Regime-ology

Posted on March 31, 2022 by thezman

Regime-ology is a new field of study so the practitioners are still working out the tools and methods for interpreting regime activity. Unlike Kremlinology, on which regime-ology is modeled, the focus is not on a hierarchical structure. The Soviet empire was run by a vertical organization that operated like a corporation. The American empire is a horizontal organization modeled on the Mafia. It is a collection of elite gangster organizations jostling for power within the elite.

With Kremlinology, events could be interpreted as either a signal from the party elite or representing internal party changes. If someone disappeared from the public eye, it meant he had fallen out of favor with the party leaders. If party media reported something hanky about a party member, it was assumed to have been done with the permission of the party leaders to prepare the public for a change. The target was being shaped as a scoundrel so he could be denounced.

Regime-ology is a bit more complicated. If someone disappears for a while, it could mean nothing more than he is having a blood transfusion at one of Google’s secret rejuvenation centers. On the other hand, disparaging information about an oligarch in regime media could simply mean that one mob family is unhappy with another mob family and this is how they are communicating it. Using the media promotes the interests of the gangster class and delivers the message.

That is probably how to interpret the sudden interest by regime media in the famous Hunter Biden laptop from two years ago. For those not interested, this was the laptop that President Biden’s drug-addled son abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, which contained a trove of embarrassing information about the family. In addition to thousands of naked selfies and pics of Hunter smoking crack and meth with prostitutes, it had details of the Biden family criminal dealings.

Regime media dutifully covered this up by declaring it Russian propaganda and going as far as to imply it was a Trump campaign dirty trick. The New York Post, which was the first to report the laptop story, came under withering assault from the Silicon Valley crime families until they dropped the story. Facebook started banning people from their site for mentioning the story. Like the people air brushed from official photos in the Soviet Union, this story was erased from public view.

This is nothing new. The power of regime media is in what they can make the public ignore and this was a typical example. They do this by framing the issue as good guys versus bad guys, which is catnip for the American moralizer. Then they declare the thing to be ignored as the black hat and let the moralizers do the rest. Anyone mentioning the laptop on-line or even in private conversation was declared a crazy QAnon conspiracy theorist by others in their circle.

For no reason at all, the laptop story is back. First the intel community told the New York Times to admit they lied two years ago about it being fake. They did not mention that it was the intel community that lied, of course. Then the Washington Post was told to write about the Biden family’s criminal dealings that were on the laptop. The Post is the official organ of the intelligence community. You will recall that the Post was instrumental in the Russian collusion hoax in 2016.

Even more interesting, the scandal ridden outlet CNN has been given the green light to unleash their nutters on the story. This is a story posted by Dean Obeidallah, a former circus clown and far-left conspiracy theorist. In addition to being a conspiracy hub, CNN is also a popular landing spot for disgraced members of the intel community. Andrew McCabe and Josh Campbell landed there after being forced out of their jobs. The FBI uses CNN to control the Antifa/BLM community.

Taken together, this new interest in the Hunter Biden laptop story suggests the intel community is unhappy with the Biden crime family. It could be a warning shot about the recent rantings by Biden in Poland. This has created huge problems for the foreign policy gangsters running the war with Russia. They have been forced to spend their time telling European leaders that Biden should be ignored. This is not a good look for the Global American Empire in the middle of a crisis.

One way to look at this is that they are preparing the way for Biden to be removed from office this year. The plan was for him to pretend to be in charge through the midterm then hand things off to strong diverse female. Team Biden has been making plans for him to run again in 2024, while he is clearly in rapid decline. The Hunter Biden story could be the leverage to force Team Biden to stick to the deal. He takes the blame for the midterms, retires for health reasons and the laptop disappears.

On the other hand, this could be the start of a plot to hang the Ukraine debacle on Biden and his crooked son. The regime media is being told to sell the Ukraine war as a smashing success, but that can only go on for another month. Reality in the ground says the Russians are slowly grinding up the Ukrainian army. In a month, there will be little of it left in the east. Whether it is by force or by negotiations, the Russians will get the terms they laid out last month.

Then there are the economic sanctions. This is proving to be a disaster for the Global American Empire. The Germans just cut a deal with the Russians to buy gas in rubles, even through both sides are pretending otherwise. The Germans will buy the gas in Euros from Gazprom, which will then convert them immediately into rubles at the agreed upon exchange rate. This is de facto acceptance by Germany that they will buy gas from Russia in rubles. The rest of Europe will now follow.

What we could be seeing here is Afghanistan 2.0. The military industrial complex, the intel community and the foreign policy establishment opposed the withdraw from Afghanistan, but team Biden insisted on it. They let Afghanistan collapse and then let Team Biden take the blame for it. Notice that no one actually responsible in the military, intelligence of foreign policy realm was fired. We could be seeing the same thing afoot with the looming Ukraine disaster.

Again, regime-ology is a new field. We do not know what we do not know, so we are left to our imaginations. Maybe Hunter Biden is so mobbed up that even the thoroughly corrupt FBI has to acknowledge it. Maybe this is a feint to distract from something much worse that is in the wind. All we can know is that Hunter Biden will never be charged and we will never know the truth about the Biden family corruption. In a gangster state like America, those things are handled internally.

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Fighting Time

Posted on March 30, 2022 by thezman

One of the puzzles from the Great War is how the leaders on both sides allowed themselves to get drawn into the war. There are plenty of reasons why each country would want war, including the infamous one that caused a certain Austrian fellow to coin the term “the big lie.” The problem with all of the reasons is they made little sense in light of the obvious costs of war. As a result, the Great War is a great example of how events can tale on a life of their own.

The remarkable thing about that war is that once it settled into trench warfare no one realized the hopelessness of it. One can understand how the initial events would spiral into a global conflict. That is not a new phenomenon. Similarly, you can see how the initial moves in the war made a lot of sense to the leaders on both sides. This was the first industrial war, so they had a lot to learn. New weapons needed new tactics but few people realized that at the start of the war.

The great puzzle of the war is that the sides did not see the hopelessness of the situation once in settled into a stalemate. Both sides were losing tens of thousands of men with each attack, only to gain a few yards of ground. The Battle of the Marne and the subsequent race to the sea made sense. The losses were high, but both sides had hope for quick victory. Two years later the French and Germans lost over a million men at Verdun and the winner got nothing for their trouble.

A century on and we are getting some fresh insight into why the Western leaders in the Great War were incapable of seeing things clearly. The war in Ukraine is proving to be nothing like Western planners imagined. They assumed the Ukrainians would stall the Russians into a stalemate of urban warfare. The world would rally to the sanctions regime and it would quickly be a question of how long the Russians could suffer the economic consequences of the sanctions.

After just one month it is clear this is not happening. The Russians did not fight like the NATO planners imagined. Instead of rushing to Kiev, they pinned the Ukrainian army in the north, using classic maneuver tactics. Meanwhile their main army is systematically destroying the Ukrainian army in the south and east. It also appears the Russians were well prepared for the Ukrainian tactic of digging into urban areas. It is now just a matter of time before the Ukrainian army in the east is lost.

That is just one miscalculation by the West, but it should be concerning. The Russians are not doing anything novel in Ukraine. They are using classic tactics that have been used in Europe since Napoleon. Further, they are following a doctrine they evolved in the Second Chechen war. That was a doctrine Vladimir Putin created as the guy running that war for Russia. It seems that no one in the west bothered to study the man they claim is the new Hitler.

That is only one small part of the miscalculation. The decision to cutoff the Russian central bank appears to have been a massive blunder. The Russians, faced with the threat of their dollar and Euro assets being seized by Western banks have told the West they must pay for goods in rubles. Otherwise, they are forced to send product to the West but not be paid for it. Alternatively, they would have to make concessions in order to get their assets unfrozen by the West.

Why anyone in the West thought this was a good idea is a mystery. It turns out that the Biden administration did not consult with the Federal Reserve. Europe appears to have just followed along without questioning the policy. Now that Russia has countered their move, Europe is in a terrible position. They either support the ruble with massive purchases or they face an imminent shortage of natural gas. That means rationing of energy products could happen as soon as next month.

Of course, the words “shortage” and “rationing” will trigger the natural response, which is hording and price gouging. That will also mean a political response. The German political elite appear to be embracing their inner Marie Antoinette by telling the Germans to wear a sweater as they shiver in the dark. Presumably, they will tell the people to eat bugs when the food shortages hit this summer. Maybe German TV will start celebrating the Turnip Winter as a way to motivate the public.

In fairness, we have to no idea how the Russians and Chinese are viewing this thing as Western media refuses to cover that aspect. We should assume the lack of food riots and social unrest in Russia means they are not teetering on collapse. This was the prediction at the start of this war. The best and brightest in the American managerial elite predicted the Russians would have collapsed by now. They also assumed China would be wavering in their support at this stage.

The point is, we are seeing in real time how supposedly clever political leaders can stagger from one blunder to the next. Unlike the Great War, this war has one side that seems to have updated its thinking since the last century. The Russians are planning for tomorrow, while the West is planning for 1985. The Biden people actually thought his speech in Poland would be his Brandenburg Gate moment. That is the most terrifying event of this crisis so far.

There we see the best parallel to the Great War. The men moving pieces on the board were men of a prior age. They were trying to fight the old wars. Similarly, the political leaders were operating in a 19th century mindset. The trouble was they were armed with 20th century weaponry. Today, the West is led by 20th century men desperate to maintain 20th century arrangements. Their opponent is not Russian, China or the new world order, but the passage of time.

The Crisis

Posted on March 29, 2022 by thezman

Broadly speaking, a crisis comes in two forms. There is the internal crisis driven by irreconcilable contradictions. Then there is the external crisis that is driven by some unusual occurrence like a natural disaster. The latter tests mostly the ability of the system to weather the storm and recover. The former tests the ability of the system to radically alter itself in order to address the contradiction. This is the most dangerous crisis and the one that few systems survive.

Of course, the internal crisis can be papered over for a long time until some external crisis comes along and makes that impossible. The external crisis puts pressure on the system, forcing it to respond under duress. The internal problems are then made obvious as the system responds poorly. Efforts to quickly resolve those issues in order to address the immediate problems just create new problems. This was the process that led to the French Revolution.

It is also where the Global American Empire finds itself. In theory, the system relies on the trust of the people. The citizens of America trust that the way they choose leaders, while never perfect, eventually gets them leaders who address the needs of the people by respecting the will of the people. It may require a few elections, but the politicians eventually figure out what they need to do to make things right. This belief rests on the additional belief that the politicians want this result.

That is not reality and people are clearly beginning to understand this. Most Americans have no genuine representation in Congress. The Democrats represent abstract identity groups that get plenty of airtime but are a tiny minority. Most people, for example, only know crossdressers through the media, not in real life. Most black people can easily describe a woman. Of course, the GOP represents no one. White voters are well outside the ideological orbit of the Republicans.

After the 2020 election, it was generally assumed that Joe Biden would not finish out his first term in office. His physical condition was the main reason. During the campaign he was mostly kept out of the public eye. When he was in public, he looked like a man struggling with the ravages of time. There was also the fact that his second was clearly picked to be his successor. The Left has developed an obsession with elevating black females and Kamala Harris is supposedly one of them.

The betting initially was that Biden would make it through the midterms and then announce that he was stepping down for health reasons. This would allow Harris to finish Biden’s term and then run for two terms on her own. This was a left-wing talking point that was echoed by mainstream conservatives. It was mostly about depressing the populist opposition. That plan assumed every other part of their grand strategy would go according to theory.

Here we are seven months out from the November elections and it is clear that Joe Biden needs to be removed from office now. His insane rantings in Europe about Russia have terrified the rest of the world. More important, the world is adjusting to the fact that the Global American Empire has an incoherent figure head. The Russians call him grandfather, not out of respect but from pity. The world sees Biden as a doddering old man who is not in charge of his administration.

This is an untenable situation. Every political system requires energy in the executive, even if it is just symbolic. The North Korean public is regularly treated to images of Kim Jong-un looking vigorous and in charge. The Chinese make sure Xi Jinping looks like a CEO of a successful firm. American presidents have often been shown doing cool outdoor things like chopping wood or playing sports. Society needs a leader and one who looks like he is fit and ready to lead. That is not Joe Biden.

Of course, the times need a fit leader. The crisis in Europe has now become a global crisis because no one has a hand on the tiller. The inmates are running the asylum in the Biden Administration. In prior generations, this crisis would have featured one-on-one meetings between the ruler of the Global American Empire and the parties at the center of the dispute. In this case, it would have meant a summit between Russia, China and the Global American Empire.

Ukraine is not the only issue. The fallout from two years of Covid mismanagement are creating serious trouble for normal people. Food prices have been climbing for a year and are now rising at an alarming rate. Retail and wholesale inflation are at levels not seen since the 1970’s. Labor markets are now showing the first signs of crisis as the deliberate demographic changes turnup in hiring. This is the unsaid basis of the commercial pilot shortage in America.

In other words, the Global American Empire is facing both serious external crises and irreconcilable internal crises. The lack of energy in the executive is allowing these problems to spiral out of control. Compounding it is the fact that the plan to install Kamala Harris looks unworkable. She is mentally and emotionally unfit for the ceremonial position she has now. The weird cackling and general ineptitude say she can never be permitted to hold power.

Of course, the coming elections mean a blowout of historic proportions for the ruling half of the uniparty. Professionals who study these things suggest this may be the worst election conditions for either party in American history. As a practical matter, that means the Republican half of the uniparty will play a major role in selecting the person to fill the remainder of Biden’s term. They may be tasked with removing Biden and Harris in order to save the system from total ruin.

That sounds like good news for the system, but the Republican half of the uniparty is every bit as inept and morally bankrupt as the other half. Again, this is a party without a genuine constituency. Their voters are just choosing the least bad option. That option is built to deny those voters real power. In other words, leadership of the system will go from people obsessed over esoteric identity groupings to people focused on denying the majority any influence over the system.

For normal people, this means a system that becomes increasingly erratic and paranoid about the general public. The things that matter like employment conditions, food prices and energy costs will continue to get worse. The standard of living is about to drop precipitously for most people. The quality of life is also going to decline. This is the cycle that the aristocracy faced in 18th century France. It is also what the party faced in the waning years of the Soviet Union.

The China Trap

Posted on March 28, 2022 by thezman

Note: I did a 90-minute interview with the Friends of Aquinas channel. I have to say it was a very enjoyable conversation. The Monday Taki post is up. Of course, Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door along with Thursday War Talk.

The Western media has been set to frame the war in Ukraine as a replay of the events in the 1930’s, with a healthy does of American moralizing. Putin is Hitler, of course, and Ukraine is the totally innocent victim. The narrative this time is different, because the “good guys” were ready and they have lured Putin into a trap. Biden made public what has been said privately, which is that Washington is planning regime change for Russia and then will move onto regime change in China.

It is entirely possible that this admission is not the result of a Biden gaffe or a bit of 4-D chess by his handlers. instead, this may be part of a trap laid by China, and to a lesser degree, Russia. Joe Biden admitted what most world leaders have understood since the war in Iraq. That is, the Global American Empire has no respect for the politics of other countries, so if they see those politics as a hindrance, they will try to decapitate the government and install a friendly regime.

Further, the reckless response by Washington to the Russian invasion has caused most of the world to rethink the global financial system. Saudi Arabia is now talking with China about doing business in something other than dollars. India has struck a deal with Russia to do business in rupees. India and Russia are now using China’s alternative to the SWIFT system for bank communications. Suddenly there is a race to build parallel financial structures by most of the world.

The primary beneficiary of this result is China. The reason the world prefers to do business in dollars and use US treasuries as collateral is the system of rules governing global finance are rooted in the dollar as the default currency. Those rules benefit America at the expense of the world, but the trade-off has been a fixed and predictable set of rules, including responsible management of the global currency. That trade-off no longer makes sense thanks to Washington’s actions.

That has been the primary result of the sanctions. Washington broke the basic rules of the system to launch this attack on Russia. Cutting off Moscow has been seen by most of the world as a violation of the basic promise of the system. Cutting of the Russian central bank without consulting the rest of the world is probably going to be viewed as the great mistake of this whole affair. That is supposed to be a punishment agreed upon by the world in only the worst cases.

The question no one is asking is whether China saw this as a potential outcome of the Russian invasion. They seem to have been prepared for it. Similarly, Russia seems to have been prepared for the assault. The ruble declined but stabilized after the Moscow central bank stepped into stabilize it. China was ready to meet with India and Russia to work out a joint response. Even South Africa seems to have been in the loop on what to do if Washington came down hard on Russia.

The fact is, Russia never would have gone into Ukraine without knowing the Chinese would backstop them financially. Russian is a big powerful country, but it is a relatively poor country so it cannot go it alone for too long. It is true that Iran has figured out how to get around the sanctions regime, but Russians have had a taste of the good life and would no doubt tire of the hardships. With China and India bucking the sanctions regime, those hardships are now greatly minimized.

Reports indicate that Washington was telling Beijing that Moscow was plotting the invasion and may have signaled their response. China has plenty of spies embedded in Washington, as well as the big social media companies. People forget that China downloaded the data from the Office of Professional Management. They have lots of close friends in Washington politics. The point being is that China probably had a good idea of what America was planning as a response.

If you look at a map, what you see is that most of the world is not going along with the sanctions regime on Russia. Instead of the West isolating Russia, it looks like it is the rest of the world isolating the West. More important, the cost of the sanctions regime is hitting the West where they feel it, their wallets. Prices are soaring in Western countries for food and fuel. Britain is about to experience the biggest drop in the standard of living since records have been kept.

It very well may be that the reason Russia invaded Ukraine is it was part of a much larger plan to deal with the Global American Empire. Russia saw the chance to reassert her ancient claims in eastern Europe and weaken NATO. China saw the chance to bait Washington into smashing its own financial system. The rest of the world is objectively looking at things and seeing a new multipolar world. They want to be on good terms with all of the new power centers of the future.

It is too soon to know if Washington is being played, but the indications thus far suggest they do not see what is happening. Allegedly, the Biden people did not talk to the Federal Reserve about their sanctions regime. This is why cutting off the Moscow central bank has blown up in their face. That is the sort of error that suggests the decision makers are not thinking things through. They also seem to have fell for the military assessments from the Pentagon.

We will know much more in the coming months, but it is possible that what we are seeing is the result of a clever trap laid out by Beijing and Moscow. The war in Ukraine is just one piece of a larger puzzle. This is a puzzle clear to everyone but Washington, which is still high off the fumes of the 1990’s. They still believe they are at the end of history and leading the world to the promised land. Instead, they may be leading the West into a massive financial disaster.

Live Stream

Posted on March 26, 2022 by thezman

At Noon Eastern, I will be on with Friends of Aquinas.

Free Speech

Posted on March 25, 2022 by thezman

If you are old enough to remember the 1990’s or earlier, then you remember when the Left was the free speech side of the debate. If you are a Baby Boomer then you probably remember the Free Speech Movement. It is an odd thing that has happened in the last ten years or so where the poles have reversed on many things, but none more so than the issue of speech. It is what the left-wing crazies call the “far-right” that upholds the old liberal traditions on speech, not the Left.

In 1978, the ACLU came to the aid of a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie. The area was mostly Jewish, which is why the group wanted to march through their neighborhood. The ACLU made clear that they thought the group was full of terrible people but they had a right to march wherever marching was permitted. Young people were taught in school about this because it was supposed to be a great example of the free speech principle.

There is no way the ACLU would do this today. Instead, they would be on the other side trying to ruin the lives of anyone who dared speak up for the group. The ACLU, like all of the legacy civil rights groups from last century, opposes the basic civil rights of white Americans on the grounds of race. It is a good corollary to Robert Conquest’s second law of politics. Any organization that does business with leftists eventually is consumed by or destroyed by leftists.

The interesting thing about speech and the so-called far-right is that many who claim to be far-right also oppose Western liberalism. You have people who want an authoritarian state, but also say they want free speech. Free expression is inextricably bound up in liberal governance. You cannot have a liberal society in the Western sense without free expression and you cannot have illiberal government with it. Free expression is the cornerstone of the liberal society.

It is why the Antifa types are anti-speech. They are illiberal and authoritarian. These are people who make various claims to communism, Marxism and even anarchism, but embrace the unfettered use of corporate power to suppress speech. It is fair to say that the anti-speech movement in America is the expression of corporate power. Of course, what passes for the Left these days operates from the HR departments of global enterprise and free speech is antithetic to the corporate state.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00: Opening
03:00: The War On Speech
23:00: The Benefit of Speech
43:00: The Harm of Speech

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The Evolution of War

Posted on March 24, 2022 by thezman

Comments: I know the spam filter has become annoying to some. I am working on an alternative to what I am using. In the interim I have made a few changes and will keep tinkering with the current system. Thank you for your patience.

The first men to go to war with men from another tribe no doubt went to that first battle with the weapons they used to hunt. We have no record of that first battle, but we can safely assume it involved spears, clubs and probably rocks. It is possible that the throwing rock was developed just for these battles, as the thrown rock is much more effective against men than animals. The throwing rock is probably the first weapon developed just for killing other men.

One day a group of men decided to raid the territory of another tribe and they were met with a terrifying new weapon, the bow and arrow. Again, we have no idea when this happened, but logic says there was a first time use for the bow in war. A group sorted out how to launch a small version of their spear at an animal. This was much safer than getting up close and personal. The next logical step was to use this cool new weapon against invaders from another tribe.

Maybe it was the sling or maybe it was the bow, but most likely it was the fear of projectile weapons that led to the shield and the use of it. Shields are useful against spears, but they limit offensive ability. Again, we will never know, but most likely there was a first battle where the shield was used. The guys with bows were stunned to see this new terrifying weapon. Instead of raining death down on their enemy, their enemy was able to advance under the cover of their shields.

We are seeing this playout in Ukraine. The Russians are probably the world’s best at tank strategy. They have a lot of them and they have always been at the top in terms of tank technology. Russia is a land power, so it makes sense that they are the best with the dominant weapons of land warfare. In the Second World War it was the T-34 that beat back the Nazis and drove them back to Berlin. It remains the most popular tank in the world, despite being 80-years old.

The terrifying counter is the anti-tank weapon. The concept is pretty simple. You launch a missile at a tank that can penetrate its armor. The trick is either in hitting the tank from beyond its range or getting close enough to hit it from a blind spot. This is where the modern anti-tank weapons have become so important. The Javelin system allows a team of two to get close, fire from cover and take out a tank. The weapon is cheap and it can be used by the dumbest infantrymen.

The effects of this weapon are clear in Ukraine. Instead of leading with their armor, the Russians have been forced to use artillery and cruise missiles to soften up the line of contact and then use infantry to clear the way for tanks. This has not made the tank obsolete, but it has forced a change in its use. It now has to be deployed initially as a stand-off weapon, like an artillery piece. Instead of being the tip of the spear for ground forces, it is now a follow on weapon.

As an aside, this is a good example of the knock-on effect. Since the anti-tank weapon neutralizes the tank, the counter is the use of artillery. In the second Chechen war and now in Ukraine, the Russians are relying on their massive artillery advantage, which is turning the defensive positions into rubble. In other words, the Ukrainians will still lose and they will have their cities reduced to dust. The anti-tank weapon is making war bloodier and costlier to the civilian population.

The West thinks this is all good news, but there is bad news for the Global American Empire in Ukraine. For starters, the Russians have had the chance to test their S-400 surface-to-air missile system against serious opposition. It turns out to be as lethal as advertised, able to take out aircraft from over 250-miles away. It is cheap, mobile and easy to deploy in a wide range of conditions. It is to American air power what the Javelin missile system is to Russian tank warfare.

The American way of war is to gain air superiority and then pound the enemy from the sky until their mobility and communications are broken. Then the ground forces come in to attack the weakened enemy positions. The S-400 suddenly turns those 100-million dollar aerial weapons platforms into expensive target practice. Since these systems are cheap and getting cheaper, they will proliferate. It is why America threatens every country that buys them with sanctions.

That is not the only bad news. The Russians have been testing what the media is calling a hypersonic missile. The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-to-surface system is probably not a hypersonic weapon, given the technical issues involved with the technology, but that does not matter. It is fast enough, lethal enough and cheap enough to pose a serious problem for a sea power like America. The ability to strike a relatively small target from over a thousand miles away is a game changer.

The reason this is important is it means those carriers America relies upon to project air power will quickly become expensive target practice. Some have argued that this has already happened with land-based anti-ship weapons, but that is disputed. This new system ends the debate. If America wants to deploy carriers to protect Taiwan, they will soon need to find a way to make them invisible. Otherwise, they are billion dollar monuments to man’s innovative nature.

Of course, these innovations that are neutralizing the strengths of great power militaries are not new. The grinding deadlock of the Great War was due, in part, to the ability of all sides to neutralize offensive weapons, other than artillery. Both sides were left to pound one another from extensive trench systems. In this age, it means both sides are left with stand-off systems like missiles. It also makes the use of nuclear weapons more attractive as a way to break the deadlock.

This being the modern age, the trenches will be virtual. America launched the equivalent of a race to the sea by breaking all promises and declaring financial war on the Russian economy. The Russians have responded but have yet to launch their best financial weapons. China and India are now joining the fight, America has announced sanctions on China in response. Instead of trench war, this century’s great war will mean barriers to trade and capital.

Instead of reducing Europe to a moonscape, it will bring about a global depression that will set off unknown consequences. The world will have a food shortage this year due to the halt of agricultural products from Russia. Energy prices are rising, which will amplify the inflation pressure. Like the Great War, we are about to enter a test of wills where all sides try to bring the other to the breaking point economically. Washington is betting you can starve longer than Russians or Chinese.

Elite Dysfunction

Posted on March 23, 2022 by thezman

It is popular in some circles to compare the current crisis to that which gripped America at the end of the 1960’s cultural revolution. Then as now, the white middle-class was disenchanted with government. The nation also faced maddening economic problems like stagflation. Similarly, the issue of race was center stage, largely driven by the political Left. We even have a version of the Nixon years in Donald Trump having been impeached twice for vexing the Washington elite.

This comparison is natural as the dominant demographic in American is the Baby Boomer generation who came of age in this period. It often feels like the current political elite is nostalgic for that time and is trying to recreate it. The cargo cult vibe was most evident in the Trump years. This comparison is also reassuring as what followed the turmoil and ugliness of the 1970’s was the reforms of the Reagan years and a long period of economic stability and prosperity.

It is a comforting narrative, but the comparison is superficial. For example, in the 1970’s, before Reagan was a realistic option, a consensus was forming among the various elites of society around important reforms. Business and banking elites had concluded that the regulatory code needed drastic reform in order for the economy to adjust to the changing economic realities. Those FDR era regulations designed to limit the accumulation of capital had to be rewritten

Reforms to the regulatory regime actually started under Jimmy Carter. The Airline Deregulation Act was passed in 1978. This begun three years earlier when Ted Kennedy took credit for launching the initiative. The monetarist revolution in finance began in the 1970’s and culminated in the appointment of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979. He famously began the process of takling inflation by tightening the money supply.

The point is that long before Reagan was an option, the elites in America were coalescing around a reform agenda. Business, finance, the military and the political class were thinking about a reform agenda. The public was hungry for reform, as they were suffering directly from the excesses of the cultural revolution and the recklessness of left-wing economic policy. Of course, the country was demographically stable with a majority population of close to 90%.

Critics of the comparison to the 1970’s start with that last bit. America is now a balkanized land of strangers. Thirty years of open borders has brought tens of millions of alien people into the country. Thirty years of policies aimed at busting up families and communities have hit their mark. The United States will be a majority-minority society within the next twenty years. Recreating the 1980’s consensus with a population that looks nothing like that of the 1980’s seems impossible.

That may be true, but the bigger problem is at the other end. The truth is no one voted for the tax reform agenda in the 1980’s. No one voted for regulatory reform or even the reforms of the military. These items were never on the agenda in an explicate way, but rather in the form of personalities. People vote for people. The pleasant people on the side of the elite agenda won national elections and the boring and often weird people opposed to that agenda lost those elections.

Fast forward to the present crisis and it is hard to tease out a reform agenda from the current ruling elites. Wall Street is operating like they are planning to swallow the family jewels, pack a suitcase and head for the border. It is a massive bust out of what is left of the American economy. Global business is more interested in currying favor with China and India than in what is happening in America. In both cases, the viewpoint is post-nationalism and even post-American.

The military industrial complex, which was essential to the reform efforts of the 70’s and 80’s, is locked in a defensive crouch. Its singular focus is on maintaining its budget, even at the expense of its effectiveness. They have embraced the dangerous antiwhite politics of the academy, just to please the budget makers in Washington. We have seen men claiming to be generals sobbing about their whiteness, all so they can please the deranged people on the appropriations committee.

Washington, of course, is a disaster. The old conservative side of the political class is trapped in the 1980’s. It is nothing but old men sentimental for their long dead heroes and young men flattering them for a paycheck. The old progressive side is a museum exhibit that talks. For them it is either 1968 or 1938. Then you have the new generation of radicals who are a toxic blend narcissism and ignorance. The few populist voices in the political class have no agenda to offer.

People like to talk about how “polarized” the public is on the various issues, but in reality, it is the ruling elite that is shattered. The only thing holding them together is the growing fear that the tide will go out and the world will see that they have been swimming naked. The impulse to surround themselves with razor wire and armed soldiers is the one thing they have in common. For them, reform is simply how to get better tools to keep the rabble at bay.

The biggest disparity between the crisis of the 1970’s and the crisis of today is in the intellectual class. The reformers of the 70’s and 80’s had a massive library of thought and analysis to draw from while debating reform. Conservatism was brimming with critiques and proposals. Monetary reform, for example, was the result of decades of debate on the topic. Even on the Left there was active debate about what comes after the cultural revolution of the 1960’s.

Today, intellectual life is barren within the mainstream. On the Left there is no debate, just a collection of bizarre theories from post-Marx radicalism. Their answer to inflation is a protest in favor of crossdressers playing girls’ sports. Conservatism is a dead space now and the debate over how to reform it is sentimental revanchism. No one in elite intellectual circles is capable of starting from present reality and talking about how to change the institutions to adapt to the new reality.

The reform era we associate with Reagan and the conservative movement was largely the result of a ruling elite seeking to revitalize itself. This was obvious if you read elite journals of the time. Reform was a serious topic debated by serious people. Today we see the opposite. The elites show no interest in revitalizing themselves and they actively discourage debates to the contrary. The current crisis looks more like 1970’s Soviet Union than 1970’s America.

Now, this is where dissidents will chime in with two corrections. One is that the claim that elites are plotting to reform the world. The Build Back Better stuff was a plan to reorganize society in their image. The World Economic Forum is an effort to reform the management of the West. Biden’s animators are now having him mouth the words “new world order” in speeches. In other words, the elite are trying to reform the world, just not in a way that serves the public interest.

The other claim is that these debates are no longer happening in elite publications or in elite forums. Instead, they are happening at private confabs like Davos or maybe at the Bohemian Club’s annual retreat. The global over-class now conducts its business far away from public view. Further, it aims are not expressed in legislation but in global regulation through international organizations. Non-governmental organization now do the hard work that used to be done by national legislatures.

The problem with the first critique is that what is being sold as a new world order shows no signs of being a reform movement. Instead, it looks like a lagging indicator of civilizational collapse. Like the American elite, the Western elite is held together by the fear the system will not hold. Guys like Klaus Schwab, the comical head of the World Economic Forum, are just monorail salesman exploiting the angst of the Western managerial elites. He is running a long con.

As to the second critique, there is no evidence that the people driving elite policy are operating from anything by avarice. You do not see deep thinkers invited to their soirées at Davos or other elite confabs. Maybe there are secret gatherings of the elites where their big-brained advisors layout their plans for global domination. Without any evidence to support this claim, there is no reason to think it is true. Instead, the chaos we are seeing probably reflects the chaos of the elites.

Now, it is possible that there is an elite consensus forming up, but it needs a bit more pain to whip it into existence. The coming economic disorder, which will show up in the streets and the voting booth, may be the remedy to elite dysfunction. On the other hand, we may have reached a point where elite consensus is no more likely than a popular consensus in a majority-minority society. Elite dysfunction may be a sign of a looming crackup of the old order.

The Hive Mind

Posted on March 22, 2022 by thezman

One of the transcendent features of left-wing people, regardless of time and place, is their complete lack of self-awareness. The great blind spot for all left-wing people is the reflection in the mirror. They are incapable of seeing themselves other than as the hero in a great struggle. This story out of Canada about the correlation between Covid-loving and Putin-hating is a great example. The Left thinks it confirms their righteous hatred of their enemy, but it merely confirms their lack of self-awareness.

According to the story, “Unvaccinated Canadians are about 12 times more likely than those who received three doses to believe Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was justified, according to a new survey by national polling firm EKOS.” Now, polling is a dodgy business, so this could be a fake poll designed to titillate the far-left. The fact that such a scenario is possible, however, is more proof of the general thesis about the far-left’s lack of self-awareness.

There are two ideas advanced in the coverage of this poll. One is that the unvaccinated are immoral, so it stands to reason that they support the evil Hitler guy. The Left all over the West has been fixated on the vaccine as a moral signifier. They rushed to be the first to prove their piety within the Covid cult and they rushed to condemn the vaccine skeptics as ignorant hooligans. The Left would have embraced face tattoos for the vaccinated if it was an option.

That was something else that turned up in places with vaccine mandates. There was some suggestion that the unvaccinated be forced to wear armbands, but there were two problems with that plan. One is the obvious link to some unfortunate events that occurred in the last century. The other is the Left instinctively feared the armband would become a moral signifier for their enemies. The unvaccinated would use it to show they are the star-bellied sneetches of this age.

The other idea advanced in the story is the claim that the people who did not want the vaccine are now pushing “Russian disinformation” about the war. The whole disinformation meme has two aspects for the hive-minded. One is the moral claim, but the other is ignorance. You see, those who are not repeating the latest talking points from the hive leaders are stupid and ignorant, which is why they succumb to the disinformation campaigns from the current devils.

Again, the poll and the media coverage have that just-so-story feel that is popular with the far-left, so skepticism is the right position here. The polling companies are extremely cynical, as befits people who make a living serving sociopaths. They are perfectly willing and able to feed nonsense to the true believers, because that is how they make a lot of money. The customer is always right and their customers are the weird identity cult that has gripped the managerial class. Here is an example.

“I saw it almost immediately, within days of the invasion, people supporting it and some quite stridently,” said Timothy Caulfield, a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta who has studied the rise and spread of conspiracy theories. “It was pro-Russia, pro-Putin, it was the same kind of dogmatic language you heard from the anti-vaxxers about the alleged harms associated with vaccines. And it was almost immediate and it was from the same crowd.”

This is a guy who rushed to get the Ukraine lapel pin and immediately started saying “Keev” instead of “Kiev” while not being able to locate Ukraine on a map. One day, normal people are seeing their favorite news presenters discussing the latest pop stars and the next day those news presenters are part of a chorus singing the praises of a place called Ukraine. What we have seen from the managerial class over Ukraine is the definition of dogmatic.

Of course, this is that lack of self-awareness we expect from the Left. People engage in left-wing politics for the same reason they join UFO cults. They hate themselves so they look to swap their hated sense of self for the identity of a group. The primary driver is self-loathing. In the case of the managerial class, the perceived status that is awarded to the believer is an important bonus. The true believer loses herself in the identity of the group and gets likes from higher status people.

There is another factor to the appeal of this stuff. People attracted to left-wing politics tend to have disorderly minds and the simplicity of left-wing political framing provides needed structure. It is why it is not unusual to see a highly-credentialed left-wing person who is useless independently. They took to the structure of school, because they needed it. They did not learn anything they could apply on their own, because that was never the point of education for them.

Now as far as the unvaccinated, the unclean and the pro-Putin stuff, this is a lot like other bogeymen that have haunted the Left. Few people in the West are genuinely pro-Putin or pro-Russian with regards to the war in Ukraine. There are those prudently skeptical of the chanting from the usual suspects and those opposed to getting involved in the war. Some on-line are mocking the dogmatism of the Left with over-the-top, cartoonish Russia support.

This is reflected in the poll. Seventy percent of the unvaccinated were honest enough to say they do not have an opinion on Ukraine. Only five percent of the true believers offered no opinion. These are the same people who thought ornamental face gear scared away Covid spirits. They still think closing bars and restaurants magically prevents Covid. They are the people who believe what they are told and faithfully point and hiss at those who are not easily convinced.

Note that the poll compares the self-described unvaccinated with those who are maximally vaccinated. The fact that they left out the reluctantly vaccinated and the compulsory vaccinated is telling. Most likely those results did not fit the narrative the poll is intended to support. Most people took the vaccine out of necessity, their doctor recommended it or they hoped it would put the charade to an end. The genuinely enthusiastic for vaccines are a small subset of the population.

The reaction by the Left to the war in Ukraine is another reminder that it is impossible to constructively engage with true believers. Deeply religious people can usually understand why you do not share their faith. They are faithful, but they are not unaware of themselves. The Left is a different breed of believer. They do no seek salvation from the world. They seek salvation from themselves. This is why they obsess over the latest enemies of their cause. That is their salvation.

Realism and Ukraine

Posted on March 21, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up. I take up the same theme in the post today, but from a slightly different angle. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door and it is all about the big story.

America is a nation of moralizers, which is why every issue is cast as a fight between good guys and bad guys. This is something that goes to the very beginning of the country and it continues to define the culture. We saw this with Covid, where it quickly became a fight between those who worshipped Covid and those who were the villains for not obediently following government commands. We are seeing it with the war in Ukraine, where it is all good guys and bad guys.

Reality, of course, is not white hats versus black hats, at least not when it comes to relations between countries and people. The Charles de Gaulle quip that “No nation has friends only interests” reflects this reality. The moral thing to do in international affairs is that which serves the interests of the people. That will often conflict with what is seen as the right thing to do by some other nation. This is made clear in Ukraine, where Russia is waging a war in what they see as their vital interests.

If one needs to have a moral principle in this area, then it is that a moral government acts in the interests of its people. After all, the point of government, no matter the style of government, is to protect the collective interest of the society. For government to act outside the interest of the society means it is not a legitimate government. It is something imposed on an unwilling population. This is the argument against colonialism, no matter the practical benefits to the locals.

With that in mind we can assess the players in Ukraine. The Russian side is the easiest as Putin has been the most vocal in explaining his motives. The Russians see NATO, especially America, as an expansionist adversary. They are not wrong about this, at least with regards to the United States. The whole point of meddling in Ukraine has been to destabilize Russia. Washington views conquering Russian as unfinished business from the Cold War.

The Russians have had to lie back and take it since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but now they have decided to fight back. From their perspective, Ukraine is the line in the sand and they are acting from both the narrow interests of Russia, but also the historical reality of Eurasia. The Russians, in part, define themselves within the greater definition of Eurasia. Their role is to defend this region, which includes the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, who they see as brothers.

One can not like the results of this point of view and also respect it. War is an ugly business and it is a tragedy for the people in Ukraine. The Russians are not wrong, however, in how they view the situation. They see they have no choice and it is clear they are right about that. The West has done nothing to seek peace, instead opting to flood the area with weapons. It is a terrible thing, but the actions of Russia align with that old Charles de Gaulle maxim.

One the other side is Ukraine, which is a much more complicated thing as there is more than one player. There is the Zelensky government, which is largely the creation of Washington. Then you have the various nationalists groups. How much they have been supported by Washington is unknown. Then there are opposition groups that want Ukraine to follow the model of Belarus. They are characterized as pro-Russian, but they view themselves as the genuine Ukrainian nationalists.

The easy one to analyze is the Zelensky government. It is clear at this point that they have no interest in the people. They are in this for personal reasons. If they cared about the interest of Ukrainians, they never would have gone down this road. They certainly would not be telling Ukrainians to fight to the death, while they shoot videos for Western consumption in Poland. Instead, they would be ready to take the deal on offer, but that is not where their bread is buttered, so the war continues.

The ultranationalists, on the other hand, are the mirror of the Zelensky government, in that they are motivated by ideals. They have an image of a Ukrainian ethnostate modeled on Israel and Japan. This may be unrealistic or even insane, but they genuinely believe it is in the best interest of their people. The fact that they are being used by Washington as a disposable pawn on the international chessboard is a good reminder that the enemy of the national interests is naivety.

As an aside, this is the appeal to Western nationalists. Nationalism does not exist in the West as a practical matter. There are no nationalists parties, other than those wearing the idea as a fig leaf. Victor Orban is popular with the American Right because he is seen as something that has not existed in American politics for a century. In Western Europe, genuine nationalism is forbidden. This makes the Ukrainian nationalists seem like heroes, despite the disastrous results on the ground.

Finally, we have America, which is the world’s great meddler. The Biden administration could end the war tomorrow, but their real supporters see a profit in prolonging the conflict so that is the plan. This means a decline in the standard of living for Americans and possibly worse. They have repeatedly said that your suffering is the price they are willing to pay for whatever it is they are doing. The interests of Americans count for no more than the lives of Ukrainians.

Of all the players in this war, it is Washington that is the furthest away from the standard implied by Charles de Gaulle quip. There are no American interests in Ukraine and the American people are not benefitting from the war. In fact, Washington is much like the Zelensky government, in that they are acting from narrow self-interest. It was not so long ago when it was revealed that the Biden family had been taking bribes from the Ukrainians going back to the Obama years.

The best one can say about the Washington position is they are demanding you and your family suffer in defense of the abstract principles of liberal democracy. Maybe you can fashion an argument that says they are acting from the interest of the Global American Empire, which benefits some residents of North America. Many nationalists have drawn a parallel between this view and the and Eurasianism while condemning Russia and supporting Ukraine.

The problem with that approach is it puts the self-proclaimed Western nationalists on the side of the Global American Empire and the EU, entities that are explicitly anti-nationalists and arguably anti-Western. This quickly looks like a suicide pact in favor of maintaining intellectual purity in the face of reality. It is a reminder that intellectual purity can be as self-defeating as moral purity when it comes to reality. No man should put his ideals ahead of the life of his people.

In the end we are where history always leads us. There are no good guys or bad guys, no grand morality tale to frame the future. Ukraine is about the nature of great powers, fading empires and the decline of the West under American leadership. War is the violent transition from one scene of history to the next. What must matter to the genuine nationalist is what is best for his people, even if it means being flexible on those noble ideas that are so inspiring in the abstract.

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