Affirming The Alternative

Posted on September 30, 2019 by thezman

Something everyone outside of conventional politics agrees upon is that the establishment conservatives are no longer useful or relevant. Whatever you want to call the super set of groups making a claim to right-wing politics, but outside of conventional politics, the one thing that ties them together is an antipathy to Conservative Inc. The criticisms vary in tone and specificity, but everyone agrees that the starting place for a new opposition to the Left is replacing the current Right with something new.

In fact, it is the failure of so-called conservatives that has fueled the rise of populism, neo-nationalism and various dissident movements. If you look around at the various tribes milling around the right-wing fringe, all of them are a response to some failure of conventional conservatism. The alt-right grew out of libertarianism, for example. The identitarians and race realist passed through paleo-conservatism. The paleocons, of course, have been around since their purging decades ago.

The absolute failure of conservatism needs to be more than a rallying point for a loose coalition of the dispossessed. This is not an age calling for a longer list of people purged by Conservative Inc. What is required is a replacement for so-called conservatism that will provide a true alternative to what is offered by the Left. This is something many among the dispossessed have suggested. Paul Gottfried, who gets credit for coining the term alternative Right, has been arguing this for years.

While more and more people are flowing into outsider politics, looking for an alternative to conventional conservatism, there is no agreement as what should come next. The paleocons have gone further than anyone, but their imagined replacement is mostly just a reset to the time before the neocons outmaneuvered them in the 70’s and 80’s. It is a conservatism of yore that is free of the baggage train of failure and perfidy that has come to define modern conservatism. It’s what conservatism should have been.

Other groups are far less sober minded. The alt-right never got around to thinking up a new metaphysics. They spent their time recreating an aesthetic from a bygone age that was intended to shock, rather than celebrate a new ideological movement. The closest they came to imagining an alternative Right was borrowing the idea of an ethnostate from fringe Russian thinkers. Otherwise, the alt-right was just a collection of complaints decorated with some racist and fascist language and imagery.

Other groups among the dispossessed are even less coherent in what they want than the alt-right. The neo-reactionaries want to return to the age of kings, but with the modern material items produced by liberalism. The neo-nationalists and populists, like the paleocons, mostly want to return to a convenient starting point in the past. Theirs is not a critique of liberal democracy, but of its constant companion radicalism. Like Marxists, they argue that real liberal democracy has not been tried yet.

The truth is, none of these approaches can get very far, because at their core they accept the base assumptions of liberal democracy. That means they embrace the core principles of the Left. Those being egalitarianism and the blank slate. They may place some qualifiers on these, but ultimately, they start with the assumption that there is a universally preferable form of human organization. That form of human organization assumes people are all the same with the same human potential.

In this regard, this age is not calling for an alternative Right. There’s no need to rally the guerrilla forces, aged and withered, having hidden out in the ideological and political jungles for generations, in order to reclaim the high ground of liberal democracy. Even if they were able to fight, that fight has been long over. The reason the Left holds the high ground, controls the institutions, is they won the moral argument. They now get to control the moral paradigm, altering it in order to win each fight.

When thinking about what replaces conventional conservatism, the starting point must be this dynamic. The Left controls the moral framework. This allows them to alter every political battlefield by manipulating the shared reality that is the public space. Since democracy is about persuasion, rather than truth, they can easily tilt the battle field to make their job easy. They win because the Right keeps charging up the hill to attack the institutions controlled by the Left, who always enjoy the moral high ground.

For there to be an alternative to conservatism, it must therefore be a genuine alternative to the Left. In other words, what is needed is not so much an alternative Right, but an alternative Left. What’s needed is a new radicalism that starts first with the understanding that we are entering a new age. The ideologies and moralities of the past age, the Industrial Age, are not relevant to the technological age and they are impotent and impractical for the demographic age.

The reactionary and violent multiculturalism on the Left is, in part, a response to this looming reality. The prevailing orthodoxy of today, is the result of the radicalism in later-stage liberal democracy that reached its peak in the last century. Peak liberal democracy, was also peak industrial society. The so-called radicals of today, are just the established order, kitted out in the outfits of yesteryear’s avant-garde. There is nothing radical about the modern Left. They are all reactionaries now.

The anger expressed by the Left toward various challenges, real and imagined, is like a child throwing a tantrum, frustrated at a toy. Their anger starts from the secret sense that their moral framework is no longer relevant. They are unable to quantify or even comprehend it. They just sense it, like an ill wind. Like primitives confronted with some natural mystery, the men and women defending the established order are in a defensive panic at the shadow of change falling on the West.

The new alternative must start where all radicals start, as a rejection of the founding principles of the prevailing order. There is no universally preferable form of human organization, morally, ethically or practically. Human beings are not all the same, born with the same stock of natural talent. Further, humans are not infinitely malleable, able to be shaped into whatever society designs. These values may have had utility in the prior age, but in this age, they are a liability that must be abandoned.

Whether one chooses to call what comes next an alternative Right or something else, it must be a genuine alternative. The main reason conventional conservatism failed in its opposition to the Left is that it was not an alternative to liberalism. It was a slightly different implementation of it. What replaces conservatism cannot start from the same error, but must be a radical departure from both Left and Right, as commonly understood. It must be a radical alternative to the prevailing morality.

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Unraveling Impeachment

Posted on September 29, 2019 by thezman

In the days after the election, when the Left was howling about Russian collusion, it was clear they were hiding something. The theory they were pitching was so ridiculous, it had to be about something else. The mendacious mediocrities in mass media could be convinced it was real, but that’s their job. Normal people always knew the claims were absurd. We later learned that the Russian hoax was part of an effort to conceal the seditious plot by the intelligence community.

The Russian collusion hoax is a good place to start when trying to unravel the latest impeachment panic. That caper was about getting a special prosecutor named before Team Trump could figure out what was happening. Mueller, the horse-faced flunky, would provide cover, while greasy operatives on his staff would hoover up anything related to the FBI caper. The whole affair would be sequestered while they figured out how to get rid of Trump and anyone too curious about what happened.

Put another way, the point of the caper was never really about Trump. He was just a useful pivot point in order to address a different issue. They were much more concerned about people like Devon Nunes, who were doggedly pursuing the case. The special prosecutor was a way to end-run Congress and pests like Nunes, so the whole thing could be hidden from public view. If not for a few Congressional Republicans, there would never have been a need for the Russian collusion hoax.

It’s pretty clear that this new gambit is being run by many of the same people who were involved in the original caper. It has the same signature. There is a fake whistle blower, who was purpose built for the task. His claims were systematically leaked to the media, so the Democrats could pretend to be outraged and demand an investigation. The media was ready for a full onslaught of impeachment stories. Like the Russian collusion hoax, this one is highly coordinated with the press.

If the last impeachment hoax was about covering up the FBI spying and seditious plot to overturn the election, the question is what are they trying to cover for now? The original investigation of the FBI seems to be heading in some strange directions after Barr took over the case. Reportedly he is on official business in Italy. That has the Democrats going bonkers, as it suggests he is looking into the CIA role in the Russian collusion hoax. They seem very worried about Bill Barr all of a sudden.

The thing that has been ignored that probably is important is that Pelosi was trying to put an end to the impeachment stuff until recent. When she went to meet with her caucus over this whistle blower stuff, the pundits assumed she was going to squash the whole thing. Instead, she came out of those meetings fully on board with not only impeachment, but fast tracking it. Maybe her caucus was in revolt and she felt she had no choice or maybe she learned something and felt she had no choice.

Regardless of the internal dynamics of the party, this latest impeachment frenzy seems to be related to what Barr has been up to lately. This post at Conservative Tree-house goes into a lot of detail, but what stands out is the Mifsud item. It was his involvement with Papadopoulos that allegedly set off the FBI probe. If he is actually a CIA asset used as part of the larger plot, then that changes things considerably. It now brings the CIA into the mix as co-conspirators in the seditious plot to overturn the election.

That could be why the CIA had one of their people work with the Democrats to create the whistle blower story. They are worried that they are now in some jeopardy. Their concern may be that they have been secretly listening to Trump’s official calls with foreign leaders. Notice that the Democrats are now claiming the transcript the White House provided is a forgery. They could only think that if they were told there is stuff missing from the transcript, by someone who saw the original.

In other words, the first impeachment hoax was about covering up the FBI plot to overturn the 2016 election. This latest impeachment hoax is about muddying the waters in order to conceal CIA involvement. The hope is the Democrats and the media can someone gain jurisdiction over the whole thing and prevent public disclosures that will be very bad for the CIA. The FBI spying on politicians is bad, but the CIA working for foreign countries to spy on politicians would be devastating.

The thing that does not make a lot of sense is that the Congress cannot take over an investigation like a special prosecutor. Perhaps that’s what the game is here. They will dirty up Barr while claiming to investigate this latest hoax, then demand another special prosecutor. That would explain why they are in such a rush to get started. As we saw with the first hoax, this one may not be about Trump at all. It may be about taking out someone who is asking the wrong questions about the right people.

The Madness Of Anti-Racism

Posted on September 28, 2019 by thezman

Every liberal society must have a civic religion and it is fair to say that the prevailing religion of current year America is anti-racism. For sure, things like anti-sexism and anti-antisemitism are in the mix. On a regular basis people are condemned for not liking homosexuals or people of mysterious origins. The list of “bads” is very long. All of these other “isms” that make up the set of official “bads” all have the same root as anti-racism. That is, they are twisted around the pole of biological reality.

The place to start is with the dictionary definition of racism. According to Merriam-Webster, the first definition of racism is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Dictionary.com defines racism as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”

Now, within living memory, racism was an act. A racists was someone who would not hire people of a certain race or would deny people of a certain race access to goods and services. Then the definition shifted to include words. If one said disparaging things about someone of another race, they could be a racist. The assumption being that to think poorly of another race must inevitably lead to acting poorly toward people of another race. Racism was now a state of mind.

Of course, this is now true of all the bads. If one is not sufficiently worshipful of homosexuals, for example, it is assumed you must be homophobic. The days of “hate the sin, but love the sinner” are long gone in our secular theology, assuming such sophistication ever existed or was even possible. With all of the bads, one’s virtue on these matters is an A-B test. You’re either sufficiently worshipful of the protected group or you are an apostate, possibly a heretic, who must be condemned.

The thing is, racism is not empirically verifiable. In fact, it is not something people thought much about until recent. The best one can do, as far as making an empirical claim about racism, is that it is verifiable under a set of logical rules. If someone believes these things, then they are racist. Those rules, however, are cognitively meaningless. That is, they are not true in and of themselves. Those rules exist because the people in charge have wished them into existence.

That’s the truth of all moral codes. They don’t exist naturally. They may arise from observation of nature or as a result of some qualities of man. People do not want to be killed, for example, so human societies have evolved moral codes against killing people inside the society. The moral codes of a society may have evolved in response to universal or particular facts facing the people, but they had to be conjured into existence by the people in charge of society. Therefore, racism is a social construct.

There is a slow shift going on with the definition of racism. The first part of those common definitions now says something like “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race.” In other words, the moral codes that define racism now include an assertion of fact. That is, race does not exist. After all, to say that people have shared traits that define them as a people is what is considered the primary definition of racism. To be a racist is to acknowledge race.

Racism is well on its way to becoming a form of magic. The racist mind is now one that perceives things that are not real, like sub-Saharan Africans having dark skin. The epicanthic fold not only cannot exist, noticing it suggests the person seeing it is possessed by the demon of racism. There really is no other way to interpret the emerging definition of racism. In order to resolve the conflict between the definition and nature, they must introduce some supernatural element.

The problem, of course, is that there are characteristics and abilities specific to race, ethnicity and sex. People are not amorphous blobs that can be shaped into whatever the ruling class favors at the moment. In fact, it is impossible to maintain a functioning society without accepting biological reality. Otherwise, the differences in outcome, for example blacks in sports or Jews in business, can only be explained by theories of nefarious forces operating in the shadows at the expense of your group.

Now, in fairness, they still tag on the old modifiers about superiority. That’s the thing though, those modifiers are now in the back. Given the behavior of science deniers in the mass media, it is not going to be long before those modifiers about superiority are dropped entirely. One has only to look at the conflation of the terms “white nationalist” and white supremacist.” The ruling cult now uses them interchangeably. To notice that whites are different from other groups is to be evil by definition.

Even if they figure out that those modifiers must be maintained in order for the definition of racism to have coherence, there are those differences between the races. It is an undeniably truth that sub-Saharan Africans perform differently in physical competitions than other races. In fact, they are superior at sprinting and at extreme long distance running events. These differences are rooted in those common traits. For people to be different, it means they must be better or worse at various quantifiable things.

In the fullness of time, anti-racism, and the whole basket of bads that come along with it, will be viewed as a madness that took possession of the ruling classes. The need to see all people as equal, a requirement of democracy, has led the ruling elites of the West down a dark journey into a madness. The denial of physical reality can only be tolerated for so long. Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it. Soon, reality shall return and wash the madness away.

Fight The Power!

Posted on September 27, 2019 by thezman

Instead of doing a bunch of stuff on the impeachment hoax, I decided to go another way and have some fun with the social justice warriors. My guess is most people are already sick of the media’s attempt to foist this latest left-wing lunacy upon us. The massive, coordinated effort to gas light the public on this is breathtaking. No doubt the Left is loving this, but normal people have to be thinking very dark thoughts. A quick look at Drudge and it is clear the media detached from reality.

Speaking of Drudge, what in the world happened to that site? I deleted the book mark back in the 2016 campaign, as I got sick of the anti-Trump stuff he ran every day, but my goodness, that site is garbage now. His site has always been run by rent boys he picks up in South Beach, but he used to exercise some judgement over them. Maybe his lifestyle has finally caught up with him. Whatever the reason, his site is unreadable at this point. It’s a hysterical version of the New York Times.

Anyway, for a little relief from the madness, the show this week is about the various social justice causes. The segment on Emily Walton is my favorite, as it reminds me of when I used to haunt the comment section of news sites. It was always good fun to post biographical material about the author of a post about social justice. Inevitably, the white people demanding justice are always the sort who organize their lives so they never have to experience vibrancy. They talk like MLK and live like the KKK.

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
05:00: Making The White Girls Cry (Link)
15:00: Climate Justice (Link)
25:00: Live Like Emily Walton (Link) (Link)
35:00: Racial Food Justice (Link) (Link)
45:00: Racist Pollution (Link)
55:00: Closing (Link)

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Bitchute

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/svQui6rXm_w

Too Corrupt To Fail

Posted on September 26, 2019 by thezman

In all of the big institutional scandals, there is always a question that rarely gets addressed and that is, how did it go on for so long? By the time the thing starts to become public, the number of people involved, either actively or passively, has reached a point where it became impossible to hide. In some cases, the issue at the heart of the scandal just became a normal thing to the people inside the institution. For some mysterious reason, no one raised the alarm until much too late.

The best example of this is the Catholic Church scandal. By the time the story of the homosexual priests was public, the Church was infested with them. The lavender mafia had taken over whole orders. The number of pederasts had reached a point where moving them around the system was just a part of the administration. As people started asking questions and making claims, the system rallied to defend itself, without much thought about what it was defending. The corruption was systemic.

Something similar protected Jewish perverts like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein from being exposed. In both cases, lots of people knew these men were involved in degenerate activities, but no one dared say it publicly. In the case of Weinstein, the excuse was that outing him would be bad for the career. In the case of Epstein, the excuse was he had dirt on powerful people. No one knows if that is true. It’s one of those just-so answers to avoid having to think much about it.

It seems that corruption has a dynamic that starts with the first flexing of the rules that are supposed to control the institution. Somewhere along the line, it becomes expedient to overlook some minor infraction. Like a cancer, the exception making starts to spread through the system. At first, a small number of people are breaking rules and tolerating the rule breaking. As each new person learns of the practice, he is a smaller minority relative to the set of rule breakers. Thus he is less inclined to oppose it.

At first it is a handful of senior people, for example, involved in some sort of minor shenanigans that violates the spirit of the rules. The first person to learn of it is faced with taking on that cabal of senior people. Alternatively, the rule breakers are junior people, but their bosses look the other way, because they have other political interests or they are just too lazy to address it. Either way, the potential whistle blower is always outnumbered. That alone is often enough of a discouragement.

At some point, another dynamic kicks in. Those who cannot tolerate the corruption, but lack the courage to do anything about it, are boiled off. They move on, leaving behind a mix of cowards and corrupt. Of course, the corrupt flock to corruption, so the institution becomes a magnate for the type who like rule breaking. Before long, you go from a system where rule breaking is not tolerated and the rule breakers fear exposure, to a system where rule breaking is normalized and rule enforcers fear exposure.

The best example of this is the rotten police precinct. In every case, the corruption begins with a small number of cops. The good cops try to do something about it, but run into lazy or fearful superiors, who refuse to address the issue. Those cops either move on or find a way to justify their silence. Other cops either tacitly support the bad cops or justify their willful blindness in some way. Before long, the rotten precinct becomes an organism with its own immune system and defense mechanisms.

Put another way, the corrupt organization or system becomes too corrupt to fail, as everyone has some reason to protect it. For some at the heart of the corruption, the reason is obvious, but all around them are people who fear being shamed for having said nothing or fear being implicated for having looked the other way. The fallacy of the sunk cost becomes an operating principle. Everyone assumes there can be no turning back, so the corruption accelerates until eventually it does collapse.

This dynamic of corruption is something to consider when trying to sort out the many scandals engulfing Washington. For eight years, the media was celebrating the fact that there were no major scandals under Obama. They never said it, but there were no big scandals under Bush. The Scooter Libby stuff was the only thing that approached major scandal status and that was only because the press was bored. Otherwise, it was just eight years of partisan howling about trivial matters.

Yet, Trump hits town and the city is hit with a tsunami of front page scandals. The fact that most are hoaxes and the rest are scandals those hoaxes are intend to obscure, suggests something about the system. It sees Trump as not only a foreign body, but a threat by reason of being a foreign body. He’s the new precinct captain taking over a rotten precinct or the new bishop with a reputation for piety. The defense mechanism of the corrupt organization just assumes virtue is a vice that must be expelled.

This would explain why the whole system seems to have reorganized itself to defend even the pipsqueaks in the system. Andrew McCabe should be a perfect fall guy, as he is high profile enough to be a nice trophy, but not so high up as to be important to anyone in politics. Yet, he has been funneled millions of dollars by the system, through jobs and speaking fees. His legal defense fund quickly filled up with millions of dollars from Washington lobbyists. The system wants him safe.

Something similar is happening with the fake whistle blower story. The system saw that Trump people were looking into the Biden stuff. Instinctively the system responds with the fake whistle blower, so the democrats can bellow about impeachment, rather than defend Joe Biden. Why not just let this very corrupt old man go down in flames so Warren can be the nominee? The thoroughly corrupt organization lacks the ability to sacrifice any part of itself, so it instinctively defends the whole.

This video of Rudy Giuliani talking about the Biden corruption is interesting for a number of reasons. One is the level of corruption. It does appear China bought Joe Biden, while he was Vice President. Putting that aside, Giuliani seems to be realizing, as he is talking, that Washington is just like the organized crime he prosecuted back when he was making a name for himself in New York. It is an organism whose purpose, in addition to the corruption, is to defend itself against exposure.

Back during the mortgage crisis, the expression “too big to fail” became a catchphrase for justifying government support for the banks. Something similar is at work in Washington, in that it is too corrupt to fail. It’s not that so many people depend on politics as usual. It’s that the graft and corruption is so wide spread, no one thinks they can afford even a little exposure. The business of Washington is now concealing the fact it is thoroughly rotten. The business of the empire is organized crime.

The Ghost Of Alexander Butterfield

Posted on September 25, 2019 by thezman

For reasons that no one can quite explain, the Democrats are once again roaring about impeachment. This time they are promising to have a meeting about holding a hearing on whether or not to start impeachment proceedings. For his part, Trump seems to be enjoying this more than usual. He gets to stand in front of the cameras and unload on the “fake news” and Joe Biden’s crooked son. This is his element. He is a man who likes to be in the middle of the whirlwind. He loves this stuff.

The core story here is a puzzle. The Democrats demanding impeachment are relying on someone pretending to be a whistle blower. This person cannot possibly have information damaging to Trump. There is a strong suspicion that this person is another menopausal nut like Blasey-Ford, the women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of being Jack the Ripper in another life. Given that the same team of lawyers behind that stink bomb were involved in the FBI plot, it’s a smart bet.

Of course, all of this is great political theater and that is the point of it. People get paid a lot of money to go on television and conjure complex four-dimensional strategies for why this is happening. No one in the Washington media knows anything that is not handed to them by someone in government, so they are left with reading those scripts or playing make believe. For a week or so, the impeachment show will be center stage, then the dogs will bark, but the caravan will move on.

As far as why the Democrats are stepping on this rake, the most likely answer is they need to make noise. Joe Biden is on video bragging about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired. That prosecutor was investigating a shady deal involving Biden’s shady kid and some other Democrat connected people. Screaming impeachment is a useful distraction. Biden gave a presser yesterday and the media largely ignored it, because they were told to focus on the Trump impeachment flap.

It’s important to remember that this is not about Trump or Biden. What this is about is the corruption that went on during the Obama years. We know, for example, that several Senators were colluding with the FBI plotters. While no smoking gun has been unearthed, it seems likely that Obama’s inner circle knew about the plot. Then there is the Clinton factor. No one really knows what she was auctioning off out of the State Department and no one wants the public to know about it either.

This is probably why Trump is grinning like a chimp over this Ukraine stuff. It’s another chance to bring that story into the sunlight. Trump has been trying to get the classified documents surrounding the FBI case released for a year now. His AG, Bill Barr, is sitting on them as the political establishment works to prevent the disclosure. The more the media and the Democrats demand documents and testimony from the Trump administration, the greater the odds of an Alexander Butterfield moment.

Alexander Butterfield was a White House staffer in the Nixon years. He revealed the existence of the White House taping system, during the Watergate investigation. It was his testimony that changed the nature of the scandal. Investigators suspected there was a recording system, but they had no way of knowing. In questioning Butterfield about another matter, he revealed that there was a taping system in the Oval Office and most important, everything was being taped. It was the turning point of the scandal.

There has always been speculation that the Butterfield story was not just serendipity, but that he was maneuvered into a position to make the revelation. The famous scene of Republican lawyer Fred Thompson questioning Butterfield during the televised hearing was completely staged. It was a made for television event that spelled the beginning of the end for Nixon. Soon, there were demands for the tapes and public opinion flipped against Nixon, who resigned the next year.

Theatrics aside, the lesson of the Butterfield story is that you never can know what will slither into the daylight once you start turning over rocks. The Trump administration is in possession of a lot of classified material related to the political corruption of the last administration. They can’t just dump it into the public domain. A big ugly political fight with the Democrats, heading into an election, is perfect cover for putting someone in front of Congress to accidentally on purpose say something important.

This is why Pelosi has no intention of holding formal impeachment proceedings. It’s far too risky to her party. She may be high on happy pills all day, but she is shrewd enough to know such a hearing would be very dangerous. Of course, this is why Trump seems to be daring the Democrats to open the hearings. It’s good politics, but it also creates the sort of atmosphere conducive to letting things slip into the public domain. Thanks to this Ukraine flap, we now know Biden’s political campaign is over.

The trouble for Pelosi and the Democrats is their media and back bench is staffed with the sorts of lunatics they have been courting for decades. The Washington press corps is full of hysterical females, convinced Trump will stuff their uterus with Bibles and sew their legs shut. The Democrat back benchers are cranks and dingbats like Ocasio-Cortez and Corey Booker. Keeping these loons from rushing into the minefield may prove impossible. Trump seems to think so, at least.

Wrong From The Beginning

Posted on September 24, 2019 by thezman

A popular topic in dissident circles is the failure of the so-called conservatives to do anything to halt the advance of the Left. The way the conversation goes is to start with some event, the “conservative case for some lefty idea” and then move to mocking a particular conservative, who exemplifies the type. This can go the other way, as well, if the latest surrender is being led by a clown nose like David French of Kevin Williamson, two men who have become the face of modern cuckery.

There is an assumption among dissidents that these types know full well that they are just props for their Progressive handlers. They are aware of the truth, but choose to lie for a living, as it pays better than being honest. While this may be true with hucksters like French or an oleaginous grifter like Dinesh D’Souza, it is not so obvious with the bulk of the conservative believers. They see themselves as an authentic opposition to the Left and they think it is an effective opposition.

Here is a typical example from American Conservative of the sort of material popular with the normie conservative. It’s the standard rant against identity politics and multiculturalism that avoids anything dangerous. Right off the bat, the subhead gives the game away. It is going to be the conservative case for democracy, an idea conservatives have opposed since forever. It’s also un-American. The Founders were quite explicit and very public in their opposition to democracy.

Now, putting that aside, the writer gets going with the claim that “a healthy democracy demands that voters resist voting out of personal advancement. Your vote should be determined by what is best for the nation, not what is best for you.” In other words, the functioning democracy, not even an ideal one, is one where the members are ready to sacrifice themselves and their interests for the greater good. Presumably, there would be strong moral prohibitions against appeals to individual interests.

A normal man could be forgiven for wondering if this is a post about membership in a suicide cult, rather than a human society. This definition of democracy can only lead to a piety spiral, where citizens prove their virtue through self-abnegation. If the greatest good is sacrifice to the whole, then the normal human desire for status is going to lead to extreme public acts of piety. Since the most one can give of themselves is their life, the ultimate act of sacrifice to democracy would be suicide.

In addition to being insane, this definition of democracy is wrong. The Greeks certainly understood that the citizen’s relationship with his polis was reciprocal. We know this from Plato and Aristotle. The reason Athenian democracy could work was the individual gained something from his inclusion in the polis and, in turn, the polis got something from his participation. The Greeks were not lunatics forming a cult. As a result, they also limited the vote to Athenian males. You had to be born into the polis.

Later, he claims, “Multiculturalist ideology and identity politics have corrupted the way we understand participatory democracy.” A few paragraphs later he writes, “Any serious thinker knows that having a society that isn’t multicultural is an impossibility…” The reader might miss this obvious contradiction, as these statements are separated by a few paragraphs, but the writer should see the error. If a democracy must be multicultural, then multiculturalism is a necessary element.

The thing is, the general tone of the post suggests the writer is oblivious to this contradiction. Instead, he looks at the inevitable result of multiculturalism, which is social conflict and eventually violence, as the result of the bad people he calls Marxists, who subvert the system in some way. These Marxist, presumably, convince the citizens to be selfish individualists. Ironically, the assertion here is Marx and Marxists were suffering from false consciousness. They were not collectivists after all!

Toward the end of the piece, we get this gem. “Oddly, identity politics and multiculturalism are similar to Randian objectivism—they reinvent the political field as a means of advancing self-interest.” While it is amusing to see libertarians and cultural Marxists at the same trough, that’s not the intent here. The implication is that any politics that places the individual or his group at the top is inauthentic. True politics is the complete elimination of the individual and group identity.

Putting aside that this sounds like a suicide cult, the obvious problem here is that the total devotion to the democracy is a form of identity politics. The members of such a society would be warranted, maybe even required, for example, to go over to another society and murder all of those people. After all, to be outside the democracy is to be opposed to it, as anything but total immersion in the democracy is immoral. A smart man would then wonder if this is why democracy tends to be aggressive.

What’s going on here is the writer, like most conservatives, is desperately trying to reconcile a grab bag of principles that have been handed to him by the Left. He wants to believe democracy is wonderful. He wants to believe multiculturalism is the natural way of mankind. He believes all people are equal and infinitely malleable. Therefore, the only way to reconcile these “truths” is a form of politics that eliminates all individual and group identity. Everything that makes us human must be sacrificed.

Not only is this monstrous, it is an affirmation of the core of radicalism. This is the argument Progressives make on a daily basis. It is what justifies their war on anyone that opposes them. They feel completely justified in destroying the lives of those who disagree with them, because dissent is to put something before the whole. Just as the virtuous must fully submit themselves to the democracy, they must also sacrifice anyone who dissents. Democracy demands your total commitment.

The writer of that American Conservative piece does not follow his own logic nor can he, because he believes the same things the Left believes. That is and always has been the problem with the so-called conservatives. Their starting point is the same as the people they claim to oppose. They embrace the same universalism, the same egalitarianism and the same worship of democracy. From the beginning, American conservatism was about accommodation. It was wrong from the start.

Questions

Posted on September 23, 2019 by thezman

A good rule to live by in modern America is that you can never be too cynical. No matter how negative your view of something, particularly politics, you are most likely being naive or optimistic relative to reality. If you go back a few decades, you’ll find that every cynical joke about how things will get worse turned out to be sunny optimism, at least with regards to politics and culture. Sadly, the doomsday predictions about economics, meteor strikes and other catastrophes turned out to be false.

As the Biden – Ukraine story begins to unfold, that old rule about being too cynical starts to look prudent. The degree of corruption in the Obama years among the Democrats is beyond what even the cynical imagined. So far, this looks like Joe Biden, while Vice President, pressured the Ukrainian government to give his crooked son a pass on some crooked energy deal in Ukraine. Biden’s son was being paid fifty grand a month for what appears to be a no-show job in a business about which he knows nothing.

Financial shenanigans are nothing new in politics, but this rises to a whole new level, which raises the first question. How crooked were these people? It’s one thing to use your influence to pressure a business for favors to a relative or political ally. This appears to be an effort to manipulate foreign policy in an effort to funnel cash to the son of the sitting VP. This is much more flagrant and much more dangerous than shaking down a contractor or taking a bribe from a donor.

This is not some one-off thing with Biden’s kid. His crooked dealings in China have long been part of the background noise of the Democrat primary. He’s also been into shady dealings with domestic financial firms and lobbying shops. The picture that emerges is of the loser son, who uses his family name to facilitate get-rich-quick schemes. He’s protected from scrutiny by his famous father. This is not Hillary Clinton level corruption, but the flagrant and reckless way in which it has gone on is amazing.

Speaking of Clinton, the effluvia of corruption that surrounds Hillary Clinton’s time in the Obama administration adds some context. The assumption has been that she was selling favors out of the State Department while she was Secretary of State. She was also eyeball deep in the Uranium One scandal. You can’t help but notice how the old Soviet Union keeps playing a role in these stories. The whole Russian collusion narrative takes on a new meaning in light of these revelations.

Of course, this not only leads back to the Russian collusion hoax, but to another question that naturally flows from all of this. How stupid are these people? Take a look at the recent Biden flap. It has been known for a while that the Trump administration was trying to get that story in the media for a year. It was ignored for the obvious reasons, so they appear to have pushed this whistle blower story. The media took the bait, only to learn that it was not the smoking gun of impeachment they imagined.

Now, this may have been dumb luck on the part of Team Trump. In politics, it is better to be lucky than good. Luck in politics is to be blessed with very stupid opponents. That seems to be the case here, but at a much wider scale. Biden had been bragging in public about throwing his weight around with the Ukrainians when he was VP. Rudy Giuliani had been pushing this story for a year. It should not have been too hard for the media to see what was coming, but they fell for the story anyway.

The question of competence is even stronger when you bring in the seditious plot run by the FBI against Trump in 2016. There was never a reason to do this. All Clinton needed to do was run a reasonably competent race and make sure to grease the Democrat machines in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Instead they went for the insanely complicated entrapment plan. Cartoon super-villains in the movies are more sober minded with regards to their schemes than these people.

This brings up something else. Why did they go after Paul Manafort, who was also involved with the Ukrainians? The assumption has been that he was low hanging fruit, but now that it is clear Biden was involved in similar dealings with Ukraine, the case takes on a new dimension. Maybe going after Manafort was about protecting Biden and by extension the Obama administration. It could be serendipity, but if you were going to look into Biden’s corrupt dealings, paying a visit to Manafort in prison is a good idea.

When Hillary Clinton arrived in Washington, her first move was to seize the raw FBI files on the political class. At the time, it was alleged she did this to get dirt on Republicans, but everyone knows Republicans are harmless. Given that Clinton operatives eventually made it to the top of the FBI, it brings that scandal back to life. Is it possible that the point of that caper was to seed the FBI with Clinton operatives? Maybe that caper was really about turning the FBI into an arm of Clinton Inc.

That sort of thinking raises the obvious question as to the purpose of the Obama administration. It is looking more and more like it was taken over by Clinton cronies and Obama was just a decoration. The most cynical said Obama was a figurehead and the real power were left-wing ideologues. Maybe the real power was the Clinton graft machine that had slowly consumed the Democrat party and the political class of Washington. Team Obama was just assimilated by the Clinton Borg.

Every time a new rock is overturned, new questions arise about what went on in the Obama years. They always seem to have some connection to Hillary Clinton, which raises a lot of other questions. The main question, of course, is will we ever get the answers to any of this. The answer to that is where we started. You can never be too cynical these days, with regards to politics. That means we will never know the truth of these scandals and we will never reach the end of them either.

Coaching Markets

Posted on September 21, 2019 by thezman

In America, a fall Saturday often means watching some college football or possibly heading off to tailgate at the alma mater. Sunday is for the NFL, which remains the top television draw, despite its problems. For much of the country, Friday night is for the local high school games. Some parts of the country play their high school games on Saturday morning, but for most it is Friday night. In Texas, high school football is a two billion dollar business. Americans love their sports, especially football.

Currently, the two best coaches in the game are Nick Saban, who coaches the Alabama Crimson Tide and Bill Belichick of the NFL’s New England Patriots. The fact that the ancestors of both men are from Illyria is an interesting fact. Not only are both the best of their era, it is possible they are the best ever. Both men have a similar style of managing their programs and both are known for being something less than charming with the media. The shadow of Diocletian is very long.

Anyway, the thing that stands out about Saban and Belichick is they are smart men, who are excellent organizers. They are gifted at working within the constraints of the game and the constraints of their situations. They are not married to a style of play, instead adapting to the talent on-hand and the state of the game. They are known for getting the most from each player, often creating a niche for the player that did not exist. They also adapt to their staffs, shuffling people in and out of their organizations.

The thing is, what makes both men remarkable is that they are exceptions. Coaching football is a very lucrative profession in current year America. Bill Belichick is thought to make close to $15 million per year. Nick Saban makes $9 million per year. Both men are probably worth over $100 million at this point. In the case of Belichick, he could be worth a quarter billion or more, as he surely has been given investment opportunities unavailable to most people. Sports teams are owned by oligarchs.

Now, for two of the greatest of all time, that is probably justifiable, but further down the talent scale, the money is still very good. All over the NFL, there are head coaches making millions per year for being very bad at their jobs. There are lots of assistants making big money for being bad at their jobs. Many assistants, are often known to lack the talent to ever be a head coach, while others are simply happy to be a mediocre NFL coach making a very good living in the game.

At the college level, the cost of mediocrity is most obvious. Many of the college head coaches are dumb people, even by the standards of sport. Will Muschamp coaches the University of South Carolina football team. He makes over $5 million per year. He is not very good at coaching football. He got fired from his last high paying gig and he will be fired from this one. He’s not alone. The game is littered with guys who are not all that bright, but somehow rise to the top of the profession.

If libertarians were right about anything, this would not be the case. There is very little government interference in the coaching business. These are contract employees, so they can be fired at will. Moreover, the colleges seem to be immune from charges of discrimination like private business. Blacks are wildly under-represented in the coaching business. There are few Jews in the management side. Women are just about non-existent in the game. Sport is free to be a free market for coaches.

In theory, the lucrative salaries and the lifestyle should be a magnet for smart young people in America. Every year, thousands of young people head to Hollywood and New York hoping to be a star. They want to be famous. You would think something similar would happen with coaching, where the money is great and you don’t have to have sex with guys like Harvey Weinstein as a condition of employment. Smart young people should be flocking to sports coaching trying to make it big.

Of course, something similar should be true of politics. Congressman and Senators are not pulling down football coach money, but they live a great lifestyle. They also get perks like the right to trade on their insider knowledge. Paul Ryan, for example, went to Washington penniless and retired with a net worth of $6 million. He landed in a seven figure job bribing his fellow colleagues. That should draw hundreds of candidates into every race, but politics is largely a closed shop, despite being democratic.

There’s not point here, other than that to point out that “natural markets” don’t exist, even in the absence of government. There’s almost no government role in the football coaching business, but it is a closed world controlled by relationships and insider information among the coaches. The same is true of politics. In theory, anyone can run for Congress. In reality, they allow in only those they want in. The Senate is the world’s most exclusive club, followed by the House and the football coaching fraternity.

A Very Crappy Podcast

Posted on September 20, 2019 by thezman

For some reason, things became a real grind for me the last couple of days. I’ve been so busy with the day job, I think it is just starting to wear on me. As a result, I’m not in the best frame of mind and that, in turn, makes me less productive. This week I decided to do some lighter material in order to lighten my mood a bit. It really did not work, as recording last night was a real grind. I had to start over so many times I started to lose track, so if the sound is not the best at some points, that’s why.

Yesterday’s post about the tax was another product of having a bad aura. I stopped to get coffee on the way to the office and the locals were doing their thing. At some point I thought to myself, “Why do we have to tolerate this?” I suspect lots of normal men have this thought cross their mind these days. Here in Lagos, it is not just the natives, but the imports that tax the soul. Our betters are dumping the United Nations here, as if we don’t have enough trouble. Maybe they just hate Lagos.

That said, you can’t walk around with a lemon in your pocket, unless you are a left-wing female, so you have to find ways to lift the spirits. This week’s show started out to be a normal grab bag type show, but then a theme emerged, I had some Xirl science stuff ready, so I included that, even though it did not quite fit with the theme. On the other hand, the crap papers that come from the grievance studies people are excellent examples of the show title. Close enough for a dissident podcast.

The segment on smart toilets was still on my mind when I woke up this morning. I just can’t stop thinking about the meetings that go on around designing a smart toilet. I keep imagining a managerial type talking about the opportunity to collect data on people’s bathroom habits, which they can then monetize by selling to advertisers. You know that will be one result of the “connected home.” You will go in to do your thing and an ad for product will appear in the bowl water or start playing through a speaker.

This already happens with mobile phones. Those who travel a lot have surely got the mysterious text message welcoming you to an airport or a location. It will not be long before Alexa welcomes you home by offering you a deal on product. You’ll need to answer a survey to get your smart toilet to let you lift the lid. Whenever I read about the connected him, I immediately think that the future will be crap. OK, that is the last crap joke of the week. Please remember to tip your waitresses.