One of the mistakes conservatives, variously defined, have always made when analyzing modern politics is to assume purely rational motives to all actors. Today this combines a form of reductionism. The motivations of groups are reduced to the sorts of motivations that you can assign to an individual. The “cancel culture” stuff is now about power, as if the people behind it are powerless. Other events are reduced to the quest for money or maybe leverage over others in the pursuit of money.
In reality, the culture war has been driven by people who have all of the power and money they could ever need. The Left in America controls everything and lives like royalty, so power and money are not primary motivators. They are motivated by the same sort of religious zeal associated with fanatics. Theirs is a secular religion, but it is salted with plenty of mysticism. The reason that Gaia worship and now the Covid stuff endures is it satisfies their need for the supernatural.
This is why the mass media has started to look like a flock of birds or a school of fish, seeming to act in coordination on every story. A year ago, every respectable journalist knew that Covid came from exotic meat markets. It was the provincial rubes and their taste for bat meat. Similarly, it was provincial rubes in America and their conspiracy theories that thought Covid was possibly man-made. Now all of a sudden, the media fish are schooling around the lab leak theory.
They are not doing this because they got a memo from HQ explaining how the official narrative has been updated by the committee. The journalists are not getting an e-mail explaining the revision to the official narrative on Covid. “Please be advised that the new truth on the origins of Covid have been changed. Be sure to update your opinions accordingly comrade.” Instead, one heavy from the party signals the change and the rest, like fish, instinctively respond.
This is also why the media is oblivious to their own change in direction. Like fish in the school, their focus is always on the members around them. They go where they go, which means they are always reacting to those around them. Since there is a strong social hierarchy in all human organizations, the humans in the media hive are always looking up for direction. Biden says something, then the media lackeys in the press pool react, which causes the rest of the media to react.
The way to think of the media is not so much as a sentient organicism playing a complex game of politics, but as a mindless organism that responds to the stimuli applied by a small group of people. This is the part missing from this otherwise excellent post about CIA manipulation of the media. The CIA can influence the media narrative by simply turning a relatively small number of journalists. They do not control it in an absolute or direct sense. They just control some influencers.
The CIA is not the only part of the managerial state playing this game. The major Wall Street players use access journalism to promote their interests. The FBI sends dozens of retired people into media jobs every year. The corrupt agents involved in the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election landed in the media. The cable channels alone have over one hundred retired FBI people employed. Then you have the revolving door between the media and presidential administrations.
That is one of the reasons official Washington despised Trump. Thousands of people in Conservative Inc spent the final years of the Obama administration angling for jobs in what was assumed to be the next Bush administration. Jonah Goldberg’s wife hit the gym and got a makeover assuming she would be in the Jeb Bush White House, but then Trump came along and ruined it all. For “conservative media”, Trump represented thousands of lost book deals, speaking gigs and so on.
The way to think about the managerial class is like a small town. It is really a collection of small towns, linked together by government think tanks, elite universities, and sinecures at nodes in the system. Newcomers are evaluated like the new family in a small New England town. If they fit in, they become part of the community, with all the benefits and responsibilities it entails. Who they are is linked to their membership in the community, so their loyalty is tangled up in their sense of self.
In the case of the media, it works a lot like any industry. There are small players and big corporate players. Some people start at a small player and eventually get called up to the big leagues by one of the big players. Others start at the bottom at a big media player and work their way up. The control is not just the threat of being blackballed by the media, but also the threat of being sent to a minor media outlet. Going from Fox News to YouTube, for example, is a horrible humiliation.
This is why reform is probably impossible. A reformer is immediately swarmed by flocks of angry insects from the various subgroups in the managerial class. We saw this with Trump, who set upon on all sides. The genuine reformer must battle with many hives of bees attacking at the same time from different angles. Before long he is solely focused on defense, which is what happened with Trump. He spent most of his tenure defending himself from one attack after another from the system.
According to Livy, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus received a messenger from his son asking what he should do now that he was a powerful ruler. Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and lopped off the heads of the tallest poppies. The messenger got tired of waiting for an answer, so he went back and told Sextus what happened. Sextus realized that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, the city over which he was now the ruler.
This is probably the only way to reform the managerial state. A strong leader will need to behead the main institutions. New people with loyalty to the leader will be installed and they will purge the ranks. This is what happened in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and the installation of Khrushchev. The problem is the American version of the corporate state does not have a strong party leader. Therefore, reform of this sort may be impossible, which means reform is impossible.
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As always, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Joe Sobran’s analogy of the Left as a hive is still germane, lo nearly a quarter century after he first proposed it. The schooling fish analogy is spot-on as well. Herd instincts are in all of us which is likely why at some point the longed-for ethnostate will come to fruition
Europe went down the wrong road in the late 17th century when 1) monarchies started to centralize and create modern state institutions and 2) the uprooting of tradition and culture by liberalism began. When you have capitalist liberalism, you will inevitably have concentration of wealth and power (and this is where libertarians go astray in not recognizing it). There is no going back after the whole industrial revolution gained traction – Marx knew it, but never anticipated the victor in the final class struggle will be the capitalists. Hardcore Marxists won’t advocate for reforms – rather seize power and change… Read more »
I remember writing in 2017 on this blog that Trump was facing a Government Party Civil War, and that he should have fired everyone within his executive power to fire at every level and in every department of Government while simultaneously revoking all of their security clearances and banning them from contract work. He didn’t, and here we are. It would actually be remarkably easy to do because the President does have powers over political appointees. The Senate would have had no choice, in the ensuing chaos, but to approve waves of non-traitors to replace those appointees. There’s a great… Read more »
No matter how much you may hate your job, you shouldn’t quit it until you find a new one, poverty being worse than a job you hate. No matter how much we hate the GOP, we shouldn’t destroy it until we have a new party, some friction against our slide into tyranny being better than none. Believe it or not, things could be worse. We still have the second amendment. Free fall from 1,000 feet worse than with a parachute with holes in it. Migrate and congregate and form our own autonomous no go zones while we wait for Napoleon… Read more »
“The problem is the American version of the corporate state does not have a strong party leader. Therefore, reform of this sort may be impossible, which means reform is impossible.”
This system does not have a paramount leader which makes reform completely impossible short of overthrowing the system. Kill Hitler and you don’t have the Third Reich anymore, kill Stalin and Soviet communism softens up significantly, kill bin Laden and Al Qaeda is totally marginalized. Kill…..who to stop woke holiness spirals?? There is no uniting face. This is worse b/c it is hive mentality and emergent behavior.
Caedite Eos.
That stopped a holiness spiral.
zMan: Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and lopped off the heads of the tallest poppies. The messenger got tired of waiting for an answer, so he went back and told Sextus what happened. Sextus realized that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, the city over which he was now the ruler. This is why we venerate Saint Joseph Djugashivili: Because he emptied the House on the Embankment, and, with an ice pick, chased down its leader in Mexico. House on the Embankment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_on_the_Embankment Moran ya Simba: kill… Read more »
and if you want actual American culture, maybe try starting with Melville, Twain, and Faulkner (not Mayer, Warner, or Kazan).
Just wanted to make a general comment (or two) about things I have noticed here in the comments section. One thing is the complete lack of coherence or consistency in people’s stated principles, and their reported behavior. Watching FOX or any pro/college sport? Twitter or Facebook membership? I am not perfect, and don’t expect anyone else to be. But I genuinely do walk the walk by denying my money to the worst enemies. No cell phone, no social media accounts, never watch network tv, don’t read any shill sites (Ace is as close I come to that, and I skip… Read more »
Oh, I don’t mind the references to popular “culture”, cable news or Snapfacechat: it provides valuable insight into the Hive. Moreover, these men are doing the hard work of watching/ listening / reading such claptrap so that we don’t have to.
I must second this (Moe’s) comment. One can live in this world, yet not be of it.
I’m just enjoying the fact that autocorrect changed “Sextus” to “Superbus” in the original post. In fact, I call dibs on “Sextus Superbus” as my pornography nom de plume.
Oops. My bad. “Superbus” is apparently correct. I fault my not- giving- a- shit as a teenager during World History classes.
Still calling dibs on “Sextus Superbus.”
I think (sadly as I figure its highly probable I would be one of the early casualties) that violent civil war is inevitable barring some miracle. And it will be more Yugoslavia than Russia 1917-21. I base that on: A. The fractured nature of the Biden Regency being incoherent and babbling.* B. St. Fentanyl and the desire to emulate the Purge movies among Rappers. C. Interference by various nations to amp up violence. D. Wokeness being the religion of stupid young women (is there any other kind?) and their marketplace power moving society. E. The inability of the White middle… Read more »
There’s a book called Losing Military Supremacy, or some such, by a Russian analyst that does a pretty good job explaining why the US is likely to go out with a whimper instead of a bang. The basic gist of it is that Americans aren’t generally very good at killing people. Instead, the current federal supremacy is built on financial dominance, which was built on the entirely lucky industrial dominance America enjoyed in the aftermath of WWII. Consequently, the unspooling of the empire will be financial, with economics being the main front of the war. Once the world moves in… Read more »
HR lady, and it ain’t even close.
How many Whites have been purged Whiskey?
Outside of Trumps political suit (civilians) in the Pentagon?
The Progs wish for so many things but wishing and doing aren’t the same.
Its like gun laws; not obeyed.
If there’s a president desantis in 2025 – what tricks do you think the media will pull? One thing I could see happening is blue states committing a “suicide bombing” of sorts. They will intentionally crash there economies so that it has a ripple effect so that the rest of the country suffers and desantis approval rating goes down.
Given that they’ve already done this once, it’s not unlikely. I think it’s already backfiring though and actually stiffening the resolve of people in Red states who know exactly who is the source of all the trouble since Jan 2020 when the economy was strong and the country was relatively peaceful. Whether it’s Coof panic, burn-loot-murderism, tribal drumming for WWIII with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, or the Republic of You’ll Do for Today, everyone knows that Blue state feminine histrionics is The Problem. Blue America is everyone’s crazy wine-soaked, pill popping ex-wife at this point and we know that if… Read more »
i feel it won’t be via a disease next time. My guess is that there will be a panic over tainted beef and how grocery stores will do a one month moratorium. Or another thing is if some “consumer rights activist” finds a defect in a car and a decent chunk of all automobiles have to be recalled.
you keep voting gop krusty, one day you will get the food pellet, really.
“If there’s a president desantis in 2025 ”
Why do people not understand the real message of 2020? They did not even bother covering it up so talking about another reform president?? Hope springs eternal I guess. But unfounded hope can also kill. And now they are talking about UFOs and what not. They are p*ssing in our faces and saying ‘hey, I guess it’s raining.’ Elections are phony baloney. Forget about reform of this system. Get it now??
There’s not going to be another GOP President this side of war. Elections are over.
and so what if there were another gop potus. so we getz all dem tough judges. we’ll know after the midterms if the gop is still viable.
Whether or not there is ever a GOP president depends on whether our rulers feel the need to prop up the GOP to keep that half of the population believing in the show. They may feel that they need to installed a Jeb Bush or Little Marco to give the illusion of a two party system without risking a threat to the uniparty.
Throughout history, reform generally comes after a crisis, not before. Furthermore, before reform you usually get greater, not lesser, efforts at centralization. Of course they usually fail. We see this happening now down to the local School Board-level. The Wokesters turn the most trivial local political decisions into epic arguments revolving around “national”, not local themes. This is deliberate centralization of conflict. Social media exacerbates these conflicts by giving them national character. Just as the “ancien regime” resorted to tax farming before the French Revolution, in America we will now see just the opposite of the “Balkanization” many in this… Read more »
Well, since we’re getting esoteric, there is component to the meta-level of which you may not yet be aware. Societal modeling has become a mature science for nearly three decades now and lots of insights have been derived which enable both proactive large-scale manipulation and reveal effective countermeasures. I tend to use the disease metaphor in my posts here as a palatable and euphemistic approximation of the modeling-derived optimum “remedy.” And by optimum, I mean least damaging with the highest probability of success. And yes, this is exactly how cancer is treated. And so specifically to your doubts; there is… Read more »
I was thinking on the same lines today. Z-man’s basic analysis is correct that there’s no Central Committee of Wokeness that issues a briefing at 0600 EDT every day. The school of fish (flocking) behavior has been modeled quite well and is even used to generate flocks of simulated birds for CGI films for instance. If the ruling class is a particularly destructive school of fish then studying how predators confuse and defeat such schools might be helpful indeed. I often think that our side gets too mystical and irate and should focus on a more scientific way to attack… Read more »
Anytime a republican governor wants they can ban immigration or government housing at the state level to stop the growing democrat strongholds, but they never will. Both republicans and democrats are dependent on funding from the federal government and are incentivized to obey the woke religion of the libtards which has infiltrated the deepest institutions of government.
very very few people commenting here, realize Punch *and* Judy are controlled by the same puppeteer. You can tell them until you are blue in the face, but words bounce off their heads…
I know for a fact that Mitch McConnell is “fighting for our values” because he said so himself.
if you want to get down, down on the ground, mcconnell.
They are also dependent on RINO voters, most of the GOP who always choose $$$ their own pockets including HUD grant Money and all the rest while moaning about Trannys. Men would not fear the state enough to let them harm their kids, or endanger them.
The GOP has to bring home the bacon too, thats why the Dems and DC win.
Its mostly the damn women of course. Thats FOX, thats the GOP.
Hey Captain
With respect to send “more and not fewer agents to the hinterlands”, magic 8 ball says they’re gonna run out.
There’s a lot of Irish Democracy (silent refusal) going on on the enforcement side, or we’d know it.
The True Believer Progs are very thin on the ground when it comes to danger.
or get shot and buried.
Reform is’nt comming from within. The symphony of shitheads will be convinced of their power right up till their heads hit the ground. It’s comming from without, with a vengence. The Romans could warn them, but they’re all dead.
Zman you’ve done a good job of interleaving the concept of emergence from Complexity Theory into how these managerial systems work. I hope it is a significant thread in your book. The emergent properties of how this system is managed cannot be overstated. What has happened over the past twenty years has been the introduction of a strong communications system into and from the managerial elites. The internet in all its forms has created the strongest signal/feedback loop imaginable, at least in a system that is not overt command and control. The will to make this happen has been there… Read more »
the mechanism to do so was invented in 1896, by Marconi. everything that came after was refinement.
@Karl, not really. Yes mass market electronic production of sender>>receiver media has been in effect since Marconi, but operationally the only difference between that and newspapers is distribution time.
What I am talking about is fundamentally different. The internet enabled a mass many>>many communication platform that was able to fit into every crevice of human endeavor.
Where it really took off was when the consumer was made comfortable with it. That hooked $ into the system, which enabled a global platform of financial optimization. The rest is history, and so are we.
you are still wrong. the electromagnetic spectrum is continuous; the technology behind the telegraph is the foundation for *all* subsequent enhancements. computer science stalled out in 1968; every advancement since then has been refinement.
And the most recent refinements have become so incremental that they are nearly meaningless
No, I’m not.
If you think the 1880’s are fundamentally the same as now, where we have billions of mobile electro-optical sensors all interconnected, then you are missing the point.
My background is similar to yours and I concur. One thing I have learned in the last 10 years is that a large group of people does not need an explicit plan to act in concert, whether that group is the main stream media or some ethnic groups. (Although let’s not forget that the Journos email group did exist.)
If members of a group are educated when young in a certain set of values then they instinctively respond together to new situations. No explicit plan is required. Their group action is emergent.
Alex – this was a brilliant comment. What Karl misses in his excellent response below is the emergent nature of propaganda now. It’s not just State radio, or even buying journalists like Operation Gladio; these were inorganic, command & control operations. Instead, we now have perhaps an historical “first”: “Organic Propaganda”.
Yes. And as Zman likes to point out, there was not a C&C mechanism for swinging the totally free and fair election (see what I did there Severian..?) towards Biden. The emergent properties of the system allowed for well placed, self-motivated individuals to work at the lowest level to “do their part” in getting Trump unelected. Organic Propaganda is a great term.
Bery nice. High five!
yah, cause no one knew how to use mass media propaganda in the 1930’s. stay ignorant, it’s more comfortable (i hear)
A robust communication system, no doubt, but it requires centralized electrical power from an extremely vulnerable grid.
Shut down the electrical distribution power and you shut down the enemies’ governance power. Rural America can survive de-electrification, NYC and the Beltway, not so much.
I was standing in line at a NYC Broadway show when the westside lost electrical power. I saw how the enemy behaved after a mere hour and a half without central electricity — it was not the genteel behavior described in the MSM press afterwards.
you won’t have to shut it down. the muds will run it into the ground all on their own.
This is why flyover land needs to cling to its guns, Bibles, and most of all its full-size diesel pickup trucks.
Speaking of Gaia worship, BerGOGlio just dropped a metric ton of bloviation with his seven-year Laudato Si Action Platform. It includes plans for encouraging “ecological spirituality,” a subject never raised in my K-12 Catholic education. As Zman points out, the “ecology” that really needs tending is the overgrowth of tall poppies that is unbalancing the landscape. Perhaps this truth is why the personification of Death is always pictured with a scythe.
Sobran and Bethell called it The Hive:
http://www.sobran.com/hive/
Thanks Jack, this is great stuff from Sobran.
[…] ZMan visits the zoo. […]
uh huh
filler for the comment checker
Just imagine how many poppies would have to be decapitated. You’re looking at multiple figures in at least 100 colleges and universities, 500 or more corporations, dozens of media outlets and cultural institutions, not to mention major players in prestigious law firms. And that’s to say nothing of the figures in government and the government’s bureaucratic architecture. The Power Structure is a vast hydra with tentacles reaching into every nook and cranny of the land. Maybe HP Lovecraft was onto something…
well under 100k, a trifle. personally i think you could chop the top 10k progs and call it a job well done.
We can’t even prevent the flagrant theft of a presidential election or prosecute the murderer of Ashli Babbitt, but knocking off 10K AWR satraps is no sweat. Riiiiiiiiiiight.
who says it will be me doing it? the chopping of the tall poppies is going to happen one way or the other. my sense is that whatever group is behind the current regime is losing control rapidly, and general mayhem will break out. and that is when i will go flower picking. and if the mayhem never comes, then i am good too.
Certainly, it’s going to happen. But it ain’t gonna be cake and pie. Simply organizing the agents and devising a plan without being infiltrated will be difficult enough. Carrying out the plan may actually be easier, but will still be a dicey thing.
Maybe somebody should delve further into the situation of Democratic Kampuchea and Pol Pot.
We might be able to arrange a controlled demolition of this Corporatist monster, but we first need an accurate picture of how it operates. Vague talk about “the media” and “wall street” isn’t going to cut it, and trying to chop off the heads of the Hydra is a futile exercise which will only cause them to grow back stronger than before.
John, I think we know the source. Not the source of our every difficulty, but the single most dispositive force.
Ostei, I’ve read ~35 Lovecraft stories in the last 6 months and I am not usually drawn to Gothic Horror. It may well be that I enjoy Lovecraft so much because the themes he deals with, ancient forces infiltrating the world to enslave or destroy us, resonate with my political outlook.
(For those who are curious, here’s a taste of the end of “Call of Cthulu”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xB4yHCgly8&t=4253s)
When one sees the Power Structure’s distaste for white civilization and its pronounced preference for Third World savagery, which is not only premodern but non-modern, there is indeed a sense of a return of the primitive. Now I don’t think this phenomenon existed during Lovecraft’s lifetime, but that would make his speculations even more prescient.
Whites are God’s chosen people (closer you get to germanics / Nordics the purer, it’s a spectrum) and the Bible is the true word of God.
Makes sense that they would try to destroy both.
We’re the chose people?! Oy! Who knew?!
That’s right. WE are the chosen people. Let’s say it and believe it … and start acting like it.
Lovecraft was very concerned about immigration about 100 years ago. The best example is his “The Street.”
‘After World War I and the October Revolution, the area becomes home to a community of Russian immigrants. Among the new residents is the leadership of a “vast band of terrorists,” who are plotting the destruction of the United States on Independence Day.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Street_(short_story)
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/s.aspx
That’s right. And he was also very worried about the decay of civilization. Interesting guy, Lovecraft. A shame he didn’t live another 40 years. The things he would have seen…
As you mention in the last paragraph, I think it is too late for any kind of reform. There are just too many of them. Other than a brutal decade of guerilla warfare, and, let’s face it, the modern obese white American is in no shape for that, the ruling class will stay. Luckily for us, they are incompetent. What will happen will be a slow decline into balkanization. We already see it in some areas in the UK. Nobody seceded, no shots were fired. The number of Muslims just reached a critical mass and they decided they don’t care… Read more »
The Eastern Roman Empire didn’t fall until the 15th century. Within 50 years, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Was the “Italian” Columbus Roman?
Did the king and queen of Spain ask Constantinople for permission?
The eunuchs running the “empire” controlled one frigging city by the time the Turks put their heads on stakes.
I don’t want my family and descendants to have to wait 1,000 years.
You don’t have to wait 1,000 years. How many of our guys do you know IRL? You could “meet up with the guys for a beer” as soon as this weekend. Or become a board member at a gun club. Or teach at a homeschool circle or something. Things only happen when people work for them.
Other than that, your options are rather “limited”. I’ll leave it at that but hope you can read between the lines.
People would also have to unplug from the “smart phone” control matrix, and somehow escape the cashless payment / social credit / health passport system rapidly being installed everywhere.
Even the “rural folk” are sucked into this. Few even remember how to plant a garden like their grandparents did, and forget about the little white churches which used to support the community. Deer and beer, plus meth and EBT seems to be the new normal.
Yeah white towns have a serious human capital problem. Many in the small towns are simply too dumb to understand wokeness / masking bullshit, and also too dumb to plan financially thus having more kids. I don’t say this in a condescending way, it’s simply understanding the reality of the IQ bell curve.
Whether they even realize it or not, they’re already seceding though. Simply not following orders is a start. Eventually something will get organized.
The rural “brain drain” has been going on for 3 generations at least. The GI bill and after effects of WWII greatly accelerated it. Couple that with the growth of large corporate farms, agribusiness, de-industrialization and the Walmart/Dollar Store phenomenon and most of the human capital has little opportunity or reason to stay. Sad.
These are also the types of people who benefit the most from having a strong social structure preventing certain behaviours, and who fare the worst under rampant individualism. It really only takes a few smarter people to get organized and they will fall in line quite nicely. I’ve seen it at church, the “white trash” under the influence of the church are just fine, while the “white trash” living on their own are much more likely to fall into substance abuse or other poor behaviors.
There’s a country western song by Chase Rice makin’ the rounds just now: “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.” The song implies that drinking with your buddies out in nature is far superior to actually worshipping God in a church with a pastor. The only mystery to me is whether this faux spirituality is the cause of the rot or its effect.
Modern country radio is horrific ear rape. I’ve also wondered the same. Is it just indicative of where white rurals are at spiritually? Or is it purposely being dumbed down to try and cause them to be dumber?
As I am not rural I don’t know. Radio ratings are spiralling down, a few stations have even started increasing the classics / 90s / 00s into the mix to increase listeners.
The gawdawful state of country music tracks the degradation of pop culture in general. All in all, everything is the worst it’s ever been, and the descent into the abyss shows no signs of slowing. If you want to experience worthwhile pop culture, you have to go back to 1992 and before.
“For how long will Hispanics be ok with a gringo in power?”
The better question is how the Hispanics react to a Chinaman or blacktivist in power. They aren’t hostile to whites, not like blacks, Hindus and some Asians are, and they’ve already been snubbed hard a few times by the other POC cartels.
The US has been balkanized for decades; I could make a few suggestions for areas you could try to live in or even walk around in daylight for an adventure.
Hispanics are used to white people ruling them. Look at pictures of the Mexican Assembly and you can be forgiven for thinking it is a meeting of the GOP. We shall have to see if the woke propaganda causes Millennial Mexicans to want to change that.
And slightly OT but certainly relevant to the growing tentacles of the managerial state, Amazon just announced it was buying MGM Studios. So goodbye TCM, at least as we know it, and hello woke entertainment with POC galore. All those old movies….. gone with the wind. Better buy your DVDs when/if you can of the old stuff.
do you really think bezos bought those old movies to hide them away? no one under the age of 60 watches them anyway. Having said that, I have been archiving tv, movies, and music for years now. Have laser discs with the unedited Star Wars IV and everything! 😛
He didn’t buy them separately. They were part of a package deal with other, more valuable, properties. And yes, his company would indeed hide them away just as they have done with several books formerly on their website and just as Hollywood did with Gone With the Wind during 2020. All of those movies will be banned one day — probably censored or issued with a trigger warning and documentary denouncing the film as racist first. There is no financial or political reason for them not to, as you pointed out, and there is quite a bit of liability from… Read more »
I have a feeling my collection of Western and American classics are going to be quite valuable and rare some day.
My guess is that in the remake Scarlett marries a black woman and has a black man as a sperm donor. The child is gender non-conforming.
since no one watches them any way, hiding them away accomplishes what? way to focus on the important stuff.
Karl, the combined mass of cultural minutiae – like classic movies – IS part of the ‘important stuff.’
since no one watches them any way, hiding them away accomplishes what? way to focus on the important stuff.
Karl, culture IS the important stuff. To coin a phrase, “It’s the culture, stupid (Party)”. This is what the GOP/SP has failed to realize again and again for at least the past four decades. If you disagree, go back to your back to your old Natl Review mags and keep reading about the “important stuff”.
For at least a couple of decades now they have been remaking movies with POC leads. In the near future, those will be the only ones shown and the originals will be “retired”. They will probably literally burn every copy the can get their hands on.
As an example, George C. Looney did a made-for-boob toob version of Failsafe in which the Vindicator’s copilot was a Hutu who spent more time blathering about the so-called “Civil Rights Movement” than he did dealing with the imminent thermonuclear war. Idiocy on stills. But even worse, moronic film-making.
The precedent has already been set. George Lucas remastered his Star Wars films with (90s) cgi and then made the originals unavailable. The rumor is that he destroyed all the original copies, so you’ll never get to see the version available to audiences in the 1970s and 80s. I could easily imagine Hollywood doing the same with other properties. For instance, The Powerpuff Girls, a 2000s children’s cartoon, was just rebooted as a blackwashed live action television show with some of the characters being — inexplicably — lesbians who have one night stands with random women. The writer put into… Read more »
Stopped watching TCM in early 2016. Had been the only channel I had watched for many years. Former host Robert Osborne was likely a man of the “alternate persuasion”, but he never allowed politics to enter overtly into how he handled the show. Not so with our boy Ben Mankiewicz. It’s all politics, all social criticism, all the time. And Eddie Muller, child of a crusading, mid-20th century writer and “news” man, seems at time the perfect loyal toady. Never misses a chance to plug the leftist-ruling class line. Finally could no longer stand it, and turned them off too.… Read more »
Ben Mankiewicz of TYT fame. That’s a far left (imho, racist) YouTube channel that promoted all manner of Russiagate conspiracies and anti-White racist stories. What do you think the chances are that Entertainment Tonight would hire Ben Shapiro to review modern Hollywood films? (not that I’m a fan of the guy). That asymmetry is why they win. Their politics poses no barrier to their employment but yours certainly does. Maybe our side should take that lesson to heart and employ it ourselves. How hard would it be for our people to look a prospective employee’s social media for the wrong… Read more »
That is one of the reasons official Washington despised Trump. Thousands of people in Conservative Inc spent the final years of the Obama administration angling for jobs in what was assumed to be the next Bush administration. Jonah Goldberg’s wife hit the gym and got a makeover assuming she would be in the Jeb Bush White House, but then Trump came along and ruined it all. For “conservative media”, Trump represented thousands of lost book deals, speaking gigs and so on. This contradicts your earlier point that the establishment went woke because they are searching for spiritual fulfillment. Not that… Read more »
The universal hatred for Trump is not for Trump, but for the plebes having the audacity to elect someone other than their approved candidates. Trump is simply a proxy upon which to focus their ire, and as a lesson to anyone else who would dare to even pretend to be the people’s champion without their approval.
Plenty of establishment types but a large portion of Never Trumpers went out on a limb (what counts as a limb for these people) and had it shoved right back in their face.
For whatever reason the first person to pop into my head when reading this was Conservative Inc. member and con man Mike Baker, the Fox News so called analyst. What a complete, total and unmitigated fraud. Nothing more infuriating than watching a glass jaw go unpunched. Frauds like that are good at carefully choosing their venues as to never be challenged. They have apoplectic meltdowns in the wrong venue.
and the fact you watch FOX says it all.
He’s been on there for years. He’s on every f-ing show as a guest. I don’t watch Fox News anymore, or even have cable, but I have relatives who do.
“In reality, the culture war has been driven by people who have all of the power and money they could ever need.”
Given the age of those currently in charge, their behavior might simply be a matter of habit, much like Warren Buffett continuing to buy businesses and invest in various ventures. He has more money and influence than he could ever hope to use in this life, but he keeps plodding along, out of habit.
like a dung beetle
I’m admittedly a little slow at connecting the dots but one would assume if there’s active CIA involvement in the news media, the practice is also ubiquitous in education, religion, entertainment, business, finance… Nihil Sanctisne?
To see the picture, you need the right perspective. The CIA was established by the financier industrialists after WW2 to help manage their empire. They own and control the media, the Fed, and both political parties. Their foundations fund the major universities, etc. See the chart in my earlier comment below, which is just the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah, the fuckin jews, no shit, we already know.
Amazing how our great “democracy” has ended up like the French monarchy. Versailles couldn’t be righted either.
I have to admit, as a freelance Sovietologist I’m getting that old Cold War thrill down my leg again, and I kinda like it. Biden hasn’t actually written about the problems of linguistics from a Marxist perspective, or ordered a hundred flowers to bloom*, but it’s basically the same thing. Since there’s no news in the truth, and no truth in the news, we have to wonder just why they’ve placed that article about the Five Year Plan quota being overfulfilled by 52% at People’s Heavy Tractor Manufactory in Krasnoyarsk. Is that good? Bad? Does it mean anything at all,… Read more »
Yes, humor is a tonic. But it’s a bit like ordering that $5,000 bottle of Dom Perignon while the Titanic sinking and knowing you’ll be dead before the bill comes due.
I’ve almost always worked in the art world. It’s very, very non-meritocratic, so it requires a kind of Kremlinology, knowing or guessing which shibboleths the social police really mean and you’re obligated to repeat even in private, and which are purely “performative” so being caught taking them seriously marks you a born loser who’ll never get the call again. The present corporate-woke-social-media complex inflicts that royal court / Soviet type of constant high-stakes lying on normal people. It’s made them insane.
One aspect of a totalitarian society: we all have to wear masks and know when it is ok to take them off or switch them out for other ones.
Scott Gottlieb has been directing a lot of the media adjustments on Covid. He is at least paying attention to legitimate public opinion. Biden and the people in his bubble were still pushing his insane, “if you are good and follow the rules, we will allow you to have small gatherings in your yard for the 4th of July” until Gottlieb went on CNBC and told them to adjust to reality. He is well embedded in the deep state, I suspect part of the shift came from elites who want to get back to their normal summer vacations and were… Read more »
To a large degree our elites are like kids running in front of parade pretending that their leading it. They can’t get to far in front, fall behind or go off track or the illusion is exposed.
Gottlieb told the they were doing just that and they better get dial it back – which they did.
Your description of the managerial state remembered me about this: “It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a central nervous system. In the late 1950’s (as in the late 1970’s) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, should be established and should prevail; and all information that muddied the tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the memory hole… the public, the… Read more »
it’s like no one here has read Atlas Shrugged. which i know is not great literature, but its central theme was the fascistic behavior of corporations and government agencies — in the 1950’s!
You’ve got your Ayn Rand jewish materialism and your Karl Marx jewish materialism. It’s a false dialectic, comrade. Whichever one you pick, you lose.
Then the alternative is civil war – and it will be unlike the last one. The US will balkanize as the competing swarms attack each other.
I hope it is unlike the last civil war-and we win this time around.
Civil war is unlikely, in my opinion. Well, at least how conservatives imagine it being fought (well-organized military forces battling each other). During the last one, the Southern States were controlled by an educated elite willing and able to organize the masses, many of whom were initially opposed to the war, into a cohesive unit able to fight against their common opponent. The situation is drastically different today. Conservatives, and normie Whites in general, have almost zero institutional support — the finance sector, the police agencies, the media, the federal government, Big Tech, and even the military now. That demographic… Read more »
“if you wish upon a star…”
Col., when you refer to the North West, do you mean https://www.heraldnet.com/news/100-armed-vigilantes-rouse-fear-soul-searching-in-snohomish/?
If so, I thought it was a good show of right wing community solidarity, although the Police Chief who allowed the rally to happen was quickly sacked. Even in semi-rural Washington, the anti-whites have control.
Your local approach is probably where we are headed. Texas, Florida, and other mid and southern states start defying DC, and stop cooperating in federal law enforcement and National Guard deployments.
This is all well thought out and I would almost entirely agree, other than I must have missed the armed rebellion that involved actual shooting and casualties in the North West to which you’re referring, where right wingers just showed up and used their weapons.
Civil war may be an alternative, but it is certainly not the alternative. That is probably a good thing besides. Because if we cannot win a non-war, we certainly aren’t going to be able to win a hot fighting war. The alternative which is most likely, IMHO, is incremental decline over a long period of time. This has really already started. What I think would be more likely for sudden change than a hot civil war, is a collapse in the money which is what the left-wing machine relies on more than anything else. But this would also be horrific… Read more »
What? 4S and focus.
When? After the collapse and the fog of chaos has enveloped all.
How? That’s up to you & to each his own.
The disease is relatively few & in time the number of antibodies will rise into the millions if necessary. It’s existential and always has been, but prolonged affluence has hidden that reality from us.
Smarter, not harder.
“A year ago, every respectable journalist knew that Covid came from exotic meat markets. It was the provincial rubes and their taste for bat meat. Similarly, it was provincial rubes in America and their conspiracy theories that thought Covid was possibly man-made. Now all of a sudden, the media fish are schooling around the lab leak theory.”
I thought we all established yesterday that it was aliens what done the Covid?
What an ignernt toad.
Everyone knows it was racists and white supremists.
Great analysis! C.S. Lewis wrote about the thrill of finding oneself among the in-group, and what a hard temptation that is for human animals to resist. Being invited to move into that exclusive small town that the elite occupy means status and prestige, career advancement and the wealth that goes with it, and the power to influence events. When you walk in to the cocktail party, you’re the one ‘in the know’, the one whose opinion everyone wants to hear. No wonder it quickly becomes addictive, and your overwhelming priority is to do whatever it takes to stay there. Regarding… Read more »
“That is one of the reasons official Washington despised Trump. Thousands of people in Conservative Inc spent the final years of the Obama administration angling for jobs in what was assumed to be the next Bush administration. Jonah Goldberg’s wife hit the gym and got a makeover assuming she would be in the Jeb Bush White House, but then Trump came along and ruined it all. For “conservative media”, Trump represented thousands of lost book deals, speaking gigs and so on.’
Z, the late, great Sam Francis is smiling down on you from heaven in approval.
This post reminds me of why it can be so frustrating to have a conversation with a normie. They don’t understand how the system works. If you don’t have this foundational knowledge, you’re lost.
and you only end up making the normies mad at *you*
I think that is starting to change, Barn. Most normies are aware that something is wrong. Sportzball is all nogger politics now. His kid’s cereal has a picture of faggoty heart shaped froot loops on it pushing gay pride. (Don’t be surprised if there’s a dildo in it as a surprise for the kids). At work, he is terrorized by the HR fatties and vibrants. At every turn he is accused of rape, racism and fascism. His kids hate him and are perverts and degenerates. He’s forced to wear a mask by revolting lumpkins. I break with our esteemed blog… Read more »
Normies are hopeless.
I spoke with a somewhat conservative normie yesterday who still believes Beer Flu is a real threat.
Also note a significant portion of National Guard troops have been sent home from DC recently.
A strong leader will need to behead the main institutions. ……. Therefore, reform of this sort may be impossible, which means reform is impossible.
Which is why we’ll have to behead them, not the institutions. And eat their livers with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
“…The CIA can influence the media narrative by simply turning a relatively small number of journalists…The CIA is not the only part of the managerial state playing this game…” See this chart of media control, and note that nearly every CIA director since Allen Dulles has also been a member of this same New York organization: https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/ Edward Bernays, assistant to CBS founder William Paley, published his book “Propaganda” in 1928. That same year, H.G. Wells published his book “The Open Conspiracy: Blueprints for a World Revolution”. Both of these books reveal the method that has been pursued ever since.… Read more »
A fish in the vast ocean, always swimming in the same direction as its school, does not know of any direction but forwards. Unless every fish around it suddenly swerves, it can diverge from it’s current course a great deal without realizing it, as long as it always follows the school.
The people on this side of the Great Divide are outside the school of fish, able to see the massive changes they’re making, and have a better perception on where the school will ultimately head if current trends continue.
The mistake in this one, often repeated, is attributing the motives of cancel culture and others to wild eyed ideology or mindless hatred.
While that is certainly true and a huge motivating factor, it is not safe to assume that power ceases to be a motivating factor once one possesses it. The local lunatic on your school board harassing people for wrongthink is motivated by her own idiocies, but a congresscritter demanding someone be silenced or arrested or impeached does so just because they can.
You are confusing individual with collective motivations. The E-3 rifleman man just wany to make it back to barracks in one piece, but the division wants to level the town. If you are analyzing the divison’s actions and tactics in light of the corporal’s motivations and intentions, you do not know your enemy and you will lose 1/2 the time.
The enemy’s collective goal is to see you dead, your women enslaved, your kids raped, and they think it is funny.
I agree that standard reform is impossible once you see the breadth and depth of the managerial estate. That’s why I also think the only way it changes is via some catastrophic black swan event. Unfortunately, it’ll most likely be ugly for all, but the cancer is so far advanced, that a major chemo shock to the system may be all that’s left.
The positive part is the more the rust spreads, the likelier it is for a catastrophic event to happen. A bridge may be able to withstand a windstorm when properly maintained, but the same storm will collapse it when the structural faults become too many due to neglect, along with the people who trusted its integrity.
i thought COVID was the black swan. maybe not.
Only if/when the federal handouts force an economic depression. Otherwise, normies are enjoying the covid gimmes and working from home.
“Otherwise, normies are enjoying the covid gimmes and working from home.”
Damn Straight!
it was a white swan with tar on its feathers. black death levels of carnage would qualify as a true black swan. don’t worry, it’s coming…soon.
“The way to think of the media is…”
Simple. What was once “gray lady” is now “Jerry Springer.” A thing to ridicule. Same thing for paunchy beta males waddling behind their wives, masked and hunched shoulders, outdoors in public.
Do as much naval gazing as the real 1%ers, before snotty rich people ripped off the term.
compared to the US the CCCP was (and still is) far less complicated of a system, with much more direct control over its component parts. The federal system is not going to be reformed, in the same way a patient with stage IV cancer is not going to be cured by “re-organizing” his health care. The federal system is in the process of collapsing and dying; the US is going to break up into multiple regions, ala Yugoslavia. Whites will control some of these regions, and will hopefully expel all the “good” whites along with the mud creatures. And the… Read more »
That fragmentation is well underway. There are a lot of the attempts to stop it, and they use misleading labels such as “Defund the Police,” which simply means centralize police. The breakup is inevitable, but whether that means numerous governments or more or less a kabuki version of what we have/had remains to be seen.
Yup.
A truthful phrasing would be something like, “Defund Your Local Sheriff, Replace With Extremely Well-Funded, Vibrant Federal Gestapo.”
Wild Geese – Covington’s ‘Fatpo’ (Federal Anti-Terrorist police).
Check out redsratesecession.org.
Apparently there is a movement afoot to have the area south of I80 in Illinois become its own state or become part of Indiana.
The counties in question have actually held referendums and most have passed easily.
A pipe dream? Maybe
But people keep asking what to “do next” to move the ball forward.
Seven rural counties in eastern Oregon have voted to join Idaho. Not that will be allowed to happen.
‘pipe dream’ or not, ‘will be allowed to happen’ or not – the importance of those movements and esp referendums is the introduction to the general public of the very idea that situation is beyond. any other ways of resolving.
How many normies have had to actually pounder – first time in their entire life! – “is it THAT bad?!”
Bringing these things up alone is a major accomplishment and prepares people’s minds for what needs to happen next regardless of whether “they won’t let it happen” or not. I play a sort of normie conservatard on Facebook and participate in the usual flag-wavin’-murrica-luvin’ FB groups and even there you’re seeing normie Fox News-heads talking about breaking off their counties. Of course this is Oregon where the state government has reached comical levels of tyranny AND incompetence. The latest thing is that our demented bisexual Xrrl Governor has started a $1M lottery based on getting vaccinated. So get that mRNA… Read more »
Reform as far as D.C. would require something seemingly simple, yet likely impossible: dispersal of the various departments and agencies across the land. Relocating Treasury to Manhattan, Interior to Wyoming, Agriculture to Iowa, and so forth. This idea was floated and shot down.
The Cluster Effect is responsible for much of the dysfunction, but the Administrative State–which is the “government” even though controlled by the Ruling Class–never will allow dispersal. In economic terms, the Cluster Effect, a/k/a the Porterian Effect, promotes efficiency and so forth. In real world politics, it simply promotes conformity. And those in power demand conformity.
Every time I see some large gathering of the hive, say the entertainment faction at one of their award ceremonies, or the technocrats at one of their mountain retreat summits, I start to get angry at the Islamic fundamentalists who’ve been promising for years to strike at the heart of the Great Satan. I know the threat was overblown to justify the expansion of the security state and bloat military budgets, but can’t these morons get anything right? I wish I was being facetious, but I’d take an Islamic theocracy over a progressive one any day of the week. Dhimmis… Read more »
Muslims, wrong about beer pork and Jesus. Right about women fags and Jews
pithy and to the point, I like it!
“I’d take an Islamic theocracy over a progressive one any day of the week.”
You didn’t notice that the progressives accept Islam as a peer. That’s not because Islam is strong; it’s because Islam is compatible.
It’s only compatible until the muslims have numbers. Then it gets interesting.
Compatible as in, the Progs are okay with losing to Islam. *points at France* I suspect that on a deep, emotional level, fanatic Muzzies and fanatic anarchists are the same personality.
Comparable to a Christian not caring overmuch if he’s ruled by Protestants or Catholics. He’s got a preference, sure, but his world won’t end if he’s forcibly converted to the other team.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/bhandari-inside-indias-hunger-games
this is a fantastic article on the nature of India, and indians. has a lot of relevance to the hindus taking over various companies in the US. those companies will die because of the hindu infestation, which is a good outcome.
sorry it is OT for this post…
karl – Interesting article, but in truth nothing new or surprising. Even along with all the criticisms, however, the author claimed that India has a crisis in ‘government.’ So even while noting no one in India has a real conscience, and is either looking to exploit or being exploited, he cannot quite bring himself to say that India’s problem is that it is full of Indians. It’s one thing to criticize India’s ‘tribalism,’ quite another to admit your people and culture are simply subpar. The article’s characterization of Indian nurses (officious and uncaring) seems apt, considering the horde of them… Read more »
Trump was the best president we’ve had since Eisenhower. That is less a ringing endorsement of Trump then a sad commentary on the quality of our political leaders. The greatest accomplishment of Trump was bringing the level of corruption in our institutions more out in the open; his biggest failure not beheading those institutions. Ironic for a guy known for “you’re fired!”.
Reform is always possible. The nature of that reform is wildly variable.
Agreed with most other than “reform is always possible.” There are cases where reform is impossible. The United States government is one of those. The Soviet Union transitioned from the status quo of Breshnev to failed reform under Gorbachev. The United States reversed the order but will end in the same failure.
I don’t think enough attention was paid recently to Merkel’s decision to sign onto Russian energy. Beyond the obvious strategic significance, it shows even Europe sees a United States in rapid and irreversible decline.
Reform can take many paths. One of them is the phoenix rising from the ashes. That is probably our path.
How do you imagine that playing out? What’s the scenario?
there is no such path. once an empire dies, it never comes back.
I have no idea. There are so many spinning plates in the air right now, dropping any one of which could cause a cascade event to start. The beginning of the World Wars had this vibe I imagine: the old system couldn’t go one so a bloody new paradigm had to be established.
And that is why the US will do everything possible to put Ms. Baerbock of the Green Party in the chancellor’s seat in Germany next fall. She opposes Nord Stream 2.
I just have trouble seeing that with all the “free” money floating around. Something John Rivers on Gab mentioned that has stuck with me is that never have fewer people watched the WWE, and never has it made more money. In a normal economy a lot of this fluff would just fall away without a fight, but we’re left to fight significant battles over even the tiniest issues because the resources of our enemies are seemingly limitless. After all, the “creative destruction” of the economy cannot even keep a fake sporting program that no one watches from thriving. (I should… Read more »
never have fewer people watched the WWE, and never has it made more money.
The same can be said for news, entertainment and sports.
The business paradigms are clearly broken. No name itinerant you tubers and podcasters have larger audiences than major shows broadcast on tv, that have tens of millions of dollars of revenue.
The K-shaped recovery is real.
The central banks have talked down inflation fears for now and we’re right back to upward idiot rips in tech stocks.
Every corporation in the western world have literally told half their customers to FOAD. They know if they need more money their buddies at the Fed can print them up a fresh batch.
Good ol’ Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne Division on Little Rock like it was 1945 again for the benefit of the Sacred African, so for White Southerners, “best” is a relative term. I don’t like Ike.
It’s really amazing how many conservatives really think it would be unprecedented for the military to enforce woke precepts on the population. It’s been done, in the South, and the population fell in line.
The population fell in line after their leadership abandoned them for their thirty pieces of silver. That’s where we can trace the “Conservative Inc” grift. It just got a new coat of paint…
Another aspect lies with the fact that America was overwhelmingly White during the 1950s and 1960s. The republican party coming along and convincing the masses they could fight back through voting ultimately contributed to White deracination and failure to oppose the system imposed upon them. Whites let go of their identity in order to win elections they foolishly thought would advantage them. The difference between then and now is that the GOP is no longer nationally viable, not beyond the next presidential election. So, there will be increasingly little reason for Whites in a heterogenous empire that hates them to… Read more »
Reform is always possible. The nature of that reform is wildly variable
Agreed. It’s a mistake on our side (and the left too) to think that the situation is static or building to some inevitable conclusion.
I’ve been doing a deep dive on Byzantium history lately. Their politics and governing structure were a lot more f-caked up than ours. It’s an endless parade of disastrous mistakes, civil wars and coups, betrayals and false starts. Even so the system still evolved over time.
Byzantium lasted for 1,123 years however.
Something that the black pillars here should consider.
“…best president since Eisenhower…”
Trump complained about the “fake news”, but he himself was largely “fake opposition” to the real New York / London power brokers.
Note that Eisenhower was a member of the CFR before, during and after his term as president. He was an agent for the very same “military-industrial complex” he famously warned about.
That’s my boy, you keep on beating that CFR drum as hard as you fucking can…