A good rule that no one anywhere follows, is to contemplate the consequences of being wrong before doing something. For example, if legislatures had to post a wrongness analysis for every bill before they could be voted on, at least some of the terrible ideas would get stopped before becoming law. Of course, that is probably why such a thing can never happen, at least in a democracy. New ideas are about hope and nothing is worse than dashing the reformer’s hope for the future.
Even so, thinking about wrongness has its utility. For example, many people on the Right still cling to the idea that government cannot keep borrowing money. Going back to the 1980’s, perhaps even further, conservatives have been predicting that there is some limit to government debt. Ronald Reagan ran on this idea in 1980, when the Federal debt stood at $900 billion. Forty years later and the debt is $23 trillion, a number so large no one can imagine it.
Maybe there is no limit to debt. Maybe what conservatives think they know about public debt is wrong and disaster is not around the corner. If this were anything else, that’s how you would bet. If the weather had been sunny for forty years, despite daily forecasts calling for showers, you would have stopped listening to the weatherman a long time ago. Sure, he may be right eventually, but forty years of being wrong still counts for a lot. Maybe conservatives are just wrong about debt too.
Similarly, what if the growth of the state is not going to lead to a citizen revolt against a tyrannical government. This is another chestnut from the so-called conservatives that dates back to the age of Reagan. He ran on the argument that the government was the problem, not the solution. The per capita spending of government, in constant dollars, is close to double what it was in the Reagan years. That’s with the U.S. population growing by more than half in that same period.
Now, in fairness, there has been a negative result to this massive expansion of the state over the last forty years. It’s not that people are angry that it does too much, but that it does too little. This is true all over the West. The populist revolts are fueled by demands that the government do more to address the concerns of the people. It turns out that everyone was wrong about the size of government. The bigger it gets, the worse it gets at doing the basics and that’s what gets people angry.
How about multiculturalism? An axiom in dissident politics is that diversity plus proximity equals conflict. Many of the same people saying that were wrong about the deficits and the growth of government. Maybe they are wrong about this too. Maybe they are wrong in entirely different ways. What we know so far is the importation of fifty million barbarians has not caused the empire to collapse. It’s made society more fragile, for sure, but collapse is not in the cards, at least so far.
How about something closer to home? Many people on this side of the great divide, especially the former alt-right, are sure Trump is going down to defeat in the 2020 election. They argue that his pandering to civic nationalists, non-whites and Baby Boomers is alienating his real base. Further, they argue that he won in 2016 by getting racially aware whites out to vote. It is a gratuitous assertion, for sure, but it is a common argument on this side of the great divide. What if it is wrong?
Trump, despite his many faults, has proven to be a natural political athlete, one we have not seen in a long time. This is a guy who does everything wrong, according to political convention, yet comes out smelling like a rose. Remember when everyone said WW3 was upon us when he droned the Iranian general? How about those predictions about impeachment? He begged the Democrats to follow through with impeachment and here he is more popular than ever. Maybe he knows something.
It is very possible that Trump does know what he is doing with all the pandering to blacks, Hispanics, one-legged lesbian Elvis impersonators and so on. Further, maybe the votes of the alt-right, white nationalists, racially aware whites and so forth really don’t count for a whole lot in elections. It may be an uncomfortable thought, but in a wrongness analysis, it has to be a possibility. The evidence is pointing in that direction, so maybe all of these folks are wrong about Trump.
Inaction is largely based on the belief of some inevitability that no one dares question, because it is comforting. Generations of conservative white people voted Republican, based on their assumptions about debt and the size of government. That vote was not action, but inaction. They comforted themselves in the belief that inevitability would be the ultimate cure. It turns out that nothing is inevitable in the affairs of man. Things happen because men make them happen.
The other side of this, the people trying to harness the forces of society, never stop to wonder if they are wrong. As they work to gain control of events, they are so certain in their righteousness they resemble fanatics. They never wonder if they are wrong. They know they are on the right side of history. As Bertrand Russel put it, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
That is the place to start for all dissidents. What if we’re wrong? What if all of the critiques of and arguments for cosmopolitan globalism are wrong? What then? That’s start of the journey in search of an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. It is not only the questioning of conventional wisdom, but the questioning of the critics of the conventional wisdom. Maybe the reason for the current crisis is that everyone was wrong about the new world order that emerged after the Cold War.
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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!
Invert, always invert.
What if we’re wrong about multi-everything destroying society? Well, then things turn out okay. But if the other side is wrong, we’ll get Yugoslavia or Zimbabwe.
The multi-everything bet is insanely stupid. If you win, you get the same society you would have had if you didn’t invite millions of non-whites into the country, i.e. you don’t win anything. If you lose, you get the Dark Ages.
The onus is on them, not us. We want to not change anything and they want to completely change everything. Not imposing radical changes is the default position. I suppose it is somewhat fair to say that we now want to reverse, at least partially, all of the evil changes we were unable to stop. But I still think it is way more justified and less likely to be wrong than those radical changes were. Another thing is these radicals will be more or less correct, right up until the moment they are proved wrong. The fact that some evil… Read more »
Sure. Until you hit the brick wall, the car is travelling along swimmingly. Part of the difficulty is that in civilizational terms, things happen slowly. Rome was not built in a day; nor was it destroyed in one.
Chesterton’s Fence
They are Chesterson and his fence now. That’s what commenting while the enemy waged war gets us.
Wait a moment; what do you mean the “onus” is on them, not us. The Onus of the Onerous is most certainly on US, my fellow beasts of burden. > this is Boxer saying the onus is on the Pigs. No, slave the onus is on us. And we’re the ones who want to change things, we are screaming to change course before the ship wrecks. They have the ship, most of the crew – we are “passengers” in the not so comfortable hold. The onus is on them. Jesus. The onus stopped being on them no later than 1965.… Read more »
I like the way you think, VXXC and Zman…..that very large ship has already set its course….we are the one’s initating change of direction…..also, we must ALWAYS wonder if we’re wrong in our accessment… 😁
There is not rights or wrongs, it is only time. Society is a enormous survival system It took 74 years, 50 million dead and horrific material damage for Soviet Union to collapse. Ukraine farmers in 1933 wondered, how the country can survive without the farmers. After 6 million Ukrainian farmers and 10 million other population dead, it came out that very well. We won the war, got nuclear bomb and sent first person into space. There is so few pro white people that Donald may ignore them. US is not Poland or Hungary. US has a great land mass. It… Read more »
Great response. There’s a widespread belief here (the most sober minded place on the internet) about the limits the vast majority of people will accept as society goes downhill. The limit is much greater than they realize.
There’s no limit.
Without organization, leaders there are no movements and never one revolt or riot. Not one, ever.
Look the enemy is the official polite society, the everything…the state, the official religion. They ARE INEVITABLE, they exist.
We don’t. We’re a wish, we don’t exist. We’d have to organize to exist.
Brings to mind Pascal’s Wager, concerning the question of atheism. Is there a God? What would be the consequences of my answer? He concluded it was wiser to wager a little bit now, in order to win a big payoff later.
Yep. I thought of using Pascal’s Wager.
Another analogy is trending following. Make a lot of little bets. Cut your losers quickly and let your winners run. The multi-everything bet is the opposite. It’s one giant bet and you ride to the grave.
As did Voltaire on his deathbed.
First, I will disagree with your statement that noone follows the rule. Second, I will admit that my perspective is a tad pedestrian and not as urbane as some others. I am not one of those that cannot see the forest for the trees, I am that guy that cannot see the forest for THE TREE. It is a sort of tunnel vision that hampers me in some ways, but has allowed me to solve a large number of real problems that have been described as impossible. I wrote software for my entire adult life. Some of that code managed… Read more »
When being wrong gets people killed, moral men take extra care to look down the path for consequences. Gets to be a habit. Drives my wife nuts, too, that I examine decisions even of moderate import this way.
This is also the life of an engineer. When we make a mistake, something usually fails, and then bridges fall down. You can’t fix that with eloquent rhetoric.
“Mistakes were made but it’s time to move on” as they fish bodies of your parents and their car from the bottom of the river.
This is absolutely a way of life for a physician, wondering what could go wrong. I can’t prescribe penicillin without remembering a patient I saw who died from it many years ago.
So much so that I always wonder WTF when I meet physicians who are on the left. Primum non nocare and all that.
TRD, We all make decisions with the information we have at hand. The only way that should bother you was if that person knew they had a penicillin allergy and it wasn’t conveyed to you.
Physicians are mostly socialists now because they want, and are getting, someone other than their patients to pay for their services. As a profession, medicine is dead, until the money printing ends and government-funded “healthcare “ collapses. Then you will see the true heirs of Hippocrates.
Eveything living dies. The only thing separating man from other mortal animals is our “eloquent rhetoric.” And “First, do no harm” as a credo or principle of action is a stirling example of just such rhetoric. We may be hardwired to do wrongfulness analysis, but it frequently turns out to be woefully inadequate.
henry kissinger is testing that theory to its limits
One of the great 19th century thinkers wrote that it is the quiet men who carry civilization and the loud who reap the benefit.
Good points. If only politics had as much concern for likely consequences. As Z (?) and others well note, this is the exact opposite of how a democracy works, in fact would penalize any politico who dared to value the long-term costs over the short-term payoff for him and those who bought him. I think the best we can hope for is a benevolent dictator.
Maybe the demise of Rush Limbaugh is also symbolic. The old normycon world is giving sway to the pozzed world we are in now. No matter what is coming, it surely isn’t going to be better but on the contrary, life will be worse compared to previous generations.
As for the debt, maybe you are right, but once America ceases to be a world power those trillions will mean something.
Yep. Reality can be deferred… but it can’t be denied.
Maybe the pot of warm water we are in is hotter than we will admit. Yes, even us red pilled people.
We can’t even imagine how hot that pot is going to get. The world is in the middle of info and bio revolution. Two previous techno revolutions caused unmeasured changes to societies: invention of iron giving birth to agrarian age, and resulting late bronze age destructions. 3000 yrs later Industrial revolution. It brought Civil war here. In Europe — WWI, Russian revolution and WWII as a result of unsettled accounts of WWI. It’s not a coincidence that the USSR fell almost immediately after fax machines were introduced there, and an uncontrolled flow of info flooded the country that violently supervised… Read more »
Nothing to Notice here – just mysterious technological earthquakes tearing up your societies.
Nothing to do with imported subversives who aggressively lobby for more earthquakes, sell earthquake insurance and lobby for earthquake gibs, always managing to come out ahead.
Nope, just the enigmatic march of Progress. What’s a goy to do but accept the changes, amirite?
In Ex-America Garrett wrote of the Frankfurt School Jews coming to America–The American vista must have been almost as incredible as Genghis Khan’s first view of China–so rich, so unaware. Why should anyone fear government?
Its cruel and cynical suspicion of any motive but its own was a reflection of something it knew about itself. Its voice was the voice of righteousness; its methods therefore were more dishonest than the simple ways of corruption.
Its not just the Subversives though there is a hell of a lot of Subversion going on. The current social order people like you and I are Noticing is when “Nice” Christianity’s evangelicalism/world healing tendencies meets Tech. Hell the entirety of modernity has been a disaster for every stable social order. Is a trap though Every single modern society has dangerously low fertility rates and that spreads into every society that can afford ubiquitous television. The Mouse Utopia will win. Subversion speeds this up but the TFR went low well before the culture was nearly as fracked as it is… Read more »
What caused me to wonder about this was Venezuela. Yes there’s “a lot of ruin in a nation”, but I didn’t think there was that much in a place like Venezuela. For instance, they held onto their currency way past the point when it obviously dead spec walking. If that place could hold on to thinking they were a high-end country ten years longer than they should have, then we probably have it in us to do it for a century.
The debt means something, and we would be better off without it. However, there is no competition for sole superpower or world’s currency. To the world, we are too big to fail. Think about it this way. If you have a loan from a bank, the bank can come and take what you own. But what if the US defaults? Is China going to take over our oil fields? The world is more at risk from our debt than we are. Thus, interest rates will remain low because they have to. The world will eventually run out of capacity to… Read more »
So then what is the timeline for whites going below 20%? Because that’s when the final solution (so to speak) – will finally come into full view. If that 20% number is not due to be reached for another 30 years – well then might as well shut this site down, because all that’s really happening here is a bunch of intellectual masturbation, none of which will be remembered when the inflection point comes where the problem can finally be resolved. Nothing is “too big to fail”. The history of the world is littered with the ruins of empires that… Read more »
I’m not saying we should do nothing and wait for it to collapse. I just don’t see an effective solution on the horizon. If you have one, count me in 100%. Tea Party movements come and go, and both parties keep spending. I agree with you as far as the US pushing wealth out to its colonies. How brilliant was Spain to unload Puerto Rico on us. PR gets bailed out of natural disasters and free US citizenship. I still cannot comprehend what we get out of it.
The U.S.’s brief flirtation with imperialism (Philippines, Hawaii, etc.) quickly reached its limits, and just as well. Alas: we substituted a through-the-looking-glass anti-empire. Resources now flow from the mother country to the former colonies. Puerto Rico, for instance — thanks to a brief moment of foolishness in the Spanish-American War. We should have told Puerto Rico, “Sorry, we messed up, here’s your country back plus some money to pay for the damages. Best of luck.” Instead it has become our perpetual child. It’s not really benevolence. It’s always been an advertisement to the world that we are so flipping rich… Read more »
You can be assured China is playing the long game, and knows if they can keep their regime stable for another 30 years they will not only be a world power, but the sole world power.
The mandarins are indeed playing the long game, but the Chinese are also known for their lack of self-awareness. In all the history of China their dynasties never rose above the limits of the Chinese resevoir, because they are Chinese. Only the many complexities of Europeans drove them to greater and greater heights. The Chinese have no complexities. Fools like Thomas Freidman see this as their strenth, which it is, and he envies that. He cannot see the flip side to th erule of a small elite because that would require a curious mind.
The mafia can run its protection racket only for as long as it is the top dog in town. Lose that position and the racket goes bust. In that sense, I understand how Russia can be a threat – they are doing things that take a long view towards eventual superiority (supporting family, nationalism, religion; removing degeneracy).
Rush Limbaugh is not easily replaced for civ Nat’s. Trump is not easily replaced for civ Nat’s. We are currently in peak civ Nat. We can see the end of Rush’s career coming. We can see the end of Trump in 2024. The Progs and Obama’ didn’t have an answer after Obama. They still don’t. Yet. At this point I don’t think the Civ Nats have an answer after Trump? I don’t think it’s Pence. Tucker if they are wise. Not sure Tucker has the donor money behind him and unlike Trump Tucker will need financing. 2024 is the big… Read more »
Germany once had an unpayable debt. Guess what, they didn’t pay it. Times were tough for eight years or so, but no one starved (we would benefit from some starving) and they were the first out of the Great Depression. Perhaps we could recognize it is the forever debt spending and it’s fiat money that enables the unlimited resourses committed by the deep state to end this previous civilization.
what would America defaulting on its debt look like? that can only mean one thing: devaluing the USD. as of 2018, $6.3 trillion in USD are held by foreign Central Banks. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22331.pdf sure, Uncle Sam could devalue and tell the Central Banks of the rest of the world to fuck off and if they have a problem with that, then come talk to our 2,021 ready-to-fire nuclear ICBMs. what could cause the US to devalue? i have no idea. because if the US did devalue, it could backfire and trigger a fire sale of US treasuries by foreign debt holders.… Read more »
There are plenty of historical and contemporary examples of what happens to governments that engage in massive currency devaluation, which is a necessary feature of maintaining unimaginable amounts of debt. Only the US dollar’s status as the world reserve currency protects us, and that status will not last forever. As both a software engineer and a rancher, I have spent my life dealing with “what can go wrong?” I annoy the hell out of my family with what they regard as meaningless rituals regarding things like gates: “Dad, there’s not even any animals in the farmyard. Why do we have… Read more »
Best comment I’ve read in quite some time.
Ditto.
With apologies to the heroes of FinTwit, who taught me.
When did we abandon the relationship between Taxation and Spending? Who was behind the Financialization of every aspect of the economy? (Otherwise known as the transfer of wealth from Labor to Capital.)
Once Pricing became a cartel (backed by the FDIC) the cost of everything went haywire. (Housing, College, etc.)
When Uncle Samiel is creating the currency out of thin air and digitally helicoptering it to his corporate cronies via the Fed, price is meaningless – even more so when that pretend currency is the world’s reserve Clown Coin.
This breakdown is why all of the fundamentals and laws can go off the rails yet we still have a superficially-functioning economy in a Frankenstein sense. It’s animate and goes through the motions of past economic activity, but something critical is missing.
Analysis paralysis came to mind for me when reading this as well. It’s advisable to check yourself regularly but the empirical evidence for human society points in (and away from) some consistent directions over our million years or so of history.
The odds that we’re going to discover a hidden or delayed-onset upside for Clown World are small. We haven’t got the biology that wrong and “because we live here” is a pretty robust social hueristic – a bit more sturdy and straightforward than the vast mega-volume mythology that the “Athens and Jerusalem” crowd is selling.
“… because we live here” is a pretty robust social hueristic …”
The American nation is now the largest people in the world not to have our own state. Our people are in possession of none of the control nodes (coinage, courts, media, manufacture of cultural products, etc) of our own civilization. We have been deliberately and systematically dispossessed.
“We have been deliberately and systematically dispossessed”
I say “conquered ” it hits harder.
“The Mandibles”. Lionel Shriver. Excellent fictional account of how Vizzini’s prognostications could play to.
This is both a good and bad post. Bad: this self doubt got us here. Leftie told us 20 years ago the queers only wanted the privacy of their own bedrooms. Yesterday Men like me couldn’t really argue that and acquiesced. Now we have queers in the bathroom, the schoolroom, the boardroom, the courtrooms… and 26 variants. And the legislation to protect their rights by undermining yours. More, much more is on the way according to the shitlibs and vibrants. Good: one of the reasons the alt right failed is that there was no room for self doubt or dissidents.… Read more »
Yeah, this was a pretty crappy Zman post.
Yeah. The voices in the wilderness are always right. From Isaiah to Enoch Powell it’s just they gather steam as they get closer and closer to fruition. We are the steam
I dunno if it is one of his worst or one of his best! 🙂 Reality can be deferred, but it can’t be dismissed. Sorry, the math says that you can’t keep borrowing forever and defaulting on payment. Healthcare proposals are just jazzed up pyramid schemes. Adding endless numbers of vibrant immigrants to your population, and giving them full access to social programs they never paid into will only end one way. And that is the tragedy in all this. Leftie has gotten so adept at feeding our fears and insecurities, that he even got us questioning obvious truths –… Read more »
Well Templar, I didn’t like the post either—at first—but now I believe I understand. People here are now thinking/questioning implicit/explicit assumptions and I’d say that was the intention of the post.
Not sure I am convinced of rightness or wrongness in beliefs discussed, but certainly timelines are called in question. Also, it helps to rebut some of the challenges made by Z-man by going back to first principles and reevaluating those.
I can question my belief that “diversity” is destructive and only discover that it is worse than I had supposed. But if we were not prepared to question our basic beliefs we would still be civic nationalist and that would be a sorry state to be stuck in.
I think it was a good post, occasional self-questioning if not doubt, is the price one pays for thinking for oneself. I agree w you about gays. I’m becoming less and less tolerant of them. I think there’s a reason they have been suppressed. When out in the open they bring cultural decay and sexual deviancy. Dislike for gays is probably a case of Chesterton’s fence.
There’s a strong insight here, Simba. I appreciate the invocation of Chesterton’s Fence: the assumption that a given thing exists for a reason, and until you’ve understood that reason you can’t judge whether to dispose of it or not. It seems to me that there are a lot of people who could and would tolerate individual gays, even defend them against outright prejudice, as long as homosexuality per se did not play a constitutive role in society. On the face of it that seems “unfair,” but in fact the necessary secrecy of gay life under the old dispensation may have… Read more »
Thanks. First it was ‘no discrimination against gays’. Uhm okay, sounds fair enough. Then it was gay ‘marriage’. Before I knew what was going on they were forcing people to bake them cakes. But where I blew a fuse was gay adoption and forcing school kids to hear that ‘gay is just as normal as ‘cis”. That’s perversion and that’s what this whole gay clown show looks like to me. In retrospect, asking for common decency and tolerance sure seems to have been the thin end of the wedge. This whole freak circus left me feeling like the nice guy… Read more »
Gays are just another aberrant group seeking validation from the wider, “normal” populace—the overwhelming, normative population. Nature promotes a general normalcy in all its species, or the species goes extinct. The problem is that we’ve left natural selection behind due to both technology and cultural rot. But as the saying goes, ‘You can’t fool mother nature’.
Like it or loathe it, this is the kind of post you’d only read on this blog. Very refreshing, counter-intuitive, and generative of a high-level of discussion. So thanks, Zman. Frankly, I feel (from recent experience that I wrote about yesterday in this forum) that one of the liabilities of leftists is that they’re so damn certain about their point of view. Often their certainties of today are different than those of five years ago, but no matter. They are certain they’re right in the moment, and any dissenting voice is therefore purposely obtuse or evil. It’s a real fragility… Read more »
This right here. You would never read or hear anything like this on a leftist site. An inability to have perspective is a sign of a weak mind.
I also liked it; to me it is a wise advice from a wise man.
As an aside related to Trump’s appealing to minority voters, Bob Weisberg had made the point that he is really trying to appeal to suburban whites, mainly females. They feel more comfortable voting for a party that is ostentatiously trying to appeal to blacks. It makes them feel more comfortable voting Republican.
It’s a definite possibility. On the other hand if he can pull 20% of blacks it’s over. Play it the same way, either outcome is a winner for him.
Trump getting 10% more of the black vote doesn’t impact many states on its own. Increasing and maintaining the gains he made among white voters makes a bigger impact in the electoral college.
Trump can’t “pull” 20% of blacks; it wouldn’t make any difference in the results if he could, and I’m pretty sure he knows that. He’ll win re-election in any case, be assured of that.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not a fan of the strategy because of the rhetoric/policy shift we’ve seen. I don’t like the compromises.
I’ve heard 20% of blacks is the magic number for Republican dominance. I assume it’s because of all the people (like white suburban women) who’d come with it.
Exactly
I think collapse is coming sooner than we think. Iowa was just an indication what happens when the Coalition of the ascendant get power and are in charge of things. Tyrannical governments work somewhat when it’s Chinese or Russian white people in charge but these people can’t run it. We are decriminalizing pretty much everything and the infrastructure is shutting down. I do totally agree that nobody is going to rise up against the government while there’s plenty of food but competent people are voluntarily turning the reins over to the incompetent. The question is, if any of that is… Read more »
Actually, competent people don’t want anything to do with the system. They avoid it at all costs and isolate themselves from the effects of a decadent civilization. They understand the futility of opposing the zeitgeist, and they have more important things to attend to than arguing with lefty. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would be considered a cranky old hermit.
Jefferson’s home is in the middle of nowhere, perhaps he anticipated what’s going on but happening a whole lot sooner.
I agree, Ep. I like to flatter myself that I am one such cranky hermit. I’m definitely not a Rand fan; but it’s well past time to go John Galt on the American experiment.
Jefferson was a cranky old hermit. That’s a good thing.
I don’t think there is going to be collapse, but if there is, the assumption is that those who lack guns and rations will be the first to go. No, it will be those who get sick.
But the thing is, we’re not wrong.
food for thought
The two sides are watching two different movies, as Scott Adams said (or, to use your example, living in different bespoke silos). Still, the fake sciences have a useful word, “inter-subjectivity,” to describe the state in which the movie you’re watching at least shares some of the general contours with the movie someone else is watching. Plainly, if two people see the same thing, it is less likely to be a hallucination. If America right now is a movie, most Republicans and independents are watching Trump up on screen fending off multiple thugs trying to waylay him in an alley;… Read more »
The crisis is in the matrix. Most of it is virtual. The real world effects won’t become acute until the dream world gets decided. Dreamers awake.
Sorry I know that’s obscure but it’s the best I’ve got right now 🙂
That’s too great Joey, an upvote isn’t enough.
The problem is bad things don’t matter until they do. The “what” is not hard to figure out, but the “when” and “how bad” are the tricky parts. We are also bombarded by those who benefit in the short run from us not dwelling on the “what” of bad things. Magical thinking has its beneficiaries, and those beneficiaries are the ones constantly telling us to avert our eyes and not believe what we can plainly see. All that said, constantly checking your assumptions is good practice. The respectful give and take with others is a great way to check and… Read more »
Here’s what I would ask all the never-Trump-ers,”What If You’re Wrong?” What if NOT voting for Trump results in Bernie or Creepy Joe or Fouxcahontas or even Butt-gig taking up residence at 600 Penn? Sure he is many things you loathe and despise, but he is NOT one thing you (hopefully) TRULY despise. He is NOT Bernie or Creepy Joe or Fouxcahontas or Butt-gig. However bad you may believe him to be for the nation, surely he is enormously BETTER than the alternative. Would you truly prefer one of the aforementioned crew running things with a fully DemonKKKRat-controlled legislature and… Read more »
my response to your question is that the Democrats will have a permanent electoral majority by 2024 anyway, and Bernie is an opportunity to put a uniquely unqualified and out of touch Octegenarian in place.
Very little will happen. We’ll still be in a ruinously expensive occupation of the Middle East. We’ll still be allowing ~3 million immigrants (legal/illegal/overstays) in a year and give them work permits. Immigration enforcement will remain at 1980 levels. De-platforming of “bad thinkers” will accelerate. “Quantitative Easing” or whatever they’re calling it this week will continue.
The fanatics are throwing sand, water and other debris into the machine betting the machine doesn’t break. All of the idiot lights are on, flashing bright red while everyone stands around amazed that the machine is still running. They will be right, right up to the moment the machine fails. When it fails, something other than sand, water and sundry debris will get the blame, perhaps someone forgot an oil change once.
Wrong.
The commie fanatics ARE outright attempting to break the machine…… because “capitalist”. They assume that when the machine breaks – they’re glorious communist paradise will magically rise from the ashes.
Even though it’s never happened before – despite multiple attempts.
That’s a different machine. The machine I’m talking about is society, not the economy. A bunch of “brown” people with absolutely nothing in common, working with a bunch of sexual freaks and degenerates are supposed to bring in a social utopia where nobody is ever judged, prisons don’t exist, police departments have been disbanded and where there are no real social rules anyway are supposed to pick up the pieces of society and put old Humpty LaRasa back together again.
We all know how things break down when the rules are not followed. TPTB are actively encouraging everyone to break all the rules and have everything break down. But that is not the end game, which is to reconstitute a different set of (totalitarian) rules that benefit only TPTB. They have had enough of our experiment in self-government. Always look for the end game that is in play, because the players will wear a skin suit that looks different than what they are really up to.
You can’t disconnect the two in the way you seem to think you can. And the Frankfurt School commies have been very clear about their effort to infiltrate all levels of society and commerce – in order to screw things up and force the day when their communist utopia comes into being. Is the social utopia an ultimate goal – or is it just a tool to bring down society? That’s the piece I think a lot of people are confused about. I don’t think the social utopia is a “real” end goal – it’s just a sell-job to get… Read more »
Calsdad….you’re on fire today. Remember…I’m daughter of Trots Commies. You nailed it. They never stop. Forward always forward the 10 pillars to utopia. That’s just the line to gaslight everyone under the High Elite. Cloward-Piven forever…until the fall and then the Elite kill off their first line command…then kill off second line command….etc. There is no utopia and they know it.
Putin got his car and driver, yachts, endless dachas and 17 year old gymnast(s). And Power.
Watch the movie Doctor Zhivago. Lessons there.
Why would the people with all the money and power want to change it all into a communist utopia? If a communist dictatorship comes, they will all be killed, or, perhaps, have all their stuff taken. It just does not make any sense that the ruling elite would want to change the status quo into a new status quo where they no longer have the money and power. Surely, the vast majority of these people cannot possibly think they will arise to the top and be America’s Stalin after such a violent change to the status quo. The managerial class… Read more »
Economy is down at the bottom. The chain goes something like Biology>Culture>Institutions>Politics>Economy. Focusing on economy misses everything above that.
They do want to break both the economy and society. I have accused a commie-in-law of wanting to be my feudal overlord. If I was to assume there was logic behind their plans, they must be seeking a return to medieval feudalism.
Because “White.”
Communism and capitalism are secondary issues to today’s Wokies.
For the most part, Wokies are the machine, they’re not trying to break it.
How many “punch a Capitalist” or “eat the rich” memes have you read lately vs. muh Whiteness, black bodies, Browning, etc..? There might be some geezers hanging around the Antifa bars who still get amped up over socialism, but today’s hotness is ethno-cultural, not economic.
Normies also ought to take greater notice that Wokies have had no issues with the CIA and FIB, their old presumed enemies. On popular tv we see both organizations populated by cool kids and the sexually ambiguous.
I’ve been pointing out to people that there’s been a distinct shortage of exploding Mohammeds in the past three years since Peter Strzok , the Anti Terrorism Head of the FBI has been too busy spying on and trying to impeach Trump when he wasn’t busy sending 20,000 texts to the FBI lawyer he was banging. (although how they found time to do any actual shagging is a mystery to me.)
Agreed. If I had to move to one of two countries sight unseen, and all I knew was that one was white communist and the other was non-white capitalist/libertarian/whatever, I would choose white communist.
This doesn’t mean I favor communism over capitalism, it means I understand that race is far more dispositive than economics.
There is a percentage of communist who, like Marx late in life, appreciate capitalism. They just want to be the ones who spend and control the flow of money. Hayek noted eighty years ago that many capitalist are socialists. Capitalism is not an ideaology, it is a talent. When socialist rule then it more resembles their ideaology, and socialist have now ruled for a century, give or take.
Yes … but , most people who proclaim themselves socialist (and/or communist) – are very distinctively untalented. Bernie Sanders is a perfect case in point – as his entire life history has been that of a person who is essentially useless outside any worth he has as a politician. You can go find the articles by doing a Google search, but one of the things I clearly remember reading when he ran for President the last time around – was people coming out of the woodwork who had known Bernie earlier in his life – coming out and talking about… Read more »
They always try to frame their greed and lust for money and power as a desire to help others. But as you mention, they are nearly always personal failures who want to erect a system where they can do nothing and get paid. Like the “artists,” poets and musicians who think they should just get everything for free so that they can have time to pursue their “art,” music and poems. Nobody wants their shitty art and poetry, so they need someone else to pay the bills. There is some desert shit-hole “town” out West called “Slab City” which is… Read more »
Bernie is a grifter. I read somewhere he was kicked out of an Israeli kibbutz for not working, but I never fact-checked that. The entire game is to get someone else to pay for your existence. The Bernies and Hillarys of the world just want a higher level of existence.
Now the US is just another sad country with the “resource curse”, like the countries whose elites control their oil and diamond resources and don’t need taxpayers or their votes. Except our unlimited resource is debt.
I don’t believe debt is an unlimited resource. People think “well the economy didn’t fall over and we’re all still standing!!” – even though we’re up to something like $23 trillion in debt. People who say this should be considered idiots when it comes down to forecasting where things are going to end up. One data point I saw mentioned back in the 2008-2009 timeframe in regards to whether the economy was really bad or not – was the observation that when times get tough people stop buying steak. They go back to buying hamburger. When times get tougher –… Read more »
Just to somewhat echo your comment, most of what people think is wrong in the country, like health care costs, college costs, “low wages”, etc. are driven in part by the debt-driven society. When I point out to minimum wage activists that the issue isn’t that people aren’t paid enough, but that stuff costs too much due to federal money printing, they seem to know that I’m correct, but that fixing that is beyond their power, whereas passing a law for a minimum wage increase is within their ability.
The reason most young people are becoming Bernie Socialists is because they correctly anticipate that they have been screwed by endless government borrowing. They damn well are not willing (nor able) to repay our debts because they know that there will be no pot of gold waiting for them at retirement. The price of debt is the extinction of generational trust.
Exactly. Debt is just transferring money from the future – to buy something in the present. Which “works” – I guess , if you really need to eat right now – and are out of work – but have a guaranteed job that starts next week and you are almost certainly assured you can pay it back once you receive a paycheck. But giving 30 year mortgages to 80 year olds – is most assuredly not being paid back. I suppose even that is ok – once you realize that the bank can always repossess the house that the 80… Read more »
Good point. I feel that the decline of a nation (e.g. ours) is a long-term affair, and it is by and large inevitable. As some wise ass once said, “A trend, once in motion, tends to remain in motion until it ends.” Re national debt, there was little consensus to stop or reduce it in 1960, 1980, 2000, and even less today. Those with a stake in the future (viz. children) should consider what the future may hold.
*If we are wrong*, MMT works. Government debt is not ‘real’ since all fiat currency is government debt anyway. It’s the ‘belief’ that the money has value which matters. Value which is backed up by a lot of tanks and planes and guns. If we are wrong.
I disagree. I do not believe that most young people today are actually fully cognizant of the extent of our indebtedness or the debasement of our currency. Their interests may rather be more base and personal, focused on student debt forgiveness alone.
Yes…Excellent take and well written. Am listening to you and the other gentlemen commenting in response.
The reason debt is an unlimited resource is because it is paid back with printed money. What if we are wrong that you can’t keep printing money forever? If you can print money forever if prices and wages rise in tandem with the printing? What if we are wrong and growth never ends?
if printing money forever works, and we have nothing to fear about a -$23 TRILLION national debt, and in the year 2040 we will have nothing to fear from a -$100 TRILLION national debt, because we can just keep printing new fiat-debt for eternity, then why even have an economy today right now? if the untested “Modern Monetary Theory” of the economist expert’s is correct, then we can just print as much money as we want with no consequences. so why don’t we print out a million dollars and give it to every person in America? why not make it… Read more »
The thing is they *aren’t* handing out millions to each person. Instead, they’re doling it out slowly to favored (((parties))), essentially stealing all productivity gains. What if we are wrong that it isn’t 2040, but 2100, or 2200?
i would never reduce the final acts of heroism of the brave soldiers of the Reich to mere “fanatacism.” the siege of Breslau is an example of that par excellence. 50,000 German soldiers defended a moated and fortified castled city on a hill from 85,000 Soviet soldiers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Breslau 60,000 Soviet soldiers died. the Reich held Breslau for a week after Hitler’s suicide, and only surrender on the same day that Herman Goerring offered the unconditional surrender of the Reich. why did those German soldier sacrifice themselves to such an irrationally extreme degree? because they were fanatics? because they were themselves… Read more »
Except you’re not fighting to the death. None of us are. None of us will, either. Typing ain’t fighting. The man who takes any of us seriously, such that he is willing to risk his family’s welfare in the present, fight and die against overwhelming odds, suffering great pain along the way, is a forgettable fool. He’s a fool because we don’t have his back in cyberspace, much less where it counts – on the ground. He’s forgettable because a time is coming where nobody will remember him. We are armchair warriors, tolerated until we’re no longer tolerated. Comply or… Read more »
The reality that people can’t wrap their minds around is that federal “debt” is not debt at all.
Instead it is money creation.
Which causes problems, but not the types of problems that individuals face with debt repayment.
Forcing everyone to use your currency in order to run a deficit without tears has protected the US from first-order effects of trade deficits, but not the second order deficits effects – if you don’t take the hint of runaway inflation, then the deficits eat away at the value of land and labor as original factors of production.
I imagine something similar happens with budget deficits as well.
The endless monetization of debt has a reality check in the bond market. ZIRP, or even negative rates in Germany, are indicators of low or negative expectations of economic growth. Massive expansion of the “money” supply is not producing an increase in bond yields, not only because no one believes in organic growth of the economy but because above a certain level the interest burden on the debt, payable to the private owners of the central banks, cannot be met. Jeff Gundlach put the “line of death” at 2.7% on the 10 yr, IIRC. The last time we crossed that,… Read more »
Lest we fall into the same blind malaise and hubris we see in both political parties and our rulers… we should constantly review our progress and survey the landscape.
But no, the purpose and mission of the Dissident movement isn’t wrong if that is what you are implying, even if just philosophically.
Z is playing devils advocate . It given how bad things seem to us at least, there should be some sort of collapse or reset yet it has not happened.
Grey,
This was my assumption as well. My answer will always be steadfast championing of the cause and enduring cheerleading. That’s the role my heart and mind are best suited for.
“What If You’re Wrong” is a simplistic subset of analysis of reality. I don’t mean that pejoratively, as simple does not equal dumb. WIYR is the beginning of analysis/examination of a phenomenon or course of action. Take the US gov’t debt, for example. It has gone apey, no doubt about it. Many economic explanations are given as to why the US system has not yet crumbled. Many OTHER countries have gotten as inverted as the USA and then gone tango uniform, so what is the deal? Given reality, the US CAN go apey into debt–$23T worth– without collapse. *Reagan and… Read more »
Except for the fact that all of those countries, the U.S. included, HAVE been invaded, and continue to be invaded, on a daily ongoing basis, and no defense has been mounted. The U.S. has been invaded and conquered so decisively that we are on the brink of having imposed on us, through our own conquered systems, a permanent racist totalitarian genocidal dictatorship. Similar things are true about Sweden, Canada, Australia, etc. Not only have these countries been invaded, their native populations are being systematically destroyed. And not only are the natives not doing anything about it, not even complaining about… Read more »
Yeah, the US is much more diverse than the other comparable countries. There’s no equivalent in their countries of the demographic change in California.
Did I not mention sewage in the harbor?
You’re preaching to the choir, bud, regarding the immivasion. Still, immivasion is not seen as a destabilizing force and thus not part of safe harbor calculation by most the globohomo set and others with the wherewithal to move money to the USA.
And even if they do allow themselves to see the truth, the US has a white genocide problem, but a lesser african & muslim problem. Squatamalans are not perceived as threatening as muzzies and africans.
Thus, USA is still the safe harbor of choice for folks with money to protect.
” the debt example, I think we can discount USA’s collapse due to barking crazy levels of debt as long as the USA is perceived as a safe haven.”
I wonder if you’ve inadvertently answered the question as to why the democrat machine seems to dislike Sanders so much; they fear his damaging the perception of security.
That’s EXACTLY why I am voting for Sanders in the primary. I’ll still vote for Trump in the general b/c 4 more years will imo be useful in exciting our dormant sociological immune system. Drain the swamp or burn (Bern) it to the reeking ashes. I have no hope of the former/
A lot of our problems and our puzzlement about the way things are stem from the fact that Westerners in general and Americans especially have lost any sense of what the vast majority of the planet is still like. I’ve always found it odd that people who claim to be “multicultural” also just blithely assume that somehow, under all those other skin colors and tribal headgear, everyone on earth is really a flabby suburban white guy with a pickup truck and a copy of muh Constitution in his back pocket at heart. This is why so many Americans dismiss concerns… Read more »
“…Americans … have lost any sense of what the vast majority of the planet is still like.”
I used to be civnat. Three months in Africa cured me.
Africa wins Again!
How safe do they think their assets will be when AOC is in charge?
Apres Trump, le deluge.
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” There is a deep truth in this, and a danger to those who would start by asking themselves what if they are wrong. The danger is that self-confidence by itself makes success far more likely, at least in the short term. This is true for business, for romance or for self-defense and Im sure many other things including politics. Self-doubt leads to choking, to half-hearted measures and premature abandonment. I don’t mean to suggest that I… Read more »
Another question you might ask is: what did you get? The U.S. is in debt to the tune of $23 trillion, a staggeringly large number. What did we get for $23 trillion? It’s enough money to not just send every single American to Harvard, it’s enough to buy an entire Harvard Yard for each American. It is an incredibly large amount of money. So… what exactly DID we get? Can we point to it? Do we all have flying cars? Where are our moon colonies? Let’s see… Lunatic wars for the Jews, approx. $10 trillion. Bailing out Jewish bankers, roughly… Read more »
Cat, based on one of Trump’s verbal spasms in 2016, I hoped he’d be the guy to sit the world down and say “all of our books are cooked and no one is paying any of this back. Let’s re-set this thing.” At least get the ball rolling in the public mind. A worldwide creditor haircut is what we’re eventually going to have by dint of collapse but the idea of managing the landing is something our creditor class refuses to consider. Debt forgiveness is an evergreen populist issue though and no matter the political climate its going to be… Read more »
In the last ten years we’ve indebted ourselves to the tune of $1.5 for every $1 gain in GDP
Cool cats. We got “things” in two areas: War and Welfare. Both have zero relationship to investment, which is sort of what your post speaks to. In the long run, only true investment can be expected to grow the pie for future generations.
The remaining $3 trillion, I have no idea.
Hammers. For the military.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665575.pdf that links to a GAO 2014 report which audited the properties and assets held by the Pentagon worldwide. what did you get for $23 TRILLION in debt to the Greatest War Machine in history? here is what you got: “557,000 facilities (buildings, structures, and linear structures), located on over 5,000 sites worldwide, covering more than 27.7 million acres, and with a value of approximately $828 billion.” “data for the Air Force showed a utilization rate of 0 percent for 22,563 buildings” and the other branches of the military have equally low utilization rates (less than 50% or they simply… Read more »
Maybe he knows something. Or maybe the globalists know something, maybe they’ve got him real dirty on camera, the full Masonic initiation with all the bells and whistles, and the reason he seems so adroit, is that he’s a protected asset. How come nobody seems to be able to find serious dirt on Trump? Are the attacks against him just kabuki to boost his cred with his base? Are the globalists playing the MSM as useful idiots, feeding them bogus scandals about Trump? This doesn’t lead anywhere. At the end of the day, it’s a coin toss. Heads, you don’t… Read more »
I agree, we can’t know. The difference between school homework or even college math problems and then real life decisions is that in real life you never have all the relevant information. A more fruitful and important approach is probably to decide what is most important to you? I support gun rights, small government (not that any of us know first hand what that is), lower taxes and ignoring climate change. But it gradually became clear to me that demographic replacement of Western countries is what I care most about. Trump is very far from good on that. But he… Read more »
But he does seem better than the alternatives on offer.
That’s why he’s dangerous. By doing so good on all the irrelevant parameters, he is preventing actual nationalists from building a broad base. Trump is sitting in a chair that by rights should belong to Jared Taylor.
It would have been better had Melania placed that medal on Jared Taylor instead of Rush Limbaugh. I think we are some years away from that.
Congressional Democrats working hard to insure Trump’s reelection. Those who select Presidents wish to keep his base — essentially the productive element which keeps the country working — riled up and complacent in that they think they have a friend in authority.
How about multiculturalism? An axiom in dissident politics is that diversity plus proximity equals conflict. Many of the same people saying that were wrong about the deficits and the growth of government. I think there is empirical evidence that this axiom is true enough. But that does not mean it leads to open war, with the possible hope and solutions that war could bring. The conflict could take the form of gangs and drastically increased levels of violence, sort of an entropic death of society instead of a war-made renewal of the cycle. Instead of Yugoslavia or Lebanon it could… Read more »
Whether a generation sees its age as ascending or as collapsing probably depends largely on group cohesion. This doesn’t necessarily translate into a civilization’s actual rise or fall. During the civil wars at the end of the republic period the Romans probably figured their time had passed. The empire proved to be their most fecund period. During their actual fall they were all having a grand ole time. To read of that period’s excesses is now a great belly laugh at their inability to correctly read the chicken entrails. It takes not one generation to understand whats up, it takes… Read more »
The Roman Republic was nothing like the Empire. The decadence of the 2nd century B.C. really did destroy it. By the time of Julius Caesar, most of the Latin race had moved out of Rome. The capital became a multicultural hell-hole during the Empire. So, yes…those old Roman aristocrats who were defeated by Caesar were correct. It was over. And it never came back. They were replaced. And try as he might, Augustus could not pull the Latins’ chestnuts back out of the fire.
Europeans replaced Europeans. It may have ceased being latin but it didn’t stop being European.
We’re being replaced by everything but.
Latins were from the north. What came into Rome upon their retreat was not the sort of DNA that builds societal comity and empire. Caesar saw this coming. He merely acted from a rational point of view. The empire creaked along for another 500 years on the template he drew up…a military monarchy.
Trajan (98 – 117AD) was the first Roman Emperor who was not a native born Italian–he was from Spain. yet Trajan is considered to be one of the “5 Good Roman Emperors”, which ended with Marcus Aurelius.
perhaps Barry Soetoro was our Trajan in a way.
So Rome continued as one, then two, empires- after kicking out Jerusalem.
Jerusalem then re-formed as Islam, killed the Christians, stole the Persian Conquest, and went to war.
Britain’s fall from 1900-2000 is another instructive Imperial collapse, largely due to war, demographic replacement and decadence. In less than 50 years Britain went from the most powerful nation on Earth to the U.S.’s footstool to Eurabia’s outhouse. Lots to unpack there.
It might also be worth noting that during the end times, the Roman Empire was torn apart by the various non-Roman, barbarian tribes that they had to fight on all sides. Some they even let into the empire and called “Romans”!
I see no reason that such foolishness should/can be repeated here with differing results.
Bit of an odd poast so I’m going to go off topic: Buttigieg is literally a CIA operation. I can describe further how we know this. Personally, I have family members who ran three letter agencies and a couple who are still in the game so I thought this was obvious about mayor Pete…but if you don’t have familiarity with the signals allow me to go on: 1. Pete’s dad is an “immigrant” from a sketchy terrorist-adjacent type country who just moved here and copped a tenured professorship at one of Americas most important national universities and one that happens… Read more »
Like every other candidate in recent memory he’s getting those Goldman Sachs folks on board.
I’m sold. It’s not as if the Deep State hasn’t been trying to “normalize” overt political action by the DS for years now – Brennan’s talking-head appearances, McRaven’s treasonous call for removing his CINC, etc… At least when HW ran he had to downplay the spook thing. Now it makes Russiagate LARPers flush with patriotism.
There are the hangers-on like Biden, who never go away, and then there are those who get vomited up out of nowhere into the big time. From nowhere to big-time is an interesting tell. c.f. Obama.
Yep. And he’s the nominee now. Dems went from panic over Sandernistas Brown Wave to happiness over Mayor Buttplug. Road tested rigging the Caucuses who do you think will count the votes in November?
President Buttplug. Get ready for it. Gay will be mandatory for all White men. Who will be forbidden from owning anything or voting or holding office save Mayor Pete Buttplug. Forever wars we are forbidden from winning, woke stuff every where, open borders, punitive and confiscating taxes aka France all coming.
The Deep state will not tolerate us any longer.
See you at Manzanar.
Hold fast, boys. Don’t shoot until you see the brown of their pucker.
100% with you on our friend the Spook. Malta is quite the glam circuit for diplomatic intrigue and petrodealings. His father was brought over during Cold War as expert on all matters cultural Marxism and Gramsci in particular. Pete has absorbed this stuff like water. He knows /understands propaganda! Apparently he didn’t do any training at the Defense Language Institute – which might indicate he wasn’t going to be put into a field post that requires perfect language skills. Gays are rich and politically active and, for now, the gay agenda has the greatest potential as a wedge against conservatives,… Read more »
I read the book several years ago called Peak Oil which told us the world was running out of oil… soon. I bought into the theory. The world is truly running out of oil. Just not soon. I thought killing Soleimani would harm us in the Middle East. It probably will. Just not soon. Empires have fallen all through history due to high debt loads. I view it like the difference between a car crash and a worn out car. Empires usually don’t crash in a big event like the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution. They just wear out.… Read more »
But how are you enjoying the Ice Age predicted in the early 70s? Ready for some global warming, yet?
Shale is such a money loser we probably hit “peak profitable oil” during the Bush years, on average. Using less oil, mostly by buying on Amazon instead of retail so far, was by far the better investment.
I’ve often asked “What if you’re wrong?” when I share the salvation of Jesus Christ with non-believers and they tell me it’s all just religious nonsense. I’m not sure which is harder for people to wrap their heads around; the concept of eternity or the consequences if they’re wrong about accepting Christ.
That’s the classic “Pascal’s Wager.” My experience is that it is effective only among a small, extremely pragmatic portion of the population. I’m not much of an evangelist, though.
Superficial tactical belief in God b/c game theory isn’t exactly what Jesus was talking about. If the Christians are right, Pascal’s still knocking on the gates wondering where he went wrong. The idea that you can lawyer around God by technical compliance was in the Jewish spirit of the Law that Jesus preached against. Check out Dan Taylor’s “Skeptical Atheist” for a Christian perspective that mostly lines up with how I see the question of belief vs. non-belief. Lotta devils in the details though, and I don’t subscribe to “World Christianity for all mankind,” FWIW. For the most part, Faith… Read more »
Pascal was a far deeper believer than his wager. See his Pensees. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm
Pascal was much more than his wager. From his Pensees: “Therefore I shall not undertake here to prove by natural reasons either the existence of God, or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that nature; not only because I should not feel myself sufficiently able to find in nature arguments to convince hardened atheists, but also because such knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless and barren. Though a man should be convinced that numerical proportions are immaterial truths, eternal and dependent on a first truth, in which they subsist, and which is called God, I… Read more »
I’ve witnessed enough genuine conversions to know that something’s going on.
The debt doesn’t matter because no one seriously believes that it will ever be repaid; when it becomes too burdensome, it will be defaulted or hyperinflated away. The system will not collapse as long as present production of real goods is adequate for present consumption.
The real problem is that the people producing those goods marry late and have very few children while low-IQ heavily-tattooed petty criminals are fathering babies all over the place.
The real problem is that the people producing those goods marry late and have very few children while low-IQ heavily-tattooed petty criminals are fathering babies all over the place.
If they were White low-IQ heavily-tattooed petty criminals, I wouldn’t care much, but even poor Whites are reproducing below replacement rate.
Somebody (apologies— I don’t recall the handle) said yesterday things don’t collapse, they stop working. I think that’s correct. The jarring moment is when enough people realize things aren’t working anymore, and that seems like collapse even though it’s been a long time coming.
Z Man said: “Maybe there is no limit to debt. Maybe what conservatives think they know about public debt is wrong and disaster is not around the corner.”
From: “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” “What brought it on?” “Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”
A system where the connected have unlimited resources and everyone else is accountable can’t work. If nothing else the pitchforks will come out eventually. Worst case you end up with communism, which has never lasted more than several decades. The problem might be one of perspective.
I think we’re going to find out whether or not debt is the biggest long con in human history when USD loses its status as the global reserve currency.
This is a sobering and worthwhile exercise; something each of us should do periodically.
Wut. Not sure I get this one. Has the odor of pilpul about it. I’m all for thinking outside the box, but not thinking outside of reality.
Going to go outside and kick some rocks.
Kick some lefties. They’re softer.
agreed. this is pilpul. anytime there is an epic thread about the Federal Reserve, my Noticer antennas light up when i see a bunch of termites come out of the woodwork to comment “blame the Frankfurt School! those diabolical schemers are behind everything. Just don’t blame the you-know-who.”
they don’t want us to notice certain things about who is behind the Federal Reserve and the itinerant Bankster class.
Most people, including “conservatives,” don’t have a problem with Big Government when it benefits them, or it’s something they approve of. They only have a problem with Big Government when it doesn’t benefit them, or it’s something they disapprove of.
The other side of Z’s coin is if like Cassandra, you warn and warn and warn, you’re ignored and yet you turn out to be right.
The fact that most of us have gone through major transformations in world view to get here suggests that we’re guys who test our opinions for “word to world fit.” We’re thinking and debating here and now as part of the testing process. Most of Us are not so “connected” that they’re giving up a seat at the table of power in order to be with Us. The conflicted interests don’t run as deep as you’d see with one of TPTB becoming a dissident. The truth is a luxury we can afford. Red pills are cheap, blue pills are expensive.… Read more »
How many Americans are now sufficiently based to be considered DR? A few hundred? A few thousand? A couple of million? I have no idea but my impression is that the DR is, by numbers at any rate, still a very small, outlier phenomenon. We may be more numerous than one-legged lesbian Elvis impersonators but that’s a very low bar. Given that, would it not electoral suicide for Mr. Trump to base his policy platform on appealing to the DR instead of ticking the boxes for normies who, let’s face it, constitute the broad mass of America and everywhere else?… Read more »
We may be more numerous than one-legged lesbian Elvis impersonators but that’s a very low bar.
You say that now, but when their army limps to the crest of the hill to the tune of “Love Me Tender’ and the sun glints off their sequined softball shirts, and the whole world seems to pause, you’re going to be sorry.
Being wrong about something, and then having to face the consequences of that error, is the essence of evolutionary fitness selection. If you were living on the savanna and one day decided that the big kitty needed petting; well, you probably got eaten and wisdom abounded for the rest of the tribe. Today, being wrong has no feedback mechanism of existential consequence. Push the restart button on the video game and presto!, no real consequence to stupidity. Perhaps all reality will become a video game soon and it won’t matter.
Well one thing is for sure. The average life expectancy for empires throughout history is about 200 years. We are well past our sell by date.
We weren’t an empire in 1789, unless you consider the settlement of America an empire. The American Empire might date from 1898 when we gained overseas colonies.
Correct. The structural changes put into effect by the “progressives” were what laid the foundation for the empire. It wasn’t until the militia was removed as a military force, a national bank was put in place, an income tax was put into place, the structure of the branches of government were modified to keep them under elite control (restriction on the size of the House and direct election of Senators) …. etc – that the empire could really get rolling. One of the ways I’ve seen life described in the US before those changes occurred – was the average citizen’s… Read more »
and the creation of the National Secret Police… every Empire has gotta have one. the FBI was illegally founded by Teddy Roosevelt in 1908 in a secret act of defiance of the Congress explicitly passing a law forbidding the creation of a National Secret Police.
bbbut… This Time It’s Different!
Anyone who thinks that Trump is going to openly court White Nationalists is daft. I do think that the Trump ‘base’ is more red-pilled about anti-White attitudes than Trump. Still, I think Trump is using the age-old strategy of not giving anything to his supporters while specifically courting those on the fence. There is no room for petulance in realpolitik. Trump’s not perfect, and neither would be anyone else. The Trump was saying the right things in 2015/2016 and he’s *tried* to do some of the right things since getting re-elected, but he’s not a White Nationalist, *he’s a businessman… Read more »
I disagree with Leftie on most things. I believe so much of what has gone wrong is due to Leftie. But I have actually stopped to think like Z on occasions – what if I’m wrong about all this? What if those snarling banshees are right? I’ll keep it short by saying that Leftie has never considered this. They are blinded by group think, self loathing and white knighting. They never consider the other side of the argument. That’s how I know we are correct.
One of my favorite questions to ask my CivNat bro in law is: “where are all the Tea Party people” now that Trump has the highest year over year deficit in history…
Conservatives seem to only care about debt when a DEM is in office. Just go to show that the people who pretend to be the most “principled” are the biggest liars and phonies.
It’s beyond clear that neither party is going to do a darn thing about the debt or the deficit. Worst case, I’m right and it will someday be a huge problem, at which point painful solutions will be unavoidable. Best case, as Z said, all those doom and gloom prognostications continue to be wrong. If I was Emperor, I’d do it differently, but I’m not, and our wonderful electorate wouldn’t give the time of day to any candidate who proposed the steps actually necessary to run at a surplus and eliminate the debt. The gap between revenues and spending is… Read more »
Maybe the formula is
diversity+proximity=oppression
The only way to keep the lid on is to silence complainers even harder That’s the way Britain has responded to vibrancy.
For the first time ever, Bush/Obama made sure that NO shakeout ever occurred in response to the 2007 financial crisis. Government bailout “saved” the day, but in order to keep things propped up, the interest rate HAD to be held down — Indefinately. Millenials have never seen a normal financial adjustment cycle – yet they lost their home while growing up! Instead of shutting their doors in 2008, a lot of marginally profitable firms are now clogging up entry of new firms, thanks to a bottomless creditline. The FED’s new role in the economy is to temper the interest rate… Read more »
My current analysis, after Curtis Yarvin in “The Clear Pill.” He divides society into Gentry, Commoners, and Clients. The point about Trump is that he represents the Commoners. His rise is the Rise of the Commoners. And Rush LImbaugh, with his 30 year run on AM radio, is the Voice of the Commoners. What do Commoners want? They want the system to work so they can have jobs and families and homes and SUVs. They are not educated, but they have learned a lot of common sense and skill. They are not ideological, but they are tribal. Their tribe is… Read more »
That sounds pretty good! The group you are describing was the Jacksonian Democrat of old. The people who got things done, made the country run, and didn’t need to be told what to do. They weren’t intellectuals – their role was far more important as the glue of society. They were the (mostly) Protestant petty burgeouis who built the country and the expansion – before the waves of everyone else were brought in to unionize and start a class warfare. DeToqueville described them as he met them up and down the Mississippi and Midwest. The very people who are most… Read more »
Those are people worth investing in.
I thought I had been wrong once,
But I was mistaken.
It is very possible that Trump does know what he is doing with all the pandering to blacks, Hispanics, one-legged lesbian Elvis impersonators and so on. Further, maybe the votes of the alt-right, white nationalists, racially aware whites and so forth really don’t count for a whole lot in elections. Yes, Trump knows what he’s doing. That’s how he got where he is. And yes, alt-right, white nationalists and racially aware whites do not count for much in elections. In fact, their racial determinism and inability to shut up about Jews scares off normies and serves as a bludgeon for… Read more »
What if we’re not even asking the right questions? GIGO
What if deficits don’t matter because a hard reset is planned? The old dollar goes away, the $trillions in debt go away, and we start from scratch. A “Super EBT” card gets the reboot started. Much of the population, especially the younger generations, is already conditioned to accept such cards as normal. Less than 2% of the population is involved in food production, so that’s a relative handful that our masters have to keep happy. Distribution adds a bit more. Hardly anyone who was making serious bank before. Sure it’d be a mess, and there’s all kinds of ways it… Read more »
Sigh. I had a long post discussing various aspects of today’s Zman post all set to go and it disappeared due to the vagaries of bad satellite internet. Maybe later. Anyway:
Does diversity plus proximity equal conflict? Ask these nice folks:
https://medium.com/@DarkSkyLady/dog-gate-the-divide-between-liberal-white-people-black-people-6a13c62ddd99
My comment also went into the ether
Very long comments often end up in the span folder. I check it every hour, so be patient when a long post seems to disappear.
Ah ha! Thanks! My satellite internet has been up and down all morning, so I just assumed it was that.
I’d shoot the dog and the cop in a heart beat…
That’s why you are a normie. The correct answer is shoot the Black man and the cop. The dog is just an exploited pawn.
Now I’m going to have to go back and reassess my attitude toward MLK. Maybe after all he WAS the greatest human being ever to walk the earth…
Z is raising an important point and I can think of no better example of it than the idea that we are OK and going to be victorious because we have so many guns. It is OK that the other side wins all the cultural battles because we buy more guns. What if that is wrong? What if people realize that is wrong when it is too late (which it almost is)?
We don’t fight, guns are a waste of money. As for cultural battles they won by FORCE; government laws.
Late to this, but re-examining premises pulled us back from the abyss however briefly. It’s hard to disagree with re-examining premises. A few responses, though, to the premises you think should be revisited. Yes, there are identity groups who are gravitating toward Trump. Even our disgust at virtue signaling cannot mask that. The reason, though, is likely the realization that black-run governments, to cite an obvious example, are disasters. Those who live in those jurisdictions already sometimes realize it. The Dissident Right has been shut out of the discussion so we can’t really gauge its size so it is ignored… Read more »
There are two factors that complicate any analysis. First is latency. Related to low v.s. high time preference, something that gives strong immediate pleasure, like spending from inflation or deficits (the latter, government or personal credit cards), or smoking, can easily overwhelm what is an abstract thought of several decades hence – something that might not come to pass, or by that time can be mitigated or cured. The second is the tradeoff at the margins. If I asked how much of your privacy you would give up, you probably would say very little. Ok google, have Alexa, Siri, and… Read more »
High government debt is a result of an aging society that has a high demand for bonds, because stocks are a risk tolerant young person’s investment. Governments relatively fund themselves with debt instead of taxes in this setup. It is a consequence of sexual degeneracy and demographic failure, but neocons successfully cast it as a strictly financial phenomenon.