The great conservative philosopher Joseph de Maistre said, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” When it comes to the flow of information, the honestly naive can be a force multiplier, spreading a falsehood well beyond its intended audience. Like counterfeit money, the cost of falsehoods and bad ideas are socialized over the whole of the society.
The de Maistre quote assumes the initial falsehood is intentional. The person promoting a false opinion or shoddy expertise is doing so on purpose. Maybe they are just fleecing the public or maybe they are seeking attention. Regardless of the motivation, they are doing so intentionally and knowingly. The same results, however, occur when the false opinion or inaccurate statement of fact is made sincerely. The same price is paid by society, perhaps even a higher price than from malice.
Stupidity has a cost. Every society, even small ones, pay a stupid tax, a price for believing and repeating things that are false. Inevitably, all facts result in some action, so the falsehood, assumed to be fact, will lead to an action. That action, based in an untruth, will come with a price. Maybe the price will be small, like women wasting money on tarot card readers. Maybe it will be high, like putting women into positions of authority based on the lunacy of feminism.
Further, the stupidity of false notions is not universal. Dumb people believe in ghosts and magic, while smart people fall for things like libertarianism. Belief in ghosts may be silly, but it is generally harmless. Crackpot ideas like communism and libertarianism, on the other hand, are very dangerous. It turns out that who is passing around the counterfeit idea counts for as much as the idea itself. Smart people falling for dumb ideas is far more dangerous than dumb people being dumb.
Like money, there are at least two qualities popular nonsense. One is the volume of it in circulation and the other is its velocity. The volume seems pretty obvious. At the extreme, if everything people think is true is actually false, they will not be around very long before they act in such a way that ends their existence. An example would be the Xhosa cattle-killing movement and famine of 1856. There is an absolute limit to the amount of stupid any people can indulge.
The velocity is something new to this age. Not entirely new, as pamphleteers then newspapers industrialized word of mouth. By the 19th century, dumb ideas and false beliefs could move around a society far faster than ever before. Radio and then television further accelerated the velocity of stupid. Now, of course, that velocity has reach something close to light speed. A dumb idea can be around the world before the person coining it has even realized they coined it.
No one knows just how this velocity of stupid changes the nature of stupid. In the current panic, for example, there are people who spend their days flooding social media with falsehoods, which get repeated a billion times. Given how many people are intensely on-line, it stands to reason that even if the overall volume of stupid stuff is still low, the speed it travels makes it feel like the volume is much higher. That velocity of stupid is chasing out the prudent and skeptical ideas for most people.
One key to managing a crisis, regardless of the type of government, is to make sure the rulers can communicate clearly with the people. Even authoritarian societies have to rely in people making good decisions in the moment. If the instructions of the rulers are caught up in the blender of rumors, deliberately false ideas and malicious scare mongering, those instructions are worthless. They either fall into the bucket of things no one believes or they get lost in the whirlwind of nonsense.
In light of the last few days, censuring the internet starts to make some sense. If the flu numbers get much worse, it is possible the public starts to embrace the genuinely crazy ideas flying around the internet. A public panic would only serve to make the situation worse, despite what the scare mongers contest. Muzzling the sorts of people who preface every social media post with “Breaking” followed by a fake news story makes a lot of sense from the perspective of the people in charge.
On the other hand, the internet may be creating a “boy who cried wolf” environment where no one believes any warnings. The situation in Italy is pretty serious, but the authorities are struggling to get the public to be serious. After the nth time being told the world is about to end, people are no longer willing to believe it. Even public officials have grown tired of the atmosphere of permanent crisis that has come to define the internet age. The stupid tax makes everything seem stupid.
Logic says a society bombarded by a barrage of false ideas and crazy assertions is headed for a bad end. On the other hand, maybe having people in charge of public discourse is itself a dumb idea. The dumbest idea. The reason people are willing to put a dementia patient in the White House is that a babbling old man is no different than the other options. None of it matters, so why not put Joe Biden in charge? The internet has brought us to the Marching Morons point of civilization.
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We need to modify the the old adage “A lie flies travels across the world before the truth puts its pants on.” with “A lie travels the world while the truth gets arrested for hate speech, gets thrown in jail, and rots in prison as civilization collapses.”
I often assume that the ideas discussed on this site that the general public would find most outrageous concern race, but then Z writes that we pay a high stupid tax for “putting women into positions of authority based on the lunacy of feminism.”
I imagine the sputtering, enraged reaction of my sister or most feminists (including conservatives) reading that and laugh. Questioning feminism makes them angrier, on a personal level, than doubting that diversity is our strength.
The reason you can’t have a corporate strongman make decisions and live or die by those decisions is because of feminism.
The womanly way of handling problems is talk, talk, talk, and create consensus for some half-baked idea, ensuring that no one can be held responsible when it all goes to hell.
It’s also why you can’t lay the hammer on an employee who is a jackass, but have to subject the entire team to some sort of bs empathy training to avoid direct confrontation.
It’s passive- aggressive, time-consuming nonsense all the way down.
Chet, it’s worse than that, it’s talk, talk, talk, then parse every last word that has been spoken by each person, and look for ill-will or discrimination or provocation in any of the words. Identify the guilty party (necessarily from the out-group roster of attendees), gang up on him, and ostracize him. They teach this stuff in the universities.
This talk-talk-talk-parse every word into virtue signaling can turn on other women too. I was behind the barn door when Understanding Women genetics were given out causing me to stumble through the La Brea tarpits of chick think. Back in the Pleistocene Era, chicks voted me president of a 30 family baby sitting co-op. How much abuse of power can one do in a stupid baby sitting co-op! I tried to run the meetings efficiently to accomplish what needed to get done, broke the chick rules of discourse, fomenting annoyed and yammering women who turned on me. I learned from… Read more »
Range, there is a reason realistic women say, “I make better friends with men.”
Dutch, that’s why it’s safer on average not to hire them at all and risk that lawsuit than to let them in the door and risk all the other lawsuits.
And that’s the crux of the issue. Because of the ideologues, who basically look to cause trouble, lots of folk are never given a chance to show what they can do.
We had a sweet, pretty thirty something woman join my engineering team as a co-manager. Twice a month, she would have us meet to discuss our feelings about the team and our projects. It felt like marriage counselling.
Feelings! Woo…Woo…Woo! Feelings!
I used the last water company diversity training to catch up on cat napping…ZZZZZ
Feelings won’t get that bridge built.
I think that depends on how you do it. Humans gave up on lining up their soldiers face to face and shooting it out back in the 19th century. The seeds of a new order of warfare showed up during the US Civil War – but it took WW1 to really drive the point home. 4th generation warfare seems to be the wave of the future – big military machines simply can’t compete head on with *incessant guerilla attacks*. So that’s why just “questioning feminism” – by actually questioning feminism – probably doesn’t work. However when you do things like… Read more »
“Women rest pretty much all of their insanity on the premise that men will continue to put up with their shit. ”
Everybody here should print that out in 36 point text and affix it to every third telephone pole.
Choose wisely—Treat kindly.
WAH…I don’t feel like doing XYZ!
Action first…the feeling will follow.
I didn’t get married til my forties. I am still married to the same woman 20 years later – although I have stopped referring to her as “My first Wife”- it was begining to seem to be self-fulfilling.
Calsdad. Look I hear ya, we don’t need Feminism—but we do need women. Test tube children ala science fiction, raised by men, would be catastrophic to the race. Indeed, I’d say we’d no longer be human. Solution is for each sex to recognize and reclaim their Natural tradition roles—which are of equal value, since like ying and yang one can not exist without the other.
Yes….. but……… most of the women you would make the argument I outlined to…. aren’t smart enough to understand what you’re talking about. So the guerilla warfare aspect I am advocating for still works. If you were talking about a smart “feminist” woman (Camille Paglia comes to mind) – I’d say that she’d probably call out the exact same argument that you’re making. But Camille Paglia seems to understand the full spectrum of societal interaction (and how that supports the humanity you refer to) much better than radical feminists like (for instance) Andrea Dworkin. Radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin have… Read more »
Women would frequently pull the crap of WAH we don’t get paid the same. Wrong chick to complain too! Become a water treatment operator-distribution operator-hydro dam operator, work Mike Rowe dirty jobs and you’ll be paid the same. And work Gasp! Shift Work….WAH we can’t do that..WAH. Try 6 months of Graveyard idiots…rake in the dough and quit bitching, oh weak ones! Plus the guys at work respected that. Early in that career I pulled some stupid women s### on a Sr. Treatment Operator and said (my poor idiot brainwashed brain!) I expect you to respect me! He said No…You… Read more »
That day might come sooner than wr think once the sex robots get perfected
There were going to be consequnces for giving women full voting rights, be them good or bad. I’ve never heard a discussion on this topic that was objective and really sought to understand how the world has changed as a result.
When it first passed, women married young and it made little difference. With explosion of the single woman demographic it’s quickly deteriorated.
It was a disaster from the start. We immediately got Woodrow Wilson and Prohibition, followed up by FDR, the Great Depression, and all the crap that came after WWII.
I like the way you think.
What’s wrong with Carrie Nation!!
Oh, she’s reincarnated back into Lizzie Warren to nag and hector us to behave. These Northern Protestant Progressives never go away.
Woodrow Wilson was pre-suffrage. Women are batty, but so are a lot of men.
Women married young.
Men started working young.
So we outlawed puberty.
We outlawed Nature.
Objectively bad. Causation-correlation, maybe, but beyond the fact that post-suffragette America has cratered every way but materially, can anyone name something good that was clearly caused by letting wahmens vote?
A little OT, but if you want a chuckle- September 23, 1944 “The question about the so-called ‘women’s vote’ is generally phrased: How will the women vote? The answer to that is too easy. Women vote just as men vote. Either they are thinking women who draw their own conclusions as to what vote is best for them and the economic group to which they and their masculine counterparts belong by right of inclination, or they are thoughtless women who vote as their husbands tell them to vote… Surely, most housewives are afraid that they will lose their jobs as… Read more »
“Of course the men come first.”
That like expecting Moishe or Felontavious or Pajeet to say, “the Founding Fathers come first.”
We men took things so for granted.
I’d like to see women’s interests represented, but HR is radically unequal.
And the Ladies Government of Finland sends soldiers to defend Turkish invaders in Greece. Ladies, that’s an act of war on an EU neighbor, don’t you get it?
Women, lacking experience, just don’t seem to get boundaries or borders as a group.
Wouldn’t have said it until recently, but it’s biblical. Mark 5. The possessed guy who freaks out when he sees Jesus. I begin to wonder if these people aren’t just crazy. Maybe possession is real.
in twatter-dom this morning, a young lady crying because she was sitting in the same chair that Bernie did while he inhaled a burger in some fast food joint. The bar for a sycophantic response is 29ft high nowadays. one would think, in this day of modern marvel, that it would take more to impress a person…it’s actually the opposite, it’s amusing but I shake my head.
What was she crying about? The stench left behind by a geriatric old Jewish commie?
Imagine her reaction if the seat was still warm. 😉
Did she touch the hem of his pants, and was healed?
Since nobody cares where that racist, slave owning George Washington slept anymore, maybe that restaurateur will be enterprising and put up a bronze plaque “Bernie sat here” or “Bernie’s adult diaper leaked here”
Mostly because it is the vast majority of women are literally unable to depersonalize. Questioning putting women in positions of authority is translated by the hamster into questioning their own personal competence. The very fact that this happens in most women makes the case for not placing them in positions of authority, but also prevents most of them from ever understanding why. When a woman says “society don’t treat women right!” she means “why am I not treated special”?
It also seems odd that most women who’ve had experience working for other women will tell you that they hate working for women. Yet, if you should have the bad taste to suggest that obvious, you’re a horrible person.
We gave them the Whole Enchilada before they were ready for the big stuff. They were only really asking for the small stuff they needed, such as women’s doctors.
We ignored the idea of learner’s permits, apprenticeship, earning your way up the ladder, etc.
That goes for guys, too- way too many men aren’t worth a sh*t, either.
Aurhority should be earned.
Line: Very much so. One of the personal trainers at the gym, with whom I’ve occasionally chatted, noticed me doing my usual rounds trying to find various dumbbells I wanted for my workout that people have walked off with. I’ve always said it is stupid women. He noted plenty of men leave things all over the gym as well. I responded that people suck in general, but women are worse. He laughed; the Nice White Lady he was training looked utterly bewildered at how a woman my age could trash all women.
If the COVID-19 turns out to be the pandemic nightmare all the Alex Jones peeps are saying, the Womenyz are going to show their true colors very, very soon.
They’re the majority of the nurse force, and increasingly filling the ranks of general practitioner MD’s.
Womenyz are not know for their propensity for going into high-risk, high-fatality professions. I’m genuinely curious to watch and see which sex does the lion’s share of the health care provider dying in this situation.
Prove me wrong, ladies.
Aesop the Raconteur notes that they can’t get men to do this work right now.
Its also why we don’t have any level 4 containment, not only is it expensive but no one wants the job.
COVID isn’t flu-bola (H/T Aesop) or Skippy the Super Germ but its nasty and highly infectious and as soon as a few health care workers die, the rest are staying home.
We’re about to experience the re-connection of belief to consequence. The technological revolution largely severed that connection, temporarily. In other words, loony beliefs are a luxury good, and luxury goods are becoming more scarce.
H;
Yeah, separation from consequences is a big part of the current information problem. You can’t help but notice that demanding to be absolved of the consequences of their personal choices was a big part of Feminism. These days, it’s bled over into many millennials of all genders’ world views. I suppose it was a matter of simple equity.
I drive by some new non-denominational church in town. For the longest time they had a “Diversity is Our Strength” message on their sign. I often wonder if anyone in the church thinks about and believes that nonsense. I’ve been in there a few times for dinners, never saw anyone not white.
I’ve been wondering if there’s a genetic difference between “Good Whites” and “Bad Whites.” A recessive gene, perhaps?
The “goodwhite” genes are going have trouble surviving what’s coming.
They have trouble now. They educate their women and maleducate their men. The only saving grace is the conservative marriage pattern they keep. They ruin even that; their children are literally sterilized with Progressive Munchausen by Proxy.
Problem is not that “good Whites” won’t/can’t survive what’s coming, it’s that they drag down the “bad Whites” in numerous ways, such that bad Whites will have an increasingly harder time surviving, much less thriving.
I live in a large metro area, and wee those people as the biggest cause of the problems we have . I get along fine and with my diverse area , as long as we don’t get too involved in each others areas, but the GW’s are constantly agitating them to hate and blame us . It prevents us for working together on some things we could fix for all of us if left to our own devices.
Yeah, it’s impressive how white the goodwhites spaces are. I was at a trendy bar/club last weekend and there was 1 or two non whites, out of probably 200 people. These are the sort of people who would berate me for my white privilege on the weekday, but here they were partying and having a good time, like normal people. Diversity is just for the dirt people (so they think)…
every year though the “diversity” grows exponentially while the “goodwhites” are shrinking.
there are clearly at least two genetic brains in whites, the goodwhite and badwhite. almost different species.
KMac’s latest book discusses the egalitarian moral communities that evolved in Northern Europe, also “pathological altruism.” Many whites evolved from people for whom relative openness to strangers combined with egalitarian morality was a successful survival strategy.
Our trusting nature has been weaponized by our opponents.
I question whether or not that trusting nature survives the period of punctuated equilibrium to come.
Our standoffish, East of the Hajnal cousins will have a definite genetic advantage.
I’m NW Euro but skeptical, paranoid, and mistrusting as fuck. I guess I ended up with some rare mutation. Anyways, good time to get these traits because high trust is going to be a massive disadvantage soon. (if not already)
Yep, my favorite saying as of late to my son, “Don’t let your virtues be used against you.” (He’s young and of a less hardened nature due to youth and inexperience.)
Two near me have rainbow flags with “love”. Why friggin bother.
Episcopalian, no doubt.
You went IN there? (Shudder.)
They do make some good chicken dinners – what am supposed to do if my wife insists? She knows I’d never join up with them.
Why not ask them? I’ve found it always pays off to talk to strangers.
Posturing is cheap. As long as it is free of personal consequences, people will posture all day. When the diversity actually sits in the pews, then things get real.
Absolutely. Matthew 23 is hugely about this very problem. Social posturing and legalism instead of useful action.
Also Sunday go to meeting Christians.
Phonies.
Churches are among the worst diversity-offenders, next to Commies. Churches already make a living out of peddling spiritual snake oil, so one more fairy tale doesn’t faze people accustomed to talking snakes and burning bushes.
Also, according to most modern interpretations of the gospels, Jesus would’ve been down at the border, feeding the wretched masses, washing the feet of the invaders and scolding white nationalists.
In Michelle Malkin’s book about the refugee industrial complex, there are more Christian organisations than there are Jewish ones.
Drake , since they have never experienced it , they are true believers. And to a fanatical level you cannot comprehend if you haven’t spent some time with them . google molly Tibbets parents. the are only one example of this meme , there are a lot of them out there.
Ah, Diversity Is Our Strength.
When DIOS is Adios, I shall be a happy man. If I live that long.
Sometimes the tax is enormous. Like when some useless oxygen consumer who has been a public charge all his life murders a med student for their phone. It is such an unequal battle. We have to expend endless money and energy building and they destroy simply by existing. Or like the price of pretending everyone is equal and a few kids make learning impossible in a school. Or the cost of reformulating gasoline because the natives just can’t help huffing gasoline fumes (don’t be ramma ramma). Or the costs of having to go through the state to get a gun… Read more »
The vast majority of what passes for public discourse in America is based on flawed or outright false assumptions. We see this in the major party political conversations. They aren’t talking about reality, they are campaigning for office based on a constructed reality that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world but we mostly unknowingly agree to pretend that it does and vote accordingly. People who are actually outside of the mainstream, even by a little bit, are ruthlessly suppressed by the ruling class. It is not just people like Ted Kaczynski but even people who stray mildly from the prevailing… Read more »
Speaking of the feminine in group-out group thing, women completely ignore Tulsi Gabbard’s existence. Bringing her up in conversation results in the “she has really weird ideas” brush-off. Weird ideas? Such as all the Leftie tropes she parrots like all the others do? Or is it because she does not reflexively angrily reject people who stray one iota from the party line? I call it the Gabbard test. Women can’t pass it.
Welp, I remember saying, “Nah, Ron Paul’s lunatic fringe.” Back in the good ol’ days when I voted for Bush, supported the war, and loved Israel.
Sorry, Zoomers. The Stupid Tax is an honor system, and I did my own taxes.
I voted for Romney! Gosh i feel dirty.
Its alright. We’ve all been there. Hell I used to be a Limbaugh Republican though I was like 20 and thought Reagan was a great president .
Became Left-Libertarian after that and only went Dissident Right maybe a decade and change ago starting with the late lamented Spearhead (It was men’s rights if you are wondering) and working outward.
How many of us are jaded to the point that we doubt things that would normally be accepted years ago. It’s not just the scientific or government agency’s statements that always seem dubious to me but the retconning of recent history by the entertainment and literary establishments.
Maybe the corner they pushed me into is where they want me. Just leave them to their playground and disrupt all order.
I am amazed to say it, but if I found out that the moon landing was faked, for example, I would not be surprised. I’m not saying that I do believe that, but that it is conceivable to me in a way that it was not five years ago. That is the degree to which I have come not to trust anything, to be jaded, as David points out.
Linein, Finding out that a certain event that allegedly took place in the early 1940’s was almost completely fabricated will do that to you.
Meme, that hysterical secular faith has supplanted stodgy old Christianity.
As it was designed to do.*
*Civil Rights abrogated Constitutional rights, Human Rights superceded moral duty.
Women’s Rights superceded men’s strengths.
(Yenta Rights to speak for POC then abrogated White women’s rights.)
In an earlier Occupation, the Mecca suras abrogated the Medina suras.
These are old, repeated tactics from the playbook, crafted and tested, fed to allies, until one catches. Talmudic lawyers weave Mosaic laws.
Line: This. I was always one to pooh-pooh ‘conspiracy theories’ but no longer. While I know for sure that whatever the official line is, it’s a lie, I no longer have that certainty that I know the truth about much of anything unless I was there myself. And as far as the malice/stupidity thing goes, while both are always applicable, the level of malice necessary to deliberately place young boys with pedophiles (as done in Germany, post over at Vox Day) astonishes even me.
Z-man, of all your ponderings, nothing explains current events and confrontations with folly better than your conception of “the stupid tax.” Copyright it. Sounds like a book-title to me.
not a new saying though. the lottery is often called a stupid tax . But the tax Z is talking about is a tax imposed on everyone collectively and as a society, whereas the lottery is a tax self-inflicted at the individual level owing to an ignorance of elementary probability. .
Grey. Hey, I resemble that…. I have good memories of lunch with staff discussing the odds of the State lottery and when it would be a “fair bet” to buy a ticket. As I recall, it was almost never a fair bet—due to State and Federal taxes. This divided the group, one saying “not a fair bet”, other saying “so what, you have to always pay taxes, so ignore in computations”. Then of course there was the possibility of two or more winners to account for. Lot’s of assumptions, estimations and math done around a burger. There was one theoretical… Read more »
“Tis true that the person promoting a false opinion or shoddy expertise is doing so on purpose. Exactly how the Z-man once opined that Martin Luther (the 95 Theses guy) was a pedophile. When confronted, the Z-Man slinked away. Why?
This reminds me of a quote by Nietzsche: “When everyone is educated, no one will be educated.”
Yep, we are seeing that today in the USA via AA—a lowering of standards and subsequent raising of mediocrity (if not outright incompetence).
Lot of truth there though the US situation is caused by civil rights, divorce , cheap labor and automation. Civil Rights and the need to not see facts long with divorce means we can’t make high school difficult enough to be meaningful This means we we need even more schooling so people can do basic things we did in like 8th grade. Automation isn’t helping either, that along with cheap labor means we won’t pay a dignified wage for less skilled workers which even pre Mexican immigration made up most of the population. Obsolete people have no reason to behave… Read more »
Is there an analogy to Gresham’s Law, bad money drives out good, in the world of ideas? Do stupid or false ideas drive out the good and true?
I think so. Bad ideas are often couched in good intentions and flattery.
I’ve argued for years that Western whites are the trust-fund kids of the world. Our forefathers built a fortune that we now slowly drain. Trust-fund kids are often fairly bright but lack any moorings. They also often resent their ancestors and their achievements even while enjoying the fruits of their labor and risk-taking.
Because all of that, trust-fund kids are extremely susceptible to bad ideas that flatter them and give them direction. Of course, sooner or later, the money runs out.
I see the lispy queer is upset that the world now knows he’s basically a trust-fund kid with a registered voting address valued at $10.7M. must be tough…
It’s already happening. Very difficult for young whites in Canada to make ends meet, unless they have a STEM degree, top 1/3 business degree, or are labouring in blue collar work. And then, they can scrape by. The majority of young whites are already eating up their wealthier Boomer parent’s money. Travelling, taking arts degrees. When they do decide to find a job they will quickly find HR departments staffed with Indians or other aliens, making it very difficult to get hired (Plus the gov mandated anti white discrimination). There is at least one generation of money left, but it’s… Read more »
More than one penniless Noble has changed the course of history.
Perhaps this way we get the Lucius Sulla we so desperately need.
The true does not always make us feel good about ourselves. So it is often rejected as being “edgy”.
In the end – all of those different “laws” are just a complicated way to illustrate some pretty basic concepts. I think – in the end – you can probably divide the world up along the lines of the people who understand there are certain things you cannot have – without consequence and ultimate failure. Then there are other people – who think you can have anything – as long as you “believe” – or you have “progress” or whatever. Call them conservative vs. liberal or whatever, but in the end …. the way I see it – is that… Read more »
Liberals aspire, but conservatives understand. With age comes either greater understanding and more conservatism, or failed aspirations and more anger. All those old liberals (see all the old Dem presidential candidates) are very angry people.
Huh. And we wondered why they were always bitching.
The Bitcher Movement. The Bitchers.
Always worked up about hobgoblins and fantasies, too. No wonder their aspirations fail.
There’s a great book called When Wish Replaces Thought that digs into this thesis very well.
“You can be anything you want to be”—
Hoo boy.
We see this in the military in the peace-war cycle. Throughout history, wars have usually begun with inept generals who are in their positions because bureaucracies reward risk-averse paper-pushers who are unlikely to cause trouble. As conflict progresses, a participant that wants to win will gradually get rid of the bureaucrats as actual leaders who aren’t afraid of risk appear and prove themselves. After the conflicts are over, and far more predictably, the real leaders are quickly driven out in favor of maintaining a stable bureaucracy. We see this very clearly now with all the flag officers, current and retired,… Read more »
We have the greatest army in the world. Just like the French in 1939. The world is waiting to see who will play the part of Germany and what prop will be the Panzer Korps.
If you really want to see what happens to an army when it goes bad in a multicultural empire, read “A Mad Catastrophe” by Geoffrey Wawro. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian army in the first year
Of WW1 was so catastrophic at times I just had to stop reading.
To a large degree the Polish Generals of 1939, who were the survivors of WWI of course (and Victors by Proxy at least because Poland emerged as an independent State) can be blamed for the second war, Their perpetual belligerence toward the Germans who suddenly found themselves in Poland thanks to Wilson, and the shenanigans about Gdansk, better known as Danzig made it almost impossible for Hitler not to do something about the fucking Poles. Someone, just who I can’t recall. wrote a great book about it, whose title I can’t remember, Something 1939? I have it in the basement… Read more »
A.J.P. Taylor is very critical of the Polish foreign policy in his “THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR”
if you can generate some positive emotion in just the right spot, replace the exact fact with the lie that changes the narrative. perhaps it’s the root of accusing your enemy of that of which you are guilty…it has been very successful, though I’m not sure if it’s by volume or efficiency.
What do Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard have in common other than successfully spreading terrible ideas? And that’s just a couple of names off the top of my head!
Damn! And I thought you were telling joke!
What do Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard have in common!
Stupid tax. Joke’s on us.
Corona-Chan is also psychically punching above her empirical weight because pestilence is a horror of the monkey-brain days. It’s only been a half-dozen generations or so since pandemic was a threat even in the First World. Call it hard-wiring or epigenetics or whatever, the dread of disease is something that chimps us out on a pre-rational level. The Black Plague generated the Danse Macabre sub-culture of “St. Death.” The sanitorium produced its own genre. Confronting our mortality brings out the poet in Whitey. No race can show even one comparable example to the best of White mortality fiction. The line… Read more »
“The line between poetry and BS being a fine one at times….”
I’m guilty in the first degree of having a touch of the Irish.
“Velocity of stupid”.
That concept has great power of explanation.
I’ve long said that the average IQ of e.g. Facebook posters can’t possibly be above about 85. I’m not sure that’s precisely true in actuality. I should probably revise that to something like “effective average IQ.” That’s probably closer to the truth of the matter. I figure that the average effective IQ of a select group of a hundred, say, divorced/widowed Boomer cat ladies dropping their ex-husband’s retirement and/or Social Security check into a slot machine one blessed token at a time can’t be much above the upper limit of retardation level, speaking of the “stupid tax.” On the other… Read more »
Casinos love slots because they have the highest house edge. Easy to play and perfect for sub 90 IQ people, although these people tend to have little money too, so casinos need card games to bring in more money.
Here’s the rule:
Number of Facebook posts is inversely proportion to IQ.
so, if I have never posted anything on FB my IQ is infinite? I will tell my wife!
FaceBook posters are geniuses compared to TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/
Every now and then I get struck by some line of wisdom that I’d like to share in Facebook. I then do my once a year sign-on and rediscover that it’s completely hopeless there.
The Zman has spent some time of late on how our elites have abandoned the people and actively work to destroy the underpinnings of civilization.
Here’s a piece on someone doing the exact opposite and with observable success. Much to the outrage of the West’s shitlibs.
https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/hungarys-secret-weapon-catholic-nobility
Interesting article, BJ. But I can’t help wondering if Catholicism isn’t just another persistent falsehood like Marxism and Libertarians. (And Islam)
If the West went full White Christendom with a reformed Catholic Church and Nobles and hell outright Monarchy we’d be better off than we are now under the Mammon Cult, Prog Heretics and the Crowleyites
Excellent essay, ZMan, truly outstanding. I always thought of lotteries as a tax on stupid. Many times as many people are killed by lighting (only a small percentage of people struck are actually killed) than score big on lotteries and yet people line up to play. Me? I have a constitutional aversion to giving the government my hard-earned money so I am seldom tempted to buy a lottery ticket. And even when I AM so tempted said aversion quickly overrides the temptation. Back when I had stripes on my sleeves (’73 – ’83) it was said that rumors propagated at… Read more »
It’s a sign of affluence to say that there is a tax on stupid. Nature’s ‘tax’ on stupid tends be to final and irrevocable.
MyA; Yeesss_!! And a bias to ‘watch out for the bad’ has been built into us for just that reason. And the grifters prey upon this bias for fun and profit. IOW, you and I are here because your ancestors and mine were on the lookout for bad stuff coming and took appropriate action (the real Murphy’s Law*) to forestall its potential effects. This looks to be stupid and inefficient in an age of plenty, easily mocked. That is, a survivorship bias was created over time by being temperamentally on the lookout for future trouble. Why_? It’s so obvious that… Read more »
The reason people are willing to put a dementia patient in the White House is that a babbling old man is no different than the other options. —- Great point, which begs the question as to why have elections at all since the candidate is apparently irrelevant. An aside, would one care to know that ghosts definitely exist? Hmm, this ranks up there with space aliens in the fact that some otherworldly knowledge does not, in fact, change their life one bit; thus the harmlessness. For instance, I have a buddy who wouldn’t believe in ghosts/spirits if they bit him… Read more »
The doom and gloom is clearly overblown and, as with all previous iterations of “Orange Man Bad,” this one will be forgotten as a new cycle becomes apparent. China and the rest of Asia are over the hump. The virus will quietly snuff a few thousand senile members of society, an unfortunate few healthy young people, and that will be that. The western media and spurned dissidents alike will continue to make hay while the sun shines. The only novelty of present circumstance is that the administration has driven off most of their defenders and thus appears acutely stricken with… Read more »
This is similar in concept to Larry Auster’s Dead White Women Tax, but more general in application.
The public perception of the current social milieu differs from current conscience and passions in that, rather than determine how we think about things it administers circumstances for what we think about. Build a kosher corral or sandwich and those circumstances will do the rest. Any idea that doesn’t fit into that milieu has no traction so it disappears down the memory hole. If I understand Zman’s take on stupidity correctly this is how we ended up in this pickle. A circumstance in which dumb ideas resonate with everyone because alternate and older more sensible arrangements no longer have meaning… Read more »
Still contend the media is responsible for a lot of this hysteria. People look to mainstream media for their information because we’re conditioned to do so. It’s like the paparazzi chasing Princess Diana causing her limo to crash and then jumping out to photograph her dead body. Of course I bought into the conspiracy of MI6 carrying out a hit because of her dating a Saudi Prince. Then again since Prince Harry has gone all “Jungle Fever” that theory doesn’t seem to hold much water these days 🙂 Sadly the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade has been canceled and NHL players… Read more »
It was an Egyptian grocers son she was dating, But close enough.
Yet, at that time the Public was all a twitter due to the ethnic background of her new consort, regardless of his wealth and success. 30 years later, the son (Prince, direct line to the throne) breeds with a C-list celebrity Black and it’s all uuh’s and aah’s. Miscegenation in the Royal family is now cool. Britain is lost.
Compsci, 30 years ago Britain was still British. The possibility (however remote) of a Muslim marrying into the Royal family was panic-inducing. Now, the Royal family are too white.
The speed of the transition really is breathtaking.
Harry and Markle got exiled to Canada and stripped of the use of titles. Short of sending MI5 in for a rather more final sanction, not much that can be done. In any case Andrew with his White British wife and White kids will be king, either next or after Charles , who for all his flaws loves his nation. They certainly could use a new government but to get that will require Scexit (Scots Exit) Labour’s main vote source and Irexit (Irish Reunification) the rump UK will be far more Conservative after that and can deal with immigration better.… Read more »
The ultimate stupid tax is lotto. Tarot cards can at least provide entertainment and occasionally insight and are aesthetically pleasing.
I disagree that communism is a stupid idea.
Nope. It’s war propaganda, an active lie.
Communism is about conquest.
About enslaving the population and stealing all they’ve got.
About using mind tricks to break the slaves’ will.
Communism was never about sharing.
The former head of the Romanian secret police said Ceausescu was all about the money, was only interested in the money.
Con Inc blathering about “Socialism!” and “ideology!” is a smokescreen. Communism and Kapitalism aren’t ‘ideas’, they’re masks.
You read your Plato, Z?
“Dumb people believe in ghosts and magic, while smart people fall for things like libertarianism. ” I don’t know if I understand you here. Once upon a time, say when the US was founded the founders were “liberals”. Later progressives and lefties of all types started calling themselves “liberals”. So, old time liberals started calling themselves “Classical Liberals”. That is pretty unwieldy to have to say each time and so “libertarian” was coined. I am thinking of people like H. L. Mencken for example as a “libertarian” or as a “classical liberal”. Your call, but “Crackpot ideas” is not what… Read more »
Approx 2% of the population are mad and they take over every last thing humans have and turn this into their agenda. This is eternal problem with words and isms and institutions. Mad people take over and they will say what something means. I prefer to call those mad people communists because this is the word what they afraid most. But also there is a lot of material about liberals so sometimes I call them genetic white liberals and recommend to search “liberal brain different”. This was already noticed 3500 years ago in the ancient Egypt. They saw that some… Read more »
Who’s stupid? I frequently open my yap and remove all doubt, but, we thought they’d see the light on diversity.
That they’d come to jeebus on immigration.
That China will be the final nail in globalism.
Ha! I bet we get globalism up the wazoo, not a black swan touching down, but a thundering herd of winged black elephants…!
Bonus points for Cyril Kornbluth reference!
MOOGS!!!
Funny how tech is supposed to help but ends up degrading. Extreme skepticism is the correct attitude, at least today.
Libertarianism is a world community against the stupid tax ( a term they invented in the 1970’s), starting with the stupidity of taxation itself.
So stupid midwits call it a stupid tax that can’t work, while using its fruits like the internet.
This poison tree has two roots. First, the destruction of the ordinary education. There is something about learning Arithmetic and Grammar and such that trains the mind for logic so you can figure out what is true and false, and it was taught that something is true or false. How many sexes are there Second is the paid for distortion. “Science” and studies will say what they are paid to say. Some think corporations are always pushing falsehood, but their stuff has to work to be bought. The iPhone is easier to use and a bit more secure, but has… Read more »
For stupid, Breaking! is only exceeded by Boom!
”I’ve dealt with underlings and lower downs all of my life and I’m ______ well sick of it. “
”You’re just like your father.”
“So are you.”
Robert Caucasian in a conversation with his mother CIRCA 1973.
What? Me no get.
You wouldn’t unless you read the National Lampoon or listened to their white album from the eighties. It’s all funny stuff. Three downvotes so far. Good thing my posts are for done for my personal benefit only.
“Catch it and you keep it”?
Well done Sir!