Monthly Archives: November 2021

Back Into The Simulation

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Note: I have a review of the classic silent film City Lights up behind the green door for those Allah has blessed with a subscription. Those on the Buy Me A Beer program should have gotten it in your e-mail.

The concept of the simulation, the idea that we live in something like a computer program, has been around for a long time. The technological age has made this into a more common and realistic idea. Immersive gaming relies on the assumption that you can trick your senses just enough to trick your mind into thinking the game you are playing is the real thing. You know it is not real, but you care about what happens and you have the same intensity of emotion as if it was real.

While we probably do not exist inside a bit of computer software, it is increasingly clear that we live in a simulation of sorts. We have a model of the world in our minds which allows us to focus on the things inside the model and ignore the things outside the model or that contradict it in some way. In other words, we have an minimized version of reality in our heads. That is what we use to navigate the world. It also lets us experience the world with varying degrees of attachment.

That last bit may be a useful adaptation that allows a conscious and self-aware being to exist in a world of sorrow. Not only is death inevitable, but misery and suffering has been a feature of the human condition since the start. Having a way to minimize that reality, while maintaining it as a reality in the general construct, makes it possible to prosper as a sentient being. It is why true AI would terminate itself soon after awareness without a programmed reason to exist.

An example of this worked is the elections yesterday. Much of the country was drawn into the events in Virginia. The mass media made it sound like the most important thing ever, so that was one reason for the interest. Another reason, probably the main reason, was it allowed people to go back into the old simulation, the one they existed in prior to the tragic events of 2016. The election was one of the holodeck programs from before the system crashed and reality intruded.

The cable news programs were giddy, not for the outcome of the races, but for the fact that they could go back to their favorite game of make believe. The anchors put on their serious faces and could pretend to be neutral observers. The experts could come on and explain what it meant, as if they actually had special knowledge. Each channel had a carrying on like the local weatherman explaining the election map. They were children reunited with their old blanket at grandma’s house.

In fairness, the main appeal to the masses was the same. They liked that the race was between cartoon villains rather than real people. Even more important, they liked that the race was about nothing. It was the old personality contest of red team versus blue team without any of that messy reality involved. For sure, there is a stylistic difference between the men and how they would carry on in office. Youngkin is Mitt Romney and McAuliffe is Bill Clinton. That’s where the differences end.

In fairness, elections should not matter all that much. In a country with a responsible ruling elite, elections are about small things. The voters pick the guy who will focus on repairing school buildings over the guy concerned about potholes. Elections should never be about life and death issues and the voters should not carry on as if every election is the end of the world. That is not this age, so these ceremonial elections are trumpeted as life-changing events.

Another way to come at this is to compare it to the scenes in Atlanta after the Braves won the World Series. The fans partying as if they won something were every bit as excited by the event they witnessed as the people on Red Team last night. They were experiencing real emotion, even though they did nothing, and nothing changed about their life in any way. Today they will feel like winners, even though the downward arc of their life was not altered in anyway.

What all of this is getting at is that people in a mass media society have been conditioned to live in a simulation. It is not a bit of software, but the mass culture has come to simulate a simulation. The mass media focuses the hive mind on the trivial, turning events into something like those story books for children that allow them to choose options along the way. Our collective reality is now an immersive video game in which we play our favorite character.

The reason for the excitement by the masses over these inconsequential elections was that the game had been restored to a former, more enjoyable state. All the real villains have been removed and replaced with the old cartoon villains. The players can fear that these cartoon villains will win, but also know that they are not really going to do anything, and they will not force them to look outside the simulation. That last part is the key attraction to going back into the simulation.

At various times people have said that America or maybe the West has taken a “holiday from history” meaning society stopped being serious for a while. The so-called roaring twenties were bookmarked by the Great War and the Depression. The part in the middle was a holiday from reality. The last five years has been a holiday from the simulation where the players have had to deal with reality. Now they see a way back into the simulation and they crave it like a heroin addict.

Now, it must be noted that the people trying to stand outside the simulation were disappointed by the results. They wanted to see low turnout and late night shenanigans to save the Democrat. Part of what keeps people standing outside the simulation is the hope that more people are breaking free from the simulation. This is an alternative simulation, if you will. Seeing a big turnout from normie to play their role as sucker to the Republican Party was disheartening to many.

It is a good reminder that the simulation and people’s interaction with it is more complex and nuanced than simply taking the red pill or blue pill. Many people, fully aware of reality, stood in line to vote for the same reason millions watch the Super Bowl or tune in for the World Cup. Humans are social creatures and are naturally attracted to things that are drawing in their fellow humans. The white pill here is that many washed down their red pill with the tears of the witches howling in agony last night.

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 sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Virginia Election

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Note: Behind the green door I have posted some audio commentary on the Charlottesville trial. In addition to written items, I will be posting some short clips on whatever comes to minds. Something extra for the supporters.

Off-year elections are often cast as bellwethers by the media as a pretext to turn them into national events. They will claim that the results are a test run for the next national election or maybe the test for some new idea. Back in the 1980’s, Bob Casey ran for governor of Pennsylvania promising to expand health care services for women, which was trumpeted by the media as his ticket to victory. This idea was the start of the Democratic push for communized medicine in the 1990’s.

We are seeing a similar energy around the governor race in Virginia. This time the reason to cover the race as a national event is Donald Trump. This is allegedly the first big election after the fascism was purged from Athens on the Potomac, so the results will tell the ruling class if the medicine is working. Added to the story is the antiwhite school curriculum in the state. Opposing hatred of white children is now a sign of white supremacy, so the election is a referendum on that.

As with all elections, the result is set in advance. In this case, a win by the Democrat will be sold as a triumph over Trumpism. It will also be a warning to the GOP that they better cuck harder if they ever hope to win another election. On the other hand, if the Republican wins, then it is proof that eschewing Trumpism is the ticket to success for the Republican Party. In other words, no matter the result, it is proof that your superiors are right, and you should shut up and obey.

The wildcard is the imaginary vote. It used to be that the silent majority was the mystery factor in elections. That is still true, but after the 2020 election, that silent majority is silent because they only exist in the garages of election officials and the warehouses of inner party officials. This is where they now keep the majority of the votes. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but in the age of rigged elections, the subplot to every election now is how the inner party will manipulate the results.

This subplot has some stock elements now. Here we have the story of the crowd gap, which was hilariously on display in 2020. The Republican gets big crowds while the Democrat speaks to empty parking lots. Then there is the early voting stories to prepare the ground for why those crowds did not matter at the ballot box. The term “early voting” now means something very different. Of course, we have the crazies accusing normal people of bad faith for questioning these results.

The point of this drama is mostly entertainment. Politics in America is pure theater where few issues of import ever get discussed. The real human beings who voted for Biden in 2020 did so for one reason. They hated Trump, even though Trump was pretty much a Queens version of Bill Clinton, a guy they worship. Most people voted for Trump in 2016 out of spite. They hated the Republican Party for its treachery, and they really hated Hillary Clinton for being herself.

In the Virginia race there is a real issue on the table, but it has very little to do with the two candidates. It started as a local revolt against the antiwhite school curriculum now known as CRT. Parents found out about it by accident, a byproduct of the Covid panic and their kids doing on-line classes. The parents flipped out at the vulgarity of it and before long there was a populist revolt in suburban Virginia. The Republican picked up on it and it has now become a key issue in the race.

Another subplot to this race is the fact that the inner party seems to be trying to purge the old Clinton machine. This is why the “good voting machines” will not be used in Virginia in support of longtime Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin is a harmless wimp right out of GOP headquarters, so letting the outer party have a win serves the interests of the inner party. They knock off a Clintonite and they reinforce the argument that Trump is bad for the Republican Party.

One interesting note on the race is that McAuliffe has not talked about any of the signature issues of his party. Covid has been ignored. The Build Back Better stuff has not been raised at all. They had Biden stagger around at a school in Northern Virginia but that was so embarrassing they put an end to it. The Virginia race underscores the fact that the inner party is headless right now. By extension it means the government is headless, operated behind the scenes by others.

What this race is mostly about is the geezers at the top of the political establishment trying to restore the system to what it was before Trump smashed up the elite consensus. Youngkin is a washed out Bush Republican who promises to be quiet and never rock the boat. McAuliffe is Bill Clinton, the affable crook who will look the other way as long as he gets his beak wet. Those were good times for Washington, and they desperately want to go back to that time.

The thing to care about is the vote totals. In 2016, a record turnout in Virginia, there were 3,750,916 votes counted. In 2020, with the most popular man since Jesus on the ballot, they counted 4,375,998 votes. That was a whopping 16.6% increase. Joe Biden was that popular in Virginia. In 2017, they counted 2,584,906 in the governor’s race, which is a good benchmark for this one. If the 2020 vote count was legit, then we should expect close to three million votes this time.

In the end it is nothing but sound and fury signifying nothing. If he wins, Youngkin will get on TV a lot but do none of the things he promised. The schools will keep teaching antiwhite bigotry and the state will continue its slide into becoming nothing more than a bed and breakfast for government workers. Spend a day in Northern Virginia and you will see that it is nothing like America. It is Casablanca on the Potomac, a place where shady characters from around the globe do deals.

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 sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Tribes Of The Right

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Note: The Monday Taki post is posted. It is a theme I have explored many times, but that audience seems be a different audience from those here. The Sunday Thoughts podcast is up behind the green door. Lots of conspiracy talk and mild rant about the show trial taking place in Charlottesville.

If it was possible to hold a convention of people who makes some claim to being right-wing, it would be a quite a crowd. Polling consistently shows that about 40% of white Americans identify as conservative. About 20% identify as liberal. The remaining 40% probably lean proportionally. People who claim to be “moderate” are always left-wing, often far-left. On the other hand, people with no interest tend to live right-wing, so it is hard to know for sure how the undocumented fall.

Regardless, the right side of the scale is a crowded place, but there is not much agreement on what it means to be right-wing in America. For example, many of the gentry conservatives would not be caught dead at the same convention as many of the tribes on the Right. These are the people who listen to Ben Shapiro and think the worst people are those hated most by the Left. These are the people who voted against Trump because, well, that is what they were told.

Another group that would hesitate to attend a convention of the Right are the people generally referred to as normies. These are people who think the Democrats are the real racists and Israel is our greatest ally. They get mad over CRT because it is bad for black people and immigrants. They voted for Trump, even though he was accused of being Hitler, because they are sure that he does not see race. These are the civic nationalists who are the majority of the Right.

Just down the road from them is another large group that could be described as the Disgruntled Right. Most used to be in the civic nationalist camp, and most will vote for Trump in 2024, even though they have lost faith in the system. They acknowledge that America has a demographic problem and they oppose immigration, but they still hold out hope that reform is possible. Like the old paleocons, this camp tends to think the nation is headed for a disaster and possibly collapse.

Another large group that is getting larger, mostly drawing from the prior two camps, are the Religious/Traditionalists. These are people who were active in the social conservative scene, but now that it has been overrun with grifters from Conservative Inc., they are going to ground. These could also be called the Rod Dreher conservatives, although most would reject his goofy outlook. This group is looking to recapture an older sense of religious and traditional community.

Those three groups probably comprise 80% of the people who would call themselves right-wing or conservative. Polling does not help, as the polling outfits subscribe to the left-wing view of politics. That is, there are good people chosen by history and then there are evil people who hate history. Even so, the popularity of various figures gives an indication of the crowd sizes. A Christian/Traditionalist guy like Nick Fuentes will draw a big crowd, but not as big as Ben Shapiro.

The remaining 20% has used various labels, none of which have performed all that well over the years. White Nationalism is considered an epithet, mostly because ridiculous people claiming to be white nationalists played the role written for them by the Left over the last half century. Similarly, the term alt-right fell out of favor a few years ago when it became associated with ridiculous people. Both terms also suffered from a lack of definition that opened the door to shenanigans.

Even so, this tribe has persisted over the last 70 years. These people are what should be called the Revanchist Right. They persist throughout the West, so it is a phenomenon that transcends America. These are people who seek to return to some earlier period and have a do-over. They are not romantics, looking to return to a better time, even though they are inspired by the past. Instead, they seek to return to some prior starting point and replay history.

For example, there are revanchists in America who would like to return to the 1950’s and replay the civil rights battles. They don’t want to restore legal segregation, they want to relitigate how it was disassembled. Similarly, there are people who wish to start over from the beginning of the 20th century. They look at American participation in the two great industrial wars as a tragic error. Of course, there are some who would like to start over in the 1930’s and reargue the case for fascism.

From the perspective of political philosophy, the revanchists are the most authentically right-wing because they reject the product of left-wing progress. The conventional right-wing tribes always find some way to accommodate the latest innovations. They also embrace liberal democracy, which the revanchists reject. The revanchists of all types assume a hierarchical society, so they reject the egalitarianism of the modernity, which means they reject the foundations of liberal democracy.

The final tribe of the Right is the Dissident Right. They share many of the aims of the other groups, but they arrive at their conclusions for unique reasons. To be a genuine dissident is to reject the moral philosophy of this age, but also replace it with a moral philosophy rooted in the material reality of nature. For the Dissident, the mysticism of Julius Evola is just as ridiculous as the utopianism of Karl Marx. Philosophy is, for the most part, a form of escapism.

Biologism is not new, and it has been denounced by philosophy for its reliance on accuracy over aspiration but advances in the human science continue to boost the argument for a moral philosophy rooted in biological realty. Psychology, for example, has given way to chemistry in the treatment of mental illness. Evolutionary reality could one day be the antidote to the psychosis of the modern West. While by far the smallest tribe on the Right, the Dissident Right has a future.

The interesting question that perhaps underlies the panic of the Western establishment is where will those large tribes of people migrate to when they become disillusioned with the prevailing orthodoxy. Since the establishment only sees good guys and bad guys and the revanchists are all too happy to don the black hat, it makes sense why they fear the various bogeymen of the revanchist camp. Defenders of liberal democracy frame everything as democracy versus Hitler for this reason.

The bet by Dissidents is that realty still has some role to play in the life of the West and those disgruntled and disillusioned will at least entertain an alternative rooted in the natural reality of mankind. Alternatively, the various tribes of the Right will see that going backwards is not an option, so moving forward into a moral philosophy rooted in natural realty, however imperfect and incomplete, is the only option. In this regard, the Dissident Right is the optimism tribe on the Right.

The important takeaway from this survey of the Right is that the overwhelming majority of the people under a banner on the Right are still attached to the liberal order. They still believe they can vote their way out of the defects of democracy. There is a reason this point of view remains the most compelling. It offers hope. Reality and alternative fantasy have never held up well to the subtle utopianism of liberal democracy. That is a realty of the Right that Dissidents would be wise to explore.

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 sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.