Dr. Strange Biden

Posted on October 17, 2022 by thezman

Note: In case you missed it, the long awaited release of my talk with Greg Hood of American Renaissance has finally arrived. You can listen to it here. The Monday Taki post is up and the topic is clowns. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door along with other postings. SubscribeStar and Substack.

Is the Biden administration planning to use tactical nuclear weapons against the Russians in defense of Ukraine? It should be unthinkable but we live in an age in which the most offensive and absurd is celebrated, so we can no longer assume anything, no matter how monstrous, is beyond the pale. The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was an outlandish act of provocation, so we cannot assume there is anyone in the admiration on the side of restraint.

The first clue that the Biden people are talking about the use of nuclear weapons is their endless talking about the use of nuclear weapons. For months they have been talking about it, in the context of the Russians threatening to use nukes. The trouble is, the Russians have never threatened to use nuclear weapons. Western media keeps making this claim, but an examination of the record shows that Russian officials have repeatedly said the exact opposite.

It is a well known aspect of regime psychology to project what they are doing or plotting onto some enemy of the regime. In 2016 we got the Russian collusion hoax in which Trump was accused of plotting with foreigners to rig the election. What we eventually learned is that it was the regime that was working with foreign intelligence services to not only rig the election but undermine the Trump administration. The opposite rule is an iron law of understanding regime behavior.

There is also the fact that Russian nuclear doctrine does not include tactical use of nuclear weapons in the battlefield. They have tactical nuclear weapons, but Russian nuclear doctrine has always been rooted in deterrence. Their nuclear arsenal is designed as a deterrent against any use of nuclear weapons. In the Cold War they took mutually assured destruction seriously. It is the West that has the weapons and doctrine for the limited nuclear war scenario.

Recent actions in the Ukraine make clear that the Russian plan is to rely on conventional forces to finish off the Ukrainian army. Despite Covid-like narratives in Western media, the Ukrainians have not been winning. Their army has been slowly and methodically depleted. This next phase aimed at making it more difficult for Ukraine to function at all will be followed by fresh offensives. This time there will be a quarter million fresh Russian troops, rather than militias.

It is clear that the Russians see a path to victory using their conventional army and the facts on the ground support that view. The Ukrainians are acknowledging this, which is why Zelensky has been sounding the alarm in calls to Western media. The point is, there is no reason to think the Russians are even thinking about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but the Biden administration keeps talking about it as if it is something they think about all the time.

There is another bit of projection at work. The West has said from the start that Putin cannot afford to change course in Ukraine. Even while the Russians were negotiating with the Ukrainians at the start of the war, the claim from the Biden administration was that Putin had no reverse gear. Again, the opposite rule seems to be at work here as the Biden administration has repeatedly said that they will never make a deal with Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

Further, the Biden administration has been repeatedly asked about the limits on supporting Ukraine and the answer is there are no limits. Hundreds of billions have been spent on this project already. Biden was given a blank check to send weapons, contractors and support. The administration has repeatedly said that they are willing to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. In other words, the only option they will accept is the total defeat of Russia.

This leaves the administration little room to maneuver. If their goal in this war is the total defeat of Russia and they will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to accomplish it, then it is the regime that has no reverse gear. If the fortunes of Ukraine continue on the current path, Zelensky will be faced with surrender or abdication. The West is quickly approaching a crossroads with Ukraine. Do they continue to throw good money after bad or do they find some other option?

As it stands, there are three options. One is to strike a deal with the Russians, which will be on their terms as far as Ukraine is concerned. The second is to abandon Ukraine entirely and let the Russians sort it out after their victory. The third is some sort of game changer that resets the war in favor of the West. Something like a small nuclear bomb smuggled into the Crimea could be such an answer. After all, the West did smuggle a truck bomb onto the Kerch bridge.

When you reduce it all down, the West has given itself just three options, nuclear war, forever war and capitulation. If the third option is off the table and the second option is failing, then the nuclear option is what we have left. Perhaps the reason Joe Biden keeps babbling about nuclear Armageddon is that the people running this war keep talking about using nuclear weapons in his presence. Past regime practice suggests this it at least a possibility.

From the perspective of the people running this war, the nuclear option may make more sense now than a year ago. They have poured massive amounts of arms into Ukraine and launched an unprecedented economic war on Russia. The response from the Russians has been pretty much nothing. Then you have the assassination of Dugin’s daughter, the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines and the bombing of the Kerch bridge in the Crimea. Russia did nothing in response.

The regime may look at this and conclude they can roll the dice with a tactical nuke into the Russian lines or maybe aimed at the Black Sea fleet. Maybe this would be another red line that was not a red line after all. Alternatively, the use of a nuke would cause the Russians to mobilize their nuclear arsenal and that would be the pretext for a first strike on Russia by the West. This is a well known tactic of the West. They cry out in pain as they strike and use that as a reason to strike again.

Again, it sounds insane, but giving the government the right to mutilate children in the name of transgenderism is just as insane. A regime that is willing to torture children is not going to draw the line at launching nukes. Just as they can spin tales about the ghost of Kiev, they can create a scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons only kills Russians and Europeans. After all, that would then be a tremendous opportunity to build back better and begin the post-post-Cold War era.

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More Clown Horn

Posted on October 14, 2022 by thezman

There used to be a time when certain pundits would post about the correlation between economics and election results. They would go to one of the quantitative guys who modeled these things and then make predictions based on his model. This was a way for a pundit to pretend he was smart. George Will perfected this trick back in 1992 when he consulted a Yale professor whose model predicted a Clinton win.

We do not see much of that anymore. The last time anyone bothered to make the connection was in the 2012 election. The economic models said the election should be razor thin, but that was declared haram. Obama was black Jesus and no one would be allowed to cast shade on our dusky savior. Since then, no one has bothered to talk about economics and elections.

Even now it is not getting much discussion, despite the fact we have 1970’s style inflation and a crumbling economy. People are feeling the pain at the cash register, but the real pain lies just after the election. People seem to get that and will most likely make this known on election day. On the other hand, the great invisible army of Biden voters may think everything is great. Who can really know?

Still, you get the sense that the regime is bracing for bad news. They are feverishly crafting narratives to claim that the bad guys are doing shenanigans. You see, unlike the 2020 election, this election is under assault by the forces of darkness who are trying to attack our democracy! Of course, those forces are led by Donald Trump who must be arrested now so he cannot attack the 2024 election.

This is life in a theocracy. Putting that aside, there is a sense of impending doom hanging over the regime media. The economy does feel like it is on the edge of a cliff due to a number of factors. It is not just poor management. The old arrangements seem to be failing in several key areas. The world is slowly turning the page on the 20th century and America is just waking up to this reality.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

The Orange Menace (Link)
Arrested & Executed (Link) (Link)
Seven Ballots & A Mule (Link)
Crime Problems (Link)
Fear Of The Cucks (Link)
Ukrainian Fantasies (Link)
Generally Stupid (Link)
Paid Clowns (Link)
King Cuck (Link)
Diaper Crisis (Link)

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Societal Collapse

Posted on October 13, 2022 by thezman

Note: The long awaited release of my talk with Greg Hood of American Renaissance has finally arrived. You can listen to it here.

Most people think of societal collapse as something like a zombie apocalypse where everything suddenly stops working. Instead of people turning into brain eating zombies, they stop going to work. The “system” collapses, so everyone just stops doing what they normally do all of a sudden. The next day, people divide up into gangs and begin to guard their turf using what is left of modern weapons. Life quickly returns to a hunter-gatherer existence with modern clothes.

This image of collapse is a powerful one. Google the phrase “United States collapse” or some version of it and you get results going back many years. Most of them start with economics but some start with culture. Right now, the people we call the Left for some reason think America is on the verge of collapse because they cannot force people to nod along with their weird morality. Many normal people think collapse is coming because they see the food bill every week.

Of course, there is a market for taking the contrary view. This is a popular gag for internet characters on what we continue to call the Right. They counter the claims from their fellow anti-leftists with arguments for why the “founding principals” will prevail and avoid societal collapse. Maybe they will point out that the magic of the free market has conquered communism, so it will conquer whatever is happening now. It is a form of strategic gainsaying to get attention.

The thing is societal collapse is a real thing that does happen just as civil wars, revolutions, wars and social upheavals are real things. Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and we got to watch lots of it on television. When people suddenly realized that the guards were not going to shoot them if they tried to escape to the West, it did not take long before order broke down. Once the process started, there was no way to stop it and the system collapsed.

The thing is it did not happen overnight. The collapse actually started much earlier but people did not notice it. Little things stopped working. For example, people in Hungary began to notice that the border to Austria was not always guarded. Maybe the guards were there and ignored their duty or they just abandoned their post. Over time the border was not much of a border. Similar breakdowns of small systems became common over the course of the 1980’s.

Of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union did not send these societies back to the stone age either. Politics became increasingly chaotic. Law and order broke down to the point where criminal gangs were imposing their will on whole cities, because the police no longer had the ability or desire to stop them. The people got poorer in many small ways, but mostly in the breakdown of trust. They could not rely on the system, so they slowly abandoned it for alternatives.

We do not think of social trust as a part of the poverty equation, but in realty it is the key component of social happiness. High trust societies may not have unlimited consumer goods, but the people trust the system, because they trust one another. This allows for long term planning. Africa will never be rich, despite having massive natural resources, because social trust is near zero. Finland will never be poor because the Finns can count on their fellow Finns to always be Finnish.

Social collapse, like war and revolution, will reflect the material relations of the age because those reflect the resources of society. Revolution in the 18th century was peasants with pitchforks, because that is how you can revolt in an agrarian society operating under feudal rules. In the 19th century revolution was workers hurling homemade bombs and shooting at the authorities, because that is how you can stage a revolt in an industrial urban society.

This is the information age, so revolution will reflect the weapons we choose to use in this age, which will be money and knowledge. Money in all of its forms is a type of information that says things about the general state of affairs. In completely financialized societies like the West, money is the big weapon. It is also other information, like the government hiring clowns and carnies to nudge people in the “right direction” during the Covid panic.

The great tumult in the West over the last decade has been centered on the things that are important in the information age. The rise of a new group of oligarchs was made possible by the technological revolution. Just as agrarian people measured wealth in land and industrial people measured wealth in capital, technological people measure wealth in control of information flows. The reason Mark Zuckerberg is richer than Bill Gates is he controls something more valuable than PC’s.

Societal collapse in the information age will, at least at the beginning, reflect the socioeconomic relations of the age. Trust in what we are told by the media has collapsed, because it is easier to see the lying than in prior ages. In 1985 you could think the New York Times was biased, but predictably so. Today, you cannot trust anything they say because it is false in unpredictable ways. Trust in the media has collapsed because their information is chaotically false.

The slow collapse of trust in our information is spreading. We used to think that the courts were predictable, if not always fair. Poor people might not get the same justice as rich people, but the reason was understood. If you could afford a competent lawyer, he would get the most from the system for you. Today, no one knows what the hell will happen in a courtroom. Alex Jones just got fined a billion dollars because the regime supporters are still salty about the 2016 election.

Of course, trust in government is collapsing not because they do not fix the streets or make the buses run on time. Trust is falling because they lie. It is not about politicians lying, which is expected and predictable. It is the government itself. For example, they appear to be faking key economic data. Their inflation numbers are laughable as anyone who buys food will tell you. They also like to change the meaning of words, which puts an Orwellian spin on the lying.

Getting back to the topic of collapse, what happens in the information age when no one trusts the information? In a world where your bank may close down your account because they claim you hold the wrong opinions; how can you trust them to be straight about anything else? If the government is faking economic data, how can we trust anything else they are doing? When the people responsible for 100% of disinformation claim to be fighting disinformation, who can we trust?

When the Soviet system began to collapse, it was the symbols of its power that first came under pressure. When people stopped fearing the border guard, they slowly stopped fearing the system behind it. The same will be true in this age. When people stop trusting the information that runs this world, they will slowly begin to stop trusting the system behind it. It is at that point the system begins to slowly unravel as alternative trust networks form up to fill the void.

The bottom line is those waiting for collapse are mistaken. It is not a thing that is looming over the horizon. It is a thing that is happening now. Every day there is a new reminder that the system cannot be trusted. Maybe it is ten dollar gas in Germany or skyrocketing food prices in England or demonstrably false claims from the drug makers with regards to the Covid jab. These things chip away at trust in the system and like the game of Jenga, the result is inevitable.

Conservative Morality

Posted on October 12, 2022 by thezman

One of the great tricks conservatism plays on normal people is to offer up a set of false choices in response to regime morality. The ruling class comes out with some new thing and conservatives come out with new responses. One choice is something the regime has declared a fatwa against, while the other choice is allowed. The job of the conservatives is to herd their people into the acceptable choice. Often, the acceptable choice is just an extreme version of what the regime offers.

The best example is racism. Way back in the last century, elements of the ruling class invented a new sin called racism. For most of human history, everyone just accepted the fact that people were different and people liked to be around their own. This was so obviously true no one had to think much about it. The exception was when one group of people tried to move into the area of another group of people. Invasions always led to violence, which is why invasions were immoral.

For reasons no one bothered to explain, elements of the ruling class decided that it was immoral for you to want to live around people like you. Further, you were not allowed to notice the differences in people. That was this new thing called racism. For several generations now, conservatives have been trying to prove that the Democrats are the real racists. You see, the greatest conservative principle is opposing racism more than the people conservatives claim to oppose.

This desire to be more of whatever the regime is promoting infects everything nook and cranny of the conservative mind. When the regime decided sodomy was a sacrament, conservatives celebrated sodomy. When the regime decided men in dresses could stalk your children in the playground, conservative suddenly discovered a new sacred principle in favor of crossdressers. To be a conservative is to fully embrace every degenerate moral claim of their alleged opponents.

Here is a good example of how conservatism is just the extreme version of yesterday’s moral claims by their opponents. The Supreme Court is looking at two cases related to freedom of association. Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina challenge the race policies of their respective defendants. In both cases, the schools discriminate based on race.

What the regime has always argued is that white people have dominated the world due to dumb luck and their unique cruelty. Whether it is the exploitation of resources held by nonwhites or simply good fortune, Europeans have unfairly outperformed the rest of the world and this is immoral. Therefore, it is required that current white people be made to suffer in order to balance the scales. This is the moral claim made in all policies under the umbrella of restorative justice.

One way to even the scales is to force whites to accept nonwhites into their lives so that the nonwhites can partake in the good fortune of whites. In education, for example, the underlying assumption is the teachers in white schools do a better job teaching their subjects than the teachers in nonwhite schools. The proof is Asians, who prefer white schools over black schools. Asians do very well, so it must be that special magic that exists in white schools, but not in black schools.

In the middle of the last century, a natural right enjoyed by all humans since the dawn of time was stripped from Americans. You no longer had the right to place your body next to another body without permission from the state. Further, you no longer had the right to deny nonwhites access to your life. Effectively, what was done is the forging of a new right possessed only by certain nonwhites. That right is the right to access white people and the things they create.

The rational opposition to this is that all people, even white people, have a right to make the most of their talents. Therefore, they have the right to work with whomever they think is in their best interest. This is a foundational argument of Western liberalism and the basis for market economics. Since you own you and have the right to use your labor as you see fit, it naturally follows that you have the right to associate, or not associate, with whomever you choose.

Conservatives do not make that argument. As you see in that post, their argument is that you have no rights whatsoever. You are not even allowed to notice that people are different and posses different qualities. Instead, in order to be even more berserk about race than the most berserk member of the new religion, you have to poke out your eyes and rip off your ears. The conservative principle with regards to the human condition is to be to the extreme left of the new religion.

Of course, the moral position here is that Harvard, a private college, can discriminate however it pleases with regards to admissions. If they want a freshman class of left-handed Korean midgets, they can only admit those people. On the other hand, North Carolina is a public university and as such must admit students according to a set of rules applicable to all American citizens. That would also bar them from favoring legacies and potential sports stars in admissions.

You see, while we human beings and citizens enjoy the absolute right of free association, our government does not have that right. Otherwise, it is not our government and is instead an occupying force. Foundational to liberal society is free association and that means we collectively own the state. As equal partners in the state, the state cannot favor one group over another. Again, equality before the law is a bedrock item in a moral society.

The writer of that post is probably a decent sort. He wants to do the right thing, but he has been conditioned by conservatism to think the right thing is always the most extreme version of whatever the liberals are peddling. It is so ingrained in the conservative mind that they do not notice it. If the liberals suddenly favored wearing colorful jock straps on their heads, conservatives would be boasting about how their new headgear is the best ever.

The result of this madness is the courts will now decide if the state has a right to discriminate against white people or no one has a right to discriminate against anyone for any reason at all. Given the makeup of the courts, the most likely result will be to ban the most basic right of free association. In effect, the new rule will render citizens as prisoners in a permission state. Conservatism will have made otherwise free people into servants of the managerial state.

Never Trust A Neocon

Posted on October 11, 2022 by thezman

One of the great tricks of the neoconservatives was to reshape opposition to radical causes into support for their own radical projects. In the early days, this allowed normal people to strongly oppose limits on corporate power, in the name of fighting the communist threat from the Soviets. Alternatively, working class people could support the military industrial complex as their patriotic duty. Their own interests and genuine opposition to the Left was always secondary.

After the Cold War, this game rapidly evolved so that so-called conservatives supported a massive expansion of government, as well as a massive expansion of foreign policy entanglements, all in the name of freedom. Most conservative people assumed the end of the Cold War meant America could go back to being a normal country again, but those feelings were quickly channeled into new causes. The old tricksters were up to their old tricks, turning virtues into vices.

This is why conservatism never conserved anything. In the Reagan years, the conservatives were too busy fighting the Soviets to roll back the cultural revolution or clean up the welfare state. In the Bush years they were too busy spreading freedom and smart bombs to address domestic concerns. Despite promising to promote conservative causes, conservatives instead found some war to fight. Meanwhile, the bad guys got to run riot in the culture.

You can see the same game emerging with the war against Russia. The deception here is another version of the big lie. This time the villain is Putin, who for no reason at all, attacked Ukraine. All that opposition to perverts in sundresses and bigots spewing antiwhite propaganda in the classroom is being channeled into opposing Putin in order to defend our democracy. Normal people are supposed to be mad at Putin rather than the sorry state of their own country and its leaders.

You see how this works in this Victor Davis Hanson post. The goal of the post is to divert opposition to the regime’s foreign policy into a Republican brand of the same policies toward Russia. You see, the reason that dude in a dress is chasing your daughter around the classroom is Obama was soft on Russia. Biden is following the same policies, which is why things are so bad. He uses some form the word “appeasement” nine times, because, you know.

Of course, the column is also an attempt to whitewash the neoconservative involvement in the current crisis. You see, it is not the people who started this war with Russia who are to blame for the fallout. No, it is some guy off stage who is turned into the Emmanuel Goldstein of this show. He is the one who set the wheels in motion and all the people currently running foreign policy, all members of the same Trotsky cult, coincidentally enough, are just victims like you.

The truth is this war has its roots much further back than Obama. If you want to point to an incident as a starting place, it would be American involvement in the Balkan war during the Clinton years. American support for Kosovo against Serbia was the start of a new conflict with Russia. At the time, it was viewed in Moscow as a deliberate offense to the Russians. In the years that followed, this affair has become a warning for the Russians about what Washington plans for them.

There are other capers that could be a starting point. Washington supporting Georgia against South Ossetia in the Bush years is a good example. The neocons wanted to add Georgia to NATO. The Russians made clear that they saw this as a provocation, as well as another broken promise. Washington had promised Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand to the Russian border. In other words, the neocons have been at this for a long time.

Of course, one does not have to go back that far to see the grimy fingerprints of the Trotskyites in the current crisis. Victoria Nuland, who is running Russia policy for Biden, was the person running Ukraine policy for Obama. She was right there on the ground when Washington overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014. She is pals with Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the Ukrainian oligarch who backed Zelensky. The point is this is another neocon war that runs against American interests.

It also needs to be pointed out that Hanson supported all of the neocon misadventures going back to the Clinton years. He wanted Clinton to take an even tougher stance in the Balkan conflict. You will note that the neocons used the same language against Clinton as they are using now against Biden. He was not tough enough against this new Hitler from the hinterlands. Hanson, of course, supported the Bush wars. He also supported the Georgia – South Ossetia caper.

The point of Hanson’s post is to make sure no one turns over any of these rocks with regards to the neocons and Russia policy. Instead, the game is to channel general opposition to the Biden administration into an even more deranged hatred of Russia and Vladimir Putin. All your troubles will go away conservatives, if you just hate the Russians more and vote harder this November. It is a clever trick that works on a gullible but trusting population.

This is why foreign policy must become a litmus test. There are no American interests in the Ukraine, South Ossetia or Tajikistan. Not only does meddling in these areas invite trouble, but it also diverts attention from important matters. Building superhighways in Afghanistan did not shorten a single commute in America. “Standing with Ukraine” does not stop the flood of invaders over the southern border. What these foreign adventures do is divert attention from America’s real problems.

Given that all of these foreign escapades over the last thirty years trace back to the same Trotsky cult, the real litmus test is neoconservatism. Back before most people were born, they hollowed out conservatism and have used to as a Trojan horse to trick decent people into supporting that which is against their interests. A genuine conservative policy with regards to Russia would oppose Biden for meddling in the affairs of Russia, not demand more meddling.

Two Wars, Two Visions

Posted on October 10, 2022 by thezman

Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. This week is a post about the mistakes Russia has made in the war thus far. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, covering some news items of the day. SubscribeStar and Substack.

All wars have their unique character, but the war in the Ukraine is probably one of the strangest in the history of the West. Its strangeness is due to the two sides operating from a different set of facts and a different framework for those facts. It is as if the two sides are fighting entirely different wars. In point of fact, the two sides are fighting different wars, despite doing so on a common battlefield. That reality is about to become clearer as the war moves into winter.

The first main difference in the war is that the Russians are fighting it from a highly legalistic and bureaucratic perspective. The West does not seem to grasp this and keeps treating it like a cartoonish war of conquest. They frame Putin as a version of Hitler, who is now a cartoon villain in the Western imagination. Putin is attacking Ukraine for no reason at all and has no real plan other than war. It is just some irrational land grab, like when Hitler conquered Poland¹.

In reality the Russians have conducted this war like a group of lawyers engaged in complex civil litigation. They spend a lot of time on legalistic points like the official legal status of the disputed territory. Before the start of the war, the Russians put a lot of time into legally recognizing Luhansk and Donetsk as independent territories. The ongoing attacks on these areas by Ukraine was the legal pretext for the Special Military Operation that started eight months ago.

This legalistic mindset is turning up in the response to the terrorist attack on the Kerch bridge in the Crimea. The facts were quickly established. Ukraine took credit for the attack and promised more. Once the Russian investigators confirmed the essentials of the attack, that it was terrorism and sponsored by Ukraine, the Russians could then conduct anti-terrorism activity. Again, this an important legal distinction for the Russians, as it permits specific activities.

Russia launched one hundred missiles at key Ukrainian facilities overnight as a response to the attack and as a warning. Much of the internet is down in Ukraine and parts of various cities are without power and water. You see, Russia can legally attack civilian infrastructure in response to terror attacks. The warning here is that if the terrorism continues, the Russians have the legal right to take out all of Ukraine’s power, water and communications systems.

Contrast this with how the West is fighting the war. At the start, Western governments seized the property of Russian companies and individuals. There was no court case or legal arguments about it. They just did it. They filled Western media with gleeful stories about stealing the yachts of Russian oligarchs. The owner of the Chelsea football club was forced to sell the team. Germany seized the assets of Gazprom, the Russian energy firm that supplies its natural gas.

Then you have the sanctions war. Much of what has been imposed on Russia has been done outside the normal channels. The whole point of the New World Order is that it is a rules based world and those rules are administered though global entities like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. The point of these groups is to hash out difference between countries. All of those were bypassed. Even the legislatures of the respective countries were bypassed.

When you put the two ways of waging the war side-by-side, you get a picture that is the opposite of what is presented. The one side is bogging itself down in paperwork and legalism while the other side is cutting through the red tape and the rule of law to implement the latest polices. In a way, it is like this war is being waged between the bureaucracy of the post office and the leadership of the Mafia. It is a war between two entirely alien ways of viewing the world.

Another place you see the contrast is in public relations. The Russians have abandoned the field when it comes to the meme war. They have invested no effort in winning the daily news cycle or spinning events into clever narratives. Instead, they provide daily updates on the granular details of the war. If you care about how many flat tires were fixed by Russian forces every day, the Ministry of Defense is your source. Their reports are a dry accounting of the basic facts.

On the other hand, the Western side of the war is a carnival of creative stories that are splashed across Western media. The occupation of abandoned territory in the north was treated like the Battle of the Bulge. The terror attack on the Kerch bridge was a great blow to the Russian army. Once it was clear the bridge was not destroyed and was back in service, it was off to the next narrative. The West has been waging this war on the internet as if it is actually taking place there.

Probably the biggest difference between the two sides is how they explain their respective involvement in the war. The Russians see it as a defense of the Russian people and the Russian homeland. The people in the Donbas are Russians and therefore must be defended by Russia. Further, Western activity in Ukraine is portrayed as part of a larger American effort to destroy Russia. The Russian people are once again being called upon to defend the motherland.

In the West, the war is an abstract thing. It is a defense of democracy, which is a thing no one bothers to explain. In fact, if you ask what it means you get shouted down as a threat to our democracy. Like so much of what has happened in the West over the last three decades, this war is a moral signifier. If you support it, you are a good person, but if you have doubts, it means you are a bad person. Even thinking about why this is true is a sign you may be a bad person.

All wars have consequences but it is never easy to see what they are until they finally arrive, usually long after the fighting has ended. No one at the end of the Great War imagined the events of the 1930’s. In this case, the West is sure that what lies ahead is their New World Order. The Russians think what lies ahead is a multipolar world of which they are an important part. Two powers, fighting two wars with two visions of what comes next and both cannot be right.

¹We know. Everyone knows.

Clown World

Posted on October 7, 2022 by thezman

Loretta Lynn died this week. She was 90 years old, so she had a long run, if not necessarily a good run. Like many of the country stars of her era, her personal life was often complicated. Most were people who lived hard lives and their music was often about the consequences of living a hard life. Of course, their audience was mostly people who also had complicated lives.

It is trite to say upon the passing of an icon that they are not making them like that anymore, but in the case of these old country stars it is true. They really are products of a bygone era. Pop music stars of all genres are now manufactured products, created by a system that selects for stability and predictability. The days of the gonzo rock star or wild living country star are long gone.

In the case of Loretta Lynn, she is also the last of the alternative feminists that flourished in the country scene into the 1970’s. We think of feminism as the increasingly deranged nonsense that comes from the harpies on the college campus, but for a long time there was an alternative to the left-wing feminism. This alternative conception of the strong women turned up in classic country songs.

Probably the closest thing today to that old right-wing image of the strong female is the trad-wife business, but that is more of an internet meme. It is also more about what it opposes than what it proposes. Like so much of what passes for right-wing now, it is mostly a reaction to the excesses of the culture wreckers. Perhaps in time it will mature into a genuine alternative to the lunacy of feminism.

Of course, when one of these old legends dies, and there are not many of them left at this point, it is a reminder that they came from a world that has been entirely replaced by something different. The world that produced someone like Loretta Lynn is gone and the audience she appealed to is also gone. There was a clean break somewhere in the last few generations and that old world is fading away.

It is most obvious in the case of someone like Loretta Lynn. She grew up in what we call grinding poverty. Fifty years ago, everyone knew someone who came from such conditions because we still had lots of genuine poor people. A young person today will expect to live their whole life never having met a poor person. That is poor as in no food poor, not as in not the newest gaming console poor.

It is not an accident that the collapse of authenticity and realism in the popular culture tracks with the elimination of want. Those old country stars like Lynn could sing about the troubles of the human condition because they lived them and more important, their audience was living them. In a world where the hardest choices are on the menu, people are not interested in the human condition.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

Clown Horn (Link)
Sad Trombone (Link)
Boob Update (Link)
More Sad Trombone (Link)
Clowner Men (Link) (Link)
David French (Link)

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

The Energy War

Posted on October 6, 2022 by thezman

The golden rule states that the man with the gold makes the rules. In this age, gold is energy in its various forms. The world as we understand it runs on electricity, which comes from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. If you happen to sit upon a lot of these things, you get to be important and have a lot of money. If you do not have these things, then you are dependent upon others for your welfare. There simply is no way to have a modern society without cheap energy.

In case the West forgot this reality, OPEC+ sent a gentle reminder this week by committing to a large cut in production. Over the next two months they will reduce supplies of crude to the market by two million barrels per day. The stated reason is to bring market prices back in line with the target of $100 per barrel. The unstated reason was to remind Washington that they are not the only voice in the room. The Saudis were sending a message to Washington.

Since Biden took office, there has been a sharp decline in relations with Saudi Arabia, due, in part, to Biden’s reckless language regarding the Khashoggi affair. He was the CIA operative pretending to be a Washington Post reporter. The Saudis decided to have him chopped up at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. This became a major scandal, as the events were leaked to the press, most likely by Washington. Biden has called Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a murderer.

There are also the recent efforts by the Biden administration to manipulate the energy markets through various means. It is clear that the administration has been faking gasoline demand numbers to suppress the futures market. Then there was the promise to buy 200 million barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia at $80 a barrel in exchange for OPEC not cutting production. The Biden admin has reneged on that deal. The Saudis have good reason to not want to play ball with Team Biden.

The larger issue for the Saudis and every other country outside the collective West is the issue of regime change, which has become a fetish for Washington. MBS looks at Biden’s reckless words regarding the Khashoggi affair and sees it as a potential first step on the regime change escalator. Whenever Washington decides they want to blow up a country, they anathematize the leader, by claiming he is in violation of the moral consensus and thus fair game.

The Saudis have become closer with the Russian over the last year and the main driver is the regime change issue. The OPEC countries, Russia, China and even India are coming to understand that Washington sees them as lackeys. As long as they do what they are told they can keep some of their stuff but get out of line and Washington will install someone new. The willingness of Washington to try regime change on a nuclear power says that no one is safe from this policy.

Of course, the Russians are a member of OPEC+ and they have their reasons for supporting a production cut. The EU is still plotting an oil price cap on Russian oil, which is mostly a face saving measure. They will set the cap at a price well above what Russia will find acceptable, so they can act tough while importing as much Russian oil as they can handle. This announcement by OPEC will make sure that the Europeans do not get creative with their math.

There is something else here. It is the first sign in the Middle East that the major players are thinking about a post-America world. The Saudi – Russia relationship has grown stronger over the last year to the point where the Saudis have been circulating a Ukraine peace plan in Europe. They have agreed to join BRIC’s, which is the political alliance formed around Brazil, Russia, India and China. Interestingly, Iran has also said they wish to join, despite their relationship with the Saudis.

Some observers suggest that Russia is playing peacemaker between Iran and the Saudis, with China and India supporting the effort. Getting these two regional rivals on the same team would be a sea change in regional politics. It is the sort of thinking that imagines a world where America is not a major force. It is also the sort of thinking that comes when all involved fear the same enemy. The sign outside their clubhouse will read, “No Regime Change Allowed.”

All of this is a reminder that while ideology plays a huge role in the current crisis, it is energy that has been the driving force. America’s presence in the Middle East has always been premised on the claim they are guarding the oil supply. The long war on Iran has been as much about keeping the Persians out of the energy markets as it has been about containing Islamic radicalism. The Iranians will not play ball with the West over energy, so they must be isolated.

This brings us back to the golden rule. Washington’s power lies solely in the power of the dollar, which is pegged to energy. The real reserve currency of the world is the BTU and the dollar is the physical manifestation of it. The war on Russia, like the war on Iran, is as much about protecting the control of energy as it is ideology. What we are seeing is that the countries with vast energy wealth are starting to figure out that they are better off as partners rather than as competitors.

Where all of this leads is hard to know. Washington is sure they can win a war of attrition against Russia, a people famous for their endurance. A lot will depend upon how much suffering Western Europe is willing to absorb. Washington is willing to fight the war in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian. Maybe they are willing to fight the energy war to the last European. As winter approaches, we will soon learn who is better equipped to survive the first energy war of the 21st century.

Food Phobia

Posted on October 5, 2022 by thezman

Food plays an important role in every culture. Since culture evolves in a place and that place has certain foods not known in other places, food helps ground the culture in a time and place, which helps ground the people in a time and place. A big part of the answer to the only question that matters – who are we – is the place where the answer was created by our ancestors. It is why our holidays have special foods. They help remind the people of the answer to the big question.

In the West, fear of food is also a big cultural item. For some reason, Western people remain convinced that their food is out to get them. From time to time certain foods have been banned. In pre-modern times the reasons ranged from the superstitious to the ritual, while in modern times “science” is the blame. In this age, we are told every day that something in our diet is trying to kill us. These days, people are often defined by the foods they think are plotting against them.

Fear of food seems to track with belief. The more ideological the person, the more likely they are to be paranoid about food. Vegans and vegetarians are almost always in one of the subcultures on what we call the Left. The exception will be someone who got it into his head that something is bad for his training regimen. Otherwise, when someone tells you they are a vegan, and they almost always tell you that as soon as you meet them, they are telling you their politics.

This may have been true before ideology replaced religion. When he was not busy inventing the triangle, Pythagoras was running a cult. A big part of his cult was the foods that were prohibited. Of course, religions of the book have dietary laws. Jews are not supposed to eat pork or shellfish. For a long time, Catholics were not supposed to eat meat on Friday. Since religion seeks to answer the big question or at least contribute to the answer, it makes sense that it would have food rules.

In this age of disbelief, food fads seem to fill the void for some people. Vegans and vegetarians are the obvious examples. They make a big deal out of their food, as if the consumption of the correct items is a sacrament. Keto people are not far behind in this regard, but they tend to be fascinated with the math of it. A big part of the keto subculture is tracking the macros. Every meal is a math puzzle. Get the numbers right and Andhrímnir will bless the day.

The biggest food fetish by far in this age is the fear of certain foods. Stories like this one in the New York Post are a daily occurrence. Some food gets the stink eye because “science” claims that it is plotting to kill you. In this case, white rice is part of the conspiracy known as heart disease. A billion Chinamen eat rice every day and have relatively low heart disease rates. This obvious fact will be ignored and some people will accept the claim that rice is a killer.

Interestingly, the science of food is riddled with science denialism. Heart disease, for example, is most certainly a genetic issue. This old post from Jayman on the topic is a good explainer on the genetic reality of heart disease. Our health outcomes are probably 98% genetic, but the “food science” people insist that arranging the right items on the dinner plate will magically bring good health. Food science is a good reminder that we are as superstitious as ever.

Of course, admitting that genetics, not diet, is the key driver of human health would be bad for business, so “food science” embraces the blank slate. If the reason people eating a Mediterranean diet have a low incidence of heart disease is due to them being Mediterranean, then you are not selling many cookbooks. On the other hand, if you claim that all people are exactly the same and the differences we see are due to things like food magic, then you can sell a lot of cookbooks.

There is the theological angle as well. The New Religion treats human biodiversity as a heresy, one of the deadly sins, in fact, so we cannot notice that certain people seem to have certain diseases while other people have different diseases. Just as dietary laws are part of all religions, the New Religion has embraced food magic. The rice in your cupboard that is plotting your demise has nothing to do with the rice that seems to like the people of East Asia. Peace be upon you.

The truth is, outside of the extremes and controlling for obvious poisons, food plays little role in your health. What matters is your over all calorie intake and the balance of nutrients you get from the food. If you get enough calories and the right mix of nutrients, you will be as healthy as your code indicates. Eat too much and you get fat. Eat the wrong things and maybe you get scurvy or rickets. Otherwise, your food intake is just not all that important to your health.

In this age, the issue with food is the extremes. The rising incidence of diabetes is driven, in part, by the fatness of people. Demographics play a role as certain people are more prone to both obesity and diabetes¹, so as they grow in number their diseases will grow in proportion. Even so, Americans eat too much and eat far too many calories from carbohydrate laden foods. Stand outside of a Starbucks and you will see fat women waddling out with what look like deserts every morning.

Interestingly, the one thing that is never mentioned by the fear mongers is the vast array of chemicals in prepared foods. It is just assumed they are safe, but we really do not know if long term consumption of sodium nitrate or guar gum has an impact on the human body. Big food is never going to pay anyone to study it and they will never let government look into it. The recent Covid experience should make clear who calls the shots when it comes to public health.

Putting that aside, the rise in claimed food allergies and weird diets is probably linked to the collapse of the culture and local community. It always returns to the answer to the big question – who are we? If you are not allowed to answer in the affirmative, then you are left to answer in the negative. Instead of being what your people eat, so to speak, you are what you fear on the dinner plate. A negative food identity fills the void left by a positive cultural identity.

¹Some people with reading disabilities interpret this to mean obesity is caused solely by genetics, rather than calorie intake. This is an error on your part. Genetics plays a role in everything, including obesity, but it is not the only factor.

The Moral Hazard Society

Posted on October 4, 2022 by thezman

For the last couple of weeks, there have been whispers that some large banks may be in trouble due to the rising dollar. The strength of the dollar is due, in part, to the Federal Reserve’s effort to fight inflation. It is also due to the decline in both the Euro and the British pound. Economic conditions in Europe are deteriorating quickly because of poor management at every level. The relative strength of a currency is the relative strength of the managerial elite that issues it.

Recently, the gossip has turned to Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, both of which have seen their share prices collapse. The former has lost about 60% since the start of the year and the latter is down around 50% off its recent high. Credit Suisse could be at risk of imminent collapse, due to its deteriorating credit condition. Banks need credit to function and right now, no one is excited about extending credit to a bank whose CEO is telling employees that the bank is not about to fail.

Some are calling the Credit Suisse crisis the Lehman moment. This refers to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which triggered the financial crisis. Banks are dependent upon one another, so if one fails, it can set off a chain reaction where the next weak bank fails, then the next weakest bank. Get enough banks unable to make payments to other banks and the whole system crashes. This is why everyone is worried about the banks all of a sudden.

It is also why the market boomed on Monday. The stock market is wholly dependent on central bank policy now. Loose policy means lots of money creation in the banking system, which means lots of money flowing into markets. Tight central bank policy means the money gets fussy about where it flows. It can even sit on the sidelines and wait until things appear more stable. The robots are betting that Jerome Powell blinks and ends his tightening to save the banks.

This is similar to what recently happened with the Bank of England. All of a sudden, there was no market for the long dated British bonds. This is why the British pound declined in value. This in turn created a crisis for British pension funds, as their collateral started to evaporate. The BoE had to step in and buy long dated bonds to guarantee their price and save the pension funds. As a result, the gilt and pound have stabilized over the last few days.

The weirdness of this age is right there in that action by the BoE. On the one hand, they are trying to fight inflation by reducing the money supply. They do this by raising interest rates, which reduces bank activity. This slows the creation of money, thus reducing the supply of money relative to demand. As relative demand increases, the relative value increases, which is what brings down inflation. In reality, it means a recession, which does the hard work of cratering demand.

Where we are now with the BoE, and probably the Federal Reserve, is that the bank is trying to reduce the amount of money in the system relative to demand. At the same time, they are trying to increase the money in the banking system in order to prevent the banks from running out of cash. Put another way, we may be in a situation where central banks are injecting and withdrawing money at the same time, which is one of those things that is supposed to be impossible.

The current crisis is due to the choices facing central banks. They can provide liquidity to the system or they can fight inflation. If they raise rates to fight inflation, major players who got sloppy with interest rate swaps, for example, are suddenly facing an extinction event, which threatens the whole system. On the other hand, if they protect the system by leaving rates alone, they face the political fury of governments contending with double digit inflation and energy shortages.

There is a bigger issue. The energy problems, the supply chain disruptions, inflation and the fragile credit markets are due to political incompetnace. Over the last three years, Western governments, led by Washington, have found every bad decision possible and then made it with furious enthusiasm. People cannot be blamed for thinking it is deliberate, because that is the best answer. The odds of rulers being this dumb this often strikes most people as impossible.

This is a time when Occam’s razor does not apply. They are this dumb. Liz Truss came to power promising to give rich people free money to boost the economy. This was a moronic plan that nearly blew up the economy in her first weeks. Truss is a simpleton who has no business in politics, so she thought it was a grand idea. She is in office because her predecessor was a bloated party boy who saw Churchill whenever he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

Go back through British PM’s and it is one buffoon after another. This mirrors what has been happening in America. Joe Biden is in the late stages of dementia and he will be on the ticket for 2024. His predecessor was a carny act. The guy before that was a formless nobody who was willing to act the role created for him. The guy before that was a simpleton controlled by his father’s friends. You can do this in every Western country going back decades. They are as dumb as they act.

The crisis of competence in the managerial elite is not the root cause. The real first mover is the moral hazard economy. Going back to the 1970’s, the Western political system has come to rely on a handful of clever bankers to save the political class from their own idiocy. Starting with Paul Volcker, central banks have been the mother hen of political economy, always right there to kiss the boo-boo of the politicians or the pirates in the financial system when they stepped on a rake.

This safety net under the political economy of the West has warped the selection pressure on the people in the system. In a world of no real risk, feckless airheads like Liz Truss can rise to the top on promises to the powerful. After all, if she breaks something, nothing really bad can happen. The result of this risk-free political environment is that it rewards reckless behavior. The bigger the claim, the bigger the media splash, which means bigger political clout.

The same selection pressure can be seen in banking. In a world where bankers go to jail and lose all of their money if they screw up, there is a low tolerance for people who are reckless and foolish. In a world where the Fed steps in to not only save your bank but save your golden parachute and those of your colleagues, why would you not take the most dangerous risks? For over thirty years central banks have created a moral hazard, which in turn created a culture of reckless disregard.

It is this sense that no harm can ever come from error that is leading the West into a crisis from which it may not survive. It is this mentality that is leading to the game of chicken with nuclear weapons. The West is now led by a collection of mentally unfit bullies who think they own the school yard. At some point, like all bullies, they will get punched in the nose and see their own blood. In this case, it is reality that will do the punching and the bankers will not be their to kiss the boo-boo.

This raises the serious question. Bullies learn their lesson in the schoolyard because that lesson is not lethal. In the present age, how can the ruling class suddenly feel the pain of their own stupidity, without blowing up the world? How can real risk be reintroduced to change the selection pressure without risking collapse? The moral hazard society may have reached a point where there is no solution. The phrase that may be needed here is creative destruction.

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Monthly Archives: October 2022