Total War

The general pattern in American politics, at least from the perspective of normal White people, is that the Left gets carried away with itself, then there is a snap-back followed by a calm period of putting things back in order. For example, by 1985, most normal White people thought the books were closed on the cultural revolution of the 1960’s, even if the irritants had not been removed. The culture had developed the necessary callouses to carry on with the important functions of life.

Margaret Thatcher called this the ratchet effect. The Left would push society to the left, there would be a click and that’s where things would stay for a while. Everyone would get used to the new normal, finding a way to make things work. There was never a return to the old ways, as roll back was always impossible. For the Left, what they have, they keep, so rollback requires a continuation of the bloody war that the normal white people seek to end. There is never a rollback.

This pattern has always been a secret solace to normal White people. You see it with the current ructions. They quietly seethe in front of their televisions and post their displeasure on-line. The underlying assumption is that “they have gone too far and they will pay for this.” The Democrats will pay for it at the ballot box and the sports leagues will pay for it at the box office. It is a coping strategy that the Left now takes for granted, allowing them to operate with impunity.

Paradoxically the restraint and sobriety of normal White people may be the cause of this total war that has been unleashed on them. It is a total war. Everywhere White people are finding themselves threatened for the smallest indiscretion. A White presenting man was fired for holding his hand in an impious position. He may be the first Mexican fired for White supremacy. A Vermont school principle was suspended from his job for an insufficient enthusiasm for his new black masters.

Of course, our corporate tyrants are getting back in the game. They are feverishly rushing about looking for signs of Whiteness to erase. Of course, the insanity of the revolution dictates that spiting Whitey means removing black images like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben from products. Nothing says racial vengeance like erasing black faces from food products. Perhaps black people should just boycott food altogether, since the entire food chain is the legacy of slavery.

All of this retail madness being inflicted on normal White people puts national politics into a better light. This revolution at the top is not really about Trump or his political opinions, but rather about what he represents. It is easier to hate a symbol than a person, so he has been turned into an avatar that haunts the fever dreams of the mad men of the revolution. For them, he is pure evil and there can be no compromise with evil, no bargain struck with evil, no sympathy for the devil.

This is a total war. Before the 20th century, war was assumed to be separate from civilian life. Armies marched out into the field and fought one another outside the cities and towns. There was always spill over and invading soldiers are never polite, but there was some understanding that targeting civilians was immoral. The ideological wars of the 20th century changed that. The whole of society was organized around fighting the war and that meant the whole of society was a target of war.

We are seeing that with the Left now. This is a total war on White people. This means the symbols, the habits, the structure of society itself. This total war is not just fanatics in the streets smashing things. This is a total war launched and funded by the people in charge of American society. As we see with what’s happening in Atlanta, it is a war motivated by vengeance. Blacks and their enablers feel they are justified in whatever they do to harm White society. There are no limits.

Despite normal White people trying hard to ignore what’s happening in the hope it will peter out and they can joyously clean up the mess, it may be impossible to hide in that dream this time. Unlike the past, where the people in charge pulled back after things went too far, the people in charge are now leading the charge into madness. Big tech is pushing this stuff hard. Look at this promoted topic on Twitter. They are promoting this as well, hoping to keep the savages extra angry.

The fact is, there is no compromise with people who think this is true. The usual suspects have spent generations conditioning blacks to hate White people for the crime of stealing their identity, accomplishments and labor. They did not do this because they found it politically useful. They did it for the same reason abolitionists hoped freed slaves would rise up and murder the White population of the South. These people hate you and will not rest until you are dead.

Their commitment to the cause is right there in the promotion of the “White Strike” stuff on Twitter. The dummies behind it think it is clever, but it is just another way for the usual suspects to lure White people into a trap. No doubt frustrated Whites will post about it on their social media, which will then be used to fire them. There will be Whites who call in sick and end up on a list of potential heretics. Total war requires a total commitment and the usual suspects are totally committed.

This is where a certain personality type stands up demands a detailed, ten-point plan of action to fight the Left. That too is a trap. That just prevents the truly woke from shaking their people from their slumber. Instead they are turned into character in the morality play controlled by the Left. In total war, the first step is to get the people aware of what is happening to them That means not comforting them with a solution. The only way forward is for White people to rediscover themselves.


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The Morality Of The Madhouse

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu outlined the motivations that drove citizen behavior in the three types of political systems known at the time. In republican forms of government, love of virtue is what motivates the people. In monarchies, it is the love of honor that motivates the actions of the people. In despotism, the people are motivated by fear of the ruler. He argued that the political system must match the inclinations of the people or it would not last.

Although Montesquieu did not address it, it certainly seems that these principles have a hierarchy of their own. Honor, for example, will give way to virtue, once the people begin to think they have a choice. Throughout history, monarchy has given way to democratic rule as the people abandoned honor in favor of virtue. Similarly, virtue has never been much of a match for fear as a motivator. Authoritarianism, the soft or hard variety, tends to overcome public virtue once the rulers realize it.

Montesquieu was working with the materiel at hand, so he could not contemplate the nature of liberal democracy. He knew of democracy, but only in the limited experiments among the ancients. Democracy on the grand scale as we see today was beyond the realm of plausible at the time. Similarly, liberalism was in its infancy. Liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law were purely theoretical concepts at the time, so he and other theorists had no working knowledge of them.

Almost three centuries on, we have a much better sense of what liberalism and democracy produce. For several generations now, the West has been ruled by the ideology of liberal democracy. Further, the West has worked hard to impose this moral philosophy on the rest of the world. Trillions have been spent, for example, trying to plant the seeds of liberal democracy in the Muslim world. South America has been forced to embrace the rituals and ceremonies of liberal democracy.

What we can now see that Montesquieu would not have been able to see is that something unique motivates the citizen in a liberal democracy.  There is no willingness to put the interests of the community ahead of private interests. There is no desire to attain greater rank and privilege. There is fear, but not of a ruler, but rather fear of falling afoul of the general will. The collective morality in a liberal democracy works like an invisible fickle tyrant that terrorizes the citizenry.

We see this in the current turmoil. The citizen is now suddenly faced with a whole new moral order, as if the ruling class all converted to some new church. People who are slow to pick up on the morality are shamed and harassed. You can lose your job for refusing to use the right pronouns, for example. Two members of the Supreme Court just converted and declared that the Founders were actually sodomites in dresses, therefore sodomites in dresses are sacred beings.

Just as fear of the tyrant is a more powerful motivation than a sense of sacrifice to the needs of the community, morality is a much more powerful motivator than virtue or even fear of a powerful individual. Look at Donald Trump. He is incompetent, for sure, but his office has real power. Yet, fear of falling afoul of the new morality leads the converted to risk everything to destroy him. The needs of the new morality are pushing the followers to bring the country crashing down to please the new gods.

Unlike the motivations behind monarchy, republicanism and tyranny, there is no structure to liberal democratic morality. There is no sacred text or body of philosophical work to provide authority. Like a school of fish, morality shifts on a dime and that new direction is assumed to be the general will and therefore the proper course. Morality in a liberal democracy is a riot with no real purpose, other than to feed the need of the people to feel they are the virtuous actor in the great drama of life.

Without a controlling doctrine, morality in a liberal democracy has no limiting principles to contain the excesses. Everything worth doing is worth overdoing. No matter how pious someone is, someone else can be more pious. Each new fad becomes a race to the absurd, which is how we quickly went from tolerance of homosexuals to declaring transvestites sacred beings. You can be sure the pedophiles and polygamists are getting ready for their elevation into the ring of honor.

It turns out that fear, virtue and honor are no match for morality in the great battle of organizing ideas. Honor is an individual characteristic. It is something you give yourself through your own decisions. Similarly, the virtue of the man willing to sacrifice for the good of the institution is largely an individual creation. It has a collective component, which makes it more powerful than honor, but it is still individualistic. Fear, of course, is about saving your own skin or that of your family.

Morality, in contrast, pivots on the collective sense of identity. The chants of “who we are” resonate because it implies a choice. You can be inside where it is good or outside where it is bad. In reality, it reminds the people that they have no choice. To stand against morality is to stand against destiny itself. Those who resist the new morality are first anathematized then invisibilized. Liberal democracy maintains an invisible gulag for those who refuse to bend the knee to the prevailing morality.

The defects in monarchy, democracy and despotism are well known. The next in line to the throne can be a lunatic or a simpleton. Democracy eventually murders itself. The tyrant eventually dies, leaving a battle for power. It seems that the defect of liberal democracy is that it has no way to control the fanatic. They are not just allowed to run free, but they are encouraged to fully explore their fanaticism. Liberal democracy eventually becomes a madhouse run by madmen.

Modern America has entered the madhouse phase of liberal democracy. Just how far along we are in the journey is unknown, but the journey has begun. Evidence of this is the wanton destruction of civil society. The pointlessness of it is the point. No one in power is willing to defend the institutions and customs that defined old America. No one in power is offering an alternative, other than more fear of the mob. The only questions now are the timing and terror of the eventual collapse.


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The Primitives

It is hard to gain perspective on the current crisis, due mostly to the mayhem and chaos that fills the screens of our life. Every day brings a new outrage. For a normal person, daily events are like drinking from a fire hose. First comes the howling from the usual suspects, then once that abates, it is the mob descending on the streets or on the life of a white person. Then more howling from the usual suspects, followed by the orgy of violence. The cycle just keeps repeating.

If you step back and take a look at things, one of the things that stands out is just how primitive and superstitious the people are at the center of this crisis. It is not just in their appearance either. The new religion that has emerged among our rulers is not a great leap forward in consciousness, but a leap backward. It is primitive, superstitious and simplistic in its statements and actions. It is as if the world has been taken over by an ancient tribe of primitives who hate us.

Take a look at the frenzy, among the nation’s circus performers, to lecture the rest of us about their goodness and our wickedness. The sportsball leagues have been the most egregious in this, as they are actively alienating their customers in an effort to appease a constituency that does not exist. NASCAR seems to be under the impression that the people burning down Wendy’s will one day be tailgating at Talladega. It is live action role playing combined with wishcasting into a marketing campaign.

Beyond the self-indulgent fantasies, take a look at this heroic statement from the National Football League. The point of this effort is to tell the peasants, otherwise known as customers, that the league is in a life or death struggle with the dark forces of systemic racism and historic injustice. These twin evils are why the league exists, not the pointless entertainment. The singular focus of the people running the NFL is the final defeat of this great enemy of democracy!

Notice that no one ever bothers describing these terms. The closest you get with systemic racism is “discrimination against black Americans is embedded in the political, economic and social structure of the country.” The implication here is that we have secret rules and laws that prevent blacks from doing something. They have to be secret, as we have spent three generations now erasing every rule, regulation and law that allows for any personal preference among white people.

The way around the absolute lack of evidence in support of discrimination is to treat it as a miasma that permeates white society like a fog. You see, you don’t even know you are an evil bigot because you are immersed in a racist system. It is a primitive form of communal salvation. Instead of blaming the drought on unidentified sinners in the village, the complete backwardness of black people is the fault of evil spirits that animate the institutions of modern society.

This primitiveness turns up all over the new religion. High paid activists on cable chat shows preach about the need for Americans, especially the white people who make the country possible, to repudiate their history of structural racism. That’s usually done in the context of the statue toppling or the desecration of cemeteries. Apparently, the twin monsters of systemic racism and historic injustice really hate it when a collection of brown savages topple over a statue on YouTube.

Let’s take these claims at face value. Let’s assume the way forward is for white people to have a group struggle session in which every bit of the past is repudiated. What happens after that is over? What is supposed to happen at that point? Will the clouds part and a new era of peace and harmony descend upon us from the heavens? Will all of the stuff that makes modern life possible stop working? After all, if you are repudiating the past, it must mean abandoning the works of the past, right?

Of course, no one knows and there is no point in speculating about these things, other than for entertainment purposes. The reductionists among us want to pretend that the people behind these spasms of lunacy seek power or they are trying to undermine Trump in the election. Small minds need to personalize things this way. In reality, the people behind what we are seeing live unexamined lives. They are caught up in this for the same reason people join religious cults.

The beautiful people from the NFL marketing offices don’t want to think about how it is they get to live like royalty by staging mock battles between gangs of black men for the amusement of white people. It is much easier to hoot about structural racism. The same is true of the people behind NASCAR. These people hate their fans, but they depend on them for lives of excess. These primitive howls about confederate symbols are a pressure relief valve for this conflict in their lives.

The primitiveness of this new faith is probably the appeal. Unlike a sophisticated religion that makes demands upon the mind of the believer, this new religion works for even the dumbest person. They just have to chant some meaningless phrases and begin smashing things up on their YouTube channel. It is another example of how liberal democracy cheapens and degrades everything it touches. Even the religion of it becomes a degenerate and artificial form of the original.

That may be the final irony of liberal democracy. This self-destructive ideology eventually reduces the most ardent adherents to simpletons, incapable of performing the basics required to keep the system running. Given the choice between a world run by howling primitives, rushing about smashing everything in sight, and any other form of rule, people will choose the latter. At some point, the people fear the primitives more than anything else, so anything else becomes the best option.


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The Awakening

Note: Today at 3:00 PM EDT I will be Fullmoon Ancestry. He is a writer and translator usually based in Europe, but back in the US celebrating Covid-19. He writes for Greg Johnson’s site and host Greg’s week D-Line show. We will be discussing Heavy Metal and Anglo-Saxon poetry for an hour or so.

The Great Awakening refers to a number of periods in American history in which there was a widespread religious revival among evangelical Protestants. These periods are characterized by an increase in church membership, but also the formation of new sects and movements. The people swept up in the movements are filled with a strong desire to reform not just religion, but carry their conviction into the rest of the society, in the form of social and political activism.

There are debates as to how many of these periods there have been. Historians agree that the first awakening began in the 1730’s and lasted about a decade. The British evangelist George Whitefield toured the colonies, preaching and organizing great revivals mostly among the British population, but also the Germans and Dutch. He also converted African slaves to Christianity, which was the first time since slavery was introduced into the colonies. He also founded the Methodist Church.

The second awakening happened in the later 18th and early 19th century. Like the first awakening, it was largely based in the Northeast and Midwest. This period of religious revival was accompanied by other social reform movements such as temperance and abolitionism. Reformers also agitated for things like limiting tobacco use, public dress codes and public health initiatives. The abolition movement emerged in the North from the wider Second Great Awakening.

When it comes to subsequent awakenings, historians disagree as to whether they constitute awakenings, rather than reform movements. The Social Gospel movement in the late 19th century is counted an awakening by some. The growth of conservative religious denominations in the middle of the last century is counted as a continuation of this pattern of religious revival. The difference is that the ruling class had abandoned Christianity in the 20th century, so they were unaffected.

The abandonment of Christianity by the American elites does not mean that the old cycle of moral revival went away. That old reformist rhythm did not disappear, but was instead channeled into secular causes. The New Deal, for example, was not solely about economics. The main thrust of the reforms was an effort to unify the country around socially useful causes. There were widespread reforms designed to improve public health, living standards and quality of life.

Similarly, the upheavals of mid-century had a strong spiritual element. Civil Rights was a purely moral cause with strong religious undertones. The language of the cultural upheavals had a strong reformist angle. The central claim being that America had become synthetic and commercial. Rejection of the materialism of the age was about restoring humanity. Of course, the feminists were building on female reform movements dating back to the prior century.

It may be that there is a biological element to these periods of reform. In the 18th and 19th century, the reformist impulse was channeled through mainline Protestantism, as religious revivals, with a social activism component. As Christianity faded from the ruling class, the reformist impulse was channeled through social activism. The New Dealers retained some Christian language, but they were secular reformers. The mid-century radicals were purely secular reformers with the zeal of a believer.

This may explain what we are seeing today. Go back to the 1980’s and the Left was in the decline. The decline pre-dated Reagan, but accelerated through the Bush I years into the Clinton years. Despite his rhetoric and the media propaganda, Bill Clinton was no Progressive reformer. His one foray into activism was heath care and once that collapsed, he raced to the middle and stayed there for his tenure. It was the election of George Bush in 2000 that woke up the Left.

The Bush II years were not a Progressive awakening, but the stirrings were there, with the revival of the anti-war movement. It was the election of Barak Obama that set off this period of radicalism and social activism. It was in this period when race relations began to deteriorate, mostly through the agitation of the ruling class. The same is true of sex relations, with the many rape hoaxes on the college campus. Obama himself became something of a religious figure for the Left.

One important difference between these secular spasms of reform and their Christian antecedents is the structure. Protestant reformers always had the framework of Scripture to both give their efforts authority and place limits on their desires. The limiting principle of Christian revivals is that salvation is for the next life. The moral principles are right there in Scripture for everyone to examine. The movements may have been led by men, but were guided by a doctrine that is clear to everyone.

The secular reformer has no source of moral authority or a limiting principle. For the secular zealot, salvation is in this life and there are no limits to achieving it. This is the problem with all radical movements since the Jacobins. When man becomes the source of moral authority, all of his actions have legitimacy. Those in opposition are not disputing the finer points of doctrine, but opposing the project itself. Eliminating the opposition becomes a goal of the project.

We see that in the current frenzy. The statue toppling is often pointless and absurd, but the motivation behind it is a reordering the present to fit the ideal. The elimination of the symbols and reminders of past sins is part of creating the glorious present. It’s clear in the language of the Left that the next logical step for them is the elimination of the people they believe are between them and their goal. The great racial revival will require the elimination of white men entirely.

The other difference between the Christian awakening and the secular variant is the former was an effort to elevate man toward an ideal. The latter is mostly a war against an imaginary enemy that prevents the emergence of the ideal society. The current reformers only want to rage at white people, for example, who they universally characterize as supremacists. It’s why the focus is on destruction. These secular revivals are narcissistic and shallow.

Now, this connection to past religious revivals explains how the ruling class has been so quick to embrace this latest spasm. They don’t know why they feel compelled to take the knee and feel glorious in so doing, but the revelry is just as real to them as it would have been to evangelicals Protestants. That reformist urge is like a monster inside them that has to feed every couple of decades. Even when it is bad for business, as in the case of sports, they join in the revelry.

The good news is these spasms burn out. This spasm may be an echo of the one which lifted Obama into office. That great awakening is nearing an end. It is a reaction to the reaction of normal people in the form of the Trump election. This summer the final flashes of it will subside and they enter their dormant phase. The bad news is a generation from now the young people swept up in this spasm will be leading a new spasm of narcissistic revelry.


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Deep Blackness

In this time of grieving and self-reflection, it is important for white people to think about their whiteness. It is what George would have wanted. In order to fully appreciate your whiteness, you must first understand blackness. This is something that gets missed in all of these discussions. Whiteness does not exist outside the context of blackness, because white people simply don’t care about whiteness. In order for them to care, they have to be surrounded by blackness.

Most white people, of course, have the good sense to not live around blackness, so they struggle with their whiteness. The struggle sessions at the company or college help, but they are not the same as experiencing deep blackness. When you live in a place like Lagos, you never stop experiencing blackness. It is all around you, like a fog that never lifts. The show this week is a journey into blackness so you, a white person, can understand blackness in order to understand your whiteness.

The thing that white people never quite get about black people is black people, especially the talented tenth, obsess over their blackness. The rank and file are not reading books on their blackness or attending lectures about blackness, but they still experience the world through their blackness. The exception is the very narrow dealings they have with other blacks. In their interpersonal relations with black, the fog of their blackness tends to lift. Otherwise, it is always black for them.

Of course, this is an exhausting way to live. It is why all of your dealings with black people are tense, even with those who are nice. There’s always that veil of blackness through which the black person sees you. It’s why people from Africa or the Caribbean always strike white people are super happy. Those blacks are not living in the fog of blackness like American blacks. They find this obsession with blackness bizarre and confusing, which is why they tend to not like American blacks.

It’s also why the current ructions are so vexing to whites. Life has never been better for blacks in America. Trump’s tweets about black unemployment are is ridiculous, but it is a fact that the material life of blacks was at a peak. Think back to the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement and it started on the college campus. Privileged black students began to agitate about their blackness. Here they are living like royalty relative to most blacks and they are full of rage.

That’s the thing about black identity. Since it is entirely negative, they can only assess their happiness relative to whites. No matter how good they have it, they cannot be happy without the full attention of whites. The only thing record unemployment did for blacks is give them more interactions with whites and therefore a greater awareness of their blackness. It turns out that black happiness is inversely proportional to their interactions with white people. White fatigue is real.

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. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. 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

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Athens In Winter

It has been popular on the Right for a long time to compare modern America to the Roman Empire. Often the point of the comparison is to support the claim that America is an empire, rather than a republic. Alternatively, the point is to warn of an imminent collapse, just like what happened to Rome. The so-called conservatives, of course, reject the idea, because the Left requires it, but most Americans still cling to the idea that the country is some sort of democracy.

The comparison to Rome is a popular one because it is a well understood story and it has a clear end. The Romans lost their republic and became a dictatorship and then an Empire that dominated Europe. America, as the story goes, has lost its republic and is now an empire that dominates the world. The analogy is not intended to tell us anything about the dynamic that has led America to this point. It is more of a self-serving warning of an inevitable end dictated by history.

The thing is, Rome is not really a good analogy. The better comparison is with ancient Athens, which went from a democratic city-state to a democratic empire. Unlike Rome, Athens avoided the transition to authoritarianism. It remained a democracy even as it came to dominate the region and operate as an empire. Unlike Rome, it never accepted itself as an empire. The spirit that animated the democracy as a city-state remained as they came to dominate and control the other city-states.

That is something we see with modern America. The typical American, regardless of political cult, does not think of himself as a subject in an empire. In fact, most stubbornly cling to the old democratic ideas. Most white people, for example, think the constitution still plays a role in the law. They think elections make a difference. Even non-whites think elections matter, which is why they are organized. They want their guys in office on the assumption that their guys will act on their behalf.

Like Athens, America is an empire that does not know itself. Further, it is an empire that is blind to its own authoritarianism. Many are shocked, for example, at the widespread and coordinated response from the corporate oligarchs to the riots. They are baffled as to how they have these propaganda campaigns ready to go as soon as the riots were started in Minneapolis. They struggle to process why people are forced from their jobs for not cheering loud enough at the struggle sessions.

That really is the distinguishing feature of the modern American empire. No one can accept that it is both an empire and authoritarian. This is a society that bans books, throws men in jail for their politics and has created a form of internal exile for those found to be guilty of impiety. These were things that happened in Athens. Similarly, America is a financial empire, more than a military one. Athens became an empire when their currency became the default in the region.

Like Athens, the American Empire struggles to control itself. On the one hand, the economic prosperity allows it to generate great wealth, while on the other hand the internal incoherence leaves it staggering around like a blind giant. Twenty years in Afghanistan, for example, is every bit as insane as the Greeks invading Sicily in the Peloponnesian War. Democracy demands a unifying purpose, so that becomes the point of the democracy, finding some unifying cause.

The one difference, of course, is Athens was blessed with a neighbor that could defeat it in war and strip it of its empire. America has no enemy that can do that or even wants to do it. The Soviets were as close as we came, but the analogy does not work because Americans and Russians do not share the same heritage. The Spartans and Athenians were Greeks and saw one another as Greeks. No such relation existed in the rivalry between communism and liberal democracy.

The American empire lost its one rival in the 19th century. America became an empire when the Yankee north conquered the Tidewater south in the Civil War. At that point, the Athens of America became a continental empire. After conquering its great spartan rival, it then moved west, conquering the rest of the continent. In time, it expelled the European powers from the hemisphere. Then in the 20th century, the American empire conquered Europe and Asia.

Instead of reliving what happened to the Western Romans Empire, what we are experiencing is what would have happened if the Athenians had prevailed over the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War. Instead of the Athenian democracy being contained, it would have spread like a virus around the region. It is hard to know, but Hellenization would surely have been more widespread and more democratic than what eventually happened. The result would have been more familiar to us.

That means we can only speculate as to how the American Empire ends. It may be that it does not end until some military power rises up to defeat it. What was at the core of Athenian democracy is what is at the core of liberal democracy. That is, an absolute certainty that this system is the only one that can work. The intolerance of democracy is not rooted in fear, but in an unbridled confidence. Only a defeat in war can shatter that confidence in the democratic system.

Maybe the future is the present forever. On the one hand, the people at the top make sure to keep the food and fun flowing to the people, even turning protest into a form of spectator sport. On the other hand, it is one spasm of virtue after another, finding new villains and new victims of those villains. Maybe the only way a democratic empire can end is to be defeated by an external force. Maybe the end of history is what we are seeing today replayed over and over forever.


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The Nostalgia Loop

Note: A good example of a small project in community building is this small documentary being made about the plight of small ranchers. The people behind it are the sorts of people dissidents should support. They are not the sort of people to wash the feet or take the knee. If you have a few bucks to spare, make a donation to a worthy project by and for our people. It would be nice to see them reach their rather modest goal this week and maybe move past it. Thank you in advance.


One of the strange things that turned up quickly in the Obama administration was the odd sense of nostalgia about the whole thing. Lost in all the gaudy rhetoric about the seas rising and the birds chirping for the black messiah, was the references to old slights and past failures. It was not explicit, but it was there when you looked at their agenda as a whole. It was clear that a big part of what was animating them was a commitment to revisit and settle all those old scores.

Vengeance has always been a big part of the America Left. This is due to it being a spiritual enterprise, rather than an ideological one. They are atoning for past sins, so addressing those past sins is always part of the agenda. For blacks, vengeance is part of their identity. They dream of exacting revenge on white people. Still, if you looked carefully, the Obama agenda was more like a nostalgia tour for the aging radicals who managed and underwrote his political career.

The best example is health care. This was a fresh wound for the Left and they were determined to have a do-over, no matter the cost. The distinguishing feature of that period was the total lack of a plan to engineer a new health care regime. Instead, they just replayed the early 1990’s, but slightly different. The Iran initiative was a re-do of the Carter years. This time, they would do negotiations right. The same was true for their Russia reset. They were spiting Reagan.

It is not just the Left that has been trapped in a nostalgia loop. The so-called conservatives curdled into a Bill Buckle mystery cult. They spent the Bush years comparing Bush to Reagan. Then they spent the Obama years pretending Obama was Carter and their next Reagan was due any minute. Even Trump has gone in for the nostalgia politics. His MAGA idea is right out of the 1980’s and he was all set to run a Morning in America campaign this fall.

You can’t help but notice that the current ructions look like a cheesy reenactment of the riots of the late 1960’s. There is a distinct lack of authenticity. For starters, the black riots have as many white people as blacks. In fact, the whole foot-washer thing is mostly old white people reminiscing about the old days. There is a very strong Baby Boomer vibe to the anti-racism thing. They are pretending nothing has changed since their youth as a way to feel young again.

The young people involved in this stuff are more like hobbyists playing a role in a historical reenactment than people with legitimate grievances. The black looters are certainly people from the ghetto getting some free stuff. The people organizing the actions are bourgeois bohemians living in the suburbs. In fact, they are upper class members of the ruling class. Instead of using peasants for a human chessboard, they are using morons for a game of urban riots.

The nostalgia is most evident in the racial component. They are so caught up in the role, they are incapable of seeing the absurdity. We just had four days of funerals for a drug-addled black criminal. All of the corporate oligarchs are imposing anti-racism on their customers, even refusing service to them if they are not enthusiastic enough for the cause, but we supposedly have a white racism problem. We’re literally worshiping black people right now, but we supposedly have a racism problem.

It is not just race either. Feminism has been caught in a nostalgia loop for quite some time now. The whole campus rape culture business was just a remake of the war on chauvinism from the 60’s and 70’s. In the original, women in polyester pantsuits complained about men treating them as sex objects. In the remake, it was frumpy coeds complaining about horse-faced guys named Haven Monahan ravaging them in their fraternity. Same bodice ripper, new scenery.

Go back to the Bush years and the anti-war movement was just a bunch of oldsters reliving their youth through college kids they hired to play them in the remake of the Vietnam protests. They even used the same language. Days into Afghanistan, they declared it a quagmire. Note too that as soon as Bush left the scene, the protests came to a screeching halt. There were no anti-war Left in the Obama years, despite the fact he was droning the Muslims on a daily basis.

Step back and look at the last couple of decades and what we seem to be experiencing is the end point of American Progressivism. They have run out of great moral crusades, so they are rebooting old franchises. Just as Hollywood has collapsed into a series of remakes and reboots of old ideas, the political elite is reduced to replaying old political battles, but with better graphics. Of course, they make sure they are the hero in all of these remakes, just in case that was not clear the first time.

There is also the fact that this ruling elite is probably the most spoiled and pampered elite since the French Revolution. Scan the resumes of the people at the top and you don’t find any signs of struggle. Even the financial elites have ridden the warm thermals of a rigged system. Jeff Bezos thinks he is Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but in reality, he is the product of a system that grants massive government subsidies and protections to a select group of insiders and friends of the system.

As a result, this ruling class operates on the assumption that there is never any consequence to their actions. The rioters did not burn down their houses or their businesses last week. They are not going to be forced into struggle sessions at their office or college job. None of this affects them. Again, like the aristocrats forcing peasants into a game of human chess, they get to take it all in as bemused spectators, enjoying the good life as an insulated ruling class.


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!


Selling Normie

One of the truths about politics that many would prefer to ignore is that politics is not about facts and reason. The game is about persuasion. If you live under a monarch, then the game is to create popular support in order to persuade the king that some policy is good for his people. If the ruler is a despot, then he needs to be convinced his best interest lie in a particular policy. In theory, at least, democracy is about persuading fifty percent plus one in favor of some course of action.

In order to persuade someone, you need to understand his needs and motivations in order to frame your appeal to him in a way that he can understand. Good salesmen always start by understanding what their prospect needs and why he thinks he may need whatever it is he may buy. He is far more likely to buy the widget that makes the boss happy than the widget that works a tiny bit better than the rest. He needs the widget and is motivated to make his boss happy.

A similar approach must be done with the sorts of people dissidents seek to persuade in the political arena. The so-called normie has become the universal white guy everyone says they want to bring to this side of the great divide. As President Barak Obama once said, he is the typical white person. This is the guy who votes Republican and listens to Rush Limbaugh when he is driving around during the day. His dream is to be left to live his life as he sees fit with whom he sees fit.

Normie would naturally come this way, but he has been convinced of a number of things that operate like a leash keeping him in lefty’s yard. For example, normie is sure that markets matter a great deal. When he sees all of the corporate oligarchs promoting black violence, he mutters to himself, “Get woke, go broke.” He truly thinks the marketplace will punish these companies. He thinks the sportsball leagues will suffer for kneeling to their black players. The fans will punish them for it.

The mistake made by dissidents when discussing the magic market issue is in thinking they need to be anti-market. The thing is, normie needs to believe the market will magically solve these problems because he is not motivated to act on his anger and frustration over what he is seeing. The choice he sees is to abandon the convenience of buying from Amazon or forgoing the joy of watching sports. If he is going to walk away from consumerism, there has to be something in it for him.

There is something similar at work with race. Normie has been told his whole life that if he just tries hard enough, black people will stop thinking he is a racist. It’s not that explicit, but that is the point of race messaging from the ruling class. They want white people in a constant struggle session over race, where they examine everything they do with an eye on reaching the magic state of being not racist. Since no such place exists, the struggle can never end, hence the endless riots.

It is why explicitly racist language is a dead end for normie. He sees that and is confirmed in his desire to not be a racist. Those taboo-breakers with their salty language and snarky comments are mostly singing to the choir. There’s a place for it and a need for it, but when it comes time to pitch normie on race realism, such language and symbolism is a deal killer. You become the salesman who walks into a Christian business using four-letter language and wreaking of alcohol.

Normie also likes feeling a bit self-righteous and sanctimonious. This is true of all people to some degree. All of us want to be good people in the universal sense, but we also want the people around us to acknowledge it. As John Derbyshire explained back in the Neolithic, social thought is a foundation of man. When it comes to politics, the easiest way for normie to feel good is to triangulate. He rejects the far-left, but also rejects those bad people and haters to his right.

You see this in business. Often a buyer will justify his decision as being the value proposition, which means not the best, but not the cheapest. It is a form of self-flattery that the good salesman can exploit. He recognizes that the buyer needs to feel like he is a reasonable guy not taken by fads and thoughtful in his analysis. Normie takes a similar approach when it comes to thorny cultural issues in politics. He naturally seeks some middle ground that he can then pretend is the high ground.

This is, in part, why normie remains smitten with immigration. It has always been framed for him as a choice between open borders and xenophobia. Normie really needs to believe that those immigrants want to be like him. To reject them out of hand is to reject himself. Again, it is a form of self-flattery. Think about how so-called conservatives sell normie on immigration. They talk about immigrants starting businesses and being natural conservatives who love Jesus and family

On the other hand, normie makes noises about the need for immigration being legal and measured, because it makes him seem reasonable. He rejects the chaos of open borders, because he is an orderly sort of guy. He wants a tough border, but as long as there is a legal process, he is fine with immigration. The current immigration levels have become his value position. He’s not taking the cheap route of open borders, but he is not going for the expensive option of a moratorium.

Then there is the weird fatalism of normie. He looks around at the madness of the day and thinks, “They have gone too far. The snap-back is coming.” This is similar to his belief in the magic of the marketplace. Normie just assumes the excesses he sees around him will cause the silent majority, of which he is a member in good standing, to move like a school of fish in a different direction. Millions of private decisions motivated by left-wing excess will put things back in order.

This is why talk of whites becoming a minority is so effective on normie. It’s not so much that he fears being at the mercy of non-whites. He fears he will lose the validation of being in that silent majority and that the silent majority will no longer be that magical force that rights all wrongs. In other words, so much of the normie mindset that keeps him tethered to conventional politics, depends on him believing he is part of a perpetual majority of good white people like himself.

It’s why the scenes of whites washing the feet of blacks and kneeling before them is so powerful, when combined with demographic reality. When normie understand he will be a minority and it means washing the feet, he suddenly becomes a highly motivated buyer for a new political ideology. The good salesman is always prepared for the motivated buyer. He does not bore him with a long sales pitch. He just presses on those pain points until he gets the sale.

Every salesman will tell you that there are good times and bad times. The good salesman weathers the bad times and maximizes the good times. Right now, it has never been a better time to sell dissident ideas to the normie in the market for something better. Not all are motivated buyers, for sure. Some people never let go of the past. You can’t save everyone, but there are a lot of white people looking around right now thinking, “There has to be something better than this.”


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 Inner Party Revolution

One of the difficult things for people living in an ideological society is that they are suspended in a solution of propaganda. All of the information they receive is warped by the currents of the prevailing ideology. Everyone has some interest in shaping opinion, so all effort is put into promoting one thing or another. Since all parties are advancing a cause at odds with reality, truth becomes an enemy. The normal person trying to figure out what is happening is left to swim in a sea of lies.

That’s what makes the current events hard to decipher. Why has the death of a drug-addled black felon at the hands of the cops set the world on fire? Why is the institutional Left so exhilarated by the rioting? Why have the corporate oligarchs rolled out an information campaign in support of the revolts? For sure, the oligarchs are all members in good standing of the new religion, but there is an uncanny valley vibe to it. The whole thing is like a well-choreographed performance.

When normal people, not infected by the rage virus that seems to be the root of the new religion, look at scenes like this they are disgusted. Why is the mayor of that city exhilarated by it? What possible reason could he have for promoting it? Why are white people literally worshiping black people? That’s probably the most bizarre aspect of this entire circus. It’s like these white people have secretly joined a weird UFO cult and they think blacks are the visiting space aliens.

Again, in a world of lies and propaganda, it is very hard to know if any of this is planned or spontaneous. The entire apparatus of the Left is promoting and facilitating the protests. Make no mistake, that apparatus is a vast and extremely well financed operation. Still, the scale and absurdity to what we are seeing goes beyond what the Left normally can muster. It is clear that the new religion that has swept the country has these people thinking something big is happening.

Now, there is something else that gets little attention. A part of what’s going on is a push by the non-white elements in the new religion trying to make their move on the old white and Jewish people at the top. The Old Guard has run the Left since the 1960’s and the party since the 1990’s. The new swarthy guard thinks it is their time to run the show and this is their chance to make their move. These choreographed events are about showing the Old Guard who controls the rank and file of the party.

This is not just about far-left theatrics. The well-orchestrated moves by people like General Mattis, Mitt Romney and Secretary of Defense Esper suggest elements within the establishment think inner party leadership has been too soft with Trump. Mitt Romney may not be down with Team Brown, but he hates Trump and the people who voted for Trump with a passion. Leadership promised Trump would be removed long ago and here he is running for reelection.

Those are some subplots, but it is also clear that something very strange is happening within the upper reaches of the ruling class. The top editor of the Philly Enquirer was chased off by a woke mob for stating the obvious. The NYTimes is being overrun by far-left crazies. One of their top editors was forced out. Andrew Sullivan, a long time darling of elite society, has been put on mute. It’s increasingly clear that the inner party elite is scared of the woke monster they have unleashed.

What’s happening in the big media operations sheds some light on what has been going on for two weeks. All of the groveling and cheering by liberal politicians may not be entirely genuine. They may think it is their only way to avoid being another victim of the woke army they helped to create. That’s clearly what’s happening in the media centers and probably elsewhere. The strange willingness to indulge these mobs is really about a panic rumbling through elite society.

The street riots of the 1960’s were a training ground for the New Left that would eventually march through the institutions. What we are seeing is cheesy replay of that process, where street violence forces the establishment to appease the new element rising up in the inner party. Fifty years ago, people like Nancy Pelosi were the future of left-wing politics and eventually the leadership of the inner party. Today, the grotesque non-whites we see on-line are the future of the inner party.

The future will come fast. The forcing out of old white looking males from big media will now accelerate. The same will happen in the academy. One reason the police are being targeted is that even in brown cities, the cops are mostly white. That’s why they are plotting to dismantle the police. They want all of those white men out of their cities and this is the fastest way to do it. Look for every city to start competing with one another to see who can be the most woke in dismantling their police departments.

The paleocons and civic nationalists will, of course, try hard to find good news in all of this by making excessive comparisons between now and the 1960’s. Steve Sailer is all over stuff like this from America’s chosen rapper. “See? They are eating their own now. The fringes are falling apart!” That’s a fine coping strategy for those on the back nine of their lives, but it is not relevant to this age. Frankly, Mr. Cube is no longer relevant to this age, as he is a museum piece from a country that no longer exists.

The radicals of the 1960’s inherited a country and a ruling apparatus that was high functioning and manned by highly capable white males. The country and ruling apparatus of today is hollowed out and manned by incompetents. The radicals of the 1960’s were the sons and daughters of high IQ achievers. The radicals of today are the sons and daughters of peasants elevated into their potions by a system evolved to assuage the guilt of the old white people running it.

The Covid-19 panic gave us a glimpse of what is too come. The exaggerated incompetence of the politicians and the system itself was a preview of what lies ahead this summer. Rather than operate like public officials with a duty to their positions, local officials will be responding to the radicals with bizarre press conferences and a competition to see who can be most dramatic. Like the Covid panic, we are about to see a spiral of make-believe over the woke insurrection.

Having gotten a taste of blood, the radicals will be out in force this summer, especially at the party conventions. You can be sure Antifa and Black Live Matter are prepping to burn down Trump’s convention. That assumes any city will agree to host it. There is a good chance this will become the new fashion. Woke cities refusing to hold Trump events like rallies and the convention. Corporations will stop hosting GOP events until they renounce Orange Man and his wicked whiteness.

Read the biographies of Nixon people and you will find that one deep concern in the Nixon White House was whether a real revolution was afoot. It was a genuine concern, but the revolution, it turned out, was mostly within the inner party. The country was strong enough to contain it. Today, that old containment vessel is rusted and full of holes with no one around to repair it. The revolution within the inner party will surely break contain and contaminate the entire society now.


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 Cult Of Inclusion

The conversion of Europe to Christianity did not happen in one fast moving wave, but rather in fits and starts over a long period of time. In the case of England, a nobleman would convert and then force his subjects to convert. In other parts of Europe, a critical mass of people would convert, leading the nobility to convert. Often, the new religion existed alongside the old religion. Not everyone was excited for the new religion, so they would stick with the old gods rather than convert.

In the cases where the nobility forced their subjects to convert, it must have been a very strange situation for the people. One day they are marched down to the river where some weirdos with funny haircuts speak a strange language while dunking them under the water. Then everyone is marched to a building with some new images and forced to repeat words in that same strange language. To the person subjected to this, it must have seemed like the rulers were going mad.

Of course, not everyone was willing to give up their old gods, even if the lord or king had converted to the new religion. Initially, these holdouts may have been tolerated, but eventually they had to be forced to obey. In Britain, according to Bede, disputes between Christian kings and pagan kings resulted in lots of bloodshed. The last pagan king was killed in battle in 686. After that, Britain was nominally Christian, although paganism survived as English folkways.

This is something to keep in mind as we watch the American empire succumb to what increasingly looks like the emergence of a bizarre new cult. All the attention has been on the blacks looting and the Antifa stirring up riots, but around this orgy of mayhem has been signs that it is all part of a strange new religion. Images like this are becoming more common, as this new region evolves public rituals. All of the corporate oligarchs are all-in on this new cult and they control the culture now.

To the common people of the empire, this seems bizarre. It is as if the ruling elite has gone mad all at the same time. Large swaths of the national government are in revolt against the President over his failure to comply with the new faith. State and local government officials are a click away from open insurrection. The country is tipping into civil war, with one side on the side of this bizarre new religion and the other side baffled as to what is happening. The empire is a madhouse now.

This cult is not entirely without president. The radicals of the French Revolution created the Cult of the Supreme Being. They first sought to replace Catholicism with a new religion devoted to the abstract concept of reason. That new cult was largely a blend of atheism and anthropocentrism. Robespierre saw the obvious problems and denounced this cult and instead promoted the Cult of the Supreme Being. It was intended to be primarily a state religion with God at the center of it.

This cult we are seeing evolve in the empire is much more like the Cult of Reason, in that it has no gods and elevates abstract concepts like inclusion, diversity, cooperation and openness. When activist chant demands for justice, for example, they are not talking about legal justice or even moral justice. Justice is one of the many words to signify this collection of concepts at the center of the cult. In this case, justice is when all non-whites feel joyfully included in the white society.

That’s a key element that goes unnoticed. In this example of justice, it is not enough for whites to grant legal access. Whites must joyously embrace the inclusion of non-whites into their world. The holy concepts of inclusion and cooperation demand more than just mere compliance with the new rules of inclusion. A grudging compliance could result in future conflict. No, justice requires that whites redefine themselves to include non-whites as an integral part of their identity.

This is why the elites suddenly look like supplicants. These bizarre rituals where they kneel and confess their privilege are in fact rituals. This new cult does not have the concept of private devotion. Such a thing as private cannot exist in a fully open and cooperative society. To have a private thought is to exclude those from that part of your life and there is no greater sin than exclusion. Those who truly embrace the new faith must do so in public. Only then can they be truly saved.

The Left in America has always been a spiritual force, rather than an ideological one, as is the case in Europe. The roots of Progressivism are in religion. Their ideal society was never about material equality. It was about communal salvation. As the empire has shifted fully into liberal democracy since the end of the Cold War, this spiritual yearning has turned into a religion of its own. Instead of salvation, the goal is a worldly Utopia of universal cooperation and inclusion of all people.

To the insider, a cult is a world where the internal rules and beliefs of the cult perfectly explain the world. To the outsider, the rules and beliefs of the cult seem amusing, bizarre or possibly dangerous. That’s what is happening in the empire. Most of us are outside this ruling class cult, so their chants, declarations and actions strike as strange and crazy. The destruction of the cities makes no sense. For the cult, these riots are purifying rituals. To outsiders, they are wanton destruction.

This may also explain the bizarre behavior over the Covid virus. It was obvious a long time ago that something other than science and a concern for public health was driving public officials to stoke the panic. The elaborate game of make believe has now been made plain. People are barred from Christian services, but BLM protests and homosexual parades are now permitted. The destruction of civil society from the top down was the elite’s version of the urban street riots.

What we may be seeing is this weird religion of inclusion and cooperation quickly morph into a suicide cult that seeks to level existing society. First the elites try to destroy society with the lock downs and elimination of personal freedom. Now the rank and file are doing their part by devastating the cities. The new faith will not rest until every trace of the old has been erased. That includes the people. Those who represent the old, with their white habits and white ideas must be destroyed.

Like those medieval peasants who woke up one day to learn their king was part of a strange new cult brought in by a couple of bald guys in dresses, normal people in the empire are seeing the mass conversion of their rulers. Just as Christianity could only tolerate the old ways for so long, this new faith is increasing intolerant of the old normal ways of American society. It now exists to expunge every trace of civil life. This cult has declared total war on the rest of us.


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!