Monthly Archives: September 2022

Coercion

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The other day, a grotesquely overweight black woman was sent out onstage in her underwear to make noises with James Madison’s 200-year-old crystal flute. The item was a gift to James Madison in 1813 by the French flute maker Claude Laurent and has been kept locked away for decades. For reasons they never bothered to explain, the Library of Congress let this woman use it as a prop in her circus.

The most likely reason, of course, is antiwhite animus. Hating white people, especially those from the past, is a centerpiece of the new religion. The toppling of statues and vandalizing of culture items is something like a sacrament for them. Publicly flinging their poo at the works of the white man is a ritualistic break from the culture coercion from which they seek to liberate themselves.

That is what the show is about this week. One way to look at the great intellectual flowering in the West is as a quest for liberation, with liberation being defined as the elimination of coercion. The utopia on the other side of the revolution is a world where everyone gets to do whatever they want without the need for permission. You are answerable only to your imagination.

Karl Marx, who still casts a shadow over our intellectuals, famously said about the mature communist society, “I could fish in the morning, hunt in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and do critical theory at night, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” In other words, no one would be compelled to do anything or even be anything.

To normal people, this sounds insane. Most on our side of the great divide struggle to accept that the people in charge really believe this stuff. It is a consequence of the moral mind to assume rational motives for the behavior of others. There has to be a better answer for why they gave the fat naked black woman a precious artifact from history so she could revolt us with it and her image.

Lots of people believed in Marxism. Lots of people still believe in libertarianism and anarchism, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. At least with Marxism, there have been real world attempts to make it happen. Libertarianism and anarchism never get past the planning stage. Despite the lack of anything to support their dreams, these fantasies persist, even among otherwise bright people

The neo-Marxists and their dream of cultural liberation are just as committed as the libertarians and anarchists. They have not thought through how the world will work when whiteness is removed. They are just sure it will be great. The main difference between themselves and the libertarians is they are well past the planning stage and are trying to make it a reality.

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

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

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

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Robert Nozick
  • Political coercion
  • Economic coercion
  • Cultural coercion
  • Racial coercion

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Surviving The War

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There was a time when normal Americans thought about how to survive a nuclear exchange with the Russians. During the Cold War, this seemed like a real prospect, so there was a reason to think about it. Into the 1960’s school kids had to do the hide under the desk thing, which was mostly about conditioning people to accept permanent war, but it conditioned people to the idea of being nuked. How to make it through a nuclear war became something of an industry.

There were two schools of thought on the subject back then. One said that any hint of a nuclear attack by either side would result in a mag dump by both sides. The United States and the Soviet Union were in a prisoner’s dilemma. If either side showed restraint, then they risked the other side striking first and possibly making it impossible to retaliate, so logic said to send all of your missiles first. Both sides accepted this logic which is why a system was put in place to prevent it.

From a survival perspective, such a scenario made the prospects for anyone living through it extremely low. The arsenals at the time were larger than today and the assumption was they could wipe out all life on the planet. The initial blasts would kill most people, but the fallout and nuclear winter would kill the rest. Even if people survived somehow, the numbers would be tiny. There was simply no point in preparing for what would be instant death for almost everyone.

The other school of thought was more optimistic. War would escalate with an initial exchange that might not lead to a mag dump. Even if the will were there to send all the missiles, many people would refuse to push the button. The disruption from the initial strikes would also render communications useless. The example of Vasili Arkhipov seemed like proof that a full scale exchange was unlikely. That meant it was possible to survive a nuclear war if you were prepared.

Today, that last scenario is more plausible. Nuclear arsenals are much smaller than during the Cold War. No one is really sure that the antique systems on which these weapons rely would work under stress. The American ICBM system still relies upon 1970’s technology. The Russian systems are similarly antiquated. The most likely scenario is that the major powers are no longer functional after a nuclear exchange, so lots of people survive the event.

The first step in surviving a nuclear war is to avoid a direct hit. Washington DC will get several direct hits and the initial flash will vaporize most of the population. The shock wave will level most of the city. By now, the Russians and Chinese know to target Northern Virginia, so it will be a saturation bombing. The five percent that survive the initial blast will be radiated and die soon thereafter. Therefore, the first rule of nuke club is to be outside the target zone.

The safe bet is to be away from the coasts. The Rockies or Appalachia are the best bet for making it through the first stage. Denver will be nuked, for sure, but the damage will be contained to that plateau. People in the mountains will escape the flash and the blast, even if Denver takes multiple strikes. The Green Briar will get hit, for old times sake, but most of West Virginia will be spared. There are lots of places to escape the flash and the blast in the mountains.

Once things settle after the final missile strikes, there will be four key things to surviving the aftermath. You will need water, shelter, food and a way to defend yourself from the people who were not prepared. Imagine a land ravaged by mask wearing Covidians and you get the picture. You will have to be prepared to kill a lot of people in order to avoid ending up like them. This means you need to pick a spot that has access to water, a food source and is defendable.

Since a post-nuclear America is going to look like the frontier as far as you are concerned, you are going to need frontier skills. You will need to know how to make a fire, provide yourself basic medical care and know how to hunt and fish. If your location is near a river, then you can initially get by with fishing and water from the river, but you have to boil the water and cook the fish. The ability to make fire without modern items like a lighter or matches is essential.

Once you have sorted the location and provided yourself with the frontier skills required to live in the wild, you need to think about the defense issue. A man alone is easy prey, even to desperate city people roaming the countryside. It would be better to have a tribe that can work together for common defense. That means you either need the skills to create a tribe from who is left or you have to create a tribe now. One way or the other, survival will depend upon community.

This basic framework of preparedness is just scratching the surface, but it does provide the basis for building a survival plan. For example, you will not want modern firearms for defense in the post-nuclear world. Making your own gunpowder for modern ammunition is not realistic. You can make black powder from raw materials. That means the old fashioned muzzleloader is a good weapon to own and master. Of course, older range weapons like spears and bows are an option.

The same applies to tools. Creating your own electric for powering modern tools is possible, but not very practical. If you assume society takes generations to bounce back from the holocaust, then it makes no sense to rely upon modern tools. They will break and you will not be able to fix them. The same would apply to vehicles. Old cars need gasoline and lubricants. Even if you stock those, they will run out eventually and your vehicles become lawn ornaments.

This is why forming communities in advance of the holocaust is critical. You can plan for the two general scenarios. The first scenario is the world steps back to the pre-industrial age and does not bounce back. The other scenario is the people responsible manage to survive and quickly set about recreating the modern world by bringing things like the power grid on-line. Do you want to play a role in that rebuilding or do you want to seek vengeance on them?

Community building in advance lets you wargame these issues. It also makes survival much more likely. No one man can know everything or prepare for everything, so having help increases your odds of survival dramatically. It also provides the means for surviving what comes after the initial devastation. In a post-nuclear world, tribalism will be the key to survival, which means the best tribe wins. Of course, that is also why the world was blown up, but that is a story for another day.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

An Inflection Point

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Imagine if in response to Governor DeSantis sending migrant invaders to Martha’s Vineyard, the Biden administration blew up the Overseas Highway that connects the Florida Keys to the mainland. In response to Texas doing similar things, they knocked out part of the power grid in Texas. For good measure, they started a car bombing campaign against leading opponents of immigration. It may sound insane, but it is not too far from where we find ourselves.

Now, take it a step further and imagine that the major media outlets simply ignored these things entirely. You see clips on-line of the collapsed bridges in Florida, but you can find little about it in the news. They simply report that something happened and no one knows who did it. Maybe a few crackpots on these media platforms claim that DeSantis blew up the bridges as a false flag operation. Texas governor Greg Abbot is blowing up his power grid for the same reason.

This scenario is so ridiculous it would not pass muster with Hollywood studios as the basis for a political satire. Somehow, we have reached this moment. Last week, someone planted bombs near the Baltic Sea gas pipelines that bring natural gas from Russia to Europe. This caper required a great deal of coordination and technical skill, so it was not a group of kids. Everyone knows it was ordered by Washington and probably carried about by the American military.

If you head to the big America media platforms, this act of international terrorism that threatens the wellbeing of Europe is barely noticed. The New York Times is obsessing over some old video of Roger Stone and the hurricane. Presumably, they hope the storm wrecks Florida because they hate Florida. The Post has a below the fold story but they are gearing up to claim the terrorism is part of Putin’s dastardly plan to spread disinformation in the West.

Typically, the regime has a narrative ready to go when they pull a caper, but this time they have just been doing the self-satisfied grin. Radek Sikorski is a high ranking Polish politician who is married to Anne Applebaum. She is a member of the Trotsky cult run by Robert Kagan, the husband of Victoria Nuland, who is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. She is running Ukraine policy. Sikorski tweeted this out moments after the attack.

The Europeans quickly announced that it was an act of terrorism but seem to be in shock as they have yet to follow the script that says to blame Russia. Maybe this level of humiliation is even too much for the Europeans. The absurdity of blaming Russia is so ridiculous that it is impossible to say aloud without laughing. The American navy has been operating in the area and we have video of Joe Biden making threats to destroy the pipelines back in February.

Where we are now is that Washington is ordering the destruction of key European infrastructure in order to make war on Russia. Given the nature of the people involved, you can be sure many of them stood to make money from the attack, but the primary motive was the war on Russia. The Europeans are already in dire straights over energy this winter. This terrorist act by Washington now means something like a Turnip Winter for a wide swath of Western Europe.

Put aside the practical issues. Washington is now openly sponsoring and probably carrying out terrorist acts in Europe. Some would claim that this is not new as Washington has spent a quarter century bombing the Middle East. That is a fair complaint, but it happened under the guise of war. They were bombing the other side’s stuff, not the infrastructure of Europe. Imagine if Washington blew up the Chunnel in response to 9/11 and we have a good comparison.

The Europeans are a broken and defeated people, but even they have to be wondering what they have gotten themselves into with this Ukraine debacle. They eagerly signed up to be a “partner” with Washington in this great adventure to save Ukraine from the icy clutches of the Russian bear. Now, their economies are in collapse, their people are facing a winter without heat, governments are collapsing and their partner in all of this is now bombing their infrastructure. Some partnership.

The fact that the American media has been told to ignore this suggests Washington realizes they have a problem. It is hard to portray yourself as the good guy when you are bombing critical assets of your partners. This is one of those unforced errors that confirms the suspicions people have been voicing in private. In this case, it is that the real threat to peace in Europe is Washington, not Russia. The self-proclaimed defender of freedom is, in fact, its greatest threat.

This may be why the Biden White House signed off on this caper. It is an act of desperation aimed at keeping the Europeans in line. Germany now must hope Washington supplies enough LNG to make it through winter. That means the rest of Europe has to play ball with Washington, or face an economic collapse, as Germany is the economic engine of Europe. This act of terrorism was a warning to Europe that they better toe the line or else.

Regardless of the motivations, this feels like a game changer. It is too soon to know if it is an inflection point, but it could be the thing that changes minds. For Americans, it is one big piece of evidence that we are ruled by lawless tyrants. They will do anything to hold power, even commit acts of terrorism. For Europe, it could be the moment when they see the folly of their submission to Washington. For the world, it is more proof that Washington is the great threat to peace in the world.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

Economically Pondering

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A feature of this age is words and phrases have fluid definitions, rather than the old, fixed definitions from our dark history. Vaccine used to mean a preparation to simulate the immune system in order to prevent infection. Now it means the sponsor of the regime friendly cable chat shows. Recession used to mean two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, but now it means a thing that never happens. After all, who can really say what words really mean anyway?

It looks like we may be getting a new definition for bear market, which used to mean a prolonged decline in equities. The rule of thumb is that a long decline that reached 20% off the previous high is a bear market. Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached that point when it dipped below 29,300. It is now off 20.4% from the high in January 2022 when stocks rallied after the end of Covid. The index is now below the level it was at when Biden took office.

The main reason the market is in decline is the global economy is a mess and Western finances are even worse. The wild spending during Covid was always going to come with a hefty cost, but the assumption was that the economy would just turn back on and everything would be fine. Western government could then stretch the cost of Covid policies over a long period of time. Instead, we have inflation, war and a global energy crisis that is demanding government action.

The post Cold War economic model, the New World Order, is based on the assumption that conflict between major states was a thing of the past. America was the last remaining superpower, who would police relations between the major powers of the world and prevent minor powers from getting out of line. Disputes would be sorted through the various international organizations. The business of the world was no longer ideology. It was business.

That turned out to be a grand bit of self-deception. The ideological fervor of the West, particularly the Global American Empire, was the main driver of Covid policy and is now the main source of economic chaos in the world. Western rulers saw the pandemic as a chance to launch their Build Back Better schemes. This not only led to massive shutdowns of the economy, but the scrambling of global supply chains. It turns out that the magical replacements did not just appear as assumed.

Then we have the war on Russia and to a lesser extent China. This is a two phase war, with one phase public and one phase private. The public phase is the vast array of sanctions levied against Russia and any country aiding Russia. The private phase is the currency war being waged by Washington. The booming dollar is supposed to curb domestic inflation and protect the petrodollar. There are also acts of economic sabotage like the recent attack on European gas lines.

The question that is never asked, but may turn out to be the most important, is why has it taken so long for economic data to turn sour? Shuttering wide swaths of the economy to fight the flu should have triggered a massive recession. Expanding the money supply through massive credit creation should have resulted in massive price hikes and many asset bubbles. The policies of the last three years should have brought disaster, but here we are with only the threat of disaster.

One thing the last three years has revealed is that the people who think they are indispensable to the running of society are not that important. The managerial elite made one terrible decision after another but the system carried on, because the people who actually work found a way. Businesses figured out a way to keep the lights on, despite the best efforts of government. Their people figured out how to get their work down, even with the lockdowns.

One possible source of the paranoid terror we see in the ruling class is the unspoken understanding that they are unessential. Their pompous self-regard is a mask concealing a deep fear that the Dirt People might figure out that the Cloud People are just an expensive ornament. Joe Biden is a dementia riddled vegetable, which makes clear that the job of president is ceremonial. Next in line is a former prostitute with the IQ of a goldfish. These are not serious jobs.

Another possible reason the economic data is defying economic theory is that the numbers are not what they claim. An iron rule of life is that anything with value will be faked or stolen. Economic data has value to the ruling class, as it is seen as a tool of control, so faking the numbers is possible. For example, many people think the Biden people have been giving us fake gasoline demand data. This would be an effort to jawbone down gas prices.

This is an old game that was popular in the Obama years. Every month the Feds would release rosy economic data, only to revise down the numbers at some point in the future when no one was paying attention. How much of this is going on today is hard to know, but we can use inflation as a guide. Anyone who has been to the grocery store knows that inflation is much bigger than the official government stats. We can probably assume similar manipulation everywhere.

Even so, you can only fake this stuff for so long. Providing fake data and false narratives is like check kiting. It works initially, but eventually the gap between reality and the false narratives gets too broad to maintain. This is what we see with immigration in Europe, where the it has toppled two government recently. Those romantic stories about how immigration enriches society do not hold up when the subway station is a warzone controlled by African gangs.

The other question, now that reality seems to be catching up with Western governments, is how bad will things get economically? The Europeans are just at the start of the long dark winter promised by Joe Biden. The British pound is in crisis and members of the ruling party are revolting against the new PM. The Euro is not doing much better, having fallen to ninety-six cents on the dollar. Of course, the dollar is soaring as people flee to the reserve currency for protection.

The soaring dollar creates a dilemma for the Federal Reserve. If they continue to withdraw dollars to fight inflation, they risk a currency crisis. If they back off the tightening, they risk a fresh explosion of inflation. Because of the dollar’s relationship to energy markets, it would also trigger rising energy prices. Then there is the politics, which is already turning up. Bad political environments tend to result in bad economic decisions, which make for more bad politics.

That is the final question at this stage. Can the managerial elite of the Global American Empire talk their way out of this? A central belief of the ruling class is that if they can create a plausible narrative and talk about it enough, it becomes reality. Can they convince the world that this is all just transitory and what lies ahead is the promised utopia they have been plotting for decades? They talked their way out of responsibility for the Covid vaccines, so anything is possible.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Demon Of Democracy

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Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. This week is a post about the natural coercion that takes place in any democratic system. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, covering some news items of the day. SubscribeStar and Substack.

It has become trite to point out that the lovers of democracy have a one way relationship with it. When the results of an election are favorable to the ruling class, they praise democracy. When the results are something other than what the rulers wanted, then you can no longer trust the process. The United States has spent the last six years torn between these two competing forces. The 2016 election was rigged while the 2020 election was the most bizarrely pure result ever.

We are about to get another dose of this in Europe as elections go the wrong way for the people who actually run Europe. In Sweden, the normally passive Swedes decided to send a very mild message to their ruling class by giving a bunch of votes to the Swedish Democrats. This allowed a moderate coalition to form up and depose the Social Democrats, which has been the ruling party for decades. For the usual suspects, this means snow Hitler is around the corner.

An honest assessment of the Swedish election would start with why it has taken so long for the Swedes to push back against the system. Decades of immigration have turned Sweden into the rape capital of Europe. Large swaths of Swedish cities have become no-go zones thanks to the migrants. The city of Malmo has become famous for its problem with grenade attacks. Rival gangs of migrants use their skills learned at home to turn the once peaceful city into a war zone.

At least some of the Swedes have decided that they can risk being called bad things in order to send a message. For this to happen, however, the Swedish Democrats had to drop all of their tough talk and position themselves as reformed heretics who will only gently rock the boat a tiny bit. It is a good reminder that whoever controls the moral framework, controls the moral consensus. In order to participate in democracy, you must submit to the moral consensus.

This past weekend, the Italians did the unthinkable and elected a female as the next leader of the country. Before the election, the unelected president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, warned the Italians that she has a particular set of skills and is not afraid to use them if they vote the wrong way. The Italians being Italian were happy to give her the now famous solute and vote for a block of right-of-center parties in Sunday’s elections.

Giorgia Meloni, head of the Brothers of Italy party, will be the next prime minister, as her party received about 25% of the vote. Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia will give the coalition a majority of seats in both chambers. The Brothers of Italy managed just four percent of the vote in the prior election and has been viewed as a fringe party with little impact on Italian politics. Suddenly, their pro-family and anti-immigration message is resonating with Italians.

Of course, the usual suspects have branded Meloni a fascist. You see, anyone who falls outside the moral consensus is a fascist. To her credit, this has not had to desired effect on Meloni’s rhetoric. Her victory speech was refreshingly moral. “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death, no to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people”

The same people who tell Europeans they must heat their homes with candles and get used to cold showers in the name of democracy in Ukraine, will now set to work undermining these two democracies. The Swedish Democrats have been accused of apostacy with regards to Russia. Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of being a Putin ally by the usual suspects. It is not hard to see where this is going. If you vote the wrong way, you are on the side of Russia.

Getting back to Ursula von der Leyen, you can be sure she will start pressing the new governments to pray at the feet of the moral consensus. Her primary weapon is financial, which she is now using against Hungary. The voters there support Viktor Orbán, who is no fan of men in dresses chasing girls in public toilets. The EU has thus declared that Hungary is not really democratic, despite their democracy. This means the EU will not begin withholding tens of billions in money.

All of this should be familiar to Americans. Voters sent a message to the ruling class in 2016 when they put Donald Trump in the White House. The message was received and the ruling class has been making war on those voters ever since. In a democracy, a legitimate result is one that pleases the permanent ruling elite. Anything that even questions the elite moral consensus is a threat to our democracy. The Swedes and Italians are about to learn this lesson.

The reality of Western democracy is that it is a weird form of colonialism where the rulers demand regular affirmation from the ruled. The point of elections is for the people to thank their rulers for their service. The rulers are naturally offended when the voters fail to hold up their end of the bargain. The social compact in Western democracy is that the ruling class commands and the voters obey. Anything else is a threat to our democracy and requires any means necessary to thwart it.

This is why elections have had no impact on policy in America. This exhaustive study from 2014 makes plain that voting means nothing. “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” As the saying goes, there is no voting your way out of the problems of democracy.

It is not all bad news. The continued support for Trump in America and now the elections in Europe suggest the people are slowly beginning to slip free from the tentacles of the imposed moral consensus. Even the normally passive Swedes are starting to look their masters in the eye and ask, “who says?” If enough people begin to wake up from the nightmare of liberal democracy, they may begin to break free from the underlying morality of it.

What the West will need to save itself is not bureaucrats promising to worship a system, but leaders who understand it is not how, but who. It is not how decisions are made, but who makes them. For Italy to regain itself, it must be Italians who make the decisions, not Brussels bureaucrats. For America to reclaim its nature, it must be Americans making the decisions, not an alien managerial elite. The demon of democracy is it leads people to forget this basic reality of life.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

Thinking About Athens

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A little change of pace this week as the news is mostly made up nonsense about the war on Russia and, of course, stories about Trump. The obsession with Trump moved past whatever lies beyond absurd years ago. Even if you get the symbolism of Trump to the managerial elite, their obsessing over him is exhausting. It is as if they want to talk about him to the point where his fans are sick of the subject.

Scan the millions of posts about Trump in the regime media each week and it is like watching a man deliberately slip on a banana peel. His attempt to entertain the audience just creates a sense of shame. You are embarrassed for him. That is the same feeling I get when I read a New York Times piece about Trump. How humiliating and degrading it must be to write those posts.

The Finns have a word for this, myötähäpeä, which roughly translates into secondhand shame or shared embarrassment. Fremdschämen is the German version of it, which means the feeling you get when seeing someone do something so embarrassing that you start to feel shame by watching it. English does not have a corresponding word, which is odd given the history of the English language.

If there is no word for it, then it does not exist, at least in the mental landscape of the people who speak the language. Perhaps if the English language did have a word for this sensation, we would have fewer people willing to degrade themselves in public just to get a little attention. On the other hand, maybe the Germans have so many of these people they needed a word for it.

Regardless, you have to wonder if by 2024 people will have tired of the endless drama that surrounds Trump. On the other hand, the elite obsession with him may turn the man into a martyr. To his credit, he is still putting his chin out daring them to take their best swing at him. Like every decision to fire on a crowd of protestors, the eventual arrest of Trump just feels like it is inevitable.

Anyway, the topic this week is about the dynamics that exists within a debating society committed to consensus. This is a topic that will be visited in a different context in the Monday Taki post. The jumping off point for the discussion is how debate must have worked within Athenian society. We get to pretend we are wearing our togas and debating the issues of the day with the ancients.

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

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

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

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Changing Gears
  • Life In Athens
  • Being In The Debate
  • Getting Attention
  • Slapping Ginger Midgets
  • Making Moral Claims
  • Consensus
  • Dissidents
  • Repressive Tolerance

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Lesson 230

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Way back in 1996 when the Communications Decency Act of 1996 was being contemplated, no one imagined the outsize role of the internet. In fact, few of the people debating the bill had ever seen this internet thing. The internet as we understand it was in its infancy and only tech savvy hobbyists were using it. Most homes did not have a personal computer at the time. The only thing everyone was sure about was that the internet had to be free to grow.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act made a lot of sense to all involved, because it gave the new internet companies relief from parasitic lawyers who were already sinking their fangs into the industry. Giving the public platforms protection from liability allowed them to host the public platform without having to edit everything the users posted on the platforms. At the time, the tech companies claimed they lacked the resources to monitor user behavior.

The logic made sense as long as that last bit was true. If the people creating these public platforms could not edit what was posted, then they could not reasonably be held accountable, as we do for newspapers and magazines. The New York Times controls its content, so in theory it is responsible for it. As a practical matter they are never held accountable and libel people daily as we saw with the Sarah Palin case a few months ago, but that is a topic for another day.

In a quarter century, much has changed. Not only can the tech platforms edit what is posted on their sites, they now aggressively monitor content. Not only that, but they also promote content on the platforms and they create their own content. The millions of bots used to boost some content over others is a form of content. It is similar to a newspaper making the editorial decision to post some stories on the front page and relegate the real stories to the back pages.

The Section 230 protections were specifically tailored on the assumption that the platforms could not control what was posted. Therefore, someone could not reasonably sue them for defamation. It would be like holding the building owner liable for something someone write on the walls outside. In theory, the platform, like the building owner, would take reasonable steps to remove the material. If the court asked, they would try to identify the person responsible.

Of course, we live in a different age and therefore the laws crafted for the prior age no longer make any sense in this age. No one in 1996 could contemplate a world where an oligopoly in Silicon Valley controlled political discourse. Further, no one imagined the oligopoly being controlled by crazy people. This is why the matter is working its way through the courts in various conflicting cases. In fact, it will probably end up in the Supreme Court in the next term.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law barring companies from removing posts based on political ideology. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned a similar Florida law on the grounds that it violated constitutional protections for tech companies. The question is whether these private firms that get the same protections as all other private firms or are they private firms operating public accommodations and therefore can be regulated.

Morally, this would be a simple question if not for the racial double standard that has become nearly universal. Facebook regularly hosts livestreams of black people hunting a killing white people. This happened most recently with the Memphis spree killer who livestreamed his rampage on Facebook. On the other hand, a white guy uses the wrong pronouns when describing a public degenerate and he is banned. In the age of Jim Snow, everyone knows the score.

Before the Jim Snow laws, when Section 230 was created, no one imagined the sorts of double standards we now accept. In 1996, everyone agreed that a public accommodation had to accept everyone as long as they did the minimum that was required of the enterprise. Restaurants could require a dress code, but they could not ban people for holding the wrong opinions. If they violated their own rules, then they could be held accountable in the courts.

Ultimately, the court will have to fashion a new standard. If Facebook is a public accommodation, then what are the rules that define such a thing? If it is a private company, then how can it have special privileges? The simplest solution is to clarify how one can claim Section 230 protections. A platform that does not edit the content of users would qualify, while a firm that censors the users would not qualify. This would be the logical solution, which is why it cannot happen.

Instead, the court will end up supporting the tech companies, because the so-called conservatives will be so high from chanting “they are private companies” that the crazies on the court will write the decision. We will end up with a new standard that says private companies can viciously and aggressively discriminate, as long as it is not against protected classes. At this time, there is one class left unprotected in the law, which is the class known as while people.

In fact, there is a good chance that the court creates a new framework that requires public platforms to aggressively censor content in order to get the protections offered under Section 230. That would mean a site like Gab is wiped out unless they apply the same standards as Silicon Valley. It would also mean that hosting companies are required to monitor the content of their users. This would be the first example of “common good conservatism” in the law.

This sounds terribly negative, but it is realistic. Stalin allegedly said that it is not the votes that count, but who counts the votes. He probably never said it, but it is something he would have grasped. He was a communist, but he eventually came to see that who decides counts for more than how things are decided. That is what we see in the current age with things like censorship. It is not the rules that matter, but who is enforcing and interpreting the rules that matters.

If the tech firms were run by the same sorts of people who were running what passed for big tech in 1996, none of this would matter. The internet pioneers were civic nationalists and libertarians. They were on-line to get away from people who wanted to police free expression. They needed Section 230 to keep the internet open, but they were replaced with people who want to close it down, so one way or another, speech will be closed down on the internet.

Finally, this is a good reminder that when a society begins to debate the letter of the law, it no longer respects the spirit of the law. Put another away, if the people in charge are so corrupt that they need written rules to behave themselves, they are corrupt enough to find a way around those written words. This is where we find ourselves with the current ruling class. They see the rules like they see the truth. If they are useful, they enforce them. If not, then not.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Next Phase Of The War

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When the Russians launched what they call a special military operation in the Ukraine, the window for a negotiated settlement was wide open. The Russians were prepared to go back to the Minsk accords and work out a deal with Ukraine. In fact, such a deal was close to happening in April, but then London, at the behest of Washington, stepped in and convinced Zelensky to end negotiations. The collective West was now fully behind Ukraine and they would accept no deal with Russia.

The Russians left open the possibility for a deal. Despite the sanctions and the flow of weapons into the Ukraine from the West, the Russians kept playing for a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The main reason is a deal signed by Zelensky would prevent future shenanigans from Washington. Liberating the disputed areas and degrading the Ukrainian military would leave open the possibility of more fighting. Ukraine would become like the Korean peninsula.

Yesterday the door for a negotiated settlement has closed completely. In an address to the nation, Putin announced that Russia would accept the results of the referendums planned in the Donbas. When these areas vote to join the Russian Federation, they will become sovereign Russian territory. The second thing he announced is the call up of roughly 300,000 reservists to defend Russian lands in the Donbas. An attack on Donetsk or Luhansk is now an attack on Russia.

This change will be lost in the Western media because they are assigned the task of selling the Western war on Russia. They describe Russia as a large outdoor gas station run by vodka-swilling peasants. Putin is described as a tyrant with absolute and undisputed control of the country. This is complete nonsense, but most of what appears in the Western media is nonsense. They make the old communist propaganda organs look like objective observers.

Reality in Russia is quite different. For starters, Putin is not a dictator and he has to worry about his constituents. Like every other country, Russia is ruled by a coalition of forces that have real power. Putin leads this coalition and he has to respect the interests of the coalition members. Russia is also a bureaucratic country. Things are done a certain way, through certain processes. Russians like rules and the Russian bureaucracy is nothing if not a playground for those who love rules.

The other important thing about Russia is that Putin is the most dovish, pro-Western voice in the ruling coalition. There were voices calling for military action in the Ukraine going back to the 2014 coup that toppled the Ukrainian government. There are voices today that want full mobilization and total war on the Ukraine. Putin has preferred to work the diplomatic angle. He saw signed deals with the West as a way to hold the collective West to their commitments.

In announcing the next phase of the war, Putin is signaling that he has moved in the direction of the hawks. This means the rules of engagement that up to now have prevented the Russian military from targeting civilian infrastructure and command centers have been removed. That means damns, power plants, water treatment plants and other essential structures will be attacked. It also means the Russian army can now take the lead in fighting the Ukrainians.

This is another thing lost in the Western media. The rules the Russians placed on themselves in this fight were to limit contact between the Russian army and the Ukrainian army. This means the militias did the bulk of the fighting with air and artillery support from the Russians. Private military contractors were also brought in to assist the militias with weapons and logistics. That changes now. The Russian military will take the lead in the war going forward.

Presumably, the Ukrainians will not respect the referendums and keep attacking these areas, which means Russia will now be at war with Ukraine. This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it is a big change. From the Russian perspective, they are following international law. The Western powers supporting Ukraine are now parties to the war between Russia and Ukraine. In other words, it is no longer a proxy war but a direct conflict between West and East.

What does that mean? For starters, the Russians can now cut off all energy supplies to NATO countries and be on firm legal ground. They can also point to Kosovo as a precedent for their actions. Kosovo elected to break away from Serbia. The West recognized it and then bombed Serbia. Putin has mentioned this precedent in the past and will no doubt point to it after the referendum. The point is to show the rest of the world that the Russians are operating by the rules.

That is another piece of the puzzle. Prior to this announcement, Putin has been meeting with his counterparts in Asia. It is clear that China and India are onboard with what the Russians are doing. That is the point of these self-imposed rules. It makes the point to other countries that one side is following the rules and the other side is not. If you are worried about being regime changed, this is important. Every leader outside the collective West is now worried about regime change.

All wars have a moral component. No one wants to see themselves as the bad guy, so the parties to a conflict seek to claim the moral high ground. This is what the Russians have been doing since the war started. These limitations they have placed on themselves were about establishing their moral position. This next phase of the war was not what they wanted, but the other side left them no choice. Whether you accept that or not, the Russians accept it and that is what matters.

What all of this means is that the war has now entered a much more dangerous phase and it will only end militarily. The West is pledged to fighting until the last Ukrainian and now Russia is accepting the challenge. In addition, Russia will now make it much more difficult for Ukraine to function as a country, much less provide the necessary support for its army in the field. That also means direct targeting of Western assets in Ukraine by the Russian military.

Sadly, the only hope for a peaceful solution to the war now lies with Washington getting its wish and reaching the point of the last Ukrainian. The Russians drive up Ukrainian losses quickly over the next few months. The military loses its fighting ability and the civilian population is put under terrible stress. The combination of the two forces a settlement, despite Washington’s desire to keep fighting. In other words, the hope for peace lies in a tragedy for the Ukraine.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Great Dimming

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For a long time, it was understood that the success of a people was tied to the quality of the people in terms of their abilities. A highly capable people would do better at the necessary things of society than an incompetent people. Often, moral claims would cloud the view. Maybe one people were chosen by God to rule over the others or maybe the people offended the gods and had been punished as a result. Even so, there has always been a link between talent and results.

Today we understand that Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally between peoples or among people. Some people are smarter than others. Some people have cultural qualities that seem to be rooted in their shared genetics. These cultural qualities provide a benefit when it comes to the tasks of society. A people who values hard work and honest dealings will do better than a people who favor sloth or lying. Whether these cultural qualities can be inculcated is debatable.

The blank slate crowd are sure that everything about a human society is a construction of the mind and can therefore be deconstructed. Western society, which has towered over the rest of mankind for more than five hundred years, can be disassembled and then reassembled to put non-Western people in charge. There is no evidence to support the claim, but a great global experiment is underway, nonetheless. There is mass migration from the Global South into the West.

A dozen years ago, Jason Richwine did his doctoral thesis in the topic and found that migration into the United States from the south was decreasing the quality of human capital by reducing the over all IQ of the population. He relied upon the mountain of IQ studies that show the average intelligence of Hispanics to be ten points below the average for Europeans. The usual suspects flew into a rage and had Jason Richwine condemned for heresy.

No one bothered to challenge the conclusions of his study, as that would suggest moral claims can be subject to objective measures. A key component of any religion is that the moral claims are unassailable. The new religion of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity operates like every other religion. Its principles are beyond question. In this case, it means that all people are equally capable and the differences seen between people are due to the racism of white people.

You see this in a response by a writer at Reason Magazine. Ronald Bailey makes no effort to dispute the factual claims of Richwine, as he lacks the intellectual capacity to understand them, much less dispute them. Instead, he draws a parallel between Richwine and eugenicists from a century ago. You see, “eugenics” is a bad word so laying it in the same area as a person makes that person bad. You can then safely dismiss the words of the bad people without addressing them.

Even if you accept the claims in that Reason post, the flow of people from the south into America is having a clear impact on IQ. The claim is that the people coming in will get smarter by standing on the better dirt in the United States, but it will take four or five generations for that to happen. That is roughly a century. While that is happening, the population of low IQ people rises. This is happening rather quickly due to the age distribution of the white population.

For example, using government data, whites have an average IQ of 100, blacks are at 85 and the new people are around 90. This is consistent with what Richwine found in his research and what subsequent research has shown. This is one of those times when the official government position mirrors reality. That means that the average IQ in the United States in 1950 was around 98. By 1980, with the uptick in immigration and decline in white fertility, the average was just over 97.

In other words, with very stable demographics and little immigration, the average IQ in the United States had not changed very much in thirty years. This would explain why the country was able to pull out of the cultural lunacy of the prior decades and turn things around so quickly. There were a lot of smart people. Societies with high average intelligence also have a much larger number of smart people. These are the people who solve the problems made by other smart people.

By 2000, the effects of immigration were showing up in the test scores. The average IQ of the country, based on the new demographic mix, was below 97. By 2020 the average had fallen to below 96. In another decade it will fall below 95 and when the white population is a minority, it will be around 93. Note also that the aging off of the white population lowers white IQ. Not only are white people getting dumber, but old people are dumber than their younger selves.

Imagine a wardrobe made for a man who is 6’5″ and athletic being handed down to a man who is 5’10’ and a lazy person. The latter can pretend he does not like the style, but the reality is the clothes simply do not fit. This is what is happening in America as the people are replaced with new people. The old cultural, political and economic institutions were made for a people with an IQ close to 100. The new people will struggle to operate what they have inherited.

The flat earth people argue that culture is meaningless and the new people will be able to run the country as they like with the same economic results. The only thing that will change is the complexion. Instead of white guys staring at their mobile devices as they walk into traffic, it will be trans-lesbians of color. In fact, the final end of whiteness will unleash the creative energy of the nonwhite people. The result will be the paradise the prophets have long promised.

The trouble is the facts suggest otherwise. Twenty years ago, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen made the connection between intelligence and economics. In IQ and the Wealth of Nations they showed that average national intelligence corresponds with the over all wealth of society. The usual suspects condemned the book and the authors, while accepting their conclusions. There is a reason the best universities do not draw names from a hat for admissions.

Recently, researchers George Francis and Emil O.W. Kirkegaard have revisited the topic and came to the same conclusion, which is to say there is a strong correlation between national wealth and national IQ. Francis notes that national IQ correlates not only with economic prosperity, but every national indicator of success. That means things like crime, social trust, affordable family formation and all of the other things we associated with stable, happy societies.

Of course, there is the smart fraction issue. As civilization becomes more complex, the demand for cognitive ability increases. At the top, where the most complex decisions are made, the demands go up much faster. The more complex a society, the more above average people are required to manage it. A society where everyone is the same IQ of 100, will not perform as well as a society where the average is 100 and intelligence is normally distributed.

The trending down of national IQ means the relative number of people in the smart fraction initially declines, but the overall smart fraction grows. In time, however, this reverses and the smart fraction begins to decline quickly in total and in relation to the size of the population. There are not enough smart people around to keep the system running, so the system must become less complex. Put another way, it must disaggregate, either slowly or all of a sudden.

What this means in terms of public policy is debatable. The most likely answer is that debating it is a waste of time. There is no arresting the demographic changes and there is no changing what that means as far as human capital. Even if there is a way to make it work, there are not enough smart people around willing to do it. At some point North America passes through the marching moron phase into something else. That something else will poor, nasty, brutish, and short lived.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The New Reactionism

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Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. This week is a post about cultural vandalism, a term that I would like to see more often. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, covering some news items of the day. SubscribeStar and Substack.

Since roughly the French Revolution, the dynamic of Western politics has been the conflict between radical forces and reactionary forces. The radicals, armed with liberal ideas, seek to change social arrangements for the better. The reactionaries, fearing what change could bring, instinctively oppose these changes. This description is entirely self-serving, which is why “radicals” love it. The point is to frame politics as good guys, the radicals, versus bad guys, the reactionaries.

In this age it does not hold up as a logical construct because the people waving the flag of radicalism control the institutions. The so-called reactionaries cannot be working from fear for what change will do to their social power, when they have no political or social power to conserve. This does not stop the radicals from pretending their victims have power, but it is a self-serving game of make believe. The people on the receiving end of radicalism know who has the whip hand.

This is why the old Left-Right framing makes no sense. The people claiming to be on the Right these days are not monarchists. They are not in genuine opposition to the people on the Left. They simply prefer a slower pace of change. The Left is certainly not opposed to institutional power, like all prior left-wing movements. They worship institutional power and act in defense of it. To maintain the old framing, the dissidents are the New Left and the regime is the New Right.

Recent events support this new framing. The election integrity protests during the 2020 cycle looked like every other protest against power. The people in control of the institutions certainly saw it that way. They still carry on like January 6 was a failed Bastille Day or the echoes of 1848. In response, they are acting like institutional power always reacts to threats. They are rounding up opponents, abusing the rights of their citizens and threatening retribution.

A good example of this new reactionism is in the paranoid chanting about threats to “our democracy” that are a feature of the current regime. Those old enough to remember the 1980’s or even the 1990’s see this fetish for democracy as novel. The standard response from so-called conservatives whenever someone said America was a democracy was to correct them and say it was a republic. Even the Left would make this point, lamenting the lack of democracy.

All of a sudden, as if there was a secret meeting of the ruling class, America is a democracy and that democracy is under assault. This started in the Obama years when his backers pushed the nutty idea that white people would oppose him strictly on the grounds that he was a black Muslim from Africa. Even though he gained a bigger majority of the white vote than Bush or Clinton, they persisted in this claim, saying his opponents opposed the democratic process.

Of course, what solidified the new language was 2016. The man who won the election based on the rules of how we conduct elections, was deemed a threat to the process that put him in office. This is not what they meant when they said Trump was a threat to democracy. What they meant was that he was a threat to the established order and the people it benefits. The word “democracy” now implies the established order and the semi-permanent ruling elite.

This is no different from how genuine reactionaries in 18th century Europe responded to the threat of socialism. They used the same sort of language and they used the same sort of tactics we see today. The point of their rhetoric was not to persuade the masses to side with the old order, but to persuade the people running the institutions to use their power to defeat the radicals. In other words, reactionaries do not seek to win arguments, but rather to rally elites to wield power.

Here is an example in the New York Times. David Leonhardt is employed by the “paper of record” to inform the managerial class. His archive is full of stories that would be of use to people in power, but utterly worthless to everyone else. His job at the media shop that serves the regime is to set the tone for other regime outlets and to help set the priorities of the regime. Normally he worries about how to keep the peasants fed, but this post is about “threats to our democracy.”

The reactionary quality is clear in the first so-called threat. He claims, “a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.” The New York Times literally created a bureau in 2016 to cover the Russian collusion hoax. The point of their existence, and that of all regime outlets, was to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. The word “hypocrisy” does not scratch the surface here.

The second threat somehow manages to be even more contradictory. “The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.” On the surface this sounds fine, but he does not mean public opinion as in elections. He means the perception of public opinion as held by the people in power. His example is the recent Dobbs case, which he claims runs counter to public opinion.

When you interpret “democracy” to mean “established order” when used by regime elements, this makes sense. There is a Burkean flexibility in defense of the status quo in the face of public discontent. That is, they acknowledge the rules and the rights of the people, but only as far as they are reasonable. If the rules or the exercise of rights threaten the established order, then they are unreasonable. You can have whatever political system you like as long the people in charge agree

This new reactionism is what lies behind the weird social fads and assaults on decency that have become common. The claim by the people behind these things is that they are trying to subvert the old order, when in reality they are useful idiots. Their job is to keep the people occupied with these controversies so they do not start thinking about why their schools are a mess or why two incomes are no longer enough to provide a middle-class life. it is defensive distraction.

Historically, reactionism is something that flowers at the end of an age when the old order feels threatened. That is one way to read the current crisis. The people leading the charge to defend “our democracy” are decrepit old people who represent the dire warnings about managerialism. They are mediocrities raised up to the top of the social order, yet fully aware of their mediocrity. It is a system now dominated by highly insecure managers paranoid about everyone around them.

The reason reactionism turns up at the end phase of a regime is that it often works fairly well to blunt the forces of change. Reaction is what drove the response to Napoleon, eventually leading to the restoration in France. Reaction held back the tides of socialism in the 19th century into the 20th century. Reaction is what defeated Trump and put Joe Biden in the White House. Fear is a powerful motivator and powerful people in fear for their position make for a powerful force.

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