Dear Black Friday

One of the little known truths about dissident politics is in order to get paid for a holiday, you have to work the day before and the day after. That sounds pretty rough, but you do get paid time and a half if the the holiday has the word “black” in it. That means a Black Friday edition of the Power Hour. The hardest working man in dissident show biz is not going to miss an opportunity to remind everyone of that fact.

This time of year is actually the slowest time of the year for site traffic. I think it holds for listening, but the metrics I have are not very reliable. The Spreaker numbers are not very accurate and the other platforms don’t have any measures. My guess though is the podcast audience shrinks along with the site traffic. People into this stuff have jobs and this is a busy time for the employed. Lots to do before take time off.

Given that this is the time of the year when American give thanks and think about their good fortune, a letters episode seems appropriate. I’m also now fully caught up on all correspondence for the first time in a long time. I have a few items left over, but those are outside the normal mailbag. Otherwise, the inbox is clean, the nail bag is empty and the secret e-mail account is also clean. For that I am thankful.

After the last one of these, someone asked how I pick the questions to use. The simple answer is I use those that I think are interesting. Questions about myself or about general politics are not all that interesting to people. Questions about subjects I don’t cover in the blog are much more interesting to me, so I assume they will be interesting to the audience. I could be wrong, but that’s the method to the madness.

Since I know everyone will be out donating their savings to globohomo today, you can now do so to the sound of my voice. I will not be partaking in Black Friday. Here in Lagos, every day is black Friday. I will be working around the house on some chores I have been saving for the long weekend. Arbeit macht frei. I’m also working on the book this weekend, trying to get that project off the ground finally.

I’m also now on something called Deezer, which I am told is more popular than Spotify, which banned me last year. I looked up the respective audiences and Deezer does appear to have a bigger audience, even though I’ve never heard of it. My guess is it caters to a European audience, but I’m just going off the fact that it is based in Europe and run by Europeans. Regardless, it is another option for you.

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.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00 Opening
  • 02:40 Cheating The System
  • 08:15 Nick Fuentes
  • 15:45 Debating
  • 20:00 Speaking Truth To Idiocy
  • 24:30 Collapse
  • 30:30 Contraception
  • 36:00 Markets
  • 39:45 Feminine Community
  • 44:15 Personal Stuff
  • 49:45 Thank You

Direct DownloadThe iTunesGoogle PlayiHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Bitchute

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

Happy Thanksgiving

Somewhere I lived, a radio station would put this song on loop all day so their employees could be home with their families. Someone told me it is a tradition in New England, but I don’t know if that is true. Maybe more of a habit. I knew a guy who would put that station on and listen to that song all day. He may have been the person who told me it was a New England tradition, but it was long ago.

The first time I heard this song in full was on the way back to Massachusetts from a trip south for some reason. I was driving through Stockbridge and I came upon a cop, who had pulled over a car full of libertarians. You could tell they were libertarians by their unpleasant demeanor and the “John Galt” stickers on their AMC Pacer. The cop was beating them with his flashlight along the side of the road.

I stopped and offered to help him beat the libertarians. He was more than happy to let me join in on the fun. Before long others had stopped and joined in on the beating of the libertarians. There’s really nothing like the holiday season to bring out the best in people. It was one of those times when you really understood the meaning of a holiday like Thanksgiving. All of us have a reason to give thanks, even if it just that we were never a libertarian or defective in some similar way.

Thank you to everyone who supports the effort. I truly appreciate it. Thank you to those who participate in what is regarded as one of the best comment sections on this side of the great divide. It is one of the things I count as a blessing. Whenever I’m out in the real world talking about this stuff, I’m always asked how I managed to create such a fun and informative comment section. I hope everyone has a wonderful day in whatever way in which you give thanks. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Unbear-a-ball

The weather last weekend was not very good here in Lagos, so I tuned in for some of the football games. I used to watch a lot of college football, but that has waned quite a bit over the last few years. When I consume college football, I’m usually doing something else, so I half listen and pay attention when I hear some excitement. These days, you can rewind the action if you miss something, so this sort of consumption is a lot easier than in the old days. You can watch the highlights in real time.

One thing you quickly learn when you cut the cord, which I did years ago, is that regular TV watching habituates you to the degeneracy. I’m not sure if you get used to it or your mind just learns to filter out the offensive garbage. Take a few weeks off, come back to it and you’re appalled at what you see. It’s not just the degeneracy, which is a big part of it, but the stupidity. Television has always been aimed at the 90-IQ crowd and that jumps out to you when you are away from it for a while.

Something similar seems to be true with televised sports. Once you take a break from watching these shows, the warts become obvious. Last weekend I could not help but notice the volume of commercials in these broadcasts. I was working on something and every time I looked up to see what was happening in the game, it was a commercial and usually for something alien to me. At some point I looked at some other games and sure enough, they were all in a commercial break.

Of course, the commercials are atrocious. This is where you see the propaganda effort behind all of this. Most likely, the typical viewer of college football is a white middle-aged male, living outside the Cloud People zones. That means suburban and exurban. That also means the sort of guy who voted for Trump. Yet, they blast ads featuring race-mixers and homosexuals. The products are things this demo is not buying, like AIDS drugs and cloud services. It’s ruling class porn as advertisement.

At some point, I decided to watch until I saw an ad featuring anything resembling normal people doing normal things. I gave up after about thirty minutes. If a space alien tried to understand America based on television, its conclusion would be that we are ruled by frizzy-haired mulatto lesbians and homosexuals. Their main task is keeping the simple-minded, almost retarded, white males under control. The TV ad world is the complete opposite of reality and any possible reality.

As far as the presentation of sports, it is pretty close to unwatchable. The endless commercials are a big problem for a casual viewer. I wanted to watch the Ohio State – Penn State game, but the presentation was so bad it was hard to watch. When it is not commercials for lesbians enjoying their work at Amazon, it is insipid airheads talking constantly while the players wander around between plays. Turning the sound off makes it worse, as you see how little is happening on the field.

It used to be popular with the sporting press to bad mouth baseball for being too slow and boring. The real reason they are told to bash baseball is the game has not been Africanized. It is not a running and jumping sport. There are no opportunities for the blacks to draw attention to themselves with the usual antics. Putting that aside, the slow pace of baseball makes sense in the context of the game. The slow pace of modern football is just a way to squeeze in more agit-prop.

The ruination of televised football is one of those examples that point to a deliberate, well thought-out war on white people. For a long time, football and baseball were things most whites could share as a cultural item. Despite the color on the field, the audience has remained stubbornly white. It was the thing white people could talk about at the office, without having to fear the PC police. Instead of leaving that as an oasis, the usual suspects seem to have targeted it for degeneration and destruction.

That said, the television ratings for this stuff have held up. There was some decline, but the usual suspects have convinced normie white males to return. The new thing now is the celebration of the black quarterback. There’s nothing that stimulates the normie whites in America more than worshiping blacks. White guilt remains a powerful delivery vehicle for the repulsive propaganda around it. Watch an NFL game and you get why the usual suspects hate white people so much.

That said, there is no way the country survives wholesale cord cutting. Once you are free from this stuff, it is impossible to come back. The old gag about baseball was that if it did not exist, no one would invent it. Something similar is true of TV. If the nation was not already hooked on it, no one would become hooked on it.  It is so trashy and so degenerate; you can’t get past the revulsion long enough to get hooked on it. My rainy weekend experience was just enough to turn it off for good.

That’s why television watching will eventually be mandatory. Orwell got most things wrong about the dystopian future. The one thing he nailed was the video monitors installed in every hope. It may not be as heavy handed as he described, but there is no way the usual suspects allow the public to cut the cord. Without the daily dose of poz, there is no way white people go along with their dispossession. The revolution comes when the televisions go dark for any length of time.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


The Trip Down The Stairs

In the year prior to a presidential election, Thanksgiving is usually when primary races for party nominations begin to come into focus. Donors have had most of the year to assess the candidates and the voters are starting to pay attention. The first test is a little over two months away, so all of the candidates have their people in the field. The boots on the ground test is one of those unofficial measures that tell us something about the organic and financial support for each candidate.

According the polls, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the favorite to win the Iowa caucus, currently polling at 25%. Warren and Sanders are tied for second at a little under 20% each, while Biden is at 12%. The Iowa caucus is not a great predictor, but it does tend to winnow the field. That means the four plausible candidates at the moment are the four at the top of the polls. The rest of the field is in low single digits. Mayor Bloomberg does not appear to be running in the state at this point.

New Hampshire has always been the bellwether and the numbers there tell us it is a four human race as well. The latest polls have Warren, Buttigieg, Sanders and Biden clustered together in the teens. Tulsi Gabbard is the only minor candidate showing any support, which bears watching. New Hampshire has a habit of elevating a minor candidate when the leaders appear weak. Gabbard is the chaos option for frustrated voters in the state. Bloomberg could also be an option.

Nevada and South Carolina are where Biden finds the most support. He leads the polls in both states, mostly on the brown vote. Biden’s support for Obama has turned into what appears to be unshakable support from non-whites. It is too early to tell if that is legitimate, but so far, he looks like the only option for blacks. Maybe after weak showings in Iowa and New Hampshire blacks abandon him. Voters tend to cluster around a winner, even if the winner is not their first choice.

What we have thus far is a field of candidates that all look like second and third tier players in a normal election. They are boutique options, appealing to a narrow slice of the party, while not appealing to the broader party. Buttigieg, for example, is popular with boozy wine aunts, but wildly unpopular with blacks. Warren is popular with the power women, but very unpopular with men. Biden, of course, is popular with blacks, but the rest of the party thinks it is time for his nap.

This is why Bloomberg has jumped into the race. He is a nasally weirdo from another planet, but he has enough money to buy the election. Despite being a very odd little guy, he is more normal than the other options. He can also offer the rage heads in the party an option that will fight Trump on his turf. Bloomberg will outspend Trump and he will be every bit as abrasive. The symmetry of two New York billionaires screaming at one another in 2020 could be too much to resist for Democrats.

Of course, what this suggests is the Democrats have no political talent in their ranks, which is why they have a field full of weirdos. It’s also a field of geezers. Warren, Sanders and Biden are in their 70’s. The younger options in the field are devoid of natural political talent and exist only because the donor class has to hire someone to play these roles. The Democrat primary is like a Broadway musical pulling people from the crowd, because they are short of professional performers.

In some respects, the Democrats are experiencing what the Republicans experienced in the 2016 cycle. It was a field full of nondescript nothings. It was why Trump won and why Bloomberg has a chance this time. In the 2016 debates, it looked as if all of the other candidates were in black and white, while Trump was in color. Voters could overlook all of his issues, because he was the only human option. That could be what gets Bloomberg a shot to win, assuming he gets on stage.

The bigger picture suggests the political system is in rapid decline. This generation of politicians has been in power for thirty years. They have done nothing to develop the next generation. In fact, they have prevented the talented from entering the system, in order to avoid the competition. The result is the next generation in the system is even more deranged and bizarre than the boomer generation. If Buttigieg is the future of democratic politics, democracy is on life support.

That’s what we are seeing. The political class is not a reflection of the people. That’s not how democracy works. They are a reflection of the system that recruits and develops the politicians. The reason the quality of candidate is in decline is the system itself is in decline. Both parties are now controlled by narrow interests at odds with the general public and needs of the country. The reason the general election will feature two septuagenarians is the system is running on fumes.

This is what decline is like. People on this side of the great divide like to think the end will be dramatic collapse or tanks in the streets, but that’s unlikely. Instead, it will be fits and starts down the uneven stairs of cultural decline. Trump is one of those steps with a long tread. The next few steps will have high risers and short treads. At some point, elections just stop happening either due to lack of interest or the inability of the political class to stage these made for television dramas.

At some point, a crisis will come and the public will have no confidence in the political class to address it. Some faction within the political class will use that to seize power and take control of the system. A temporary suspension of elections will slowly become permanent, as order is restored. America will no longer have the demographics or cultural will to operate the old system. The next step down is some form of authoritarian rule that manages the decline a bit better than the chaos of democracy.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


Ukrainian Mysteries

One of the puzzles to the impeachment stuff is why certain elements of the ruling class think this is a productive use of their time. The impeachment show put on by the Democrats last week struck most people as boring and weird. It was mostly a parade of people with funny sounding names babbling about inside baseball. There’s also the fact that the guy appointed to be the master of ceremonies gives people the creeps. Adam Schiff looks like frog peeping through the ice. He is a very odd man.

The bigger issue is no one seems to know what the crime is at the heart of this alleged scandal. We live in an age where the President bombs countries, overthrows governments and sends troops onto foreign soil whenever he likes. Demanding information in exchange for cash hardly seems important. The claim by the outrage mob is that it would have been perfectly fine for Trump to bomb Kiev or overthrow the government, but he crossed the line demanding they investigate criminality.

Of course, nothing in politics is as it seems. This impeachment stuff has other aspects to it. One is the outlandish corruption in Washington. The Biden family appears to have been taking massive bribes from Burisma Holdings, the dodgy energy company that operates within Ukraine. What exactly they were expecting to get is not all that clear, but it must have been worth a lot. They were not paying Hunter Biden tens of millions because he offered wise counsel. They expected something big.

Given the nature of the Washington political elite and Biden’s position within it, it is safe to assume a lot of people were getting paid by elements operating in Ukraine. They played some role in the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election. Some of the fake information used to defraud the court for FISA warrants came from Ukraine via the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS. Of course, Mueller put Paul Manafort in jail allegedly because he had corrupt dealings in Ukraine.

This small unimportant country on the fringe of Europe seems to play an out-sized role in America politics. People forget that during the Obama administration, the foreign policy elite overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. Victoria Nuland was caught red handed working to disrupt the government in 2014. Nuland is one of those permanent party members who is never affected by elections. No matter who is in the White House, she is part of the team running foreign policy.

Of course, no discussion of Ukraine can be complete without mentioning that our greatest ally seems to have an obsession with the place. The Ukraine impeachment show looked like a Chinese restaurant on Christmas day. It was one Jew after another popping up to talk about the ancestral homeland. As Steve Sailer and many others have noted, American Jews have an obsession with their old stomping grounds in the former Russian Empire. Impeachment was shtetl porn for these people.

The Jewish obsession with that part of the world is a fascinating bit of history that never gets much attention. Third and fourth generation Irish Americans have no interest in Ireland. The same is true of Italians, Poles and even Mexicans. These groups have folded into the white American ethnic group. For Jews, the old country still looms large, even after close to a century. Look at the Russian sector of the foreign policy establishment and it is a sea of little hats.

This is probably why Russia is now a magic word in leftist circles. When the party wants to say something bad about someone, they claim the person is a Russian puppet or fond of Putin. Tulsi Gabbard, who has outrageously taken the position the Democrats had during the Bush years, with regards to endless war, is regularly accused of being a Russian agent by various rage heads on cable. For certain people, Russia will forever be the most hated enemy. The Jews really know how to hold a grudge.

That is one major reason for Ukraine being so important to Washington. It is the dream of these people to have Ukraine included in NATO, thus an official part of Europe. It is a symbolic liberation from the Russian Empire. The people from the Pale of Settlement can then claim to be European. It is an important psychological element animating much of the obsession and paranoia over that part of the world. That old need to not dwell alone is the invisible hand guiding all of this.

Of course, there is the possibility that Jews obsess over that part of the world, because that is where they have hidden the Ark of the Covenant. Instead of a government warehouse in the Midwest, it has been stashed away in the Pale of Settlement. The Jewish people have been there for a long time and their origin story is shrouded in mystery, so maybe that’s the big secret. Is that any more absurd or ridiculous than anything else in the bizarre impeachment charade?

In the end, the weirdness of this whole affair is probably why impeachment has not resonated with the public. All of these odd-looking people with foreign names strike most Americans as outsiders. They are not the sorts of characters that have meaning to them, because these are not people they can relate to as fellow citizens. The pudgy Ukrainian colonel looks like a flunky from a Bond movie. Most Americans wonder why we have a Ukrainian general working in the White House.

What impeachment and the various scandals of the ruling class demonstrate is just how foreign the ruling class is today. These are people so divorced from the daily reality of Americans, they may as well live on another planet. They can’t even put on good political theater now. Instead, it is a parade of their buddies from an obscure part of the imperial establishment. They would have been better served offering up spectral evidence that Trump is a witch. That would be more relatable.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


Marketism

Last summer, I was asked to do a presentation to an industry group on the topic of technology and small business in America. The question was how can small and mid-sized business compete with and cooperate with the tech giants. I suspect they expected a dozy talk on how best to use LinkedIn and Facebook to attract new clients, but instead I gave a speech on how these companies need to be destroyed. If we are to avoid techno-feudalism, Silicon Valley must be wiped from the earth.

The funny thing I noticed is the older more right-wing people were uncomfortable with this sort of talk, even if the facts made sense to them. The older left-wing types were taken back by such talk. The Left in America is fully incorporated now, an extension of the human resource and training departments of global capital. The most receptive to what I was saying were the younger people. They asked a lot of good questions, suggesting they have been wrestling with this reality as well.

Last weekend, I was at an AIM meet-up. Jared Taylor, James Kirkpatrick (buy his book) and Patrick Casey were there as well. Jared gave a talk on the dangers of picking the wrong enemies. One of the wrong enemies, according to Jared, was capitalism. He gave a fiery defense of market capitalism. One of the things I noticed is that the young guys were not really buying it. Everyone loves and respects Jared, so they were polite and respectful, but I could not help but notice the skepticism.

Now, Jared is a man of his time. He remembers the 1970’s and he remembers living in Japan as the country turned the corner from post-war depression to economic powerhouse in the 1980’s. Young people inherited the product of market economics, so they take it for granted. At the same time though, they inherited the consequences of marketism. The broken homes, the busted communities, the sterile suburbs, young women throwing their lives away on feminism. That’s their frame of reference.

I thought it would make a good topic to cover in the podcast this week, especially as we head into the holy season of marketism. It is one of those topics that I think is useful in reintroducing the types of topics that must be the focus of any cultural movement. One consequence of marketism is that those naturally inclined to right-wing politics are no longer comfortable speaking about culture. Instead, everything is framed in the sterile terms of market capitalism. We’ve lost the cultural language.

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.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 05:00: Monetizing Social Capital
  • 15:00: Institutional Dishonesty
  • 25:00: Neo-Taylorism
  • 35:00: Evaluating The Results
  • 45:00: Markets As A Tool
  • 55:00: Closing

Direct DownloadThe iTunesGoogle PlayiHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Bitchute

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

Another Trip Around The Sun

Yesterday was my annual physical, so I got to experience a little bit of the American health care system. Since I don’t have any maladies, I only experience the system on these annual trips to get inspected. As is always the case, when you are familiar with something, its quirks seem normal. When you are unfamiliar with something, those quirks and contradictions jump out to you. My trip to the doctor is like visiting a strange place for the first time. All the weirdness stands out to me.

The first bit of oddness is the check-in. Last year they started this new process where you answer a survey when you arrive for the appointment. They ask questions about your personal habits that are none of their business. One question was whether you own firearms and why. There’s no reason for the doctor to know this or ask it, but that question was on the survey again this year. A new question was to list the states I had visited in the last year. It is not hard to see where this is going.

Another new item this year is a kiosk where you check-in for the appointment. One of the things they do is take your picture. My dentist started this last year. There’s no reason for them to take a picture of you, at least not one to do with health. Most likely, the pics are being sold to the tech giants. The mass surveillance system being built out by companies like Google and Facebook will use facial recognition to track us as we go about our business, so they want a database of faces.

In this regard, the health care system is a glimpse into the future our rulers have planned for us. To the people in the health care system, I am just a talking meat stick, one of many, they have to supervise. The relationship between the patient and the system is impersonal and transactional. Health care is a process. The patients enter the system, pass through the system and come out the other end repaired, broken in some new way or dead. No one really cares, just as long as the process continues.

Of course, the American health care system is really just a massive series of toll booths and processing centers. All along the way, patients are turned upside down and given a good shake to get money from their insurer. If you have a malady, you get diverted into a new series of toll booths and processing centers, so the people manning those operations can dip into the insurance pool you represent. The business of treating sick people is a good business for a lot of people.

A good example of how this works is I had patella tendinitis a few years back. I was pretty sure that was the issue, but I asked the doctor about it. He sent me to a quack called a physical therapist. My insurance covered five visits, so he said I needed five visits, then I would be sent for an MRI. To get the MRI, I would need an X-ray. The doctor, of course, needed to see me in-between stops. The point of the process was to squeeze out every dime from my insurance plan.

If the goal were to treat my injury, they would have sent me for the MRI right away, as that would tell them the best course of action. They would see that it was tendinitis and that rest and a brace were the right course. That would not line the pockets of the quack, the X-ray company or the doctor, so that’s not what happens. This is one reason American health care is absurdly expensive. We have great health care, but you have to pass through a lot of toll booths to get it.

Another new thing this year was a giant flat screen in the waiting area running ads for various drugs and treatments. It used to be that the sci-fi movies about the dystopian future would show a world bombarded by ads everywhere you went. That’s where we are headed now. I suspect that the next time I see the doctor, he will have patches on his smock like race car drivers. He will great me with, “this physical has been brought to you by the makers of” some drug being pushed on patients.

The funny thing about the problems of the American health care system is that this is the one area where libertarians could apply their arguments. They don’t, of course, as that would take time away from selling weed and porn to grade school kids, but there is a libertarian case to be made about health care. In fact, we have a libertarian health care system operating in the United States. It is world class and provides amazing results for the patients. It is called veterinary medicine.

In America, our pets get better health care than most humans on earth. The cost, compared to any system in the West, is trivial. The service is phenomenal, as there are lots of suppliers competing for customers. In my area, I have one doctor and five veterinary clinics. I don’t need permission to make an appointment and I am not required to pay a monthly fee for services I’ll never use. It is a great example of how to operate a market-based health care system that no one ever mentions.

Whenever I mention this, the immediate push-back is that you can choose to put down your animal, but you cannot put down your granny. That is nonsense, as we end care all the time for terminal people. In Europe, they are euthanizing people now, sometimes against their will, just to cut costs. All the current system does is disguise these tough choices by shifting them onto the system. For most of human history people accepted that death was the inevitable end of life. We can accept is again.

The good news is the ravages of time have not made me obsolete, so the system recommended I remain operational for another orbit around the sun. Even though I had no issues to report, I was still relieved to learn I was not on that list. Like most men, I don’t like interfacing with the health care system, so good health means less interaction with the system. Of course, it will not be long before my social credit score flags me for refurbishment or perhaps recycling, but for now I get to live another day.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


Low Tide

“When the tide goes out you find out who’s naked” is an old gag in the Wall Street world, often attributed to Warren Buffett. He likes to include it in his annual letters to investors. What he means by it is the risk positions of a company are only known when they face adverse conditions, like a downturn in the economy. Others have used a version of the aphorism to mean that you find out who is a smart investor when the market takes a downturn. Similar idea, broader application.

The same sort of thinking applies to politics. Like most Wall Street traders, the political class is the last notice the tide going out on them. Most came into the game during a rising tide and came to assume good times are perpetual. If you live in the Imperial Capital, this sense is reinforced by the fact it is always a boom time, in terms of the economy, around Washington. Every year trillions of dollars flow into the city and those dollars don’t spend themselves. It’s always Christmas in the DC.

The tide does go out in politics. The moderate Democrats learned that lesson in the early 1990’s as the party began to radicalize. For the longest time they got to play the old game of talking like a normal person at home, but going along with the radicals when it came time to vote. Then Newt Gingrich figured out how to exploit this contradiction and the moderate wing of the Democrat party was eliminated in the 1994 midterm elections. The tide went out and the moderates were naked.

Something similar happened with the neoconservative cabal that had controlled the Republican Party for decades. Their appeals to normal white guy patriotism had been so effective at directing support for their endless wars in the Middle East, they just assumed it would work forever. They did not see the growing backlash on their Right until Trump captured the Republican nomination. Their reaction to the tide going out on their enterprise revealed things about them best left concealed.

One of those things revealed in 2016 was just how much these people despises their target audience. That in turn has raised an age-old question about the sorts of people in the neoconservative movement. A warmonger like Jonah Goldberg never met a war you should not fight on his behalf, but he is always ready to lecture you on your moral failings while you wage that war on his behalf. What low tide for the neocons meant was the stench of an age-old hatred for the victims of their perfidy.

Today the tide is going out again and this time it is the remaining figures of Conservative Inc. showing their nature to the world. Nick Fuentes, the young YouTube personality, has become a bug-light of sorts, for grifters to immolate themselves on in a fit of moral outrage over the groypers. It is as if there is a secret contest to see which one can put on the best smug face as they shriek about Fuentes. One after another, the dull and the witless have stepped forward to bleat their unhappiness.

Here we have bugman Dan McLaughlin claiming he sees the army of the invisible Hitlers all around Fuentes. Here we have bourgeois hausfrau Claire Lehmann warning about tricksters between trips to the liquor cabinet. John Cardillo, who everyone assumed was dead, turned up to remind everyone why that would be his best career move. The only thing that guy needs is a pic of himself on his Harley that he never takes out of the driveway. He’s the B-roll of a documentary on boomer conservatism.

Another guy who should collect his paycheck wearing a ski mask and carry a gun is Jim Geraghty from National Review. He penned a tantrum that reads like an interview with a teenage girl after an accident. Not to be left out, David French chimed-in to remind everyone that he is the king of cucks.. French is a guy who stepped over the poor and suffering in his own backyard so he could kidnap an Africa baby to tote around as a trophy to his perverted sense of righteousness.

Of course, the guys with a color in their name have got in on the game. Here we have someone calling himself Dominic Green at the Spectator telling us the groypers are the real fascists. Here’s someone calling himself Matt Purple, at the ironically titled American Conservative, telling us Fuentes is the omen. Keep in mind that AmCon has defended and employed a guy regularly arrested for soliciting sex from children. Yet, they are outraged over talk about demographic reality. When the tide goes out, guys with colors in their name reveal their perfidy.

That is what is so revealing about these guys swarming to attack Fuentes and his young acolytes. They are so craven and hollow; they are incapable of seeing any humanity in these young men. They are antibodies of the establishment, attacking what they are told is a pathogen. Nowhere in their attacks do they mention that these are young men, motivated by a real concern for their future. For the automatons of Conservative Inc., none of that matters. They do what they are told.

In dissident circles, there is a debate about whether conservatism, as an institution, is worth saving. James Kirkpatrick has a book on the subject and has talked about this topic at various events. In the end, it may be a self-answering question. As the tide goes out and more and more of these people are revealed to be hollow, soulless men without chests, the conservative enterprise looks shabbier and uglier. At this point, the question is whether they can withstand the rising tide of the dissident right.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


The War On Reasonableness

The underlying premise of consensual government is that the people in the society, at least participating in its governance, can and will debate the issues facing the people in the society. By debate, it is understood that sharp disagreement will erupt and personal squabbles will inflame any disagreements. After all, men are not angels. In the end, a consensus will form and all sides will accept it. Everyone involved may not be ruled by reason, but trusted men in a civil society are reasonable.

If you think about how a democracy must work, the assumption of reasonableness becomes clear. If it is fifty percent plus one that carries the day, the winner must acknowledge that a large minority will not like the result. That means showing the other side respect, so they will return the favor when they carry the day. On the other hand, the losing side has to accept the will of the majority. Of course, it also means all sides have to be ready to revisit the issue if the majority got it wrong.

If you wanted to characterize the current crisis in America, a way to frame it would be a war on reasonableness. It’s not a war on reason, as in objective reality. At all times and all places reasonable men have been motivated by superstition and nonsense. What matters is the reasonableness, moderation and openness to alternatives, especially from those with unpopular opinions. It is among those willing to reconsider the consensus, where solutions are found when the consensus fails.

This war on reasonableness is most obvious in the reaction to Nick Fuentes and his young followers. Reasonable people can disagree with their opinions and reasonable people can oppose their tactics. Reasonable people must also acknowledge that young people are prone to getting carried away. Reasonable men cut young guys a little slack, because they remember what it was like to be young. In the case of the groypers, they are challenging authority, which is what we expect from young people.

Unreasonable people condemn these young men to eternal damnation for daring to question official dogma. When someone accuses Fuentes of being a fascist, he is saying Fuentes is evil and therefore outside of civil society. That is the intent of using the word “fascist” or the phrase “holocaust denier.” Regardless of the pedantic quibbles about the nature of fascism and the facts of the holocaust, the intent when using those phrases is to anathematize, to declare the accused of being evil.

This is not a reasonable response to a fellow member of society. This is a call for society to exterminate the invader, like a call to the immune system of the body. They want these men removed from society as if they are a disease. It is a hysterical response by people unwilling to concede an inch to dissenters. This is how a winner take all game is played. Those with power utterly and completely subjugate those without power, in order to make sure they never challenge power.

If you are on the other side of these calls to exterminate you, how can you come away thinking there is a bargain to be had with these people? How can those in dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy want to cut a deal with people who want them dead? The start of any deal is reasonable parties willing to compromise and reach consensus. What is the middle position when one side opens with a demand for your head? Do you agree to give up an arm? A leg? Live as a pariah?

Even when you move away from the howler monkeys taking to social media to declare fatwahs on the dissenters, those who claim to be reasonable, stake out the most unreasonable of positions. When some sober minded pundit claims that race is a social construct, a statement in direct contradiction to observable reality, that’s not a reasonable position no matter how calmly stated. That is making a concession to the unreasonable in advance, in order to appease them.

In fact, indulging these crazy assertions from the woke crowd is a war on reason and reasonableness. It is an effort to socialize pathology, spreading the disease to the whole of society. It is akin to the doctor spreading the cancer to the whole body, so that the patient stops noticing the tumor. When this is what passes for reasonable debate, it marginalizes the alternatives, thus normalizing that which is abnormal and anathematizing those who still cling to the normal.

Many of the paid spokesman that the Nick Fuentes crowd have targeted love to wave around the Declaration of Independence. The open lines are their opening and closing statements on all things political. They indulge the sentimentality, without understanding the intent.  That document was a statement by reasonable men, no longer willing to bargain with unreasonable men. Irreconcilable differences existed between the colonists and England. The only solution was separation.

This is where the war on reasonableness must lead. Good men seeking compromise will indulge the unreasonable for as long as they can, perhaps long beyond where they should, but eventually they stop indulging the unreasonable. At that point, there are but two choices. One is peaceful separation and the other is those reasonable men embrace unreasonable solutions to the unreasonable men in their midst. Ranse Stoddard gives way to Tom Doniphon to end Liberty Valance.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!


The Wilderness Of Mirrors

A general rule in democratic politics is that nothing anyone says or does should be taken at face value. James Jesus Angleton famously described the espionage game as a wilderness of mirrors, a term he borrowed from T. S. Eliot. The same can be said of democratic politics. Everyone assumes that everyone else is operating from a hidden agenda, so no one plays anything straight. That is something to keep in mind when examining the weird impeachment show the Democrats are staging.

Conventional wisdom says this is an extension of the long running tantrum that began after the 2016 election. The Left, spiraling into revolutionary madness, is demanding vengeance for 2016. Party leaders, fearing a schism in the ranks, went along with what is a ceremonial process. Pelosi has refused to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry, as that would trigger a legal process that could easily get out of control. Instead, she has gone along with what is turning out to be a melodramatic fishing expedition.

Now, Adam Schiff is mentally ill. That’s not an amusing criticism, but an obvious fact based on his bizarre behavior and deranged demeanor. He is not too far from demanding witnesses play leapfrog while entering the hearing room. He’s not the first party member to serve while suffering from mental illness. David Wu, a congressman from Oregon, went around dressed as a tiger. The reason for this circus could simply be that the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum.

If we assume that not everyone has gone insane and that these lunatics were allowed off their leash in order to serve some other purpose, the question is what? It’s clear that they have nothing. If Pelosi allows this to move to a formal impeachment process, then she would be betting that this nothing stands up to what the White House would offer into evidence, which would be very bad for everyone in the political class. The party leaders are not going to roll those dice heading into an election.

All of this, of course, is against the backdrop of the investigation into the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election. What should have wrapped up a year ago is supposed to be reaching some sort of denouement. Supposedly CIA officials are hiring lawyers and the Inspector General is ready to issue criminal referrals. U.S. Attorney John Durham is making the sorts of inquiries that suggests he is serious. Despite the foot-dragging, it looks like something may finally happen on that front.

This impeachment charade may very well be a part of some political negotiating going on between Democrats and the White House. The IG report has been delayed for months, so it is not unreasonable to think there is backroom dealing going on that is holding up the release. If there are to be indictments, then those who are indicted will surely consider cutting a deal. This impeachment stuff could be a stall to give the party time to cut deals with those who will take a fall and keep quiet.

There’s also the possibility that this impeachment stuff is a stall for time so the party can figure who did what exactly. One of the interesting aspects of the 2016 spying plot is the number of people involved. If it was a small group of conspirators, this would have been swept under the rug a long time ago. The scale is no doubt slowing the official inquiry, so it probably has slowed the unofficial ones as well. Maybe that’s the real point of the impeachment show. The party is still sorting the issue.

On the other hand, many of the people involved in the impeachment charade were involved in the spying plot. The outside lawyers conspiring with Schiff’s committee, were also involved in setting up the fake evidence in the Russian hoax. Some were working in the DOJ during the plot, while others worked on Mueller’s team. Much of the news “reporting” on this is being done by “reporters” who had worked hand and glove with the conspirators during the plot. We’re back to the lunatics running the asylum.

What could be happening here is that the Schiff committee is really trying to get a handle on what the administration knows about the Ukrainian corruption and the seditious plot. These hearings are about getting administration people to secretly tell Schiff what is known about these scandals, maybe talk about what the IG has been doing over the last three years. In other words, it is not about fishing for dirt on Trump, but fishing for what Barr has on the conspirators.

Another angle to that is the Ukraine plays an absurdly large role in American politics for some reason. The scandals of the Obama years always seem to have some roots in the place. Maybe that reason is a bigger, much scarier bit of corruption involving Ukraine that no one wants made public. At this point, the image of Hillary Clinton’s cackling visage should come to mind. Her off-the books e-mail system seems to have a role in all of this. Maybe she sold Ukraine something big.

There is one other facet here to consider. The genesis of this impeachment stuff was the revelation that Joe Biden and probably many other party members, were taking bribes from Ukrainian officials. That probably ended Biden’s campaign as he has been fading ever since. Maybe this Ukrainian stuff was just a way to get that information into the public domain, either by the White House or by party radicals. This is the sort of scheming these people do as a matter of habit.

Of course, you can go the other way with this and maybe the whole point of this was to get the White House to reveal the Biden stuff. If that came from some other source, the party media could not dismiss it as political shenanigans. By raising questions about Trump and Ukraine, the White House had to reveal what they had on Biden and anyone else getting their beak wet in Ukraine. That’s a bit of 4-D chess, but it is a common practice in politics. Accuse the other side of something outrageous in order to make them talk about it or disclose their own schemes about it.

Then there is the planted story about Obama cautioning the party about going too far into crazy land. These stories are written up and handed to sites like The Hill by the party, as a way to communicate to party members. This brings us back to the decision by Pelosi to allow a fake impeachment inquiry to proceed. Given the lack of public interest and the lack of any evidence of wrongdoing, this whole thing may have been a concession to the crazies, a concession that may soon be withdrawn.

Finally, any rumination on this impeachment charade has to acknowledge the lack of interest by the public. The media had their amplifiers turned to eleven. The actors on cable chat shows were given the right lines and the show opened with as much fanfare as possible. Like the new Terminator movie, it has been a flop. People took a peak and then stopped looking when they saw nothing there. Schiff really thought this was going to be a hit, but he may have been the only one.

At this point, the Cloud People are so divorced from our reality they are left to guess as to what interests the Dirt People. What we could be seeing is the fantasy world of the Cloud People in the inner party’s radical ghetto slamming into reality. They are suddenly learning that the rabble does not share their obsession with the orange golem that haunts their dreams. This impeachment show was just a big ceremony by the ruling class that failed to resonate with the general public.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!