The Limits Of Vampirism

Posted on September 16, 2021 by thezman

Imagine if tomorrow, the Federal Reserve announced that the top ten home builders in the United States are insolvent. They would cease paying interest on debt and probably would default on principal payments. Further, their bonds would be frozen for some period as the Fed sorted through their finances. It is not too hard to imagine as 13 years ago something close happened when Lehmen Brothers collapsed. It started a long financial panic and then a long recession.

Something similar is now happening in China. The nation’s largest developer is no longer able to pay its creditors. The Chinese government announced yesterday that the firm will not make interest payments and probably will default on principal payments, although that remains unclear. China Evergrande has liabilities over $300 billion, but this is China, so no one knows the real number. All anyone knows is they sit at the heart of the Chinese financial and real estate system.

One thing that is universally true in all times and all places, even in China, is that real estate is the base asset. Mother Nature is not making more of it, so it remains a constant and therefore the basis of all value. It is why this development is not just another story of corrupt financial dealings. As in the West, all land in China is leveraged and that leverage is treated as an asset, which means it is leveraged. If Evergrande stops paying its bill, many other firms stop paying their bills.

At this point, the financial world is not all that concerned with what is happening in Chinese real estate, but they were not concerned about the mortgage crisis in the United States until it was a pending disaster. The old claim that financial markets look forward and therefore offer a glimpse of the future was always nonsense, but the Lehman disaster proved that markets are not the future. The world of finance assumes tomorrow will be yesterday but better.

At the minimum, the Evergrande crisis is a test of the new Chinese model of governance ushered in under Xi Jinping. The relatively loose days of Chinese capitalism are coming to a close as the party imposes new rules on the economy and cracks down on its pirates. The focus is now on domestic growth, rather than cheap labor and exports. China is no longer the cheapest or most productive labor market in the world, so it cannot remain an export economy.

No one really knows if China can successfully make the turn from export economy to one driven by domestic consumption. The breathtaking modernization of the country is impressive, but that required massive cooperation from the West. If the United States had a ruling class concerned with the welfare of the American people, for example, the Chinese miracle never would have occurred. The feckless American ruling class cannot help China transition to a domestic demand driven economy.

The bigger question with regards to China and this current financial crisis is can the Western financial model survive the Chinese transition. For the last thirty years the corrupt Western ruling class has preserved itself like all corrupt ruling classes have done and that is with bread and circuses. The Chinese economic miracle has kept inflation down and money printing up. Cheap goods from China have been an essential part of maintaining stability in the West.

Inflation is already becoming a problem in America. In most parts of the economy, the food markets are plagued with supply chain problems and rising prices. Then there are labor market problems, some of which were created by the Covid panic, but others are the result of demographics. Those Baby Boomers taking early retirement due to the Covid panic are not going to be replaced by the magical people that we see on television shows and commercials.

Of course, the great retirement boom that is just started in the US will put massive strain on programs like Social Security and Medicare. Those programs represent trillions in debt that can never be paid in current dollars. Medicare is now projected to run out of cash in ten years. Social Security has been insolvent for a long time now, based on generally accepted accounting practices. Its assets were spent years ago by the government, leaving it with worthless IOU’s.

People are pointing to the current crisis in China as a replay of the Lehman debacle 13 years ago, but in reality, it is a continuation of it. Starting in the 1980’s, the people actually in charge of the world began to transition the global economy away from an asset based system to a credit based system. The great debt explosion that ensued took many forms and the rise of China was one aspect. Without the massive growth in global debt, China’s growth would have been impossible.

The thing with debt is that it has to eventually be repaid. That means there is a hard limit to the amount of debt that can be generated. A system based on the assumption that debt can expand forever will naturally end in a crisis when that that assumption runs into the reality of the debt limit. In this regard, Lehman, the mortgage crisis and now the Evergrande crisis should be seen as warning tremors. One day soon there will be no way to paper over one of these crises.

Step back and look at what has happened over the last half century and what you see is an effort to mitigate the demographic decline of the West. The reason China was so attractive to the West is she was full of young people. China’s utility to the West is in decline because she is rapidly getting old. The massively complex system that is the Western financial modern is just a way to turn the youth of other societies into cash for the Western welfare state. Their vigor is our safety net.

The trouble is the system drains the vitality of all those exposed to it. Japan was the first example of a formerly fecund society drained of its youth and vitality by exposure to the Western economic model. Korea soon followed. Now we see all of the same signs in China as she nears the end of her economic cycle. The only place left with lots of young people is Africa, but even the scheming of Western elites will never be enough to conquer the dark continent in this way.

In this context, what is happening in China is a sign that the system of endless credit expansion is really the implementation of a system that converts civilizational vigor into cash for a tiny minority. The natural limit on the expansion of credit is set by the limit of young people available to be consumed. China’s future was written in her one child policy and ultimately that would set the end times for the West. Once we run out of kids to convert to credit, the plates stop spinning.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com

.

The Blessings Of Covid

Posted on September 15, 2021 by thezman

Long before the Covid panic, it was obvious to many on the dissident right that the main problem in the West was a core of true believers. These are fanatics who are immune to facts and reason, driven by a desire to pull the roof down on society. On every issue, they seem to come down on the side of the society wrecking option. The Covid panic has brought this into stark relief The Covidians are more deadly than even the exaggerated version of the virus.

The Covidian is a useful case study in how the believer engages with the world. Since this started back in the spring of 2020, the true believers have shifted positions, often contradicting yesterday’s deeply held position, without explanation. The cult leaders seem to have moved along an authoritarian scale, which at least provides some rationale for their actions. The rank and file believers, however, have flitted from one position to another like a murmuration of starlings.

The most recent example is their view on vaccines. In 2020 when Trump was promising to accelerate the development of a vaccine for Covid, the true believer was sure vaccine meant “deadly Hitler poison”. Their cult leaders were on their media platforms swearing to Gaia that they would never take the Trump serum. After all, there was no way a safe vaccine could be developed in such a short period. It was just another effort by Trump to destroy our democracy.

Within hours of Biden being installed, they shifted to swearing that these vaccines were a perfect defense, an impenetrable defense, against Covid. If the bulk of the people were vaccinated by spring, the pandemic would be over as we would quickly hit herd immunity or pretty close to it. Everyone could go back to normal. The skeptics with whom they agreed just minutes ago were now QAnon conspiracy nuts. All good people would be vaccinated and only the crazies would refuse.

There you see the mind of the true believer at work. Theirs is not a world of facts, reason, and a vast area of uncertainty, as it is with normal people. Instead, their world is those inside the walls and those outside the walls. The walls are an abstraction created by the good people who lead the faithful. Those who are inside the walls are the good guys, the faithful, while those outside the walls are the bad guys, the undifferentiated other that is always at war with the faithful.

This hive mentality is not easy to maintain in the face of reality, so the faithful need a constant stream of reinforcement. In a prior age, this came from physical gatherings where the believers could affirm their convictions and have those convictions confirmed by fellow members of the collective. Churches have always been social groupings as much as spiritual ones. For those committed to an ideological faith, the need for spiritual and social reinforcement is no different.

In this age, mass media provides the steady stream of affirmation. It is not an accident that the hardest thumping crazies on the Left are also intensively on-line, obsessed with things like Twitter. Social media is their tether to the collective. The more they remain connected, the more intense their need to feel connected. The swarming effect of crazies on social media platforms is not an accident. Like a fish in a school, the believer gives herself over to the collective whole.

Here is an example of how the mass media feeds the true believer. Note the exaggerated language like “hyper-contagious”. The true believer operates in extremes, so this necessitates the over-the-top description of things. In this case, describing the variants as increasing dangerous is a way to maintain the fervor. You see, you must remain vigilant. The evil one is always out there. If you let down your guard, he will get you with one of his hyper-contagious variants!

Note also how the definition of vaccine has changed. Since the advent of vaccines, the concept has been a binary one. If the vaccine worked, your immune system would be ready to handle the specific virus and prevent infection. If not, then you would get infected by the virus. Now a vaccine is something like an amulet. If you are exposed, it protects the faithful from the workings of Old Scratch. You still get infected and are contagious, but your soul is pure so you will be safe.

This line is instructive. “Even the sky-high efficacy rates of mRNA vaccines during clinical trials left a little window of imperfection — and those trials happened long before this virus evolved to replicate quicker, spread faster and infect even more unsuspecting human hosts.” You see, no matter how vigilant you are, there are others who may let their guard down and give the evil one a chance to strike the innocent. This is not about you but about the community as a whole.

This is why Joe Biden said the other day that his administration would protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. The tether to biological reality has been cut and we are now in the world of the true believer. The words vaccinated and unvaccinated no longer have a medical definition. To the true believer, those words now mean the anointed and the benighted. The elect are those who have laminated their vaccine cards and wear eight masks in the car while driving alone.

This is why pointing out the fascism of Covid passports has not effect. The true believer needs that display item. They desperately want the affirmation that comes from holding up their iPhone to be scanned and the god in the machine confirming that they are one of the chosen. This is why they celebrate the death of those the mass media claim were ant-vaxers. Their blood extirpates the evil from the land in the same way a public sacrifice washes away the sins of the guilt in the blood of the innocent.

Counterintuitively, Covid may have been a salvation. The fever-rage of opposition to Trump was channeled into a ridiculous but so far mostly harmless identity cult built around the coronavirus. We saw the destructive power of lunatics in a full rage allowed to seek their own satisfaction. Covid probably saved the country from endless riots and urban warfare. The real blessing of Covid is that it has given our crazies a way to get their fix without blowing up the world in the process.

Political Weather

Posted on September 14, 2021 by thezman

Depending upon where you live, the news could be full of dire warnings about how the virus is still raging and you must remain vigilant. Alternatively, the news may be about how those heretics somewhere else are being visited by an extra wave of the virus for mocking blessed Covid. It did not take long for the panic to become a racket. The Covid industrial complex is like a public works project. Everyone involved is committed to one thing and that is never ending the job.

Of course, there is always time for a reminder that the secret invisible army of Hitlers is out there in the shadows. Everyone needs to be on the lookout for white supremacy and all its manifestations. Every once in a while someone utters a discouraging word in the earshot of a minority, so the local news team rushes into investigate. Sometimes the national scandal monger chopper in a team to investigate something, which gives the locals a reason to put on a show about it too.

Many people have dropped out of media consumption for this reason, but they cannot escape the constant reminders that you better be afraid. It is impossible to live in the modern world without being exposed to some of it. The only means of escape is to unplug from all mass media, including the internet. Even that is not enough, as your friends and family will still be connected and some of them will be there to remind you of the various things that are supposed to keep you up at night.

Short of doing a Ted Kaczynski and relocating to a cabin in the wilderness, there is no escape from the reign of media terror. No physical escape, at least. The thing is, few people want to remain in this hyper-emotional state, so they find ways to filter it out and get on with what matters in life. You see this with the Covid lunacy. It is as if people are thinking, “okay if I wear this ridiculous mask around in public, I can be left alone to do the things I need to do so I’ll just wear the mask.”

Similarly, the latest vaccine mandate is being met with ignorance by most people as they have checked out of the Covid drama. They simply ignore the Covid news now, so they missed it. Employers will probably ignore it as well, as the last thing they need right now is another way to hassle their workforce. The bureaucracy could very well ignore Biden’s orders as well, as they are permanent, while he is temporary. This reality was made plain under Trump for four years.

One reason people are not in the streets demanding an end of this stuff is they have found a better solution. They just ignore it. Look around the dial over the weekend and you see that the sportsball arenas were packed with fans. They were not wearing masks or social distancing. It was like none of it had happened. You can be sure that television ratings were back to the prior levels. As far as most Americans are concerned, it is football season. Covid season is over.

The same can be said the bombardment of race in mass media. Spend a few minutes watching one of those sportsball shows and you quickly see that every ad is some version of hate whitey. Most people, of course, have long ago developed the ability to not see ads of any kind. Even ads that are attention getting, like the ones created for the Super Bowl, are forgotten the next day. Humans in a mass culture develop a force field to block out the things they dislike.

This is why the Soviet system staggered on for so long. The oppression under Stalin was unsustainable, but Stalin died before than could be tested. Instead, they got a decade of feverish experimentation under Khrushchev. That failed and threatened the stability of the system, so he was pushed out and what replaced him was a new normal in which most people were left to live as best they could within the rules. People ignored the craziness of communism so they could live.

In the current age, things move faster than in the prior age, so we may be living in an accelerated version of this. In the Soviet Union the joke was, “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” Perhaps the new normal in America is “They pretend to rule over us and we pretend to play along.” The rantings of the current old man in the White House become background noise. People pretend to notice, but otherwise get on with their lives and don’t make a fuss about it.

After all, much of what our political class seems to be doing of late is best explained by an effort to get attention. Sandy Cortez showed up at some swanky gala wearing a dress with the slogan “tax the rich” on it. The only reason this horse-faced barmaid is in Congress is she is good at getting attention. No one really cares what she or any of these people have to say about anything. The only reason to notice them is when they do something stupid like this.

We may be in the phase of the Soviet system where the empire is now on autopilot and the people in charge are just playing make believe. Similarly, the people they are supposed to rule are playing along on the surface but are going about their lives as best they can despite the noise. Unless and until there is a genuine crisis, politics is just an increasingly freakish carnival act. Since the pols are locked out of the cockpit, they are left to gain our attention by other means.

What we may be at the tail end of is a holiday from reality. Since none of these crises ever amounts to much, people pay attention if they need to feel some excitement, but otherwise tune it out and just live as consumers. There are minor ups and downs, but nothing important really happens, so no one feels the need to be too worked up for too long about anything. Like the weather, if you don’t like what is happening, just wait and things will change on their own.

Modern Faulkner

Posted on September 13, 2021 by thezman

At some point in the future, the ape historians may look back at this time and call it the Bush – Clinton period of the American empire. The period started with the first Bush presidency in 1989, roughly corresponding with the end of the Cold War and concluding sometime around now. It is hard to know if this period is at an end or if it will stagger on for a while longer. It would surprise no one if Hillary Clinton or one of the Bush clan takes one last stab at the presidency in 2024.

The rivalry between the Bush family and the Clinton family mirrors the rivalry between the Compson and Snopes family in the William Faulkner novels. The Compson family represented the old Southern order that emerged from the wreckage of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Snopes family represented the new, white trash culture that was slowly overtaking the old order. It was order and dignity at the end of its time versus an emergent disorder and lack of dignity.

In the American context, the Bush family represent the old WASP order that cannot update its thinking to the present. They are built for the old America that was confident and ascendant, but they find themselves at the end of empire. Desperate to maintain their status and position, they aligned with shady characters like Mexican cartel members, the Saudi Royal family, and the neoconservatives. This toxic blend of anti-American interests would shape the empire for decades.

The Clintons are far less grandiose. Like the Snopes clan, they represent the new order that is not really order at all. Instead, it represents the vermin that infest the dying old order, doing anything and everything to get an edge on the other rats. Unlike the Bush clan, they don’t seek power for prestige. They seek power for profit. They cut deals with China in the 1990’s for campaign cash. Then Hillary was auctioning off state secrets from her perch in the State Department during the Obama years.

The analogy breaks down a bit as the Clinton family was not productive like the Snopes family, so there will be no second and third generation. On the other hand, they did unleash the new breed of Baby Boomer politician. While biologically unrelated to the Clinton family, the entire political class has been shaped by them. The Poppy Bush type is nowhere to be found in modern politics, but the political class is thick with women who admire Hillary and men who think like Bill.

Just as the Faulkner novels play out in the shadow of the old order represented by the Compson family, American politics continues to play out in the shadow of the Bush clan and their efforts to remain at the top of the old order. Even though the 20-year debacle in Afghanistan has ended, it remains a big player in politics. Of course, the neoconservatives are still embedded in the system. It was their brains and the gross stupidity of George Bush that made Afghanistan possible.

The Bush family, like a drug resistant virus, will not go away. George Bush gave a speech to on 9/11, as Joe Biden was cognitively unable to do it. Of course, he took the opportunity to remind everyone of his contempt for ordinary people. He said of the January 6 protestors that “they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.” Despite his inability to string a sentence together on his own, that perfectly captures the sentiment of the ruling class.

Taken together, the last thirty years have been a decaying ruling elite willing to strike any deal necessary to maintain their position. This includes allowing a rapacious vermin-like Clinton clan to gnaw away at the social fabric. One side looks at the American society as fuel to be used for the imperial engines, while the other side just sees America as a host on whom they will feed until it dies. Nowhere in the struggle between the two sides are the interests of the people.

No analogy is perfect. Donald Trump is certainly a member of the Snopes side of this fight, but hated by the clan nonetheless. He saw his opportunity for some personal gory in 2016 and he seized it. He had no grand plans or even a desire to reform the system, so he spent his time on personal projects. In a way, Trump was the new and improved version of Bill Clinton. It is a nice bit of narrative irony that Hillary was defeated by one her husband’s old golf buddies.

An important potential parallel between this age and the Faulkner novels is that the story preceded the upheavals in the American South. The new South that emerged in the late 20th century was not like either side of the struggle. The world of Faulkner is a distant memory now. Similarly, the old imperial order represented by the Bush clan and the grasping thievery of Boomer politics represented by the Clinton family is not going to survive the dissolution of empire.

What emerges from the inevitable turmoil that comes when these two modes of politics collapse under the weight of their own immorality is unknown. What is certain is a period of upheaval where the empire contracts in fits and starts, staggering from one crisis to the next. Each crisis shrinks the empire a little more until the very concept of empire is no longer tenable. The people will be spectators as the dying elites savage one another for their share of the declining profits.

The lesson from the Faulkner tales is that elites must be replaced by elites. The Snopes clan either had to evolve into an elite or be replaced along with the old elite as represented by the Compson family. That means the Bush side of the struggle will not last, but neither will the Clinton side. Rapacious thievery can never be the foundation for a new elite. A generation from now, the people at the top of whatever comes of America will be nothing like the ruling class of today.

Taki: Living in Isolation

Posted on September 12, 2021 by thezman

In the American political system, the president is the symbol of the democratic process, the embodiment of the general will. With few exceptions, he gains office by winning a majority of votes in what is close to a national plebiscite. If the radicals get their way, it will soon be a national plebiscite, as they hope to eliminate the electoral college so that large urban states can dictate to the rest of the nation.

The reward for winning the favor of the people is to be locked away in a museum called the White House, surrounded by the most complex security system on earth. The president is the most isolated man in the nation. He experiences everything through intermediaries in the White House and the Washington media. Everything he thinks he knows about the people over whom he rules comes to him thirdhand.

Thirdhand may be generous. His staff lives in the same sort of isolation as the president, without some of the high-tech security. They have spent their lives in the system and have no firsthand knowledge of the country. Many have lived so long in the biggest small town on earth—Washington, D.C.—that they may as well be aliens. Even their language is beginning to drift away from that of the rest of the country.

Narrative Musings

Posted on September 10, 2021 by thezman

I did not start out this week with a theme for the show, but one sort of developed as I set about putting it together. My habit is to mail it in the first week after a break from recording, so I can ease back into the routine. A one hour show is two hours of recording and two hours of editing. Research adds to the time. A show based on news items requires less research, so it is an easier show to put together.

The news of late has been dominated by a few big items, all of which are driven by the ruling class commitment to their narratives. As a result, the show this week is about how the Cloud People are living in a simulation. Their reality is not only not our reality, but rather an approximation of it. If you imagine the Cloud People playing a live action role plating game of real life, their rantings make more sense.

They just had Mumbly Joe slur through a speech on Covid that sounded like it was given by an alien in another universe. This great emergency he thinks is happening outside the bubble is not happening at all. For most of the country, life is back to normal, except for the annoying interference of these idiots. Team Dementia, however, is sure the peasants are living through a version of the Black Death.

The thing is, they probably sense that it does not exist, but they need it to be real so they pretend it is real. It feels better to imagine themselves defending their democracy from Covid that to see themselves as wreckers cause the food prices to shoot through the roof due to their meddling. Reality avoidance is a major concern for the Cloud people, so they are fully committed to their own narratives.

For the intensely on-line, this simulated reality crowds out their daily reality. In the case of Covid, the Covidian believe all of the Covid porn that the system beams at him on-line and through the mass media. The reality he sees is not the normal activity around him, but the imaginary hospitals overrun with sick people. He is like someone addicted to video games, struggling to discern fantasy from reality.

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!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00: Opening
2:00 The Game of LARP
27:00 Afghan Narrative
42:00 Imagination Land

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/nYMjtmGgpFk

The Need To Believe

Posted on September 9, 2021 by thezman

Eric Hoffer noted that people who are prone to join mass movements tend to join many of them, often going from one to another. It is not unusual for someone to go from one cause then to another that contradicts the prior cause in some way. The old stereotype of the middle-aged woman driving a Volvo festooned with bumper stickers from various causes does not spring from nothing. The vegan activist will be into saving animals, sustainable farming and oppose nuclear energy.

A good recent example of this is the amazing overlap in people who worship Gaia and those who are now Covidians. The people who carry grimy canvas sacks to the market as a sign of their piety are now wearing three masks in the car as they driver alone to the Whole Foods Market. That does not mean all Covidians were Gaia worshippers, but almost all Gaia worshippers embraced Covid. HBD people embracing Covid suggests their interest in biology is something other than empirical.

What is going on here is that humans are hardwired to believe. Like almost all human traits, the need to believe (NTB) trait operates on a spectrum. At one end is the zealot who is consumed and defined by her belief. At the other end is the skeptic who tends not to accept anything at face value. The reason you don’t see skeptics protesting the latest fads is they tend to think protesting is a waste of time. On the other hand, the zealot is ready to act on the slightest provocation.

For most of human history, the NTB was kept under control by settled society through various means. Religion was the main control. The zealots were funneled into the the shared beliefs of the group. The structure of the belief system kept these otherwise unorganized minds from exploring new ways to express their NTB. When that did not work, the belief system had ways to handle the crazies. Maybe they were declared witches or expelled from the community.

The collapse of Christianity as the unifying belief system opened the door for every sort of alternative belief system. Those with a strong NTB were attracted to these new belief systems like communism. The more utopian the ideology, the more attractive it is to those with a strong NTB. It is not an accident that Marxism, for example, has had a profound influence, despite the fact it has never had a broad appeal. A relatively small number of fanatics can accomplish a lot when unified.

The great geneticist J. B. S. Haldane claimed that fanaticism is one of man’s greatest inventions, even though it was not an invention. In reality, fanaticism is just a cognitive trait like any other. The ancients noted that some men would fight like lions while others were more cautious. It was not a big leap from that observation to cultivating this quality to create elite units of warriors. The berserkers in Norse mythology were not insane, but rather the most enthusiastic of their fighters.

Today, the berserkers are those ready to lecture the rest of us about the latest edicts from the high priests of Covid. These people are irrational or insane. They are the simply most enthusiastic of believers. Their NTB goes to eleven, while everyone else stops at ten. It is why they never notice the contradictions. If you point out that Fauci can never keep his story straight, it bounces right off of them. It is not that they do not understand, it is that their NTB overrides reason.

Even the most fanatical believer, however, is prone to doubt. Since the bulk of believers are not berserkers, this means the bulk of any mass movement is made up of people in need of regular affirmation. Here is an example in the ironically named Popular Science instructing the faithful on how to tease affirmation out of their loved ones. Note that the first item on the list is the justification for trying to convert those who have yet to accept Covid in their life. The religious overtones are not hard to miss.

Note the term “vaccine hesitancy”. They cannot allow for disconfirmation, so the assumed model is one camp are those who have accepted Covid and those who have yet to accept Covid. The latter group is just scared and uninformed, so it is incumbent upon the former group to guide them to the light. All of sudden. being an annoying pest about Covid is transformed into a righteous cause that proves to the believer that she is on the side of angels, saving mankind from evil.

Also note the communitarian aspect of modern mass movements. We have to sit in the dark and walk to work because we all share the same earth. If one person refuses to use those grimy canvas sacks, then we all suffer! Similarly, the vaccine is a community good that only works when everyone is vaccinated. As long as there is one disbeliever in our midst, we will continue to be punished. The only thing missing from the Covidian toolkit is the flagellants whipping themselves in public.

What Covid has revealed is that the only path out of the madness that is infecting the West is to sort out how to manage the fanatics. That is easier said than done, as it means creating a new religion and prying these people out of power. It also means that political power alone is not enough. As long as the fanatic population is left to operate like a hive without a queen, they will keep finding new queens. Usually, those queens will be seeking dominion of the rest of society.

Abductive Junction

Posted on September 8, 2021 by thezman

Note: There is new content behind the green door. For those interested in the Western, I have a review of the 1969 classic The Wild Bunch. The role of the Western is something I’ll come back to again. It is an interesting topic.

The fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes begins this week, and it promises to be an enjoyable bit of theater for those interested in the workings of the Cloud People. Holmes founded a company called Theranos when she was just 19-years-old. She had dropped out of Stanford and promised to deliver miracle drug testing equipment. She attracted the support of all the beautiful people, who saw her as the living example of everything the Cloud People believed about the world.

In reality, the company had nothing to offer other than the promise to fulfill those prophesies the Cloud People cherished. Holmes adopted the Steve Jobs black turtleneck and spoke in a weird deep voice. Like all grifters, she was short on specifics, but long on inspirational flattery. This got some of the most famous men in the world to support her company, giving it an aura of authenticity. As a result, Theranos stuck around for a dozen years before it was revealed as a fraud.

In many respects, Holmes is the poster child for the new religion. The reimagined gender role for women is just women doing the things men normally do. You see this in movies where the normal male lead is replaced by a strong diverse female who does all the same things as a male lead, even the personality. There is really nothing new about the new gender roles. The new ideal female is nothing more than a fraud against nature, a fraud that is eventually undone by observable reality.

That is the story the Feds will tell in court. They will point out that nothing about this company was based in reality. Holmes and her business partner, another unicorn of the Progressive imagination named Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, knew all along that their new technology would never work. They hid the facts from investors in order to swindle them, the textbook definition of fraud. More important, she damaged the cause of women in the workplace, which is her biggest sin.

From the perspective of the Dirt People, the Elizabeth Holmes story is great fun and also a reason to keep fighting. One look at this woman and a normal man in control of his senses could see she was trouble. Many people at the time made this point, but the Cloud People fell for her shenanigans hook, line, and sinker. It is a good reminder that these people are not evil super geniuses. They are frauds like Holmes who now have real power, but they are not unbeatable.

The Holmes story is also a good example of abductive reasoning. This is the type of reasoning that makes a conclusion on what you know or what you think you know, which is always an incomplete set of data. You wake up in the morning and you see the driveway is wet, so you quickly assume it rained overnight. There could be other explanations, like your automatic sprinkler is on the fritz or a pipe burst somewhere during the night, but rain is the most likely answer.

The important thing about abductive reasoning is that the explanation for the given facts does not have to be right to be accepted. After all, the explanation is simply the most probable, based on the data set. This is why in the hands of a good storyteller, abductive reasoning is very powerful magic. Humans are hard wired to accept stories, so a good story that explains what is going on can quickly become gospel. A good story that confirms the gospel is never questioned.

This is what Holmes was doing with her presentation to Cloud People. She presented herself as living proof of the one true faith. She was every bit as talented as the pale males in Silicon Valley. She could do anything a man could do, even sound like them and run an identity cult like Steve Jobs. Apple became one of the world’s biggest companies selling toys disguised as holy relics. Holmes was the female Steve Jobs, but saving the world, rather than entertaining it.

Another interesting aspect to the trial is the plan by the defense to blame her former partner for everything. The old story of gender said that women were always the victims of male oppression. Women who killed their husbands for the insurance would always accuse the dead man of being abusive. That story was being replaced by the new story of female empowerment. The jury will be presented with a conflict of the two absurd visions of womanhood promoted by the Cloud People.

This story is a good example of how facts play a supporting role in life. People are believing machines. Even the most cynical hard cases among the Cloud People believe they are on the side of angels. It is why facts and reason have no effect on these people, outside of the extremes. Once the reality of Theranos was too much to ignore, the Cloud People abandoned their unicorn, but only after it became clear that Holmes was a mockery of their beliefs, rather than confirmation.

That is why the endless presentation of facts and reason falls on deaf ears. The Cloud People will never abandon their faith for mere facts. The only thing that will get them to abandon their faith is a better faith. This was the central insight of you know who back in the last century. His story of redemption covered the observable, and his new facts was the mortar that held them together into a coherent narrative. That is what awaits the Cloud People running the American empire.

Civic Marxism

Posted on September 7, 2021 by thezman

Back in the heyday of conservatism, Bill Buckley would often say you can know everything about a person’s politics from their options on abortion and Israel. It was true to the extent that it put them one side or the other of the consensus. By the late 20th century, the ruling consensus in Washington was pro-abortion and pro-Israel, but not publicly enthusiastic for either. These two issues were useful proxies for foreign policy and social policy at the time.

Something similar can be said of race and culture. Those who deny the reality of race are on one side of the great divide, while those who accept biological reality are on the other side of the divide. There is no middle ground. Those who think culture is a manufactured good are on the side of biology deniers, while those who think culture is the product of biology and time are on the side of the realists. Again, these are mutually exclusive positions that cannot be reconciled.

That is what makes this post over at the American Mind interesting. According to their website, “The American Mind is an online publication of the Claremont Institute dedicated to the ideas that drive our political life.” Claremont was founded in 1979 by four students of political theorist Harry V. Jaffa, the man responsible for the second founding thesis. He is also why so-called conservatives preach the glories of Lincoln to their mostly Southern supporters.

The title of the post is the first clue that the writer is not only on the denialist side of the great divide, but in their left-wing camp. The first sentence sounds like something from a grievance studies paper. It is pure cultural Marxism. “The fabricated black race should never have been born. It was confected out of false biological taxonomies by Europeans to justify a system of human physical bondage that, paradoxically, brought black people into the historical process.”

Whenever you see the phrase “historical process” you are almost always dealing with a man of the Left. This is right out of the Young Hegelian view of history that was allegedly rejected by Strauss. If there was any doubt as to the views of the author, the next sentence clears it up. “It was a cruel, artificial construct, and blacks have suffered enough under it.” When someone speaks of race as a social construct, they do so not to clarify, but to obscure the reality of biology in human affairs.

A further example of that desire to obscure reality in the fog of rhetoric is this sentence further down in the post. “A taxonomy that makes human distinctions based not on cultural differences—which can objectively be defined as the set of dominant beliefs, customs, and traditions of a homogenized or non-homogenized group—but based on race, which none of the conceptual markers that allow us to predict or pick out any moral characteristic of a human being, is valorized by most blacks.”

This is another habit of the far-left. They conflate issues so that the easy to defend can be blended with the impossible to defend. In this case, he claims cultural differences can be quantified. This is true to a point. Then says racial differences tell us nothing about moral characteristics of people. This is also true, but it is incorrect to compare culture with morality in this way. It is a false comparison. Further, race helps us explain cultural differences and is quite useful at predicting them.

Then we get this sentence. “Holding a racial identity turns one into a practicing racist. White supremacists of all stripes, either of the North American variety or the Nazi counterpart, have given us ample evidence of the nefarious nature of strong racial identities, especially when they are wedded to a political ideology that demonizes racial/ethnic minorities such as blacks or Jews.” That is jargon right out of the grievance studies department of a state university.

It is tempting to dismiss this as irrational ranting or maybe a display item used by the Claremont people to show they are not racist. The conventional Right has always loved putting the intellectual version of a lawn jockey on the pages of their publications to own the Left by being to the left of them on race. Donald Trump spent a good deal of his presidency celebrating his gifts to people who hated him just to prove that he was not the evil racist his enemies claimed.

Beyond that, it suggests that the path of civic nationalism, the sort preached by people like Ben Shapiro, must end up in cultural Marxism. Once you deny that biology is real and has a real impact on social organization, you are left with a problem. How does culture come into existence, if it is not a function of blood and soil? The answer they are left with is that it is a product imposed on people by other people. Culture is just ideas, and they can be anything you like.

There is nothing more Marxist than this interpretation of culture. The cultural Marxist seek domination of the institutions for this reason. They believe culture is the product of societal institutions. If you control them, you can control the culture. The civic nationalist, like Strauss, believe there is an ideal culture. If you get that right, then the institutions fall into place. In both cases, the underlying assumption is that the nature of man plays no role in the final outcome.

To deny that biology is the prime mover of both history and culture inevitably leads to man declaring himself the prime mover. This is what we see here. The writer assumes humans can be talked out of their racial identity. There is a short hop from there to thinking that humans must be compelled to abandon their natural identity. This is the same path that all such thinking takes. If man is free of nature’s god, then he can recreate himself and his fellow man by his own lights. He becomes man’s god.

The end of most journeys is determined by the starting point. It is why intellectuals of all types talk about first principles. It is that starting framework that lays out the path forward and ultimately sets the destination. When the first principle is a denial of observable and measurable reality, the road suddenly opens up to wherever the imagination can conjure. So far, all of those imaginary destinations have not been the utopia, but rather a hellish bloodbath of murder and mayhem.

Z In Taki

Posted on September 5, 2021 by thezman

The Russian evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin coined the term “elite overproduction” to describe the condition of a society that is producing too many potential elite members. These potential elites jostle for positions that are declining in number relative to the increase in elite members. This game of musical chairs creates conflict as these elites engage in a struggle for power within society.

His choice of terms is a bit misleading, as his description of elite overproduction in America is better understood as an overproduction of people who see themselves as potential elites, despite being mediocrities. He points to the glut of lawyers as an example of the excess of people who wildly overestimate their ability. The number of people toting around an MBA is another example of this phenomenon.

The primary appeal of Turchin’s theory is flattery. It is human nature to resent the people who rule over you. A theory of history that says the problem with the world is there are too many people like that know-it-all rumpswab at the office is going to strike most people as plausible. All of us imagine ourselves as the most rational person in the room, so elite overproduction turns a conceit into scientific theory.,,,

Link

The Z Blog

Sports, Culture and Other Stuff

Monthly Archives: September 2021