Lessons From The Troubles

Posted on March 17, 2023 by thezman

Like so much from the 20th century, The Troubles has largely been forgotten, despite the fact it loomed large in the last half the century. It is a good example of how the cultural shadow of the Global American Empire warped everything. Meddling by important people in the empire played a huge role in the conflict. It was also one of the justifications for flinging open our borders.

Then all of a sudden, the conflict ended. Right around when the Cold War ended, the two sides decided it was time to get on with making peace. Just like that this generational event disappeared from our consciousness. Ireland quickly moved to the “Celtic Tiger” stage and then to the bust-out stage. Now Ireland is just another node on the Global American Empire trying to commit suicide.

Interestingly, The Troubles are a good example for dissidents trying to figure out how to combat the metastasizing blob that is the managerial state. It is not a perfect analogy, but it is a good example of a long running revolt against a cultural force. The British were not in it for the money. They were motivated by cultural factors and the Irish, for their part, rallied to their cultural banners in resistance.

Of course, there are good lessons and bad lessons from everything. The Irish won their freedom only to give it away to globalist interests, far more sinister and deadly to the Irish than the British. If you hold the views of the typical IRA man in today’s Ireland, you will be de-platformed and perhaps even imprisoned for blasphemy. The Irish are literally trying to erase themselves from the book of life.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

History of the Troubles
Lessons of identity
Lessons of Conflict
Lesson of Struggle

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Save The Future, Kill The Past

Posted on March 16, 2023 by thezman

Montesquieu observed that each form of political system had what he called a spring, but what we would call a mindset, that animated the people. For example, in aristocratic systems the people were motivated by honor. You wanted to please the man you served, so you were loyal to him. In a republican system, the citizens were loyal to the institutions and processes. You served the office, rather than the man. Tyrants, of course, relied upon the fear of the people.

Democracy was not mentioned and liberal democracy as we understand it did not exist, so Montesquieu did not have a spring for these. What we think we know about Athenian society tells us that morality was the spring of their democracy. The people were motivated by what they understand to be the shared beliefs of the people. In fact, Socrates was put on trial for impiety. He questioned the generally held beliefs of the people, which was viewed as a threat to order.

Managerialism was not something Montesquieu could discuss, because it did not exist until long after his time, but we can see it operates a lot like democracy. As with democracy, there is the need for consensus. Dissent is viewed with suspicion as it calls into question the majority’s sense that they are acting in the best interests of the whole of society. Therefore, everyone seeks to be viewed as pious, the more pious the better, so it is a race to the center of the consensus.

The thing is, this is not a front brain activity. People are not looking around on every issue, counting noses and anticipating the majority. Instead it is an instinctual thing, arrived at by interacting with the people in close proximity. It is why the metaphor of the hive is so important. Like drones in a hive, the people in the managerial class do not know why they believe what they believe. They just know everyone they know supports men in dresses, so it must be the right thing to do.

We have a couple of good recent examples from the courts. In theory, this is where kooky beliefs like transgenderism should slam into reality. The courts exist only because they operate upon fixed rules. Even the subversives of the legal profession acknowledge that it is a rules-based system, even as they gnaw away at those rules with clever manipulation of the language. The law is rules and without rules there is no law, so this should be the graveyard of belief.

In the case of the Proud Boys, who are being charged with trying to overthrow the government, the FBI accidently revealed that they had been actively working to destroy exculpatory evidence and frame the defendants. In most cases, this would have resulted in the case being dismissed with prejudice. In some cases, the defense would simply use it to destroy the credibility of the state. In this case, the judge is preventing the defense from using this in their defense.

In a related case, Douglas Mackey, the man behind the infamous Twitter account Ricky Vaughn, is on trial for being funny at the expense of Hillary Clinton. The judge in the case has denied the defense the right to confront his accuser. There is a secret witness that the defense is barred from knowing about in advance. More importantly, the judge has laughed off a clear case of witness intimidation by the state. Apparently, prosecutors had the SPLC harass a defense witness.

This is not the first time we have seen federal judges throw the law out the window in order to persecute people with beliefs contrary to the ruling consensus. The judge in the Michael Flynn case went to the Supreme Court demanding the right to be both judge and prosecutor in that trial. In fact, this is becoming so common it is right to view the federal system as something like Sharia courts. The written law and the traditions behind it are unimportant. Managerial morality is the standard.

The reason for this is the people who exist in these systems feel they must be seen as pious by everyone else in the system. If you are a judge providing a fair trial for the Proud Boys or Douglas Mackey, you are suspect. Your friends and associates in the system will begin to question your commitment. After all, everyone knows these are bad people who must be punished. A judge that allows for these bad people to avoid punishment could be viewed as a bad person.

The way to understand what is happening is to imagine a religious cult taking over the primary institutions of society. Imagine if the Scientologists gained control of the judiciary and started demanding thetan readings in court. The irrationality of thetan levels is unimportant. The people who believe it are not about to be talked out of it and even if that was possible, the selection pressure favors believers. Therefore, faking it has far more benefit than questioning it.

This is why facts and reason have no role in our debates. The people in charge either believe the current fads or they are pretending to believe them because that is what is required for membership in their portion of the polyarchy. Judges burn law books, carnies burn Bibles and politicians burn the Constitution not because they are destroyers, but because the system requires it. If the system needs the Bible, then they will quickly become Bible defenders.

Another troubling fact about the current crisis is that the existence of this hive mentality atop the system shows that the current structure of our cultural, political and economic universe is what makes this outcome possible. Make a small change in how America evolved in the 20th century and we get a vastly different result. What this means is changing the people gets more of the same, even more extreme results, because the system is tuned to produce the hive mind.

Much in the same way that the end of the aristocratic order required the French Revolution and the American Revolution, the end of this crisis in the West means erasing the history that made this system possible. Revolution puts a period on a historical process and begins a new process. The end of managerial polyarchy requires the repudiation of the history that created it. The system and the process that created it is the enemy, not the people in it.

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The Shifting Ukraine Narrative

Posted on March 15, 2023 by thezman

Just a few months ago, Western media was hailing the wonderfulness of their bosses in the political class over the decision to send tanks to Ukraine. The West was going to send modern battle tanks. The first batch would be Leopard II tanks from Germany followed by Abrams tanks from America. On top of that, the Poles donated their Patriot system to Ukraine. This would cure the missile problem. Maybe F-16’s were not far behind, the media told us.

Here we are entering the spring and the mood has shifted. This story in the Washington Post would have been called Putin propaganda a few months ago. It explains the terrible condition of the Ukrainian army. Six months of Russian grinding with artillery and now air power has killed tens of thousands of Ukraine’s best soldiers. This story published in Politico is about the growing troubles in the collective West over how to go forward with the Ukraine war.

One reason the mood has shifted in the West is it is impossible to hide the reality on the battlefield much longer. Reliable estimates say the Ukrainians have lost 200,000 soldiers in the last year. That is killed in action. An equal number have been wounded, with the majority unable to return to service. On the Russian side, the death toll is much lower, around 20,000, with two or three times that wounded. This disparity means it is a matter of time before the Ukrainians crack.

There is also the fact that there is no way for the West to change the numbers of this war with methods or tactics. The West committed Ukraine to a style of fighting that cannot now be abandoned in favor of a new approach. They are throwing all available resources into defending every inch of turf. The trouble is, the West is running low on weapons and ammunition. An army that is low on men and material is an army headed for defeat, under any conditions.

Of course, what we are seeing is a change in the narrative. The old narrative was based on the Russians running out of men and material and the heroic Ukrainians, armed with weapons from their morally superior backers in the West, would go on the great counter offensive and drive the Russians from the Donbas. That has been the story for a year, but now that story is inoperative. Since Western leaders live in a fictional world of their own creation, they need a new narrative.

The new narrative will probably blame the Ukrainian leadership for the failures on the battlefield and maybe the failure to conduct negotiations. There are rumors being floated in Western media that NATO commanders have been telling the Ukrainians to abandon Bakhmut, but Zelensky has ordered a defense of the city. As the envelopment of Ukrainian forces in the region becomes more obvious, Western leaders will get more chatty about how this is the fault of Zelensky.

For those unfamiliar, Bakhmut is a central stronghold in the center of what had been called the Zelensky line in Donbas. The Russians have been laying siege to this heavily fortified stronghold for months. They have fire control over the main roads and the Wagner group is conducting operations in the city. More important, a larger encirclement is forming to contain about 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers. This is a big battle that the Ukrainians are losing.

Another subplot to the new narrative emerged last month when Washington started floating claims about who bombed the Nord Stream pipelines. First was the story planted in the New York Times claiming that a couple of guys in a canoe blew up these underwater pipelines at the direction of Ukraine. Then the Wall Street Journal was given a taste with this story. The European press was given a taste with this story posted in the Financial Times.

The absurdity of the claims is not important. There is simply no way that a group of Ukrainian partisans pulled off this attack. What is important is that these stories seeded a new narrative about the Ukrainian leadership. Instead of being heroic defenders of freedom, they are erratic and unreliable. They do things like assassinate the daughter of Alexander Dugin without telling their Western sponsors. You can easily see where this will lead once it is time to exit the current narrative.

Another sign that the tide is turning against the blood-drenched Kagan cult over Ukraine policy is the response to the Russian downing of an American drone. The United States has been providing intelligence to the Ukrainian army since the start. They have satellites over Ukraine and use these advanced surveillance drones. The Russians could blind the satellites and take down the drones, but that would risk escalation, so they have been quiet about it until now.

There can be no doubt that the decision to take down the drone was made at the highest levels with Kremlin permission. The changing reality on the battlefield and the changing rhetoric from the West probably led to this. The Russians wanted to test if the changing rhetoric can be trusted. Washington’s tepid response to the incident suggests that there is no appetite for escalation. The Ukraine party in the West is winding down and everyone is thinking about heading home.

This does not mean the end of the war is imminent. Right now, the Ukrainians are locked into a strategy of fighting to the last man. The Russian are happy to oblige as they now think the only solution is a military solution. They need to grind down and break the Ukrainian army. Then they will impose their preferred political solution on Ukraine, whether it is with Zelensky or his successor. This process will probably take the rest of this year, perhaps longer.

What comes next for the West is plotting out the rest of the narrative in the coming months when it becomes clear that Ukraine cannot launch an offensive. This will close out the old narrative completely. Ukrainian tanks will not be driving through Moscow after all, so the new narrative will need a new ending. This new ending will allow the West to declare that whatever result the Russians impose will fall far short of their goals, thus scoring a win for Western narrative makers.

The Great Reckoning

Posted on March 14, 2023 by thezman

For generations, going back to the middle of the last century, people have been warning about systemic problems in American society. Some of the warnings have been tricks to continue the cultural revolution. Some have been part of the financial legerdemain that defines so much of our economy and politics. There have been, however, many sincere warnings about long term structural problems. Out of necessity and expediency they were ignored, but that may be about to change.

The most obvious is the most immediate. Going back to the Clinton years people who understood money were warning about loose money policy. People forget that Clinton winning was a surprise. After all, Bush came into the election with a huge war victory and a solid economy. The Reagan expansion was viewed not only as a miracle of Republican policy, but a rebuke of left-wing economics. Then the economy soured before the elections and Clinton was president.

Much of official Washington blamed the tight money policies of Alan Greenspan for tanking the economy under Bush. Team Clinton made sure this could never happen again, especially with a Democrat in office. Loose money became official policy and only got worse with each administration. By the Obama years, we were in a world of Zero Interest Rate Policy. Now those ZIRP chickens are coming home to roost in the form of a systemic banking failure.

No one should be deceived by what is happening. Last weekend, the Federal Reserve decided that the banks are all broke due to holding assets that have a declining market value, so the Federal Reserve effectively nationalized the banks. The only way they can regain control of money policy is to eliminate the market for long dated bonds by promising to buy them at face value. The Federal Reserve has nationalized the banks by nationalizing the bond market.

This is required to avoid a bank collapse but also allow for the long overdue reorganization of the financial sector. A generation of free money has turned Wall Street into a drug addict. It is entirely organized around getting the narcotic of free money from the government, rather than the normal practice of banking. All of its schemes are designed not to create value in the economy but to generate the need for more free money, a portion of which ends up in executive pay.

This did not happen in isolation. The great auctioning off of the manufacturing base that began in the 1980’s has finally caught up to America. The subtext to the Ukraine war is the fact that America no longer has the ability to make the weapons it requires to wage war on the world. Russia, with a third of the population, can now make more weapons for war than America. Her production of ammunition dwarfs what America can muster, which is why Russia is slowly grinding down the Ukrainians.

Of course, one main reason for the auctioning off of the manufacturing base is it raised quick money to invest in the rigged casino that is Wall Street. This fact was masked to a great degree by cheap consumer goods. In fact, the culture of cheap consumer goods has justified all of the nation wrecking policies. Everything from open borders to wholesale political corruption have been justified by cheap lawn care and cheap products sold in big box stores.

The price tag for decades of cheap goods underwritten by the sale of the manufacturing base is now coming due. The only thing America makes now is sexual deviance and lectures in favor of sexual deviance. It turns out that there is no global market for rainbow colored marital devices and films promoting the culture around them, which means America does not have a real economy. The ongoing economic crisis is about to get much worse as that reality becomes clear.

In fairness, some of the proceeds from auctioning off of the manufacturing base went into the technology sector. In the fullness of time, the robot historians may remember America for having singlehandedly created the technological revolution. This has changed the world. The trouble is, the technological revolution ended decades ago, but Silicon Valley continues to consume trillions in money. With the collapse of SVB, that great money drain is now ending.

The war with Russia and the looming war with China has also brought other chickens home to roost. For a long time people have been warning about the military industrial complex and its addiction to expensive, high tech weapons. Those whiz-bang systems look great, but they are not what wins wars. What wins a war are the tools the average soldier uses to kill the enemy. We no longer bother making them and instead focus on rocket ships and space lasers.

What the war in Ukraine has revealed is that NATO would have to use nuclear weapons in a war against Russia, because NATO lacks the men and machines to fight a ground war against the Russians. Most NATO countries would run out of ammunition in a few weeks and have to surrender. Against China, the American military would deliver some serious early blows, but then run out of supplies. Chinese manufacturing capacity is now greater than America and Europe combined.

Overlaying all of this is the crisis of competence. The SVB fiasco is a great example of a problem that permeates American society. Instead of rewarding skill and accomplishment, our system is rigged to reward nonwhites at the explicit expense of whites, especially white males. The only market that is booming in America is the racial revenge market and the result is colorful people in positions of authority who lack the basic skills to do the jobs they have been given.

Thirty years ago, people warned about this. What started as tolerance in the 1980’s, became sensitivity in the 1990’s, then diversity in the new century. It has now turned into a full blown cult of anti-whiteness. While towns in Ohio suffer from an ecological disaster, the people in charge fret of racist sidewalks. Corporate America is more concerned with its ESG and DEI scores than its financial stability. We have combined demographic reality with anti-white fanaticism into a ruling ethic.

No society can run this way. Good luck fighting China with a rainbow coalition of drag diverse drag queens trying to operate space guns. Good luck weathering a reorganization of the financial system when the banks are run by people who were just recently coaxed from caves by European explorers. Imagine surviving an end of empire crisis with the productive portion of society seething with rage at the fanatics who brought about this disaster.

One could go on a long time listing the things that should never have been allowed to happen that are now turning up in the nation’s crisis list. All of these are the result of bad polices hatched in the late 20th century and used to loot the country by the new generations of rulers ushered in by the Clintons. The bill for the great bust-out is now coming due and there is no avoiding it. Like drunks at closing time, we await the bill for generations of reckless behavior.

Crisis In The Clouds

Posted on March 13, 2023 by thezman

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One of the underappreciated properties of managerialism is how the managerial elite begin to look like the elite of a bureaucracy. The people at the top of the various pillars of power begin to think like the people in charge of the Post Office in that they care primarily for the power and privilege’s of their power center. We are getting a glimpse of this with the evolving financial crisis that was set in motion by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week.

The bank started to run into trouble when the Federal Reserve started raising rates in order to combat inflation. Rates have been near zero for so long that it became the new normal, leading to activity that otherwise would never get financed. When money is cheap, the appetite for risk-taking is high. When money has been cheap for a generation, risk-taking is no longer seen as risk-taking. It is simply how things are done, until money stops being cheap, which is what is happening now.

Despite the bizarre devotion to the cult of diversity by the people running SVB, the bank itself does not appear to have been poorly managed. To date no violations of the law have been suggested. Instead, the bank was the victim of changing conditions that suddenly made their model unworkable. In the world of banking, when your model becomes unworkable it means you are running out of money. A bank without money is an abandoned building.

SVB’s clients were mostly startups, tech companies and their corresponding venture capital firms. The bank helped facilitate funding for new companies and existing companies that are growing. Private investors kept their money at the bank and the firms they were bankrolling also kept their money at the bank. Because borrowing rates were near zero, the bank could lend to the customers of their preferred customers, the private investors, at attractive rates.

When the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates to combat inflation, everything based on cheap money was thrown into crisis. Those private investors suddenly had more attractive options than startups. Those startups suddenly found it hard to borrow money at tolerable rates. The startups then started to draw down on their cash reserves and the private investors began to move their money to more profitable places, thus creating a cash crisis for the bank.

That is the second problem, the very serious problem, that has broad implications for the entire system. To raise cash, Silicon Valley Bank first elected to sell assets like treasuries and mortgage backed securities. In the near zero interest rate world, these were as good as cash. In the time of rising rates, these very low yield instruments are not in demand, so they had to be heavily discounted. SVB had to take a two billion dollar write down when they sold these assets.

Since every bank in America, possibly the Western world, holds treasuries and long dated mortgage backed securities, it means every bank has the same problem as this bank in that they have assets with a book value above market value. Some estimates suggest there is a trillion dollar gap in the system due to this problem. In 2008 when the system came close to collapse, the problem was about a trillion and half, so you can see why the bankers are in a panic.

This is where we see the bureaucratic nature of the system. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

That is what we see with the bankers. The people running the system care only about the system, not the alleged goals of the system. No one ever asked if near zero interest rates was good for the economy. They do not care. What mattered is what is good for the financial system and the people running it. When inflation promised to become dangerous to their position in the system they raised rates, but now that raising rates is threatening the system, they will stop raising rates.

We are about to have another banking crisis because no one in the system bothers questioning what happens in the system, outside of those things that threaten the position of those atop the system. Cheap money underwriting you-go-girl capitalism makes them feel good, so they do it. If the polices warp the overall economy and puts the middle-class at risk, they do not care. All that matters is the internal dynamics of the system and how it impacts the people in it.

Replicate this silo mentality across the empire and you can easily see why the ruling class appears to be out of touch with reality. The reason is their reality is not our reality, but the artificial reality of the system. Right now, banking regulators are telling each other they are heroes for working the weekend to stem a bank run, while the rest of us see another trillion getting printed up and handed to the greed-heads who have been looting the economy for generations.

Of course, none of these silos of power are independent. The political silo will get in on the act when Joe Biden mumbles something about it this morning. Expect to hear lots of statements beginning with “we did…” from various political operatives, claiming that they are the real heroes of this crisis. The media will adopt their usual bunker mentality, defending the people who control their scripts. Here is an early example of what we will see this week from the content creators.

What all this means for the rest of us is the grocery bill will rocket up this year as the bankers are bathed in free money to save the system. We will get new narratives from the Cloud People about how the food bill is a conspiracy theory or maybe it is the work of the Chinese, who are the new bogeyman. The people at the top will sleep well knowing they have once against defended the system from the barbarians of reality who threatened to crash through the gates.

Managerial Polyarchy

Posted on March 10, 2023 by thezman

One of the on again, off again debates on this side of the divide is about what to call the current system and how we got to this point. The old language is either inadequate or loaded with moral connotations. Calling the Biden people fascist is not entirely wrong, but not entirely accurate either. That and the word fascist comes with so much baggage that its descriptive value is completely lost.

The same can be said for words like communist and authoritarian. Even the term managerialism has been abused to the point where it often just means “bad” rather than a specific sort of organizational outlook. One of the weird parts about being trapped in the 20th century, as is the case with the West, is we are left to use moral language that no longer works in this century.

The term “Biological Leninism” is a good example. While the NRx people have accurately described some aspects of the current system, this is mostly an accident of trying to jam the current system into old models. The term itself is just a way to anathematize the current ideology by associating it with an ideology of the last century which is universally reviled.

What needs doing is a fresh look at the 20th century from an objective, historical perspective that avoids the old moral language. How did liberal democracy evolve into this strange elite ideology? Clearly, we no longer live in liberal democracies and our ruling classes no longer subscribe to the morality of liberal democracy. The question is, what is this ideology and how did it evolve?

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This Week’s Show

Contents

What is Going On?
Our Democracy!
Robert Dahl
Polyarchy
Managerialism
Managerial Polyarchy
The System

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The Cult Of The Elite

Posted on March 9, 2023 by thezman

Every society has a moral code, a collection of unwritten rules that govern the behavior the members toward one another and with the outside world. A moral code, of course, is a collection of rules reflecting the moral preferences of society. These things and activities are good, while these things and activities are bad. The authority for these preferences can be the gods, tradition or what the rulers prefer. Fashion, after all, is just the sartorial preferences of the people in charge.

Despite what conservatives insist, the moral code of a society is a top down affair, imposed by the people in charge. Their preferences start at their primary preference, which is to remain in charge. That means the preferences the rulers impose on their subjects reflects their interests, at least how they see their interests. It is not a perfect link as elite society is as subject to evolutionary pressure as the rest of society, but it is a good place to start in understanding the elite.

Since a moral code regulates behavior, we can look at behavior and do a bit of reverse engineering to get a peak at the code. What are the things the elites do that point to what they prefer and not prefer? It is not what they say, as people say what they think they are supposed to say. This is especially true of elites. What matters is what they do as this indicates what they value. One thing libertarians got right is the concept of revealed preferences. Actions are what matter.

For example, we have the constant lying from official Washington. They lie about everything to the point where it is the norm. No one is bothered to be outraged as it is just how the things are now. It is the line incorrectly attributed to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but written by Elena Gorokhova. “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”

Obviously, truth in the empirical sense is not important. Dig deeper and you see that the lying is mostly in service to narratives that define the world of Washington. In other words, they are not lying to deceive so much as lying to support a version of reality that is preferred at the moment. They see the truth and the lie as means to an end, judged only on the ends. What counts is the narrative, while facts are just props in the narrative structure, used only when needed.

What this tells us is the people inside the political system are not hostile to the people, but indifferent to them. The lying is not an effort to trick the people into supporting one thing or another, but mostly about internal considerations. Even the lies over Covid, which were an effort to shape behavior, were actually in service to the narrative they created around the virus. Immiserating millions of people was a happy accident, but never the point of their lying about Covid.

We have a couple of recent examples that are useful in understanding what truly matters to the elites. First is this case involving a couple of fringe goofballs using robocalls to mock black people. Americans receive billions of bogus calls, despite it being illegal, but these two warranted special attention. The judge makes clear that if they had mocked Irish people, for example, it would have been fine. They targeted black people and no one is allowed to mock the gods.

We have this case of four black people who drove to Mexico so one of them could get cosmetic surgery, but they got carjacked instead. Sadly, thousands of Americans are attacked by Mexicans around the border ever year. Of course, tens of millions of people from around the world stream over the border. This not only damages the lives Americans near the border, but it has ruined life around the country. This is cheered by the political class as the browning of America.

This case is different. You see, the four people involved are black and no one is allowed to lay a hand on our sacred black people. Lady Bugs Graham is now demanding we go on jihad against Mexico as retribution. Official Washington is suddenly ablaze with angry rhetoric about what is happening south of the border. Mexicans kill white people every day in America, but when they killed a couple of black people, they crossed a line in elite moral code that must be addressed.

Of course, anyone paying the least bit of attention could come up with a dozen such cases where elites are moved to action because an issue involves black people, but they are indifferent when it involves white people. Candace Owens is a millionaire because she tells white people they are good boys, very good boys. Even so, this Mexican case is threatening to change policy regarding Mexico. It is not just a show to signal their virtue to one another.

A century ago, Paris was gripped by something called negrophilia which is derived from the French négrophilie that means love of the negro. The beautiful people would collect African art and hang out at Jazz clubs. Much of it was driven by exposure to black troops from America and Africa during the war. The controlling factor was the desire of the avant-garde to feel trendy and separate from the bourgeoise. It was all superficial and eventually was replaced by new fads.

Today’s version is something more than a fad. It is not just a weapon to be used against the remaining white people. What we are seeing is antiwhite, but it is not necessarily hatred of whites that is the source of this new moral code. Instead, it seems to be a genuine worship of black people, as if they are magical beings. Our elites now think they will be judged by how well they take care of black people. Who will do the judging is never spoken, but that just adds to the mystery.

That last bit is important. Much of what we see from our elites fits the pattern of religiosity, but it lacks the explicit supernatural authority. They never say why they worship black people. They never point to an authority for this behavior. It is just assumed to be there at the center of things. Perhaps that is what gives it power in the minds of these people. Their moral code is now a mystery cult in which it is essential to not know why you embrace the moral code.

A million years ago in another context, John Derbyshire made the following observations about cults. “To those inside [a cult], it appears to be a structure of perfect logical integrity, founded on unassailable philosophical principles, while to those outside it seems to some degree nutty; to some other degree hysterical; and to some yet other degree a threat to liberty.” This sounds eerily accurate with regards to the worship of nonwhites by our ruling classes.

What we are seeing is the evolution of a cult of the elite, in which salvation is sought through the worship of that which symbolizes the antithesis of the West. This explains the extremism of these people. How can you be satisfactorily anti-Western? How can one be satisfactorily worshipful of black people? What is the outer limit of the rejection of biological reality? There is no answer to these things, so cult members keep looking for an even more extreme expression of these values.

Returning to where we have started, an objective examination of elite behavior reveals a bizarre moral code that is out of sync with reality. That gap between what they believe, their moral preferences, and reality, is the measure of their virtue. In other words, the way to understand elite behavior is to imagine a cult founded on the rejection of human reality and then that cult gains control of society. That is the condition of the West and it is probably not going to cure itself.

Ukraine Stirrings

Posted on March 8, 2023 by thezman

Last Friday, the ruler of Germany got on a plane and flew to Washington, then took a car service to the White House for a private meeting with Joe Biden. He was not accompanied by German media. After the meeting, the White House issued a one paragraph summary of the meeting. There was a brief media show after the meeting and then Scholz got back on a plane to Berlin. Regime media then issued the usual agit-prop about the collective West’s commitment to victory.

The whole thing was extremely bizarre, even by current standards. Normally when a head of state visits Washington, they bring their media to cover it. They typically bring some of their most important citizens to meet Washington officials. Often, the visiting head of state will stay the night in the White House, even if there is no official state dinner on the agenda. The trip is finished off by a press conference in which state media from both countries put on a show.

One interpretation of this bizarre event is that Scholz was summoned to the imperial capital so he could be reminded that Washington would not think twice about regime changing him and the other flunkies in his government. The German political class may be craven and obsequious, but they are not so stupid as to not understand what is going on with the war on Russia. A year on and none of the predictions from Washington have turned out to be accurate.

The reason that the promise of new super tanks for Ukraine has fallen apart is the Germans cannot scrape up enough of them. The reason for that is the internal resistance in Germany to supplying what is left of German weapons. This is not just a German problem, but it is signaling to the other EU counties that it is probably a good idea to not give the store away. This meeting could have been a warning to Scholz about what happens when you defy the empire.

Alternatively, Scholz could have been dispatched to deliver a secret message to Washington on behalf of Europe. Given the shabby state of things in the West, the only way to make sure such a message was not leaked to the world would be to hand deliver it in the White House. Scholz met privately with Biden for one hour. This means no one can be sure what was said in that meeting. Most likely, Biden had his key handlers there to receive the message from Scholz.

A third option is that Scholz was summoned so that Washington could confirm that it was Washington that ordered the bombing of the gas lines. What followed the meeting was a claim laundered through regime media that it was the Ukrainians that bombed the Nord Stream pipelines. The absurdity of the claim notwithstanding, this could be misdirection to give Scholz some cover. Maybe the disclosure came with some promises to help in other areas.

A fourth option is that Washington is planning to expand the war to include China, with the excuse being the claim that China is selling arms to Russia. China is a vital trading partner for Germany. Scholz recently met with the Chinese and issued Washington supplied statements about the consequences of selling arms to Russia. This secret meeting could be part of some backdoor discussion with China or about looming sanctions on China over support for Russia.

On the other hand, the Germans have been increasingly restless about the progress in the war, so this meeting could have been a warning to Washington. The German economy is in a precarious state due to sanctions. Europe avoided an energy crisis this winter because they stocked up on Russian gas. That buffer is now gone, which means a looming energy crisis this year. Put another way, time is running out on Washington’s scheme to defeat the Russians and steal their resources.

There are also the events on the battlefield. The Russians have encircled the strategic town of Bakhmut. This is the linchpin to what is called the Zelensky line. If this town falls, then the line of contact moves rapidly west. It would also rule out any possibility of counter attacking this spring. There were reports that the Ukrainians were abandoning the town, but then Zelensky changed course again. Now there are reports of new units with new Western gear being thrown into the cauldron.

Clearly, Washington is calling the shots in Kiev, so this change of plan in Bakhmut could mean there is some new escalation planned. That could be why Scholz was called in for a private briefing. Maybe the Poles will be sent into the Western part of Ukraine in order to bring supply lines closer to the front. Currently, the Ukrainian army is supplied through Poland using rail lines. Having the Poles set up forward bases in Ukraine shortens the supply lines.

That would also put NATO troops near the front. The Russians have been attacking the rail system and power grid all over Ukraine. Would they attack those rail depots knowing that they are full of Polish troops? That could give the Kagan cult the excuse to launch World War III. It sounds insane, but this is what happens when you have a Bronze Age death cult running imperial policy. No matter how insane the idea, they are willing to consider it in pursuit of their goal.

The final possibility is that we are seeing the start of the end game. Unless Washington is prepared to get directly involved in the war, there is no other possible outcome for Ukraine than defeat. The question is how to manage this so that Western governments experience the least amount of agony. Given how Western politics is driven by narrative, this meeting may signal the start of a new narrative to explain what is looking like the inevitable demise of Ukraine.

A Culture Of Corruption

Posted on March 7, 2023 by thezman

What we think of culture is a system and a system is a collection of rules for how interdependent group of items interact with one another. This results in the whole possessing a set of unique properties. An accounting system is a set of formal rules based on the accepted standards of accounting. The habits of the accounting department, the culture of the department, is an unwritten set of rules for governing the behavior of the people in the department.

Most of life is governed by the unwritten rules. You can see this in something as simple as driving a car. In the United States, the written rules of the road are the same from state to state, but the unwritten rules are quite different. In Texas, drivers will stand on the brakes to let someone merge into traffic, while in Massachusetts people regularly drive on the shoulder to prevent it. The driving culture in New England is different from the driving culture of other parts of America.

Cultural shifts, changes in those unwritten rules, happen when key players within the culture decide to violate those rules. Maybe it is self-interest that drives the change, or maybe it is simply the declining utility of the old rules, but important people begin to violate those unwritten rules. Because humans are social animals, the rest follow the lead of the important people and the culture changes. The fashion industry has counted on this reality since its inception.

A classic example of a cultural shift was Watergate. The sorts of shenanigans done by the Nixon people during the 1972 election were considered normal and then all of a sudden they were declared beyond the pale. Prior to that time, the FBI was prohibited from getting directly involved in politics. Then all of a sudden, they were plotting with the Washington Post to overthrow the president. Those unwritten rules of political conduct suddenly changed and Nixon was removed.

Another example from politics comes from the 1990’s. Current affairs programming followed a set of unwritten rules. It was supposed to be a calm exchange of views, hosted by a moderator who pretended to be objective. The Clintons showed up in Washington and this changed. All of a sudden Clinton people were flinging their pooh at the moderator and anyone else on stage. It did not take long before this became the new normal and now all shows are pooh flinging contests.

This week, Tucker Carlson is doing shows on the hidden surveillance tapes from the Capitol on January 6th. These tapes had been hidden from public view by the Democrats until the Republicans took control of the House. Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker, let the production team of the Tucker Carlson Show review the 40,000 hours of footage and this week they are reporting on it. They also have permission to show clips of that hidden footage in their reporting.

So far, nothing earth shattering has been revealed. The guy who showed up wearing animal skins, the QAnon Shaman, is seen being given a guided tour by the police, who seem to be having a blast leading the guy around the building. The QAnon Shaman is now in prison, doing four years for allegedly leading a violent insurrection. He was not allowed to have access to this footage in his defense, because in America the accused are no longer entitled to defend themselves in court.

This is where you see one of those cultural shifts. Most people reading this remember when such a thing would be a massive scandal. The judge and the prosecutors would have been reviled as fascists for denying this man a right to a defense. Of course, the media would have been demanding the footage from the beginning. Instead, they are up in arms over Tucker having access to the material. They fear he may create a “dangerous narrative” using these tapes.

The media was always biased. We used to be more mature about this and accept that politics is about friends and enemies. In the colonial times, everyone knew the bias of the newspapers and thought nothing of it. Then all of a sudden there was a culture shift and we were supposed to pretend the media was neutral. They were the fourth estate, speaking truth to power. We have just experienced another culture shift. The media is totally corrupt, using power to obscure the truth.

Another example of the culture shift is in the tapes. Tucker showed a scene from the J6 show trial in Congress. One of the politicians showed a clip of Senator Josh Hawley running from the building like a little girl. It turns out that the video was heavily edited by the Democrats. Hawley was with a group of other pols being herded out by the police and he was the last guy to leave. In other words, the Congress doctored a video and presented it under oath to the public as fact.

Everyone has always accepted that politicians lie. The reason they lie is to get elected, avoid scandal, or avoid responsibility. In other words, self-interest. This is the nature of all human activity and everyone accepted it. Doctoring video and presenting it as fact in order to promote a crazy narrative is something different. In a prior age, the people involved would be facing criminal charges. After all, they charged Roger Clemens for lying to Congress not so long ago.

More importantly, they doctored video to make a sitting Senator look like a sissy and then used the hearing to broadcast it to the world. It appears they worked with the media to promote this lie. Ten years ago, this was so beyond the pale that no one would have considered it. Now all of a sudden, the culture controlling the House and Senate has changed and this is now the new normal. How long before they move onto assassinating one another?

None of this is startling for people on this side of the divide, but it underscores an important point about the current crisis. The corruption at the top is so deep and so pervasive that the time for reform has now passed. How can the system reform itself when the people running it are so thoroughly corrupt? How could a genuine reformer work with people who are so corrupt? How can you fix the rules when the culture has evolved to reject the very idea of rules?

In the fullness of time, the ape historians will look at the 1980’s as a time for choosing, when the political class struggled to redefine itself. They could have gone down the road of reform and prepared for the word after the Cold War. Instead they signed on with the Clintons and the road to perdition. That has led to the flowering of a culture of corruption at the top of the political order. That is why J6 terrified them. They have known this long before that protest.

The Internal Monologue

Posted on March 6, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, a post about terrorism and technology and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Note #3: The Pepper Cave is joining the group of supporters you see at the bottom of every post. They were kind enough to send a care package with various spice blends they produce. I will be doing a longer post about it this week, but if you are a chili head, check them out here.

The looming presidential primary season is about to be a good test case for the claim that the system is inward looking. That is, what we get in the national media with regards to politics is for internal consumption by the political bubble. They are not trying to sway public opinion, but rather signal things to one another. Like fireflies at dusk, the various nodes of the system use the media to blink to one another. Those outside just happen to see it but are not the intended audience.

This post in Breitbart covering CPAC is an interesting example. Mike Pompeo is running for president, so he shows up to give a speech. In his speech, he promises to throw old people off the Social Security and Medicare system. The reason he wants to do this is he says these systems cost too much. You see, with all the baby boomers retiring, the costs are starting to rise quickly. Therefore, the logical solution is to start throwing old people off the programs. Problem solved!

To a normal person, this sounds as sensible as coming out in favor of slapping children of killing puppies. There is no constituency in favor of cutting Social Security or Medicare funding or even limiting access. Further, old people are the biggest voting block in the Republican Party. Look around at CPAC and you see more gray hair than gray hoodies. He would have been better off giving the speech in Klingon. A reasonable person may think Mike Pompeo is insane.

He is not insane. He is simply a man who has lived his entire adult life inside the system, so he has no idea how normal people sound. He is used to chatting with friends in the system about the need to reduce spending on Americans in order to spend much more on Ukrainians or illegal aliens. For him, this is perfectly normal. He would probably be shocked to learn that there is no constituency for this. After all, everyone he knows thinks something must be done.

Now, Mike Pompeo is a ridiculous person by the standards of normal people, but he is typical of the political class. He is what passes for serious in that world. You see it in the media that serves the people in the system. Real Clear Politics gives him a big thumbs up for being courageous in his call to throw old people into the streets. Time Magazine says he is just the man the Republican Party needs. They are signaling to the system that this is what is good and proper.

If our mass media cared at all about the hoi polloi, the headline in the Washington Post would be, “Jobless Rando Shows Up At CPAC, Rants About Old People.” The New York Times would ask, “Why did CPAC let this weirdo speak?” No serious person, not even the people in the system, thinks Mike Pompeo should be president. No one thinks he has chance to register in the polls. That is not the point. The point is to participate in a debate among the political class.

Speaking of jobless randos, Nikki Haley also showed up at the event to give a speech in favor of killing white people and sending their stuff to Ukraine. She was not quite that explicit, but like Pompeo, she is deeply concerned about people on the other side of the world, but not so much about people in America. Even though she must know this is a losing hand with the voters, she knows it is a winning hand in Washington. Like Pompeo, her campaign is about internal politics.

Of course, CPAC itself is part of the same system. It bills itself as the convention for conservative activists, but in reality it is mostly a tradeshow for the grifters and confidence men who populate the conservative ecosystem. They decorated the event with yokels from flyover country in order to give the impression that they have genuine support among the hoi polloi. In reality the point has always been to promote internal dialogue and signal to the rest of the political system.

The curious thing about all of this, and it jumps out at you with CPAC, is that Trump did the system a huge favor in 2016. CPAC would have gone bust by now without the Trump victory and populist surge. Even with Trump running in 2024, CPAC struggled for an audience this year. The speakers talked to more empty chairs than people, judging from some of the pics people have posted. Without Trump, they are left with zombies like Mike Pompeo to sell tickets.

The same can be said for the entire system. Imagine how insulated and cutoff they would be at this point if Trump never came down the escalator. The Republicans would have selected a goofball like Jeb Bush. Maybe he beats Hillary, maybe not, but the result would have been the same. Large swaths of voters would be wondering what in the hell is going on, but with no way to tell the system. Without Trump, national politics would be even more bizarre than it is now.

That said, the persistence of this internal monologue that is presented to us as democratic politics says nothing really changed. The internal monologue has been more shouty and angry since 2015, but it remains an internal monologue. Once the door is shut on Trump and his voters this election, the internal monologue will return to sounding like an opioid laced talk show on National Public Radio. The people inside it will drift off into the dream world of their own making.

It may already be happening. Chris “Thanks Dad” Sununnu went on the far-left chat show Meet the Press to announce that Trump will not be the nominee. Maybe he was telling tales out of school, but most likely he is stating the general consensus within Washington with regards to the primaries. It brings to mind what Talleyrand famously said about the Bourbons after they were restored to power, “They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing”.

What the Republican primary is going to be this time is an argument between the party establishment and the rest of Washington. The former will be insisting that all the Trump stuff is over and it is time to get back to looting the white middle class, while the later keeps pointing to Trump saying, “He’s still here.” Put another way, the voters are now a guest that refuses to leave the party. The political class is debating how best to make them leave and go home.

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