The Storytellers

Posted on February 28, 2023 by thezman

Those of a certain age will probably recall when they were taught the difference between the great man theory of history and modern history. The former claimed that events were driven by individuals, while the latter stressed events. Those great men we read about were products of the events around them. If Napoleon had never been born, some other man would have filled the role. Therefore, history is about the narratives that shaped the people, including the great men.

A similar thing happened in content creation. In the middle of the last century, the content creators working for newspapers and news gathering organizations decided that the basics of events were insufficient. They needed to create a narrative to explain those events, to put them into proper context. In his book, Banana Sunday, Chris Munnion described how content creators would arrive in Africa with scripts, looking for quotes and images to complete them.

The scandal business has undergone a similar transformation. It used to be that when a famous person got into trouble, he did one of two things. Either he presented the facts in order to explain his behavior or he went away in disgrace. Then narrative creators came along to present a third option. They would create a story for the person to tell that would contextualize his actions in such a way as to make his accusers into the bad guys and himself into the victim.

That last bit seems to have had a mesmerizing effect on the managerial classes, as they no long respond to scandal in the old way. Joe Biden is as crooked as a ram’s horn but displays no shame nor an inclination to explain himself. Instead, the content creators in the media have created a narrative to contextualize his corruption as part of a partisan plot against him. In this age, facts are no longer important, because they are controlled by the prevailing narrative.

You see the power of narrative in this story about January 6th. It is about content creators suing for access to video of January 6th. “Without full public access to the complete historical record, there is concern that an ideologically-based narrative of an already polarizing event will take hold in the public consciousness, with destabilizing risks to the legitimacy of Congress, the Capitol Police, and the various federal investigations and prosecutions of Jan. 6 crimes.”

In other words, the claim here is that without the proper narrative, people may come to an unwanted conclusion about the events of that day. Most people would read that and think the content creators are afraid of having their lies exposed. That may be part of it, but the main reason for the letter is they think narrative is reality. They think Tucker Carlson will create a new narrative to supplant the old narrative, which is the reality in which all of them exist.

What we are seeing with our ruling class is they have come to think of their tall tales as reality, while reality itself is a conspiracy theory. In the case of January 6th, they think the insurrection story is real. In that story, cops were killed by an angry mob trying to overthrow the government. It is a conspiracy theory to point out that the only person killed was a white woman executed by a black man. The former is their reality, while reality is a reckless conspiracy theory.

We see the power of narrative everywhere now. The Ukraine war is a perfect example of how their own fantasies have supplanted reality. Content creators make up whoppers about how the Ukrainians are destroying Russian tanks with slingshots, while the poor Russians are forced to fight naked in the snow. Putin is a maniacal dictator holding together his rule with brute force, while his country crumbles. This is the reality of the people running the West.

Events on the ground have no bearing on the thoughts and opinions of the ruling class because they are excluded from the narratives. It is as if the people in charge think that if they tell the story the right way, with the right amount of enthusiasm, it will change reality to match the narrative. As we see with the Tucker Carlson story, these people think reality is literally a creation of their imagination. Whoever produces the best tale gets to shape reality.

This is what drives them to rewrite history. We get movies about Vikings featuring African actors because the past is just a story. That means they can change the past by writing Africans into Beowulf. You go girl can be the reason men walked on the moon, simply by creating a narrative in which you go girl wrote all the software used to get the astronauts into space. For the managerial class, these tales they spin for themselves are more real than reality itself.

As insane as it looks to the normal people on the outside looking in on these people as they create these whoppers, it is not without logic. In a world dominated by words, rather than deeds, a good story is better than a good deed. Look at the resumes of the people running the West and you find no one who has done anything in his life other than talk to others in his class. The resumes of these people are stories about themselves that contain no truth value.

Can a society run with a ruling class living in an alternative reality? Clearly in can for a little while, at least until reality intrudes on the fantasy. Perhaps the people who live in reality and make the world possible will keep on providing the energy to keep the system going. Maybe the system is on autopilot now. Alternatively, reality could be prepping for its violent return to the main stage of life and the storytellers are headed for a terrible end to their own narrative.

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Enablers Of Evil

Posted on February 27, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about a B-movie called Avengement, a post about the fatwah issued against Scott Adams and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

An important insight of Karl Marx was that rights, as in individual rights established in the law, create inequality. The reason for this is obvious. People are not equal so left to their own devices, they will have different life outcomes. More important, since human society is defined by scarcity, this will inevitably result in the unequal distribution of the benefits of society. A rights regime will impact the distributive choices because the more talented will lay claim to a greater share of benefits.

Communism would solve this problem by first producing superabundance, so that those distributive choices were greatly simplified. Of course, superabundance is only possible when you eliminate gross inequality. This leads to Marx’s expression, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” This is a main difference with socialism, which seeks to close the gap between the rich and poor through redistribution of wealth.

This is all sounds quaint and a bit nutty in the current age, but it turns out these problems are going to be front and center in the diverse future. If you listen to the diversity warriors, most of what they are saying revolves around what Marxists would have called distributive choices. Instead of thinking about the distribution of benefits based along individual or class lines, like the communists, they think about the problem along lines of group identity.

The logic flows from egalitarianism. If all people are equal, inequality must be the result of something other than nature. Individual choice can explain differences in individuals, but what explains measurable differences in groups of people? The only option once you eliminate the obvious is the structure of society itself. The reason blacks, for example, are overrepresented in prison is the criminal justice system distributes justice unequally between the races.

This is what the diversity warriors mean when they talk about whiteness or white supremacy culture. These are the unwritten rules of society that benefit one group over other groups. Since it is white societies that make this form of madness possible, they naturally conclude that white society is the problem. As insane as it is, the diversity warriors are not irrational. From their starting premise, theirs is the only rational answer for why we have inequality in our societies.

This is why conservatives are worthless against these arguments. Here is a “conservative case for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” post in National Review that is a good example of the problem. The author thinks there is some accommodation within his conventional American view of politics for the politics of diversity. He assumes that these people will accept equality of opportunity, when in fact they view that argument as the problem they are seeking to eliminate.

This is the central problem of diversity. Scarcity is a permanent feature of all human societies, even wealthy ones. For example, there is a finite amount of health care in America, which means some people get less, maybe even no health care, while others get the heath care they need. Since there are still some market forces at work, rich people will get luxurious levels of health care. Dick Cheney, for example, was able to buy a heart for himself.

Further, Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally among people, so no two people are identical and no two groups of people are equal. Combined with the scarcity problem, it means there will be an unequal distribution of benefits between people and also groups of people. Even more important, the more diverse your society, the less equal the outcomes appear. The reason is there are lots of people with a grievance for not being in the top group of society.

The way to think of it is this. In 1950’s America, blacks were a little more than 10% of the population, while whites were a little less than 90%. There was a small percentage of Asians and other. In a world where 10% of the population has a racial grievance, most of the rest can safely ignore the complaints. In a majority-minority society, the majority always has a beef with the minority group at the top, so that minority group must always be on guard against the majority.

This is why the arguments in favor of natural rights or equal opportunity sound increasingly ridiculous to people who live in the world. To conservatives they make perfect sense, because their income depends upon maintaining these fictions. To the diversity warriors, these arguments are confirmation that they have the morally superior argument and therefore they are justified in pushing even harder. The conservative case for diversity is exactly what it claims.

Instead of letting nature take its course, the Marxists imagined an administrative state making the distributive choices. It was this managerial layer that would determine “according to his needs” issue. The diversity warriors have assumed control of the managerial state and the corresponding administrative state. They are now proceeding to remedy the equality problem. From each race according to their abilities, to each race according to their needs.

Of course, this has no better chance of working than Marxism. Unlike communism, however, this new egalitarian drive will not just make people poorer. It will unleash the passions of cultural differences that cannot be remedied. These differences are the product of thousands of years of separation. This is ultimately the conservative case for diversity. It promises to unleash 10,000 years of evolutionary differences within the confines of Western societies.

This is what makes American conservatism so evil. It is the sugary drink in which the poison of egalitarianism is dosed to society. The diversity warriors believe they are on the side of angels, while the so-called conservative know otherwise, but they choose to cash in on the madness. The simpleton who wrote that NRO piece is too dumb to get this, but his handlers surely know better. Yet, they volunteer to be the willing accomplices to the executioners of Western civilization.

Politics And War

Posted on February 25, 2023 by thezman

Note: This was posted behind the green door last week. Every week I do a Sunday podcast behind the green door. I also do a couple of posts like this one. For just five bucks a month you get more content than you get from anyone else. Maybe you take this time to get right with the Lord and sign up for a green door account.

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Because we live in an age of over-specialization, we do no get a lot of discussion about the interplay of politics and war making. We get people focused on the political dimension of the Ukraine war and we have people discussing the facts on the ground, but very little about how the two sides interact. It is a lot like how the economy is discussed in isolation from politics.

Usually, the road to understanding what is happening in something like the Ukraine war passes through both domains. There is a political aspect that impacts the war making side, but the war shapes the politics. The Great War is a perfect example of how these two forces interacted to create a disaster. A century on and we are seeing something similar unfold in this war between Moscow and Washington.

For example, one reason we are in this long war of attrition is the Russians misread their own domestic politics and the international politics. If a few years ago they looked at the developing crisis on their border and if they understood the people behind it a bit better and had a better read on their internal politics, they probably would have prepared for a massive, overwhelming response.

Instead, the Russians were concerned about doing anything that would cause the West to retaliate and escalate. This is something Putin discussed last year when Washington launched the massive economic assault. To his credit, he admitted that they misread things and were not as prepared as they should have been for what Washington would do in response to Moscow’s concerns about Ukraine.

Fast forward a year and we see how politics are shaping the battlefield in a way that harms the Ukrainians. Zelensky, with the help of the Kagan cult, has created a narrative of the Ukrainians holding out against the Russian onslaught. They are the defenders of the wall between democracy and barbarism. Western political leaders have no choice but to support Ukraine on moral grounds.

This has created a dynamic in which the Ukrainians are constrained in what they can do on the battlefield in order to maintain this political narrative. For example, they cannot do as the Russians do and abandon land in order to preserve resources. it would not be much of a wall if they were always in retreat. Instead, they have to keep throwing precious resources into places like Bakhmut.

What we keep seeing is terrible military decisions preceding or coinciding with big political events in the West. The refusal to abandon Soledar preceded Zelensky coming to Washington for his big speech. It took weeks for Ukraine to acknowledge the reality on the ground. Ukraine had to maintain appearances until the political events were finished, despite the loss of men and material.

We are seeing a similar process take place in Bakhmut. The Kagan cult wants the West to commit modern battle tanks. This will necessitate other assets, maybe even airpower, so Ukraine is being forced to hold Bakhmut. Meanwhile, the Russians pound away at the defenders who have little chance to fight back. Credible reports suggest Ukraine in losing a thousand men a day in the futile defense of Bakhmut.

Of course, the bigger political problem is the narrative the Kagan cult has created around Ukraine prevents talking to the Russians. Zelensky is not allowed to speak with the Russians or even mention the idea. Victoria Nuland is going around telling Western audiences that the plan is to drive out the Russians, force regime change in Moscow and then break up Russia.

Now, the Kagan cult hates Slavic people so they are happy to see millions of Ukrainians die in their war on the Russian people. You can see, however, that by letting this bloodthirsty death cult shape the politics, it is limiting what the military planners can do on the ground in Ukraine. They have no choice but to keep feeding men and machine into the Russian meatgrinder setup along the front.

The Russians seem to have sorted this, which is why we are not seeing the big offensive everyone was predicting. They see how the political dynamic is limiting what the Ukrainians can do on the ground. At some point, the politics will force the Ukrainians to launch a counter-attack to maintain the narrative. The Russians are probably preparing to take advantage of that to destroy more of the Ukrainian army.

There we see another area where politics is shaping the war. Russia is now operating as if this is a global conflict with the West. A big bloody offensive that could unleash unknown forces is bad for that global political process. No one can say how the West will react to a sudden collapse of the Ukrainian army. The prudent approach is to grind it down slowly and carefully to avoid new problems.

Even so, what is emerging is a gap between the political narrative and reality on the ground, which will become impossible to ignore this summer. Like the Athenians learning about the Sicilian catastrophe, many in Western capitals will start to understand what is really happening in Ukraine. This will require a new political narrative to explain what went wrong.

Interestingly, this is similar to what happened after the Great War. The people on both sides felt betrayed by their leaders. What was the point of the war? What was the point of the massive sacrifices endured by both sides? The winners could at least claim it was to preserve democracy, thank you Woodrow Wilson. The losers, however, were left to figure it out on their own and a new narrative eventually emerged.

Civilizationalism

Posted on February 24, 2023 by thezman

Thirty years ago two competing theories about what comes next emerged from the end of the Cold War. One was the end of history thesis by Francis Fukuyama and the other was the clash of civilizations thesis by Samuel Huntington. The former carried the day, but it is the latter that is proving to be closer to reality. Even so, it is the Fukuyama thesis that continues to animate Western thought.

Reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it and reality is telling us that Huntington was the better thesis. He got some things wrong about what comes next, but his general thesis is proving correct. The new global order that is emerging is based in civilizational identity. In a way, the world is returning to its natural state after the long fever of the 20th century.

The exception, at least for now, is the West, but it does provide some clue as to what will happen in the West. The new diverse societies being created will have to be organized around something. The civilizational idea allows for the native population to impose their will on the guest populations. It also allows the natives to defend their ways at whatever cost is required.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

The Cold War
The New Age
The End Of History
The Clash Of Civilizations
The End Of Empire

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The Future Of Virtual Society

Posted on February 23, 2023 by thezman

At the dawn of the internet revolution, it was common for big-brained public intellectuals to talk about what it meant for the nature of society. As is always the case, they confused what they wanted to happen with what would happen. That usually meant some form of “as information is democratized, more people will have access to information and therefore come to agree with me on everything.” The internet would bring about the glorious egalitarian future.

Most of the predictions about the impact of the internet turned out to be wrong, but the internet has changed society. In fact, it has changed people by changing the selection pressures within society. For example, the phenomenon of the digital grifter is something that could not exist in the past. These people certainly existed in some form, but the digital age rewards their behavior, while the analog age did not, so they now flourish, while in the past they were suppressed.

That is how to think about it. Virtual reality is not reality. Life on-line exaggerates certain features by removing constraints or offering incentives. The solitary nature of on-line life removes the social signals that people rely upon to figure out what they can say and what they should not say. When you are on-line, you are by yourself in the physical realm, even though you are interacting with others in the virtual realm. Those people, however, are mere avatars of people.

Of course, things that get the user attention are rewarded with likes, clicks and views, so this encourages more of that behavior. It does not take long before the weak minded are consumed with attention seeking. Twitter is full of hollow people who amplify the current thing as a way to get attention. In the hours after every cable news actor was sporting a Ukraine pin and chanting “keev”, the internet personality was pulling down her Covid stuff and putting up Ukraine stuff.

Years ago, Dave Chappell did a skit where the internet was a real place. What made the skit amusing, in addition to Chappelle’s delivery, was the fact that the internet is such an absurd place compared to reality. Imagine walking through a store and everyone in the store is doing whatever they can to get your attention. Imagine the day after the war started, everything at the store is in Ukraine colors and all of the employees are chanting “keev” at the top of their lungs.

Another novelty that the digital age has brought is the clout chaser. This is a person who spends his days scanning the internet looking for the next thing so he can seem like the first person to get on it. These people front-run trends in order to present themselves as trendsetters. They will often glom onto a person, positively or negatively, who has a big following on-line. This lets them free-ride off that person to gain attention and followers for themselves.

This is not something that could exist in the analog age. Famous people had flunkies, but the flunky was never going to use their association with the famous person to make himself famous independent of the famous person. Mike Cernovich could never have become a thing in the analog age by stalking famous people. On Twitter he was able to build a huge following mostly by front running trends he had no role in creating and glomming onto big Twitter accounts.

Another version of this is the manufactured influencer. If you watch YouTube, you will have noticed that Lex Fridman was always in your suggestions. You could only watch woodworking videos, but YouTube would suggest to you a Fridman video. The reason is the people backing him paid YouTube to do it. A similar thing is now happening with Jordan Peterson, who signed up with the Ben Shapiro operation. They are now paying to have Peterson promoted on YouTube.

They did the same thing with Ben Shapiro. The people behind the Daily Wire made a Mortimer and Randolph Duke type of bet to see if they could make this obscure hobbit man into a star. How they did it was social media. They paid to have Ben Shapiro pushed heavy to middle-class whites on Facebook. He was what they hoped young people were really thinking. It worked. This helium voiced nobody is now a household name and a major influencer of old white conservatives.

Tim Pool is another version of this phenomenon. Spend some time watching his YouTube channel and ask yourself why he has a huge audience. There are hundreds of people doing some version of the same act. The answer is he has the backing of an influencer production company. Richard Hanania is the most recent example of the manufactured influencer. The guy suddenly appears on-line and before long all the other influencers are mentioning him.

This deranging of the public culture to now has mostly been about rewarding qualities and people that existed but were suppressed in the analog age. What we see with the Zoomers is a whole generation of people raised in this culture. This post in the New York Times, of all places, is a good read on the subject. Those born around the turn of the century are the first generation raised on the internet. This is their normal as they never knew a world without the internet.

One result of this cohort being raised on-line is they lack the normal social skills that have defined human life for ten thousand years. People have noted that in real life, this cohort is shy, awkward and quite weird. On the other hand, they are the exact opposite as their on-line persona. Meet Nick Fuentes and you are not all that impressed as his social skills are non-existent. Turn on a mic or pull out a camera and he goes from shrinking violet to boisterous and confident.

This is why this generation was not upset by the lockdowns. They did not complain about Zoom school because that was better than having to be around those talking meat sacks on campus. They prefer life on-line to life outside. They have grown up with the chat room as their playground. Instead of playing games with their friends in the physical realm, they played games on-line. Their peer group was the collection of avatars and personalities in the chat.

Everyone has their opinion on this stuff, but the important question that no one seems to be considering is if society is possible under these conditions. China’s heavy-handed censorship is viewed as a defense of the regime, but it could simply be a way to tamp down the negative selection pressures of the internet. American censorship is driven mostly by ethnic paranoia, which is another negative quality that is being amplified by the forces of the digital age.

It could very well be that the newly diverse Western societies cannot hold up under the selection pressure of the internet. The digital age amplifies the differences, which amplifies the natural reaction to those differences. This has the effect of bringing diverse civilizational outlooks into virtue contact. The result is hostility. The West may be forced to choose between the glories of diversity or the virtual public square. The answer may be a segregated internet in order to keep the peace.

The Final Boss

Posted on February 22, 2023 by thezman

Since the concept of the “red pill” got going, there has been a debate about the progression one takes in the awakening. Logically, this implies that there is a final boss on this journey, some belief one must drop in order to finally become fully aware of what is happening behind the façade of life. Once you defeat that final boss, you see things as they are, not as they are presented. Of course, the nature of this final boss almost always reflects personal bias.

Strangely, the real final boss in this process may be the crux of the whole normie belief structure that gets ridiculed by dissidents. That last belief may simply be that the political class cares about public opinion. Even the most cynical among us still thinks that the people in charge worry about public opinion. They may have ways to fortify democracy against the voters, but they still worry about the voters. After all, no democracy can be completely fortified.

The reality is, they probably do not care at all. The people controlling the politicians certainly do not care. The unanimity of opinion among this group is why the two parties are barely distinguishable from one another. What is the main different between Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer? The people who animate the politicians have their aqendas and they do not care about public opinion. Most people get that, but they still think the pols care and they need to care.

The trouble is, there is no evidence of this. For example, it was rather obvious that the Republican Party threw the 2018 midterm to spite Trump and his voters. They could do this knowing that they would not suffer in any meaningful way. Sure, some back benchers in the party would have to transition into lobbying jobs or (gasp!) the dreaded private sector, but 90% of the caucus would do just fine. In fact, the bosses could expect to be rewarded for throwing the fight.

The last midterm was a similar display of indifference. If the parties really cared about the result, they would have pulled out all the stops. On the Democrat side, it was a chance to prove those election deniers were wrong. Joe Biden really was the most popular man in history. On the other side, the Republicans could have got their red wave of rebuke. Instead, both sides worked to make sure none of the populists got the support they needed to beat a system candidate.

The indifference of the political class is most obvious with what is going on in the town of East Palestine Ohio. There was a time not so long ago when the place would have been crawling with Democratic politicians, including the President. They would bring the media to show how much they care about the people. Instead, Pete Buttigieg is antiquing in Vermont and Biden is in Poland promising the people of Ukraine that he will take care of them forever.

Of course, the media could cover it on their own. It is the ideal story, ripped right from one of many movies over the years. We have a small town being victimized by a mean and indifferent corporation. It is as if someone decided to make a real life version of the movie Erin Brockovich. Instead, the media cannot be bothered and the reason is the political class does not care about it. More important, they do not care that the people might think they do not care.

The fact is, the political system in America reached a point where elections make no difference to the system. Over 95% of incumbents win reelection and those who lose land in cushy jobs. John Boehner now makes seven figures selling weed, after a disastrous run as Speaker. Paul Ryan makes seven figures sitting around one of the banks, making calls to Washington on behalf of the bankers. When the losers get rich the winners do not fear losing.

In the bigger picture, even a wave election does little to change the makeup of the political parties in Washington. If forty House seats change hands in a wave election, it means close to 400 remain safe. Look at the last twenty years and you see that maybe 60 Congressional districts can be competitive. Most years only about twenty seats are genuinely up for grabs. American Congressional elections are ceremonial. It is a big expensive show that means nothing.

What appears to have happened over the last thirty years is the political class has internalized this reality and they no longer care about elections. The contempt we see is not so much about public opinion, but about the lingering need to keep up appearances with regards to elections and public opinion. The leaders of both parties are increasingly irritated that they have to pretend to care about your opinion. They have better things to do than take questions from the slobs.

This reality is hard for Americans to accept. Central to the American identity is the invincibility of the marketplace. The “go woke, go broke” business reflects the enduring belief that public opinion matters. The fact that none of the woke are going broke does nothing to alter this belief. Something similar is in play with elections. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, people still cling to the idea that public opinion not only matters, but it matters to the politicians.

Even people on this side of the divide cling to this belief. The concept of the psy-op rests on the idea that the people in charge care about public opinion. In reality, the secret police just like their work. The same can be said for the busy bodies that police the internet for bad think. They are not shaping public opinion. They simply enjoy playing hall monitor. Contempt for the public and public opinion is now the coin of the realm in the ruling class.

That is the final boss. You can be red pilled about race, ethnicity, history or conservatism, but still believe public opinion matters. You only become fully aware when you defeat that final boss and realize that the people in charge are indifferent to public opinion and often contemptuous of it. The reason elections change nothing is the entirety of the political class is in agreement on most everything. Mainly, they agree that they are in charge and your opinion does not matter.

Elite Escapism

Posted on February 21, 2023 by thezman

In every society there is a gap between the truth the ruling class asserts and the truth the people experience. This used to be a feature of Western criticism of the Soviet economic system during the Cold War. Communist rulers would make claims about their system and critics would compare that to reality. Today, the obvious gap is in the West where the ruling class exists in another world. Over the last year this has been on display when they speak about the war in Ukraine.

Yesterday, the regime sent Joe Biden to visit Kiev, thinking this was going to be a public relations coup on the anniversary of the war. This is the New York Times lead story in which they make him sound like Lenin crossing into Russia. The Washington Post has a very similar story. They even use the same photo. Obviously, much of the content was supplied by narrative men in the regime. The point of these stories is to maintain the sense that victory is at hand!

In reality, Washington coordinated the trip with Moscow so that nothing bad could happen during Biden’s trip. Serious people in the Pentagon, who still have contacts in Russia, made sure the Russians knew Biden was making the trip long before Biden got on the plane to Poland. Those serious people know Russia does not want a direct war with the West. Two days before Biden made the trip, social media was buzzing about it, as word was leaked by both sides.

This public relations stunt was conducted against the backdrop of a policy that has failed at every turn and now promises to end in disaster. No one in the ruling class bubble wants to think about that, so they tell each other stories like this one from one of the Kagan cult members. Another cult member chimed in with this post in the same publication, now operated by the cult. This post in a conspiracy site gave the kooks out in the fever swamps something to discuss.

There is a theme coming from the cult members, which is aimed at maintaining the fiction that animates Ukraine policy. That theme is inevitability. The subtext to these stories is like the quote from the Terminator movie. The neocons are out there. They cannot be reasoned with. They do not feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until Russia has been destroyed. You hear that Europe? Washington will never stop until victory is achieved!

Of course, the reason for this is reality is starting to creep in at the edges, especially among the Europeans. The stockpiles of old Soviet weapons are all gone, blown up on the battlefields of Ukraine. The extra Western weapons have also been used up to the point where many NATO countries no longer have a functioning army. The German army is back to using slingers and berserkers. America is no longer able to provide Ukraine with enough ammunition for the war.

What is going on here is that the people inside the bubble created a glorious story for themselves regarding Russia. The story said that if they could bait the Russians into war, they just had to sit back and wait for Russia to collapse. This version of reality created by the cult was a reboot of the Bolshevik Revolution. This time, war would crack the Russian regime and the heroes would ride into Moscow to finally exact their revenge on their ancient enemy.

That has not happened. In fact, it is the American Empire that is now cracking under the strain of this war of attrition. Western economies are struggling. There is growing unrest in the public about the political class. Meanwhile, the Russians have organized themselves for the long haul. The story Western elites told each other about this war are falling a part, but rather than face reality they fill their minds with more versions of the big lie from the biggest of big liars.

This form of elite escapism is not unique to Ukraine policy. This is the defining feature of our ruling class. When asked about how all of these magical electric cars will be charged, people like Pete Buttigieg just reply with some hand waving or maybe say they will supply more sockets. He has no idea and he has no reason to care, because his world is the world of fantasy. The people running energy policy are just as divorced from reality as the people running foreign policy.

It is not confined to the elites. This is how the managerial class maintains its sense of identity and cohesion. The answer to the primary question of life, who are we?, is supplied by the many narratives that define the managerial class. Whether it is pronouns, support for deviant sexual practices, saying “keev” all of a sudden or any number of affectations, the point is to signal membership in the club. For these people, the answer to the big question is one of the approved narratives.

This is why the neocons have managed to dominate foreign policy. They are expert at creating complex narrative structures that provide simple moral choices for the audience, moral choices that favor their preferred outcomes. In a society that lives by words, rather than deeds, being good with words counts for a lot. Robert Kagan tells one side stories about monsters and heroes, while his wife tells the other side similar stories, always with the same monsters and heroes.

In the fullness of time, Francis Fukuyama’s seminal essay, The End of History, will be seen as the point at which Western elites became untethered from reality. For them, history was always a nightmare from which they could not awake. All of a sudden, the nightmare was over because history was over. What was ahead was whatever their imaginations could conjure. They could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as they had a mind.

Much of what constitutes democratic politics in the West is the people debating with one another about the precise time their rulers wake from their dream. Surely they will see the folly of making war with Russia. Maybe this event will do it. Surely they will see the lunacy of banning fossil fuels. Maybe now they will see it. So far, nothing has worked, suggesting nothing will work. Elite escapism is now too much a part of what defines the elite, so their can be no awakening from their dream.

Turf Wars

Posted on February 20, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about cat prison, a post about the interplay of politics and war in the Ukraine and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

In the political heyday of Conservative Inc., back in the Bush years, Karl Rove would speak about the benefits of “big tent” conservatism. The main upside was that it provided a winning coalition politically. This not only gave the people controlling it power, it made it easier for the coalition they assembled to ignore their differences, as there would be plenty of goodies for everyone. This was the theory behind the FDR coalition that ruled politics for half a century.

The Rove argument never held together for the simple reason that most of the people in this new coalition were never going to get anything. They were being lied to by the neoconservatives who seized control of the conservatism. Their singular quest was to use the American empire to further the long term goals of the neocons. This became clear in the Bush years where we got pointless wars of choice, a massive expansion of government and the creation of a police state.

That said, there was some bit of truth in the Rove claim. A successful political movement is always making compromises with itself. Regardless of the types of politics, practical necessity means cutting corners when it comes to ideology. The communists figured this out after they gained control of Russia. This means there is always going to be tension between the true believers and the ambitious. Success is what allows both sides to look past these differences.

Again, this was true with the communists in Russia. When they were easily crushed by the tsarist system, they spent their time squabbling with one another. When the tsarist system began to wobble and victory became a possibility, the various factions of Russian communism came together to fight the system. The Bolshevik coalition held together through the resulting civil war. Once victory was achieved, the factions began to go at one another.

There is much more to it than that, of course, but the point is that winning and the prospect of more winning can keep opposites attracting. Logically, losing or the dim prospects of winning will highlight the differences. That is what we are seeing inside the conservative industrial complex. The array of ideological groups is starting to turn on one another as their prospects dim. Faced with a shrinking pie and a growing threat from outsider politics, they are turning on one another.

For example, we have this post from the submissions editor of National Review Online attacking the Claremont people. The first thing to note is the post was published in the far-left conspiracy site The Daily Beast. The cozy relationship between people in the conservative ecosystem and the people they claim to oppose has always been a tell, but this is like satire of that old dynamic. If NRO was anything like it claims, Jack Butler would have been fired immediately.

The other thing to note is that the post is supposed to be a rant against the internet character Bronze Age Pervert, but it is an effort to purge Claremont. This may explain recent behavior of some Claremont people. Behind the scenes, where money changes hands and the donors do their best Randolph and Mortimer Duke impressions, a decision has been made to do something about Claremont. Jonah Goldberg’s flunky Jack Butler is playing the Billy Ray Valentine role.

Alternatively, the yesterday men of National Review may simply be going to their Trotskyite roots and taking a shot at the winners of the internal power struggle within the conservative entertainment wing. Claremont did not roll out a real person to respond to this attack and instead used an internet character. This post at American Greatness is mostly laughing at the ridiculousness of that Butler post. He restates the dissident case against conservatism made a decade ago.

In fairness, this spat is between low ranking parties in the conservative industrial complex and may not reflect what is happening inside it. Both National Review and American Greatness struggle to stay in business. The former relies on school children to produce much of their content. the latter relies mostly on unpaid volunteer writers to produce its content. Their respective not-for-profit operations take in a few million per year according to their tax returns.

In comparison, the neocon outfit American Enterprise Institute takes in over $100 million per year and has its tentacles wrapped around the Republican Party. Similarly, The Heritage Foundation takes in over $100 million and remains the primary engine for Reagan nostalgia in the system. Then you have the left-libertarian Cato Institute that takes in $30 million to promote globalism. In other words, two pipsqueak operations beefing with one another is a tempest in a teapot.

The billion dollar thicket of not-for profits that controls the conservative ecosystem remains unified in its opposition to the people they claim to represent. In other words, at the top of the system, the three legs of conservatism remain on reasonable terms with one another, mostly sharing the same donors. Endless war (AEI), liberal internationalism (Cato) and romance for a long lost past (Heritage) continue to hoover up cash to animate the shuffling husk of conservatism.

Even so, the turf wars between the low ranking soldiers of conservatism suggest the system has far deeper problems than personal squabbles among some of the circus freaks they put on stage. The institutions that control funding of conservative operations are now clearly suffering from Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. These operations care only about hoovering up as much cash as they can in order to keep the leadership of these groups in the lifestyle they think they deserve.

This is why they failed to thwart the Trump insurgency in 2016 and why they are struggling to produce a coherent alternative for 2024. The slobbering over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott suggests they have learned nothing. It is also why they have failed to coopt ideas and people from the dissident space. A guy like Bronze Age Pervert should have been easy to crush or corrupt, but the system is now too sluggish and stupid to handle such tasks. It is a fighter past its prime.

All of that said, we are a long way from see the collapse of Conservative Inc., even as its influence fades to black. Even so, it is encouraging to see it pick fights with itself, as it confirms it is entering the end stage. From the dissident perspective, this dispute between Team Claremont and Team Buckley is like seeing your ex-wife drive your new Mercedes over a cliff. You hate to see BAP get singled out for extra treatment, but the bigger picture makes it tolerable.

The Shape Of Things To Come

Posted on February 17, 2023 by thezman

Someone posted in the comments a link to an Ed Dutton post at VDare that got me thinking about a subject I touch on from time to time. That is, what kind of society will be possible with the history and human capital that will be available to us in the glorious time after this age? Whatever it is will not be like what was done in the past, simply because the material will be vastly different.

All discourse on what passes for the Right tends toward some version of “all we need to do is return to…” What ends the sentence is an idealized version of one of the big three ideologies of the past. Alternatively, people will offer up a vision of the future without mentioning how we get there from here. White nationalism, for example, suffers from the same problem as libertarianism. It exists only as an idea.

This is a problem with politics that we inherited from the Enlightenment, which is to assume you can start with a clean sheet of paper when it comes to politics. In every other area of life, problem solving begins with an assessment of the material at hand and the minimum requirements of the project. This is, in fact, how human society evolves, despite the claims of political philosophy.

This means that the place to start when thinking about the politics of the future is the material that will be available in the future. If the Western order does crumble, as it seems to be doing, then the question is not what will replace the current system but what can replace it. That means taking stock of what the population will look like demographically and spiritually.

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The Future Past (Link)
Smart Fraction (Link)
The Past Is Past
Medieval Spain (Link)
Polyarchy (Link)
The Future Does Not Lie In The Past

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An Imperial Disaster

Posted on February 16, 2023 by thezman

One of the most studied and debated events in human history is the decision by the Athenian empire to send an expeditionary force to Sicily. This happened in 415 B.C. during the middle of the Peloponnesian War between the Delian League led by Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Athens decided to send military support to allies on Sicily who were opposed to the dominant city state of Syracuse, which also happened to be an ally of Corinth.

The Sicilian Expedition is one of those events that offers something for everyone interested in the ancient world. The politics involved in the decision to send the expeditionary force are fascinating. Then you have the military side of things, which is one of the first examples of politics undermining military effectiveness. Of course, the political psychology around the war to that point is also important. Much of Athenian politics had been shaped by war.

The decision to send the navy to Sicily would turn out to be the turning point in the war with the Spartans. The expedition was a spectacular failure. In fact, it is on the list of great military disasters in human history. The defeat not only permanently weakened the Athenians militarily, but it also crippled their political culture. The politics of the region quickly moved against Athens, leading to the overthrow of the democratic system and the eventual defeat to the Spartans.

Like all great events in history, if you ask ten people with an interest in the topic, you will get eleven theories as to what happened and what it means today. Academic careers have been made studying the war and the events surrounding it. There is also the fact that Athens, despite losing the most important war in human history, continues to cast a shadow over the West. Sparta, on the other hand, is largely remembered for being a cartoonish version of a warrior state.

It matters to us today because the Global American Empire models itself after the Athenian empire. The Athenians had a moral certainty about themselves and what they did based on their form of government. Their system was superior, therefore whatever they did to spread their system must be righteous. Of course, spreading their system often meant overthrowing the rulers of neighboring city-states and installing their system, led by people friendly with Athens.

We see the same thing with the American empire. In fact, it has become a defining feature of the system. For the last thirty years, Washington has been trying to overthrow governments around the world in defense of democracy. There is even an organization called The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which works with various tentacles of the American empire to overthrow governments around the world. The business of America is not business. It is regime change.

Like the Athenian empire, the American empire has found a way to embroil itself in a war with a land power. This proxy war with Russia over Ukraine has little to do with the facts on the ground in Ukraine and everything to do with the politics that drive the expansive polices of the American empire. Like the Peloponnesian War, this is just the latest phase of a war that goes back to the defeat of fascism, which is the analogue for the defeat of the Persians by Athens and Sparta.

Like all historical analogies, this one is far from perfect, but it does provide a lens through which to view current events. Looking at this fight with Russia as a continuation of the Cold War helps explain the actions of the people involved. For the people driving American foreign policy, the main enemy was always Russia. In fact, they were at war with Russian long before they set foot in the new Athens. World War II was just another chapter in that long fight.

This might seem like a stretch but look at the people running foreign policy for the American empire. The people named in Seymour Hersh’s piece on the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines is a who’s who of neoconservatives. All of them are members of the same club, which is led by Robert Kagan. The wife of Robert Kagan is Victoria Nuland, who runs Ukraine policy for the empire. She is also the person who engineered regime change in Ukraine in 2014.

Proof that the universe has a sense of humor is the fact that Robert Kagan is the ideological leader of the war party. He was born in Athens Greece. His father was Donald Kagan, “the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War.” His book on the Peloponnesian War is excellent. His book on the Sicilian Expedition is also quite good, but more aimed at an academic audience.

Robert appears to have read none of his father’s books, as his cult has led the American empire into its own version of the Sicilian Expedition. The decision to bet on Ukraine is turning into a catastrophe. Instead of sending triremes to aid a supposed ally in order to undermine an opponent, as Athens did when she sent that expedition to Sicily, Washington has sent its prestige and military production capacity to Ukraine in a futile attempt to undermine Russia.

Much like the Sicilian Expedition, the Ukraine war has become a dynamic all its own, sweeping up everyone in the empire. The Europeans, which should know better, have gone along with Washington. In the process, they have revealed themselves to be nothing more than a collection of flunkies serving Washington. The rules-based world order that Washington has claimed to defend has also been exposed as a rigged game to serve the interests of the empire.

Probably the biggest parallel between these two events is how the political class in both cases failed to consider failure as an option. When news of the disaster reached Athens, no one believed it. No one had prepared the Athenians for the possibility of defeat, much less a catastrophe. Once reality sunk in, panic gripped the people as they processed what the disaster meant for the war. Everything about the Sicilian Expedition assumed victory was inevitable.

Something similar is brewing for Washington. For a year the war party has been feeding the political class stories about the Russians running out of weapons and Russian troops being forced to fight naked in the snow. Political leaders are given scripts with big talk about total victory and the dissolution of Russia. The public has been told nothing about the reality of the war. Once news of this disaster makes itself fully known, we may see panic and disbelief in Washington.

Again, historical analogies are never perfect. At best they help contextualize current events by providing an objective viewpoint. Washington is not Athens. Robert Kagan is not Alcibiades and there is no one playing the role of Nicias. Instead, the empire is led by spoiled children of the managerial elite that rose along with the American empire in the aftermath of Word War II. The disaster for this empire, however, will be just as real as it was for the Athenian empire.

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