Year In Review

This is the time of year when lazy writers do retrospectives, usually in the form of lists or worse, tweet collections. Streaming has reached a point where people are doing these on YouTube or DLive. Then you have the predictions for the coming year, which hardly anyone ever mentions as part of their yearend review posts. This makes sense, as most predictions are terrible. No one can see the future, so predictions are always about the present trends and the prognosticator’s hopes for the future.

There is some value in looking back at past predictions. It’s a lot like reading old articles about the glorious future of 2020, which is now upon us. Predictions tend to reflect the binary model of the future that is inflicted upon us by our rulers. The future is either going to be much worse than anyone today wants to believe or much better than anyone ever promised. In reality, the next year will be pretty much the same as the last year, with maybe some new characters in the media.

Looking at your own past predictions is a bit humbling, which is probably why no one does it as a part of their yearend posting. Here is my post from last year with my crystal ball forecast for the upcoming year. When I do these posts, I’m not trying to be too serious, as this is not the time of year to be serious. The point is to have some fun with the format and make some points along the way. Still, if you make a post full of predictions, you must be made to answer for them!

So, how’d I do?

My first prediction about how Congress and the Senate will behave in the new year was pretty much dead right. The Democrat House did spend the year chasing Trump around with subpoenas and the Senate did nothing. I did not see the impeachment fiasco coming, but no one thought the Democrats were that dumb. I was wrong about the Mueller probe. That’s probably the surprise of the year. Trump gets a lot of grief, but you have to give him credit for getting rid of Mueller.

As far as the race for the Democrat nomination, I will take a bow on predicting that Warren would be a bust. She is still in the top-tier of the candidates, but she is fading and probably headed to a bad end. The current polling has her finishing second or third in Iowa and second or third in New Hampshire. That’s pretty much the Howard Dean phenomenon. He never recovered from that and she will not recover from losing the early races. Being a total fraud has consequences.

I think the jury is still out on the censorship. There’s no question that is has slowed over the last year, but that could simply be due to a lack of targets. The alt-right was mostly an open door for the old 1.0 types and other fringe weirdos. Once that door closed, they went back to their respective warrens. As a result, there is not a lot of low hanging fruit for the censors. Still, I think the trend will continue, as the platforms find the cost of censorship rise and the benefits decline.

On the economic front, I got it all wrong on the stock market. The markets continued to be strong, despite the beginning of the great retirement. The fact is, the markets are no longer connected to reality. Instead, they are driven by Fed policy, which was another miss last year. I did get China right. I’ve been saying for years that China is more paper tiger than most realize. China remains a low trust society, outside the local community, so that means lots of mischief in the national economy.

As for Europe, I nailed the Brexit process. I was a little muddled on the way the end game would play out, so I can’t crow too much. My expectation was that the globalists would offer up the Tories as a sacrifice to globalism. I did not think it would work, but I was not all that clear, so I get dinged a few points. I was a bit early on the role of the Eastern bloc of countries. I still think that is in the offing, but Brexit may have to unfold before that can get momentum.

On the sportsball front, I was ahead of my skis on that one. Ratings keep declining for the NBA, but the NFL rebounded a bit. Of course, the ratings are mostly fake, so no one can be sure. My hunch, just based on personal experience, is that more and more white people are abandoning conventional entertainment. The obnoxious propaganda packed into everything is impossible to ignore. Even so, we don’t have hard data to back this, so the cord cutting prediction goes into the loss column.

Finally, I swung and missed on the Facebook prediction. Frankly, I remain puzzled about this one. It is so obviously true that ads on that platform are a waste of money, but they keep suckering in advertisers. Further, the data they steal from users and sell to marketing companies and the FBI is mostly garbage. Facebook is a company that exists in spite of reality. This is why looking back at predictions is good. It reveals gaps in your understanding and it reveals bias.

Over all, it was a mixed bag. In the gambling business, the rule of thumb is you have to win 57% of the time in order to make money. That covers the juice owed to bookmaker I’ve lost track of where I was on this, but I’m glad I did not bet the “Escape Lagos Fund” on these predictions. Even so, it is always fun for me to look back at these posts. They are a good reminder that no one can see around corners, so it is wise to be skeptical of one’s confidence.


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156 thoughts on “Year In Review

  1. Sad to see so many commenters are clueless about the appeal of the Democrats. Insane candidates may turn off the swing voters so there is a chance Orange Man Bad can win in 2020. But the insanity is irrelevant to 90 plus precent of the Democratic base. After all, how many third world nations do you see with sound governance?

    The Democratic party is increasingly built around people who want what the white man has. Many of them, including single white women, cannot compete with the white man on an equal playing field. The Democratic party guarantees them that they won’t have to do so. They will get advantages. They will even get more status the less capable they are of being competitive.

    That isn’t going away. Jamal, Cleon, Rosita, Donna (formerly Bob) and Claryce are not going to suddenly announce that they reject affirmative action, aid to dependent children and the status of a victim so they can stand on their own two feet. LOL. Seriously.

    Quit dreaming about civil war and start understanding human nature and the battle for status. If you want status among the affluent and media, you must gain approval from the tribe. We can’t grant that status. So no matter how crazy democrats get, many uni educated whites men and nice white women will continue to vote for them especially since we lost the culture war.

  2. One of the positive things about 2019 was how almost every voice that matters on this side of things began to settle down and do their own thing instead of engaging in dumbass jihads against each other. I do not know why this happened, only that it was a good thing.

    Hope for the future…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YVrF2DdTp0

  3. the investigations can never stop. This is how they tie up evidence. It’s all so they can say “I can’t discuss on ongoing investigation” when unpleasant questions are asked.

  4. 2019 is at an end and one of its memorable trends in the on-line world has been the accelerating facebookification of Youtube, whose old “Broadcast Yourself” motto has evidently been replaced by “Start your own tribe”.

    Since roughly 2017 dissident Youtubers have been moving from soapboxing in the town square to preaching to the converted to now tending to a flock within their own personal echo chamber.

    This was helped along by the rise in popularity of streaming as a broadcasting style, the successive rounds of adpocalypsing which forced creators to chase fans, not views, and a general realization that politics has polarized to such an extent that debate is futile and outreach inefficient. Tribalism of viewership also affords greater protection in a world of weaponized TOS. Finally, there is the rarefaction of disinterested essayists from the blogging era and their replacement by a class of narcissists chasing ego strokes and validation from a well-maintained army of simps.

    The upshot is that things have gotten more cliquish and generally gayer. Raising a clan, curating it and milking it is now the name of the game.

    A year ago, our gracious host linked to an archetypal rogues’ gallery of old-timey Internet Chat rooms. In the same spirit, and out of nostalgia for things that are gone, I present:

    The Logarithmic Scale of Youtube Faggotry

    Ranked by level of reprobacy, as pertains to formatting and general behavior. For a scale of goonery in content per se, refer to the Cernovich Scale.

    ******Slight or minor faggotry******

    1 – Overdramatic Thumbnails
    Basic Bitch Dreck Churners and Stefan Molyneux are experts at this. It’s the Youtube equivalent of Instagram filters. Let your content stand for itself you pansy.

    2 – Chastising the audience for their viewing habits, telling the audience who to watch and not to watch
    e.g. “If you enjoy TurboCunt65, go away. Don’t even watch my videos.”
    Don’t be a diva you fairy.

    3 – Policing the chat
    The chat function allows the bored and the drunk to try their hand at stream-of-consciousness grunting. It’s a cathartic release to blow off steam. Such is its only purpose, beside testing emojis and giving seizures to epileptics. If people have something important to tell you, they have your email and/or your social media. If they’re in disagreement, they can write a blog or make their own response videos. Every time you interrupt your talk to join the food fight, your audience are eating dead air.

    ******Serious faggotry******

    4 – Curating the content retroactively. Removing or privating videos unprompted
    YouTube is meant to be a universal repository. Content is supposed to accumulate into a Library of Alexandria of the video format. Times have changed and sadly preemptive nuking is sometimes called for to avoid loss of channel. But every time you excise or redact the record for your own faggoty reasons, you undermine the platform’s archival value. Extra points are awarded if you doctor your video history slyly and without explanation.

    5 – Policing the Comment section (beyond removing the porn spam)
    “Sucky-sucky happy price long time ultra HD at THIS address join now!!!!!!!!!” is obviously out of place. “This sucks you pooftah” is not. And if you remove it, it’s accurate. You control the release of videos, but you are not entitled a say in how your content is received, any more than a novelist is owed editing rights over the critic’s article after his book is published. The comment section is not part of your channel, it’s a common whose stewardship is entrusted to the channel owner in the form of first-line, basic moderation. Don’t turn that privilege on its head on account of your fragile ego.

    6 – Buying subscribers and/or views, doctoring the thumbs up/down metrics.
    These indicators, for what they’re worth, are the Standard&Poor’s of Youtube. Don’t mess with them you ponce.

    ******Extreme Faggotry******

    7- Engaging in online GayOps. Fighting video with video is the name of the game. If you plot and connive to cauterize the production of content by rivals or competitors, you deserve your own circle of hell.

    8 – Engaging in IRL GayOps. A.k.a pulling an Owen Benjamin. Same as above, but much worse.

    Happy New Year Mr. Z, you and those like you are a dying breed.

  5. Year-end “You can’t make this shit up.”

    An instrumental metal album that is, in the words of the artist “all about our oncoming climate apocalypse.”

    Yes, the distorted guitars symbolize the rise of the oceans.

    And, the, um, distorted guitars symbolize the drowning cities.

    And the … distorted guitars symbolize the fascists being drowned.

    And the drums are, just drums, man.

    https://stelliferous.bandcamp.com/album/clathrate

  6. I predict a quiet year. Impeachment will go nowhere. Biden will get the nomination and beat trump. We will return to something like the Obama years, yet without the radical racial politics. This is not necessarily for the better because torpor and complacency are what got us into this mess.

    The only way we might see some action would be if warren or sanders got the nomination and/or if there is a really close election with accusations of criminality and fraud. Then the population might be stirred to ructions, the scale depending on circumstances. I myself prefer not to have to live in “interesting times.”

    Oh and Star Wars will suck in dec 2020. That’s a gimme prediction

    • I would for far future predictions, after Biden and his immediate successors, I think the democrats will only be able to offer up these weird identity type candidates like aoc and buttigeg. Business won’t like them and they will have trouble winning states like California and Illinois. All the dems with centrist, clintonesque type views, such as Biden and blumberg, are very old. Actually a reign of milquetoast centrist republicans like sasse will ensue, which could last as late as 2040ish. But then the demographics will hit a tipping point where it’s impossible for a republican to win and shortly after that they will pass the constitutional amendment legalizing white slavery, but nobody will notice because it had been de facto true for so long.

    • Star Wars always sucked. Why watch an update with “gee whiz” space graphics, when you could get the real thing from any WW2 propaganda movie, complete with real men, pretty women, and awesome airplane visuals and sounds?

      Now get off my lawn! 😉

  7. As I get older and grumpier my predictions are usually: “things will continue to suck worse”. Sports, politics, entertainment, cars, and society in general – that’s my prediction.

    • Change is constant. There are many many more ways a change can make things worse than there are to make things better. The more changes, the more likely things will get worse.

      • As a car guy, through and through, I will go on the record that cars are better. The objective qualities of the new cars are awesome. The base model Honda Accord is light years ahead of anything offered not too many years ago. What the new cars don’t have is the personality, the quirks, and the ability to upgrade and tailor them to make them better and more personal. The choice of the car you bring home, and what you do to it, don’t matter any more. Most importantly, they aren’t aspirational, no “wait until next year” and no “so much more I get by trading up”. The long-stretch aspirations of a flying car or commuting at 100 mph have been eliminated. Cars now are like an iPhone with wheels. But the iPhone is an awesome thing as well, and simply mostly wasted on the user’s habits with it.

        • Dutch, agreed—if we are talking about reliability and performance. However, I fear in the next decade or so, cars will not longer be cars. They will be robotically controlled and driven conveyances which the government allows you to pay for, but not to enjoy control of. Sort of like our government.

        • In 1991 I had a Honda Prelude Si. It had unassisted rack and pinion steering until you got below 10 mph. It had a smooth 5-speed manual, handled great, and a little motor that could wind up like a 2-stroke. Nothing as fun is available at a reasonable price. Just demanding a manual eliminates 90% of the cars. Most are just computer operated generic boredom. Ford killed their Focus RS which I almost bought a couple of years ago.

      • My son, just the other day, described what you explained in one word, “entropy”. Thanks for elaborating. 😉

  8. There is an interesting science fiction novel from the 1980s called ‘Courtship Rite’ by Donald Kingsbury in which social status is partially determined by predicting the future. Zman would probably do pretty well.

  9. 57% is not marginal in the professional betting world. I played baseball with a fellow who ran millions for a syndicate betting games every day. 53% is marginal, 57% is the far end of the bell curve. In politics, the media bat 0% as witnessed by the ’16 election. The CIA has wiffed on all the big ones. So no, hang a 57% shingle and they will come.

  10. Z-Man, I have a blog post title for you if you ever get the time and feel like it:

    WHAT IS RIGHT-WING POPULISM?

    After all, all writers get “writer’s block” sometimes. At that point dig out the above title and have at it!

  11. I am always ready to make predictions—all in good fun of course—but then I think, on what basis do I make such? A wiser commenter than I has suggested a coin flip. ;-). Z-man of course nailed it succinctly in stating most predictions are really wishful thinking.

    The reality is that much of the information I would use comes from the same sources we all decry as “fake” news. A prediction on my part would seem a contradiction in beliefs. So I’ll hold off and continue to “speak about that which I do know”—which in this day and age is unfortunately less and less. ;-(

        • In 2016, my wife stayed up to watch the election results. I went to bed and slept like a baby. Not that I was confident in the unexpected results which transpired, or disheartened by the early news and State calls. Simply, I just didn’t care—at least not enough to cause me a sleepless night. Detachment is my last survival mechanism. I’m hopeful it will see me through to the end.

      • Good stuff from RamZ. My prediction is a Trump win in 2020 and maybe the dems can’t hold the house which is different than RamZ. I just don’t see the loony democrats winning in 2020. By 2024 though demographically we will have changed enough by then and I for certain don’t see Pence winning and as much as I would like to see it I don’t see Tucker or an equivalent winning either.
        Mid 2020’s is when the stuff gets real is my thoughts at this point.

        • It gets real the day after Trump’s re-election. The Left and the Deep State will go full Cultural Revolution. Thank the Godz that it is a secret ballot. The repercussions for voting Trump/Republican will be devastating.

          • This has been my view for a while now. What ever you do, don’t be near any big cities on that day.

      • I don’t quite agree with the “conserva-boomers are dying off” theory of why Trump will lose. Yes, immigrants tend to be Democratic, but they also don’t vote, and there are plenty of immigrants who dislike Democrats simply because of the trans/gay/abortion issues. Trump is still fairly popular, and not just among whites.

        • Marko, I used to think so as well. But lately I’m not so sure. Seems the Dem party has the lock on appeal to ethnic/racial/religious divisions. One may peal a few percent off of the Dem majority for any classification, but as long as Whites split 50/50, we are doomed.

    • Traffic went way up after I upgraded the server. The outages were a bigger issue than I realized. One of the things on my list this week is to start measuring traffic again. When I moved to a new server, I did not install some stuff.

  12. Yeah, the Facebook/artificial intelligence/super high-tech mind-reading industry is sort of a scam. The Facebook scam is to use super geniuses to track your cookies and offer up some ads from the last place you visited. Wow. Sometimes they do a super sophisticated category match, where if you looked at REI you will get ads for other outdoor gear. Amazing.

    But the marketing peeps love to be told there is some magic bullet. They love that story about Target finding the pregnant teen before her parents knew about it, as if sending coupons for diapers to women who spend time in the baby section can only be done by artificial intelligence. Mind. Blown.

    I doubt 2020 is the year when everybody wakes up. It’s the nature of these things that people make big investments in all this and then really, really need to justify the investment. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the analytics world, it’s that the least important thing is getting the analytics right.

  13. Nice job, Z-Man! Thank you, again, for what you do.

    I made a single prediction: that not a single one of the bad actors and principals in the ongoing attempted coup would be prosecuted for their crimes. I’m predicting the same for 2020.

    And Epstein didn’t kill himself.

  14. I like the old Irishman who said that he preferred to do his prognostications after the fact. Or as the old country people used to say: hindsight is 20/20.

    Happy New Year to all here; and may God bless you and yours.

  15. In all fairness I don’t think anyone saw the Donk meltdown coming – in spite of the fact that it was utterly and obviously inevitable. Cripes, look at the kind of people they are voting for: senile boomers, retarded vibrants, feminist rage heads and sexual degenerates…? Anything those kind of people get involved in eventually turns into a shit show. We all should have seen it coming…

    I am predicting the Donks get wiped out in the next election.

    • Well and good that the Donks get wiped out but all recent history informs that they will be replaced by the Dorks.

  16. The two things I figured would happen didn’t pan out. First, I figured, correctly, the phony Russia probe would fizzle, and then, incorrectly, Dems would then settle into running for reelection. Their insanity over this has surprised me.

    Second, I figured after the Hillary debacle, the Dems would never run a white for president again. It would be the first ‘X’ to run for president this time. Instead, the leading candidates are betting pool contenders for which white guy dies on stage first.

    For this year, I think a big question is how Jews respond to their collapsing control of the Democrat party.

    • For this year, I think a big question is how Jews respond to their collapsing control of the Democrat party.

      Collapsing control? Wishful thinking. The Media is the Democrat Party and the Media is controlled entirely by secular Jews. They’re not going anywhere. Besides, Linda Ronstadt says “Mexicans are the New Jews!”

      2020 begins the Roaring-Not-In-A-Good-Way-Twenties.

  17. I will make a few predictions
    The NFL will recover unless they are stupid enough to allow another Kappernick to rise up.
    White people love sports and will tolerate a lot of crap to keep it.
    Drug legalization such as marijuana will continue at the state level which will be used to divert attention from just how bad finances are getting in the woke states.
    Sexualization of Americans will continue for the same reason that drug legalization will continue to divert our attention from the lower living standards of the next generation of whites.
    We will continue to be pushed toward expensive military engagements in the Middle East and even Africa by the neocons Trump is not dealing with in the military industrial complex. Wars will continue to be pushed which have no intrest to white Americans.
    But our blood will be required to fight them.
    I don’t think the Dems are stupid enough yet to push for gun confiscation and confrontation in Virginia but I could be wrong about that one?
    And the Fed will keep it all pumped up and running until they can’t anymore.
    It could go on for years beyond 2020 or it all could crash this year.
    That is about it for my prognostications for 2020.

    • I read that as of January1st Illinois residents must pay sales tax on auto trade ins as well as sales tax on auto purchases.
      But hey! Marijuana is legal.
      So get high and forget about the sad financial shape the state is in.

    • Never underestimate the public’s propensity to allow itself to be outraged about things, or people’s willingness to cheat if they think they won’t get caught. The two things driving our culture today, just fill in the blanks associated with them.

  18. Our enemies are very confident of the future. The smarter ones know that they’ve won the demographic war so they assume the larger war is over. They’re wrong. They assume things will run just as before only with them in charge, and whites acquiescing to our new role as helots.

    That won’t happen. A country where blacks and Hispanics make up 40% of the population and whites 50% won’t run as smoothly one with 15% blacks and 85% whites. My prediction is that our enemies will gain more authority even as they lose legitimacy, particularly among whites. The future is wide open for any group willing to grab it.

    • I would add: embrace being the overclass. White people are declining but we still have our innate civilizational skills, and instead of “having a country” we should pivot to “running a country”.

      • Just like Whites keep South Africa still funcitoning, albeit barely? No thanks. We need to run things for our own people. Let clown world rely on its denizens to keep the lights on.

    • Citizen, the political class is already rapidly losing legitimacy along with credibility. Just wait until things get really nasty going forward. It’s inevitable. Amity Schlaes has just written a book about the debacle of the Great Society. You know things are moving in our direction when historians begin to deconstruct the civil rights era.

      • Exactly right. I think the increasing craziness is evidence they’re losing control, not tightening their grip. Also evidence the opportunity is there for each of us to be the greatest we can on our own terms. Those buying into the system today are building on sand.

  19. When it comes to predictions, I don’t get into details, I only do big picture.

    Some time around 2005, when it was becoming clear even to the blind what a grift and a work of nonsense and deceit the whole Iraq war was, I was talking politics with a relative who is a sort of unthinking, non-noticing bien pensant liberal in the most anodyne way. Even she was starting to express quasi red pill concerns. Here was my prediction.

    I told her, “Nothing is going to happen and no one is going to do anything. The only thing that really matters is the massive non stop, unchecked, never-ending flood into America of begging, wheedling, ever-pregnant sh!t-colored monkey people, which nobody will ever stop because everybody is hypnotized into thinking that America is not a country, it’s a magic cookie jar, and every single sh!tskin deserves a cookie, and the supply of cookies is infinite. The nonstop flood of monkeymen and rape-apes will continue until one fine morning we all wake up, have a look around, and realize that this is simply not America any more.”

    Well, we’re finally here. Your country is dead. America is gone, replaced by a giant anonymous parking lot full of random foreigners. Happy 2020. Maybe you should start converting to the Islamic calendar system, though.

    At least they’ll be popping corks in Tel Aviv. They finally got what they worked so hard for!

    • Doof, here, here. During my Christmas shopping, I sat at the food court in Costco, eating a quick lunch. In the half hour I sat, the entire world passed by (heading toward the exit). There were Muslims (judging from the burka clad wives), Somali’s (all pushing 7 feet tall and thin as a rail), Hispanic families of course, mixed couples (mostly White women, Black males—but also a few Asians with White males), Indians (with a dot) in sarees, a grandma or two with daughter and a darkish grandchild (all too common these days), and so on.

      In short, the exodus looked like a “woke” TV commercial. Indeed, they could have filmed one there by simply setting up their camera next to me. All folk were in good spirits and the lines moved quickly, but something was missing and it was saddening.

  20. The 1930’s Quantum Mechanics (QM) gave the world a formalized Materialism as philosophy – the big bang, then matter, time, space, world’s form, humans evolve, and at the last moment a little packet of consciousness magically appears in brains, made of this dead, inert stuff called matter. So science says, but can’t even begin to explain how, or what, consciousness is. That last magic step of consciousness emerging from brains, I’ve never accepted.

    Last 15 years of QM discoveries are discrediting matter – it looks fundamentally unreal like Bohr & Hisenberg said. So just for fun my prediction is matter, time, and space as we currently conceive will be fully discredited over next 50 years.

    Consciousness will be discovered to be primary. Matter time & space will be seen as “appearances” in Consciousness. Consciousness in this context is just a science word for “that which is beyond name & form”. In religious terms, God’s Infinite Being.

    • Consider the uncertainty principle. You can measure the position or the momentum of a particle with certainty but not both, if I remember. Why? Because observing something affects it. Which blew up scientific materialism for me. All of a sudden, things look a lot more mysterious. Haven’t been able to take science as seriously since.

    • We ascribe either scientific-like assumptions or mysterious oogly-boogly to the things we cannot understand. Perhaps it is time for humans to empirically figure out the things we can, but simply let the things we do not understand be what they are, and accept that there are things beyond our ken. Human nature, hubris, and the need to lord things over other people will not allow such an acceptance of that.

      • I’m going to disagree with that “beyond our ken”, because I think that’s why we’re here– and why white is White.

        We’re meant to figure it out, while the authorities insist on leading us down the primrose path instead.

        Mythified political propaganda?
        Magic?
        Play-acting?

        Nah. Painterstorm’s (and your’s) spidey-sense is correct… there’s something more at work here. A something that can satisfy both the faithful and the materialist.

        I propose we go exploring.
        Stupid s.o.b. that I am, I intend to make such voyaging possible. That’s my prediction.

      • I’m just fascinated by the nature of mind and how the quantum guys are breaking materialism at the book binding.

        Are you thought, or are you that which is aware of thought? Are you sensation (body) or are you that which is aware of sensation? Are you the taste of tea, or that which is aware of the taste of tea? That which is aware is awareness itself, consciousness, knowing, three words for the same non-subjective experience.

        Try this. Have you ever experienced anything that was not in awareness? Could you ever experience anything if it was not in awareness? Has anyone ever experienced anything that was outside of awareness? Try now, to experience something outside your awareness?

        So how do you know there is a world outside of awareness? QM is indirectly asking this question empirically, and the wave function & other discoveries are shining on consciousness.

        This stuff is a lot of fun

        • Great conversation going on here. My beef is that people pigeon hole things, especially when they dress up speculations as “facts” (global warming, anyone?). Not only is it wrong-o but it inhibits the free thinking that comes up with new ideas and speculations. To pretend that something unknown or partially understood is “fact” or “settled” is a crime against our intelligence.

    • Btw the primacy of consciousness sounds very Buddhist. All is mind, all is empty.

      I smell a rat.

      If this is where science is taking us it’s one more reason for extreme skepticism.

      Personally I’m into dualities: God/Satan, good/evil, man/woman, mind/body, reason/emotion, life/death, light/darkness. They’re everywhere and their interplay is creative. I can imagine a universe of oneness being a very cold place.

      It probably sounds occultic but as long as you remember evil is something to fight it’s almost perfectly Christian. Without evil there’s no reason to discriminate or seek the good.

      • Re the primacy of consciousness – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

        • Yes Kw, this is the last thing physists want to be discovered. Imagine having to tell world culture after they indoctrinated all that God is dead and that the physical world is made of dead stuff called matter – then having to admit their interpretation was wrong, completely, fundamentally.

          Admitting they have empirical evidence proving it is this spiritual like stuff called consciousness that brings everything into appearance that we call reality.

          In religious terms they would be saying not only God created the world, but he did more than just set it in motion, He is the foundation “substance” if you will, that is the moment by moment continuing Revelation of Creation.

        • At the risk of getting theological, if this is even theological and not simply logical, where I get hung up is the notion that creation can happen if everything is of one substance. You could come to the conclusion that we’re all just aspects of God— even Satan would be. Then obeying God is a contradiction, and the fight against evil is a rebellion. Any differences or distinctions would ultimately be in error. Creation would be an illusion, at least to my mind, and that would lead to nihilism.

          There is the Creator and His creation. They’re distinct but related. We’re not God but we’re created by Him in His image. It’s the distinction that leads me to think in dualities.

          I’ve always read that passage as a reference to Jesus (the Word). It’s a statement of His divinity, not a description of the nature of divinity. But I’m not a theologian so take that for what it’s worth.

          Anyway, lively discussion. Thanks all, I’ve enjoyed it!

  21. I am operating under the assumption that Trump wins fairly easily next year and muddle through 4 more years somewhat like the last. I think the mid-2o’s is when things may take a very nasty turn.

  22. Imma go out on a limb and say 2020 is the year the Democrats implode. The GOP will continue with one sleepy foot in chamber-of-commercialism and one sleepy foot in milquetoast nationalism. Trump will win. If I’m right, the Dems will splinter. I don’t think they’ll be trounced like Labour was, but hatreds run deep among leftists. Trump’s win will turn the Dems into an uncomfortable pairing of the socialist left (“AOC”) and the nationalist left (“Gabbard”) and limousine libs like Pelosi and Biden will be finally discredited. The 2020s will see which flavor of leftism wins out.

    Meanwhile, the dissident right will get stronger and probably help Trump win again, accidentally, but instead of cheerleading him it will be exposing LIES. The d-right is stronger in the long term but weaker in the short. People on our side should start thinking of running for small political offices and boards.

    • The Dims are so ripe for self immolation that it’s a testimony to the the stunning stupidity of the GOP that they remain solvent.
      Foe example. Importing a Kenyan into the US increases his output of “greenhouse gas” emissions by a factor of 15.
      US immigration policy is a major contributor to this vital planetary crisis and not a word from the “right”.
      Anybody can come up with half a dozen of these in fifteen minutes.

      • At what point does it become obvious that the republi-frauds are not being stupid, they are in on it. They Want third world immigration as much as the left. On the major issues we have a uni-party.

  23. I’m going to predict that Hillary runs again, Joe Biden says something and does something stupid, and that Chocolate Jesus continues to keep his mouth shut because he was involved with the spying on Trump.

    • Nah, the entire group of candidates would have to die in a plane crash before Hillary would run again. They will ignore an interesting candidate who could actually beat Trump for a centrist snoozer who “polls well in Michigan”. I still think Warren or Biden is the best bet.

      • “the entire group of candidates would have to die in a plane crash”

        Don’t give Her Majesty any ideas, Mr. Wellstone, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Who-was-it-last-week?

    • I’ve heard through the grapevine that Gavin Newsom is monitoring things closely. He’s probably planning on 2024 but Wetbackifornia is decaying rapidly. Waiting another 4 years may put him in the position of having to explain why California has gone full third world shithole. If the demo convention goes full chimpout he may decide now is better than later. Today he has Trump as a foil. 4 years from now it’s explaining California. He’s arrogant and ambitious without being all that smart.

      Maybe as Joe’s “can do” VP. Joe resigns for health reasons after a year. He sees the window closing. He’s always been impulsive.

      • I cannot be the only one who gets a bad taste in her mouth from Trump Jr. snuggling with Gavin’s half Puerto Rican ex. Talk about bad taste.

  24. Happy New Year to Z-man, readers and commenters. May we all be prepared for what’s to come. Looking forward to the long-awaited Z-book sometime this year perhaps…?

    On the Facebook thing, I think it’s a generational thing. People of a certain age, such as our host and myself, were around to witness the birth and evolution of the internet and social media. Hell, I remember when I was a college student giving presentations to other students on “this is email”. Seems so long ago. Younger generations have always had it and can’t imagine a world without it. To them, it’s just so obvious. The proven ineffectiveness of social media advertising simply doesn’t compute.

    • A related tidbit re generational things – I’m sure you’ve seen videos of modern kids trying to figure out how to use an old rotary phone, or various other ‘primitive’ technology. Well, my friend told me a new one. When making cookies with her niece, said niece (16) didn’t know how to use the electric can opener, because everything is a pop-top now. Made me laugh, because I had to learn how to use a manual can opener when I went to England in 1980, having grown up with the electric version.

    • Maybe if the upper middle class (phonies) suffer. Proles are already wide awake by the tens of millions but we don’t matter.

      On the bright side I look forward to mocking the people who think I’m racist once they get it. That’s about all I can reasonably look forward to. I just hope it doesn’t come too late to salvage something worthwhile.

      In spite of it, I’m very optimistic.

    • That is certainly one the Zman was way, way ahead on. The bigs are plagiarising his ideas, so good on you, Z, if this becomes a preference cascade.

      I sperged out a tad yesterday, because I’ve stepped foot in a lot of industries and have watched how the immigrants build resiliant back-bench communities.

      Carving out niche spaces as an anchor for one’s people to attract and form families is community. They do it within the system as it is.

      Since we’re the refugees now, it’s time to start exploring what can be done. Social organizing, not for political-corporate activism, but to stake our places.

      I didn’t mean to sound all high-falutin’, but I’m getting ideas. I intend to try a bit more professional approach with goals in mind, and invite you better, smarter people to do the same.

      And a Happy New Year to our host and his legions! Zman, I predict you having a larger effect than you’ll ever get credit for.

    • Whinging about socialism is the boomer cuck’s crying call. Millions of foreigners invade our land and these losers are whining about muh socialism. JC, give me a break.

      • Notice how you never see a demographic breakdown of these alarmist “Young People Support Socialism!” surveys?

      • In fairness they grew up in thick of the cold war. Economics was everything. They got some serious indoctrination and that’s the lens they see everything through. Maybe the refugee thing is a perversion of the Marshall plan mentality. Americans sacrifice, but hey we’re trying to create good capitalists. Looks ridiculous to younger people, but I think that’s what’s going on. All this CivNat talk is the sugar coating of market worship.

        With that said it takes a lot not to get upset.

    • Maybe. But even this article (and its writer) are trapped in the past. The writer still believes that we are in Ideological Age when we have moved to the Demographic Age. That’s the great divide between us and Joe Normie conservative/Republican.

      The Left made that journey long ago. The Right hasn’t.

      • The right might as well be called the old left because thats what it amounts to. DR might as well be called the real right.

    • That was a great article, Josh. Thanks for the link. It’s encouraging that many folks (our Z-man and Tucker especially) are beginning to “notice” that the system is rigged against us.

  25. With regards to sports, I do know of at least one semi-reliable barometer.

    The Huwitest of sports, the NHL, bases it’s salary cap on “hockey related revenue,” which is essentially 3 things:

    -ticket sales
    -merch sales
    -national & local tv monies

    Those 3 are totaled up, divided in half, then divided again by 31 (the number of teams) and that’s how much each team gets to spend on salaries.

    I mention this because the NHL is suddenly becoming “woke”, firing coaches over decade-old accusations and putting on rainbow stick tape days. If the salary cap doesn’t grow, that means regular white folks aren’t buying tickets and merch.

    Initial projections show the 20-21 cap going up by about 1.5%, or about half of what it had been in recent years.

    Will a league headed by a guy named Gary Bettman care?

    • What % of capacity (either ticket sales or bums in the seats) does the NHL play to? I’d guess it varies widely from North to South. Went to a Ranger game a few weeks ago- packed, to see an average club. Expensive, though.
      The creeping wokeness is annoying. We are now at the point where every negative interaction between a white and a POC is defined as racism.

    • It’s interesting to see the NHL and NBA floating shorter seasons and weird playoff scenarios. The NBA is starting to really hemorrhage empty seats because fans know that the regular season is a farce. Very few teams have a shot to win a championship. I live in Minnesota and the NHL season goes forever, by the time the playoffs come around we are getting outside again. The NFL has 16 games to concentrate on and teams can turn it around very quickly because of the short life span of players. I’m an MLB guy, although I don’t know Spanish.

      • Most pro sports were originally treated as carnival acts, like going to the circus or the county fair. Something to do, hang out with friends, and take in the things you see, that you don’t see every day. The way sports embedded themselves into the culture, led by baseball, is a 20th century thing. Think of pro sports returning to their carny roots (it’s a show, not a competition), and you won’t be far off. But this time around, the internet and the rest of the culture offer a lot of alternatives. Pro sports will likely fall into the corners, a small shell of what they once were, just as the circus has gone. Sports will be played in schools and neighborhoods, among friends, as they once were done.

        If I owned a billion dollar sports team, I would be selling it, today, for cash, no paper. The peak of the sports team market is here. The Yankees and the Cowboys will always be worth a lot, but who wants to pay up for the New Orleans Pelicans? Can you even name the sport they play? The Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals are the true nature of pro sports, and always have been. It’s a show, not a sport. The likes of Vince Lombardi, Johnny Unitas, and Larry Bird, among others, ennobled pro sports for a while, but that is all over now. Tom Brady is leaving the building.

    • One of my unofficial armchair barometers of the decline is the ‘success’ of the NBA.

      Until the average white man stops paying attention to basketball, the brainwashing suicidal impulse is still robust.

      At least the NFL maintains some flag-waving and tailgaiting and appeals to regional legacy and clannish nostalgia to keep the rotund wing-eaters mostly content.

      But the NBA is full ghetto, full idolization of the dark dominance. There is nothing appealing about it for average white guy. Yet the worship rages on.

      I find it disappointing when my friends chatter on about the NBA. Its strange to me. But then so much about dimension B is strange to me.

      I keep hoping the NBA tanks. But I guess it really is the one sport that is the culmination of white submission, which seems to have plenty of runway left.

      I like the NHL metric too. Lotsa nordic goodwhites tho. I don’t see NHL fans putting up much resistance to the pozz when they do finally get targeted.

      A nice white couple live next door. Mid 20’s. No children. Sports fans. Attend church. From Minnesota. They like to play ghetto rap music. They even “sing” along.

      Would they resist a blackened NHL?

      • The NHL will always be a white sport with white players. Buying ice time and new skates every year for growing young players is a huge barrier to entry. A shared basketball and school yard is much more accessible for the vibrant.

        • The majority of players and enthusiasts will remain White, certainly. But not the commentators or reporters or managers. You will soon have Raju telling you which team to back. The vibrancy/wokeness is transmitted via the (((ones))) with the shekels. Yes, in Canada (and Argentina, and Australia and . . . ).

      • It will always be a white sport.

        But it will go from a tough, conservative white sport to a virtue signalling, leftist, soft white sport.

        Think of how annoying white liberals are. At least as bad as Tyrone de’Jackson of the NBA.

    • Sad but this good Canadian boy no longer watches.

      I still play religiously, though. Nobody likes the poz moving in, it’s mostly conservatives, but I don’t see much resistance either. But they do not follow the nhl nearly as much now.

      The truth is that hockey was pozzed long before this. It had been getting softer year after year anyways.

  26. the economics stuff is easier to predict than the political stuff. 2020 is anyone’s race. Look at how Howard Dean in 2004 or Hillary in 2008 seemed so strong initially, only to fail.

      • trump’s problem, in spite of the strong economy and stock market, is that he is just not that popular, at least not compared to past incumbents such as Reagan, Obama, Clinton, etc. His approval still stuck in the low 40s according to 538. The nice thing about the electoral college is that is works so heavily to trumps favor. 2016 showed that polls are of only limited predictive ability. Converting an approval rating to a probability of a binary outcome more of an art than science.

        • Friend, If the economy were “strong” they wouldn’t be printing money and monetizing the debt at record levels.

      • The other Trump problem is that many of those in positions to replace him, or in positions to influence the vote (registrars, attorneys general, etc.), hate his guts, hate the system as it is currently constructed, and have no compunctions about tearing everything down or cheating on a wholesale level.

        As has been stated here before, power is the measure of success for these people, and going around the rules or flat out gaming the system is a feature, not a bug. If it stirs up conflict and violence, all the better, because it is about tearing everything down and rebuilding it in a way that they prefer. They want Portland Oregon, San Francisco, and NYC. That’s why the bevy of Democratic presidential choices is such a clown show. It is a clown show by design, with the goal of getting someone moderate but old and fragile like Biden (or Hillary) into the presidency, where they can then nod off and resign, handing the position to some radical VP that our country would never elect directly.

        These people are not about popular mandates, the proper way of going about things, or consideration of the other people living in this country, as we are. It is all about power, any way it can be grabbed, and tearing it all down. Do not judge them by your own way of seeing things, there is anger and hatred and thinly veiled violence afoot, and we need to be prepared for it. 2020 is going to be an interesting year, IMHO, a culmination of many different and evil things in motion.

      • Don’t forget that Trump won narrowly and didn’t win the popular vote. His victory depends entirely on the voters in a handful of swing states. The Dems are probably working on how to cheat there. That’s all it takes for him to lose.

        • Yup. That’s why the uncertainty. All the same I’m not picking up the same enthusiasm the left had the last couple of years. They might stay home, which would make cheating difficult, and Trump might actually get the popular vote this time.

          • Painter, Line, he got it last time.
            Crook County, IL reported 3 million under and the MSM ran with it.

            The NSA, with their slightly better database, reported Trump had won the popular vote, also, by 12 million. Crickets.

          • On that note, who actually certifies federal elections? Or is it some kind of informal tally of state-certified results?

        • The Dems have been working on cheating there for the last four years. There’s no doubt they want no surprises in 2020 like there were in 2016. The repukes, in contrast, have done their usual zilch re voter fraud. As far as turnout, I expect a lot of disappointed 2016 Trump supporters to stay home, but that won’t matter except in those swing states. Hard to predict. If he wins, it will be by a razor’s edge.

  27. Great job this past year Z-man … I can’t fathom how you come up with a thoughtful topic every day, let alone the penetrating analysis on each of those topics. Kudos, and blessings on your 2020 endeavors. Hope the end of this year finds you safely out of Lagos.

    As for the economic prognostications, that’s a near-impossibility because of the shear irrationality of Fed policy. All we can know for sure is that it’s a house of cards … and gravity always wins.

    As for the Democratic nomination, my prediction is that the eventual nominee will be a progressively woke, geriatric nutjob.

    As for the firm of Barr & Durham, I wish them a highly productive 2020.

  28. Look on the bright side. There is an entire punditocracy that makes a great living being wrong 95% of the time. That’s a pretty damn good record on your part. In London next week, kind of looking forward to doing some “man on the street” assessment of Boris and Brexit. However, will keep the small trauma kit with me. Seems Israeli bandages, quick clot, and chest seals come in handy more and more frequently there.

    Happy New Year!

      • Should be interesting. Haven’t been there for 18 months. Usually like to take long walks in free time–biggest change last time was the number of neighborhoods closer to the “City” that are a lot more vibrant and dicey. Twenty years ago I’d think nothing of walking after dinner in the Trafalgar area back to my hotel near Tower Bridge. No more.

        • There are no poor residential neighbourhoods between Trafalgar square and Tower bridge-at least north of the Thames.

          It’s very expensive real estate so mostly offices, restaurants, and expensive residential.

          Have you actually ever been to London?

          • Au contraire, mon frère. Of course there are no poor neighborhoods. But the change in who’s on the street at night is marked. Now will confess, last time was for a conference held over at the Tate Modern (the “Tanks” are probably the weirdest conference venue ever, but I digress). Normally I spend my time in the close vicinity of Leadenhall St, will let you figure out why. But the vibe just walking along the promenade was weird and weirder a few blocks in from the Thames. Have tours of duty in Chicago, Detroit, Philly and NYC under my belt so spider sense is pretty damn good.

        • I haven’t been back to visit since 1981, and probably wouldn’t be allowed in even if I had any desire to enter. My friend’s English husband hasn’t been back in over five years; he has no desire to even visit and see what diversity has increasingly wrought (nor to go unarmed and mute among it).
          England, along with ancient Greece and Rome, was the cradle of our civilization. Its destruction is just one more thing to be enraged about.

    • We in Britain talk about our violent crime in the media more than you lot so it can appear that London is a warzone. It isn’t .
      London is ,by American standards, a safe city.

      Save your Israeli bandages for your shining city upon a hill.

      • So “Meeeee”…
        sounds like you haven’t been to the “shining city upon the hill” in a while.
        AKA The Imperial Capital to which Zman refers.
        While our region is browning, there are only, thus far, pockets of muzloids.
        Whereas in Londonistan, the muzloids are out in force, at night esp, like cockroaches.
        It sounds like SamlAdams has some good experience with dicey areas.
        Maybe you will consider additional situational awareness, IF you live in Jolly old England.

    • Canvassing opinions on Boris Johnson and Brexit in London is rather like asking for views on Donald Trump in New York.

  29. My prediction didn’t happen but from my latest observations using my trusty Celestron telescope, the major earth changing event will occur this year. Yup, one big rock headed our way.

    • With regards to the stars, will this be the year they align correctly to allow great Cthulhu to leave his house at R’yleh and give his Cult of nonwhites dominion over the Earth?

        • I’d prefer his granddad, Yog-Sothoth:

          “Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.“

      • The momentum and fury that builds in that song is almost unbearable.

        I felt like Maynard when I lived in CA. Appropriately, I saw Tool in Berkeley.

        “I’m praying for rain
        I’m praying for tidal waves
        I wanna see the ground give way
        I wanna watch it all go down”

      • Netherworld?
        A few times, I’ve experienced a white flash, in a blink, and I mutter to myself-

        “Aww, sh*t. Just jumped universes again.”

    • Nature is on our side in more ways than simply innate biological preferences and instincts…

      An under reported story of the past 2 years has been the “Big Chill”. The largest drop in global temperatures in over a century.

      In tropical and subtropical areas when temps drop to below 50 degrees F, microorganisms that are present but dormant become active. This is beginning to have an effect. Influenza, associated with a viral infection in temperate climates, has begun to break out in the tropics. Bangladesh is currently monitoring an outbreak.

      We are just entering a solar minimum period so global temps may continue to drop. We’re probably going to hear a lot more about this along with endless demands for more and more wealth transference to the South as more and more brown people begin dying from diseases they have no natural defences against. This will also affect the less hardy of our own populations. We’ll hear more and more demands to save tropical peoples by moving them to Minnesota, Maine and Scandinavia – as they cool as well. Should be interesting.

      The divinity school dropout has already begun mustering his troops and blaming CO2 for this new inverse trend…the exact opposite of where he began his climate hustle.

      This will be the new manipulated crusade in the coming years. All of it due to white supremacist’s CO2 privilege and their social construct of the influenza viruses.

      If this cooling trend does continue nature will have dealt use a very useful wildcard.

    • Nothing new under the sun. Always a few in each generation that wake up to a black pill laying on the bedside table. In our community, appoint me as the official fortune teller black pilling with predictions of our future: (1942 “Skin Of Our Teeth”-Thornton Wilder). No wonder fortune tellers ended up in the stocks!

      FORTUNE TELLER:
      “I tell the future. Nothing easier. Everybody’s future is in their face, Nothing easier. But who can tell your past, —eh? Nobody! Your youth, —where did it go? It slipped away while you weren’t looking. While you were asleep, or distracted? Puh! You’re like our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus; you lie awake nights trying to know your past. What did it mean? “What should I have done differently?” Think! Think! Split your heads, I can’t tell the past and neither can you. But I can tell the future. A stroke!

      Nobody listens. I see a face among you now. I won’t embarrass him by pointing him out, but listen, Death by regret. Next year you’ll decide you should have lived for pleasure, but it’s too late. Death by regret, —Type A! Avoid mirrors.

      And now what’s the immediate future of our friends, the Antrobuses? Oh, you’ve seen it as well as I have. You know as well as I what’s coming. Rain. Rain. Rain in floods. Oceans rising. The deluge. But first you’ll see shameful things —shameful things. I can see it in your faces. But you’re wrong. It’s you who won’t get a place in the boat. Again there’ll be the narrow escape. The survival of a handful. From destruction —total destruction.

      But a few will be saved: two of each kind, male and female, two of each kind. It’s too late now —you’re bailing out the Titanic with spoons.”

      Happy New Year! Enjoy your fruitcake and sherry! See you next year.

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