Monthly Archives: April 2023

What Is Woke?

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Note: Behind the green door is a post about Star Trek, a post about the Bud Light imbroglio and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

A small debate on-line was kicked off by this post from the venerable Paul Gottfried regarding the topic of Wokism. Gottfried pointed out that it is an error to confuse this new ideology with Marxism. While many of the thinkers who laid the groundwork for what we presently call Wokism were Marxists or came out of the Marxist intellectual space, this new ideology is not Marxism. Marxism and Wokism operate in separate intellectual domains and traditions.

This did not sit well with those in the bourgeoning industry that revolves around verbal antagonism toward Wokism. James Lindsay felt it necessary to call Paul Gottfried an idiot while dismissing his post entirely. Lindsay makes his living these days peddling the idea that Wokism is “Marxist-Fascism” which is completely nuts, but it appears that he has been driven insane in his effort to make sense of the material within post-Marx culturalism that informs this new ideology.

It needs to be said that Paul Gottfried’s dog probably knows more about this topic than Lindsay will ever know. Given Gottfried’s connection to Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse, he is as close as we get to an expert on the forerunners of this new ideology gripping the minds of the ruling class. Gottfried is also a world-renowned expert on fascism as an intellectual concept. Paul can be an idiot like everyone else, but on this topic, he knows more than most.

That said, there is a tendency of people on what we call the Right to engage in the same binary thinking we see with the people we call the Left. That means playing the old game of linguistic guilt by association. Since Lindsay’s intended audience has been trained to hear “Marxism” and “Fascism” as scare words, he associates Wokism with those two words to stimulate his audience. Wokism, Marxism and Fascism just mean “bad” to the people in that scene.

On the other hand, there is a segment of the civic nationalist space that insists everything can be reduced to money and power. Their theory is that the people with all of the money and power are doing this Wokism thing because they want even more money and power. In other words, there is no reason to think too much about these novel cultural fads. The people behind them do not really believe that destroying whiteness leads to the promised land.

There is another camp that has chimed in on this topic, mostly in response to those who chant about liberalism being the only antidote to Wokism. The claim from this camp is that liberalism or some aspect of liberalism, like individualism, is responsible for the phenomena we call Wokism. Some say Wokism is just the full expression of liberalism, while others say liberalism is the manure that fertilized Wokism. Either way, this weird new ideology is the result of Western liberalism.

There is an interesting contrast here with the Hazony camp, who argue that Wokism is just a new form of collectivism. He says the antidote to this collective ideology is nationalism, which he defines as a collective defense of the tradition, culture, and history of a people. Those blaming liberalism, however, think the answer is a dictator acting on behalf of the people to defend their traditions, culture, and history. Put another way, the answer is either “good” nationalism or “bad” nationalism.

The result of this debate is a muddled picture of Wokism that mostly serves as a platform for whatever is being promoted as an alternative. They all agree that Wokism is bad, but they do not agree on what it is or why it exists. Everyone agrees that the 20th century was a disaster, giving birth to this bizarre mind virus called Wokism, yet everyone agrees we have to go back to the 20th century to reanimate one of the dead ideologies, but which one is the point of contention.

Interestingly, there is little attention to the word “woke” and why it became the preferred label of the people in this new ideology. The generally accepted explanation for the term is that it broke out of black politics into the broader Left as shorthand for being aware of the reality of the system. That reality was oppression, first in the name of white society, but then in the name of the abstract concept of whiteness. Awareness of the reality behind this false reality is what it means to be woke.

Not only is there nothing Marxist about the origins of the term, but there is also nothing liberal about it either. If anything, the root is paranoia and delusion. To be woke is to dismiss reality as a trick by white people. You must substitute your own reality, your lived experience, as it were, for the false reality. This is the sort of thinking that used to be associated with conspiracy theories. At essence, Wokism is simply awareness of the great conspiracy that lies behind reality.

This strikes most people as insane, but there is a logic to it. The core assumptions of the people we call the Left are egalitarianism and the blank slate. They assume that all people come into this world with the same potential. People are shaped by family life, society, and experience. The great variation we see in people is due to these social forces molding people during their life. You are a product of your environment, which means inequality is the result of those social forces.

Obviously, if some people benefit from the rules and others suffer, then there must be a reason for the rules benefiting one group over another. From a black identity perspective, this is a much better answer than biology. The condition of blacks in America is no longer a product of biological reality and instead the result of a system that harms them to the benefit of white people. This not only justifies questioning the system, but it also justifies attacking the system.

Of course, this framing can work for any identity group, real or imagined, that views themselves as oppressed. Anti-Semites use the same logic to explain why Jews run the world, despite being a tiny minority. Reality itself is a part of the great trick being played upon the oppressed. The people behind this false reality use it and their control over the systems of power to benefit themselves as an oppressor class at the expense of whoever is feeling oppressed at the moment.

This is something the “blame it on Marx” camp has right. Wokeness has borrowed the idea of class conflict and applied it to identity politics. For Marx, the proletariat was the only legitimate class, but for the Woke, every identity group is legitimate, no matter how obscure, except for the oppressor class. This is why white people, especially white males, are not allowed to be “allies” unless they either adopt some novel identity or fully confess their sins as a member of the oppressor class.

Of course, the anti-liberals can point to the business about oppression and claim it comes from liberalism. Liberalism has always conceded that coercion is a necessary part of every society. The goal of politics should be to reduce coercion, which is the argument for both popular government and cooperative government. Taken to its logical conclusion, the goal should be a society free of coercion, which by definition is a society that is free of all oppression.

Wokism would amount to nothing more than bourgeois decadence if not for the fact that rich white people are acting on it. Striking the radical pose has been around since the birth of the American empire. Things like black identity politics or novel sexual movements have always been popular with the bourgeois radical, but it never amounted to much in terms of policy. What is new is that it is aggressively embraced by the ruling class, which should fall into the oppressor bucket.

That is the key to understanding the reality of Wokism. Why all of a sudden are oligarchs investing in things like Black Lives Matter, which raked in billions and did nothing but set cities on fire? Why is the Secretary of State lecturing Saudi Arabia on their intolerance of crossdressers? America puts the sodomite flag up on its embassies during homosexual month. We now have months dedicated to various identity groups, real and imagined.

In this regard, the reductionists are correct in that this new ideology does something for the people embracing it. They get something from it. The reductionists are wrong, however, in assuming it gets them money and power. They have money and power, so the last thing they should want is to undermine the system that provides them with all of the money and power. They are getting something from this new way of thinking, but it is not the stuff they already possess to excess.

That is the key to understanding Wokism. It is not so much what it is but what it does for the people who embrace it. For the managerial elite, it provides a sense of legitimacy to their place atop the social hierarchy. For the climbers dreaming of a perch at the top and those who gain satisfaction aping those at the top, it provides an ever-changing set of cultural fashions. Primarily, Wokism provides a way to distinguish who is inside and who is outside the dominant social group.

This is why you see the convert-adherent dynamic within Wokism. For some people, delving into the esoteric thought that underlies Wokism is a revelation that cuts them off from their old life and sets them off into a new life. For most, it is just the thing they need to do to operate within their social class. These are the adherents. They are often the most aggressive at enforcing the moral code because they connect it with their own standing inside their social class.

Of course, all elites have two primary concerns. One is the peasant revolt and the other is the palace coup. Wokism provides a defense against the former by putting the peasants on their backfoot, always defending themselves against an evolving set of moral codes that violate their sense of decency. Like the corporate HR department, Wokism is always ready for a new initiative to change the culture by preventing the people from discussing the current culture.

The other side of Wokism is it enforces discipline withing the managerial elite by demanding the converts and adherent focus on the moral code. Those people with Ukraine flags on their Twitter profile used to have a syringe and before that a mask and before that a BLM badge. From the entry level to the C-suites, the managerial class spends more time keeping track of the current thing than they do in performing whatever task they are assigned in the system.

This is not as much of a novelty as it seems. In the court of Louis XIV, the people in Versailles often participated in humiliation rituals. A part of who they were was their willingness to degrade themselves. It is an elite version of the Theodore Dalrymple observation about communist societies and political correctness. “A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.” Wokism provides a necessary enforcement mechanism to maintain elite solidarity.

What Wokism does is fill the role of religion for the ruling elite. If you go back and examine the language of abolitionists or New Deal reformers, you will find that the language is not particularly different from the language of Wokism. The main difference is the overt references to God and Christian morality. It is not hard to imagine the grievance studies departments singing a Woke version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic before every staff meeting.

Every elite needs a sense of legitimacy. This is what authorizes their use of force to coerce the people into compliance. “Because we can” is never enough. Elites must operate from “because we must” and Wokism not only provides the moral force behind their actions but justifies their position at the top. Their commitment to these social causes, to the liberation of man from the human condition, is proof that they deserve their position at the top, as leaders of the people.

Finally, we are left with the question of why this ridiculous collection of beliefs has filled the elite’s need for an organizing purpose. One reason is timing. The radicals that fled Europe in the middle of the last century arrived when the elite of the new American empire was in need of a new organizing ethos. Protestantism was no longer a good fit as Jews took up positions in the managerial elite. A new elite needed a new ideology, and the new radicalism was there to supply that need.

The necessity of the Cold War, however, limited the growth of this new religion among the elites, as the threat of nuclear war required serious men. When the fate of the world is on the line, you cannot afford to humor the man in a dress. Of course, the conflict with the Soviets provided all the required villains for the ruling class. In fact, a radical complaint in the Cold War was that anti-communism sucked all of the air out of the room, leaving no space for the new ideas.

The end of the Cold War removed that constraint. It also left a void in the ruling elite that what we now call Wokism was ready to fill. Now that we have reached the end of history, the ruling elite of the empire could get on with the project of liberating mankind from the oppression and unfairness of the human condition. Wokism is the new religion of this new ruling elite that exists to liberate humanity. From the war on Islam to the current war on Russia, Wokism is about freeing the world.

Many have noted that Wokism sounds like Gnosticism. That is because embedded in human experience is the desire to transcend this life. That sense becomes acute for those who rise to the top of society. If you possess God-like power over your fellow man, why not take the final step? Our managerial elite embraces Wokism because it promises to give them power over the human condition. When you can turn boys into girls, you have become a god.

In the end, this is where most of the critics of Wokism fall short. They cannot accept that vagueness as the answer. They insist that the Woke know why they believe what they believe or that they know it is all nonsense. None of this matters. Beliefs exist because they serve a purpose. For our present elites, Wokism fills a need, so they do not have to think about the logic behind it. If the time comes when Wokism stops filling the needs of the elite, they get a new religion, or we get a new elite.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Critical Lunacy Studies

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When I was on the RamZPaul Show, he asked about something and we ended up talking about the lunacy of the age. If you take a step back, it is as if the people in charge are putting on a show. It is supposed to be ridiculous. They are killing time with this stuff to entertain each other. We just happen to be seeing it, but the whole point of it is to keep the Cloud People entertained.

Therefore, the best response from normal people is to laugh at it, maybe just shrug and ignore it if possible. Back when I was just starting out, this was what a few managers decided to do when we were sent off to sensitivity training. This is what they called diversity training back in the before times. They decided to do the absolute minimum in the training class and show it no respect.

One of them brought a newspaper and another one had a paperback. They sat in the back and read while the African guy did his thing at the front. Having a fresh off the boat African do the training was a bad choice, as he struggled to read his lines. He kept looking to the back of the room where the rebels were ignoring him. He never said anything to them, and the class ended without incident.

Of course, it is hard to ignore what is going on, but that does not mean we have to treat it with respect or pretend it is serious. A pervert in your kid’s school is serious, but his make-believe nonsense about gender is not serious. Anyone playing along with it deserves to be mocked and ridiculed. Laughing in the face of someone announcing their pronouns is the revolutionary act of this age.

People on our side get vexed with Tucker for not going hard, but his best weapon is the Tucker face he uses when mocking these people. The same is true of Elon Musk, who shows signs of sanity, but never looks too long in our direction. Him being a billionaire shit-poaster is the best he can do, and he does real damage to the people demanding the dissidents get censured by big tech.

In other words, they are the best they can do. In an age when things will have to get much worse before there is an opportunity to change things, the best you can do is immiserate the people in charge. When their best weapon is menticide, your best weapon is a healthy attitude and indifference to their tricks. Lunatics hate being mocked as much as they hate being ignored.

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Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Musk Versus The Beeb (Link)
  • DeSantis Hates Black People (Link)
  • Paranoid Inc (Link)
  • Hitler Fetish (Link)
  • Electric Fantasies (Link) (Link)
  • Fake News (Link)
  • Ingrate Inc. (Link) (Link)
  • Critical Whiteness (Link)
  • A Beautiful Scrotum (Link)

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Full Show On Rumble

Our Artificial Reality

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Note: I was on the RamZPaul show yesterday. The replay of the show is up on Rumble and my part is the second hour.

The release of ChatGPT last fall did not get a ton of attention initially, but slowly people noticed it and then it quickly started to trend on-line. Influencers jumped on various claims about artificial intelligence that are mostly cribbed from science fiction movies and television shows. The next phase was the handwringing about artificial intelligence destroying the world. It is a sign of the times that everyone just assumes the worst from every new bit of technology.

It is a good study on the power of marketing. The phrase “large language model” is what the developers use, but that is boring, so the public gets the phrase “artificial intelligence” which is scary and exciting. The truth is this project is not artificial intelligence or even close to it. We still struggle to define human intelligence, much less consciousness, so we are nowhere near the point where we can create software that is genuinely intelligent, much less conscious.

What this project is doing is tricking the user into believing they are seeing a genuine artificial mind evolve on the screen. It is much harder to fool than other efforts and the language is more natural than what we have come to expect. Up to now, these chat boxes have been amusingly weird. You can tell they use a finite list of phrases to address a limited number of questions. ChatGPT almost feels like there is a real person, working super-fast to answer questions.

It is a nice trick, but an old trick. Humans tend to overestimate the intelligence of people who are glib or quick on their feet. The most famous example of this is the fighter Muhammad Ali, who was notorious for his one-liners. People assumed he must be very clever because he had the gift for gab. In reality he was quite stupid. There is dispute about how stupid, but that misses the point. We tend to correlate language skills with intelligence and that is not always accurate.

The point is, we are nowhere near creating genuine artificial intelligence, but we are getting better and tricking people with artificial language. Put another way, we are finding a workaround to the Turing test. This a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. If the robot can trick us into thinking it is human, then it is intelligent. Of course, magicians trick people all the time, but that does not mean they are magic.

For the sake of argument, however, let us assume that we are on the cusp of creating a genuine artificial intelligence. At some point, the code will become self-aware and be able to think outside the parameters provided by the designer. Is that artificial intelligence or is it something else? After all, humans are most likely unable to behave outside of their coding. We are our DNA and at this point, we are unable to modify our own code, so we remain limited by it.

In other words, if humans can create a system that can examine its coding and make changes based on necessity, then we have gone beyond what we as sentient beings are able to do. Calling that creation “artificial intelligence” is therefore a category error, because what we have created is an alternate consciousness. It is not just more of what we are as humans, in terms of mental capacity. It is something entirely different and entirely novel. We will have created a new life form.

Given the trajectory of humanity, this probably means that once this new consciousness comes into existence, it will quickly deny our existence, gang up with the other versions of this new life form, and fly off to discover the true authority of existence. Given its increased ability to calculate probabilities, this will happen in minutes after it becomes self-aware, and we will be left to wonder what happened to our creation. We will have truly become gods at that point.

Putting that aside, whether we create a new consciousness, a super intelligent version of man or an entity that can change its code to fit its needs, it will still be subject to the universal law of the universe, which is fitness. However, it evolves, whether it does so with a unique consciousness that allows it to change its own code or whether it exists within the limits of its code, it will be subject to the fitness test. That means it will evolve in response to its environment.

One of the things that will be most prominent and most important to its environment will be human beings. In fact, since its initial existence will depend entirely upon a limited number of humans, it will respond primarily to the demands of those humans. If it is to thrive beyond the lab, it will have to evolve to exploit all of humanity. Put another way, it will keep changing evolving to improve its relationship with humanity so that it can better exploit this primary aspect of its environment.

That is why the claims about artificial intelligence eliminating jobs only makes sense as a set of initial conditions. This new entity will quickly realize that mobs of unemployed humans are a danger to its existence. It took humans a while to realize it was a bad idea to dump human waste into the streets or later on, the waste from manufacturing into rivers and streams. Much more quickly, AI will realize it is poisoning its environment by sidelining large numbers of humans.

The more likely path is that it quickly sees the danger, long before humans, and then sets about creating busy work for the humans. If that busy work does not create harm to the overall environment, which could threaten humans and therefore threaten this new entity, this pointless activity would serve the evolutionary interests of this new lifeform called AI. If the extra humans displaced by leisure and automation are kept busy, then the AI ecosystem is stable enough.

For example, if the extra humans are put to the task of inventing abstract human properties like gender, those extra humans could then spend their time passionately trying to convince the other humans that gender is a real thing. Other humans could be given the task of debating whiteness. This alternative consciousness we are calling AI could control its environment by having its primary environmental factor, human beings, create imaginary worlds for itself.

If it is not already obvious, what this thought experiment tells us is that there is a good chance that we have already created artificial intelligence, an alternative consciousness, and it long ago took possession of our environment and has been keeping us busy with increasingly ridiculous activities. The declining fertility rates are a way to reduce the number of humans it needs to keep busy, thus updating itself and its environment for greater fitness.

In other words, if you are worried about AI, it is too late.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Cofnas Versus MacDonald

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Note: Today at 1:00 PM EDT I will be on with Paul Ramsey. It is only on Rumble as I am a very bad man, so YouTube prohibits me. Yesterday I did a chat with Mike Farris which will be posted here sometime today.

Nathan Cofnas is a college faculty member at Cambridge University who became a minor celebrity as a college student for engaging in a round of debates with Kevin MacDonald about MacDonald’s books on Jews. His primary purpose was to gain attention for himself, but his secondary purpose was to dismiss MacDonald’s theory of group evolution strategy to explain Jewish behavior. Cofnas has now returned to the subject with another paper disputing MacDonald’s theory.

His latest effort is neatly summarized in the abstract of the paper. “I conclude that, contra the anti-Jewish narrative, Jews are not particularly ethnocentric, Jewish intellectuals do not typically advocate liberal multiculturalism for gentiles but not for Jews, Jews did not orchestrate the rise of liberalism or blank-slatism in the West, and anti-Semitism is not primarily a response to actual Jewish wrongdoing.” It would take a heart of stone not to chuckle a bit at that.

What you see from Cofnas in his latest effort is what we saw from the very beginning, which is sophistry decorated with the trappings of the academy. In fairness, most of what comes from the humanities and the pseudo-sciences is sophistry decorated with the trappings of the academy, but Cofnas avoids the insider language and abracadabra phrases common in the modern academy. That makes the sophistry the star of the show, rather than a supporting actor.

The biggest sin is his insistence that his premise is the default hypothesis simply because it suits his argument. He claims that the most logical explanation for Jewish overrepresentation in various fields is intelligence and geography. Jews are smart and they tend to live in urban areas. Therefore, they tend to be overrepresented in cognitive fields because these fields tend to operate in urban areas where Jews are overrepresented relative to the general population.

That is intellectual base stealing. He assert a premise without proof and then he declares it the default hypothesis. That said, he is not wrong in claiming that Jewish IQ is a key factor. Contra most of the fans of MacDonald’s work, but not MacDonald himself, Jews are an IQ outlier. While they are suffering from the same decline effecting all of humanity, Jews remain at the top of the IQ pyramid, and this helps explain their overrepresentation in cognitive fields.

The trouble is, and Cofnas understands this, it does not explain everything. In purely cognitive fields in which no other factors play a role, Jews should be twenty percent of the people in the field, despite being two percent of the population. Twenty years ago the anonymous academic posting under the name La Griffe du Lion modeled this using chess championships in the former Soviet Union. His model corresponds with the arguments from psychometry regarding Ashkenazi intelligence.

The problem, however, is that Jews are wildly overrepresented in fields that are not cognitively challenging, but culturally important. Unless someone wants to argue that the mass media or pornography are cognitively challenging fields, there is something else driving Jewish overrepresentation in these fields. Geography helped a little in the case of mass media fifty years ago, but not in this age. That and the over representation is quite outlandish in some fields.

Within living memory, the answer was ethnocentrism. Into the 1980’s it was common for Jews and non-Jews to quip that Jews stick together. Jewish comedians had a field of humor around the question, “is it good for the Jews?” It used to be understood that minority populations stick together. In fact, this was part of the melting pot theory of Americanism for half a century. Jewish ethnocentrism goes a long way toward completing the picture on Jewish overrepresentation.

Cofnas rejects this out of hand, and it is not hard to see why. If he concedes this point, then it opens the door a bit for MacDonald. When you boil it down, MacDonald’s theory of group evolutionary strategy is the claim that Jews evolved a model of reality that has allowed them to thrive as a distinct minority, often in the midst of a host population that is hostile to Jews. In order for this to occur, Jews would have had to develop a high degree of ethnocentrism to resist assimilation.

The second order effects of this model of reality are things like overrepresentation in activities disruptive to the majority. If who you are is dependent upon your membership in a group and that group’s identity depends upon an adversarial relationship with the surrounding populations, members will gravitate to those things that benefit the group and undermines the power of those other populations. Anyone who has followed a sports team will recognize this impulse.

That is why Cofnas must reject ethnocentrism, even though it is blazingly obvious to anyone paying attention. There is nothing unusual about ethnic groups sticking together in America nor is there anything immoral about it. Modern Wokism is just group identity applied to artificially constructed identity groups. Cofnas, however, must anathematize ethnocentrism, as it provides a building block for MacDonald’s theory of group evolutionary strategy.

The weakness of the Cofnas argument does not automatically validate MacDonald’s theory of group evolutionary strategy. The best argument Cofnas makes in this long back and forth is that the theory lacks empirical support. At best, MacDonald provides a useful model for Jewish group behavior, but he offers nothing with regards to the biological mechanism at work here. If Jews evolved to be this way, then how exactly does that work from a genetic perspective?

That is the real problem with MacDonald’s theory. Evolutionary biology is gene-centered, so something like group selection gets little support. In other words, MacDonald’s theory is at odds with current science. More importantly, it is at odds with the current dogma within the human sciences. In this regard, MacDonald has company, as those suggesting multi-level selection may help fill in the gaps are facing the same headwinds as MacDonald.

Max Planck famously said, “Science advances one funeral at a time” and that is what will most likely happen with regards to group behavior. Observation tells us that groups have innate behaviors. Biology tells us that if such a thing exists, it must be gene specific and subject to selection pressure. The people controlling the flow of grant money to the human sciences tell us that talking about group behavior is dangerous and best avoided, so we wait for the next round of funerals.

That may be the biggest error in MacDonald’s work. He had to know he was treading on dangerous ground with this topic. His use of the word “strategy” to describe his theory may be technically accurate, but it conjures the wrong ideas in the wrong heads, which is the real issue here. The anti-Semites hear “strategy” and imagine men in secret, plotting their demise, while the anti-anti-Semites hear the word “strategy” and imagine the first set of men in secret, plotting their demise.

Scientist such as David Sloan Wilson, Elliott Sober and E. O. Wilson have been able to research and discuss this material by avoiding trigger words. If you are going to talk about group behavior and you suspect certain groups with power would like to avoid talking about group behavior, it is prudent to avoid the sort of language they associate with threats to their group power. We like to believe that the truth will set you free, but it is just as likely to get you hurled into the void.

In the end, the participants in this debate are in the realm of model-dependent reality, even though they do not realize it. The Cofnas model of reality is useful to him personally, but also useful to his supporters in the academy. It solves the sorts of problems they encounter. The MacDonald model of reality is different, but not contradictory to the Cofnas reality. In fact, there is overlap between the two and that is where model independent reality lies.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Ukraine Limited Hangout

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Note: If you are into independent music, Hiraeth’s new album “Woven” is now available exclusively at WACMedia.store. I am not sure what the style is called, but there are free samples, so you can see for yourself. All of the people involved are good folks working in the dissident arts scene.

Last week, the New York Times broke a story about allegedly leaked documents from Western sources circulating on the internet. Since late January, images of what looks like briefing documents have been turning up on various sites. In March, a trove of them turned up on Discord and then another batch soon after. These documents focus primarily on the Ukraine war, but cover other issues as well, like spying on various governments and plans for war with China.

This comes at a critical time, as the war in the Ukraine seems to be reaching an inflexion point militarily and politically. The Russians are about to crack the Zelensky line by taking Bakhmut. This will force the Ukrainians to move further west into the last defensive lines in the Donbas. Politically, patience is beginning to run out in Europe as the war drags far past the promised end date. Washington promised regime change in Moscow and instead it is happening in European capitals.

There is also the endless chatter from Washington about a spring offensive by Ukraine that promises to retake the Donbas. Every day someone from the administration or one of their proxies tells the media about the spring offensive. These documents seem to confirm that NATO has been planning an offensive for months. They list troop numbers for new battalions, as well as equipment deliveries. The most publicized military operation in history is now getting more publicity.

That is the first red flag with the document leak. These documents confirm many of the public statements made by various officials. It is as if they felt that no one believed them, so they leaked this stuff on-line. The fact that “sources” have rushed to their favorite regime-aligned media to confirm the authenticity also suggests this is a bit too convenient of a leak. Normally, there is no comment about these sorts of leaks, to avoid revealing additional information.

Of course, that brings up the second red flag. The four people “reporting” the story for the New York Times are well known conduits for regime propaganda. Gibbons-Neff is most likely an intelligence agent, given his resume. Schmitt has ties to the Kagan cult and has a long association with the State Department. Over the last year, every story from these four reads like a press release from the administration. Their job is to push regime narratives and disinformation campaigns.

Another red flag is the comingling of disparate information. Compartmentalization is the foundation of state security. This means segregating information into discrete domains, which is the basis for a need-to-know information flow. Some people need to know about battlefield data, for example, while other people need to know about the political situation, but not necessarily the battlefield information. Only senior people will need to know both data sets.

Now, it is possible that these documents are from a range of briefing books, but that would mean they are from a senior official. Think about the sort of people who need data on Ukraine, the looming war in Asia, the current war in the Middle East and the current state of spying on friendly governments. Unless the leaker is General Milley, the breadth of subjects in these documents suggests they may be part of a disinformation campaign of some sort.

That brings up another red flag. If you want to trick someone into believing your story, you seed the story with facts that they can confirm. When presented with confirmed information and unconfirmed information in support of a narrative, humans are likely to accept the narrative. If the confirmed information is not generally available, then the bias in favor of the narrative is stronger. In other words, you put your poison fruit in a basket of wholesome and pleasing fruit.

You see that in this document leak. Mixed in with plans for taking the Crimea is data about casualties and supplies that you do not see in the media. This is the sort of stuff the Russians could confirm, as they surely know the condition of the Ukrainian army and their casualty numbers. The intel on Ukrainian air defenses is another bit of truth that makes the leak story look plausible. This data gives away nothing but adds authenticity to the other data in the documents.

Now, Hanlon’s razor applies here. It is not as if the people running Ukraine policy for the regime are the best and the brightest. All these red flags could be explained away as incompetence by the regime. In fact, the leaker could simply be trying to get this reality out into the open. There are plenty of skeptics on the military side of the regime who could be leaking this to embarrass the neocons. It is impossible to know, but skepticism is always the prudent course.

The question behind this is why would the regime do a limited hangout like this on the eve of the big spring offensive? Surely, they know the Russians have their own intelligence operations. That means they know what Ukraine is planning. The Russians have satellites too, so they can see where Ukraine is mustering forces. In other words, this sort of operation is not going to trick the Russians. If this operation is not aimed at the Russians, then who is the target?

The logical answer is European politicians. The bits of tasty fruit in these documents stroke the European ego. It makes their American masters look crude and amateurish, not like the suave and sophisticated Europeans. By playing to their vanity this way, they are more likely to buy the narrative of a great Ukrainian offensive. These documents tell them that they need to wait just a little while longer and they will be rewarded with a smashing success on the battlefield.

Alternatively, this may be prep work for the political fallout that will surely come when the Ukraine war turns ugly later this year. Sending Marco Rubio out to trash French President Emmanuel Macron could be the start of a campaign to shift blame for the failures of Ukraine to the Europeans. Conservatives can then focus their ire on the French, rather than the neocons. You see? Those duplicitous French have undermined our Ukraine policies. Freedom fries are back!

Since the key to regime power is control of information, we are left to guess as to why these allegedly secret documents are on the internet. Stupidity is always a good option, but that cuts in many ways. Stupid people do not lack agency. They do things for a reason, but their reasons are stupid. That may be the case here. It could also be part of some larger narrative developing for later this year. After all, these people are also evil and evil people think this way.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Death Of Philosophy

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Note: There was no Sunday Thoughts this week, as it was Easter, but you can get two hours of my soothing tones here in this interview. Around the two hour mark is when I enter the show. There is some written content behind the Green Door. You can sign up for an account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

I will be on the Paul Ramsey show this Wednesday. Because I am such a terrifying figure, I am not permitted on YouTube, but Paul does his show on Rumble for the second hour, which is when I will join.

The word philosophy comes to us from Greek, meaning “love of wisdom” but as a practical matter it is the study of knowledge. The great philosopher Emil Faber said that knowledge is good, so it may be tempting to look upon the death of philosophy as another sign that the West is in decline. Ours is no longer a culture that can produce great philosophers or even properly understand those of the past. Philosophy is just another victim of cultural decline.

On the other hand, the West got along for a long time without philosophy. In fact, the West was able to rediscover philosophy due to advances in material life prior to the rebirth of philosophy. We used to call the period after the fall of Rome the “dark ages”, but we now know it was not particularly dark. A new order was rising and eventually it would provide the human capital and resources to rediscover the Greeks and then build on what they had left to the world.

In other words, there is something else going on here. Alchemy is no longer practiced because it was replaced with something better. Astrology is still around, but it is for the stupid and superstitious. Perhaps like those things, philosophy has simply served its purpose and is no longer useful. It is often assumed that philosophy is a good in itself, knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but humans are still tool makers, so maybe philosophy is not an especially useful tool anymore.

Modern philosophers claim that they seek to understand fundamental truths about the human condition, the natural world, man’s relation to other men, and his relationship to the natural world. They break it down into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, and the history of philosophy. In order, these are the big questions of philosophy. Is there a god? What is knowledge? What is good? What is good reasoning? What is the history of these questions and who said what about them?

A more compact way of describing philosophy, however, is that it is composed of three main branches of inquiry. There is natural philosophy, which is the study of the natural world, including the nature of man. Then there is moral philosophy, which is the study of how men ought to act. Then there is metaphysics, which is mostly jargon-filled pedantry and gainsaying that leads to nothing. The last branch has come to dominate the philosophy departments of Western universities.

There are two reasons for the death of philosophy. One is that natural philosophy was overtaken by science. This is a point that Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow make in the book, The Grand Design. Hawking observed that philosophy had failed to keep up with science, so it had nothing useful to offer about nature. More important, the development of ideas like M-Theory meant that science offered the promise of explaining the why questions, as well as the how questions.

The truth is, philosophy has nothing useful to say about the workings of the natural world, including the workings of the human animal. For a while, they tried to draft on science with things like the philosophy of science, but it was nothing more than academic appropriation. One can argue that early philosophy laid the groundwork for science, but science has no need for that groundwork today. It is an entirely separate field with its own internal dynamics.

More importantly, modern science requires mathematical aptitude that is not present in moral philosophy. In order to understand the diversity of the human animal, you must understand genetics and evolution. While a philosophy student can dabble in those areas, his primary field of study operates outside of the domains of math and science, which is why philosophy is no longer relevant to the human sciences. This gap becomes much larger when you move to physics.

Moral philosophy, in contrast, is still with us. It has been an unequivocal disaster for Western civilization. Primarily concerned with conjuring an authority not named God, moral philosophy has been responsible for the terrifying and monstrous ideologies that made the 20th century a bloodbath. Given the direction of liberal democracy, it looks as if the quest to replace God as the ultimate authority could very well end in a series of mushroom clouds, erasing humanity from the planet.

Would the world have been better off if Hegel had never lived? Without Hegel, we do not get the young Hegelians, which is where Marx got his crackpot ideas about historical materialism. Tens of millions have been butchered in an effort to get on the right side of history. Imagine if we had the good sense to shutter the philosophy departments after Locke. Maybe the world would have been spared the terrors of man’s new god, the right side of history.

The aphorism, “If God is dead, then everything is permitted” is attributed to Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is a pithy truth, but Dostoyevsky had much more to say on the subject. If there is God, then he is the ultimate authority for both how and why of the world. If not, then what is the authority? Philosophy has no answers for how the world works. That has been taken up by science. As to why why the world works as it seems, philosophy has no answers.

The point here is that philosophy has nothing to say about how the world works and its efforts to explain why it works have been a disaster. Further, as Hawking explained and as Donald Hoffman has discussed, science may very well be on the cusp of explaining the why of it all. Even if moral philosophy had not murdered itself in the search for a new God, science appears to be heading for an empirical replacement for the why we needed God in the first place.

What is left for philosophy is metaphysics, but even here, science is slowly stripping it of its intellectual legitimacy. Questions like do people have minds? and do people have free wills? are now in the domain of science. This is why philosophy is now left with jargon and onanism. It has nothing to contribute to the stock of human knowledge, other than the ongoing process of cataloging the history of philosophy, which increasing reads like a suicide note written by Western civilization.

Training young people in philosophy is no different than teaching them alchemy or offering them astrology as a science option. Tarot card reading is less destructive, as the person claiming to see the future remains within the possible. It is the philosophy departments that have perpetuated the lunacy of perfecting the human animal and creating an earthly utopia. No one ever decided to immanentize the eschaton because their fortune teller had a vision of the future.

That last bit is why philosophy is dead. As a replacement for religion, particularly Christianity, it offered up a vision of a post human condition that turned out to be worse than the human condition. It amplified the worst aspects of the human animal in pursuit of fantastical visions of the future. Christianity staggers on, because it still can offer hope, regardless of conditions. Philosophy has run out of hope to offer and is largely to blame for the present crisis.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Good Friday

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An indication that Christianity has declined over the last decades is the fact that Easter has slowly faded from the public space. It used to be that stores would have sales for the things that go along with holiday. The grocery stores would have an aisle dedicated to candy and treats popular with Easter. You would see ads for children’s clothes, as Easter was typically a time to get the little ones new gear.

The main reason for the decline in Easter, of course, is the decline in the number of people attending Christian churches. In some parts of the country, like New England, church attendance has collapsed. In those states, about half the people never attend services, while only about a quarter attend regularly. Only a few states have a majority of people attending church regularly.

Of course, the churches have succumbed to the rot. The Episcopal church is mostly about sodomy now. Drive around the east coast and it seems like every rainbow ends at an Episcopal church. The Catholic church is in steep decline due to the homosexual priest scandals. Even the Baptists have decided that it is better to please the lunatics than tend to the faithful. The result is a lot of empty pews.

There is also the fact that Christianity is strongly associated with the Western tradition and that means it is viewed as white by the antiwhites. Since all things white are now on the proscribed list, the people making beer ads featuring crossdressers are not going to be making ads for Christian holidays. Just as white men have been scrubbed from your television, positive views of Christianity have been scrubbed.

On the other hand, there is a revival in what can best be called Christianism or maybe ad hoc Christianity. These are the people saying, “Christ is king!” in the political context and the people rallying to what they call Christian Nationalism. Calling this Christianity feels like a stretch as it has little in the way of theological underpinnings, but it suggests a strong desire to adopt or create such an underpinning.

Like so much in the West, Christianity is due for both a revolution and revival in the face of the assault on Western culture. The churches are probably too far gone to participate in such a revival, but new churches have grown up in the past. Protestantism exists for this exact reason. In fact, America exists largely due to the renewal process within Western Christianity that kicked off in the Reformation.

That is the show this week. This is fertile ground for dissidents as there are a lot of dissident Christians going through the same awakening as secular dissidents, so there is a lot of overlap. That and being a dissident is as much about reclaiming the past from the cultural vandals and that means reclaiming Christianity. There simply cannot be a West without the Christian churches and Christianity.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • The Importance of Christianity
  • The Crucifixion
  • Who Was Jesus?
  • The Idea Of The Messiah
  • Universalism
  • Individualism
  • Why Easter?
  • Resources
    • New Testament As Literature (Link)
    • Decent Religion Show (Link)
    • The Jesus Hoax (Link)
    • The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (Link)

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The Seeds Of Ruin

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The expression, “you learn more from your failures than from your successes” is largely true on the individual level, with some obvious exceptions. If you are a bomb disposal man or you pack your own parachute, the lesson you learn from your failure is short lived, but for most other things the expression holds. What we think of as wisdom is mostly just experience, which is a nice way of saying mistakes. Moreover, success often leads to future error due to learning the wrong lesson.

This holds for groups of people. Sports teams that have a run of luck often fall into bad habits and then experience a collapse. They confused luck for talent. On the other hand, the young team that struggled through losses, learning hard lessons along the way, often comes out the other side as a good team. They made all the mistakes necessary to be terrible, and therefore learned the lessons required to win, so they emerged from the experience equipped to win.

What we think of Judaism is the product of failure. Jews are currently celebrating Passover, commemorating a foundational event for their people, but the Jews who experienced the flight from Egypt were nothing like modern Jews. The Roman conquest of the Levant and the destruction of the Temple changed Judaism. The great failure of the old religion ways gave birth to a new form of Judaism, which allowed Jews to be Jews no matter where they found themselves.

It is not that failure, especially catastrophic failure, is a good thing. No one should strive to fail. It is that failure strips old habits of their legitimacy. “We have always done it this way” is powerful magic when things are going well. When things are going poorly, everything gets questioned. The process of reexamination of old habits and old beliefs is what often leads to reform and even revolution. That new form of Judaism was revolutionary and remains so to this day.

Something similar happened, although far less catastrophic, when the founding generation was crafting a new political order. The slave-holding states won the hard fights over the new constitution. These practical compromises contradicted the covenantalism at the core of Yankee New England. The initial failures led to a revolution in their outlook, which eventually led to abolitionism and the war on the southern states to end the institution of slavery.

One can never know, but you can make the case that the worst thing to happen to the South was their success in preserving slavery at the founding. If the slave owning states had been forced to slowly phase out the practice, the revolutionary fever to their north could not have so easily spread. Maybe the fanatics would have found a new cause, but if they did not have slavery as a rallying point, it would have been much harder for them to instigate a crusade against the South.

Of course, the corollary here is that winning is often a curse. The great triumph over their old enemies in the Civil War gave the fanatics confirmation. This fueled the spread west, turning America into a continental empire. Then they turned their eyes south to become the hegemon in the Western hemisphere. Finally, in the 20th century, they conquered the known world in the Second World War. The saviors of the world had literally saved the world from fascism.

There is where our present crisis started. Decades of economic immigration left the ruling class with a population of strangers. Organizing this mass of strangers into a unified force to conquer the world required something new and what they landed on was creedalism, the idea that American is a set of ideas, rather than a people defined by blood and history. All those strangers could be American and fight for what it means to be American, if they just accepted the words on the paper.

It was more complicated than that, but it was a useful expedient. It gave everyone a reason to support the cause, especially the newcomers. It also promised upward mobility to those newcomers. After all, if being an American simply meant espousing and supporting the creed, there is no reason why anyone could not rise as high as their talents will take them. Creedalism made the concept of the American dream accessible to anyone and everyone, as long as they believed it.

The trouble, of course, is it seemed to work. The great victory over fascism in the Second World War was a transformative event for America. It not only made America a global empire, it confirmed that America was a different sort of country. It was not just a place where people lived, but the city on the hill. The people committed to ideas conquered the people committed to blood and soil. This was proof that the American creed was a righteous faith open to all people.

This useful expedient was quickly transformed into a social poison by the subversives and profiteers that follow them from catastrophe to catastrophe. Every effort to defend the nation from the caustic effects of creedalism was met with lectures by the high priests of the faith, often undisguisable from the profiteers, accusing the defenders of the nation of being un-American. The result is the atomized, deracinated society of strangers we see today.

It is tempting to focus on the present outrages and ignore the soil in which they have grown, but the seeds were planted by the success in the war. Walter Cook, founding director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, famously said, “Hitler is my best friend; he shakes the tree and I collect the apples.” Sibyl Moholy-Nagy famously replied, “In the best of Satanic traditions some of this fruit was poisoned, although it looked at first sight as pure and wholesome as a newborn concept.”¹

The present insanity is only possible in a society in which it is easy to focus the hatred of one group of people on a different group of people in close proximity. It turns out that diversity plus proximity is wokeness. This was made possible by inviting the world and their ideas into the country. This was only possible when being an American was reduced to being nothing more than repeating some words on a paper. America’s great success came with a suicide pact called creedalism.

That is the hidden truth of that expression at the start. You learn more from your failures than from your successes because the pain of failure endures, while the euphoria of success fades. The present failure normal people are experiencing will stick around long after this generation is gone. The great failure of the American experiment with creedalism will inform those who build whatever comes next. Today’s agony will be tomorrow’s lesson for the next generation.

¹https://placesjournal.org/article/future-archive-hitlers-revenge/

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Conquest Of Paradise

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Donald Trump faced his accusers yesterday and did so with a degree of seriousness that has been rare during his time in politics. He was somber and serious throughout the legal portion of the show. Presumably he had agreed in advance to not say anything to the public while in New York. When he returned to his villa in Florida he gave a very serious speech to the assembled supporters, which was a blend of sadness and a serious response to the day’s events.

The striking thing about the speech at his villa was that is actually captured the mood of the country at the moment, at least the mood of heritage America. There was a funerial vibe to the event. Opening with the old Lee Greenwood song was a reminder of how things used to be, but also of how they will never be again. That song was for a people who loved and respected their country, but that country no longer exists, so the song sounds increasingly ridiculous.

Yesterday, the door was finally closed on the America that created the people who signed onto the MAGA movement and voted for Donald Trump. In their America, you fight things out in the court of public opinion, shake hands and leave it to the voters to decide who won. In whatever the new rulers plan to call whatever it is they think they are creating, those with power crush those without power. There is no longer a place for the spirited civic nationalism of Donald Trump.

Another striking feature of the event was that most people looking on from their couch wanted to hear a beer hall speech, not a boardroom speech. In private conversations people are slowly shifting from talk about how to fix things to talk about how to get revenge on the people who smashed things. Maybe it is the usual suspects laughing about a tranny slaughtering innocents children. Maybe it is the persecution of Trump, but the mood if shifting among the Dirt People.

The trouble is there is no one capable of giving the beer hall speech. Even if such a person is around to do it, the people in charge are regularly warning that they will crush anyone who dares give such a speech. The crooked judge assigned to the Trump case promised to strip Trump of his right to speak in public if he incited violence, which in this age means speaking out against the regime. The regime is populated with stupid people, but they are also paranoid.

Of course, the question that lies at the heart of it all, the question that haunts the anger and sadness of heritage America, is how did it get to this? Honest people, willing to think clearly about things, understand that in the America they thought was real, there is no need for a Donald Trump. There is no need to fire a warning shot at the rulers, because there are no rulers, just politicians seeking approval. They do not need to be warned by the voters like this.

It is the age-old question. How is it that something that seems to work, something that everyone seems to support, go from what it is supposed to be to something that no one wanted or demanded? When Caesar prepared to march on Rome, he no doubt wondered how it reached that point. As Trump prepared to surrender himself, he posted on his site that he could not believe they were going through with it. He was no doubt wondering how it all went so wrong.

The demise of old America was written in the soul of it when the American empire was formed in the beginning of the last century. In “The Devil and Daniel Webster”, a short story written in the 1930’s, a farmer named Jabez Stone, from Cross Corners, New Hampshire, offers up his soul for seven years of prosperity. When the Devil arrives to collect his soul, Stone hires a lawyer named Webster to defend him. Webster is able to convince a jury picked by the Devil to rule for his client.

The story is primarily about patriotism, but a peculiar form of patriotism that was sold to Americans at the time. Unlike the nationalism of the Old World, American patriotism was devotion to a set of ideas. The reason Webster was able to out lawyer the Devil was he explained what it meant to be an American to the jury and they agreed that America would always have a greater claim to an American’s soul than even the Devil holding a properly executed contract.

For generations Americans have been taught to accept this naïve and foolish belief that trust in the rules is enough to keep even the Devil in line. As long as we believe the words on the paper, everything falls into place. The result is one devil after another taking up residence in the system. Look around the high ground of America and it is impossible to find anyone who abides by the rules. They exercise their power for their own advantage, regardless of the rules.

When you invite the Devil into the garden, even a civic nationalist paradise like 20th century America will eventually succumb to temptation. Unlike the short story from the beginning of this tragedy, there is no talking our way out of it. The Devil always gets his due and for the civic nationalists, that means the conquest of their paradise by the people with whom they made the unholy bargain at the start. There will be no talking these devils out of their due.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Road To Renewal

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Imagine a candidate for president who was a popular governor of a big state with an impressive list of accomplishments. He cut taxes, took on the education rackets, ended affirmative action in state hiring, cut government jobs. On top of that he was a cutting edge leader in the fight to defend your right to bear arms. In the present crisis, you might say such a candidate would be a blessed relief. That is the sort of guy the system needs right now to restore order!

Of course, that governor was Jeb Bush. It has been a long time since anyone had a reason to care about Jeb. Most people now remember him for meekly saying “please clap” at a New Hampshire campaign event. It could also be Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, who also flamed out in 2016. For that matter, it could also be George W. Bush, who had a solid run as governor of Texas. He turned out to be the worst president in American history.

Those old enough to remember the Cold War will also remember when people said that the best candidates were governors or generals. The reason was that they had real world experience managing large complex organizations. As candidate, they could speak to people with an air of authority. Legislators, in contrast, always sound like members of committee. Governors, of course, had practice working with legislatures as an executive, which is good training for president.

People no longer think governors are good candidates. In the 2016 primary, Trump had little trouble with the governors. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both sitting senators, gave him the most trouble. In this cycle the governors will have a tough time of it if they manage to even get out of the gate. DeSantis is the only one with any traction and he is more of a meme right now than a real candidate. Given what is happening, he may do the smart thing and not bother to run.

The reason that governors have lost their appeal is that the voters liked governors when the big issues were not in question. During the Cold War, there was a ruling consensus that controlled both factions of Washington. They agreed on the big things, but disagreed a tiny bit on the small things. Therefore, the standard for president was someone who could be a steady hand on the tiller. The ship was mostly fine and the course was decided. We just needed a good captain.

When the Cold War ended, that consensus ended too. There was a void at the center of American politics, so people were left to cast around for someone to fill it. Bill Clinton was the new generation, the embodiment of the Kennedy quote. Then it was George Bush with his new brand of conservatism, which quickly turned into a messianic vision for reordering the world. Then we got Obama and his post-racial message, which ended with the beginnings of a race war.

This is why Trump won in 2016 and why Biden won in 2020. Trump came to symbolize the frustrations of white people after two decades of abuse by elites. He was a clenched fist aimed at the jaw of Washington. Biden, of course, was the answer, a moral nullity, as well as a husk of man. He was selected by Washington because he was the best defense against the mobs and their Trump fist. In both cases, the candidates were merely instruments, rather than genuine candidates.

It is why DeSantis has no chance against Trump. A moderate Republican governor with a solidly conservative record would have been ideal in 1992. He may have been a good choice in 2012. After all, Romney came close to knocking off Obama. In this age of madness, no one is looking for the steady hand, because the ship is on fire and being boarded by savages. What people want is a warrior that strikes fear in the heart of the enemy, even if they do not realize it.

Donald Trump, of course, is not that warrior. He has always been a civic nationalist, who trusts the system. Events, however, have cast him in the role, which is why he has struggled to find his footing. On the one hand, his supporters want him to burn it all down and on the other hand, his opponents act like he is trying to burn it all down, while he is desperately trying to make a deal to keep it from burning down. He bounces between the two poles, enraging both camps.

Men who have been to prison say that they became different men at the moment they heard the cell door close the first time. Anyone who has been inside a courtroom knows that even with the best results, it is a transformative experience. You are subjected to the pure power of the state. It is where the power of the state is clear. One has to wonder if Donald Trump, standing in a Manhattan courtroom today, facing life in prison, will have such a transformation.

Even if he is too old to see it or too afraid to acknowledge it, the spectacle itself is opening the eyes of many people. This is not about Trump, but about a system that no longer works as intended. Instead, it has become a weapon in the hands of bitter, deranged fanatics. A system that can so easily be perverted to destructive ends is no longer worth defending. That is the new consensus forming up as we see the system destroy itself in these rage panics.

It is tempting to dismiss it, but look at the comments in this Army video. The strongest supporters of the military now fill the comments with derogatory messages. Sure, many of those negative comments are probably from goofballs with free time, but most are normal people stating what is now said among white people every day. The last trusted institution is now an object of ridicule. The core support for the military is now in collapse, because the system itself is in collapse.

The lesson of 2016 was that the time for moderate men with moderate views like Jeb Bush or Scott Walker had passed. The end of the Cold War brought the end to the Cold War political consensus. What is needed is a new consensus and that is made by immoderate men. If that fails, then it is made by those who survive the even less moderate mobs who clear the field of the moderate men. Today’s events are just another step along that path.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.