Monthly Archives: October 2024

Radio Derb October 18 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m57s Thank you, Columbus!
  • 08m45s Kamala’s Fox interview
  • 18m59s Bring on the triumvirate!
  • 26m15s Skeptical on Kamala’s Glock
  • 28m39s Anarcho-tyranny, U.K.
  • 31m35s Anarcho-tyranny, U.S.A.
  • 34m13s Triggered by Chaucer
  • 35m54s Signoff

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! That was Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 in a big band arrangement, and this is of course your intractably genial host John Derbyshire with thoughts on the passing scene.

Two weeks this coming Tuesday is Election Day, if Comrade Merrick Garland doesn’t find a way to cancel it — don’t think he’s not trying. What are the prospects? I have no idea, but I’ll cover some relevant events.

First, though, my weekly reminder that you can help support my efforts here via snail mail or PayPal, relevant address and link at johnderbyshire.com, or using Zelle direct to my bank, or with a tax-deductible donation by a check earmarked with my name and mailed to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you for your help. Continue reading →

After Conservatism

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The failure of conservatism is one of those things that has been observed many times by many different people, but why it failed is never discussed. The assumption is that conservatism failed because the people in it did not try hard enough, or they were easily corrupted by the big money donors. The underlying assumption is that it could have succeeded and created the civil nationalist paradise.

This is why these successive efforts over the last decade to create a new right have failed to get very far. They assume they just need to get new people saying the same old things and they can get the band back together. Christopher Rufo’s internet activism is in pursuit of the same agenda as Buckley conservatism. It has the same agenda because it learned nothing from failure.

The most likely answer to why conservatism failed, however, is that it was doomed from the start and by start, I mean the founding. Conservatism, in a nation that was never a nation, but rather a country that saw itself as a radical experiment in liberty, was going to be the first thing reformed out of existence. What a radical experiment of any kind can never tolerate is anything in its way.

Conservativism in America was just slow progressivism, with progressivism being the radical ideology at the core of the experiment. As Dabney noted a century ago, conservatives were merely a drag on progressivism. Its job was to slow the process but eventually concede to the progressives. This meant that the reason conservatism failed is the progressivism has failed.

That is the show this week. Technical issues made it difficult to record and compile the show, so it may sound a bit wonky. Getting over those technical issues left little time to organize my thoughts on this topic, so it is mostly thinking aloud, but it is a subject I may returned to in a future show. The death of conservatism is as much about the death of progressivism as anything else.

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. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • The Death Of Conservatism
  • Doomed From The Start
  • The Mystery of Progressivism
  • Buckley Conservatism
  • Trumpism & Populism
  • After Conservatism

Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee

Dreams Of Purges Past

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Yesterday, internet activist Christopher Rufo posted on Twitter a long post denouncing, disavowing and anathematizing someone named Chris Brunet. Apparently, Brunet used to work for Rufo or maybe they were friends, but Rufo now finds that old association inconvenient to his current relationships and career choices, so he decided to do the predictable thing and denounce Brunet. It is a weird form of public piety that the conservatives inherited from communism.

For those of a certain age, this is familiar stuff. While the format is different from the old days of conservatism, the act is the same. That post reads like a Twitter version of Bill Buckley’s denunciation of Pat Buchanan thirty years ago. Interestingly, that famous essay is nowhere to be found online, but the book version is still available. Imagine someone writing a forty-thousand-word essay denouncing someone then being so proud of it that he turned it into a book.

That is the first notable thing about this bit of drama. Those familiar with the history of conservatism recognize this performance. The person putting on the show is doing it for an audience that is never named, but always assumed. The stated audience is either credulous, incredulous or confused by the performance. Everything about this age is a reboot, especially the stuff that emanates from the political class, so the “new right” is just a low-budget reboot of the old right.

There is a Little Rascals quality to all of it. They put on the costumes of the past and reenact events as they think they happened, but in a high school musical sort of way, which makes it feel small and petty. Thirty years ago, Buchanan and Buckley were towering figures fighting for the right to define a sociopolitical movement they helped create, while Rufo and Burnet are two guys on the internet. To his credit, Burnett seems to appreciate the absurdity of it.

The resulting drama brings up another notable aspect. Then as now, the people doing the denouncing always couch their denunciations in moral terms, when it is obvious that they are motivated by money. Buckley knew there were loads of cash waiting for him if he denounced the paleocons. The neocons, Zionists and the Israel lobby were as flush with cash thirty years ago as they are now. They hated the critics of these things as much as they hate them today.

There is nothing wrong with currying favor with rich people. The “American experiment” is pretty much an institutionalized version of this habit. The market economy, after all, is nothing more than people with something to sell chasing after and flattering people who have money to spend. Democratic politics is the art of flattering wealthy interests so they will back your candidacy. There is a reason that one of the highest paid people at every Washington think tank is the fundraiser.

In theory, the one group most comfortable with this reality should be the conservatives, as they boast of being the most free-market of the bunch. Yet, they are the ones most ashamed of being men for hire. They cast all their actions in moral terms, often making it seem like they are engaged in the greatest of moral struggles. David French has made a career of nailing himself to the cross. So much so, in fact, that he has attained what all conservatives seek, a place at the New York Times!

It is a strange quirk of conservatism. Read the comments of that Rufo post and you see the phrase “moral clarity” turn up often. It is as if these people have a strange form of Tourette’s that only comes out when they are finking on one another. It brings to mind the famous quote from Emerson, “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” Whenever a conservative begins speaking of moral clarity, get ready for a load of arrows in your back.

The reason for this is the central contradiction of conservatism. They start by agreeing with the central premise of progressivism, which is that all people are equal and infinitely malleable. Hierarchy is therefore a construct. You cannot oppose an egalitarian ideology like progressivism by first agreeing with its central claim, so conservatives can never admit that they are simply doing the bidding of their patrons. That means they must invent other reasons which they call principles.

That aside, the sense that this is just recycled drama from a bygone age is due to progressivism becoming a backward-looking phenomenon. It evolved to its logical endpoint only to find nothing there. The modern progressive must content himself with refighting old fights with old enemies reimagined for this time. The new Nazi is the guy opposed to Israel carpet bombing civilians. The new Bull Connor is the guy wondering why the FBI is faking crime stats.

The new right is now following suit. They search around for someone to play the Pat Buchanan role or the Joe Sobran role. It will not be long before these guys pick a fight with the Birchers, which is still around, amazingly enough. Conservatism has always been the slow version of progressivism, so as progressives become a strange sort of antiquarian society, conservatives will slowly join them in the project. The left-right debate is about who hates the past the most.

Of course, what they truly hate is the future. Both progressivism and conservatism are artifacts of a bygone age. They reached their peak in the twentieth century at the zenith of the Global American Empire. That was an empire built for a world that not only does not exist, but the memory of which is fading into the past. Imagine conservatism and progressivism as two old ships engaged in battle as they slowly slip over the horizon, and you have a good sense of it.

In the meantime, they will continue to engage in their mock battles with each other and with themselves, pretending to believe that things have not changed and will never change, while terrified by the sense that they are changing. Like science, politics advances one funeral at a time. As the codgers of the old politics march off to the cemetery, they will be replaced first by their imitators and then by their replacements, who will create a new politics for their age and challenges.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

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 sa***@mi*********************.com.

The Decline Of Pop Music

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One of the unexpected consequences of the technological revolution is the death of the popular music industry. The sale of physical content has just about disappeared, outside of the vinyl subculture. Even if you count downloads, the gross sales of music decline more than ten percent per year. On a per capita basis, popular music revenues are a little more than half of their peak fifty years ago. The biggest drop in sales started with the introduction of the mp3.

Unlike the newspaper industry, which thought they could make money giving their content away on the internet, the music industry always saw technology as a threat to their business model. They famously fought the introduction of cassettes because it would make it easier to record and transport music. If you could copy that album and give the copy to a friend, the music industry reasoned, there would be no reason for the friend to buy the album.

The music industry went to extraordinary lengths to protect their cartel, but they simply could not hold off the flood of technology. They treated downloaders like the Israelis treat Palestinian civilians, but it failed to deter people from downloading free copies of the song they wanted. Eventually, the industry gave into reality and started selling single copies of songs, but by that point, the horse had left the barn. There are too many ways to get a copy of a song free of charge.

The hope was streaming services would stem the bleeding. Instead of loading up on free music maybe people would pay five bucks a month to have access to everything all the time from anywhere. That did seem to work for a while, but then it just further cratered the music sales side of the business. There is also the fact that the public does not listen to as much pop music as in the past. Part of it is demographics, but part of it is the collapse in the quality of content.

This is starting to damage the last area where money could be made in the music business, which is the live show. For the first time in a decade, excluding the Covid years, live shows are in decline. The popular excuse is to blame the ticket sellers and the secondary market for pricing people out of the events. The claim is the ticket sellers are gouging the consumer with demand-based pricing, which is like saying no one goes to a restaurant because it is too crowded.

One reason for the decline of live shows is Covid. A weird thing happened during Covid and that is people discovered that they could live without things they suddenly could not have due to the panic. Restaurants never fully recovered from Covid because people got used to not going out to dinner. Something replaced it. Live events are another thing people did not miss as much as expected. Pro sports have had to work hard to regain their crowds and college sports never fully regained them.

Another reason live music is struggling is the quality of the product. As the industry relies more on technology to create listenable content, the less able they are to stage compelling live shows. This is not a new problem. In the golden age of pop music, they often used studio musicians to record the songs. The “band” often could not play their own music at all. This limited the “band” to doing studio shows where they could lip-sync to the recorded music.

This changed in the 1960’s when bands could play their own music and insisted on recording their own music. They also did live shows where they could actually play their stuff and not sound like a bag of cats. Technology has reversed this so that the performers are no longer able to produce the songs live in any way that sounds like the recorded material. Technology has made it easier to make music, but that has resulted in fewer acts that can do live shows.

Here is where you see the damage done by hip-hop. This is content easy to create in the studio, but it is hot garbage when performed live. In a small venue, the tight spaces and use of drugs can result in a good time for the audience, but in an arena it is often hilariously terrible. It looks like that homeless guy who yells at passing cars got on the stage and is yelling at the audience. Whatever the merits, there are none, hip-hop does not make for a compelling live show.

Another issue for live music is young people are not being socialized in the meat space, so live shows fall outside of their comfort zone. A generation used to interacting with their peers through internet platforms is not going to see the live show as an opportunity for socializing and dating like the old days. They would rather hear the music while cartoon characters perform the concert online. For a generation that prefers the indoors, the outdoor music show may as well not exist.

Of course, the music business was always a racket. The golden years of pop was when the music companies ruled with an iron fist. They could make you buy the album when you wanted just one or two songs. They forced radio stations to play the songs they wanted played. Most important, they we free to rob the music acts. Technology nibbled away at the music cartel eventually freeing the consumers and the music creators from the clutches of the music companies.

One result is there is probably more music available now than in the golden age of popular music. Creators can make good stuff from their bedroom and make it available to the world via the internet. The other side of this is the days of the rock star are coming to a close. Taylor Swift is probably the last mega star and her fame is mostly due to her general weirdness. Her songs are popular because she is popular, not the other way around. Her music is secondary to her act.

Otherwise, the golden era of popular music, especially rock music, will be viewed as a strange artifact of the American empire. A generation from now that music may sound as weird and alien to young people as Chinese opera. They will not understand it, because the people and culture that produced it are as alien to them as the people and culture of China. The concept of the rock star will disappear with memories of phone booths and quadrophonic sound.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

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 sa***@mi*********************.com.

Democratic Theocracy

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Iran has been in the news lately and one of the interesting things about the coverage is Western media rarely talks about the president of Iran. In fact, almost all Iran stories skip the president entirely. This is highly unusual as Western media is conditioned to personify countries that are out of favor. The bad country becomes the ruler of that country and that ruler is always some form of Hitler. The closest they get with Iran is using a picture of the supreme leader in the copy.

One reason for this is Iran is a complicated place and Western media struggles with anything more complicated than the good guys versus bad guys narrative. Despite what most think, Iranian politics has factions and parties, with the winners being picked by the voters at fairly normal elections. Those factions and parties argue about all the usual things, including foreign policy. The current president ran on a platform of improving relations with the rest of the world.

The funny thing about Iran is that it has avoided what has happened with all prior revolutionary societies. They did not have rounds of purges or a great terror in which a strongman consolidated power. There is no cult of personality in the way most communist societies evolved. They are not dogmatically attached to a narrow set of economic policies. Instead, Iran has evolved into the world’s first explicitly democratic theocracy based in its form of Islam.

At the top of Iranian society is the Supreme Leader. He is appointed by the Assembly of Experts, who are elected to their positions. The Guardian Council approves all candidates for elected office, including those nominated to the Assembly of Experts, so the gatekeepers of politics are the religious authorities. The result is a political system that can debate and argue over public policy, but within the broad religious framing of the Islamic authorities.

This is why the West often talks about Iran as if it is a medieval society. In medieval Europe, the Church set the boundaries for secular government. The King had to be in good standing with the Church, but the Church needed to be in good standing with the king as he provided security. From the perspective of “secular” societies in the West, the Iranians have recreated a throne and altar society, something the West abandoned in favor of reason and democracy.

The interesting thing about the criticism is it comes with some envy. The managerial class of the West, especially in America, would probably prefer the explicit relationship between the moral and the practical. In Iran, if Islam forbids it, it is simply forbidden and that is the end of it. In America, banning the discussion of crime stats is forbidden for an extensive list of contradictory reasons sprinkled with magical thinking about the reality of the human condition.

This may be why Iran avoided the cycle of violence and authoritarianism that we expect to see with revolutionary societies. From the start, the morality of the revolution had been resolved. The main task was to first remove the prior regime and the Western influences that emanated from it. Once the old regime was gone, there was no void where the old morality existed, so there was no battle for who would decide how to fill the void and with what to fill it.

This may explain some of the convulsions of the West. Christianity and the carryover from it provided the moral center of the progressive ideology. That slowly gave way to opposition to communism in the Cold War. Once the great struggle had been won, there was no longer a moral purpose to the progressive ideology. What flowed into it was whatever was kicking around the institutions. Fringe lunacies suddenly had a clear path to the center of the progressive moral universe.

Once again, we see that Marx was right about politics. At the highest level, it is about the battle over moral questions. Once the moral questions are answered, there is no need for this sort of politics. Instead, politics is reduced to debates about how to address the mundane practical issues of governance. For thirty years Iran has only had to worry about defending itself from the West, while for the last thirty years the West has been searching for a new god to replace the old one.

What you see in Iran is something the West cannot reconcile and that is the limit of reason, which is the moral. The ideology of the West rests on the assumption that all moral questions have a reasonable answer, so all moral limits that cannot hold up to reason must be invalid. Iran does not struggle with this dilemma, because the moral limits are beyond question and they are right there in the Koran, as interpreted by the religious authorities.

Put another way, what Iran has in excess is the answer to the two most important questions for any society and they are “who says?” and “why not?” The answer to both questions is well known to everyone in Iranian society and therefore the questions never need to be asked. In the West, there are no answers to those questions, so the closest we get to an answer is the jungle of rules against discussing anything that challenges the sensibilities of the managerial class.

What we see with the contrast between Iran and the West, particularly America, is a contrast in two forms of democratic theocracy. Iran starts with the issue of morality as a settled matter and implements democracy as a means to sort practical ends. In the West, democracy is a moral end in itself, but the result is endless debates over what will be temporarily viewed as timeless truths. Iran is the mirror of American in terms of the relationship between the moral and the political.

There are other reasons why Iran is what it is, not the least of which is that it is full of Iranians who can date their society back to the ancients. Islam also has a vastly different view of the natural world than what evolved out of Christianity. Even so, the fact that Iran has survived as a democratic theocracy provides a clue for how American progressivism could survive as well. Otherwise, it shakes itself to pieces searching for something to fill the void that lies at the center of it.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

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 sa***@mi*********************.com.

Washington Was Right

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Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the death of grammar, a post about life as a modern serf and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

George Washington famously observed, “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.” This was in his farewell address where he cautioned that one of the risks to the new nation was from involvement in foreign affairs. When a country aligns with another country, it not only takes on the friends and enemies of that country, it opens the door for that country to influence its leaders and shape its policy.

We see this writ large with Israel. Since the Bush II administration, Israel has been seeking a way to get the United States to go to war with Iran. They claim Iran is the cause of all the problems in the region. Coincidentally, Iran also backs the two primary opponents of the Greater Israel project, Syria and Hezbollah. Therefore, if the United States takes out Iran, then peace will descend on the region and, coincidentally, Israel will face no opposition to its expansion plans.

Bush II probably would have pulled the trigger on a war with Iran if the Iraq war had not been such a debacle. The neocons were boasting in the first term that once Iraq was made into a democracy, it would help “liberate” Iran from its rulers. These plans we shelved once Obama came to power, in part because of Valerie Jarrett, who was in favor of normalizing relations with Iran. The neocons were also busy getting Project Ukraine off the ground.

Depending upon whose narrative you prefer, the United States is either abandoning Project Ukraine in order to deal with the Middle East or the United States is getting sucked into a war with Iran and must abandon Project Ukraine. Either way, it is becoming clear that war with Iran is in the cards. The Israelis keep provoking the Iranians, who have no choice but to respond. The Israelis then claim the response is an unjustified attack so they must respond.

The last turn at this game was a genuine escalation as the Iranians launched waves of ballistic missiles that were able to penetrate Israeli air defenses. This by itself is a huge step in the process. No one thought the Iranians had this ability. Add in the accuracy with which they were able to target Israeli military facilities and the Israel – Iran conflict moved much closer to all-out war. Israel promised massive attacks against Iranian nuclear and energy facilities.

Now we get word that the United States is setting up the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in Israel. This is the most advanced air defense system in the American arsenal and it is supposed to be capable of defeating the best missiles. Of course, the Iron Dome was supposed to be the best air defense system until it was defeated. The Patriot system was also supposed to be a great system until it was destroyed by the Russians in Ukraine as soon as it was deployed.

Reportedly, the Biden administration opposes attacks on Iranian nuclear and energy facilities, but that could be a cover story. They reportedly promised Iran that Israel would not retaliate to the Iranian drone attack. Then Israel set off a string of targeted assassinations and the famous pager attack. It is a good reminder that everyone involved in Middle East politics is incapable of honesty. Everyone lies about everything to everyone, even about the lies they are telling.

Regardless of intentions, this move now provides Israel with cover for whatever attacks they have planned. This will inevitably mean Iran launches another wave of missiles at Israel, maybe even targeting that THAAD system. This is what happened with the Patriot system in Ukraine. The Russians filled the sky with drones, so when the Patriot system lit up, it became an easy target for Russian missiles. The use of air defense systems makes them vulnerable to attack.

Even if the Iranians avoid striking this system, they have a lot of missiles and the THAAD system is limited. Each battery is about forty interceptors. Iran reportedly has thousands of missiles. Of course, like everything to do with the Military Industrial Complex, the THAAD system is riddled with corruption. It is a big, complicated and expensive system no one expected to use in war, so it is mostly a jobs and patronage program, rather than a weapon of war.

All that aside, it is easy to see that George Washington was correct. Indulging habitual fondness for Israel has made the world’s lone superpower a slave to whatever schemes the Israelis are plotting. The United States is on the brink of war with Iran, solely because Israel desires it. No one in Washington dares question any of this, as the Israeli lobby is too powerful. Even the neocons, who prefer Project Ukraine over Project Iran, are powerless against the Israel lobby.

War with Iran will be a disaster of the United States. The American military can deliver devastating strikes against Iran, but Iran can also close the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices through the roof. They could also attack oil facilities in the region, crippling global supplies and sending the world into a depression. Only a madman would want such a scenario, but this is the price that must be paid when you chain yourself to the lunatic regime that is Israel.

Compounding things is the fact that no one knows who is actually running foreign policy in the Biden administration. We know it is not Biden, due to his declining health, but who is calling the shots is a mystery. It is no doubt a mystery to Iran, as well. The Russians have made this point regarding the Ukraine war. The result is the United States is the Lennie Small to the Israeli George Milton as far the Iranians are concerned, which means the United States no longer has agency.

This is exactly what Washington warned of in his farewell address. The only way out of this degenerate relationship with Israel is a revolution in how Washington deals with the entire region and that is impossible due to the massive Israel lobby. When every Congressman has a minder from Israel and every media outlet has to run their coy past AIPAC and the ADL, there is no room to think about this clearly, much less have a debate about this terrible situation.

This is why the way to bet is war with Iran after the November election. The Biden people have no reason to care at that point and Israel will see it as an opportunity to get what they have wanted for decades. The next administration will have to pay the price for this reckless foreign entanglement. Perhaps it is the price that must be paid for the end of empire. Gas lines and ten-dollar gasoline will surely cause some to question this habitual fondness for Israel, at least.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

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 sa***@mi*********************.com.

Radio Derb October 11 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m50s Controversy in science, new and old
  • 14m24s Disaster equity
  • 27m09s Hillary, Zamyatin, and Us
  • 38m59s Voice cloning
  • 40m50s Using a shovel
  • 43m36s An old friend is angry
  • 46m46s Signoff with Cilla

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners. That was Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2, as originally scored for clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, serpent, and percussion, the serpent being an 18th-century wind instrument now defunct, ancestor I think of the modern trombone. And this is of course your formidably genial host John Derbyshire with some notes on the passing charivari.

We are now less than one month away from the general election. I shall of course have things to say about that. The Southeast of our country has been stricken by yet another natural disaster; I shall cover that, too. Before either of those topics, though, I’m going to take a detour through science.

I am, as I’m sure I have mentioned before, a science geek from far back. Although I don’t have any expertise in any of the rigorous sciences, the old affection lingers and I try to keep up with developments.

There has been news from the world of science this past week, so let me start off with that. Continue reading →

Doomsday

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Are we doomed? It certainly seems like it. Polling on the issue suggests that most people expect something bad to happen in the near future. The unspoken driving force of our politics for the last decade is this sense of foreboding. Despite all the numbers people use to measure society looking good, the voters keep searching around for someone who will either fix things or stop the fixers.

One reason for the pessimism is the people in charge have been crying wolf for decades as a way to both distract people from certain topics and as a way to rally support for the ruling class. The theater of democracy requires a hero and a villain, so it is only natural to create a crisis atmosphere in which to place them. Politics is one manufactured drama after another.

Even so, there are reasons to be worried. The behavior of the authorities in response to the floods in Appalachia underscore the fact that our government is not very good at doing basic things anymore. The main road was washed out and no one thinks it will be replaced in their lifetime. The reason for that is we drive over torn up roads every day that never seem to get repaired properly.

That said, doomsday seems to be a part of the American DNA. For as long as there has been moving pictures, the end of the world has been a topic. Movies and television shows based on the end times are a stock feature. The cause of doom changes from generation to generation, but the sense of doom is constant. It is as if Americans need to be in fear in order to feel alive.

On the other hand, maybe it is that the youngest people in the Western world have the best historical perspective. Nothing lasts forever and that means what we call the West will one day draw to a close. Perhaps the birth of this nation is so recent that it remains a reminder that death is inevitable. On the other hand, maybe we suffer from a collective form of imposter syndrome.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • Doomsday’s Past
  • Doomsday Templates
  • Are We Doomed?
  • Arc Of History

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Death Of The Grammar Nazi

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A truth revealed by the widescale adoption of the internet was that there were millions of people with a blue pencil desperate to use it. The Grammar Nazi is a thing unearthed and unleashed on the world by the internet. When comment sections were still common, every story or post came with comments correcting the grammar or highlighting a typo. It was clear that the person posting the comment had no interest in the content of the post, other than what he considered to be violations of the rules of grammar.

The Grammar Nazi is something that can only exist online. Sure, he could get a teaching job and terrorize school children or get a job as a copy editor at a newspaper, but where is the fun in that? The thing that brings joy to the black heart of the Grammar Nazi is correcting people who do not expect to be corrected. Finding a post online that has an open comment section and then posting a short note about a missing comma or the incorrect use of “there/their” is the fruit of life.

Unfortunately for the Grammar Nazi, his days are running short because the same forces that brought him to life are about to take away his life. Another thing we will get with AI is the rigid formalization of online discourse. The old fashioned spellcheck and grammar check in Word will soon be replaced by real-time rewrites of your text in the generally accepted form. That means no more grammar errors or spelling errors for the Grammar Nazi to hunt online.

There will be people who holdout and write their own text. There are people who still own pens and pads of paper. It will not be long, however, when the browser simply corrects your “mistakes” and rewrites your copy. Those idiomatic expressions you love so much will be replaced with text that can easily be translated into other languages and understood by new language learners. The same will happen with colorful euphemisms and salty language. None of it will be allowed.

You can see the future in Word. Run text through the old-fashioned spelling and grammar check and it regularly suggests you change the wording of sentences in order to make them less interesting. For example, if you type “There are a lot of mudgets in here”, misspelling “midgets” as you see, it will not suggest the word “midget” as the replacement because that is an offensive term. If you persist, it will warn that it is insensitive language. We know what comes next.

On the other hand, the genuinely stupid will soon be able to present themselves online as they imagine themselves through services like Grammarly that will rewrite their incoherent jibber-jabber into something intelligible. In fact, they will not even need to know how to read and write. They will just speak and the machine will figure out what they should write and write it. This woman will never have to worry that she may be a “magician” rather than a “musician.”

That may be a bridge too far, but you can see how these grammar services can quickly transition from mere grammar services into thinking services. The low-IQ person may not fully understand the resulting product, but the happy face emoji at the end of the process will let her know she did good. In effect, technology will remove the midwit from the internet and replace her with a bot, a bot that never makes a spelling or grammar error to give the game away.

It is easy to dismiss these sorts of claims about technology and the language, but they are based on our history with the printed word. The very idea of grammar as something to debate was made possible by the printing press. The necessary standardization that came with the mass production of text changed how we think. It changed the grammar, punctuation, spelling and even the alphabet. We write a different language as a result, which means we think in a different language too.

Unlike the time when the printing press revolutionized the world, ours is a much darker time with tighter rules on what can and cannot be said. We already see how the internet has narrowed and dulled the public debate. When it can intercede between your brain and what you are trying to write, it is easy to see how we can quickly get to a future that Orwell would have thought impossible. Soon, it may be impossible to post an impure thought or a poorly formed sentence.

Even if it does not reach that point, these writing services will surely strip originality and creativity from the language. The constant hectoring from Word about the use of “write a book” instead of “author a book” will eventually wear down users to the point where this sort of variety is gone from our writing. All nuance and idiosyncrasy will be replaced with the technical manual version that the robots demand. As a result, we will become as boring and stupid as a National Review columnist.

There are signs of this happening. This post about changes in German grammar is a good example of what lies ahead. This change is not to make German more precise to Germans, but to make it more accessible to non-German speakers. That may sound good to English speakers, but language is more than just how people speak. It is how they think and how they think evolved over generations. How they think is their inheritance from their ancestors and the core of their culture.

Of course, the main argument against the Grammar Nazi was that grammar is a fluid thing that changes over time. Obsessive concern for rules of grammar and word usage is a losing fight. After all, what we think of as punctuation is a novelty in the history of the written word. The core features of the current rules were innovations. To put an end to innovation is an effort to kill the spirit of the language. Like the people who speak it, the language must be free to seek its own path.

That is now where things are heading, at least not for the written word. It will not be long before the outlaw is the man who uses outlawed words in outlawed forums using now outlawed word processing software and browsers. Everyone else will screaming into the void that is the Large Language Model version of the software, as it rewrites their text to remove unpermitted thoughts and expressions. The Grammar Nazi will have been replaced by this new, hellish form of spellcheck.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

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 sa***@mi*********************.com.

The Smash And Grab Ends

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This weekend, the heads of the NATO families were supposed to meet to discuss the “victory plan” for Ukraine created by Volodymyr Zelensky, but the meeting has been cancelled, allegedly due to the weather. Joe Biden was supposed to attend but dropped out on Tuesday due to hurricane Milton. The peace summit Zelensky was planning was also cancelled. When Zelensky was in Washington last month he was given millions to hold a second peace conference.

One thing that was supposed to be discussed at this meeting was a plan that has been in the works for eighteen months according to the Financial Times. This story covers the basics of the new plan for victory. Russia would be handed a deal whereby they get to hold the lands they have, Ukraine joins NATO, but promises to not start a war to reclaim those lands and at some point in the future, Russia will give back those lands to Ukraine for reasons no one can explain.

The scheme is ridiculous, which is probably why the intel service planted the story in the Financial Times this week. This has become a habit of the Anglo intelligence services over the last year. When they want something injected into the political discussion regarding Ukraine or they want to elicit a Russian reaction to something discussed behind closed doors, they plant a story in the Financial Times. Presumably, this story was placed there ahead of the meeting for some reason.

Officially, the main focus of the meeting was supposed to be the Zelensky plan for peace, which has two main parts. One is Ukraine joins NATO right now and Russia agrees to return all lands claimed by Ukraine. That is pretty much it. The path to victory is the United States threatens Moscow with nuclear war unless the Russians withdraw all of their forces from Ukraine, including Crimea. The reason to cancel the meeting is there is nothing really to discuss. The plan is nonsense.

That may be the reason why Zelensky created the plan and spent the last month shopping it around the West. The one thing Zelensky cannot survive right now is a peace process involving the Russians. The reason for that is the ultranationalists in Kiev and on the front are strong enough to oppose it. They can use the process as an excuse to take out Zelensky. On the other hand, Zelensky cannot simply flee with his billion dollars, as the West will not protect him.

He is in a political vice. One jaw is the nationalist forces that have been committed to war with Russian since the Maiden coup in 2014. Despite the losses on the battlefield, they remain committed to the war. They have no choice from their perspective, as a Russian condition for peace talks is dissolution of the nationalists. Given the Russian habits and recent history, the leaders of these nationalists forces are right to assume dissolution means they end up dead.

The other jaw is the West, which has committed itself to the war against Russia, but is unwilling to go all in fearing the consequences. The truth is escalatory dominance only works if the other side believes you can continue to escalate. The Russians know the West is not willing to go all in for Ukraine. The West is now in a trap they created for themselves in 2022 and 2023 with all the hot rhetoric. They need a way out, but they cannot simply quit, so they need Zelensky to make a deal.

For his part, Zelensky has been a rapacious schemer who has survived far longer than anyone expected. He does not get credit for managing to stay alive while existing in this impossible position. He must wage a war enthusiastically that he knows cannot be won, but also keep the various factions from pointing the finger at him for the failure to find a miracle solution to the battlefield reality. So far, he has outmaneuvered all of his opponents in Kiev, which is miraculous.

It looks like the Zelensky victory plan is actually a survival plan. The game is to buy time so that the nationalist units on the front get worn down or destroyed, thus weakening their political support in Kiev. As the saying goes, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. If there is going to be a move against Zelensky, it will include nationalist military units. If those units are buried under rubble in the Donbas, then they will not be around to depose Zelensky.

For their part, the nationalist units seem to get this, as they have repeatedly refused orders to engage with the Russians in difficult battles. Despite having the best equipment and the best men, they have been held in reserve for most of the war, most likely for political reasons. That cannot go on much longer, given the condition of the front, so time is probably on Zelensky’s side. At some point, the nationalists either die on the front or quit on the war.

Of course, all of this assumes the Russians will be willing to deal with Zelensky when the time comes. It also assumes the West will not kill him as an excuse to wash their hands of the project. Then you have the nationalists who may simply kill Zelensky because they can, and they have never liked him. The Zelensky survival plan assumes many things that may turn out to be unrealistic, but for now it is the only plan he has, so he is working it as hard as he can.

That may be the other reason for the cancellation of the Ramstein meeting. It may be dawning on the Western political class that there is no plan for victory because victory is impossible and Zelensky has known it for a long time. His little green man act was just part of the long con he has been running to both remain in power and get hundreds of billions in financing, some of which has underwritten his retirement. The West now needs a plan for how to not look like dupes.

In this regard, the Ukraine war is a metaphor for the West. Everything about this project has been in the short term. Everyone involved is thinking like a smash and grab gang working the shopping mall. At the macro level, it is as if the West is controlled by an alien class that is here to harvest what they can before moving on to the next opportunity to run the next grift. As with Ukraine, no one thinks about investing in the people or the long-term consequences of their actions.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

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 sa***@mi*********************.com.