Monthly Archives: September 2021

Bourgeois Fantasy

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False consciousness is term probably coined by Friedrich Engels to describe a scenario where a subordinate class embraces the ideology of the ruling class, even though the ideology guarantees their subordination. In the communist view of things, workers embraced the bourgeois values of capitalist society, even though it meant they remained at the bottom of the social hierarchy. It was an interesting bit of projection that has been a feature of radicalism since the beginning.

To be a radical in the conventional sense of Western politics starts with a heavy dose of self-deception. Radicals are rarely from the subordinate class. Almost always they are from the ruling elite. They are intellectuals raised in leisure, but convinced they are the authentic voice of the masses. The rare few from the masses have been elevated because they confirm the bourgeois radical’s need for affirmation. As a reward, the striver gets to live in the farmhouse with the pigs.

A glaring example of radical self-delusion is in this clip from the Jimmy Dore Show in which the host discusses the revolution with Chris Hedges. For those unfamiliar, Dore is a comic who has made himself rich doing left-wing comedy. Chris Hedges is an activist who caters to the NPR crowd. He used to write for the New York Times and got famous trafficking in conspiracy theories during the Bush years. He is the type who claimed Bush was a fascist and Iraq was the Sudetenland.

The clip is interesting because both men are convinced they are opposed to the system, when in fact they are products of the system. This is not an act. They truly think they are the avant garde trying to organize a revolt against the system. Further, both seem to think they are working class heroes, leading the proletariat in their struggle against the bourgeois oppressor class. There are times when they sound like a museum exhibit explaining the 1930’s union movements.

Jimmy Dore is a rich guy who lives in a two-million dollar home in California, while Hedges is a rich guy who lives in a mansion in Princeton New Jersey. That is one of the tonier neighborhoods in America. They owe everything that truly matters to them to the system they pretend to oppose. If there was a revolution, they are the on the first train cars heading to the gulags. The only thing more ridiculous than these two talking revolution is the fact that they seem to believe it.

An amusing sidebar here is that they both have put a lot of effort into retconning their life story to match their roles. Hedges claims to have grown up working class, but his family sent him to elite boarding schools. But hey, the Chaffee school is pretty much a juvenile detention center. Dore carries on like his father was Archie Bunker, but in reality, he was a cop who owned a construction business. The system they claim to oppose has been very good to the both of them.

Other than the entertainment value, the reason to pay attention to these sorts of people is they offer an insight into the people in charge. The typical person in mainstream politics suffers from the same sort of self-delusion. Few have ever done real work or known anyone who does real work. Their entire lives have been inside the world of make believe, where they struggle with other actors, pretending to care about the people outside the bubble.

Just as conservatism is a bone the system throws to middle-class white people to keep them busy; socialism is a bone tossed to upper-middle class white people to make them feel special. One of the remarkable features of the Bernie Bro phenomenon is that it is whiter than a Klan rally. Scroll through the clips of the Jimmy Dore show or the Young Turks and it is nothing but palefaces. In no way does this brand of radicalism look anything like the people they claim to represent.

The self-delusion is not a one-way street. There are cynical people in politics, for sure, but most really believe what they are saying. Elizabeth Warren holds court in her mansion telling the wealthy hens in her circle about how she is fighting for working families and the victims of Wall Street. They all congratulate themselves on being the conscience of the people. All of these people are high on their own fumes, which is what keeps them from facing reality.

The thing about the concept of false consciousness is that Engels was inadvertently signaling what would become a prominent feature of radicalism. It is not the subordinate classes that are the victims, but rather the radicals themselves. Whether it is civic nationalists and their utopian fantasies about the Constitution or the middle-class socialists and their utopian fantasies about economics, radicalism requires the participants to live in a state of smug self-delusion.

Perhaps it is the nature of all political systems to delude the beneficiaries, so they do not have to face the reality of their position. The king can know himself, but his court must believe they are acting in the name of honor. The crafty political operator can be as cynical as he likes, but his supporters must see him as a man of virtue, selflessly serving the republic. In liberal democracy, it is the narcotic of radicalism played out in the comfort of the gated mansion.

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











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The Quest For Meaning

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When you are living through an age, it is very difficult to see the currents with which the age will be identified. Few people living in the Jazz Age would have guessed they were living in the Jazz Age. In this age, society is whipsawed by one trend after another, so it seems impossible to know which one will be remembered. Maybe this is the geriatric age where aging Baby Boomers ruled the day. Perhaps the democratic age, where mob rule plunged the West into darkness and chaos.

One option may be the age of meaning. This is the time when people are always searching about for meaning and purpose in their lives. They turn the trivial into all-important moments, so they can pretend to be in a struggle. They invent victims of imaginary oppression so they can play the white knight. Every crisis, it turned into a crusade that quickly takes on the trappings of religion. Ours is an age where everyone is on a vision quest and they force the rest of us to play along.

For example, lost in all of the handwringing about Afghanistan is how some became emotionally attached to a place they ignored for two decades. Suddenly, getting our “allies” out was a holy mission. They spent all day on-line playing “digital Dunkirk” as if they were really doing something heroic. All of a sudden, the media was full of stories from people who claimed to working to get their friends out of the country. Of course, those friends were always heroic Afghans, not Americans.

This quest for meaning was not limited to LARP’ing on-line. Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero. They were not satisfied with making noises about it on the House floor. They had to be in the middle of the action. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma decided to play Rambo and went over to personally rescue people. These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play.

Of course, for close to two years we have been hit by a tsunami of this from women claiming they are in the “front lines” of Covid. Just look at the language. They imagine they are in real trenches fighting real monsters. When it started, every nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building. Many got swept up in their fantasies on-line for the same reason.

The main reason the Covid panic is not old news is the people swept up in the cause cannot let go of it. For many, this was the first time in their life they woke up in the morning with a sense of purpose. There are nefarious reasons behind the government response, but it is aided and abetted by the quest for meaning. There are many more people who want to believe the stories are true than those who are offended by the assault on their liberty by the state in response to the problem.

The best way to see this quest for meaning is in things that are not driven by a sense of crisis, but by history. Here is the ridiculous governor of Virginia inserting himself and his co-religionists into the history books. They get to feel like heroes for righting a past wrong, that was probably not wrong. The facts are not important. They need to be part of the long gone struggle. Since the line for the Emmett Till ride is way too long, they picked a different event to exercise their quest for meaning.

This is one reason events like the civil right movement are talked about as if they happened yesterday. Part of it is nostalgia, for sure, but a big part of it is a secondhand nostalgia by people who have no direct connection to the events. Instead, they seek to fill the need for meaning and purpose in their present lives with fantasies about having experienced emotionally important events of the shared past. This allows them to feel like they are part of the struggle from the safety of home.

Bourgeoise restlessness is not a new thing. This desire to do something important seems to be the result of leisure. Young men from good homes have gone off to seek adventure since there have been young men from good homes. We live in an age in which large swaths of the population are idle. Poverty is no longer a threat, as even the poor have more than they need. In one respect, the quest for meaning in a post-scarcity phenomenon driven by an excess of middle-class people.

Another driver though is the devastation wrought by liberal democracy. Social capital in the form of family and community has been used to fire the great engines of the technological state. The transactional replacements, on-line community, social media groups and mass media, are a poor substitute. Like emergency meal replacements, manufactured community can keep you going for a while, but it is a constant reminder of the loss of the real thing, as well as a poor substitute.

At the end of the Time Machine, the protagonists realizes that the future he witnessed was not the failure of man, but the result of his success. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” Once those challenges were conquered, there was no need for the sort of men who rush to the sound of danger. Over time those types faded away and were replaced with the type who easily lived a carefree life as food.

We are learning a similar lesson. Like all living things, humans are wired to do what is necessary to reach sexual maturity. What has always made man unique is the desire to live beyond that point. To look into the heavens for purpose and then manifest that purpose on earth for the benefit and admiration of our people. The dream may be small or grandiose, but it is the dream that gives meaning to life. We are not meant to live in adult daycare centers, marking our days consuming the latest products.

Perhaps the tech overlords will make the virtual quest for meaning good enough to keep the species going for a while longer. We will plug into the machine and have our dreams made true by an algorithm. Maybe we simply make ourselves insane in the increasingly chaotic quest for meaning. Whatever happens, there is a good chance that people look back at this age and know that we were spoiled for choice in the material realm but starved for choice in the spiritual realm.

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











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Christian Zionism

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If you were to compile a list of the most influential people in history, you would probably start with the most influential ideas. The people responsible for inventing those ideas or popularizing them would be on the list of influential people. Presumably, without those people, the ideas would not have had the same level of impact. Marx would be on the list because he came up with Marxism. Without Marx, it is hard to imagine that branch of socialism developing as it has over 150 years.

Christian Zionism is an idea that does not get much attention, despite the fact it has cast a long shadow over Western history. It is fair to say that Zionism would not exist if not for the Christian Zionists. As much as people like to talk about the influence of Jews and Judaism on the West, it was Christians and a peculiar strain of Christianity that made Zionism possible. In fact, the modern state of Israel probably owes its existence to the hard work of Christian Zionist.

Christian Zionism has its roots in the Protestant Reformation. The revolts against the Church gave rise to a wholesale reassessment of Christian dogma. The distribution of the Bible in vernacular languages allowed radical Protestants to interpret the scriptures in ways contrary medieval Catholic tradition. Christian Zionism can be viewed as the result of the democratization of Christianity. When every man could read the Bible, ever man’s interpretation of Scripture was suddenly equal.

Restorationism was the Protestant idea that the Jews would eventually return to Israel as part of the flow of history. Here you see the early roots of this idea that history flows in one direction toward a predictable end. With regards to the Jews, their return to Israel was part of the end times. It did not take long before this evolved into a belief that helping the Jews return was an essential part of Christianity. Restoring Israel was the next logical step for this branch of Christianity.

Picking the first Christian Zionist or even the most influential one is difficult as the 19th century had many philosemitic Protestants. Of course, all of them were relying on Puritan interpretation of Scripture, so you can probably credit Oliver Cromwell with making it possible for Christian Zionism to flourish. The British empire then spread the idea around the world. Wherever English speaking people exist in large numbers, you have fanatical support for Israel to this day.

The guy who should probably get credit for the invention of Zionism is an Anglican clergyman named William Hechler. He was a rabid crusader against antisemitism and the sponsor of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. He called for the Jews to return to Palestine as a pre-condition for the return of Jesus, which made the unconditional support of Jews and Israel a core Christian belief. Overtime this has evolved into unquestioned devotion to Israel.

Theodor Herzl could also get credit for Christian Zionism. After all, it takes two to make a relationship and Herzl was the first Jewish Zionist. If not for large swaths of the Jewish diaspora embracing the ideas of the Christian Zionist, it is hard to imagine the movement lasting into the 20th century. Even today, secular Jews despise Evangelical Christians, in part, because of their support for Zionism. There are other reasons, but the unbridled support of Israel and the restoration is one element.

Even so, the creation of the Jewish state in the middle of the last century was the product of Christian Zionism. Its existence has nurtured and supported Christian Zionism, especially in America. In fact, much of the spiritual fervor that would flow into Christian identity politics is channeled into Zionism. In the cultural climate of the West, this is one of the few safe ways for white people to cheer for their own side. You can probably argue that Zionism relies on a form of white identity politics.

Christian Zionism and Zionism would not exist without the strange form of empire first invented by the British then perfected by Americans. The British were the first ocean empire. The Greeks dominated the Mediterranean, of course, but that is not the same as dominating oceans. At the minimum, the British Empire was the first modern ocean empire. Today, America controls the world because she controls the seas, which means she controls the flow of goods globally.

It is hard to argue against Zionism as the most influential idea of the 20th century and now the 21st century. The creation of Israel by the British in 1948 has focused the attention of the West on the Middle East ever since. The long Cold War was entangled with Zionism which gave birth to neoconservatism. The last thirty years has kept the American empire obsessed with the fate of Israel. It is not unreasonable to say that American foreign policy is controlled by the Israelis.

Step back and you can argue that Christian Zionism is the result of two main forces unleashed in the West. One is the democratization of Christianity. It is impossible to imagine Zionism flourishing within the Catholic Church. The other is egalitarianism, the very Protestant idea of equality. Without hierarchy, theology was turned over to the entrepreneur, always looking for a novel way to sell Scripture. That is how you get ideas like Restorationism or Mormonism.

Returning to where we started, if one was looking to compile a list of great historical figures, you would have to include William Hechler on that list. Even though his name is unfamiliar to the modern ear, his influence is immense. If not for his tireless promotion of Theodor Herzl, it is possible that Zionism was never born. Imagine what the world would be like if Israel remained a concept, rather than a physical reality. The last century would not be possible.

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











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