes a person boring?

More important, how can you avoid being seen as a boring person?

The first thing you notice about boring people is they never seem to have a point to their stories and anecdotes. Stories must have a point. No one cares about what you had for lunch, unless it was something bizarre or unusual. If you had a delicious turkey club for lunch, that’s not something anyone wants to know. Now, if the waiter stripped naked and ran screaming into the street after serving you that delicious turkey club, then you have a story with a point. That’s an amusing tale.

Your stories and anecdotes don’t have to be amusing.  What’s important is you have some reason for telling the story. This is a courtesy to the listener. By having a point, you are showing respect to the listener, whether it it by sharing information with them or making them laugh with an amusing story. When your stories are pointless recitations of mundane events, you are, whether you realize it or not, insulting the audience. At the minimum, you are wasting their time, which is just as bad.

You should also avoid unnecessary details. That story about the waiter stripping down and running into the street is a good example. If you spend five minutes describing the menu and the turkey sandwich, then thirty seconds on the naked man, you made an amusing tale into misery for your listeners. Sure, a little setup to the big reveal is a good way to create tension, but a little goes a long way. In a social setting, a good story is one that avoids extraneous details.

The easiest way to avoid loading up your sixty second story with ten minutes of tedium is to never explain the obvious. This is the most common error boring people make when telling a story. For some reason, they think they need to explain what everyone on earth has known since childhood. In the case of our turkey club, the boring person will actually explain what he means by turkey club or maybe even talk about the history of the turkey club. When in doubt, skip it.

Another way to avoid being the boring guy everyone avoids is to never tell a story that requires a back story. Boring people often start a story that should last three minutes, then veer into a long back story. For example, the they will veer into a story about how they met their lunch companion in the turkey club story. The result is a dull story about the lunch companion, plus a dull description of the turkey club. This is misery for listeners and is an unacceptable price for the pay-off.

The boring also have a funny habit of talking over people. They ignore the little things others do to signal to the boring that they need to stop talking. The boring are strangely competitive in their dullness. If you notice people starting to speak as soon as you take a breath, or they start looking at their phones, you are the boring guy. You are not going to improve this situation by talking louder or talking over any interruptions. Take the hint and wrap up your story.

A good way to stop yourself from being that guy is to always invite others to tell their story or comment on the topic of conversation. People will find your turkey club story more interesting if you showed interest in their lunch story. A little active listening goes a long way. It not only keeps you from droning on about the delicious turkey club, it makes you seem more interesting to others. Boring people are selfish people, in that they are only interested in their point of view, in far too much detail.

Finally, if it is a story you tell often and the listener is someone you know well, assume you told them the story, because you almost certainly did. Start with “If I told this before, stop me” or maybe, “I probably told this story before…” This gives them the right to stop you from boring them with the 80th retelling. This is a courtesy to the listener and it makes you seem more interesting. This is flattering to the listener and and they will think better of you for it.

¡ Viva México!

Posted on by

Europeans who worked in colonial Africa would say, “Africa Wins Again” whenever some project went sideways. The point was that no matter how well-intended or well designed, the best ideas of Westerners would fail. The implied reason was that Africa was the way it was, because it was full of Africans. This expression must have been common during colonialism, as it always turns up in first-person accounts of the post-colonial years. There was simply no way to beat nature.

That’s what comes to mind whenever a Latin American country makes the news for some reason. A decade ago, libertarian economists like Tyler Cowen were sure that Argentina and Brazil were on their way to first world status. Sensible people knew that the Latin Way would eventually win. Argentina is back to begging the West for bailouts and Brazil is teetering on social and political collapse. It turns out that the Latin Way always wins too. There’s no beating nature.

Mexico just had an election and the winner is promising to prove every cold-hearted Anglo north of the border right about the nature of Mexico.

Veteran Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been elected president of Mexico, winning the largest landslide in his country’s recent history in a remarkable routing of what he terms “the mafia of power”.

Promising to combat corruption and drive down record crime rates, Mr Lopez Obrador captured 53 per cent of the vote, according to preliminary results – a historic victory for the party he created.

Voters decided in their millions to turn their backs on the two parties which have ruled Mexico for almost 100 years, and finally give him a chance – sending his supporters into a frenzy.

The American media will never honestly report about anything, so we can expect them to celebrate this guy as the antidote to Donald Trump. You just know they will find some way to link his rise to the election of Ocasio-Cortez. Alternatively, they will swear Trump caused it. It depends upon how things unfold. If chaos ensues, then you can be sure it will be blamed in Trump’s rhetoric. In reality, this is just Mexico being Mexico. Here’s a summary of AmLo’s platform:

  • Amnesty to all drug cartels.
  • No longer will work with U.S. immigration enforcement.
  • Nationalize oil industry.
  • Farm subsidies.
  • Elimination of multinational corporate influence on farming.
  • Support and assistance for economic growth plan:
    • using •mass migration of Mexican nationals into Southern U.S.,
    • create AmeriMex border region, and
    • remittance of earnings back to Mexico as initiative for rapid domestic economic growth.

Now, in fairness to Mexicans, the two main parties have become so corrupt that voting for either is just a vote for the status quo. That means a country largely controlled by two murderous drug cartels and a political elite willing to protect them. Just how much money the Mexican ruling elite makes from the drug business is hard to know, but they have grown rich off the free trade scams operating at the border. They have also helped facilitate the waves of migrants entering the United States every year.

Obrador is probably a good result for Americans. He will no doubt make an excellent bad guy in the coming war with Mexico. That is where things are headed, whether anyone realizes it. The Mexican government is incapable of ending the flow of drugs into the US and they have no choice but to facilitate the flow of migrants. That means the border will have to be closed and most likely guarded by the US military. That is an option the public will support, if Mexico is led by a nutty Marxist who hates America.

Putting that aside, it is another reminder that Mexico is a failed state. The central government retains control of Mexico City and the immediate area surrounding it, but the rest of the country is controlled by drug cartels. One reason the political elite facilitates migration is they skim from the remittances back to Mexico, from their people living in America. Carlos Slim, the owner of the New York Times, owns the Mexican phone company, which means he gets a taste, every time Pablo calls home from America.

Those old enough to remember will note that NAFA was supposed to prevent this from happening. Instead, it has been a disaster for Mexico, making the people poorer, while their elites grew rich. Mexico was never going to withstand unfettered contact with the first world, for the simple reason it was never a modern country and is never going to be a modern country. The human capital of Mexico cannot sustain it. This is a reality of the human condition that people used to know, until there was money in pretending otherwise.

Now, America has a failed narco-state on its southern border, thanks to the greedy we politely call globalists. You will note that everything these pirates of the new economy touch eventually falls to pieces. That is because this form of economic activity can only thrive in chaos, so it works to create it. A disordered world, where sovereign people no longer have control of their borders, lurches inexorably toward chaos. Instead of Vikings raiding the West, the last 30 years has been men in suits raiding the West.

Chaos always results in a reaction and that reaction is usually authoritarian. That is what is happening in Mexico and will happen in Brazil and Argentina. If those countries are lucky, the authoritarians will be like Pinochet and the result will be a pruning of the political elite and the imposition of order. It is always a coin flip with strongmen. For every Peisistratus, who restores order and economic balance, you get a Nero. The history of Latin America suggests the latter is the way to bet, but maybe this time will be different.