Times Are Changing

Posted on October 31, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up and this week it is somewhat related to the topic in this post but from a different angle. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green doo so if you do not have a subscription, get one. SubscribeStar and Substack.

Last week the people in charge of Penn State University decided to get in the way-back machine and relive the alt-right days. They invited onto campus a bogeyman so that the usual suspects could engage in performative protesting. They invited internet performers Gavin McInnis and Alex Stein to talk to a student group. A group of entitled children was then invited to throw a tantrum outside the event. Eventually, the school cancelled the event for security reasons.

The only people interested in any of it was the regime media that has yet to find a new set of bogeymen to replace those from the Trump years. McInnis went along with it because it is all he has at this point. His edgy right-wing guy act fell apart with the Proud Boys fiasco and dissidents have no interest in him. Alex Stein is trying to be the Matthew Lesko of ambush comedy, so this provided him with a chance to do his act in front of some purple faced coeds for the streaming audience.

The main takeaway from the event is that the white supremacist bogeyman act has run its course and the regime has found nothing to replace it. As a result, the usual suspects are resurrecting old villains like McInnes. The term “Proud Boys” is still something of a dog whistle for the crazies, even though the rest of the world lost interest in the whole thing years ago. It is sort of like how Nixon remained a villain for the crazies well into the 1980’s, after the world had moved onto Reagan.

Of course, the point of these manufactured dramas is for the people running the college campus to pretend they are in a state of emergency. The college campus is the safest place on the planet, but the inhabitants need to feel they are under siege. The forces of darkness are closing in so they have to heroically defend their abracadabra word from the enemy of the abracadabra word. They stage these events so that they can have a few minutes where their fantasies seem real.

If it were anything other than a performance, they could easily handle these things by either not hosting the speakers or putting an end to the protests. There is no reason for a college campus to have these sorts of people on to talk to students. In theory, at least, the students are there to learn, not hear hacky gags from an aging comedian and an internet prankster. Not only are these two not bringing anything to the campus, their act is easily accessible on-line.

On the other hand, the campus could end the protest business by expelling those who create trouble. The students are there to learn and this event was a good time for them to learn that it is immoral to prevent people from speaking or prevent others from hearing a speaker. Expel a few of the troublemakers and the protest culture comes to a screeching halt. This is a state college. These are not future leaders. They are there to get a credential in order to get a middle-class job.

What these sorts of events amount to are something like the historical reenactments around events of the Civil War or Revolutionary War. Historical reenactors enjoy learning the fine details of the period. They spend hours getting their costumes right and working with others in the subculture. Another part of it is escapism. They get to spend the weekend pretending to be a person in another era, an era they find more interesting than the current era.

That is what we have seen on campus for half a century. The long march through the institutions put the old protestors in charge, so they set about recreating the events of their youth, except this time they were the cool administrators. Unlike the squares running the place in their youth, they were down with the cause, at least until something got broken or someone got hurt. Decade after decade this farcical game of make believe gets rebooted on the college campus.

That said, this nonsense may have run its course. One of the weird side effects of the Covid panic is it broke the pattern. For two years no one was allowed on campus, so they could not stage these dramas. The attention whores that agree to play the bogeyman role for these shows have had to move onto other things. Penn State was left with what can charitably be called D-list bogeymen. Instead of playing weddings they jumped at this campus gig.

There is also a growing regime fatigue. That is another consequence of Covid and the events of the 2020 election. The endless lying from the media has shifted public opinion away from this sort of drama. When people thought the campus was simply biased, they could justify people trying to get on campus to counter the bias. In a world where people use the term “regime” and assume everything that comes from official authority is a lie, these dramas make no sense.

Of course, the January 6 pogrom has changed minds as well. In a world where the state will arrest you for being attacked by regime agents posing as protestors, going onto the street to speak your mind is a fool’s errand. Even the flag and costume crowd has figured out that they cannot march around in public. This leaves the regime elements on their own, which makes for a boring performance. Without a bogeyman to attack, they are left to stare at one another.

All of this points to a slight maturing of dissident politics. Guys like McInnis are not getting attention anymore. He staged his own arrest and the response was mostly indifference at his pathetic play for attention. Similarly, more and more dissidents are simply tuning out of regime media. These dramas only work if there is an audience and that audience is drying up. Slowly, it seems, dissidents are disconnecting from the machine and accepting the new reality.

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Lots Of News

Posted on October 28, 2022 by thezman

With Halloween approaching I thought about doing a special show on the subject, but then I remembered I did that last year. I then remembered that it was not just the greatest Halloween show ever, it was probably the best podcast ever produced in the history of podcasts. In retrospect, I should have retired after that show, but like all champions, I have lingered on too long.

Luckily, the news is providing more than enough content. We have the war, the midterms, the fatwah against Ye. Next week we will get to see a million blue checks on Twitter wail in unison over Elon Musk. It looks like he will start his reign of terror with mass firings, which will be a good time. This is the season of schadenfreude and the gods of that concept are going to be generous.

The one sour note will be seeing so many of our guys rush back to Twitter so they can once again perform for the enemy. Generations of conditioning have trained them to think they need the attention of lefty in order to live. They will abandon the various alternative platforms just so they can carry on like precocious children for their masters on the other side. It is the slave’s mentality.

It gets at the heart of being a conservative. The whole point of the enterprise was to get the attention of lefty and one day get him to agree. It is what Robert Lewis Dabney was getting at with this famous quote. Going back long before anyone alive can recall, the people we call the left have been training their opposition to grovel for the hope of some positive recognition by lefty.

The people racing back to Twitter will deny this. They will say they are doing it because they seek a broader audience for our ideas. Conservatives used to say this long before the internet existed. They would crawl on their belly to get on lefty talk shows, only to be humiliated. They would mew about the unfairness of it all, but then crawl right back at the first opportunity. It was shameful then and it is shameful now.

It is a reminder that even though someone crosses the great divide to this side, they bring with them the habits of mind of the other side. Good salesmen know that you have to keep reselling your accounts in order to reduce attrition. Dissidents have to accept that crossing the great divide is just the first step. The initiates need to be reconditioned to have a positive identity, rather than a negative one.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

No Left Turns
Elections
Ye Is Doomed
War Talk
Burnt Monkey Testicles

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Democratic Police State

Posted on October 27, 2022 by thezman

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If you are over the age of fifty, you remember a time when you would have been corrected, if you said America was a democracy. Conservatives would interrupt you and say that America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Liberals would say that America is a fascist police state, not a democracy. That is a small exaggeration, but the liberals were always going on about the lack of democracy. Both sides of the mainstream agreed that America was not a democracy.

Somewhere along the way, this reversed. Both sides of the increasingly narrow political consensus calls America a democracy. In fact, they compete with one another to be the most outraged by threats to our democracy. Proof that the universe has a sense of humor, our rulers would no doubt condemn all of their prior statements about America not being a democracy. This would never happen as no one would dare bring this up to them, but the point remains.

Of course, when they say democracy they mean liberal democracy, rather than direct democracy, which is impossible outside of small exceptions. By definition this means elections between distinct political parties, the rule of law, open debate about the issues of the day, a market economy, private property and the equal protection of the natural rights of all citizens. In other words, liberal democracy is representative democracy bounded by the natural rights of the people.

That last part is the critical piece. The point of the system is to not only give the people a say in who governs them but to make sure the people in power respect and defend the natural rights of the people. Otherwise, there would be no point in having elections for representatives to a parliament. It would be like giving the condemned the right to choose their executioner. The word “democracy” as currently understood means the defense of your rights.

The thing is, as the use of the word democracy has exploded, respect for the basic rights of citizens has sharply declined. It is not just the in the areas that can be debated, but the most fundamental rights of people. There will always be a debate about the use of private property at the fringes. For example, an you build a factory on your property located in a suburban neighborhood? That is a different matter from your basic right to own your labor and the fruits of your labor.

Take for example voting. Back when we called America a republic or a fascist police state, voting was orderly and mostly above board. You showed up to vote on the day of the election, identified yourself, voted and that was it. Maybe you had to stand in line for an hour if you went at the wrong time. Now that we have democracy, voting is a mess and the results are not known for days, sometimes weeks. Worse yet, no one can trust that the results are on the level.

Probably the greatest violation of our rights in this new fangled democracy is in the area of speech, which is under attack by the people preaching democracy. Kanye West is being systematically destroyed by the defenders of democracy because he says things they do not like. The defenders of democracy tell us we are supposed to cheer their coordinated assault on the man’s ability to exist, because he is a threat to democracy for foolishly sharing his opinions in public.

This war of speech has led to a war on property. PayPal recently announced a scheme to steal the property of their customers if those customers said anything that PayPal does not like. They had to backtrack on that scheme, but the mere fact that they thought they could do it is the point. They are not alone in this. The federal government thinks it can willy-nilly take money from employees of regulated firms if those firms fall afoul of the accounting rules governing public firms.

Before anyone thinks that this extrajudicial seizing of property will not withstand court challenge, take a look at the courts. The high profile police cases in Minnesota provide a clear understanding of how the courts have been corrupted. All similar cases involving police shootings. The results make clear that the foundational liberal concept of equality before the law no longer exists in our democracy. One can find hundreds of such examples that are now the rule.

Of course, the most basic right of all is self-defense. In most of the Western democracies self-defense is now illegal. This is a typical example of how protecting your life in your home is prohibited in Europe. Americans assume this cannot happen here, but Kyle Rittenhouse is a free man only because he drew the right judge and happened to be in one of remaining civilized parts of Wisconsin. If that had happened in a place fond of democracy, he would be on death row.

Self-defense arises from the bedrock belief that you own you. The entirety of the liberal tradition rests on this assertion. Even Karl Marx, a man not fond of private property, argued that the basic right of every man is that he owns himself. The past two years people were forced to take medicines against their will in the name of protecting our democracy from Covid. If you no longer have the right to control your body, then you have no rights at all.

None of this should be surprising. For most of human history people understood that democracy was a nice word for mob rule. In a mob, you have no rights other than those provided by the mob at any one time. You are always subject to the whims of the mob and those who can manipulate them. Therefore, as the talk of democracy has increased, the respect for basic rights has decreased. It turns out that democracy and a police state look a lot alike.

Some Regimeology

Posted on October 26, 2022 by thezman

Regimeology is a concept that needs much broader interest, as it is becoming an essential tool to understanding the current age. As the regime blacks out its windows and boards up the exits, the only way to understand what is happening inside the black box that is the ruling elite is to analyze the actions and media statements to then tease out some explanation for what we can observe. Like Kremlinology, it is the only tool we have to understand what is happening inside the system.

We have something new to analyze. The so-called progressive caucus sent a letter to the White House and the senior members of the inner party suggesting they were not onboard with the Ukraine war. They were careful to not break with official dogma on the war, but they were signaling to their supporters that they may at some point begin to question Ukraine policy. It was a very tepid bit of pushback, but they made the letter public so their fans could see it.

The reason they did this is the antiwar left is freaking out about the war and the fact that no one in the party they support is opposing it. The Bernie Sanders wing is supposed to be opposed to these wars and the machine behind them. Yet in this case they are silently nodding along with the warmongers. A group of antiwar people ambushed Sandy Cortez at an event where she was spouting neocon lines about the war and the resulting video was a huge embarrassment for her.

It was a nice little peak inside how the regime uses the far left to manipulate the various tribes that make up the Democratic coalition. They let these people speak against regime policy as a pressure release, but the unwritten rule is they can never threaten to block regime policy. It is the same theater the outer party uses to keep conservatives showing up to the polls. The guys at Trump rallies wearing tricorn hats are not the only chumps exploited by this system.

The interesting bit here is how quickly the hammer came down. The Biden White House and senior party members held an emergency meeting and then threatened the progressive caucus with death if they did not recant. We do not know the exact nature of the threats, but the speed with which the apostates recanted and their groveling tone suggest genuine fear. Whatever was said to them was serious enough to have them groveling in public within hours.

Just in case anyone missed the point, the regime then sent Bernie Sanders out to chastise the progressives for being wrong. Sanders has spent his life railing against the military industrial complex. He has opposed every military action, even those sponsored by his party. Now he sounds like Bill Kristol after a few too many drinks. Bernie is not just supporting the war; he is supporting the war dogma behind it. He felt he needed to get that out into the public domain.

The old internet meme about knowing who is in charge by thinking about who you are not allowed to criticize works here. If you want to know what it is important to the regime, think about what cannot be questioned. It is clear that they will tolerate no dissent on Ukraine policy, not even from the people they use to manipulate the left-wing activist class. In other words, they are willing to lose the support of their activist base in order to defend their Ukraine policy.

This is why the outer party has been silent on the war. There is no support for the Ukraine war policy, so the opposition party should be waving this around as part of the argument against their opponents. Most Americans would like to see a negotiated settlement to a problem they do not think is our problem. Despite the overwhelming support for a moderate position, everyone in the outer party is just as extreme as everyone in the inner party.

The question is why has the ruling class pushed all of their chips into the middle of the table on this issue? Objectively it is a bad bet. Ukraine is a backward and deeply corrupt country with no real chance of winning this war. The only reason it has gone this far is some version of why Bolshevism succeeded. The old line was that communism was the result of Jewish brains, Latvian swords and Russian stupidity. This war is the product of neocon paranoia, American arms and Russian stupidity.

That may be one clue as to why Washington is obsessed with this war. It is the last stand for the post-Cold War consensus and the neocon place within it. A settlement with the Russians on Ukraine would lead to a settlement on many other issues, like the wars against Syria and Iran. If you can make a deal with the Russians in one area, then there is no reason to not make a deal in other areas. In other words, the neocons need Russia as the eternal enemy in order to exist.

Another possible reason is the general paranoia of the aging leadership. Old people in power naturally get suspicious of the next generation. Look around Washington and across the board you see ossified geezers locked in place. Rather than the paranoia of one or two fossils it is a culture of paranoia among a gerontocracy. The Ukraine war just happens to be the issue through which they are exercising their intolerance of dissent, but it could be any issue.

Of course, there is always graft. Hundreds of billions are flowing into what is now a giant money laundering operation. This is the bust out of all bust outs and every serious player in Washington is getting a taste. The only place more dangerous than the area between a principled conservative and money is the area between a committed progressive and the same pile of money. As the saying goes, never mess with a man’s money or his women. Got that Jack?

Regardless, it suggests that the regime sees this war as one they cannot afford to lose, much in the same way Washington viewed Vietnam fifty years ago. Back then, that worthless backwater was the hill to die on for reasons no one could explain, but no one was allowed to question until it was too late. It is ironic that a generation that was born in the protests against the Vietnam war is closing the show by making the same errors policy makers made with regards to Vietnam policy.

Midterm Musings

Posted on October 25, 2022 by thezman

The midterm election is two weeks away and we are seeing the predictable pattern in the polling and news coverage. Whenever there is a Democrat in the White House, the regime media works feverishly to convince everyone he is the next Lincoln, but the voters think otherwise. Fake polls are released claiming the president is more popular than sex and the media is full of stories about doomed Republicans. Then autumn hits and everything swings the other way.

This pattern started in 1994. Bill Clinton was some weird mash up of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Al Goldstein. Supposedly, everyone loved Bill Clinton, even most Republican voters. In fairness, most people probably did like Bill Clinton as a picaresque character. They feared and loathed his deranged old lady, so they ran to the nearest Republican at the first opportunity. The GOP picked up eight Senate seats and 54 House seats in a sea change election.

This pattern did not hold in 2002, when newly minted president George W Bush went into his first midterm. The media spent a lot of time carefully explaining how this mumbling fellow was Hitler, but no one fell for it. His endless slobbering over Israel was probably the clue. That and the fact that his administration had more Jews in it than an accounting convention. The Republicans actually picked up a few Senate seats and lost just one House seat.

Fast forward to 2010 and they are back to the old tricks. Black Jesus is in the White House and the media is carefully explaining to white people that voting against his party was the most racist thing you could do. Of course, the Republicans agreed with them because that is what they always do. In a rare example of white people breaking from their conditioning, they risked being called racist and voted Republican. The GOP picked up seven Senate seats and 63 House seats.

Here we are with another Democrat in the White House and it is looking like another example of the pattern. The races that were allegedly competitive, like the Florida governor’s race, are not going to be close. Ron DeSantis is going to cruise to victory and probably carry a lot of Republicans with him. Firebrand girl boss Kari Lake was supposedly a long shot, but now it appears she will win that race. In fact, Arizona may go all Republican this cycle.

Then you have the weird races. In 1994 and 2010 there were races in areas no one thought would be competitive that were suddenly competitive. The same thing is happening this time around. Tiffany Smiley is neck-and-neck with grizzled hag Patty Murray in Washington state. The Oregon governor’s race is getting tight and the Michigan governor’s race could be close. The narrative makers are struggling to convince their core audience that the narratives are true.

What all of this points to is a big night for the Republicans and a glum night for the regime toadies and sycophants. The question is the numbers. Demographics and vote rigging probably limit the damage. The best estimate for the Republicans is 40-50 seats in the House and a one or two seat majority in the Senate. Given the condition of the president and the world, this red wave should dwarf the previous red waves, but there is no getting around the demographic issue.

As the New York Times helpfully points out, this election is a rear guard action by white America in response to the Great Replacement. The same people who repeatedly demand you say that demographic replacement is a conspiracy theory are consoling their readers with the knowledge that white people will be gone soon. Of course, their readers are uniformly white, but that is a detail. Hating white people is too important to worry about such trivialities.

They are not entirely wrong, of course. The white portion of the vote is in sharp decline and will be a minority of the vote in a generation. It will remain the biggest bloc so if it becomes racially aware, then it is big trouble for the regime, which is why they are so invested in preventing that from happening. In order to keep this system running, they need whites on opposite sides. That way the other tribes become the deciding vote and they are easy for the regime to manipulate.

There is another thing that is becoming clear. The quality of the options, like the quality of popular culture, is in steep decline. Pennsylvania is leading the way, with a Senate race featuring a brain damaged hobo and a Turkish carny. Georgia is not far behind, featuring two black guys with “colorful” histories. Serious adults are starved for serious choices at the ballot box, so they are left with symbolic ones. Voting Republican is now the same as voting none of the above.

From the dissident perspective, the election results are meaningless, as the first step along the dissident trail is realizing the game is rigged. Elections in a liberal democracy are always heads they win, tails you lose. The Democrats are “heads” and the Republicans are “tails”, reflecting the relationship of the parties. It is another example of how the universe has a sense of humor. White people vote Republican only to be finked on by the Republicans whenever they win an election.

Even so, there is the entertainment quality. Over the next two weeks the narrative shops will be tasked with producing new versions of reality. Fragile old geezers like Nancy Pelosi will be sent out to stumble through the latest message. Joe Biden will be sent out to shake hands with invisible people and fondle little girls in public, while reminding everyone he should be in a home. Democracy is a theater that always ends in the theater of the absurd.

That said, there are little green shoots from the dissident perspective. Guys like J. D. Vance and Blake Masters have managed to shrug off the racism stuff, which suggests it is losing it power over white people. Doug Mastriano is probably as close to a dissident candidate running and he is doing well, despite being called all the usual scare words by the usual suspects. The election results will not matter in the short term, but they point to positive long term trends for dissidents.

The Great Mistake

Posted on October 24, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up and this week I decided to change gears and write about a past hero of the cause. Sunday Thoughts was on break while I was away at a secret handshake meeting, but I have posted some travelogues. I will be posting some more detailed information about the event this week so if you do not have a subscription, get one. SubscribeStar and Substack.

Over the weekend news began to leak out about a series of calls between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his counterparts in Turkey, The United States, France and Great Britain. The purpose of these calls, reportedly initiated by the Russians, was to warn of the possible Ukrainian use of a radioactive bomb, a dirty, bomb, in the coming days or weeks. The point of the bomb was to escalate the war in order to force NATO to directly intervene in the conflict.

The Russians also reportedly said they had intelligence that the Ukrainians were getting help on this project from the British. It is largely assumed that it was the British that provided the intelligence and logistics to smuggle the truck bomb onto the Kerch Bridge two weeks ago. It is also assumed that the British helped the assassin with the murder of Alexander Dugin’s daughter. The British have been intimately involved with the war since the very beginning.

Interestingly, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace denied the claims but then quickly added that the Russians should not use this thing they deny is happening as a pretext for escalating the war. The American version of this bit of double-speak was almost identical, suggesting some level of cooperation. Given that various Biden administration officials have been claiming the Russians will use nukes on Ukraine, this has the look of the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Another clue about what is really going on is the fact that former CIA director General Petraeus has been sent on a public relations tour to prepare the media for the entry of American troops into Ukraine. Here he is three weeks ago talking about a hypothetical that no one considered plausible at the time. Here is a story about the 101st Airborne training in Poland for the purpose of joining the fighting in Ukraine. In other words, the narrative makers in the West have been hard at work.

Interestingly, the Ukrainians were not ready for their usual story telling and had to scramble in response to the Russian calls to the West. Zelensky does not do anything without permission from his Western advisors who are always in the room with him, so it would seem the Russians caught everyone by surprise, not only with the calls but with making sure they got into Western media. Zelensky then came out with the claim that the Russians planned to nuke themselves as a false flag.

One cannot help but detect a pattern with the false flag business. The Ukrainians claimed the Russians killed Dugin’s daughter as a false flag. They claimed the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was a Russian false flag. They made the same claim about the Kerch Bridge and the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plan, which is held by the Russians. Someone in the Zelensky media team has a bizarre obsession with this particular narrative structure.

Putting that aside, we have two competing stories. The Russians, who have repeatedly ruled out using nuclear weapons, but have been warning that this war could easily escalate to nuclear conflict, are saying that the Ukrainians are planning to use a dirty bomb and blame it on Russia. The West is saying they are totally innocent and it is the Russians who are planning to use a dirty bomb on themselves and then use that as an excuse to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

If you are inclined to believe what you hear from Washington and their media organs, you will want to accept their version of this story. If you are skeptical of the people who lie to you every day about the most trivial matters, then you are probably thinking that the Russians are telling the truth. It is impossible to know the truth at this point, but one should always leave open the possibility of a third option. Both sides could simply be psyoping one another on this issue.

Regardless of the truth, it reveals a serious problem for the West. They have pushed all of their chips into the middle of the table, betting on the prospects of a deeply corrupt country run by a narcissistic sociopath. The one thing everyone can agree upon is Zelensky is just an actor hired to play the role of president. This is the role of a lifetime for him and he has thrown himself into completely. Much now depends on the mood of an actor high on the attention of a global audience.

Tucker Carlson touched on this last week when he highlighted the absurd demands being made by Zelensky. This pint-sized potentate is calling Western media demanding that he be supplied hundreds of billions in aid. If an American mayor or governor made a tiny fraction of these demands he would be pilloried. It has somehow become completely normal for this nut to demand massive sacrifices from Western people in order to perpetuate a war with Russia.

This is not without president. America’s unconditional commitment to Israel has led to several disastrous wars against Islam. Officially, the Afghan war cost $2.3 trillion and the total bill for the neocon wars is $5.8 trillion. Not all of this can be laid at the feet of the Israelis, or the Saudis, who also played a role in these wars, but it is the danger that comes when large countries make open ended commitments to defend small countries in their wars with other countries.

The Founders strongly opposed these sorts of foreign commitments. Washington explained the danger of “entangling alliances” in his farewell address. John Quincy Adams echoed those same sentiments a generation later. When a nation considers another nation a friend, it inevitably takes on the friends and enemies of that nation, which inevitably warps the decision making of the country, putting the interests of foreigners ahead of the people.

It is important to remember that the last two European wars were due in large part to great powers aligning with minor powers. It is fair to argue that war with German was inevitable, but the British commitment to the Poles certainly guaranteed it. Western commitments to Ukraine look a lot like the same error. Nuclear war now hinges on the mood of an emotionally unstable circus performer. The so called great powers are now led around by a tiny corrupt backwater.

This will not end well.

Lessons Of War

Posted on October 21, 2022 by thezman

Greg Johnson and Mark Collett had a debate about the war in Ukraine, with each man taking a quite different view of the war. It was a reasonable and polite exchange, so if you like these things, it is worth a listen. I must admit I struggle to follow the logic of Greg’s argument, as it leads him to defend the people who would throw him in a cage if they had the chance, but perhaps the fault lies with me.

Regardless, the debate itself is a good jumping off point to talk about other issues related to the larger struggle. Like Covid, the war in Ukraine is a bit of a litmus test on this side of the great divide. Where you stand on the issue says a lot about where you stand on many other issues. Like Covid, it is becoming one of those reference points for other differences in the dissident sphere.

That said, much of the debate about the war, and you see in the Collett – Johnson debate, is trapped in the 20th century. In fact, the war exists because the Global American Empire is a product of the 20th century and the beneficiaries of the empire cannot let go of the past. As a result, people often find themselves trying to jam the present into those old models of politics.

The fact is, the 20th century is over and it is long past time for the West to close the books on it. Further, the liberal era is over. We live in post-liberal societies and it is time to face up to that reality. More important, the political modes of thought from the past no longer apply to this age because we no longer have the same human capital as those past modes of thought require. We need to think different.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

How To Think About Things
- Greg & Mark
The Framing
- Good Guys And Bad Guys
- Avoid Moralizing The War
The Gell-Mann Effect
- They Are Lying
- Fake Experts
The 20th Century Is Over

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The Political Vice

Posted on October 20, 2022 by thezman

The British oddsmakers are not giving new prime minister Liz Truss much of a chance to survive the year, putting the odds at 1-in-8. They are posting wagers on her probable replacement, which is a good sign they are confident they will have plenty of action in the near term. You can wager on just about anything in Britain but the point of posting odds is to attract action. If the oddsmakers are posting odds on the next prime minister it means there is a demand for it.

From an American perspective it is a bit amusing because of the over-the-top way in which the media talks about these things. It is like how British sports announcers turn a mundane sport like soccer into life and death drama. Every player heroically passes the ball to some other hero, who courageously passes it back. They are doing the same thing with the political squabbles within the Tory party. They are carrying on as if the island will flip over if they pick the wrong person.

The British are in political crisis because the people who actually run the country never forgave Boris Johnson for supporting Brexit. The fact is, the elites in Britain all wanted to be fully integrated into Europe. They loathed the very idea of Brexit and detested the people who supported it, which is the majority of the people. Just as everywhere else, British elites, and those who think they are elites, define themselves by the degree to which they hate the average subject.

The elites shoved old Boris over the side without thinking much about who would replace him because of another quirk of modern Western elites. They never think more than once move ahead when on the attack. When scheming to line their own pockets, they are masters of eight dimensional chess. When they get their feelings hurt, they tend to blindly and maliciously strike out while howling in pain. They never think about what happens after they get their revenge.

This is what is happening in Britain. They got revenge on old Boris, but then they had no suitable replacement, so they were stuck with Liz Truss. She is a simpleton, so this has quickly blown up on them. Now they have to find a way to push her over the edge and find a different empty suit to play the role of PM. The odds are the next person will be terrible and this will force new elections. The other party will be declared the winner and then the drama comes to an end.

The only reason this is interesting is that it will be a story we see all over the West in the coming months, even in America. The midterms are shaping up to be a disaster for the Democrats, so they will be forced to address their Joe Biden problem. He is not going to go quietly, because his handlers need him to stay. Joe Biden is a shuffling husk, but the people holding important jobs in the administration need him in the job so they can hold onto those important jobs. Dementia Joe is useful.

Regardless, the people who actually run Washington will conclude that they have a Joe Biden problem after the election. The trouble is the next in line makes Liz Truss sound like Cicero, so pushing Biden over the edge will just create new problems, but wounded animals do not think that far ahead. We could very well see a replay in Washington of what is happening in London. Biden is forced out for health reasons, then Harris is forced out because everyone remembers that she is an idiot.

Of course, as the political turmoil in the West heats up over the next year, the popular explanation will be that it is due to bad economics. Inflation, shortages, recession and energy prices will get the blame. You see this happening in Britain where inflation is getting blamed for the crisis. It is complete nonsense. The Bank of England is undermining the Tory government, not popular unrest. The Tories have no reason to care about public opinion. They do care about elite opinion.

That is the real source of the crisis that is slowly spreading in the West. In theory, government exists to exercise the will of the people. The “general will” is defined though the democratic process. The parties compete for support by offering up policies to address the issues the voters think are important. The Tories are in power because they supported Brexit and they implied they would do something about the problems that naturally stem from post-national cosmopolitan globalism.

There was never any chance of this happening because the people who actually run Britain never wanted those things. Those people are not subject to elections and have no concern for public opinion. That is the cause of the crisis. The political process and its results lie between public opinion and elite opinion. The two sides are natural opposites that operate like the jaws of a vice. As they close, the political process is squeezed until it eventually bursts.

The fact is the West has reached a point where we cannot have both an avaricious ruling elite and a prosperous middleclass. Either the elites are brought to heel and are subject to the political process or the middleclass collapses. The new world order is an effort to consolidate power and impoverish the population. Populism and various forms of nationalism are middleclass efforts to fight back against elites. The West is now entering the survival stage of liberal democracy.

It is tempting to think that numbers matter and the people will eventually win out and bring their elites under control. Covid should disabuse anyone of that notion, as it is clear that most people would rather die than speak out against the most humiliating abuses of the elites. If you can make people wear their underwear around their heads, you can make them do anything. Of course, an elite willing to mutilate children is never going to be susceptible to appeals to their humanity.

On the other hand, no one was really at risk during Covid. People got sick but people always get stick from something. Covid policies did not put the general wellbeing in danger, at least not right away. When people are worried about paying their rent or keeping the doors of their business open, they stop worrying so much about offending the sensibilities of rich people. Western people seem to accept no limits on their humiliation, but maybe there is a limit.

Regardless, the West is clearly entering a crisis phase. Unlike past crises in Greece, Spain or Italy, this one is occurring in the heart of the West. People expect political turmoil in Italy, but not in Britain. People expect the Spanish economy to be on the edge of the abyss, but not the German economy. Washington is supposed to be the same regardless of the party in power. This crisis is in the core of what made the post-Cold War order possible. Soon, all of it will be up for debate.

Managerial Reality

Posted on October 19, 2022 by thezman

There is a Hollywood plot where a troubled ventriloquist either begins to think his dummy is real or the dummy has actually come to life. The dummy then begins to direct the ventriloquist to do terrible things like kill people. Another take on this is where actors in some sort of fantasy performance get sucked into what appears to be a real life version of the fantasy world. The underlying premise is that playing make believe for too long causes one to lose his grasp of reality.

There is some truth to this concern for unreality. Extremely rich or famous people often cut themselves off from the world. In the case of the rich guy, it simply becomes a haven from the hassles of the real world. For the famous person it is the one place they are free of the fans. Over time they become increasing detached from reality or overindulge in drugs and alcohol. Howard Hughes is the famous rich guy example, while Elvis and Michael Jackson are famous people examples.

The French Revolution provides a more general example. The king was certainly divorced from reality, while clearly not insane. His actions were rational, based on the rules of the world in which he lived. The same can be said for the aristocracy that was competing with him for power. The trouble is that world was separate from the reality of France at the time. The Ancien Régime was operating in an unreality, based in rules that were quickly being washed away by events.

Of course, the comparison between this age and that age is common on this side of the great divide because of the general weirdness of the managerial class. Normal people, regardless of their income, are concerned with things like rising prices and the dramatic spike in violent crime. Meanwhile, the people running for office are telling you that their penis is imaginary and climate change is our greatest challenge. “Let them eat cake” sounds reasonable in comparison.

What is not well known or at least not discussed in the history books, is if the Ancien Régime invested a lot of time in story telling. That is, did they spend their days spinning tales that confirmed their version of reality? Were there people responsible for telling the important people that the peasants were running out of steam and soon they would fall back in line? Did the official information guy at court tell everyone that the unrest in the countryside was transitory?

It sounds ridiculous but look around the mass media. So much of what passes for the news is just a form of wish-casting. The stories, opinions and analysis are all designed to buck up the ruling class in the face of disconfirmation. When inflation began to rage, they were falling all over themselves to preach the gospel of transitory. It was obviously ridiculous but they wanted to believe it, so everyone in the managerial class put on the transitory face and explained how it was all transitory.

The last two years has been an elaborate game of Covid charades. It seems like a million years ago, but at the start they were claiming the hospitals were overrun and people were dropping dead in the street. None of that was true. In fact, the opposite of that was true with regards to hospitals. We wrecked our medical system because the managerial class believed the scary stories they were telling one another. In retrospect, the whole thing was a deadly and expensive farce.

We are seeing a replay of this with the Ukraine. For close to a year the media has been brewing up one whopper after another about the war. A batch of fake stories are released about Ukrainian babushkas destroying Russian tanks with household products and Western capitals erupt in celebration. According to the storytellers, Russia has been running out of missiles since February. The whole thing looks like a deranged game of make believe to console the managerial class.

This is not a new phenomenon. Way back in the Obama years, the Democrats passed a big spending bill to fund “shovel ready projects.” That was in the winter and by spring they had all the stuff ready for a big party called the summer of recovery. They expected to have Obama roam the countryside, standing in front of construction sites for new bridges while he talked about his great polices. Their narrative said he would be the new FDR, along with the new Lincoln and new Jesus.

They were so sure their stories were true they spent tens of millions on materials for the expected rallies. Things like signs and t-shirts with the “Summer of Recovery” printed on them in Team Obama colors. They were using the slogan into the early summer, despite the reality on the ground. It was as if they thought they could will their preferred version of reality into existence if they just pretended it was happening. The script said it would happen, so it was going to happen.

This has been the pattern for a long time now. Someone in the managerial class creates a pleasing narrative. It catches on and before long everyone is repeating the pleasing narrative in public. Experts are brought in to explain why this pleasing narrative is realty and then other experts are brought in to present proof. It is as if they think that once everyone agrees that the pleasing narrative is reality, then reality has no choice but to submit to the new moral consensus.

Again, Ukraine provides examples. A month ago, the Ukrainians launched a series of counter offensives. The mass media was instantly full of stories about how the Russian army was collapsing and the Ukrainians would soon be in Moscow. Retired generals were brought in to confirm the story. Analysts with funny names wrote columns about how the war has turned decisively against Russia. Everyone was sure it had to be true because they believed it was true.

Getting back to that old Hollywood plot, the managerial class seems to be in a pattern where they create a fantasy and then the fantasy convinces them it is real. Like the ventriloquist who believes his dummy has come to life, the narrative makers seem to be sure their alternative reality is more real than reality. They have come to believe that a good narrative is something like an incantation. If it is repeated enough, the narrative bends reality to fit the plot line of the narrative.

The assumption is that the endless telling of whoppers is to shape public opinion, but that is just a story normal people want to believe. No one in charge gives a tinker’s damn what the people think about anything. There is no evidence that public opinion has any impact on public policy. After the next election, all of those new faces in office will melt away revealing the same old faces behind them. Public opinion will have changed nothing about Washington.

A better reason for the explosion of narrative realty in the managerial class is that this is how the managerial elite controls the system. The people with complicated titles and inscrutable qualifications control the vast leviathan that is the modern managerial state using tales of what lies just over the horizon. The millions in the system, like ants in a colony, response and act accordingly. The leviathan moves in the desired direction with the help of a million administrative hands.

Surf & Turf

Posted on October 18, 2022 by thezman

Since ancient times, the great civilizations have been divided into two distinct categories, land powers and sea powers. The best example is the rivalry between Athens and Sparta that culminated in the Peloponnesian wars. The Peloponnesian League was led by Sparta, the dominant land power. The Delian League was led by Athens, the dominant sea power. The great ancient conflict still casts a shadow over the West because the dynamic is still with us.

To be a great sea power requires different human capital than what is required of a land power, which makes them cultural opposites. As a result, they look at war differently and they fight their wars for different reasons. Sea powers tend to be driven by profit while land powers tend to be driven by cultural forces. Culture and economics play a role for both, but the priorities tend to be reversed. The sea power is moved to act by money while the land power is moved by cultural issues.

The Athenians were arguably the first financial empire. They built their power through shrewd business relations with the other city-states. The alliances that were established to fight the Persians quickly became a business for Athens. They provided security while their “allies” provided money and men for the ships. Their aggression toward the other city-states was driven by opportunities for trade and profit. The Athenian empire was as much about business as Athenian culture.

The Spartans, on the other hand, were not driven by profit. Their willingness to join the rest of Greece against the Persians was purely in defense. When the Athenians wanted to take the fight to the Persians after the Greeks had successfully driven the Persians back across the sea, the Spartans were not interested. Their eventual war with the Athenians was purely defensive from their point of view. It is probably why they chose not to obliterate Athens after they won the war.

We see the same dynamic today. The Global American Empire is the new Delian League, spreading democracy to the world at gun point. The Russian Federation is the new Peloponnesian League. The Cold War was often cast the same way, but it did not work as an analogy. The communists were just as obsessed with spreading their form of utopian politics as the West. This time it works as the Russians are at war with an ideological and financial empire.

The clash of cultures is clear. The GAE just assumed the Russians would do what the GAE always does in war, which is systematically destroy the civilization of the opposing culture with air power. The West is still puzzled as to why the Russians never unleashed shock and awe at the start of the war. Further, the West concluded that the incremental approach was due to a lack of resources. The GAE is a sea power so it thinks like a sea power and fights like one as well.

The Russian Federation is a land power, so putting on a big symbolic light show to start a war makes no sense to them. Sea powers move like the sea, while land powers move like the land, slowly and incrementally. This is why the Russians had not bothered to put together a public relations campaign for the West. They saw no point in it as their purpose was to force the Ukrainians to submit. That happens at the bargaining table and on the battlefield, not on Twitter.

Another contrast in the two sides is in the weapons. The Russian have the best air defenses in the world. They have the best artillery in the world. The GAE has the best air force in the world and the best navy in the world. This contrast is due to the assumptions of both sides. The Russians assume their great wars will be defensive while the GAE assumes its great wars will be offensive. The two contrasting worldviews results in two entirely different military postures.

This contrast in warfighting is turning up in the weapons. Land powers assume long wars of attrition so they plan accordingly. That means squeezing the maximum from the resources available. The Russians are famous for making cheap, reliable weapons that can be used by anyone. The Kalashnikov is the prime example. The new drones the Russians are now using follow the same pattern. They are cheap, easy to operate and extremely effective against enemy targets.

Sea powers have to assume short wars. You can only keep a fleet at sea for so long so you have to inflict maximum damage up front. A naval battle is not going to last months like a land battle, so you need to prepare for the short haul. In the old days, ships were expensive, complex weapons. Today, the jet fighter is the cutting edge of technology and human organization. All of America’s best weapons are complex systems that require lots of training to utilize.

The flip side of the time preference aspect is that sea powers can take a loss and bounce back quickly, while land powers take time to recover. The GAE suffered a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, but quickly shook it off. The loss in Vietnam stung for a few years, but then the war machine was back in business. In contrast, the Russians needed decades to overcome the failure in Afghanistan. It has only been in the last decade that they have moved past it.

What that means for the Ukraine is that barring a collapse of the EU or the global financial system, the GAE will shake of this failure too. Whatever is left of Ukraine will be ignored and the GAE will turn its sights to some new opponent. Land powers must always be on defense, because it is their nature. Sea power must always be on offense, because it is their nature. That means when one war ends a new war must start, regardless of how the prior war ended.

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