The 2022 Predictions

Posted on December 31, 2021 by thezman

A clever way to make smart predictions is to start with the assumption that the near future is not going to be much different from the present. Current trends will extend out over the near term. On the other hand, if you want to get a lot of attention for yourself, you can make bold crazy predications that confirm deeply held suspicions. “Next year we see hyperinflation!” will get the gold bugs and Fed watchers excited. Everyone likes to hear that their dreams will come true in the coming year.

The trouble with either of those approaches is they are not motivated by the desire to figure out what may be coming in the new year. Sure, most things will probably be the same as last year, but so what? What matters is what will be different. Similarly, pretending the Great Pumpkin will rise from the pumpkin patch and finally deliver on his promises is just cheap theater. So, with that in mind, let us cut open the goat and read what the entrails tell us about the coming year.

The signs say chaos is coming for the political class in 2022. The administration’s half-hearted effort to tamp down the Covid panic will be met by shrieking from the Covidians and much of the media. This is where we start to see some deep fissures in the coalition as many are tired of the restrictions while others cannot let it go. This will lead to criticism of the administration from some on the Left and a corresponding bit of return fire from the inner party.

Adding to the chaos will be the collapse of all support for Kamala Harris. She never had a constituency in the party and the prospect of losing the House and Senate means they need to get a replacement done before the election. The fact is Biden is in rough shape so the question is who will pick his successor. The inner party will make this a central part of the fall campaign. They hope the new heir apparent will get their people energized and take people’s attention away from the economy.

The fall elections go poorly for the Democrats. They lose over thirty seats in the House, but the result is not a landslide as many whites sit out the election. The icy hand of demographics begins to show up in formerly safe republicans areas. The Democrats take the loss as an opportunity to force Joe Biden to resign. His deteriorating condition and his successor secured, leads to a coordinated push to have him retire from office after the new year, allowing his successor to run for two terms.

I will finally escape Lagos.

The instability of the imperial leadership begins to show up globally. Ukraine experiences civil unrest, especially in the east. The Turkish economy collapses and we see widescale protests against the government. Israel decides now is the time to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ethiopia collapses into chaos because Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed overplays his hand in peace talks with the Tigrayan rebels. As a result, east Africa collapses into famine and civil war.

I finish my book and I become more popular than Jesus.

Back on the home front, first quarter inflation comes in much hotter than expected, forcing the Fed to speed up their tapering schedule. Food prices show the biggest rise as the phrase “fertilizer shortage” enters the conversation. As the Fed begins to raise rates for the first time in a generation, equities decline 20% in what the media will tell us is a natural correction. Bitcoin will lose 50% of its value as governments tighten the rules on digital assets and their platforms.

The combination of Covid chaos and economic troubles will result in the first signs of right-wing unrest since the 2020 election. Fueled by anticipation of another stolen election, populist groups will organize public rallies in DC. The FBI, of course, will play their role but thanks to awareness of their shenanigans, these rallies will be full of people with cameras looking for FBI infiltrators. Finding the infiltrator will be the most popular internet game in 2022.

Everyone at Reason magazine will come out as trans and no one will notice.

Conservative Inc. begins to show some serious problems as the decline of their donor base begins to accelerate. Some of it is driven by the actuarial tables but most of it is the increasing realization that conservatism is just a money pit. This will correspond with an uptick in support for populist and dissident operations. Grifters like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk to become more populist in their rhetoric. Even Trump will start attacking the conservative establishment again.

On the media front, we see a wholesale reorganization of cable news. CNN shifts to a pure news model, dropping their entertainment shows. MSNBC, responding the Tucker Carlson-ization of Fox, begins adding left-wing populist content, retiring many of their current personalities in favor of left-wing YouTube personalities. The collapse of conservative talk radio will accelerate as that audience ages off and people simply stop listening to terrestrial radio in general.

Happy New Year!

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!

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Year In Review

Posted on December 30, 2021 by thezman

There are three reasons to write a predictions post. One is it is familiar stuff that everyone does this time of year. It is easy content. The other is you can have some fun with the predictions. Saying that the coming year will bring the death of your enemies is both fun for the writer and the reader. You can be serious about it and try to figure out what the next year brings. Of course, a blend of all three is like a trip to the old fashioned all-you-can-eat buffet. Good living.

The first prediction I made last year turned out to be a miss. The murdering in Lagos did not follow the familiar pattern. Odd number years are usually good years for killing, as the locals struggle with factoring. This year the pattern did not hold as the city is not going to break a record. Barring a very productive couple of nights, Baltimore will clock in with about the same number of murders as last year, despite a record number of shootings and a decline in the number of cops.

That said, there are rumors that the city is faking the statistics, so time will tell if the current figures hold. Baltimore has faked its crime stats in the past. There was a time when they stopped recording rapes entirely, so it is not out of the question for them to classify murders as accidental deaths. In most cases, no one really cares about the victims, so they could get away with it for a while. Regardless, this predication has to go in the loss column for now.

On the other hand, I was stunningly precise with my Covid predictions. “The Covidians will not back down. There will be reports of “vaccinated people” getting Covid and that will be enough to keep the panic rolling. Covid has now replaced climate change as the left-wing religion of fear.” For that call alone they will be making documentaries about my predictive powers in the future. I know my left-wing crazies as well as anyone can truly know the mind of the insane.

I kinda-sorta got the economic forecast right. The lack of specificity gave me some wiggle room, which is the hallmark of a good prediction. I did not mention inflation, but I got the general trend right. I also was right about the media trying to run cover for the economy as has been the case recently. The fact is the economy is so weird right now it is hard to judge it. Millions not working, despite millions of open jobs contradicts what we have been told about economics for a century.

The big miss in last year’s prediction was on Biden. I did not think they would let that idiot stay in office beyond Labor Day. Every seer has their weak spots and mine is in underestimating the stupidity of the people in charge. I figured they would pillow Biden before anyone realized that Harris was an obnoxious moron. Instead, they seem to be stuck with both of them. That and Biden has avoided the Grim Reaper, despite his condition and multiple Covid outbreaks in Washington.

I think I got it right on Trump. If not for the Left trying to keep him in the news, most people would have forgotten about him by now. The Trump phenomenon was like that one amazing summer you had in your youth. You have fond memories of that time, but there is no going back. That chapter is closed. We have serious issues facing us now and his frivolous brand of self-promotion seems out of place. Flight 93 crashed and no one really wants to revisit the crash site.

I was wrong and right about the Republicans trying to help the Democrats loot what is left of the middle-class. They helped get some things passed, but they held the line on some others, like the Build Back Better stuff. They did not push for an amnesty, but they have not said much about Biden’s open border lunacy either. The Republicans would love to vote for amnesty, but the Democrats refuse to give them the opportunity, so the Republicans are being saved from their own idiocy.

I will say I was right about the shifting posture of this side of the divide. Over the last year the number of people who think we have a systemic problem along with a hopelessly corrupt ruling class has grown rapidly. Lots of people now call themselves dissidents, without really knowing what it means, but they have come to loath the people in charge with the zeal of a communist. It is less and less about policy and more and more about the structure of society.

This is why you see more high profile people aping dissident rhetoric. They feel the ground shifting and they are looking for a safe place. This is something else I got right in last year’s predictions. Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro sound like paleo-conservatives all of a sudden, because that is where the audience is now. These grifters will always be with us and they are a good barometer. They are being told by their handlers to embrace populist themes because that is the market now.

All-in-all it was a strong performance from the hardest working man in dissident politics, but not a flawless performance. Like everyone, I am disappointed that Biden did not drop dead, but that gives us something to look forward to in 2022. Like last year, I think we may look back at this year and see it as a good time. The immediate future looks grim, more so than this time last year. Accepting it is not pessimism, but simply being realistic, which is another word for prudent.

The Runaway Train

Posted on December 29, 2021 by thezman

A popular topic on this side of the great divide is how much of what we see from the ruling class is directed and how much is emergent. Put another way, how much of it is the result of conscious coordination from some central source and how much is just the mentality of the swarm. Those who like conspiracy theories and simple answers prefer the coordination model, while those with experience in complex human systems prefer the emergent behavior approach.

Of course, both can be true. Elites in the anglosphere have been enamored by what is called nudge theory for a while now. the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness was a big hit with the managerial class, as it suggested a feminine way to compel social behavior. Instead of ordering people around, elites would use their power over the institutions to “nudge” people in the preferred direction with positive incentives, rather than force.

As is so often the case, Nudge Theory is really an old idea tarted up with managerial class jargon that comes from the graduate schools. The tax code in America has been used this way long before the nudge idea. The mortgage interest deduction is a nudge toward home ownership, rather than renting. Business gets tax breaks for capital purchases when the economy is flagging. The government food pyramid is a way to nudge people toward one form of consumption over another.

The food pyramid is a good example of how conspiracy and emergent behavior work together in a mass society. The people behind the food pyramid are the giant agricultural concerns that control the food supply. A high carbohydrate diet is more profitable than a healthy diet, so they bribe government officials and academic researchers to promote the high carb diet. At the same time, people actually believe in the “low fat” diets now so no nudging is required.

We are seeing this with the Covid drama. The inner party has finally realized they have a serious problem on their hands with Covid theater. People have figured out that they can get two weeks out of work by claiming to have Covid, so the great winter sick-out is starting to harm the economy. Of course, the contradictions and lies about Covid are undermining their ability to tell future lies. Biden’s last speech on Covid came with a message to the media to cool it on Covid.

The White House is pushing a message to the media, which they expect the media to blast through their megaphones. You are starting to see planted stories about how Omicron is harmless and a good sign. On the other hand, the hive mind of the media has been tuned to spread fear about Covid. The front page of party organs like the New York Times are organized around Covid theater. The result is a weird whipsaw effect where the message swings wildly back and forth.

Covid theater is useful in exploring the hive mind aspects of this age. All of a sudden, tens of millions of normal people are made aware of the fact that many of their associates are not just liberal, but possibly insane. The people wearing ceremonial face gear are exempting themselves from the normal tribe and declaring their allegiance to the crazy tribe. One sort of emergent behavior, triggered by the Covid conspirators, is causing new emergent behavior among the healthy.

Those big tanker trucks you see on the road are a good model to think about when considering this stuff. Inside those tanks is either compartments or what would look like a baffles if you peeled back the skin. The point of the internal structures is to give the tank rigidity but also prevent the fluid inside from sloshing around. A ton of water sloshing forward when braking would create a tremendous amount of force. The tankers are designed to keep the contents stable in transport.

That is a good way to think of society. The hive mind, the emergent behavior is like the fluid inside one of those tankers. When the ruling class jams on the brakes or takes a sudden turn, general opinion can swing wildling in one direction. The initial Covid panic is a good example. The baffling is supposed to be local institutions, community and the traditions of society. They are supposed to put a brake on the wild swings of opinion caused by the sudden lurching of the ruling class.

This is the proper image for modern America. It is a tanker truck racing down the road half full of fluid. During the Trump years it swung from one side of the road to the other, in part due to the driver and due to the sloshing about inside the tank. The Biden turn at the wheel was supposed to stabilize things, but every reaction on their part to stabilize things has caused a new action inside the tank. Trump enjoyed the ride, while Biden is hanging on like prisoner to the machine he is driving.

The point is, much of what looks like conspiracy is just wild reactions to events that the elites set off by a legitimate effort to nudge society in a preferred direction. Just as war plans do not survive contact with the enemy, elite conspiracies do not hold up very long after contact with mass society. Covid is revealing just how little control our ruling elites have over their creations. They unleashed a panic that has become a bizarre subculture they no longer can control.

This does not settle the question at the start, but it does suggest the question is not all that important. Unless you are inclined to believe that the people “really in charge” are super-geniuses able to play four-dimensional chess, yet not realize you are onto them, it is hard to see the hand of design in the current madness. On the other hand, emergent behavior does not explain the players who are fortuitously positioned to profit from the madness unleashed by our rulers.

Perhaps the way to think about is as a process that evolves and two of the forces driving the evolution are conspiracy and emergent behavior. The former is locked in on short term gain without considering the long term consequences. The later forces are just the normal social forces weaponized by the collapse of that internal baffling that comes from strong local community and traditions. The empire is a runaway train and all of us, the engineers included, are just along for the ride.

How It Ends

Posted on December 28, 2021 by thezman

A little over a century ago, September 16, 1920, to be exact, a horse-drawn wagon packed with 500-pounds of dynamite exploded outside the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan & Co. bank on Wall Street. Thirty people were killed instantly and another ten died from their wounds. Over 100 other people were injured. The bombing was never solved, but everyone assumed it was done by anarchists. Anarchist terrorism was becoming common over the prior decade.

One consequence of the bombing was the federal government got serious about the communists and anarchists in the country. They rounded them up and deported them even though they could not pin the crime on them. The elites also gained a new perspective on immigration after this bombing. All of a sudden, letting anyone walk into the country was not so popular with rich people. Not long after, immigration was sharply curtailed, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe.

The incident is a good reminder of the reality of politics. Things that vex the people will be ignored until they begin to threaten the rich people. The bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910 did not register with the ruling class, because the people running the country lived on the East Coast. The terrible impact of immigration on the working classes was considered a feature by the wealthy. When the reality of immigration landed on their doorstep, their attitudes quickly changed.

Another example from the last century was medicine. For most of human history the best medicine was money. Rich people avoided the general fifth of society and they could avoid what passed for medicine. More people were probably killed by doctors than disease as hospitals were disgusting and until the 20th century, germ theory was unknown to doctors. Avoiding hospitals and having a private doctor, along with better food and sanitation was what kept rich people healthy.

The 20th century started to change that reality. The rich and poor packed into cities which meant that disease loads were much higher. The Spanish flu, for example, hit all classes of people, not just the poor. It also struck young people, which made it even more frightening. Polio was another scary disease. It had been around since forever, but urbanization made it more common. Numerous urban polio epidemics began to appear starting in the 20th century.

All of a sudden, polio was causing panic and civil unrest, as epidemics in major cities were reported by the mass media. Despite the fact most infections were mild and only a tiny number of people suffered long term effects, polio became a scary thing. One big reason for that is rich people were getting sick with polio. Unlike most plagues, this was not just a disease for the rabble. Polio was not sparing the wealthy. Just like that, finding a solution to polio became a top priority.

Public health is another good example of how the ruling class acts only when it serves their interests. Industrialization brought urbanization which brought disease to the doorstep of the rich. Unlike in the feudal order, the rich needed to be around the poor, who worked their factories and maintained their cities. Being near filthy poor people living in their own slop was dangerous, so the ruling classes set about improving public health and sanitation in the urban areas.

Politically, the ruling class of any society operates as Jeremy Bentham imagined all people would act if permitted. That is, the rich are motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Discharging their duties is avoided until not doing so promises more pain than pleasure. They are only ever moved to act on behalf of the greater good when they feel pain. This is especially true in liberal societies, which select for sociopathy in the political class.

Counterintuitively, it means that the only real way for people in a liberal democracy to get the attention of the political class is to threaten their lives. We saw this last January when a very peaceful group toured the Capitol. Within hours the city was turned into an armed camp. The same people who claim drug crimes are impossible to police and make excuses for black violence were suddenly able to find every last protestor and lock down the city for months.

This is something to keep in mind when wondering when the lunacy of the Covid panic will come to an end. Right now, it is great fun for rich people who are not required to play along with the loons. The politicians have to participate in Covid theater, but in private they think it is just a big goof. They take pleasure in mocking the crazies and their ornamental face gear. They think it is hilarious that the masses just go along with the ridiculous measures that serve no purpose beyond humiliation.

This nonsense ends when the ruling class decides it ends and that happens when the cost to them gets serious. Economic trouble is one obvious way the cost quickly becomes intolerable. That may be what lies ahead in 2022, as another round of Covidian theater craters a struggling economy. Someone taking a shot at one of these provincial politicians is another possible wakeup call. Organized resistance is unlikely, but a localized “event” is certainly possible.

Regardless, reason and reality are not going to end this lunacy. For the rich it is just an amusing game of human chess. For their servants in political office, it is a way to pretend their lives have meaning. Of course, there are plenty of stupid people willing to degrade themselves in order to feel like they are part of something. What puts the brakes on this dynamic is when the war comes home to the rich people. Until they start to feel the pain, Covid mania is a feature of life in the West.

It is an interesting lesson in the reality of democracy. Since democratic government selects for sociopathy, the result is a government that is far less responsive than allegedly autocratic systems. The dictator or king can be motivated by a sense of duty to his office or his legacy. Elected officials are motivated purely by pleasure and pain and they are extremely low in empathy. It turns out that democracy works only when the people are prepared to use violence.

This may be why democratic systems precede autocratic ones. It is not that mob rule becomes unreasonable, but that violent mob action becomes the only reasonable response to the indifference of democratic rule. The mob hangs their elected officials and the rich are suddenly moved to act by installing a dictator who will address the concerns of the masses. In other words, democracy is not mob rule but rule by sociopath, which is remedied by the strong hand of leadership.

The Managerial Borg

Posted on December 27, 2021 by thezman

Note: The Taki post is up. I find the whole anti-Nazi thing interesting as it seems to be a subculture now, rather than just ham-fisted sloganeering. It is becoming an anti-religion in which the believers are defined by their opposition to the imaginary. For something lighter, I have some posts behind the green door about pop culture. Over Christmas I watched The French Connection, Star Trek: Diversity and The Expanse.

Most people on this side of the great divide have little interest in sports entertainment, as it is seen as part of the head game the system plays on people. Instead of investing in things that are important to their community and family, men invest their energy in rooting for the local corporate sports team. For most on this side of the divide, there is something unseemly about seeing a man wearing a sports team jersey in public or putting his favorite sports team in his social media profile.

That is, however, what makes sports entertainment a useful window into the psychology of the managerial state. Sports entertainment is a microcosm of what is happening in more subtle ways across the culture. College sports are particularly useful as that is where the ideology of this age slams into reality. On the one hand, players are supposed to be “scholar-athletes” and on the other hand college sports is a great celebration of diversity. None of it, of course, makes sense.

An example is this announcement from the Atlantic Coast Conference about a corporate program called “the coach’s academy” that is “an eight-week virtual and immersive development program that equips coaches with information, tools, and skills of a humanistic approach to better support the needs of the student-athlete.” Anyone who has worked in corporate America recognizes the creepy bureaucratic language that defines modern managerialism.

The hallmark of the modern managerial class is the creepy, dehumanized language they inflict on us. How does one “equip a coach with information, tools, and skills of a humanistic approach”? A normal way of saying this is “train coaches to be more empathetic to their players” but that is too direct and it lacks the signaling that is so important in the managerial class. The word salad says that the writer has been to graduate school and has the appropriate credentials.

The proof of that is the third paragraph. ” ‘The response to the ACC Coaches’ Academy has been terrific,’ said ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, Ph.D.” A normal person would wonder why that academic credential is listed, but inside the world of the managerial class, credentials are everything. This is why they are so cheap. Phillips earned a Ph.D. in education administration from the University of Tennessee, a master’s degree in education from Arizona State University.

Another thing you see in managerial language is the appropriation of terms and concepts from business and science. These are fields in which there is a right answer and accomplishment can be objectively measured. College presidents now call themselves CEO’s, for example. In this announcement they use the term “cohort” rather than group, suggesting things about the first group of coaches forced into this seminar that are certainly not true, but the word “cohort” sounds cool.

Later on, we learn that the coaches learn “emotional intelligence competencies to enhance trust and connection.” A normal person would wonder what exactly is an “emotional intelligence competency” and the long answer is nothing. There is no such thing as emotional intelligence. It is another racket where “experts” on “emotional intelligence” sell their services to corporate trainers. The idea is to train staff to control their emotions like a sociopath.

Also note the word competency. This is a very popular word in the managerial class, because it implies that all knowledge is acquirable. You just have to sit quietly in the class, repeat what you heard and get the credentials. Now you have that competency, which you can put in your trophy case. This is a product of the blank slate, which assumes anyone can learn anything. The strivers festooned with credentials are not naturally better. They just want it more.

Perhaps the most amusing bit of language in this press release is the phrase “transformational leadership approach.” This is another example of how the managerial class loves neologism, especially those that borrow words and phrases from the productive sector of society. They also love the idea that natural ability, like leadership, can be acquired, like a new car or a new couch. They also need to feel like they are leaders, even if they sit in a cubicle all day.

Like emotional intelligence, transformational leadership is popular in the corporate space, mostly because it is a good way to avoid reality. That reality is there are people good at the things needed in a corporation and there is a finite number of them, which means there is never enough of these people. Consultants make a nice living telling senior managers that there is a way to spin the straw they can afford into the gold that will make the company successful.

This line is typical. “Through personal reflection, peer discussion and interactive activities such as role play and case studies, coaches developed an action plan for practical implementation of new strategies within their teams and integrated program concepts to evolve their coaching philosophy.” The action plan is the proof that the employee attended the seminar. Usually, they end up in the trash or maybe in a drawer with the other nonsense credentials.

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, people have complained about the dehumanizing aspects of large corporate entities. Marxism was driven in large part by the dehumanizing aspects of large scale manufacturing. Writers and comedians have mocked corporate culture. The corporation is a creepy form of fascism in that the people in charge imagine themselves to be something other than autocrats and they demand their employees play along with the charade.

The social phenomenon of managerialism is the application of corporate self-delusion to society as a whole. The administrative state embraces the same bizarre language and internal activities as the modern corporation. Popular culture spreads the language and concepts, normalizing this stuff in areas like sports, of all places. Managerialism seeks to turn society into an integrated corporate entity. The only thing missing from that press release is the phrase “resistance is futile.”

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2021 by thezman

Site Update

Posted on December 24, 2021 by thezman

Note: I was on with Professor Ed Dutton yesterday. You can watch the video version on Bitchute and you can download the audio here.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thank you all for your support, not just behind the green door but in the comment section. A recurring theme when people comment about my work is that this site has one of the best comment sections going. Lots of people find it reassuring to see that many smart people hold similar views. In fact, it is usually from academics that I hear the compliments about the comment section. They like reading smart people confirm their private thoughts.

It looks like 2022 will be an exciting year in these parts. We have been in a bit of lull in 2021 with Trump in the wilderness and real life activism on hold. Traffic has actually dipped year over year a bit, which has never happened. Of course, 2020 smashed all previous traffic records for obvious reasons. From the perspective of dissidents, this year has been rather dull, so traffic has declined a bit. This is something you see everywhere, which is to be expected.

Even so, it is a good reason to think about refreshing the site. It has been this format for close to ten years so a facelift is on the 2022 agenda. Nothing radical, just a freshening up of the look and feel. The big change on tap is a move away from WordPress. I am not on the WordPress system. I’m running my own server, but I use the software, mostly because it was free and easy to setup. It has a lot of limitations and WordPress sites are routinely blocked these days by firewalls.

Shifting to a new software means I can add some features. One thing on tap is to improve the comment system here. I’m open to suggestions, so feel free to let me know what you would like. Do so in the comment section, so others can respond with their opinions on the matter. My list of upgrades to the comments thus far include better editing, formatting, a new spam filter and threading. I used to have a plugin that did those things, but it broke and was never fixed by the developer.

Another big change on tap is to bring everything home. Instead of having premium material over on SubscribeStar and BuyMeABeer, I want to have everything here under one roof like the cool kid sites. The idea is to let people sign up anyway they like, SubscribeStar, PayPal, Crypto, eCheck, cash, you name it, but the content will be here behind a firewall for subscribers. That way people don’t have to be chasing me around the internet looking for my stuff.

This will also mean hosting the podcast. Spreaker has been fine for what I needed at the time, but they are not offering me anything I need now. Five years ago, they were targeting small podcasters to help boost their reach. They were bought by iHeart Radio and now mostly cater to the regime friendly podcasters. They also plan to roll out a censorship regime in 2022 so I see no reason to continue with them. Once the site is ready, I will abandon Spreaker entirely.

One idea that I have is to add a community area for people to post whatever they want in a message board style format. Maybe this will be a premium user thing only or a mix of the two, I am not sure at this point. Putting it behind a firewall means it does not have to be moderated for lunacy. The usual suspects like to pollute message boards with garbage, but they tend not to pay for the privilege. It is still a fetus of an idea, so feel free to make suggestions on this topic.

The book I have been working on for ages is close enough to a first draft to think I can sell it next year. The plan is to have nine long essays of about 10,000 words each and one longer essay that is the star of the show. I have six essays done as far as first drafts and the long essay is three fourths complete. By first draft, I mean the consent is right, but it needs to be edited for spelling and grammar. I’ll hire a proofreader when everything is written and then begin the publishing process.

One reason to update the site is to be able to sell the books. An agent contacted me some time ago about taking it to a traditional publisher, but I’m leaning toward doing the whole thing in-house. The reason is I think it would be a fun challenge and I like the idea of building the parallel society. I stay off the regime platforms as much as possible because I do not want to support people who hate me. I still have to think it over a bit to make sure I am not biting off too much, but that is the plan right now.

As far as timing, it is probably mid-year for the new site. It has a lot to do with how the book goes and how the day jobs go. I’m also looking to escape Lagos in the spring so that will take up some time. I put off the move during the Covid stuff, but I cannot put it off any longer. Being a polar bear in Lagos is not a good idea. That means the dance card is already packed for 2022, which means these grand plans I have just laid out are far more ambitious than they look on paper.

Merry Christmas everyone. Posting will resume on Monday and then another little break for the New Year holiday. Again, thank you all for reading, commenting, donating and sending e-mails and letters. I cannot properly express how much I enjoy the interactions with the folks who read the site every day. When I started this, I never imagined I would be in this position and I am grateful for the opportunity. Like all of us, I’m sure, I am thankful to be part of such a great community.

Signs Of Hope

Posted on December 23, 2021 by thezman

Note: Today I will be on with professor Ed Dutton. We will be watching women’s beach volleyball together and commenting about it MST3000 style. The livestream is on the YouTube at 2PM eastern. He posts replay on Bitchute so when that link is available, it will be posted here.

I also have a post up about the classic film The French Connection. This is behind the green door for subscribers. For those who have not subscribed may Allah send a gaggle of chubby feminists to your Christmas party.

Edit: Live show can be seen here starting at 1PM Lagos time.

A wise person once said that the revolution comes when a conservative of some sort is addressing a crowd and when he starts babbling about the evils of racism, the crowd begins to snicker and then starts laughing. In other words, there will come a point when white people have caught onto the scam privately then they realize that everyone else has caught on as well. The revolution is people realizing that everyone else is thinking the same taboo things privately.

It may not be that dramatic, of course, but that is a good way to think about how attitudes change slowly then all of a sudden. We may be seeing some of the slowly part as we close out the year. The jury in the Kim Potter manslaughter trial is in its third of day of deliberations and may be headed to a hung jury. Kim Potter is the former policewoman who killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. She mistakenly used her service weapon rather than her taser and shot him in the chest.

The case, of course, is highly important because it happened during the Derek Chauvin trial in the same general area. Minnesota has become ground zero for proving that diversity plus proximity equals violence. They have had four high profile police shootings involving diversity. In three cases the victims were diverse and the officer white, while in one case the officer was diverse while the victim was white. The results say a lot about where we are as far as diversity.

What makes the Potter case interesting is she was not charged with intentionally killing Wright as we saw with Chauvin. There is no question as to what happened in this case as it was caught on video and Potter admits to the facts. The issue at hand is whether she should be put in prison for an honest mistake. Under normal circumstances, third degree manslaughter would be a slam dunk for the prosecutor. All of a sudden, it is not looking like the easy conviction they imagined.

The suspicion is that at least two jurors have refused to convict. That suggests we may be seeing a new type of jury nullification. Not a single person in that courtroom is unaware of the fact the Derek Chauvin was railroaded by the state and sent to prison for twenty years because he is white. Everyone in the courtroom knows the Feds have piled onto Chauvin making sure he has no chance to overturn his verdict by hitting him with trumped up civil rights charges.

Again, a reasonable person can look at the Potter case and conclude she deserves the same as a drunk driver, which is about ten years. Recklessly taking a life, regardless of your profession, requires a punishment. This is easy stuff but all of a sudden it is not so easy for this jury and the most likely reason is they follow the news. They notice that there are no more white people in TV ads. They have had to sit through diversity training at the office. Their kids are facing it at school.

The other bit of evidence that private conversations are turning away from the prevailing orthodoxy is the Rittenhouse trial. Reports from the trial suggest many of the jurors were offended by the spectacle. It was clear that one juror tried to shanghai deliberations but was bullied into submission. That jury was given every chance to convict Rittenhouse on a lesser charge. Instead of taking the easy way out they decided to send a message and acquit on all charges.

Individually these sorts of events can be explained with whatever theory you find comforting but taken together we are seeing a trend. White people are figuring out that they are the target, not some abstract baddy like Nazis and racists. When they watch a football game, they see the crowd is white, but the ads all feature black people in unrealistic settings. Maybe they notice out loud around friends and those friends laugh uncomfortably at first, but then it becomes a thing.

This does not mean that every white person in America is suddenly going to become a white nationalist or anything close to it. What it means is that we are heading into a new phase of the struggle. White people are increasingly comfortable with the idea that they are being made a scapegoat because they are white. That means the lunatics bellowing about racism are suddenly going to see their audience shrink. Attitudes are shifting slowly and that changes the battlefield.

The hopelessly pessimistic will want to dismiss this as pessimism is a form of escapism, like libertarianism. The pessimist always seeks to dismiss the positive, so he does not have to act on it. He can remain on the sidelines, smugly brooding about the end of the world, while everyone else is in the struggle. His only comfort is the libertarian, smugly assuring him that he will be proven right in the end, between rounds of smelling his own farts, of course.

The reality of this struggle is that reality has always been on the side of dissident and is on the side of the people who make civilization possible. Civilization operates in a longer time span than we would like, but the course of history is always bending to conform with biological reality. It is often hard for us to see it, but there are times, like now, when you see the signs of a turning. Like the line about bankruptcy, revolutions are slowly then all of a sudden.

The New Enlightenment

Posted on December 22, 2021 by thezman

Note: This coming Thursday I will be on with the great Ed Dutton to explain to him that intelligence is a social construct used to defend white supremacy. The livestream is on the YouTube at 2PM eastern. He posts replay on Bitchute so when that link is available, it will be posted here.

If you were a typical European in the 17th century, you would not have been brimming with optimism. Life was tough for most people in that age because the margin for error was so small. If you made a wrong step behind the plow, you could break a leg and before long some guy is sawing off your leg to stop gangrene. Knock over a candle on the way to the latrine and your hut could burn down. Disaster was always lurking as even small things could quickly turn deadly.

If you were educated, material life was usually better, but being educated in an age of general ignorance is a special sort of curse. If you were an educated man in the 17th century, you knew about the Thirty Years War, so you were not all that optimistic about the intellectual future of mankind. Parts of Europe were reduced to cannibalism in an effort to hang onto antiquated modes of thought and order. Few people saw them as antiquated, which meant grinding war was normal.

Despite this, the West was on the cusp and the Enlightenment. Most people date the dawn of the period of Western intellectual flowering that is still with us today to around the start of the 18th century. Galileo was a man of the 17th century and Nicolaus Copernicus was a man of the 16th century. James Harrington published The Commonwealth of Oceana in 1656. As with any era in human history, pinpointing an exact starting point is mostly out of convenience, not accuracy.

The point here is that for most people alive in the 17th century, these intellectual stirrings were unknown. Even educated people were limited by the circumstances of the age as the dissemination of information was by foot. The printing press had revolutionized the production of books, but books were still expensive. Of course, most of the best and brightest were Thomist, so the new ideas from science would have looked like a threat to the natural order.

Of course, the political outlook was grim. The Peace of Westphalia had settled the Thirty Years War, but the underlying issues remained. The division of the world into Protestant and Catholic suggested eternal conflict. The English Civil War suggested that religious conflict within the Protestant side was inevitable. The great unity of faith maintained by the Catholic Church was forever broken. A reasonable, educated man could easily foresee a dark future for mankind.

It is a good reminder that we are not very good at judging the times in which we are living or seeing around the next bend. The cynical in the 17th century had no idea that the 18th century would be an unprecedented intellectual flowering. It was not all kittens and puppies, for sure, but in the rubble of war and upheaval were the seeds of a great leap forward intellectually and materially. No one living at the time knew that the birth of modern Europe was just over the next hill.

We could be in a similar period. Like the 17th century, this age looks like it is headed to endless conflict and barbarism. The old order is falling to pieces and random lunatics pop up with new religions. Just as 17th century man struggled to come to terms with what was happening, people in this age struggle to make sense of it all. Ours is an age of pointless chaos, often created by the people in charge, who should be the most aggressive defenders of the old order.

Like the 17th century, what lies at the root of the chaos is a collection of new ideas and new questions about the world. Genetics is promising to give us new insights into the nature of man. More important, it is threatening the old ideas about equality and the power to shape society. Extreme egalitarianism and the blank slate lie at the heart of the liberal democratic order. Questioning those concepts questions the legitimacy of the current political order in the West. Revolutionary stuff.

Like the printing press, the information age is threatening the flow of information in unpredictable ways. Much of the current crisis lies in the realization by the ruling elites that the people no longer take their word for anything. The natural authority that comes from the monopoly on information has been shattered. Lots of gentlemen scholars and part-time intellectuals are now challenging the definitions of those terms by spending their free time reading forbidden material on-line.

The 17th century was a revolutionary time, even though the people living in it did not realize they were at the cusp of a revolution. The expression about bankruptcy being slow and then all of a sudden applies to revolutions as well. Angry mobs in the streets are lagging indicators of revolution. Long before the masses raise the black flag and declare war on their rulers, clever men privately declared war on the ideas that gave the rulers their legitimacy. This is what we see today.

Like the people in 17th century, we now find ourselves in a time when the old order is desperately trying to adapt to new information. It is easy to forget that revolutionary thinkers like Locke and Hobbes were trying to adapt the old models of thought to the new information of their age. In other words, even the defense of order can be a revolutionary act that expedites challenges to the status quo. We see this today as people try to make science prove the blank slate.

There is always the possibility that we get at the macro level the equivalent of the peasant knocking over a lantern on the way to the toilet. The hysterical response to the plague and suicidal impulses of the new religion are ominous signs. The flicker of this new enlightenment could easily be extinguished by madman with super weapons destroying civilization to save democracy. History, however, tells us that this is not the way to bet. Instead, we are on the cusp of a new enlightenment.

Exciting Times

Posted on December 21, 2021 by thezman

One of the signs that you are living in an unpredictable age is that each year the world seems less predictable and reliable. When people say, “It is an exciting time” they generally mean it is an unpredictable time. Of course, when an enemy says, “May you live in exciting times” they are wishing you end up in an unpredictable age. The reason unpredictable is seen as a curse is it means uncertainty. When you cannot count on anything, you live in a world populated with risk.

Three years ago, no one in their right mind would have predicted that Joe Biden would be president or even alive. He was a frail old man. Two years ago, that was being confirmed as he staggered from one loss to the next in the primary. Then all of a sudden, the rest of the field retired and he was made the nominee. A year ago, his unlikely and unprecedented victory put a frail old man in the White House. Few people thought Biden would be alive, much less still president today.

That is what makes the coming year interesting. The ruling regime, mostly by their own hand, now live in interesting times. They have the midterms looming, which is always a rough time for the regime as fraud is at its lowest. They can get their believers agitated enough to “do what it takes” in presidential elections because they can personalize it for them, as we saw in 2020 and 2000. People forget that the 2000 election was the most fraud-ridden election up to that point.

On top of the normal problems they face; they have a president who is so out of his mind that mocking him seems cruel. A big part of his low approval numbers is an anger at the regime for installing a vegetable in the White House. That is compounded by the fact that his second is about as popular as rectal cancer. Fans cannot call for the backup president because she is worse than a vegetable. The whole thing is a train wreck with no obvious solution.

It is a good reminder that the people running the empire are no geniuses. They are clever, but not smart. Clever people know how to wiggle out of tight jams, but smart people know how to avoid the jams. Bill Clinton was clever because he could always slip the noose, but never smart enough to avoid the trap entirely. The people running the empire were able to outflank the hapless Donald Trump, but they just created another mess for themselves in the process.

Now, they have a president that will have to be replaced before the 2024 election simply due to his declining health. No one wants strong diverse female in the top job as it turns out she is dumber than her critics had claimed. If they are going to engineer a coup against her, it has to be done in 2022. Otherwise, they could face the prospect of getting a VP through a Republican House and Senate. Granted, the GOP will roll over and play dead, but it would still be ugly.

Of course, removing Harris from office and finding a suitable replacement would end up being like one of those airport brawls. The Harris staff would leave only after a World Star quality melee posted on Twitter. Even if that could be averted, who would they find to replace her as VP? The Left does not have the “take one for the team” mentality when it comes to this stuff. The only plausible option is Hillary Clinton, who would take the job on the condition that Biden dies in 2023.

That is just one enormous headache for the regime. Their loons are gearing up for what may be the most ridiculous show trial in history. The crackpots on the January 6th commission plan to entertain us starting in January. Imagine the increasingly deranged Liz Cheney and the bug-eyed Adam Schiff, stripped naked and sent running through a field full of garden rakes. That image is somber compared to what lies ahead for this ridiculous show trial they have planned.

It has been forgotten that this same crew managed to turn the second impeachment show into a laugh riot. In that farce, the witnesses were Jewish people with names that sounded like the roster of a Russian hockey team, but the they were mostly boring and incomprehensible. In this farce, the witnesses will be people expert at getting attention on social media. It is going to look like Reddit exploded and the bits landed at the witness table of this hearing. It is going to be bizarre.

We are just scratching the surface when it comes to the many dangers for the regime that lie just over the horizon. The economy is doing things all the smart people claimed was impossible and it is getting worse. The Covid panic has turned into something of a UFO cult that is beyond the ability of the rulers to control. This is just the stuff we know about right now. The future is never bright for a gerontocracy, but 2023 is looking to be exciting times for our geezer overlords.

The American empire is now firmly in its Crisis of the Third Century phase. This is when powerful actors see advantage in chaos. The regime itself sees chaos as a way to prevent the mobs from forming at the gates. The thought of normalcy is what keeps them up at night, so they embrace the chaos. Chaos cannot go on forever, so the exciting times will reach an end at some point. That point is always just beyond where people think it should lie, so 2023 promises to be an exciting time.

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