Year End Finale

Posted on December 16, 2022 by thezman

It is that time of year again when I go into my winter hibernation. For the next two weeks the show will be on hiatus for Christmas and New Year’s. There will be regular written content here and behind the green door, but it is time to give the old pipes a rest and prepare for the new season of the show. This is the time of year when I plot new ideas and changes to the format.

For the last show of the season, I decided to keep it light and do some newsy stuff, but one thing I missed is the latest Twitter drama. I must admit that even though I am not on Twitter, I am enjoying this more than I should. For example, I see that Keith Olbermann was suspended by Musk for being an all around horrible person. The new horrible person rule in the terms of service is going to be great.

It also appears that Musk has banned doxing and mobbing. Antifa accounts will no longer be allowed to post personal data about normal people. They will also be banned if they try to get a mob together to attack a normal person. This is pretty much the entirety of their activity on Twitter. They are either doxing people or they are spying on people, hoping to get them attacked in public.

The best part of this is that Musk banned some activists from the mainstream sites like the Washington Post and CNN. All of the fruitcakes who use the word “journalist” like it means “cleric” are up in arms. “Just imagine if this had happened to a Fox News reporter” they gasp. The fact that the old regime did this routinely has been forgotten, because fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism.

Where this leads is hard to know. The crazies will never abandon the site, but Musk seems to be determined to apply some basic rules evenly. The Yoel Roth/child porn stuff seems to have rattled Musk. The day he fired that perv was when things started changing quickly as far as moderation. History says the sexual degeneracy stuff is always the bridge too far in these matters.

What is happening with Twitter is a good reminder that one person with power is better than a million people with no power. The reason to win over the masses is so that people with real power decide to join the cause. That can only happen when the masses appear to hold the moral high ground. Musk was moved to act because people he liked were getting the shaft from Twitter.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

Trump The Hoarder (Link) (Link)
Kevin McCarthy (Link)
Sam Bankman-Fried (Link)
Twitter (Link)
Kanye & The Jews (Link) (Link)
Alternative Reality (Link)
The Electoral College (Link)

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The Canary Is Dead

Posted on December 15, 2022 by thezman

Note: This is the time of year to be generous to those in need, so if you are looking for a place to give, here is an option. Most certainly know the story, but for those who do not here is the background.

If you live near a public tennis court, you may have noticed that there are not that many people playing tennis these days. Many courts have simply been abandoned to nature, due to a lack of interest. Depending upon where you live, you may see people playing pickleball, which has nothing to do with pickles. It is a game that is something like ping pong, except the players are on the table. They use paddles and a plastic ball, taking turns hitting the ball back and forth over a net.

According to the wiki page, the game was invented as a way to give kids something to do when they were bored. Over time it caught on around the neighborhood and soon it was becoming a thing. Recently the sport has caught on in a big way with tournaments and leagues around the country. It is very popular with Baby Boomers, because they can play the game while stationary. They just bat the ball back and forth to get some exercise and socialize with friends.

This is a bit ironic. Fifty years ago, tennis went from being a rich person sport, like polo and golf, to something of a national craze. In the 1970’s big tennis matches were must see television and the stars of the game were household names. Baby Boomers were young and fit, so they could play tennis. Then father time made tennis much less enjoyable and tennis went into decline. Fifty years later the Boomers are back on the court but playing pickleball instead.

It is hard to overstate the warping effect the Boomer generation has had on the American culture. The tennis to pickleball phenomenon is one example, but all of sports has been changed by the Boomers. Through most of the twentieth century, sports attendance was light, but then the Boomers got into sports and suddenly going to games was a thing. Hundreds of billions have been spent over the last half century creating sports arenas for the Boomers.

Of course, standing outside for three hours is tiring on the old back and knees, so sports attendance is in decline. College football, which is a quintessential Baby Boomer pastime is seeing a collapse in attendance. All of sudden the people who make a trip once a year to catch a game at their alma mater are finding a reason to watch the game from the comfort of the recliner. They can stay in touch with their old classmates on Facebook, so why make the trip to the game?

The decline in attendance is a serious threat to the college model because the infrastructure for this industry relies on donations from alumni. The rich donor wants his friends to see his name on the sports building. He wants his friends to party with him in the luxury suite. If all his friends are at the Villages watching the game on television, what is the point of writing the check? This is why those sagging attendance numbers have colleges in a panic.

Golf is another sport feeling the Boomer decline. This is the sport for the white suburban middle manager. Three decades ago, there were a lot of these people and they filled up golf course around the country. Demographics and the actuarial tables are thinning the ranks and so the number of golfers declines every year. Those little brown guys swimming over the Rio Grande may be natural conservatives, but they will not be taking up the game of golf any time soon.

This decline in participation will mean a decline in interest. Twenty years ago, the big names in sports talk radio were known throughout the culture, because tens of millions of people listened to these guys while at work. The core demographic for these shows was white men between the ages of 25 and 55. That demo is now in steep decline and the listenership is following them. Here is a list the top sports talkers and you probably recognize none of them.

What all this points to is a looming winter for sports entertainment. Some sports like the NFL have been gaming the cable system to tax the public for their product, but that model is facing the same demographic collapse. The grandparents still have a cable subscription, but their kids most likely cut the cord and their grandkids will never have a cable subscription. That assumes the grandkids even exist, which is highly unlikely according to the census.

The decline of the Baby Boomer generation was always going to bring a decline to the leisure industry, but the demographic decline promises a depression. Many will wonder why they should care, but the sports entertainment industry is driven by the same economic principles as the rest of the economy. Those billion dollar stadiums and multibillion dollar franchises are leveraged to the max. It all assumes a growing audience of middle class white people.

You can probably do this same exercise with other parts of the economy. How will the legal rackets maintain themselves when the law schools are forced to drop the LSAT requirement in the name of equity? A courtroom like this is amusing, but it is no way to keep the ambulance chasers in business. Even if the standards do not collapse, the legal profession is about to experience a great die off. Soon, simple cases will take years because of the lack of bodies.

It is easy to overstate things, but the country is about to undergo a demographic revolution, and this is before the Great Replacement discussion. All of the things that relied upon a massive number of suburban white people are going to find they lack the people to maintain the old model. The number of suburban whites as customers is in decline and the number to do the work is in decline. Sports entrainment is the canary in the coal mine and the canary is dead.

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The Murder Itself Phase

Posted on December 14, 2022 by thezman

Note: Let’s face it, you stink. The way to stop stinking is to take a bath and for that you need soap. Havamal Soapworks is where you can find it. It also makes a nice Christmas gift, especially for those smelly people in your life.

A year ago, when the Russians began to assemble forces along the Russia – Ukraine border, Western planners were sure that whatever the Russians were planning could only last a few months. They simply lacked the resources to put an army in the field, especially against a heavily defended opponent, for a long time. The Western response to the Russian advance into Ukraine was predicated on this. By now, the war should have been over due to a Russian withdrawal.

This short time frame thinking is clear in the economic sanctions that were levied against Russia when the war started. It did not require an advanced degree in economics to see that these sanctions would hurt the West. Cutting off a critical vendor has to have a negative impact. Western countries basically went to war with their most important supplier of energy. They were willing to do this because the war would be short and Russia would surrender to the West.

On its face this always looked like a crazy decision, but it was based on two assumptions that have turned out to be even nuttier. The first assumption was that Russia was nothing but a giant gas station run by drunken peasants. Western economic sanctions would send the country into economic turmoil and those drunken peasants would quickly revolt against their stupid rulers. Back in the spring, predictions like this were placed all over Western media.

The second assumption was that China and India would eagerly jump aboard the sanctions train. This has turned out to be the biggest error. China and India have not only refused to join the sanctions regime, but they have also moved closer to Russia and are now integral partners in the anti-Western bloc. More critically, OPEC+ has also moved closer to both Russia and China. Saudi Arabia recently signed critical deals with China, despite Western pressure to the contrary.

These horrible blunders by Western planners have resulted in a long brutal war on the doorstep of Europe. The Russians have slowly reconfigured their systems for a long war, both economic and military. On the battlefield, they are relentlessly pounding Ukrainian positions while minimizing their casualties. The battle for Bakhmut, for example, is being called a meat grinder. The Ukrainians are losing a thousand men a day defending this one place in the Donbas.

No one in the West cares at all about the lives of Ukrainians, but they have to care about the growing economic cost to the West. In parts of Europe, energy costs are five times higher now than before the war. An economic system based on cheap energy is not going to hold for long when the energy costs start to rise. Europe is just at the beginning of this energy crisis, with 2023 promising even bigger price hikes. How much longer before this spills into the political arena?

People who have seen the battle space in this war have described it as something like the trench warfare of the Great War. The Ukrainian army is dug into massive fortifications, surrounded by trench systems. In places like Bakhmut, two thousand artillery shells a day will fall on the defenders. The defenders fire back, but their artillery lacks the range of Russian systems. Even so, much of the fighting is the sort of artillery duels that were common in the Great War.

There is another parallel between the two wars. There is no path forward for a negotiated end to the fighting. In the Great War, both sides were locked into a mode of thought that prevented the necessary compromises. For both sides, the war became an end in itself. Something similar seems to have gripped the West, which has categorically ruled out a negotiated settlement. Repeatedly, Western leaders have declared there can only be one result – total victory.

As if to make sure the Russians also forgo all hope of a negotiated settlement, the West sent former German chancellor Angela Merkel out to tell the world that her prior dealings with Russia were a trick to buy the Ukrainians time. Until that interview, Merkel was one of a few Western leaders Russia thought she could trust. Now they must assume that they can trust nothing from the West. Therefore, Russia can never expect to get a deal from the West at the bargaining table.

All of this leads to another important comparison between this global conflict and the Great War a century ago. A century ago, the British Empire was effectively destroyed by the totally unnecessary war in Europe. Something similar may be waiting for the Global American Empire in this war. Instead of surrounding Russia with enemies, the war will end with the West being surrounded by a league of regional powers committed to defending themselves from color revolutions.

The question that must follow is can the economic and political model of the Global American Empire survive when it is confined to a minority of the world? The West is a little more than a tenth of the global population. How will the GAE function if the EU is in economic ruins? Can the petrodollar survive if the largest energy producers are comfortable dealing in alternative currencies? These are questions that get to the core logic of the American empire.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the same thing that happened to the British Empire at the start of the last century. The Global American Empire is not dying because it has run its course, but because it is run by stupid people who keep making critical errors in vitally important areas of imperial business. Adams famously said of democracy that it “wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Perhaps this is true of democratic empires and America is now in the murder itself phase.

Custodial Musings

Posted on December 13, 2022 by thezman

Note: Is the man in your life a lifeless lump on the couch? Is the little lady acting more like an old lady? Need to add some spice to your life? Then head over to Minter & Richter for a jar or two of their hot sauce.

Wawa is a local convenience store chain in the Mid-Atlantic. The typical store is a big gas station near a major road, along with a store selling the sorts of things working people would pickup during the day. Their big draw is a sandwich shop that makes a decent cold cut at a very good price. It is not gourmet eating, but it is far above what you would get from a fast food joint. Of course, being a convenience store, they have the quick items you would expect.

Another take on this is a chain calling itself Royal Farms. They have copied the model used by Wawa and many other chains. They used to be strictly a convenience store chain, but they have been building big gas stations. Many are something like a small truck stop, providing services to the big scary truck people. Like Wawa, they have a sandwich shop, but their hook is fried chicken. They claim to have the best take away fried chicken on the planet.

One interesting difference between the two chains in the Greater Lagos area is that Wawa hires mostly white people, while Royal Farms hires black people. Wawa will hire the occasional nonwhite, but the stores are 90% white. Royal Farm is 100% black at their stores. This turns up in the customer base too. Go into a Wawa at lunch time and it is all white working people. Go to Royal Farm and it is lots of black people, along with some Hispanics and white working-class people.

The one thing both chains have in common is a labor problem. Royal Farm is the most amusing in this regard. It is entirely possible to order a turkey sub and be handed a roll with just the condiments and then be told they are out of turkey. Alternatively, it is possible to order something but you get nothing or someone got tired of waiting and simply took your food when you were not looking. Of course, this all assumes the ordering kiosk is working, which is not always the case.

Like many take out chains, Royal Farms was an early adopter of the self-service kiosk in order to solve the quality control problem. Quality control in this case means the staff, who struggle to do the basics. Mother Nature does not always get it right and the defects end up working at Royal Farms. This problem has turned up all over the retail space, but Royal Farms seems to get the worst of the worst. There is a World Star Hip-Hip vibe to their hiring decisions.

No one is immune to the retail staffing problems and as a result these two competing chains have been in a technology war. The self-service kiosk for ordering was the first logical step to reduce errors in food orders. Both aggressively push their app and the use of delivery services. Both now have self-checkout kiosks that blow away the ones you see at the big retail chains like Home Depot. The goal, of course, is to reduce the staffing to the barest minimum.

What this points to is something that people have been warning about for decades and that is the great robot take over of the workplace. Go into one of these chains and you can easily imagine a time when you order your sandwich from the screen and a robot assembles it, wraps it up and delivers it to a pickup area. You pay for your items at a self-checkout kiosk using your bank app. The only interaction with a human is the guards who make sure you paid your bill.

This is not limited to retail. The mass layoffs at Twitter confirm what many people have suspected for a long time. There are lots of people sitting in office cubicles who have no real purpose. Maybe they are there to tick boxes. Maybe they perform some function mandated by the government, which could be automated. Maybe the marketplace has stopped functioning, allowing for massive overstaffing. That clearly has been the case at the giant tech firms like Twitter.

The people who have been warning about the automation revolution have always asked the question, what happens to the displaced workers? The teddy bear conservatives cling to is the great invisible hand of the marketplace. Sure, the robots will replace the people, but the magic of creative destruction will save the day. Look around the retail space and that is clearly not happening. It will certainly not be the case for the tens of thousands of people fired from Big Tech.

Even if the magic beans of capitalism are not the answer, it does not follow that there will be a neo-Luddite revolt against the machines. Again, you get a glimpse of the future in these retail chains. Go into a Wawa and people are happy to interact with a robot to get their food and checkout. Everything about that experience, in fact, everything about their lives has been reduced to a transaction. As long as people can get their extra large drink and snacks, they will not complain.

That is the lesson of Covid. Those fired Twitter people were in make work jobs and they knew they we in make work jobs. Here are some examples from conservative media that have been making the rounds. The reason these people liked working at home so much is they were not doing anything at work. Covid allowed them to pretend that goofing off at home was real work. The reason firms are struggling to get people back to work is many of their workers have no real purpose.

How big of a leap is it to slash the pointless people from the workforce and then give them busy work at home? Some parts of the country spent close to two years experimenting with this idea. It was like the old gag around Washington whenever there was a big snowstorm. Nonessential workers were told to stay home, which meant everyone working for the government. Something similar happened during Covid and we learned that most people were not essential.

Of course, Covid came with rules to make sure the suddenly idle were not going outside and getting into trouble. Short of a revolution, we will never know why the rulers all got on the lock down bandwagon, but one likely answer is they feared millions of idle people milling around looking for something to do. Making sure they stayed in their huts, plugged into the internet was a primary goal. The robot revolution will no doubt come with something similar to pacify the masses.

Stand around in a place like Wawa and it is not hard to see where this is all heading and then wonder if it can work. We are about to tip into a world with lots of useless people, kept busy by a custodial state. They will be given credits to buy the things they want and kept busy through various means. Some will be assigned busy work, while others will simply be amused into a catatonic state. Still others will be used to police their fellow inmates in the custodial state.

From the perspective of the managerial class, this seems like a great challenge that will give purpose to their lives, even though many will be assigned to busy work. Can a people live like this is another question. Note that during Covid there was not the predicted baby boom. It turns out that lots of idle people at home did not let nature take its course after all. Maybe such an unnatural way of living does not put one in the mood to bring new life into such a world.

Welcome To The New Rome

Posted on December 12, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: I have multiple goodies up behind the green door this week. The schedule going forward will be two written pieces a week and one podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Note #2: If you are looking for a book to read, you may want to buy the book A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story. It is a first person account of the events by a couple of good guys who deserve your support. it would be a great Christmas gift.

Imagine you agree to play a game with someone and the first rule of the game is that your opponent sets the rules of the game and he can change the rules whenever he likes for any reason he likes. That would mean that no matter your mastery of the rules, you must always lose the game because your opponent will simply change the rules whenever necessary. You would spend all of your time learning rules that keep changing to put you at a disadvantage.

Similarly, imagine that you decide to build a house on another man’s property, without getting a fixed agreement on your use rights. Since the landowner could at any time tell you to remove your house or even deny you access to it, the focus of your life must be making sure that you are in good standing with the landowner. While technically the house is yours, in reality he sets the rules for how you use it. Like the game example above, your life is about complying with changing rules.

This is the situation for professional Christians. They have agreed to allow their opponents to set the rules of the moral framework. Like the guy building a house on another man’s land, they have built their church on progressive land. The professional Christian must always get permission to use his church. Or like the game example, he must spend his time making sure the tenets of his faith comport with the changing morality of the prevailing the moral framework.

You see it in this rather bizarre post at First Things. There are two main assertions made in the post. One is that racism, and the mythological concept of white supremacy, are the worst things possible. The other point is that it is the duty of Christians to purge those accused of these sins from the ranks of the political Right. To make this point, he piles on a guy named Thomas Achord, a headmaster of a private classical Christian academy, who was accused of blasphemy by the Left.

A feature of professional Christianity is to not only abandon a fellow Christian attacked by the enemies of the faith, but to also rush to the front of the line of bigots taking turns kicking the accused. Here is the execrable Rod Dreher taking some self-righteous shots at Thomas Achord. Like David French, Rod Dreher never misses an opportunity to promote his own virtue. He is who Emerson had in mind when he said, “The more he spoke of his virtue, the faster we counted the spoons.”

Note that Christian mercy never comes up when the Left starts howling for the blood of a Christian accused of violating the progressive faith. Professional Christians are like a pack of wild dogs. As soon as they sense a member of the pack is weak, they pounce on the poor fellow, tearing him to pieces. One cannot help but wonder if this behavior is solely to please the Left. Many of them, like Dreher and French, seem to take pleasure in these sadistic rituals.

Of course, the reason that professional Christians rush out these condemnations whenever one of their own has violated progressive dogma is to let the people holding the other end of the leash know they are a good boy. For professional Christians, what matters is remaining in good standing with the Left. These ritualized condemnations are a public act of piety – progressive piety. It is an affirmation that Christian piety must always rest on the moral foundations of the Left.

Another example of this sort vulgarity is this self-published video from Anglican priest in Nova Scotia Canada. If not for the collar, one would be forgiven for thinking Father Ed Trevors is a weirdo from the grievance studies department. In the description of this tantrum, he makes sure to post his pronouns. One thing missing from his public act of piety is a reference to Scripture. Like all Anglican priests, he is probably unfamiliar with the foundation text of his church.

Putting aside the vulgarity of these displays, the premise of the argument in that First Things article is anything but a Christian argument. Jesus Christ had plenty of chances to state his opinions about racism and white supremacy. He had nothing to say on the matter. His disciples wrote and spoke about the full range of the human dilemma but never bothered to mention anything about racism. Scripture is silent on the issue of race and the moral claims around it.

The reason for this is that these are entirely novel concepts conjured in the last century for purely political reasons. Even those on the winning side of the American Civil War lacked the racism concept. Lincoln famously said, “there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality.” He repeated these claims throughout the Civil War to audiences on his side.

Now, there are people who will cherry pick lines from Scripture claiming that Jesus was very much opposed to racism. Never mind that the concept did not exist in the age of Jesus and his language lacked words for the concept. Even if one can make these leaps of logic, the reason for doing so is to make Christian morality match progressive morality, in order to please the people controlling public morality. Those who bothered to read their Bible should be thinking of Matthew 6:24 right now.

In fairness, the professional Christian can argue that Christians must live in this world and that means navigating around secular moral claims. That is clearly not what we are seeing with these people. Instead, their Christianity is just part of the sales pitch they use to convince Christian people to embrace secular morality. Once you accept this new class of sins as far worse than those in your theology, you have subordinated your theology to those creating the new class of sins.

Arguably the most challenging thing is this age is to be a Christian. Your enemies control the commanding heights of Western society. Your friends are always looking for a way to profit from their alleged defense of you. It is a good reminder that all moral frameworks must stand alone. In the case of Christianity, it means the logic of the faith must stand outside of and often opposed to the prevailing orthodoxy. Christianity now finds itself where it started. Welcome to the new Rome.

Dissident Thoughts

Posted on December 9, 2022 by thezman

Years ago I did a show on what it means to be on the dissident right, but it was long enough ago to revisit the topic. Back when I did the show, hardly anyone used the term so it was a different conversation than today, when lots of people use it. In fact, far too many people recklessly throw around the label. Just because you got booted from your Facebook group for using the N-word does not make you a dissident.

What you see is lots of people who used to claim the label alt-right having stopped using that now discredited term and picking up this new label. Their opinions have not changed and their understanding has not changed. They just needed a new label so they scanned around and found one that had not be ruined yet. In many cases, these people have no coherent politics at all, just grievances.

Labels are important, especially in politics. The words in the label bring meaning and connotation, but the label should have its own definition. The white nationalists are not simply people who are white and patriotic. Hitler was white and a nationalist, but no educated person would call Hitler a white nationalist. The label white nationalist has meaning that transcends the words in the label.

Therein lies the danger with labels. The white nationalists have allowed the bad guys to define the label they use. It was not all their fault, as the bad guys control the organs of cultural production, so they were able to define the label. That said, the many wackos who have been allowed to use the label white nationalist have made it easy for the bad guys to anathematize the term by soaking it with their vitriol.

That is why it is important to control your language. This was one of the many errors made by the alt-right. They never bothered to provide a clear definition of what they meant by an alternative right. This allowed every weirdo and goofball looking for a home to lay claim to the label. If they had put some effort into defining their labels and controlling who used it, they would have avoided the weirdo problem.

That is the gist of the show this week. What it means to be a dissident in this time and place, as well as what it means to be dissident right. I have also sprinkled in some of the things I talked about at AmRen, so the people who were there will recognize some of the things at the end. This is a topic that could probably be made into some useful posts down the road.

This Week’s Show

Contents

Inspiration
Labels
What It Means To Be A Dissident
Dissent From What?
The Dissident Right
The Dissident Vision

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Mask Dropping

Posted on December 8, 2022 by thezman

Note: This being the time of year when people feel generous, you may be thinking about sending a few bucks to a worthy cause. If you are an HBD fan or a supporter of academic integrity, you should consider kicking in a few bucks to the Bryan Pesta fundraiser that you can learn more about here.

Michael Kinsley famously said that a political gaffe is “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” The important part of that quip is that the truth is obvious but everyone pretends otherwise. The word for it is mokita, which means things we know are true but agree to never discuss. It is not really an agreement, but more of a convention that is enforced from the top down. Every once in a while, someone with power screws up and speak the truth.

That is what you see with this recent Dennis Prager column. He declared that anyone questioning the current facts about the holocaust is evil. He specifically singled out Nick Fuentes, who has been in the news because of the Kanye West business. The two of them have been making the rounds, with West saying uncharitable things about Jewish people and saying nice things about Hitler. Fuentes has been mostly a bit player in the show, as West is the headliner of Ye24.

Why Prager singled out Fuentes would be a good question to pose to him. Kanye West is the guy praising Hitler. Milo Yiannopoulos was instrumental in kicking off this traveling carnival, but Prager did not mention him. Another player in this drama is a hip-hop performer named Sneako. They recently added the weird internet gadfly Ali Alexander to the performance. Fuentes is the only white Christian in the crew and not the main player, yet Prager focuses on him.

Putting aside that bit of mask dropping, Prager has made himself rich selling creedalism to the salt of the earth white people who make up his audience. This is the claim that anyone can be an American as long as they embrace American principles. If you accept the basics of the American creed, then you are as American as a guy whose family came over on the Mayflower. America is an idea, or a collection of ideas, rather than a physical place for a specific people.

Lots of white people are flattered by this, but most people also notice that the people peddling this idea tend to take Saturday off. It is not a coincidence that this new definition of American has no benefit to white Christians but is a huge bonus to mercurial people from outside the European Christian tradition. Prager is one of the leading advocates “America is a set of ideas’ and most people understand why, even if they politely ignore the elephant in the room.

One of those creedal ideas is freedom of expression. In fact, it is one of the most cherished principles of American morality. The right to speak one’s mind without fear of retribution is the cornerstone of the republic. Not only do you get to say what you like, but others get to hear you without fear of retribution. Free speech is established in the first amendment to the Constitution because you cannot petition the government for the redress of grievances if you need permission to speak.

Until the last decade or so, “I may disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it!” was a common refrain from leftists. Most right-wing people knew that what lefty really wanted was the right to send porn to your kids, but the civic principle was worth the risk and the lecture. You cannot have self-government and a civil society without the free exchange of ideas. More speech, even stupid or obnoxious speech, is better than less speech.

It was not just sloganeering. In 1978, the ACLU defended a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through a Jewish neighborhood. There was no question that the intent of the neo-Nazi group was to be offensive. They picked the neighborhood for their march because it was full of Jews. The ACLU successfully argued that even though the Nazis picked the neighborhood because it was full of Jews, they still had a right to speak their mind in public and the public had a right to hear them.

Foundational to American morality is that you are free to speak your mind not because you have the right to speak, but because others have the right to hear you. Shouting people down is explicitly un-American. You let the person be heard and then you can be heard in response. This is the exact opposite of what Dennis Prager is doing with regards to people like Nick Fuentes. He wants Nick Fuentes to be silenced, so you cannot hear what he has to say for himself.

Prager is careful to not call for the arrest and execution of Nick Fuentes, but it is clear that he would not be offended by it. After all, Prager declares that questioning the holocaust is the epitome of evil. Those who do this, according to Prager, will spend eternity in Hell. Given his cult’s ambiguity about the existence of Heaven and Hell, this is a curious claim. It means that he wants you to believe that holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes are outside of your Christian mercy.

That is what makes the Prager column a massive gaffe. He is essentially saying, “That civic nationalism stuff applies to you people, but my people have other priorities and so we get to operate by separate rules.” By elevating his Jewish identity over everything else, he contradicts the entire civic nationalist argument. Again, this was obvious to many people, but it largely went unsaid. By demanding everyone submit to the myths and legends of his people, Prager is saying it out loud.

The column itself is a remarkable example of Kinsley’s quip. The truth is, in a majority-minority society like America, what matters is your tribe. This is the truth that the people in charge are not supposed to say. They get to be in charge as long as the biggest tribe does not decide to tribe up. The minoritism that rules modern America only works if white people buy into the creedalism stuff. Dennis Prager just told his fans that creedalism is nonsense. It is tribe that matters most.

The Future Christian

Posted on December 7, 2022 by thezman

A question that never gets asked is whether or not Christianity, however one wants to define it, can survive in the modern West. Those opposed to Christianity, which is the entirety of the managerial class, never discuss it. Actual Christians are aware of the challenges they face, but they just assume they are on the side of angels, literally and figuratively, so the question does not require an answer. If you are sure yours is the one true faith, then the survival question has been answered.

Looking at survey data, just three states, Alabama, Tennessee and Utah, have a weekly church attendance over 50%. On the other side, New Hampshire is the only state that has a majority who never attend services at all. Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts are all in the high 40% range and on their way to being majority non-Christian. Given that Yankeedom has ruled the country since Gettysburg, it is no wonder that the rest of the country is slowly losing its religion too.

In Europe things are bleak for the Christians. Four countries, Belgium, the UK, France
and the Czech Republic have majorities who have never attended church. Spain and the Netherlands are in the high 40’s. Poland and Ireland are the only two countries with a majority of church goers, but in both cases, the younger population has caught the modern disease and they avoid church. In Poland youth attendance is 27% and in Ireland it is at 33% according to recent surveys.

In fairness, there are a few modifiers to these numbers. One is how one defines regular church attendance. Most surveys break it down between weekly, multiple times per year, rarely and never. One can still identify as a Catholic, even if one is only going to mass on a monthly basis. Similarly, an adult that does not attend service, but went to church as a child and was baptized into the faith could still identify as a Christian, but not necessarily a practicing one.

The point being is that you can quibble with the numbers and whose survey is better, but the overall picture does not change. Christianity in the West is not just on the wane, but in many places, it is on the way out. When you shift from the private sphere to the public one, it is rare to find any discussion of Christianity. The Christians allowed on stage must profess an undying devotion to Jewish people, Israel and various myths and legends important to the Jewish people.

This void in the managerial class is being filled by people who define Christian as the bad whites they despise. The recent gay marriage bill made possible by the Republican party, allows the IRS to strip churches of their tax exempt status if they are not willing to play along with the homosexual marriage charade. Like the Obama health care bill, the point is mostly about attacking Christians. The people in charge want the believers to know that they are not welcome in America.

This is where the survival question comes into play. Most people who regularly attend services think they have a constitutional right to their faith. Evangelicals, for example, when they are not celebrating Israel, are waving the flag. These are people who not only think they are on the side of angels, but they also think they have the law on their side with regards to how they practice their faith. These people are completely unprepared to defend their faith from the coming assault.

Mainstream Protestantism has been thoroughly corrupted. On the east coast, the surest sign you are near an Episcopal church is the rainbow flag. That sect has given itself over completely to the worship of homosexuals. The Southern Baptist Convention now sounds like the grievance studies depart at a third tier state college. The Methodists are in a civil war over the usual questions. Of course, the Catholic church long ago succumbed to the pink mafia that took over the clergy.

The fact is, the Christian in modern America is under assault not just from the historical enemies of the faith, but from the institutions he has relied upon to defend religious liberty in America. The churches themselves have signed onto the programs that promise to make it impossible to be a Christian, at least one who thinks Scripture is more than just some pointless stories. Just as important, the believers seem to be psychologically unprepared for the fight.

From a purely secular and analytical perspective, religions evolve to solve the basic questions of human society. Religions help explain the natural world and provide authority to the customs and traditions of a people. Often, religion provides at least part of the answer to the central question, who are we? It is religion that helps people understand the observable world around them. That ranges from the natural phenomenon to the nature of human relations.

The modern West is increasingly defined by the deliberate avoidance of observable reality, along with prohibitions against noticing certain things. The authority for these prohibitions is mob rule, guided by an invisible hand that is on the list of things no one is allowed to mention. Christianity offers an alternative source of authority and Scripture encourages the believer to engage with the human condition. It is not hard to see why that invisible hand guiding the mob hates Christians.

This brings us back to the beginning. Can Christianity survive? The answer depends a lot on how one defines Christianity. Within this century the mainline churches will have disappeared, their nicer buildings having been made into museums. Baring a cataclysm that derails modernity, institutional churches are doomed. That will leave the believers to fend for themselves as ad hoc communities. They will have to redefine what it means to be a Christian in order to survive the onslaught.

That presents another problem. Most of the people who would join an ad hoc community of believers embraces the universalism and openness that has been the ruin of Christianity in the West. In a world where demographic reality is the defining feature, the refusal to recognize demographic reality is a suicide pill. In other words, if Christianity is to survive, it will have to become something different. Christians will have to find the authority for new survival skills within Scripture.

It is easy to see why Christians prefer not to think about this stuff. It is a complex problem that defies simple answers. It is a lot easier to type “Christ is King!” in a Gab post than think about these challenges. Like all the other problems facing Western people, the future does not lie in the past. Whatever comes next for Christians will be fashioned from what is available in the future. Like most Western traditions, the old Christianity will not survive the revolution.

The Great Delusion

Posted on December 6, 2022 by thezman

Note: If you are wondering what to buy the little woman for Christmas this year, consider something from our friends at Minter & Richter. For the ladies, giving the man in your life something cool he can wear in public lets the hussies know he is taken.

Imagine you are the CEO of a large corporation and you have to make a big decision about a critical issue facing the company. Your team in the C-suites have been busy putting together all of the information they can about the issue. There have been meetings and presentations on all aspects of the issue. Experts have been brought in to explain various aspects of the issue. After having digested all of the information on the issue, it is now time to act. What do you do?

Obviously, the right answer, even without knowing any of the details about the issue in this hypothetical, is to put it up to a vote. First, you will have the various sides on the issue make their case to the employees. Maybe have a series of Zoom debates and let the parties put up posters around the offices. Perhaps the principles representing the various positions will have an all hands on deck meeting. At some point, you have the employees log in and cast their vote.

Of course, this is ridiculous. No company would ever do such an insane thing, at least not in this age. In the 19th century there were some efforts to create socialist companies, but they ended poorly. Usually, these democratic companies were part of a utopian society. In the modern age, no one thinks the principles of democracy have any place in something important like a corporation. The truth is the commies were right about American business. It runs on fascist principles.

It is not just major corporations that avoid democracy. There is no military in this world that embraces democracy. The nearest thing to democracy in warfare was the pirate ship, which often voted on where to plunder. Even on a pirate ship, there was a captain who made the big decisions. His men might “vote him off the ship” but they would quickly elect a new captain. Otherwise, every military on the planet has a vertical chain of command and no democratic principles.

A good rule of life is that when any organization reaches sufficient size to employ a full time leader, it employs a full time leader. A small group of men working to a common goal might operate from a consensus, but even in small groups someone is the de facto leader to whom everyone looks for the final decision. It is fair to say that an organization without a leader is unnatural. Human beings, even women, always organize around a leader, even when everyone is agreement.

This natural lack of democracy is most evident in science. If someone comes along claiming that he has discovered a new element, the science men do not call together a meeting and vote on the claim. The claim must be backed with proof and that proof is analyzed and challenged to verify it. Despite what the Gaia worshippers say, consensus only exists within science where proof is not present. The word “consensus” is a signal of doubt, not proof of the claim.

A good rule of life is that anything important is excluded from anything resembling the democratic process. No business runs on democratic lines. Armies do not run according to democratic principles. Those two areas are arguably two of the most important bits of any human society and they run according to fascist principles. Even family life avoids democracy as much as possible. The expression “head of the household” exists because households naturally have a leader.

If one wants to understand why voting is a pointless waste of time, you just have to ask why no important things are ever put to a vote? Immigration is arguably the most important issue facing the country. Politicians avoid it like the plague. Even the “good politicians” speak in tongues when the issue is raised. Meanwhile, they scheme in private to do what they know is against the interests of the people. No one voting for it will dare mention it when on the campaign trail.

The fact is our elections are meaningless. The candidates speak in vague terms about abstract items. It is all in-group/out-group signaling. “We have to secure our southern border” is just echolalic babbling used to titillate a certain population. “We need affordable healthcare for all” is emotive noise for different people. None of the things candidates say while campaigning has anything to do with how they will vote once in office or the policies that will become law.

You could easily replace the people with colored blocks of wood. How would the current Georgia senate election be any different if the choice were between red block of wood and blue block of wood? Alternatively, the candidates could be replaced with lights that flash different colors in response to different noises. Say the word “immigration” and one light flashes green and the other flashes red. The expensive humans could be replaced with cheap robots.

The reason our elections are meaningless, of course, is that no human society ever subjects important things to democracy. The old joke about if voting mattered, they would not let us do it was funny because it is true. There is no correlation between public opinion and public policy. This study from 2014 went through 1800 issues and found no link between what the people told the politicians they wanted and what the politicians eventually did.

If nothing important is ever subjected to democracy and democracy never results in the public will manifesting in public policy, then why are people hooked on the act of voting and why is democracy an object of worship. Based on observation it appears there is no argument that can be made to convince the bulk of the people to end this absurd charade we call voting. Suggest a boycott of the process and the typical suburban peasant gives you a sermon about democracy.

Compounding this bizarre worship of democracy is that most modern people live a third of their lives as fascists. The self-employed person has almost disappeared from the labor market. Small business is following the self-employed into the abyss as big business dominates the marketplace. That means most people work in companies that operate along fascist principles. If half of your waking life is committed to fascism, how in the world has democracy become an object of worship?

Societies can have moments of madness. The 1970’s saw America embrace leisure suits and disco, while cities were turned into war zones. Much of that period has been politely forgotten because no one can make sense of it. Maybe this age and its fetish from democracy is something similar. The chanting about democracy and obsession with politics is another fit of madness. Instead of afros and sideburns we have brain damaged hobos in the Senate and black Nazis.

Alternatively, this great delusion about the importance of participating in elections is a form of escapism. As people become more dependent on the system for the basics of their lives, they need to believe they have some say in how the big machine that is the modern society runs their life. Democracy and the various identity cults are a way to feel like you have control when you are effectively living as a prisoner. Democracy lets the inmates feel they are in charge of the asylum.

White Sambo

Posted on December 5, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: I have multiple goodies up behind the green door this week. The schedule going forward will be two written pieces a week and one podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

In the novel Invisible Man, an important bit of symbolism is a paper doll, called a Sambo doll, that was popular in the middle of the last century. It was often a paper doll made up with exaggerated features of back people. In the novel, black street sellers would attach the doll to a string and include a stereotypical song and dance performance as a way to sell the dolls to passersby. Of course, the passersby were white people who bought the dolls because it appealed to their racism.

Obviously, the black people selling the dolls were profiting from the promotion of what the writer saw as a negative stereotype. One interpretation is that the reason black stereotypes persisted was that some blacks profited from them. The black people selling the dolls made money from the suffering of their own people. They were willing to degrade themselves and their people to make a few dollars. These selfish acts were a part of the problem facing blacks in America.

It was not cut and dried for the narrator. He could see that the black men profiting from these stereotypes were simply adapting to reality. They made money for themselves and their family, which by extension benefitted the community. Black stereotypes, in effect, created a moral dilemma for back people. On the one hand, they kept black people down relative to white people. On the other hand, profiting from these stereotypes allowed black people to prosper despite their condition.

Later on the novel, the narrator tries to burn one of the Sambo dolls for heat and finds it difficult to do, symbolizing the difficulty of overcoming the stereotype. He is eventually able to burn the doll. In the process he realizes that it may be difficult to overcome the cultural framing that the Sambo doll symbolized, but it is possible if one accepts the reality of his condition. The individual can only transcend his condition by creating and maintaining his own individual identity.

Invisible Man was written seventy years ago, but the problem facing black people described by Ralph Ellison has not changed. You see it in this interview of Jared Taylor on the Young Turks channel. Dr. Rashad Richey is playing a stereotypical black character, which has been lampooned for generations. He gets to make a nice living doing it, but like the characters selling Sambo dolls in the novel, he is profiting from the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of black people.

An extreme example of this is the Kanye West story. His career has been built around selling the stereotypical black cultural items, things like sneakers and expensive lifestyle items, to an audience primarily of white suburban youth. His own struggle with this reality seems to have broken him. His most recent interviews suggest he is a man rolling around in a struggle with own personal Sambo doll, one that he created and that looks striking like Kanye West, despite the name change.

This moral dilemma applies to anyone who exists outside the moral consensus and this Kanye West stuff is an example of it. Nick Fuentes has signed onto what he used to mock just a few years ago. He was the guy in the so-called optics war who insisted that presentation was important. He mocked the alt-right people for praising Hitler and throwing Roman salutes. He is now flying around with a guy who praises Hitler and makes the alt-right sound philosemitic.

Fuentes, faced with the dilemma described in the novel Invisible Man, the choice between playing the stereotypical role for money and attention or rejecting that role in order to create and maintain an individual identity, has chosen the former. Like so many before him, Fuentes is volunteering to play the role of cartoon Nazi that the system he claims to oppose needs in order to perpetuate itself. Like the character in the novel, he is perpetuating a stereotype for profit.

The counter from his fans is that these publicity stunts get attention and therefore expose people to this material. It brings attention and resources into the community that lies outside the moral consensus, which helps the community. In this case, by signing onto the Kanye West circus, Fuentes raises his profile, which he then uses to promote the ideas and opinions of his followers. Like the character selling Sambo dolls in the novel, Fuentes is degrading himself to support his community.

Here is where the comparison breaks down. Black people in the middle of the last century faced genuine economic hardship. A man trading his dignity to feed his kids is making a rational choice. Similarly, refusing to trade his dignity, even if it means his family suffers, is also a rational choice. That is the moral dilemma. Both choices are rationally defensible. Playing the cartoon Nazi for the mass media, on the other hand, lacks rational support.

The reason is the argument in favor of “getting the word out at all cost” has been proven false over and over for generations. George Lincoln Rockwell got the word out by dressing up as Hitler. David Duke was the preppy Klansman and got a whirl on the big stage in the 1980’s. Most recently, the alt-right was front page news for a while and nothing came of it. No minds were changed. It was just another version of the white Sambo act for the benefit of the people in charge.

Like the narrator in the novel, the only way forward is to step outside the moral framework and create a new and independent identity. In the political context, this means a stand alone argument in favor of some alternative future. There is the list of complaints about the current system, every cause has a bill of indictment, but it is followed by a plausible alternative. There is a vision of a future independent of the current moral framework, not just opposed to it.

Blacks in the middle of the last century were faced with a choice. They could find a way to live within the system or find a way to live outside the system. The choice was the former, which has often required a sublimation to the same sorts of stereotypes that allegedly motivated the civil rights movement. Agreeing to be one of the forty-two black people living in the white nationalist enclave of Brattleboro Vermont is no different than selling those paper Sambo dolls on the street corner.

In this age, white people are faced with a similar dilemma. One can simply play the role of suburban peasant until that is no longer permitted. One can play the white Sambo role pretending it is something other than theater. Alternatively, one can seek to live outside the world of racial coercion, looking to a world free of racial coercion. That is a genuinely break from the past and present. It leaves the Sambos and the enablers to the dustbin of history.

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