A History of Failure

Posted on May 30, 2021 by thezman

One of the enduring mysteries, one that is rarely explored, is why all right-wing movements in America have failed to make a dent in Progressivism. The first iteration of conservatism in America was washed away by Progressive reformers in the first part of the 20th century. When political crisis struck, conservatives had no political solutions, just theoretical analysis. Progressives, meanwhile, had a program.

In response to the success of New Deal politics, the American Right reorganized in the middle of the last century around more practical items. Buckley-style conservatism was about winning elections and implementing policy. Like its predecessor, it failed to do much to stem the tide of Progressive innovation. In the end it was corrupted by the system it sought to reform, becoming just another node on the managerial state.

The reason for this long track record of futility is that American conservatism has always been dominated by bourgeois objectivism. Unlike Randian objectivism, bourgeois objectivism is the assumption that the world runs by a set of immutable laws and that the point of politics is to adapt to those laws. Discovering the right answer is the point of all political activity as once the answer is clear, everything falls into place.

In the realm of politics, it means that all political actors, individually and in groups, are acting from rational and discoverable motives. This naturally leads to a reductionist interpretation of Progressive politics. Whatever the Left proposes is feverishly analyzed by conservatives to discern “real motives”. Further, it is always assumed that the Left is driven by the same desires as the Right would be driven, if the roles were reversed.

Read the rest here…

Lost Hoppe

Posted on May 28, 2021 by thezman

Libertarianism comes in for a reasonable amount of criticism on this side of the great divide, mostly for its tendency to side with the Left on cultural issues. Libertarianism, at its best, is low-tax liberalism. The common and well-supported form of libertarianism is the version that functions as lipstick on the pig of corporate excess. The people who claim to champion individual rights always seem to be defending those rights being trampled by massive global companies answerable to no one.

There are some exceptions within the libertarian fever swamp. Ron Paul is still remembered fondly by many on this side of the great divide. He was their guide into the world of political realism. He was always careful to avoid taboo subjects, but there were plenty of paleocons in the baggage train to help guide those swept up in the Ron Paul moment toward sensible politics. The Ron Paul moment turned out to be a waystation for what is now the dissident right.

Another exception is the libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Greg Hood and Chris Roberts from American Renaissance have posted a new podcast on Hoppe and his most popular work, Democracy: The God that Failed. It is a good discussion of Hoppe, his brand of libertarianism and the arguments in his book. This podcast is part of a series on various writers relevant to dissident politics. The show on Wilmot Robertson is especially good, as few remember him.

One thing that was missed in the review of Hoppe’s book is that he was one of the first people to notice a peculiar feature of democracy. That is, as soon as the idea of democracy is planted in a society, the franchise expands rapidly. Societies can reject the core idea of democracy, but still have limited participation through elections, which was the case in early America. Once the society accepts the idea of democracy, all limits on the franchise quickly give way to democratic zeal.

Hoppe observed this in his book, but he offered no explanation for it. He just accepts it as a force of nature, noting how the franchise expanded in every Western country as soon as democracy was introduced. We saw this in America. In the 20th centur,y as the country transformed from a republic into a social democracy, the franchise quickly started to expand to include all men, then women, then blacks. Now we are extending the vote to criminals, foreigners, and the imaginary.

One reason for this is the very nature of democracy. In a world of fifty percent plus one there will always be a large minority unhappy with the result. In order to avoid conflict, the natural elites form parties, which allows them to form a consensus around a set of compromises on the important issues. This is something that was the norm in the 20th century, whether it was in multi-party parliamentary systems or the two-party bicameral system in America. Liberal democracy was about consensus.

While that greatly reduces the number of people who feel left out of the result, it creates a new problem. Reformers now need to break the consensus in order to get the changes they think are required. That is difficult, so they instead look to increase the number of those outside the consensus. Put another way, the reformer looks for new voters, rather than trying to challenge old voters. Get enough new voters and the outsiders can challenge the prevailing consensus.

In America, expansion of the franchise parallels reform efforts. The social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th century were also the driving force behind expanding the franchise to women. Extending the franchise to blacks came with social reforms like the elimination of free association. Today, the people chanting about democracy are also demanding the vote be given to foreigners. Open borders are a way to create a permanent revolution against the prevailing consensus.

Again, this is not something Hoppe addressed, but it does suggest that the primary reason libertarians favor open borders is they share the same reformist impulse that exists on the Left. They instinctively seek to break the consensus, which in their case is their idea of statism. The fact that libertarians never try to think through the ramifications of open borders suggests they are not acting on practical considerations, but rather on an instinctive sense that it is good for them.

Of course, there is a natural limit to democracy’s expansive tendency. Once every human on earth can vote for the next American president, there are no more worlds to conquer for the democrats. Long before that, however, democracy becomes too unstable to maintain a consensus of any sort for any duration. That seems to be happening now, when half the country in unhappy with every election result and the consensus that is implied in the result. America is shaking itself to pieces.

Hoppe is a good reminder that even the most ridiculous ideas can be useful in the right hands, if only as a warning. In the case of libertarianism, its utility was always in its use as a critique of liberal excess. Libertarian economics was an excellent antidote to central planning. Natural rights are useful in challenging authoritarianism. In the case of Hoppe, his economic defense of monarchism is useful in understanding the inherent dangers and defects of liberal democracy.

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Sunset Of The Neocons

Posted on May 27, 2021 by thezman

One of the more interesting developments of the last half dozen years is the collapse of the old neoconservative order. By the Bush years it was no longer possible to question the presence of these people at the heart of conservativism, but a little over a decade on and the neocons are happy to exclude themselves from the Right. More important, they seem to be unambitiously antiwhite now. That was always the subtext of paleocon criticism of them, but now they are happy to confirm it.

It is as if someone blew a whistle that only the neocons could hear, and they abandoned their former friends on the Right. Look around conservative media and it has been like a weird form of the rapture. One by one they have disappeared from Fox News, National Review, and other conservative outlets. They have quietly tapped into hidden wealth to start up new outlets like the Bulwark and the Dispatch. Others have moved onto the pages of far-left scandal sheets like the New York Times.

The thing is this departure has not just been a change of direction for them or an adaptation to new reality. These new sites are not an effort to build a better mouse trap or find new intellectual freedom. In fact, they are not trying to influence right-wing discourse at all. Instead, they are at war with their former friends, desperately trying to prevent anything like a right-wing from emerging from the tumult. They are anti-Trump, anti-populist and most important, anti-white.

Again, this was always the claim from critics. The first generation of neocons started out in life as Trotskyites and transformed into conservatives when the Left started saying nice things about their ancient enemies. There was also the Israel question. The Left was siding with nonwhites, like Palestinians, while the Buckley crowd was happy to side with the Israelis. The neocon phenomenon was a marriage of convenience for the first generation and has suddenly become inconvenient.

Neoconservatism has not collapsed, of course, as they are like a drug resistant virus or an invasive species. Short of a nuclear holocaust, there appears to be no way to eradicate them. Given the track record of the neocons, they should have gone to the trash heap of history a long time ago. They are responsible for the worst presidency in modern American history. Somehow, as if by magic, they have found new hosts and carry on as if everyone else is to blame for their failures.

What is most amazing about all of this is the mask dropping. Back in the Trump years, Jonah Goldberg amplified every left-wing criticism of Trump. He was also enthusiastic about calling Trump voters every left-wing epithet he could remember from his days working for Ben Wattenberg, the old Bolshevik TV presenter. Bill Kristol, of course, sounded like one of screeching harpies from the Daily Beast. His bizarre outbursts and predictions suggested he was having a psychotic break.

It was not just an over-reaction to Trump. The mean old orange man is gone and there is no rapprochement between the neocons and their former friends. If anything, the neocons are getting more aggressive. This post from Cathy Young is a good recent example of the neocon war on the conservatives. She manages to weave together the familiar paranoid delusions about antisemitism with left-wing conspiracy theories into an indictment of conservatives as hypocrites.

It was not so long ago that Cathy Young pitched herself as a right-libertarian, posting at Reason, National Review, the Federalist and so forth. Everything about her was a fraud, including her name, but she was able to fool Conservative Inc. The fact that she warms herself on a large rock every morning should have tipped them off, but conservatives are not known for noticing these things. Still, her shifting into an antiwhite bigot at war with conservatives is a telling transformation.

The question that naturally arises is why have they suddenly abandoned the old host, despite not having a new host? Perhaps the assumption is that after a clear separation they will be welcomed by the Left. This is something a pupa stage for them. The next stage is the imago when they will mature into left-wing warmongers. Many of them do still pose as conservatives at left-wing tabloids like the Washington Post. Jennifer Ruben and Brett Stephens are two examples.

Of course, there is the possibility that intellectual decline has hit them hard. Read the first generation neocons and there is no missing their intellect. These were smart and shrewd men with the animal cunning of revolutionaries. Their descendants, in contrast, are obnoxiously dull-witted. Bill Kristol spent his life as a freeloader, cashing in on his father’s reputation. Jonah Goldberg made armpit noises as the house jester for National Review, before declaring himself an intellectual.

This is something that cannot be dismissed. David French is the house intellectual at Goldberg’s Dispatch. Tucker Carlson nailed it when he said, “David French is a buffoon, one of the least impressive people I’ve ever met. Only in nonprofit conservatism could he have a paying job.” This is true across the neocon spectrum. Recall this is a crew that seriously considered running Evan McMullen for president. For those in need of some clown horn, here is more on that topic.

The other possibility is that neoconservatism was always a long con, but it has finally run out of road. The disastrous Bush years brought this reality to the fore and the neocons had no willingness or ability to answer for it. Eric Hoffer pointed out that mass movements in America end up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. In the case of the neocons it is just a racket now. They are happy to run the pro-Israel racket as long as it keeps them in the lifestyle they believe they deserve.

Regardless of the the causes, the slow death of neoconservatism is a net positive for right-thinking people. The reason conservatism was a disaster is it cloaked anti-Western sentiment in liberal principle. The neocons were always the quintessential wolf in sheep’s clothing, so their departure offers clarity. That is, the people on the Right can now think in terms of their own interests, rather than the interests of esoteric principles or carefully cultivated and ennobled outsiders.

Social Reform

Posted on May 26, 2021 by thezman

One of the mistakes conservatives, variously defined, have always made when analyzing modern politics is to assume purely rational motives to all actors. Today this combines a form of reductionism. The motivations of groups are reduced to the sorts of motivations that you can assign to an individual. The “cancel culture” stuff is now about power, as if the people behind it are powerless. Other events are reduced to the quest for money or maybe leverage over others in the pursuit of money.

In reality, the culture war has been driven by people who have all of the power and money they could ever need. The Left in America controls everything and lives like royalty, so power and money are not primary motivators. They are motivated by the same sort of religious zeal associated with fanatics. Theirs is a secular religion, but it is salted with plenty of mysticism. The reason that Gaia worship and now the Covid stuff endures is it satisfies their need for the supernatural.

This is why the mass media has started to look like a flock of birds or a school of fish, seeming to act in coordination on every story. A year ago, every respectable journalist knew that Covid came from exotic meat markets. It was the provincial rubes and their taste for bat meat. Similarly, it was provincial rubes in America and their conspiracy theories that thought Covid was possibly man-made. Now all of a sudden, the media fish are schooling around the lab leak theory.

They are not doing this because they got a memo from HQ explaining how the official narrative has been updated by the committee. The journalists are not getting an e-mail explaining the revision to the official narrative on Covid. “Please be advised that the new truth on the origins of Covid have been changed. Be sure to update your opinions accordingly comrade.” Instead, one heavy from the party signals the change and the rest, like fish, instinctively respond.

This is also why the media is oblivious to their own change in direction. Like fish in the school, their focus is always on the members around them. They go where they go, which means they are always reacting to those around them. Since there is a strong social hierarchy in all human organizations, the humans in the media hive are always looking up for direction. Biden says something, then the media lackeys in the press pool react, which causes the rest of the media to react.

The way to think of the media is not so much as a sentient organicism playing a complex game of politics, but as a mindless organism that responds to the stimuli applied by a small group of people. This is the part missing from this otherwise excellent post about CIA manipulation of the media. The CIA can influence the media narrative by simply turning a relatively small number of journalists. They do not control it in an absolute or direct sense. They just control some influencers.

The CIA is not the only part of the managerial state playing this game. The major Wall Street players use access journalism to promote their interests. The FBI sends dozens of retired people into media jobs every year. The corrupt agents involved in the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election landed in the media. The cable channels alone have over one hundred retired FBI people employed. Then you have the revolving door between the media and presidential administrations.

That is one of the reasons official Washington despised Trump. Thousands of people in Conservative Inc spent the final years of the Obama administration angling for jobs in what was assumed to be the next Bush administration. Jonah Goldberg’s wife hit the gym and got a makeover assuming she would be in the Jeb Bush White House, but then Trump came along and ruined it all. For “conservative media”, Trump represented thousands of lost book deals, speaking gigs and so on.

The way to think about the managerial class is like a small town. It is really a collection of small towns, linked together by government think tanks, elite universities, and sinecures at nodes in the system. Newcomers are evaluated like the new family in a small New England town. If they fit in, they become part of the community, with all the benefits and responsibilities it entails. Who they are is linked to their membership in the community, so their loyalty is tangled up in their sense of self.

In the case of the media, it works a lot like any industry. There are small players and big corporate players. Some people start at a small player and eventually get called up to the big leagues by one of the big players. Others start at the bottom at a big media player and work their way up. The control is not just the threat of being blackballed by the media, but also the threat of being sent to a minor media outlet. Going from Fox News to YouTube, for example, is a horrible humiliation.

This is why reform is probably impossible. A reformer is immediately swarmed by flocks of angry insects from the various subgroups in the managerial class. We saw this with Trump, who set upon on all sides. The genuine reformer must battle with many hives of bees attacking at the same time from different angles. Before long he is solely focused on defense, which is what happened with Trump. He spent most of his tenure defending himself from one attack after another from the system.

According to Livy, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus received a messenger from his son asking what he should do now that he was a powerful ruler. Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and lopped off the heads of the tallest poppies. The messenger got tired of waiting for an answer, so he went back and told Sextus what happened. Sextus realized that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, the city over which he was now the ruler.

This is probably the only way to reform the managerial state. A strong leader will need to behead the main institutions. New people with loyalty to the leader will be installed and they will purge the ranks. This is what happened in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and the installation of Khrushchev. The problem is the American version of the corporate state does not have a strong party leader. Therefore, reform of this sort may be impossible, which means reform is impossible.

Alien Reboot

Posted on May 25, 2021 by thezman

Note: There is a new movie review up on SubscribeStar. For those looking to support my alcoholism, it is also up on Buy Me A Beer.

For reasons no one has bothered to explain, the government went on a strange public relations tour, informing us that it has for years been documenting unidentified objects in the air and sea. These events have been captured by cameras mounted on military ships and aircraft. They released a bunch of these videos, some of which had audio of the people recording them. Those voices in the videos tell the viewer that the cameramen are baffled by the blurry images they are seeing.

Along with the videos, the Pentagon provided some background. They claim they have data going back a long time suggesting these events are not illusions. For example, they claim the appearance of unidentified flying objects near a nuclear weapons battery caused the facility to shut down. They did not state it directly, but the implication is the entity behind the unexplained objects was also able to turn off the nuclear weapons facility or at least disable it while they were flying around it.

Despite the comically bad video that was released, the claim is that these objects, in the air and the sea, operate in ways thought impossible. They move faster than any human built craft and they maneuver well beyond our capability. In one case, an object was claimed to have been in the air then it went into the sea, moving at speeds well beyond any known seagoing vessel. The video for that one shows what looks like a piece of fuzz moving around on a grainy black and white video.

Supposedly the government is releasing this stuff because Congress passed a law requiring them to come clean on the UFO question. Marco Rubio, one of the Senate’s most brilliant thinkers, got something passed last year that requires the Pentagon to issue a report to the public on what they know. Presumably, these videos are part of prepping the public for whatever the official word is on UFO’s. Who knows, maybe they will roll out a little green man along with the report.

Of course, the right way to view this is with lots of skepticism. After all, the people putting this into the public domain lie to us every day. They were sure that invisible Russians using mind control somehow altered the 2016 election. Amazingly, those invisible Russians were able to do their dastardly deeds without ever having been caught on camera, so maybe the space aliens flying around US navy ships could learn a few things from the those invisible Russian mentats.

Then we have the evidence itself. Maybe the military really is using 1970’s technology on ships and aircraft, but those videos look suspiciously primitive. The only thing missing was Mulder and Scully from the old X-Files series. If Rod Sterling were narrating the video, it would have made more sense. Again, given the government’s compulsive lying, the voice overs were less than convincing. If this is all they have, then we have to assume this is just more bravo sierra from the state.

The biggest problem with all UFO claims is that we know some things that would have to be true about alien visitors. One is they would have to be orders of magnitude smarter than humans in order to master interstellar travel. We are not even sure we can return to the moon, much less travel the stars. This super smart species that has conquered what we currently think is impossible, that is travel beyond light speed, would surely have figured out how to evade our primitive cameras.

The claim about the nuclear missile facility is the most amusing example of the paradoxes in the UFO story. We are told they were able to detect these entities on radar, but the entities seem to have disabled the nuclear weapons. That means these super intelligent space aliens can shut down our most advanced weapons from their ships but could not figure out how to shut off the radar and cameras. It is a good thing they did not come here to rob bank vaults.

Despite the outlandishness of these whoppers, it fits a familiar pattern for how the state disseminates bogus information. Andrew Anglin pointed this out in his Unz Review piece on the UFO story. He wrote, “Journalists and people who claim to be journalists regularly come up with things that seem plausible or likely, then claim that they have an insider source”. Those sources are imaginary, or they are the government contact that is dictating the fake news item to the “journalist”.

The question, of course, is why are they putting this nonsense out into the public domain after years denying any of it was real? There are plenty of theories ranging from the mundane to the conspiratorial. One possible answer is that these people are compulsive liars who just like lying. Generations of selection pressure in favor of sociopaths have resulted in a ruling class full of them. They think it is funny to mess with the rubes in flyover country and this just another gag.

The good news is that the public seems to be more than a bit skeptical about these new UFO claims. The story did not get much traction and the commentary on it from independent sources has been mostly negative. The American public may have reached the point where they view all official stories as just new productions from the same theater group. The new real-time X-Files is like the latest Star Wars offering, in that the public has seen enough. The thrill is gone.

An Approved Alternative

Posted on May 24, 2021 by thezman

Note: The regular Taki post is up and the topic is our friends at the FBI. Behind the green door is the Sunday news podcast. There is also a review of the book Red Plenty, which is a very interesting book on Soviet central planning. There is also a post about the looming war between the barefaced and the Masketarians.

The great Sam Francis observed that the Buckleyites were doomed to failure, because they not only engaged the Left in practical politics, but they also embraced the rules the Left had imposed on practical politics. As Francis put it, conservatives had accepted the premise of the managerial class, which meant they would eventually be forced to defend it. If the premise of your ideological movement is the permanence of the managerial state, your existence literally depends on its existence.

That is why Buckley’s project was punctuated by rounds of purges, which often seemed designed to remain in good standing with the Left. In reality, the two sides of the political class, embraced the same set of premises, and the same moral framework. It is like a rivalry between two departments in a large corporation. Their differences are completely bounded by the overarching concerns of the corporation. Both sides know that the point of their rivalry is that the corporation always wins at the end.

The problem with the purging of bad-thinkers is two-fold. One is it boils off anything resembling diversity of thought. Instead of an ongoing debate among equals, it becomes an echo chamber. The other consequence, something that appears to be a feature of the managerial class, is smart people get purged. The result is a slow decline in cognitive capital. If you are curious and ask too many questions, inevitably you run into conflict with the system.

That is what you see with National Review. The last interesting guy on staff was Mark Steyn and he was run off years ago. John Derbyshire was hurled into the void half a dozen years ago. The only thing interesting about National Review these days is looking up the long list of people they fired. Otherwise, the site is now just a collection of dullards who repeat what they are told. Like conservatism itself, National Review has been consumed and fully masticated by the system.

This is why Trump was able to win in 2016, but lost in 2020, despite being more popular and facing a vegetable. In 2016 he was facing off against a brittle and pointless right-wing system that shattered when he struck it. The left-wing side was not prepared to take on the role of disciplining the right-wing side, so Trump was able to squeak through and win the election. The left-wing side was fully prepared to deal with Trump in 2020 and made sure there was no way he could win again.

The problem for the system is it still lacks an approved alternative. Despite its many flaws, Buckley-style conservatism was a valuable vessel into which was poured the political aspirations of white America. About 40% of white people called themselves conservative at the peak. Another 25% leaned that way on most issues, but maybe had some objections on other issues. This made the right side of the political system seem like a legitimate alternative to the left side of the system.

Something similar happened in the late-1960’s and early-70’s. The old-line Republican leadership, the Rockefeller Republicans, lost their legitimacy due to their impotence in the face of the culture war waged by the Left. The Goldwater campaign in 1964 was the first shot across the bow of the old guard. The ascent of Nixon masked the problem, but finally the conservatives rose up to supplant the old guard. The Reagan revolution was more about creating a new approved alternative to the Left.

Today there is no out-of-the-box movement ready to push the wreckage of conservatism over the side. The long run of Buckley-style conservatism anathematized anything that looked like a threat from the Right. It is easy to miss, but conservatism became extremely narrow and intolerant after the Cold War. Populism, nationalism, and traditionalism are all forbidden topics in modern politics. The result is alternative thinking is a scattered mess, often polluted with eccentrics.

One strange result of this loss of an approved alternative is the left-side of the political class is in a panic. Progressivism in America is now a fully negative identity that needs an enemy to survive. More important, that enemy needs to be compliant. Over the long Cold War, the left-side of the political class evolved to depend on that compliant right-side as its constraint and raison d’etre. This is why it is desperately flailing about trying to create a new version of the old familiar.

It is also why the Republican party is trying to get a make-over. They dumped the ridiculous Liz Cheney not because they disagreed with her opinions. In fact, most Republicans share her disgust for their voters. It is just that she is screwing up the plan to put Trumpian lipstick on the old pig of right-wing politics. The hope is if they decorate their language with Trump’s rhetoric, white voters will forget how much the party hates them and go back to reflexively voting for the GOP.

The trouble they are having is that white people increasingly distrust the system as a whole, not just the Republican leaders. The Trump wing now defines themselves in opposition to system. They still talk about voting in new people, but their plan is self-contradictory, even though they do not see it. Throwing more people into the “the swamp” just means the creatures in the swamp are well-fed. Another tainted election and that reality becomes clear even to the dimmest of them.

Then there is the dissident wing, much smaller, but growing. These are the people who have come to terms with demographic realty. While lacking a coherent moral philosophy, they have broken free of the prevailing moral framework. They can no longer accept a politics that features two sides of the same. No amount of political marketing is getting this group back in the fold. Not even a return of Trump will bring this group back to liberal democratic politics.

What the political class faces is a choice. They can try to adapt to this reality and become a ruling party like in South America. They win every election, but the opposition parties are allowed to exist as a pressure relief. The other option is to prop up the Republicans and conservatives as a Potemkin alternative, knowing that very few people think they are anything more than yes-men to the oligarchy. Those are the options for the next approved opposition.

Questions & Answers

Posted on May 21, 2021 by thezman

Summer is here in Lagos. We went from cold mornings and moderate afternoons a week ago to cool mornings and hot afternoons. Next week is the unofficial start of summer in the U.S. and the start of high killing season here in Lagos. There be lots of pent up homiciding, so we are expecting a banner year. In preparation I am taking next week off from the show and the Sunday show. Next week is one of the slowest traffic weeks for the site, so it is a good time for a break.

This week I wanted to clear out the mailbag, but I have been noticing a trend in the e-mail the last six weeks or so. That is people asking me about topics that I have not discussed anywhere. I have not done anything on the Israeli attack on Gaza or the Arizona audit, for example. Since many of these topics will never warrant a post or a segment in the show, it seemed like a good time to address them this week. I am killing two birds with one show, so to speak.

Getting back to the coming of summer, it is looking like an interesting culture war here in Lagos over the dropping of the masks. Last week, the Tubby Tyrant in charge of this dump dropped the mask edict. In theory, you are no longer required to wear a mask when going into stores or offices. We never wore masks at the office, but if you wanted to go in a store, you had to wear one. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

So far, no stores have dropped their mask mandate. In fact, the Covidians seem to be doubling up on their mask discipline. I saw a normal in the Wawa without a mask and a helpful Covidian tapped him on the shoulder to remind him it is store policy to wear a mask inside the store. She was just another customer. I was hoping he would reply with a right cross, as that is probably the only way these people learn, but he just ignored her and went about his business. She probably reported him.

I have had some fun with the Covidians I know by saying that mask wearing goes against the science. You can see that it really cuts deep. They have spent the last year telling us the CDC is the Oracle of Delphi. Now their most trusted oracle has turned on them and they have no way to handle it. That will not stop the lunacy. Instead of stars on their bellies, the Covidians will have masks on their faces. This could become a permanent feature of our society going forward.

It is not the worst thing. For a while now it has become clear that normals cannot live with the crazies much longer. Maybe their decision to mask up forever will lead to a natural self-segregation of the two species. The crazies will slowly stop dealing with normals and normals will be able to easily spot a crazy from a distance. A slow segregation of the two groups will emerge. it is wishful thinking, I know, but summer is upon us and it is the time to think positive thoughts.

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!

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This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00 Opening
04:00 The Young Guys
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14:30 Bill Gates
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25:00 The Jab
33:00 Arizona
40:30 DeSantis
46:00 Shekeling
51:30 Music
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The New And Improved GOP

Posted on May 20, 2021 by thezman

If you have an idea for a new solution to an old problem, you have two ways to promote your new solution. One is you can try to convince people it is a novel solution that is not just a better version of old solutions. It is a compete departure from the old way of addressing the problem. The other option is to disguise the originality of your solution and pitch your new idea as an advance on the old idea. Your new solution is a new and improved way of solving this old problem.

For example, you have come up with a new home cleaning product. Instead of the normal kitchen cleaner that relies about chemicals, your new product relies on microorganisms that eat the typical kitchen grime. You could try to convince people that using an alien life form to keep the stove clean is better than the old way of getting rid of grease and grime. Alternatively, you could skip past the details and focus on the amazing ability of your new product to clean the stovetop.

One approach is about changing minds. In this case, you need to convince people that novel life forms are better than chemicals. The other approach is about positioning your product at largest point of agreement. In this case, most people hate cleaning their kitchen, so you focus on that as your rallying point. The choice comes down to how open minded people will be about the novel idea. If you think people are open to a new approach, then your novel idea is the better option.

It also depends upon your willingness to take risks. You could try and fail to change people’s minds about using invincible critters to clean the kitchen. They could be perfectly safe and better for the environment than the use of caustic chemicals, but people freak out over invisible critters. Your effort to change how people think about the use of microorganisms could fall on deaf ears. Even worse, they could think you are a crazy person promoting dangerous ideas.

This is always the dilemma of politics. The reason the parties sound like two metronomes is they think it is safer to focus on the established market. They eschew novelty because that runs the risk of catastrophic failure. Their donors could be offended, or some large segment of their voting base could oppose it. The downside of the tried and true is a modest election loss. The downside of embracing a novel set of ideas is turning the party into a fringe party of weirdos.

This framing is what the Republicans now face. Most would like to go back to being the bland shadow of the Democrats. That was easy and fun. It required little risk, as all they had to do is wear little American flag lapel pins and be mean to Democrats. Until the 2016 debacle, being a Republican was simple. You waited for the Democrats to step on a rake, and then you talked about it on Fox News. Come the election you told your voters that they had to vote for you or the Democrats would win.

The one thing the Republicans seem to have figured out is the old approach is not going to work, even if the evil orange menace has been purged from their city. Maybe it is the threat of Trump running in 2024 or their own internal polling, but they seem to have figured out that the old product is not going to sell. They need a new product to take to their voters if they hope to win future elections. This is the gist of this memo circulated by the House GOP leadership last month.

In addition to it being leaked to the public, friendly media was told to promote it to the typical Republican readers. Here is James Pinkerton promoting the working class stuff in the context of British politics. That one off-year election is supposed to be a proof of concept for the new working-class conservative. Here is Fox News “reporting” on the origins of the memo and the person behind it. The “minuscule minority” bit seems to be coded language for the neoconservatives.

Given the timing and the ouster of Liz Cheney, the market testing of the new idea to win elections must have gone well. This summer the Republicans will have their regular meetings and strategy sessions to figure out how to take their new message to the market for the 2022 misterms. At least for now, they think sounding like a kinder gentler Donald Trump is the ticket to success. Look for them to stump in shirt sleeves or maybe blue jeans and flannel shirts this fall.

It is tempting to think they are going for the novel approach as outlined at the beginning, over the tried and true approach. In reality, they are not veering far from their standard approach to politics, which is a pure economic play. That has always been the GOP approach to politics, when you strip away the gingerbread. “Vote for us and you have more money and more cheap stuff.” They are now tailoring that message for the humans their analysists have identified as working class.

The trouble with this approach is the Trump phenomenon was not powered by economic anxiety. Immigration, for example, was never about money but about culture and demographics. Lots of people hate the changes they see in their communities and they were attracted to the TV carny-barker because he mentioned it. The same is true about trade policy. What people see is Walmart and Amazon obliterating small business and they associate it with global trade policy.

The other problem is there is an “own the libs” vibe to it. The people running the Republican Party are just as divorced from the dreaded private sector as the robots running the Democratic Party. Is anyone going to mistake Ben Sasse for a working class guy? Kevin McCarthy? Lyndsey Graham? There is a good chance they look like John Kerry dressed up as a hunter in the 1996 election. These Republicans talking like Huey Long will underscore their otherness to the voters.

On the other hand, homo economicus has always been a homunculus for white middle-class voters to crap into in order to avoid the culture war. In this regard, the Republican message, like the libertarianism on which is rests, has always been a form of political escapism for white people. Reducing everything to money means avoiding the debate about culture items, like race and sex. Reframing Trumpism to be nothing more than an economic play fit the conditioning of the typical white voter.

On the other other hand, the thing that sociopathic grifters always know is there is one last squeeze of even the oldest lemon. This could wring out one more good election for a party that no longer has a reason to exist. Baby Boomers, hoping to buy enough time will flock to the message. The struggling economy and the reality of the Biden administration will suck the life from the Left. The GOP will get one last shot to sucker white people into thinking this time will be different.

Systemic Crisis

Posted on May 19, 2021 by thezman

All human systems, whether created by design or created by happenstance, start to evolve as soon as they are born. This is true of systems like a company or tools like process regulation systems. Like Frankenstein’s monster, they take on a life of their own and break loose from the creator. This usually happens quickly. As soon as something like an organization gets going, it starts changing. The people in it find defects to remedy, new things to add and so on. Evolution starts instantly.

That evolution has an impact on the people in the system or in the case tools, the users of those systems. The ability to look down the road, to see several moves ahead, seems to decline in human organizations as they evolve. Initially, the people running them are always looking ahead. That was the point of the organization. Over time, they either lose their ability to look ahead or they are replaced by people who are only interested in the short term, because that is where the rewards lie.

An example of this college athletics. Initially, student sports were just a natural result of young people and free time. Before long college teams were challenging one another to sports matches. Males like to compete, and groups of males like to compete for their tribe, so college teams playing one another was natural. The natural rivalries that existed between states added to the fun. College athletics in America is an example of a system springing up by happenstance over time.

Like all systems, college athletics began to evolve. The University of Oklahoma, for example, invested in their football program for state pride as a way to raise spirits during the Great Depression. Other colleges learned that being good at a popular sport got them attention. Notre Dame would be just another cow-college if not for the use of ringers to make their football program famous. What started as amateur fun turned into a marketing vehicle for colleges and universities.

Of course, the colleges and universities never imagined that college sports would be a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry one day. Television did not exist, at least to anything like today, so there was no way to see this outcome. By the middle of the last century, college athletics evolved into a popular American tradition that was mostly about school and state pride. The players got free tuition for playing the sport and the school got to promote their brand on the field.

Once it was a mature system though, the ability of the people running it to see down the road started to decline. The NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma is a good example. This was a case that began in 1979 over television rights. The schools wanted to strike deals for putting games in TV, while the NCAA wanted to retain the right to control those deals. The schools won the case and the flood gates of television money opened soon after, reaching the billions today.

Half a century ago, the people running college football had no idea what was going to happen once they started taking TV money. On the one hand, they could not see the proliferation of mass media culture that was coming. On the other hand, they were focused on the here and now. They did not think about how a new revenue stream would change how the system functioned. They did not think about how it would change their thinking. They just needed the cash.

This type of example is common in America. Last year the people in charge began to run around smashing things because of Covid and their own sore feelings. None of them gave a second thought to the consequences. When faced with millions out of work, they did not think about the long term impact of their remedy. They just started throwing invented money at people. We are now on a wild ride of unpredictable scarcity and inflation with no ability to look more than one move ahead.

Getting back to the college athletics example, short-term thinking within an organization takes on a life of its own. In the case of college athletics, these highly educated college presidents have a couple of generations of examples to draw from, but they are as trapped in the moment as their predecessors. They tinker with the rules to address one issue, only to create a chain reaction they never considered. This story about the advent of the transfer portal is a good example.

One reason that people in a system lose the ability and willingness to think a few moves ahead is the incentives evolve along with the system. The people in the system who show some skill at patching up immediate problems benefit. Those pointing out the potential costs down the road gets ignored. When it comes to tools like regulatory systems or software, change means immediate cost. Since human organizations tend to be intertwined with tool systems, both forces work in concert.

Take the college athletics problem. If a group of college presidents wanted to address the excesses of college athletics, they would face enormous institutional pushback over the immediate costs. Changing the regulations and subsystems that are in place to maintain things as they are would cost a lot of money. The reformers would also be in competition with demands to address immediate problems. The reformers get drowned out by the natural functioning of the system.

Reforming a system is like trying to reform evolution itself. The thousands of cumulative decisions that went into the present state cannot be turned on or off without addressing the other decisions. In time, all human systems evolve past the point where reform is possible without an existential threat. If the choice is death or reform, then the minimum reform can happen to avoid death. Even facing death, reform faces long odds, if death can be rationalized into a distant possibility.

The French Revolution is a good example here. The threat of death was both personal and abstract, but the aristocracy could not bear the thought of reform. It was not as if they did not know their system was teetering on collapse. Their best ministers had explained this reality in detail. It was simply the case where the inertia was too strong for the reformers. No one could look ahead and immanentize the eschaton, so the immediate always took precedent over the future.

This is something to keep in mind in the current crisis. Reform, if it is possible at all, will come only in the shadow of the gallows. If the political class begins to fear for their life, then maybe they begin to act to push that inevitability off into the future. Of course, 80-year old men tend not to be long-term planners. Still, if genuine fear grips the ruling classes, then maybe we see reform. That is not the way to bet. Like all systems, this one most likely is carried on by internal forces until it collapses.

Big Con

Posted on May 18, 2021 by thezman

Every once in a while, a post or series of posts comes along that captures why conservatism never amounted to much. This post in the ironically named American Conservative is a good example of the genre. The topic is how to deal with the privatization of authoritarian power, primarily in Silicon Valley. The argument put forward is that using the state to tame these rogue companies is morally wrong, so we have to find some new way to contend with these out-of-control tech firms.

The first thing you should notice is the style is exactly what we get whenever the topic of immigration in on the table. The obvious answer is dismissed. In the case of immigration, that means shutting down the border and cracking down on employers who use helot labor. The open borders crowd always says that is impossible or harmful in some way. Instead, they offer a collection of overly complex solutions that have no chance of succeeding but will keep the punditry busy.

In the case of Big Tech, we have laws on the books to put an end to this reign of terror, but enforcing those is socialism, according to the usual suspects. We cannot have that, even if it would work. Instead, let us have a twenty-year series of international commissions to study technical standards and pass a bunch of laws that no one reads, but have cool names like “Data Portability Act”. In other words, the people who cannot build a wall along the border are going to fix the internet.

Interestingly, the rodents from Conservative Inc. always use the same trick the Left is so fond of using, which is the false dichotomy. “We can shut ourselves off from the world or embrace globalism” is how they frame trade. “We can become a hermit nation or remain a nation of immigrants” is how they frame immigration. Now it is “We can choose central planning or preserve an open internet” with Big Tech. It is the same partisan game the Left plays, just tailored for a middle-class white audience.

The fact is, enforcing Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act as intended puts a halt to the most egregious violations of our rights. Twitter can choose to be a publisher or an open platform. If it is the former, they can censure their platform however they like, but they are accountable for the content. If they choose to be an open platform like Gab, then they get the protection of Section 230. There is no need to reinvent the internet to solve the biggest problem with Big Tech.

Similarly, the obvious collusion that goes on with these big firms could be crushed with the use of existing law. There are plenty of examples of the tech companies colluding with one another to ban people from their platforms. If we can give a cop 20-years on civil rights violations for shooting a fleeing suspect, we can give the harpies of Silicon Valley a few years for violating the civil rights of Alex Jones. One lawsuit is all that would be required to end that practice and restore some sanity.

Of course, the author of the AC piece is clearly trying to strike the libertarian position, which is a blend of hiding under the bed and shilling for global capital. This is what is wrong with the libertarian-conservative commentariat. They are not interested in advocating conservative interests. Instead, they are focused on making sure their corporate donors are free of government interference. If that means the rights of conservatives are trampled, well “whoopsie!”

The writer of the AC piece is someone calling himself Zach Graves. He is head of policy at the Lincoln Network. You always have to be suspicious of any group using the name Lincoln and this is no exception. As we saw with the Lincoln Project, these groups tend to attract the very worst people. In this case, this is a not-for-profit located in San Francisco, conveniently near Silicon Valley. A Loren Graves, presumably the same guy as the writer, is a paid staffer for the group.

Before signing on with the Lincoln Network, Mr. Graves was with something called R Street Institute, which is neoconservative front group. The founder of the Lincoln Network is a man calling himself Garrett Johnson. He popped out of college into a job on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then into a position as the founder of something called SendHub and now the founder of Lincoln Network. Nothing strange about this at all. There is no reason to suspect anything hanky.

This is the problem with conservatism in a nutshell. It has always been infested with pens for hire. This bit of corporate marketing posted at American Conservative is just a paid advertisement masquerading as commentary. To their credit, the site does acknowledged that they were paid to run it by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is a pro-business non-profit in Missouri. There is a good bet that they bankroll the R Street Institute to some degree, given their location.

This is the problem with subjecting everything to the marketplace. When the highest bidder gets to determine public morality, no one can ever question the morality of the highest bidder. Public opinion becomes another commodity to be traded, rather than a genuine exchange of ideas. The founder of The Lincoln Network would be happy to promote communism if that pays better than shilling for Big Tech. He is just face purchased on the market to make the brochure look good.

Similarly, the writers and “policy wonks” at these shops are just pens for hire, with a set of specialties. “Need generic libertarian babble about technology? No problem, we have Zach Graves. That is his specialty.” R Street puts him on the UPS truck and ships him off to a Silicon Valley non-profit. Like the economy as a whole, the marketplace of ideas has become a pirate’s cove. Everything is for sale and everything can be purchased, if the price is right. The consequences are for the suckers to bear.

This is what conservatism should oppose. One basic tenet of conservatism is that there is a transcendent moral truth. That means it is indifferent to the marketplace. it also means that truth itself is not up for bid. Once you concede this point, you are no longer on the Right, but just another kiosk in the bazaar if increasingly bizarre ideas. The way to end the pirate’s cove is to shut it down and hang the pirates. That’s the starting point for conservatism, if it is to be anything more than another grift.

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