Stupid People

Posted on March 31, 2023 by thezman

In the modern age, which in this context means the period following the Second World War to the present, people have been conditioned to ignore the stupid. If you notice them at all, it is to show your compassion. You care about the stupid because you are a good person, not because you want to do something about them. In this regard, we are taught to confuse the stupid with the helpless.

This was not always so. For much of human history, the main task for the people in charge was to limit the number of transactions by the stupid. Every time a stupid person makes a decision, there is a chance for mayhem. Therefore, the way to create a stable society is to reduce the number of transactions made by the stupid. Controlling the stupid population was a priority of government.

In times when the intelligent people were in short supply, bandits would often be used by the intelligent to keep the stupid under control. In wartime, when the intelligent are busy with war fighting, the bandits could be used to make sure the stupid are limited to things that minimize the damage they cause. The bandits profit, but that is a price worth paying to keep the stupid under control.

It is why after a war, the intelligent people are often faced with a bandit problem, as this class has grown rich as war profiteers. The bandits have to be suppressed in order to then take control of the stupid and restore peaceful order. The former task is always easier than the latter, as bandits operate by the bandits logic. Stupid people, on the other hand, follow no know pattern.

This is fine in a temporary crisis, but when the shortage of intelligent people is long term, then the society is overrun first by bandits then by the stupid. The present administration is a microcosm of this. The geezers are mostly of the bandit class with strong stupid tendencies. The younger members are just stupid. Our political class was first overrun by bandits and now by the stupid.

The internet itself is a great example of this. In the early days, it was the domain of intelligent people as you needed to be smart to get on-line. Then the bandits with intelligent tendencies came along and made it easier for the stupid to get on-line, which also made it easy for the bandits that tend toward stupid. That is how we got social media companies. Before long the internet was overrun by stupid people.

This is turning up all over now. The intelligent have declined in numbers, but many have been pushed aside by bandits with intelligent tendencies. These clever grifters have taken up positions in power all over society. They bring with them the bandits that tend toward the stupid and they do nothing to control the stupid. The result is an explosion is stupid people doing stupid things that cause enormous harm.

The thing is, stupid people are a constant, in terms of their percentages, so the controlling factor is always the smart fraction. This is not just a matter of general intelligence, as there are high IQ stupid people. The intelligent have to be aware of their responsibility and have the means to control the stupid. If either is missing, the smart fraction, no matter how large, is overwhelmed by the stupid.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

The Basic Laws of Stupidity
Law #1: Scale
Law #2: Distribution
Law #3: Nature
Law #4: Power
Law #5: Danger

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The End Of The Beginning

Posted on March 30, 2023 by thezman

The Russo-NATO war in Ukraine appears to be headed to some sort of final act or perhaps the penultimate act that sets the stage for the final act. All along the line of contact, the Russians are pressing the Ukrainians, slowly grinding down the defenses and advancing in key areas. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians talk endlessly about the spring offensive when they will deploy the much ballyhooed Western main battle tanks that have been slowly arriving since January.

Since last summer, it has been clear that the main battle in the Donbas would be in and around the city of Bakhmut. This is the lynchpin of the so-called Zelensky line that runs from Siversk in the north to Vuhledar in the south. Some say the southern end of this defense line is Marinka or Avdivka, which are strongholds to the West of the city of Donetsk, the capital of the Donetsk oblast. This is where the revolt against the Washington puppet regime began in 2014.

Regardless, there are three main battles going on at the moment. In Bakhmut, the Russians have the city surrounded and control about seventy percent of the city itself, while the Ukrainians have an estimated ten to fifteen thousand fighters in the city with up to forty thousand in the surrounding area. Reports from Ukrainian say that they are sending some of their best troops to Bakhmut in a relief effort, but that could just be what they are telling the West.

In the Donetsk region, the Russians have just about surrounded the garrison in Avdivka, having fire control over all of the main roads. No one knows how many Ukrainian soldiers are in this area. The Ukrainian deployment map shows up to five brigades, but these maps are not always up to date or accurate. Reports from the ground suggest up to ten thousand soldiers, but many of them are probably conscripts. The real value of this fortress is that is controls the southern part of the line.

What has been happening for the last few months is that the Zelensky government has been throwing everything they have into defending this line, even though their military and the Pentagon have advised against it. Logic says to withdraw to preserve men and machines, while putting together a counteroffensive. Politics, however, says the Ukrainians cannot afford to give up any land as it would risk losing support from European politicians, who are getting nervous.

It is that growing sense of dread in European capitals that is undermining support for the Ukrainian side in this war. There is growing unrest throughout Europe as a result of the economic problems caused by the sanctions war. Then there is the banking and energy crisis that has been hidden from the public, but is not going away no matter how hard they ignore it. The bigger issue is fear that the Russians could stoke unrest, as Tom Sunic explains in this post.

Of course, there is the practical problem of supplying weapons to Ukraine. Land wars are supply chain and industrial capacity wars. Russia has better supply chains and more military industrial capacity than NATO. Western countries cannot make anywhere near enough munitions to keep Ukraine going, so they have had to clear out their warehouses, which are now close to empty. One way or another, the war will be over this year, as the West is simply out of weapons.

Then we have the China issue. Xi Jinping’s recent state visit to Moscow caused panic in Europe because it makes clear that China is never going to sign onto the new world order proposed by the West. French President Emmanuel Macron was sent to Beijing to beg for mercy. He came back and immediately signed a trade deal with China in which the French will buy LNG using yuan. That LNG, by the way, is sourced from Russia, thus blowing another hole in the sanctions regime.

That energy deal is just one deal, but the symbolism is what matters, as it makes clear who has the whip hand now. Decades of bribing American officials has taught the Chinese how important narrative and symbolism is to Washington. By making Macron do that deal, they are telling Washington that China is willing to compete with Washington on every continent, even Europe. It also signals that Europe is very worried about what is happening to them in this war.

On the Russian side it is hard to know how they view things in terms of time lines and the looming end game. The experts all said the Russians would launch a winter offensive after calling up close to half a million troops in the fall, but instead they have been content to build fortifications and logistics hubs. Meanwhile, Wagner and units from the Donbas have been taking the fight to Ukraine. Western experts are suddenly quiet about what they think the Russians will do next.

The most likely answer here is the Russians have determined that there is no need for a big offensive at this time. The dynamics of the fighting favor them and they have minimized their losses while maximizing Ukrainian losses. They can also see the deteriorating condition of Europe, both politically and economically. You can be sure that there are lots of back channel conversations happening between politicians in Europe and their friends in Moscow.

The Russians have spent months building defenses in the south and that suggests they think this is where the much talked about Ukrainian counter offensive will happen, if it happens at all. It is increasingly clear that this will be Ukraine’s last chance to reverse the decline in support from Europe. The calculation by the Russians may be to wait for this attack in the south, defeat it and then wait for the political fallout to force the Ukrainians back to the bargaining table.

There is also the fact that the war will end and Russia will have to do business with Western Europe again. How the Ukraine war ends will determine how difficult it will be to patch up relations. From the Russian perspective, it is best for Europe to break from Washington and force Zelensky to sign the paper put in front of him. The Europeans save face and the Russians have international recognition for taking possession of the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine.

While the war is not close to being over, it is clear that the end game is slowly starting to form up as winter gives way to spring. The big talk about Ukraine sacking Moscow is a thing of the past. Slowly the talk is shifting to what happens after the war. Given the geopolitical changes that have come about as a result of the war, what comes next is not going to be a return to the status quo ante. What the world looks like a year from now when the war is over is up for debate.

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Why They Hate Us

Posted on March 29, 2023 by thezman

Paul Gottfried has a post up on the topic of elite whites incessantly condemning white people for alleged crimes against nonwhites. A feature of the current crisis is a rich white person, usually a woman, wagging a bony finger at white people for the alleged crimes of their ancestors. Of course, these white people always live in the whitest areas and rarely interact with nonwhites. This always brings the charge of hypocrisy from the sorts of people who think this matters.

The question that white civic nationalists ask themselves when confronted by this strange behavior is whether the antiwhite scolds believe it. The practical brains of the people attracted to civic nationalism cannot accept anything but a practical answer to the question of motivation. The antiwhite scolds must see some profit in this behavior so they are cynically exploiting it. They do not actually believe what they are saying, which explains how they live.

Gottfried offers up an alternative to this thesis. These antiwhite scolds are acting from some form of self-loathing. Eric Hoffer made this observation seventy years ago in his book The True Believer. People who join causes tend to do so because they have a desire for self-abnegation. This is driven by a hatred of their natural identity and a desire to swap it for some other identity. The group identity then becomes their own, which is why they so viciously defend the group.

By way of example, Gottfried points out that Hitler once socialized with Jews in Vienna when he was trying to find his way in the world. The great enemy of the Jewish people once admired the tastes and attitudes of the people he came to loath. He later protected an old family friend, the family doctor, from his own polices. The argument here is that Hitler’s hatred for Jews was driven by hating himself for secretly admiring the Jewish people and their cultural outputs.

Occam’s razor says that Hitler, like the rest of the Nazis who promoted anti-Semitic polices, were like all humans in that they could hate something in the abstract, but also admire it in the particular. There are plenty of Israelis who have Arab friends, but also support the extermination of the Arab population in Palestine. Humans operate by general rules but then make exceptions to those rules as circumstances and their own emotional and moral needs dictate.

Putting the Hitler business aside, the question remains. How is it that someone like Elizabeth Warren can wag her bony finger at us about our white privilege, while she enjoys a lifestyle free of diversity? How is it that Sandy Cortez presents herself as the woke warrioress while married to a guy who looks like he should be leading the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade? Ilhan Omar divorced her brother so she could shack up with a guy who looks white to Jared Taylor.

All of the antiwhite stuff comes from people who are as white as a Klan rally or clearly infatuated with whiteness. The model of the universe held by the typical white American cannot explain this bizarre phenomenon. This is why they tend to start chanting the word “hypocrisy” even though the target is immune to the charge. That there is a clue as to what is going on with these people. For the antiwhite scolds, there is nothing hypocritical about what they are doing. It makes perfect sense.

The place to start here is understanding what they mean by white. It is not skin tone or even ethnic heritage, but rather a state of mind. Elizabeth Warren feels no shame or remorse about defrauding at least one university about her heritage, because as far as she is concerned, her lived experience says she is an Indian. She is not white because she has lived as a nonwhite, therefore society has treated her as a nonwhite, so her lived experience is as a nonwhite.

Even for those who cannot do this mental jujitsu, the mere fact that they accept that whiteness is a social condition is enough for them to see themselves as nonwhite, even though they are ghostly white. It is hard for normal people to accept this, but people with a need to believe in something have an amazing capacity to believe in the most creative and egregious nonsense. Anti-whiteness fills a need for these people, so they find a way to passionately believe in it.

That gets to a much more complicated part of this. What is the void that needs to be filled and is being filled by anti-whiteness? That is answered by asking, why is it that a mediocre lawyer is a senior senator? Why is it that a former barmaid is now the most famous Democratic in the House? What justifies the exalted position of the people who populate the managerial class? It is not smarts or achievement, so how is it that we are ruled by a collection of mediocrities?

That is where these secular fads come into the picture. Elizabeth Warren feels justified in her scolding because she fervently believes all the things the beautiful people believe, which places her on the side of angels. The anti-whiteness is not the point. It is the embrace of it and the thorough understanding of the language it employs that demonstrates the piety of the person espousing it. They could just as easily hate broccoli as they do whiteness. It is the hate that matters.

This is the final stop on the managerial train. A system that seemingly selects people at random and places them into positions of authority and status results in people in these positions looking for a justification for their good luck. Since they cannot accept random chance as the answer, they latch onto every passing fad that promises to justify their position with regards to the rest of us. Who they are is not us, which is proved by their enthusiasm for hatred of us.

This is why their reaction to one of their social experiments murdering children at a Christian school was so vulgar. That need to not be us required them to no share in the general horror of the event. It is why the NYTimes found the first opportunity they could to side with the killer. It is why they are now rallying around an imaginary narrative about a brewing backlash. Who they are is not us, so anything that amplifies that is embraced, which is why anti-whiteness is so popular with them.

This is why there is no reasoning with these people. You cannot bargain with them or appeal to their humanity. Who they are literally depends on them hating us. Like the people on the top floors of the office building, making fun of the rank and file, our ruler’s sense of identity is now tied to hating the people over whom they rule. For them, their life literally depends on hating normal white people. As we saw yesterday, for the rest of us, our lives now depend on hating them back.

Currency Wars

Posted on March 28, 2023 by thezman

One of the most overused phrases in economic discussions is “petrodollar”, especially by those inclined to doomsday theories. Right behind it is the phrase “reserve currency”, which gets tossed around almost as much as petrodollar. For most people, these are terms that no longer have a practical meaning. They are words that are supposed to mean something bad. The petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency is the tool of the evil money men in Washington.

For starters, the petrodollar is not a real thing. It is simply a term to express the fact that in the 1970’s the large oil producing countries agreed to use the dollar. If you want to buy crude from the Saudis, they accept dollars and dollar equivalents. They will accept Chinese yuan or Vietnamese dong, but they will be converted to dollars. In the case of Vietnam, they may discount the exchange due to administrative costs. Otherwise, they turn the dong into dollars.

This agreement to price energy products in dollars is what makes the dollar the world’s primary reserve currency. Everyone needs energy, so if the energy guy will always take dollars for payment, then the world will always keep a supply of dollars around, not just for energy purchases, but as a reserve. In other words, the dollar’s position as the primary reserve currency is tied to the fact that energy is priced in dollars, so everyone has to have dollars around to buy energy.

Now, why did the Saudis agree to price everything in dollars. The main reason is they got something for it in return. What they got is a guarantee that the United States would protect the kingdom from threats in the region and never side with the wrong faction among the Saudi royal family. That last part is important. Joe Biden, as Vice President, sided with the faction opposing Mohammed bin Salman, the current Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia.

This is why the Saudis are now open to pricing their energy products in Chinese yuan and maybe other currencies. Since Russian products are now priced in rubles, the ruble has become one of the strongest and most stable currencies in the world. Lots of countries now need to hold rubles, because lots of countries need to buy Russian energy and agricultural products. Lots of people need to buy Chinese manufactured goods, so you can see the appeal there as well.

To finish the thought on the Saudis, they no longer see Washington holding up their end of that bargain struck fifty years ago. Russia and China, on the other hand, are willing to help in that regard. The Chinese brokered a deal between the Saudis and Iran, which is an enormous development. Iran backs the rebels in Yemen and the Saudis back anti-regime forces in Iran. This new deal solves a problem for both countries and makes the Chinese the honest broker of the region.

Further up the road, the Russians have slowly been putting together a deal between the Turks and the Syrians to end the long bloody war in Syria. That war is the result of regime change efforts by Washington aimed at Syria. The Turks had been party to that scheme, but they have changed teams and now oppose regime change. The looming settlement of this problem, brokered by the Russians, will alter the dynamics in the region and further push Washington out of the picture.

Taken together, the regional players are now looking to Russia and China to help keep the peace and be the honest broker. Getting back to that old deal between Washington and Riyad, if Washington is no longer keeping the peace, then why only accept Washington’s money for energy products? If the world is increasingly comfortable holding yuan, to buy Chinese goods, and rubles, to buy Russian products, why not hold those currencies and accept them for payment?

This is why arguments like this one promoted by Darren Beatty at Revolver News miss the point of what is happening with the dollar. The writer just assumes that because things have always been this way, they will always be this way. It is as if he thinks the dollar has magical qualities that make it the primary reserve currency. The dollar’s value in the world is pegged to practical things. If those practical things decline in value or disappear, then the dollar loses its power.

What is taking shape is that the global conflict between the Global American Empire and the emerging power centers of the world will include a currency war. Both China and Russia clearly get this aspect of the conflict. Both countries are working to not only make their currencies more stable, but they are also building out the infrastructure to make dealing in their currencies easier. China and Russia are making it easier to do business with them in their currency.

What is happening is that as we move from the monopolar world of the post-Cold War era to the multipolar world, we are sliding into a currency war. As a practical matter, Washington will no longer be able to abuse the dollar as it has recklessly done for the last thirty years. This means Washington will not be able to export inflation in the form of excess dollars to other countries. Those other countries will now have choices, with regards to investment and reserves.

This does not mean the collapse of the dollar or a collapse of the empire, at least it is not a foregone conclusion. Instead, it means Washington must enter a period of reform similar to what followed the Second World War and the collapse of the gold-backed dollar in the 1970’s. Currency wars are the result of changing political and economic relationships that demand changes in money relations. The petrodollar solved a problem at the time and its end solves a problem of this time.

Whether or not there is the talent in the ruling class to pull off the needed reforms is the great question that looms over this currency war. The Fed chair is obviously in over his head, but there is no one in Washington noticing this. The current administration is staffed by lunatics and buffoons. The Republican side is trapped in the last century, unable to accept that the world has moved on from the 1980’s. Prospects for reform are grim at the moment, which is what makes for a crisis.

Even so, we are entering a period similar to the 1970’s in that we will have periods of inflation along with declining real growth. Unreliable money relations make for unreliable economic relations. America emerged from the last century as the global hegemon because she won the currency wars of the last century. The disposition of the American empire will be defined by the new currency war and what comes out the other side of the process will also be defined by the currency war.

Math Of The Future

Posted on March 27, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about old people, a post about my journey into the world of stupid people and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

One of the challenges on this side of the great divide is in convincing people that there is no solution within the system to the problems of the system. In other words, there is no voting our way out of this crisis. It is only through altering the system, perhaps even replacing it, that there can be meaningful change. This is a truth that even many people on this side of the divide struggle to accept. Generations of conditioning have trained us to vote harder, rather than act smarter.

The main reason there is no solution at the ballot box is demographics. The people in charge are quickly replacing the old white population with a new, vibrant and diverse population that naturally prefers managerialism. The tens of millions of new Americans love their managers more than they love life itself. In elections, they look for the candidates and the party that promises to take care of them. This institutional lock on the system will be clear in the coming election.

If we take the last census and break out the population into logical identity blocks, you end up with Black, Hispanic, East Asian, Jewish, South Asian, Liberal Whites, Conservative Whites, Undecided Whites, Other. Breaking out South Asian from general Asian is necessary as Indians are not Chinese. Other is required as we have Africans and West Asians arriving in record numbers. Using past voting habits and using the last census, 2024 looks like this.

Undecided Whites Break 25% Authoritarian
Vote Break 2024
Demographic	Percentage	Democrat	Republican
Black	12.00	10.80	1.20
Hispanic	15.00	9.90	5.10
East Asian	3.00	1.98	1.02
Jewish	2.00	1.96	0.04
South Asian	2.00	1.96	0.04
Liberal Whites	16.00	16.00	0.00
Conservative Whites	25.60	0.00	25.60
Undecided Whites	22.40	5.60	16.80
Other	2.00	1.96	0.04
Totals	100	50.16	49.84

Now, these numbers are based on the 2020 census. We have to adjust a bit for the rapid aging of the white population. Then you have the issue of self-identifying that often confuses things. There are lots of people who tick the Hispanic box because it pays better but will tick the white box around friends. There is a little guesswork on breaking out these groups, but it is close enough. Assuming a quarter of the undecided white vote breaks for the regime, the regime wins.

This is the chart that gives the vote harder people hope. Win over some of that undecided white vote and you have a slim majority. This is what Trump was able to do in 2016, but by 2020 the math was working against him. As things currently stand, a Republican must find some way to motivate the anti-regime vote, while not scaring the undecided white vote too much. If such a miracle formula is found, the best we can expect is a result something like this.

Undecided Whites Break 10% Authoritarian
Vote Break 2024
Demographic	Percentage	Democrat	Republican
Black	12.00	10.80	1.20
Hispanic	15.00	9.90	5.10
East Asian	3.00	1.98	1.02
Jewish	2.00	1.96	0.04
South Asian	2.00	1.96	0.04
Liberal Whites	16.00	16.00	0.00
Conservative Whites	25.60	0.00	25.60
Undecided Whites	22.40	2.24	20.16
Other	2.00	1.96	0.04
Totals	100	46.8	53.2

That looks heartening, until you roll forward to 2030:

Undecided Whites Break 10% Authoritarian
Vote Break 2030
Demographic	Percentage	Democrat	Republican
Black	13.00	11.70	1.30
Hispanic	17.00	11.22	5.78
East Asian	3.00	1.98	1.02
Jewish	2.00	1.96	0.04
South Asian	3.00	2.94	0.06
Liberal Whites	15.00	15.00	0.00
Conservative Whites	24.00	0.00	24.00
Undecided Whites	21.00	2.10	18.90
Other	2.00	1.96	0.04
Totals	100	48.86	51.14

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is 2040:

Undecided Whites Break 10% Authoritarian
Vote Break 2040
Demographic	Percentage	Democrat	Republican
Black	14.00	12.60	1.40
Hispanic	18.00	11.88	6.12
East Asian	5.00	3.30	1.70
Jewish	2.00	1.96	0.04
South Asian	5.00	4.90	0.10
Liberal Whites	12.50	12.50	0.00
Conservative Whites	20.00	0.00	20.00
Undecided Whites	17.50	1.75	15.75
Other	6.00	5.88	0.12
Totals	100	54.77	45.23

Now, these are all back of the envelope numbers and you can quibble about the break downs and breakouts. As is true of all models, you can create the reality that you like with the right amount of tweaking. What matters here is that under ideal conditions, responsive government requires something close to a perfect storm of conditions and actors on the political stage. Otherwise, the sheer weight of the demographic changes lets the managerial class rule unopposed.

There is something else. Assuming the managerial class continues with the theater of democracy, the two parties will continue to shift away from the dispossessed minority of whites who prefer responsive government. This has been happening for a long time now and will only accelerate with the browning of America. It is why both parties now support open borders. It is why the Republicans are silent on the antiwhite rhetoric coming from the other side.

The fact is, within the lifetime and most reading this, competitive national elections will come to an end. At best they will be ceremonial personality contest between figures who agree on all of the important issue. More important, that 40% of the population that prefers responsive government will have no representation. Democracy will no longer offer them anything. In order to get the managerial class to respond, they will have to find means outside of the democratic process.

Generational Musings

Posted on March 24, 2023 by thezman

Note: No show this week. A bolt of lightning took out one of my machines, the one I use to produce and edit the show. This happened yesterday, so I did not have time to make other arrangements. It is a pity as I had a great show planned. A new machine is on its so things should be back to normal next week. Today is a post from behind the Green Door that seems appropriate for the moment.

One of the more toxic aspects of modern politics is the generational stuff, which pits one generation of whites against another generation. While old people have always complained about the younger generation, it was historically in the context of concern for the future, not a competition for resources. In 20th century America, generational conflict became another exploitation vector by the ruling class.

That said, we are experiencing some weird generational warping. Baby Boomers, for example, came along in a unique time in history. They experienced the post-war expansion, the problems of the 1960’s and 1970’s and then the reforms that came in the 1980’s, which set off another run of good times. From the perspective of this generation, the system really works. It even fixes itself!

Younger generations have a different perspective, so their faith in the system is much lower and they are more open to questioning the system. The millennial that had to put up with diversity in school, along with endless lectures about diversity, even while enjoying material prosperity, is not going to be as patriotic about the American Way as his parents or grandparents.

Of course, the Zoomers are coming onto the scene as the American Empire shows all the signs of decline. It is an interesting contrast with the Boomers, who came on the scene when America was at her peak. The Boomers came along thinking everything was possible. The world was their oyster. The Zoomers came along in a time when people wonder if anything is possible.

There is something else. The Boomers were raised by a generation that was pretty sure that every problem had a solution. That solution, however, was not just ready to spring to your aid when you needed it. Like every generation before them, the Boomers were raised to make things, fix things and discover things on their own. While brimming with a sense of entitlement, they still had to make their way in the world.

In contrast, Zoomers were raised with the answers all around them. They have never known a time when you could not google the answer. This seems like a small thing, but it has an enormous cultural impact. For 10,000 years of human history, getting the answer meant work, real work and there was a good chance the answer was not available, but today it takes a few clicks and there is almost always an answer.

This contrast turns up in some strange ways. Here is a story about Zoomers bested by common office equipment. What is happening here is the young people are experiencing tools for the first time. A tool does nothing for you other than extend your own skills in some way. This seems strange to young people who look at everything as a technological shortcut to getting the desired result.

I have run into this in my work life. A story I love telling is about a summer intern we had about ten years ago. He broke the letter folding gizmo one day. He came into my office and told me the machine was not functioning. I told him it was probably a paper jam and told him that my tools were in the closet. Take it apart, clear the paper jam and reset the wheel that fed to paper through the machine.

He left and came back in a few minutes. He had no idea what he was looking for in the closet in terms of tools. I realized that he simply had no idea what I was asking of him, so I walked him through it. He looked on as I fixed the machine as if I was performing black magic. He actually asked me how I learned to do it. I showed him the instructions on the inside of the machine. He was still baffled.

Now that I am done with the old guy interlude, the Zoomers share something with the Boomers and that is being a unique generation. The Baby Boomers were the first generation to come into a world of mass prosperity. The Zoomers are the first generation raised on the internet. Both generations came into the world with expectations that were not like prior generations.

For the Boomers, this novel view of things was not much of a problem as the conditions that created the novel view have remained in place. For the Zoomers, it may not work out the same way. For them, life is going to be a real struggle as the country falls prey to its demographic changes. There will be no button to push to solve the reality of race and no place to hide from it.

This is going to make for some interesting generational conflict. The advice from old people will make as much sense as Charlie Brown’s teacher. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” sounds like madness when the problem is demographics. On the other hand, the Zoomers blaming the Boomers for the decline of the country is going to strike the old folks as nothing but the mewing of ingrates.

Another weird thing will be the fact that the Zoomers distrust the American Way, but completely trust the technology of their life. Prior generations viewed technology as a tool to be used like any other tool. Zoomers think of technology as a natural and normal part of their ecosystem. They trust their mobile device more than they trust flesh and blood people. That is something new.

Regardless, the future belongs to the Zoomers as they will be around for it, so whatever skills they came into the world with will be what they use to navigate their way. If they are being bested by the copier, one should not be optimistic. Maybe the marching morons problem transcends demographics. On the other hand, maybe training on the office copier turns out to be good training for the war ahead.

Know Your Enemy

Posted on March 23, 2023 by thezman

The German philosopher Carl Schmitt observed that politics is about the friend – enemy distinction, played out in public. Everyone has people they call friends and people they think of as adversaries or enemies. This only becomes political when others outside these relations are called upon to pick sides. Politics is about groups of people opposing one another in public and forcing others to pick sides. The winner is the one whose group dominates the others.

The thing is, it is never easy to know your friends in politics, but the only way to survive is to know your enemies. Those would be the groups whose very existence depends upon your demise. Friendships are transactional as they are situational. When your interests align with those of another faction, you are friends while you have some common interest. When conditions change, the friendship ends. Enemies are always enemies because who they are the negation of you.

This is why conservatism has never amounted to much in America. They insist that politics do not exist and instead public policy is decided by factual accuracy and the best ideas to solve problems. While the people we insist on calling the Left run around playing politics, the conservatives spend their days making impressive charts and graphs explaining why they are right. Occasionally they win an election, only to be outclassed by their opponents once in office.

You saw this clearly with Trump. Despite all of his faults, and he has many, he is a guy who completely believes the civic nationalist creed. He is the living embodiment of those School House Rock civics lessons. When he won in 2016, he just assumed everyone would have to respect the will of the people. After all, this is how our system is supposed to work. Instead, he was routed by the schemers, conmen and deviants that dominate Washington politics.

We are seeing the other side of this with the neocons. They do not care for Ron DeSantis, but they can work with him. He was a reliable vote for their warmongering when he was in the House. He has the endorsement of the House of Bush, so even though he opposes their domestic agenda, they can work with him on their larger plan to blow up the world. More important, he can be useful in undermining support for Trump in the coming Republican primary.

In other words, they do not necessarily see him as a friend, but he is not an enemy and because they share his current enemy, they can quietly work with him towards the goal of toppling Trump. The trouble is DeSantis has a very thin skin, so he could not resist taking cheap shots at Trump with regards to the indictment business. He also flip-flopped on his Ukraine statements, probably fearing that he may have jeopardized his support from the Kagan cult.

As an aside, Russia, the war in Ukraine and the subject of peace is becoming a central issue for the Republican base. This is a carry over from the Bush years when the party lied about the Iraq invasion. Since then the party base has become increasingly skeptical about foreign policy. Republican voters also tend to be practical, so they question spending hundreds of billions on foreigners when the country seems to be falling apart from decades of neglect.

In the 2016 election, the litmus test issues were immigration and trade. Trump went one way and the field went the other. It was a strange thing to see when logic said the field, or some of it, would be smart to follow Trump. We are now seeing the same thing with foreign policy issues. Opposing the neocons is a good vote getter, but bad for making friends in the regime, so the field, including DeSantis, is racing to sound like Lady Bugs Graham, while Trump sounds like Pat Buchanan.

Putting that aside, the friend enemy distinction sounds simple in the abstract, but in practice it is very difficult. Most people make the fatal mistake of looking for friends, rather than identifying their enemies. Note that conservatives have said for years that you should vote for someone not against them. This is part of the conditioning to keep their voters from focusing on the enemy. It is a clever trick that has allowed them to profit from finking on their voters.

Politics, at its most basic, turns on accurately identifying the enemy. Friends may turn out to be unreliable or stupid, but the enemy is always the enemy. The surest way to identify your enemies is to look for those who demand that you place your interests second to those of some alien group of political actors. For example, the people telling you that Ukraine should come before your kid’s school or that you must impoverish yourself in the name of climate change. Those people are your enemy.

For dissidents, and a growing number of Americans, the system itself is the enemy because it is based on denying you any benefits from the system. In fact, the system has evolved to harm the bulk of the population. That means you participating in it profits the forces that are committed to your destruction. In this regard, the Ron versus Don charade being put on by the mass media is another way for the enemy to lure decent people into supporting their own demise.

In the end, the simplicity of the Carl Schmitt formulation is the place to start when looking upon the looming election circus. First identify your enemies, then look for anyone that promises to harm them. The goal of politics is always to harm the enemy and profit your cause. If the enemy is not obvious, then the process itself is the enemy and you are best served being an amused observer. Not participating is the most political of actions, because it declares the process the enemy.

Escaping The 20th Century

Posted on March 22, 2023 by thezman

It is 2023 and middle-aged conservative pundits around the country are wondering if maybe today is the day when they bring back the sock tie. Perhaps break out that “Gipper” lapel pin they got in college. After all, it is high time that this country be reminded of the greatness of the Reagan years. Then they think better of it, as they do not want to ruffle any feathers. After all, that is not who they are. Conservative principle requires conforming to current norms.

A bit ridiculous, perhaps, but it is not far off. This post by conservative pundit Jeremy Carl on Twitter is a good example. Ronald Reagan has been dead for close to twenty years and he has been out of public view for thirty years. For the tens of millions of people who entered the country after Reagan opened the border, he is at best a guy in their history books, no more meaningful to them than the other long dead white guys responsible for the scourge of whiteness, they are told.

In other words, Reagan and the politics of his time are about as relevant to this age as those old clothing styles in the closets of conservative pundits. Reagan and his movement were a product of the 20th century, primarily the Cold War. What we call conservatism was just a radical approach to fighting communism. Note that Reagan’s lasting influence is all negative. Corporatism, open borders and a massive military are what he passed onto the 21st century.

It would be unfair to lay the present crisis at the feet of Reagan as he was a man of his time dealing with the issues of his age. He could not know that his military buildup would lead to decades of reckless and pointless violence. No one imagined that his economic reforms would lead to the financialization of the economy. Global capital with the reach we are seeing was unimageable in the 1980’s. The world “trillion” was an abstraction for most people.

Even so, it is not hard to make a case that in the long run, the world would have been a better place if Carter had won in 1980. The neocons would have been cut off at the pass, thus sparing the world of their senseless violence. We most likely would not have got the same currency, banking and regulatory reforms that we got under Reagan, so we may have avoided the blossoming of global corporatism. This is all speculation, but you can make an argument for 1980 being the inflexion point.

Putting that aside, conservatives are not the only ones trapped in amber. The people they pretend to oppose are also spending every night at the museum. After the Cold War, what we call the Left went back to put on their old 1960’s radical outfits so they could relive their salad days, but this time as the man. For the last thirty years it has been a revenge tour by the culture wreckers who thought they got short changed when they rioted in their youth.

It went unnoticed, but in the Obama years, it was if they were working from a list of slights they endured over the prior decades. The Iran deal was about avenging the “arms-for-hostages” issue. The Russian reset that everyone now forgets was about avenging Carter. When they were not revisiting past defeats, they were reviving old causes like black radicalisms and sexual liberation. Just like their conservative buddies, the so-called Left is trapped in the 20th century.

This weird dance through the halls of the museum of the 20th century is most obvious with the war in the Ukraine. This post by Thaddeus McCotter at American Greatness is emblematic of the mindset. The triumphalism following the fall of the Soviet Empire froze everything in place. No one on either side of the political class can think beyond the point when the West declared the end of history. Therefore, nothing can be allowed to change from that point in time.

Alexander Dugin has written about how the end of the Cold War was a disaster, which strikes most Western readers as sour grapes. It certainly was a disaster for Russia, but who cares about Russia? She deserved it for losing. Of course, what he meant is that the Cold War provided a moral framework for the world. When it abruptly ended, that moral framework ended with it. All of a sudden, there were no rules and what has followed has been chaos from the Eurasian perspective.

From the Western perspective, it has been worse than chaos. “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” is a common Russian expression. In fact, it greatly influenced the thinking of Nietzsche. For the West, the requirements of the Cold War filled the role of God, limiting the excesses of the ruling class. When those restraints were removed, what followed was an orgy of excess leading to the current crisis, made worse by rulers who are trapped in the past century.

Max Planck famously said, “Science advances one funeral at a time” and that may be what must happen for the West to escape the current crisis. As the geriatric class of leaders fades from the seen, they will take their antiquated worldview with them, leaving open the possibility for a new world view. Whether the West is governable as currently composed will be the defining question, but it will not be answered by those old men with their sock ties and Reagan memorabilia.

Ron Versus Don

Posted on March 21, 2023 by thezman

On social media, a mini-war has broken out between the pro-DeSantis faction and the pro-Trump faction. An example of the former is Pedro Gonzalez who spends his days on Twitter insulting Trump supporters. An example of the latter is Scott Greer, who also spends his days in Twitter, but insulting DeSantis people. Both may be paid “influencers” but that is not entirely clear. The DeSantis people are mostly anti-Trump people, while the Trump people are mostly pro-Trump.

That last bit is important. DeSantis has mostly attracted the on-line influencers who feel insulted by Trump for some reason. Most were superfans of Trump in 2016, doing the whole god-emperor thing, but then soured on him for some reason. Ann Coulter is the queen of this crowd. She now has the same enthusiasm for DeSantis as she had for Trump, Romney, Christie and George Bush. If history is a guide, Queen Ann will one day be trashing DeSantis on the Bill Maher show.

The basic argument from the DeSantis partisans is that he has a chance to win the general election, while Trump has no chance. More important, DeSantis knows how to govern, which he has proven in Florida. There is no doubt that he has been a great governor for Florida. He also has a very friendly state legislature, which makes it simple for him to get things done. There is no data to suggest he has a better shot against Biden than Trump, but that is the claim.

The truth is electability has never been a factor in these races. Most voters are not like most Republican politicians in that they do not negotiate with themselves. They vote for the candidate they like, not the candidate that a conservative commentator swears will be acceptable to the Democrats. Even if their preferred option has no chance in the general, most voters will go for the guy who speaks to them. It turns out that most people are decent and honest, not scheming weasels.

That is the argument for Trump. Despite his faults, and he has many, he represents those decent and honest people. He is a symbol, more than a candidate. Supporting Trump is about opposing the people who rule over us. It is as close as we get in America to class warfare. Trump’s voters are the great unwashed, the forgotten Americans who hate what has happened to their country. Trump is not the solution, but he makes noise on their behalf. That is enough.

Both camps are right in the same way that two people who have different favorite ice creams are right, even though they disagree. There is no empirical argument in favor of either guy as it is purely a matter of opinion. Pedro Gonzales is mad at Trump for not being the savior he hoped for in 2016, so he is has jumped on the DeSantis side, while Scott Greer still loves Trump and now hates DeSantis. Their arguments in favor of their guy are cognitively meaningless.

That said, we can assess the electability claim. The place to start is the 2020 election broken out by electoral votes. All of those national polls that people wave around are meaningless as we pick presidents by indirect election. In the last election, Biden won 303 electoral votes, while Trump got 235. The threshold to win is 270. There were a lot of shenanigans in the 2020 election, but they were repeated in 2022, so we have to treat them as a feature, rather than a bug.

The next step in assessing the electability claim is to ask which states are they mostly likely to flip into the Republican column. You can quickly rule out WA, OR, CA, CO, NM, ME, VT, NH, MA, CT, RI, NY, NJ, DE, MD, VA, HI and IL. That leaves NV, AZ, MN, WI, MI, PA and GA. There are eighty-seven electors in those states. A Republican will need to flip some combination of states to gain thirty-five electors. He will also have to hold the states that Trump won in 2020.

The state most likely to flip is Georgia. The Republican Party there has started to figure out what is happening to them and they have adjusted. The 2022 election was a small wake up call for the white vote in the state. That gets the Republicans halfway to their goal, but then things get dicey. Arizona and Nevada appear to be fortified for democracy now, as we saw in the 2022 election. Pennsylvania, of course, is heavily fortified for democracy, as we saw in the Fetterman race.

This means a Republican will need to win Michigan or Minnesota and Wisconsin, something has not been done in generations. In 2016, Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin, but lost Minnesota. It was close, so it cannot be ruled out entirely, but it is not the way to bet. Realistically, the only path to victory for the Republicans is to take back Georgia and then win Michigan, but they will still be short four electoral votes, so they have to focus on one other state as well.

What this tells us is the odds for a Republican win are awfully long. They have to win states that are mostly in the other camp by default. Then they have to defend their own states, some of which are trending the wrong way. The Yankee invasion of North Carolina is turning the state into Virginia. Texas is slowly becoming California as those weirdos arrive in droves. Barring some sort of black swan event, Joe Biden will cruise to victory in 2024 no matter his opponent.

What this says is that the choice for Republicans is not centered on electability, but who they prefer to see lose in 2024. The neocons and conservatives prefer to see Trump lose, but they are so full of hatred of white people now, they will root against him in the primary, even if it works against their interests. The DeSantis fans are coming around to the same view, thinking that Trump is some sort of bad juju that must be exorcised in order to return to the 1980’s.

For dissidents, it is a different question. DeSantis is a good governor and it would be better if he finished the job and set an example for others. We do not need another too nice to win loser presidential candidate. Trump is a crazy man who sends the bad guys into paroxysms of vengeful hysteria. He was a lousy president, but he has proven to be a great wrecking ball. His revenge tour, especially if he is indicted, will be the mother of all crap shows. A good time will be had by all.

On the other hand, DeSantis losing the general after the party swore he was better than Trump, discredits the whole process and drives home the point that we live in a one party system now. Many will assume that he was the victim of more democracy fortification, while others will read the map, analyze the demographics and see that there is no path forward in the current system. Reasonable Ron losing could be worse for the system than Demonic Don losing again.

In the end, it is probably a coin flip. Those who have yet to wake up to the present reality will place their hopes according to their desires. To paraphrase the American transcendentalist Theodore Parker, we should not pretend to fully comprehend the political universe, because the arc of history is long. We can only see a bit of it and make calculations accordingly. While the arc of liberal democracy is long, we can be sure that it bends towards civilizational disaster.

We Are Argentina Now

Posted on March 20, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about stupid people, a post about those rotten kids and their pivot tables and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

The Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have for a long time now been wrestling with a problem that is truly novel. They find themselves in an interest rate trap, which means they need to restore borrowing rates to something close to the historic norm, but doing so puts the global banking system at risk. The political class is just as hooked on cheap money as the bankers, so their is no appetite for a Paul Volker like approach to solving the money problem in the West.

For a long time, the problems were abstract. Everyone knew that near zero interest rates would one day create big problems, but in the here and now they made all of the important people happy. The reckless and insane response to Covid by Western ruling classes moved the problem into the domain of reality. Massive spending by government put enormous amounts of cash into the hands of regular people, not just the bankers, and those regular people started spending it.

Compounding this was the decline in global demand for dollars. Since the 1990’s, the Chinese economy was able to soak up extra dollars and euros. Other parts of Asia could also be counted on to take dollars in the form of investment. The massive liquidity in the banking system was, in effect, sequestered from the retail economy of Western countries, so the impact was low. That and the rest of the world was happy to hold euros, dollars and bonds in those currencies.

Covid was an accelerant in many ways, but one very important way was in regards to the Chinese economy. Central to the long term plans of China is to boost domestic demand and reduce her dependence on exports to the West. Lock downs and the subsequent decline in global commerce accelerated the process. China came out of Covid with far less demand for Western investment. Those extra dollars and euros are retuning to their makers.

It is looking like the insane response by the collective West to the war in the Ukraine is another accelerant to a process that was slowly building steam. Cutting Russia off from the “rules based international order” was a wake up call for the large, non-Western economies of the world. China understood right away that the dollar was Washington’s primary weapon in international affairs. The Saudis also came to see the problem with depending upon Washington to abide by the rules.

More important, the Russian economy survived the assault by Washington and she successfully defended the ruble. When Russia demanded payment in rubles from Western nations and they went along with it, the world changed. All of a sudden, the multipolar world with multiple competing currencies came into focus. China, Russia, India and the OPEC countries have now set off on a path where the dollar and euro no longer have a special place in global trade.

The enormity of this politically and economically cannot be overstated. This week the ruler of China is making a visit to Moscow. Generations of American policy makers have worked to avoid this meeting, but the current crop in charge of American foreign policy wrecked all of that and now we have an alliance between Russia and China. The world’s largest economy is now a strategic partner with the world’s biggest nuclear power, in opposition to the Global American Empire.

The global realignment does not stop there. The Russians have been brokering a peace between the Turks and the Syrians. The goal is to squeeze out the Americans, who are in Syria stealing Syrian oil and gas. China has brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which promises to reorder the region. The oil producing hub of the world is suddenly in the orbit of China and Russia. Economics follows politics, so it is not hard to see what this does to the dollar and euro.

For the last year, the Fed and ECB have been facing a problem. There is far too much money in the system and the demand for their money is in decline globally, which means they have to remove money from the system. They tried to ignore the problem by spinning yarns about inflation being transitory, but rocket high food bills made that story impossible to maintain. The politicians demanded the Fed “fix” the economy for them, so the Fed started to raise rates.

That is what brings us back to the interest rate trap. The entire Western banking system depends on exclusive access to cheap money. This is their margin. They no longer provide much in the way of essential services. Much of what the banking system does could be automated at this point. The profits come from operating a casino in which the house arbitrages the difference between what it pays for money and what the suckers on the other side pay for money.

If all of a sudden the price the house pays for money closes with that which the suckers are paying, then the casino goes bust. That is what we are see now. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were just money laundering schemes for plutocrats. Once interest rates went up just a little, they were no longer viable. Credit Suisse was just bailed out by the Swiss National Bank for the same reason. These banks could only exist in the world of free money to the banks and their clients.

Over the weekend, the Fed with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank announced a global bailout of the Western banking system. They are offering unlimited cash in exchange for the illiquid assets on the bank’s books. The reason they did this is they know that every bank in the West has the same problem as Credit Suisse. That is their liabilities outweigh their assets so they are effectively broke.

Of course, you cannot fight inflation while showering the system with cash, which means the effort to rein in inflation has come to an end. The Fed will try to limit the swapping of bad assets for cash by substituting treasuries, but this sort of legerdemain is just so they can continue the game of make believe. High inflation is now the new normal in the West because it is impossible to raise rates. The West has turned itself into Argentina through bad policy and worse politics.

For generations now people have warned about the long term cost of living on borrowed money, but they were mostly wrong. Living on borrowed money is self-correcting in that the lender eventually stops lending. What the West faces is a problem where the lender cannot not stop lending. The only way to sustain this now is for the people to be impoverished through systemic inflation. Inflation is now the banker’s friend, because it promises to keep the cheap money flowing.

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