Note: The regular post on Taki is here. I decided to dive back in the ancient Rome comparisons, which is always a good time. Of course, there is content behind the green door for those supporting the cause with their wallet.
A big part of the ongoing crisis in America is that both sides of the political debate agree on one main point. The people are responsible for the mess. Joseph de Maistre gave us the phrase, “Every country has the government it deserves.” The American ruling elite has turned it into their raison d’etre. Because they have nothing but contempt for the people over whom they rule, they feel they have an obligation, a sacred duty, to be every bit as contemptable as the they imagine their subjects.
The general shabbiness of the current ruling class relative to those of the past can be seen when looking at the oligarchs of the prior age. Great technological advance brings great changes in economics. There are winners and losers and some portion of the winners become something like royalty. The industrial age gave America a class of super-rich who were every bit as powerful as old world aristocracy. They controlled the economy and finance, and thus the country.
These were the robber barons. The term itself actually comes from the feudal age, when a class of knights would shake down travelers for money. They would charge tolls for goods crossing through their lands, even though they had no authority to do so, and the roads were intended for public use. A robber baron was someone with status who maintained it though unscrupulous practices. Surprisingly, it was the New York Times that first used the term to describe modern industrialists.
The robber barons were accused of exploiting unethical monopolies over natural resources like coal and oil. They maintained these monopolies by bribing politicians and threatening those who challenged them. They squashed their competition, which let them suppress wages. If that was not enough, they operated financial scams on unsuspecting investors, often by manipulating the markets through fraud. The robber barons were high status crooks.
If that sounds familiar, it should. The oligarchs of the modern age make the robber barons look like pikers in terms of wealth and immorality. They are not hiring private armies like the Pinkertons to murder their workers. Instead, they are unleashing waves of foreign peasants who create mayhem in your community. They finance terrorist groups like Antifa and BLM to attack white people. Of course, they have their tentacles wrapped around the economy like a kraken.
When you look back at the men who were the oligarchs of the prior age, they are not very different from the current crop of oligarchs. Look at their biographies and they are familiar to a modern eye. Getting a monopoly on oil, like Rockefeller, is no different from having a monopoly on operating systems, like Bill Gates. James Fisk got rich through stock fraud, which is no different from what we see from the gangsters in the financial class today. We just have more of them.
There is one big area of departure in this comparison. The robber barons of old had some sense of shame, which led them to take some of their ill-gotten gains and put them back into society. Maybe it was just a way to buy public approval or maybe it was a genuine sense of duty, but they did underwrite things public works projects, colleges, and museums. In fact, most of the remaining culture we have that is worth the name was paid for by the robber barons of the industrial age.
The current robber barons appear to have no shame. Instead of using their money to build cultural monuments they are trying to blot out the sun. That is right, Bill Gate is using his wealth on a plan to block the sun. Feudal man got great cathedrals from his rulers, while industrial man got great museums. Technological man is getting crackpot schemes to plunge the world into permanent winter. By comparison, our oligarchs are super villains compared to those of past ages.
This is not just a one-off example. Gates is fairly typical of the modern robber baron, in that he seems to have a fetish for schemes that cause more harm than good. He poured money into African relief programs that were doomed from the start. He has bankrolled education schemes that make a mockery of what we know about how to train up the young generation. He has been making an ass of himself on the Covid issue, spouting one kooky idea after another.
Part of this, of course, is the modern moral framework. The robber barons of the prior age were working within the Christian moral framework. They may not have been believers, but the public was still Christian. If they wanted to be seen as pious men, they had to commit public acts of piety. Modern man is far more primitive in his beliefs, so pleasing the earth goddess or fighting evil spirits is the way to salvation. Even the hacks in the political system get in on the act.
Perhaps de Maistre was right. The people in the prior age would have had the good sense to hang someone promising to blot out the sun. If a governor stood in front of a pothole filled road blaming in on the gods, he would have been tared and feathered as a lunatic, if not a blasphemer. Today, out best and brightest indulge in the onanistic religion of climate change with the same fervor as the loons promising us they can control the sun. We have the rich people we deserve.
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The climate has changed.
Good essay. While I haven’t delved deeply into it, I am puzzled by a central issue. Let’s assume for argument here, that the following statement(s) is (are) true: Many of the super-rich fund social, political, or other programs that lead to instability and unrest in the nations where they’re promoted. Z already detailed much of Bill Gates’s screwy programs. For several years, especially in 2020, George Soros funded, directly or indirectly, communist, anarchist groups like BLM and Antifa, as well as bankrolling the election of super-lenient DAs that give a free pass to dangerous criminals, including the aforementioned rioters. I’m… Read more »
I believe malice is behind it. I don’t think it’s enough that they are rich, they want everyone-else to have nothing.
As far as the rich destroying themselves, I think there is a relatively small number of extremely rich people controlling things and they are so diversified world-wide that they won’t go broke no matter what.
Then there is the tribe who wants to destroy the builders of the modern world at Any cost..
Late I know, the power behind the throne is the SuperZips from Murray’s Coming Apart. More precisely, it is about 10 families who are inter-married and occupy key positions in Congress, corporations, and government. The Clintons, Obamas, Schumers, etc. Ask yourself where power lies? It lies not in generals, admirals, intel people, etc. Nor in big shot masters of the universe billionaires though they have some considerable power. It lies in the hands of those families that decade after decade run things in the rungs below. During the Merovingian Era the Kings being illiterate turned over the Chancery to the… Read more »
$100 – 200 million recommended funding for the geoengineering project to blot out the sun. Another big climate change cookie jar for the usual grifters.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9407249/White-teacher-failed-hang-Zoom-call-caught-calling-black-parent-pieces-s.html
Of course the teacher was fired, but this put a smile on my face anyway.
The Biden smoke and mirrors clown show gives us a peek behind the curtain. Military intelligence is running the country, seamlessly and invisibly.
Off topic: I was preparing for a little speech at work about irreducible complexity in software, and it occurred to me that this text applies to those who require a detailed plan about how we are going to come to power before they commit. ‘That’s not to say that design artifacts are useless. They’re great for thinking in broad terms and making rough plans. Just don’t rely on them for more than they’re capable of doing. As Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”’ Given Eisenhower at Little Rock… Read more »
The Robber Barons lived in the places where they collected tolls as physical real live people surrounded by other physical real live people. So, they had a certain scrupulousness that came from the fact that if they were overly odious, everyone could just walk right over to their estate and plunder it, which happened sometimes. Being near the people you control means you also have to trust and depend on them to a certain extent and they have to at least be willing to put up with your rule. But where do the executives or politicians that have crushed our… Read more »
I’ve sometimes thought that American Federal government was so hard to infiltrate and corrupt at the time, that our wicked men went into business instead and became the robber barons.
Now that all the restrictions on State power are gone, nobody at the top cares if the economy implodes.
Another way to look at it is that essentially big money and big government are largely the same group of people calling the shots. It’s probably always been this way to some extent, but the present regimes, I’d guess, are symptomatic of late empire stage.
Rockefeller didn’t drill for oil- he had gangs that beat up the drovers coming from boomtown drilling sites and stole their barrels.
And to this very day, oil is still sold in the archaic unit volume of a barrel. Which incidentally is equal to 42 gallons, a size that a typical laborer of the day could lift & man-handle.
The typical laborer in the 19th century could lift and man-handle 300 lbs.? I’m not sure about that.
This doesn’t necessarily imply repetitive handling. It could also mean rolling each barrel or moving it with a dolly. Or two man lifts.
But it’s true that the size was chosen for relative ease of handling at shipyards without extraordinary mechanized means of labor.
Btw, a healthy, average young man should be able to deadlift 300 pounds. I’m middle aged and can deadlift 350 and squat 250. I lift weights 4-5 days a week, but I assure you I’m no gifted athletic specimen.
Men, generally, in 2021 are no match for ordinary laborers 100 years ago.
.
Actually, the proper way to handle a barrel involves tipping onto its side and rolling to the next location, then tipping it back up onto the flat bottom. Then to elevate the barrel one stack height (30 inches), you squat, bear hug, & lift with your legs. Yes, its a heavy lift, but the stevedores of that era were typically big men.
“We have the rich people we deserve.”
Excellent.
Then again, so did the Russians and the French before them. Ours are convinced of an endgame without historical precedent.
The robber barons also imported millions of people. They just happened to be surplus white people from Europe. At least they were smart enough to not want more Africans. One of their main drivers was to flood the country with new people to dilute the useless jigaboo breed. They understood good breeding, and talking about it wasn’t taboo at the time. It was the unions that put an end to that as the unions at the time also understood and cared about wage pressure on the lower classes, and the supply and demand of labor. The union leadership wasn’t yet… Read more »
Hearst and Stanford “imported” plenty of Chinese as coolie labor on their railroads. They sure liked California, called it Gold Mountain and arrived like locusts. There’s a reason why California is part of the Greater Asian Co-Prosperty Sphere, but Des Moines, Iowa not so much. To the extent any of this drive for cheap labor was about breeding, it waa a quest for more docile workers who were easier to control.
The original white Californians were incredibly racist (aka race realist). They understood that the Chinese were not really here to build America, or build the social structures around them, but only to make as much money for themselves and take care of their own. So they fiercely pressured Congress to eliminate their migration. As such, they were impossible to do business with on anything more than a cash basis (like laundry or whoring or food service). People forget that San Francisco is half Asian. But look at the place. The Chinese thrive in chaotic, corrupt malfunctioning government. All in all,… Read more »
Maus – Yes, the West coast robber barons brought in far too many Chinese. Initially they limited this to men only, but the women and unrelated children/slaves and whoring soon followed. They got push back from the other White European immigrants, who knew the Han could not outwork them, but could ‘under live’ them. And it was English and Scots/Irish immigrants who built the railroads from the east coast out to the mid-west, not the Han as the woke like to believe.
It’s worth pondering whether today’s elites really are very different from those of yore. Their main preoccupation is and was securing access to cheap labor and vast end-markets. The cultural consequences of this “prime directive” occur beyond their planning horizon and are somewhat unpredictable. I serious doubt the Wasp robber barons of yore had any inkling that their heirs would end up sharing power with elite Jewish financiers, yet here we are. Diamond rings are more plentiful than crystal balls.
There’s no need to flee your beloved home town Z-man. They’ve solved the crime problem.
http://www.domigood.com/2021/03/baltimore-will-no-longer-prosecute-low.html
sounds like hobo paradise, they can just move into whichever home they want and kick the owners out.
Lots of abandoned beautiful brick row homes to squat in. Bmore could potentially become the first majority-homeless city…
I love this quote “policies enacted over the past year have resulted in a decrease in arrests, no adverse impact on the crime rate”. So not arresting people leads to a decrease in arrests? Who knew. Soon, they will realize they can apply this to all crimes and achieve a zero murder rate by simply legalizing murder. This could be introduced on a trial basis by, say, just having one day a year when all crime is legal… Wait a minute, I think I saw a TV show or something like this.
This post got me thinking about the Rockefeller Chapel on the University of Chicago campus. Donated/underwritten of course by John D. Rockefeller, with the purpose of being the “central and dominant feature” of the campus. Of course, it is currently closed because science (COVID). But they have virtual events which consist of yoga and meditations. See the list of events for holy week: https://rockefeller.uchicago.edu/events They also have spaces for Hindu and Muslim daily prayers: https://rockefeller.uchicago.edu/visit-us So, in addition to our new elites not really doing much for society as compared to the past robber barons, they take the public works… Read more »
A New Tomorrow (cont) The parable of the Jackboot. OK, so you happen to be one of the few remaining sane high IQ alphas with a sense of the mega problems afflicting society. There can be only so many SEALS, so you must find another way to express your sheepdog instincts to save the day. And you happen to be very good at everything you do, but also carry the baggage of innately following orders by rote reflex. Boy-o-boy, the Deep State has a job for you! There’s BAD GUYS in them thar hills that want to invade DC and… Read more »
Have you ever attended a trade show and spent your whole time lecturing attendees about, say, Platonic philosophy? You seem autistic enough to do it.
Never been to a trade show, nor given a lecture about Platonic philosophy. Don’t read the comment if it angers unduly. Just look for the TomA in the header and skip to the next comment. If you have a legitimate criticism about something I’ve written, then state it with clarity and rebut the response, if any. Attempted intimidation via snarky ad hominem is a poor substitute for lack of intelligence.
What is even more disconcerting is the fact that the midwit (Drew) has gotten a dozen upvotes. Challenges the assertion that the commentariat here are of above average intelligence. Check out the Warrior Poet Society on YT hosted by former Ranger w/five tours of duty. Watch his videos about the George Floyd incident. It was MURDER! and he knows because he did a book report on MLK in High School. Political Correctness is cancer but never question the tenants of egalatarianism you Racist Socialist. He is a poster boy for whom Tom is talking about, indoctrinated to the point of… Read more »
“ The robber barons of old had some sense of shame, which led them to take some of their ill-gotten gains and put them back into society”
They wanted to be remembered as public benefactors, like the Medici or Augustus: “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble”.
It’s just the same now, but public morality has been so corrupted over the past century that when you set out to spend a fortune buying virtue, the choices on the menu are all insane.
A good read, and its subsequent link to Lind. I know, it is Vox, and he strikes a nerve with many of y’all here. Nevertheless…
https://voxday.blogspot.com/2021/03/american-exodus.html?m=1
I think these public works and visible displays were always done at least partially for propaganda purposes going back to the Caesars. Julius Caesar sponsored enormous parties for the Roman public. Prominent hedge fund managers sponsor the Greenwich CT town festival every year. Perhaps the motivations have evolved but I doubt it.
At the rate things are deteriorating here, perhaps a future POC ruler will brag that he reintroduced houses made of straw, thatch or wood, just like they used to make in the motherland, renewable materials, instead of those bad things like brick,mortar and steel, that produced greenhouse gases.
The greeks at PSU run a charity called Thon. It’s a big deal every year. As an undergrad seeing the daily debauchery and common criminality of the frats, I wondered if Thon wasn’t a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. That and the Sandusky affair cast the good works of ‘great’ men in a different light for me.
I’m on the side that believes today’s elites think themselves invincible.
Man is a religious creature, as our host has often pointed out. Atonement is an essential component of religion because it taps into man’s need to counterbalance the evil he feels guilty of perpetrating. Unfortunately for Luther, indulgences are a permanent part of the human condition.
So did French nobility.
Will point out that there only so much food and energy that a Musk or Bezos can personally consume (even with private planes etc.) Maybe a 100 or 1000 people worth of stuff? On the other hand a Musk can concentrate wealth and use it to get into space. Space exploration or other endevours to move humanity forward. He sure as hell outstripping national space programs. I also wonder what biological research facilities these guys are secretly setting up. Cloning, life extension? Surely, Steve Jobs came up with that liver remarkably fast. China is making significant advances in genetic/IQ issues.… Read more »
Assuming the third-world masses don’t destroy civilization first, the future will bring genetic modification broadly applied to whole populations. But not necessarily to improve their IQ or to make them live longer. More likely, the goal will be to create obedient specialized workers with planned obsolescence.
“….I have seen attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. Time to die.”
That seems where they’re headed to me.
Generally agree. I’ve read a lot of science fiction in my life. Yesterday’s fiction sometimes becomes today’s fact. Somebody said that “our generation” (let’s say, most of the people currently living) will probably be the last that were purely natural, not subject to deliberate genetic tinkering. Just like any tool, gene editing will be used by the powerful to suit their own interests, not necessarily those of the average person. If I were in the Elite, I would want to improve my own offspring, giving them advantages the Sheep did not enjoy. We will very likely get Nietzsche’s Übermensch, but… Read more »
“Space exploration or other endevours to move humanity forward.”
No can do, old son. Joggers.
Total waste of money. Space exploration has too many insurmountable problems. Even a colony on a foreign body would never be more than a glorified and very expensive space station. They would need to be far too big to ever become self-sustaining and would need a never ending ‘imports’ and ever more expensive. Maybe in the distant future, but not the foreseeable future.
I wouldn’t trust Musk with yesterday’s digital newspaper.
I Musk’s rocket land. I was impressed. Humanity can get out in the solar system with present technology, farther afield would require generation ships (doubtful). Quite certain that guys were criticizing colonies in the new world as impractical back in the day. That whites hold (maybe not that much longer) North america, Australia and West asia is due to exploration. Whites have been rolled back in africa, but I’m still betting on the boer to make a comeback.
I’d rather we keep earth and send the blacks to outer space
On the 1000 year timeline I think blacks are doomed. Unfortunately some of our women seem intent upon preserving some their genome. Asians may well win evolution. I fear for the future of redheads. My politics almost entirely grow out of that fear.
C. M. Kornbluth approves.
“I’d rather we keep earth and send the blacks to outer space.” We just need to make sure it’s deemed racist to send white people. I find it interesting how distraught the Right has become over the newly woke military. I say let the blacks and Trannies and lesbians go to war for us. We have had enough brave white men getting their limbs blown off. Back in Vietnam, the claim was that we were disproportionately sending blacks to die in battle. This wasn’t true, but today we have done a 180 and the prevailing view is that we need… Read more »
No need. There are too many of them anyway. Send the cuckwhites to space. They’re the real reason blacks are a problem.
The moon is probably good enough. They could provide entertainment – which is all they’re good for anyway – some sort of programming where we can watch them all doing da moon walk for real, or otherwise engaging in slo mo tnb.
Yes, but the colonies contained fertile soil, sunshine, forests, and land.
Mars contains dust.
The only way to live on Mars is in a tin can.
No thanks
Until we find a planet we can thrive on and we can get too at reasonable costs we are wasting our time.
The most we will get is a mining colony in a tin can on Mars where all vital signs and activity of the worker bees are monitored.
Stay here on earth
Battle it out for a fresh liveable civilization.
Recommend the book “Deta-V” by Daniel Suarez.
Fiction about a Musk-like billionaire character (warts and all) who funds a deep space mining mission. His basic premise is that Mars is just a stunt, but gathering raw materials for manufacture in space avoids the huge problems of lifting mass out the of the Earth’s gravity well.
Which would lead to potential space colonies that are self-sustaining. Much more promising.
Great novel. The Musk-character does not end how you’d think, government and giant-corp behave as you’d expect.
Used to think we’d never leave the planet. Now…maybe the Chinese will manage it.
The New World had little things like “air,” “water,” “food,” “Earth normal gravity” and “an environment that wouldn’t fry you to a crisp or freeze you solid in seconds.”
“Quite certain that guys were criticizing colonies in the new world as impractical back in the day.” The “new world” had oxygen, water, food and air. That is just a ridiculous comparison. The new world already had millions of people living in it. Mars, the Moon, Venus and all other bodies in the solar system are sterile. Most do not have an atmosphere and even the ones that do have an atmosphere, the atmosphere is not breathable. Lead melts on the surface of Venus. Carbon Dioxide freezes on Mars. The whole Jovian system is radioactive to a very high amount.… Read more »
I recently posted (here maybe?) the further problem: Even if mankind were presented with perfect technology, space stations or even a brand-new unpopulated Earth-like world, there is still the problem that we are humans. In short order, we’d have the same or similar intractable problems that we have here on Earth. Given a gold-egg laying goose, we’ll kill the goose, looking for more eggs, or just because we wanted roast goose for dinner. 🙁
“But wherever I have gone, I was sure to find myself there
You can run all your life, But not go anywhere.”
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/socialdistortion/ballandchain.html
Blocking the sun is a great way to create crop failures and famine.
I am starting to think that Alex Jones may not be as crazy as he seems.
It sounds like terraforming research from the article. Not necessarily bad or malevolent.
He says a lot of things people aren’t ready to hear, expresses them with florid language, likes to clown, and wears his flaws proudly, so he comes across as crazy sometimes. But he’s almost always near the mark, often on it.
Now that he’s not constantly supporting Trump, he’s himself again, hallelujah!
Isn’t Gates now the number one farm land owner in America?
“Isn’t Gates now the number one farm land owner in America?”
No. He’s not.
Read “The Uninhabitable Earth – Life After Warming” by David Wallace-Wells if you want to understand why young people are nihilists with no hope for the future. It’s “doom porn” like you’ve never seen.
I grew up in the Cold War under threat of nuclear annihilation; but there at least was a chance MAD would work (it did).
Now there are 1-2 generations who are convinced that no matter what they do, the world is lost. They’re going to give total control to politicians over every aspect of their lives because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe the world is over.
Honestly, it has gotten to the point where I think leftists have started viewing conservative conspiracy theorizing as a brainstorm session for their next policies.
“I am starting to think that Alex Jones may not be as crazy as he seems.”
Really. Our ruling class makes Alex Jones look wise and sober-minded by comparison.
Compared to the Archons of the Power Structure, he’s the very living image of sobriety and lucidity.
The Sun is already being blocked via jetliner exhaust. When 9/11 grounded all air traffic for about 3 days there were recorded temp rises. Gates is not as crazy as we would think. There have been several ideas proposed to reduce global warming or the effects of such. Some already tested. True believers will have none of it. But such proposals are interesting in that they might “solve” the problem at a fraction of the cost and inconvenience of other “solutions”. Of course, the “problem” of global warming has little to do with climate and everything to do with globalism… Read more »
Now that you mention it, a new Ice Age might well lead to a “repopulation” of the Northern Hemisphere by Asiatic and Caucasian man, as was true thousands of years ago. A race realist dream accomplished! Alas, it would have all sorts of other consequences, none of them good for civilization. It’s all but inevitable that this will happen; the world has been though many Ice Ages, including quite a few during Man’s tenure here (although none before we became “civilized.”) In fact according to some authorities, the average time between Ice Ages is 13,000 years and we are 13,000… Read more »
People like Scott Adams are defending G*tes on account of his superior intelligence. What Scott is neglecting to mention is that a person of superior intelligence who has bested all of his compatriot snakes is probably a sociopath. Who elected this guy, anyway? I can’t recall receiving any messages about a referendum. Hilarious that we’re allowed to determine the county dog catcher, but not the kosher status of the goddamn sun. The technological capacity of humankind continues to progress, but decisions involving the employment of such technologies are relegated to smaller and smaller circles of influence; meanwhile, we get to… Read more »
You know I used to read his column or blog or whatever when he still wrote but I don’t know how anyone can listen to that voice. I’ve never been able to make it more than a minute. Also deafening supervillains is a losing position in the long run
That is indeed the problem. Gate’s intelligence aside, there is far more to it than ‘science’. There are a huge number of moral questions that pop up. Questions of people’s freedoms. Questions of how this would affect every single individual. Now, I didn’t read the article because the first image was of Gate’s slippery mug, but the arrogance of it is astounding. The Earth is one heck of a complex system. Suppose that this ‘project’ (I am not sure how likely it is) succeeded in lowering temperatures; we can imagine the knock on effects. For example, certain plants that I… Read more »
To underscore Mr. Frog’s point: intelligence and values are entirely distinct. Someone can be both manifestly intellectually brilliant and intent on doing you harm.
Actually, Gates is not responsible for the abomination that is Windows 10. Another thing is that great men who invent awesome new things usually do so at a very young age, like 18 to 25. While not exactly rare or unheard of, old men rarely do so. Gates was at the right place at the right time and with the right skill and luck along with a lot of cheating. As you say, his early choices at MS does not qualify him to make decisions about the energy budget of the Earth. IBM made Bill Gates. Amiga OS was superior… Read more »
To be fair to Gates, his computer chicanery is his computer chicanery. It is the non-stop sermonizing and amount of power this man has to bend people and organizations to his will that is concerning to me. How many things has he stuck his oar into?
“Actually, Gates is not responsible for the abomination that is Windows 10.”
Thanks for the clarification. Can we still strap him to a rocket though?
What’s wrong with Windows 10?
Seriously, every iteration is worse than before in the estimation of a few.
Gates’ skill lay entirely with having a mother who was on the board of Planned Parenthood (Eugenicist roots a few generations deep) with the CEO (I think) of IBM.
IBM was under Congressional investigation for the PC hardware monopoly and Gates; jr was the perfect supplier of a software OS (not much of a threat, they thought.) because IBM doing the software too was seen as politically risky.
James Corbett has a great video (just audio works well too) on Gates.
https://www.corbettreport.com/who-is-bill-gates-full-documentary-2020/
Orange Frog: This is where my Christian faith comes into play. Any individual human who believes he is meant to ‘fix’ or ‘perfect’ creation is, by definition, both insane and malevolent. As I wrote in a comment a number of days ago, all of today’s abominable reproductive practices began from someone’s purported ‘compassion’ for the infertile (I’d argue it was far more likely they put compassion on their moral microscope and were motivated by amoral scientific curiosity and greed). This is another example of where ability/knowledge/morals intersect. First the search for the knowledge, then the experiments to acquire ability, and… Read more »
It is interesting that you mention your faith; because the first word that comes into my mind whenever I see one of these megalomaniac schemes is ‘Godless’. Indeed, as I wrote the phrase “… the arrogance of it is astounding.” this is the word that went through my mind. There is a certain humility that a handful of scientists have adopted in the past. This was no doubt related to their religious practice. It is just such a view that many ought to, in my immensely bigoted opinion, return to. Of course, what makes it worse is that Gates himself… Read more »
Orange; I dare say the Russians will have something to say on the subject, being downwind and all. If Gates’ mad scheme works, Russia will starve. Somehow I can’t see Vlad P just throwing up his hands and saying, “Oh, well, can’t stand on the way of progress, after all. Gaia is more important.” Fun contest: How will Vlad sent Bill (and Harvard) the message that they are greatly over-estimating their actual impunity_? Polonium in his organic tea_? Nerve agent in his car seat_? We all know Vlad likes deniability for his ‘wet work’, while at the same time there’s… Read more »
I can’t help but like that Vlad guy. He appears to love his people and he gets the job done. (I haven’t studied him so I could be wrong.) No agonizing about moral quandaries, just win for your people.
If world domination was determined by physical combat between world leaders, Vlad would win, despite being 68.
Al. Admittedly, I did not read the article and just sounded off because of the arrogance of the title. I had not even thought deeply enough about it to consider other countries’ responses. Good point. How would they take it? I’d like to think they’d act as a buffer.
As to your fun contest; they’re a creative bunch. Wouldn’t want to wind them up.
Orange;
Only mentioned the Russians because Gates et al likely would have nothing to fear from the Govt. of Canada, which would probably welcome the result. It is a constant marvel to me that Canada is the country most likely to benefit from global warming, but yet is one of most fanatical agains it (if it even exists). Likewise England.
As with Russia, failure of the Canadian wheat crop would likely bring on a global-level famine event.
I suspect that it’s true, out of necessity. We get dumber, machines get smarter. Small cloisters of high(ish) IQ elites, docile plebs, and AI herding them — or at least corraling them.
I’ve tried to listen to Scott Adams’ podcast a few times. Man that guy is impressed with himself. He’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
Well he did predict a Trump victory and stuff. I mean nobody on earth could have seen that coming.
They are all grifters.
Bill Gates owes his wealth to the following:
1. His mommy was well-connected and served on a local board with a top IBM guy. She arranged for an introduction for Bill to sell his operating system to IBM.
2. The IBM team licensed it instead of buying it outright.
Bill Gates played his cards really well but he was dealt some really nice cards.
That (IBM/DOS) just gave him a basis/foothold for Microsoft. Where things took off was with Windows, the follow up to DOS. For some particular reason, others simply could not keep up. Windows closed the deal with a true multitasking OS and that was the end of Apple as a contender for an alternative OS. As Microsoft got bigger and bigger, they muscled their way into pretty much an OS monopoly in the private and pubic sector with their Office suite and their financial ability to license entire State governments, PC manufacturers, and pubic/private school systems.
I was thinking about sand-in-the-gears the other day and wondered if there was a list of ideas regular people could do on a daily basis. Just general ideas for things that make it more expensive and difficult everyday for the regime. One thing that needs to start happening is moral pressure on white police and military people. They need to be made to recognize they are the main tools of authoritarian repression, the embodiment of the NKVD in America. They are taking a monthly check to be the muscle behind the genocide of whites in America, by the United Nations’… Read more »
The real change would come when their wives stop getting invented to neighborhood gathers by the other wives.
I feel like you either live in the hinterlands or don’t know many cops personally, am I right? I know several and live in Sodom on Potomac. DC and all surrounding areas if you attempted this at best, you’d be laughed off, at worst, something worse… possibly criminal in fact. They are power tripping low paid ego maniacs many of whom have a sociopathic streak a mile wide so tread carefully with your idea should you attempt it and know who, and what, you are dealing with. The ones around here don’t care, even a little, about your hot takes… Read more »
Your advice is well given about being careful of your mark for in-person moral criticism. I’ve known the types you speak of but also more normal people. I don’t expect that moral pressure will create mass conversions. It could very well produce other less ambitious benefits leaving the regime with the need to expend more energy on internal enforcement and alienating that segment further.
When I think of cops, I’m always reminded of a couple of quotes from a prosecutor that I once knew:
“If all they wanted to do was help people, they would have become a fireman.”
“Becoming a cop allows people who have achieved nothing in life to immediately gain authority over other people.”
Also, don’t cops generally hang out with other cops. They have their own community, something we want.
I have know career military guys, and they are wed to their military world. They don’t look at us as their people. Nice neighbors, but they wouldn’t hesitate to kick in my door and take me away if ordered. Nothing personal to them.
People in most any profession I’ve found have a tendency for increased interaction among themselves. Why not, they work together and see each other regularly. That’s how relationships form.
Until recently, I’ve lived in big cities on the West Coast. Mostly, the police are mercenaries.
If they are told to stomp on your face for no reason, they will think about their early retirement and stomp on your face.
I can’t speak to small town America, but in big city America, police seem to be an inhospitable field for recruitment, although it would be great if we could flip some…
Perhaps if they realize that their next unpleasant interaction with diversity may ruin their lives, they will start to see the light.
They’re just a different gang, is all.
Alienating the organized-violence crews seems a lose-lose proposition. You’d drive the “good” ones out of their positions as moderating influence (or strong-man alternative in the long term) and simultaneously push the “neutral” ones away from us and towards the regime.
Sometimes the other side is doing that job for us. I mean, consider two Black teen girls that carjack a Mideastern (?) Uber driver in DC, indirectly leading to his death (manslaughter, I’d guess). The girls are apprehended by Soldiers (National Guard, I assume) that were on the scene. All this is caught on video. There many not have been a White person involved, but the identities of the actors cannot be hidden in such cases. Even the fellas in uniform must be scratching their wooly heads over this one. Some of them may even start to wondering why tens… Read more »
Andrew Carnegie donated much of his wealth for the building of 1600 libraries across the country.
He also ran his mills like the gulag, and strip mined resources with ruthless greed. I can go across the river and see the permanent scars on the land from his money all over the place a century later. The poison in the air from his mills is finally gone, but a lot of it still lingers.
Carnegie’s guilt can’t be fixed with libraries for the proles. Besides, the people and the neighborhoods he built them for no longer exist, replaced by negroes who don’t read books.
I think that the larger point is that today’s robber barons commit evils just as Carnegie did, yet unlike Carnegie, they don’t even pretend to do anything to redeem themselves (no matter how out of reach full redemption may be). We presently suffer an oligarch class accountable to nothing and no one.
To be fair, Bezos has built a monument to porcelain and chrome. His Washington DC home has 25 bathrooms.
The Sacklers are also generous to universities and universities.
Maybe that’s why Western universities are turning to shit.
Don’t forget colleges and colleges.
More damning words about a group of people have never been written.
Bill Gates using his money to block the sun makes me laugh. I think its really funny. I mean he is turning into a super villain right before our eyes. it’s hilarious. I’m pretty sure he’s going to show up at some weird outfit pretty soon.. I was never into cartoons or the super hero movies but but it does appear that life is following fiction.
Now that I think about it isn’t that the premise of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Narnia was plugged into permanent Winter by the evil woman super villain. Maybe it’s his wife.
The problem is, too many people these days assume extreme wealth equals extreme intelligence and it just ain’t so. Critical thinking among the masses, let alone the “ruling class” is nothing but a distant memory.
That problem is just a drop in the bucket in the bucket of problems
Kanye West claims to be a billionaire. I’d rather have him setting national policy rather than Gates, Bezos, or Buffet.
The harm stupidity can do is somewhat limited. The same is hardly true for high intelligence.
In the Despicable Me/Minions cartoon universe, one of the villains, Vector Perkins, bears more than a passing resemblance to Bill Gates.
Look at the next level down of rich people, celebrities and the like. They are uber wealthy and at a level the Cary Grants, Norman Mailers and early tech pioneers like Robert Noyce (one of the founders of Intel and AMD) could probably not comprehend. Look at their houses and cars, nice to be sure, but more like the level of upper middle class now. The separation from what normal Americans living standards are is astounding. Same as the ruling class in D.C. They don’t care to understand us or care what happens. This can’t be sustainable can it? The… Read more »
“You mentioned Christianity had some mitigating effects on the despots rule, what will replace it now? Nothing.”
there is a plan to unite all religions, to create an authentic religion of wokeness
I was watching an episode of The Jack Benny Show recently and the story involved Jimmy Stewart and his wife. Now, I know it was filmed on a set and was acted, but there was a scene where someone went to visit the Stewarts and they were depicted as sitting in a large, but not ostentatious living room, Jimmy reading the newspaper. The two of them spoke as if they were a well-adjusted, long-married couple. When the doorbell rang, he got up and answered it himself. Imagine a star of Stewart’s caliber today and the 10,000 sq. foot home he… Read more »
Look at this outdoor beach party by the beautiful people of the sixties. Other than the Malibu address looks rather middle class or pedestrian to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAi8tPFqJEc
Steve Allen had a Christmas show done from his house in the sixties at the height of his fame. Looked like the some of the nice ranches around me.
Jimmy Stewart could have insulated himself from military service, but he didn’t. Here is a section from Wiki on this: A licensed amateur pilot, Stewart enlisted as a private in the Army Air Corps soon after the United States entered the Second World War in 1941. After fighting in the European theater, he attained the rank of colonel and had received several awards for his service. He remained in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and was promoted to brigadier general in 1959. He retired in 1968, and was awarded the United States Air Force Distinguished Service Medal. President Ronald Reagan would later promote Stewart to the rank of major general in the Air… Read more »
Steward was actually rejected his first time attempting to enlist. He was too thin! He needed to gain weight. He went home and a month or two later—after intensive eating/exercise regime—made the minimum weight by a few ounces.
PS: I forgot. Steward had won that year’s Academy Award for Best Actor. He was at the top of his game and mega famous. He need not have enlisted, and then when he did, he refused to do PR work for the military. He insisted on a position where he’d be in combat! As a pilot on day light bombing missions, he was in the most dangerous MOS then available in WWII.
Benney was wonderful humor, from the golden age.
I doubt this was ever actualy done on the Jack Benney show (radio or TV) but they could have gotten away with it back in the day:
[Scene: Jack on hands and knees, working the garden.]
Mary: Jack, don’t dig with your hands. Use a tool.
Jack: You’re right Mary, I’ll use a spade. Oh, Rochester!
Rochester: Yes, boss!
Jack: Rochester, bring me a shovel from the shed.
The problem is, there is a pecking order among the ruling class. The wannabe oligarchs start dancing to the same tune so they can be invited to all the best fund raiser events. In turn, these circulate among the trust funder classes whose wealth has not quite reached that magic ten-figure mark. There are plenty of those swarming around me where I live. To a person, these folks are arrogant and dismissive of anyone who disagrees with them. The painful part is watching the merely successful gravitating to the not-quite-billionaires in order to gain some tenuous contact with the glamor… Read more »
Some of the Robber Barons were pious men- Rockefeller comes to mind, and very few of them felt guilty- many were Calvinists who internalized a sort of earthly predestination- they believed that they deserved what they had . As you say, most also believed that their great wealth came with obligations to the society that facilitated such great fortune. I’d also add that building the railroad network, mass producing cars, discovering new uses for petroleum products improved the lives of people to a way larger extent than the modern robber barons. OT. Watching the NCAA hockey tournament this weekend I… Read more »
White people: ‘we hate ourselves. But don’t worry, we’ll die out some day and the planet will be all yours.’
That’s about the size of it.
Our current crop of oligarchs such as Gates, Bezos, and Soros come about as close to being actual James Bond villains as anything we’ve ever seen before. And to think,people used to critique characters such as Goldfinger and Hugo Drax as unrealistic – as it turns out Ian Fleming was just ahead of his time. I mean, planning to dim the sun? WTF!?!
Tomorrow Never Dies already put this truth on screen in 1997 with the Elliot Carver character:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nBZ-u1ilBI
Probably one of the most frustrating 007 films because it had many good elements that never quite gelled to form something greater.
Yes to that last sentence. To read the synopsis I had to wonder how it could fail, but it was like they recruited the writers from a second rate middle school.
My main beef with the TND writers is that they reveal the big bad and his masterplan so early in the course of events.
It completely kills the sense of mystery and discovery that makes for a satisfying spy movie.
The first third of TND was utterly classic Bond. Unfortunately, the film ran out of ideas and devolved into nonstop explosions and machine gun fire. Then there was Michelle Yeoh as the ultimate Rambette. Still, Carver was a marvelous villain and Gupta, the–“Berkeley radical who now sells his politics for cash”–an underrated henchman.
Well, I believe the devolution was due to the screenwriters giving away the big reveals so early in the film’s running time.
Michelle was fit and had good screen chemistry with Brosnan, though overall her character was written with too much of the ’70s tongue-in-cheek Moore attitude.
Those days were still pre-Woke, so Brosnan did wind up saving the Rambette in the end.
If it’ll make you feel any better, the oil firms probably are likely well aware that green energy is not a sound idea. A cynic like myself would speculate that they are merely playing to the crowd, adjusting their behavior or at least their publicity, to whatever is currently politically fashionable*. Just like with racial quotas, it is just better business to go along with the charade, the promotion at least, even if the actual execution is often absent. Miscellaneous investments in “green” are made, often with can’t-lose government subsidies of one kind or another. This is all just part… Read more »