170 thoughts on “Dissident Economics”

1. You’re either intentionally misleading people about Marxist theory, or unintentionally betraying your ignorance when you read the Communist Manifesto as if its 10-point plan was a blueprint or pre-determined goal that Marx and Engels wrote to be applied to any country in any historical context. The Manifesto is a pamphlet that was written in the context of the nationalist uprisings in Europe of 1848-51. Its primary value is its concise distillation of the principles of Marx’s materialist conception of human history. You get one partially right: Marxist theory is first and foremost a critique of capitalist society that focusses on its dehumanizing nature and its internal incoherencies. Marx explicitly derided other socialist theorists who believed the future utopia could be pulled from the mind of a great philosopher when he dismissed the writing of “recipes for the cook shops of the future” in the introduction to Capital. Marx believed the hope for transcendence of capitalism lay with the revolution of the industrial working class. There are very few places in Marx’s corpus where he describes what a socialist society would look like, but where the does, he references the re-appropriation of the unity of man’s essential nature, the abolition of the division of labour, the practices of the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian obschina and the moral principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.

2. Z,

   Things have changed. Ideas have lost their ability to inspire sacrifice, even the Left does nothing without a promise of reward.

   What I contend with below;
   The fact is, Saul Alinsky was right when he said, “He who controls the language controls the masses.”

   But the masses are finished Z.
   The last gasp of the masses was 1/6.
   No one will fight for a dead idea, and the Republic is dead. The Dems and the Left are on top by force and fraud;
   > this is normal, pre-Enlightenment politics. Politics returns to the naked struggle for power, with money as its strongest suit. That’s normal human history returning.

   “All wars are moral wars.”
   No, thankfully few. Most wars are resource conflicts, the chief resource being POWER as that allows control of all the others, including the masses.
   If the Dems tomorrow say there are only 2 genders the entire script will be rewritten to reflect the same, and most will bow to the “new order” of sexual taxonomy as if they had never thought anything else.

   Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia is Point Deer make Horse.
   This is the central insight of Stalin and Orwell- and Orwell speaks through O’Brien not Winston.

   So..what is to be done?
   Recognize that the wars of Ideas – Wars of Political Religions – are over.
   Normal human politics returns-
   Politics is Power. That’s all.
   Then the Winners are they who use organization to synthesize people + resources + path to power.
   At present that’s the Dems.
   There’s no opposition so they are in power.

   Woke you know is just the Left replacing the legal Clerisy of the vast Civil Rights government and Corporate administrative class that rules us with a religious Clerisy.
   Once you overthrow the Republic (they have) the Laws are vapors.
   So now it’s Religious- Woke is Godly, Black Criminals are Saints, Whites are Devils. Woke is the most Competent thing the Elites have done since 1965, if not 1945. Certainly more Competent than 1865; for they have the apparatus to Reconstruct, lacking in 1865.

   Politics is Power, Ideas are mere uniforms and rituals that can and do change daily , it is raw power alone that counts now.

   And see the woke Generals scrambling for position; they see the new Religion, Milley simply wants a place in it. Kolenda and other young ones (Kolenda a true warrior BTW) may want…more. And why not all?

   Behold our most likely fate; Woke Warlords scrambling to be Dictator.
   They believe nothing, but they’ll ride the Horse they find- and the Right has no Horse.

3. “moral superiority .. would lead to .. end of capitalism…”

   Wrong. That was never claimed. The basis for all Marxist theorizing was 2 observable phenomenon which continue to act, even if it is difficult to measure the pace: overproduction and declining rate of profit.

   It was observed by Marx that capitalism created a totally new type of economic crisis. Whereas historically an economic crisis always implied a shortage of goods, under capitalism it was possible to have a crisis where huge stocks of goods were sitting in stores that couldn’t be sold. Overproduction was a distinctive feature of the new economy.

   At the same time Marx observed that as capitalists worked in competition with each other they always sought to reduce the amount of labor required for production. The capitalist who figured out a new way to produce the same goods with less labor could make more money. But as the new techniques of production became established this would result in lower prices for consumers with a higher volume of production. The rate of profit gained from the production of each individual item would go down, though the aggregate profit would rise in the short term as more goods were manufactured and sold.

   Ultimately Marx saw these 2 tendencies working to ensnare the economic system as the efficiency of production put more people out of work against the background of an economy that was already producing enough to meet market demand many times over. This was expected to lead to a crisis that would then force a proletarian revolution. It was never expected by Marx that morality would drive the revolution.

   Why hasn’t this happened yet? The most simple answer is that things have proceeded much more slowly than anyone on the political spectrum of the 1850-1950 era had envisaged. There were many crises in the US during the 19th century which seemed to auger this breakdown, but they were solved by expansion to the West. After 1898 the Spanish-American War initiated US ventures beyond the Western Hemisphere. When the system of alliances began to form in the early 20th century it seemed as if the need to allay internal contradictions through ventures abroad would initiate the final crisis through inter-imperialist war.

   Well there were some major wars in the first half of the 20th century and it some respects they did reflect the accuracy of many Marxist predictions. But the revolutions which broke occurred in underdeveloped countries which were never the main focus of Marx. The most developed capitalist countries managed to pull it together and ride on into the new century.

   All of the classic issues raised by Marx continue to act on the modern economy and nothing ever raised by the Austrian School has actually been able to answer it. However it is clear from the last 150 years that it is much easier to diagnose a general trend than to predict when a revolution is likely to occur. In fairness to Marx, one should realize that virtually everyone in those earlier eras thought in terms of imminent crisis. Arthur Gobineau, Oswald Spengler, just about author popular among the Right of that older era, thought that in terms of an upcoming crisis.

   When Marx wrote that “A specter is haunting Europe” he wasn’t just pulling a rabbit out of his hat. He was summing up the view which many conservatives in the Europe of 1848 held. It seemed as if revolution by the proletarians was on the horizon. Marx just sought to give a finer understanding of this phenomenon by tying it into overproduction and the declining rate of profit. As it turns out, although his theoretical observations were insightful, his immediate analysis was making the same error which Rightists of that time made. They were all expecting an imminent cataclysm rather than a very slow unwinding of contradictions. But Marx remains valuable because he spelled out these contradictions better than anyone else.

4. You keep getting closer to Catholic economics….

   • Yep, I was noticing the same thing. Not that I mind of course, it all comports with my natural sentiments as well.

   • I’m not a Catholic, but aren’t the Catholics unique in the Western World for forbiding usury?

     I bet we could ignite a war on this site if we broached outlawing usury.

     • If you ban charging interest on borrowed capital, the risk premium shows up as mandatory insurance. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly how we got insurance.

       The issue isn’t lending money at interest, it is kiting checks AND charging interest on the kited value.

       Risk is always conserved and there is no economic model that can eliminate this fundamental fact.

       • QED.

         My understanding is that usury doesn’t ban charging fees for the risk of lending capital, it bans compound interest on the loan. Am I wrong?

       • Interest is not the issue

         It’s excessive interest. Punitive interest. And what often follows is the borrower can’t pay so the lender gets to break his kneecaps or take the collateral.

         Interest in and of itself was never the issue. In fact interest, some, internet, has the unique psychological benefit of telling the borrower he is in a real deal and needs to take it seriously. If you simply give him the money, there is no sense of gravity to the situation and he’s likely to bail out on the deal.

5. Z; agree with Gab comment on calculating Trump/ MAGA utility- any movement needs bodies.

   On Trump raising Hell; be warned- Trump has no Hell in him, and lets be honest nor does MAGA. We’d know by now.

   To update Hamilton: I think the People Sir are a Great Sheep.

   But still a pool. Maybe even an organization ripe for taking.

   • Is Gab worth going to? I signed up a few years ago but never go there. I found it a bit empty. Like, I didn’t see many comments. If there’s a certain section of Gab that’s best for DR / Zman type followers, please let me know.

     • I signed up in Jan 21 of all things but have been on there today for the first time talking sh-t, as it were

       Kinda fun. At least you don’t have to worry about being banned. You get some pretty lovely debates going on. I’m still trying to feel it out. A lot of Christian stuff, which I don’t in fact mind, but lots of Bible citations and so forth and I haven’t read the Bible in, say, ever. Take that back, I did read the Gospels. But these guys are masters of the Book. Lots of pro Trump / anti Trump fights going on, which is entertaining. I follow Z’s feed too.

       Yeah, it’s worth a few hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but I can see how it becomes addicting. So I have to watch myself.

       • You don’t get banned.. you get muted by Investor class – no one can see you.

         But it’s probably better than being banned by Pakis who wrote a Python script, with English words they don’t understand.

         • Thanks for the replies. I’ll have to give it another shot.

         • I didn’t consider the muting by the investor class. So there’s a snob factor in play I take it. Or a social hierarchy. Fair enough. Reason enough to bail on the platform. It’s no fun if only “commoners” can see you.

6. Excellent ‘Sunday Thoughts’.

   mfw when Z says we won WW2.
   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/General_George_S_Patton.jpg

7. “Let the market decide” is a monstrous lie in every aspect. First, it is absolutely false. Government intervenes constantly to choose winners and losers. Secondly, as you point out, the assumption a free market will reach a better endpoint is rank bullshit. Third, hamburgers are more expensive for some than for others–mass migration, if we want to use an economic analogy, is the rankest, vilest form of cost-shifting.

   This not only will not end well, it cannot end well.

   • To be fair, the Austrian School is almost completely correct on what is good and bad for markets. What it gets wrong is where this intersects with morality or what is good for a society. Often their free market solution to a moral problem is pure fantasy. For example, I’ve heard people argue that we don’t need regulations to prevent corporations from dumping waste into a river. The consumers would be so repulsed by the act that they would not buy from the company, which would force them to behave morally. Pure fantasy. It assumes an actual press that would inform the public. It also wrongly believes enough people would act this way. I mean, companies like Nike and many Chinese factories employ child and Uyghur slave labor, but it doesn’t hurt their bottom dollar. Similarly, the markets perform better when importing cheap immigrants to the US, but not a thought is given as to whether this is good for the society.

     • The only people you’ll find with a copy of the Fountainhead on their desk work in Govt – GOP. Paul Ryan for instance.

8. I appreciate the fresh look on communism, libertarianism, and liberal democracy, Z. A couple of points:

   1. As much as they were presented as polar opposites during The Cold War, communism and liberal democracy are, in fact, very similar. This is well presented in Ryszard Legutko’s “The Demon in Democracy”, a Pole who lived under both systems. Communism and Liberal Democracy are both utopian, ideological, progressive, totalitarian, born of the Enlightenment, and hold systems, principles, and processes above people. The unattainable heaven is out there somewhere in the distant future, we all must be sacrificed to it in the present.
   2. Post-Enlightenment political and economic systems are very abstract and tend to assume all humans are like European political and economic theorists – White, rational, living in an overwhelmingly White country with almost everyone far above the world average intelligence. To come up with a political or economic system without considering what people it is for is doomed. My feeling is that White people can make almost any modern system work for decades or even centuries and blacks cannot make any modern system work, anywhere, ever. A mixture of races can have mixed results, depending on how much control is exerted by Whites, but there will always be a tax on the system in economic and quality of life terms, by having pre-modern races in your state. I have recently heard this stated in a concise and vivid question:

   “Would you rather live under Socialism in Sweden, or Capitalism in Haiti?”

9. Z: On Marketism: 37:35. “We don’t *want* the market to determine everything. Most cultural items we don’t want the market to dictate. Like tradition. We all feel a bit of sadness when an old building is torn down.”

   Here’s Johnny Rotten lamenting similar things around London. Johnny was the singer of the Sex Pistols. The first political punk band in ’77. (Yes, New York’s The Ramones were first in ’76…but were a-political).

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrz92Z0SsDI&ab_channel=madferrett

   • This is the full 30 minute version. It’s from more than 10 years ago. He comes close to saying anti-immigration things. Even 10 years ago, you can tell the channel took him aside and said “Some of this is sounding a bit racist. We’re going to need you to slip in something about how you are pro-immigrant.” So he did. Today this “tour” wouldn’t have been aired at all. It’s not racist, just populist. A working class lament.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SkUPM_T7FE&t=1766s&ab_channel=identitycrisistheft

     • I’ve brought this up previously but it goes well with your comment. Get an old dust jacket to Jean Raspail’s CAMP OF THE SAINTS and look at the glowing reviews from Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, etc. These outfits would be trying to destroy Raspail less than 40 years later.

       I’m shocked this from Rotten was allowed onto the screen even 10 years ago.

     • Eric Clapton endorsed Enoch Powell in the 70s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYccj2PmraQ

       Clapton’s 2018 apology, blaming drugs and drinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XgwjQdpH4o

10. Why aren’t the government or political actors considered a market? They don’t use money?

    • A: Why aren’t the government or political actors considered a market? They don’t use money?

      Because, as a good little shabb0s g0y, you dutifully allow them to define the vocabulary and the grammar of the discourse.

      Create your own vocabulary & grammar, and then you can speak as a free man, not as a s1ave.

      Z: [T]his determinism …[that t]hey are… on the right side of history… was the source of their fanaticism, this certainty about what was coming next.

      I beg to differ, but the causality works has to work in the opposite direction – it’s the innate fanaticism, the abolute biological genetic certainty that they are the Chosen Race, which fuels their certainty about the future.

      And of course their Insula-dominant/Amygdala-submissive Unitardian/Quaker/Wesleyan/Jesuitical/Scofield-Heresy shabb0s-g0yische pets dutifully follow them with the precisely the same fanatical certainty [because of Muh Feelz emanating from Muh Insula].

      Z: Interestingly, this fixation on the inevitable future led them to do no thinking about the details of that future. This is something we see today… their sense of historical inevitability drove them… prevented them from thinking about the details of that inevitable future

      We badly misunderestimate the Sanhedrin of the Frankfurt School if we think they aren’t war-gaming 4D-chess moves as far into the future as their supercomputers at j00gle & f@cec0ck & tw@tter & amazog can run the calculations.

      They had Obama sign the “Gain of Function” presidential directive just a few days before he left office, and then they had their j00gle subsidiary dumping mountains of Federal Reserve fiat sheke1s into the Wuhan biological warfare laboratory.

      Again, take a look at the physiognomy of our new adversary in chief:

      https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=David+Barnea

      That’s the physiognomy of a stone cold mass murd3rer. [If he were straight, not ghey, and if he knew just a little bit about Game & pickup lines, then he could s1ay all the Chosen p00nt@ng he wanted to s1ay, and probably even s1ay some quality sh!ksa p00nt@ng, as well.]

      PS: What would be absolutely fascinating here, however, is if Bill Gates & Warren Buffet outsmarted them, and convinced them to vaccinate the entire population of the Promised Land with vaccines which will reduce Its population by 90% in the next few years.

      Now that would be an epic sh0ah’ing.

      PPS: On the other hand, if the Chosen Ones outsmarted Bill Gates & Warren Buffet, then we g0yim might be looking at a literal extinction.

      Tune in next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel…

11. I listen to z on the way to pick up fresh, raw milk from the farmer every Saturday at 11am, so no spoilers, please!

    • No spoiled milk either, we all hope.

12. Its said there is nothing new under the sun, and Marxism is certainly an example. Its pretty much the same thing as the ancient Sumerian Empires: conquer neighbors, enslave them, use their LABOR forced to cultivate the land and crucially, build and maintain irrigation ditches, and reap the agricultural surpluses. Its very primitive, and not sustainable as neighbors eventually get tired of being enslaved and the core military tech and manpower is available to anyone. But it worked for thousands of years, it was basically the modus operandi there until the mid 20th Century and mechanization and industrialization.
    Our oligarchs are just more of the same — 12th Century French barons without martial prowess and seeking ever more serfs and fighting with each other and the king. Blackrock is buying up all housing, with free fed money and demanding outrageous rents and forbidding all sorts of things: Republicans, Gun Owners, etc. The rapacity and the desire by oligarchs to control every tiny aspect of their serfs lives is very medieval.

    • The oligarchs happen to operate in a power vacuum. With modern states mostly leaving their citizens alone to live their lives, there’s no one to boss us around. The oligarchs see a need for this. They must see themselves as a combination of father figure and patron. And of course there’s the popular notion that he who has the cash is the wisest.

      • They must see themselves as a combination of father figure and patron. And of course there’s the popular notion that he who has the cash is the wisest.

        This is what the Frankfurt School sanheder*, sigmund freud, mis-named as “Projection” [which should have been called “Reflection”, and the fact that freud mis-named it was an act of Meta-Projection on his part].

        Anyway, you’re making an excuse – namely “paternalism” – for their behavior, based upon how you imagine you would behave around your own children & pets & servants & slaves, and failing to summon the courage necessary to ponder the possibility of other, less laudatory explanations for their behavior, such as, for instance, Sadistic Psychopathy [or Psychopathic Sadism – choose your poison].

        *https://tinyurl.com/22vmyu3c

        • Agreed. This is one to attribute to malice. It is sociopathology at its worst. And, no, there really are not historical precedents for this.

    • Actually, it’s quintessentially modern. Medieval lords generally left the serfs to their own devices just so long as duties, in the form of corvee and in-kind payments, were made in a timely fashion. Serfs were limited in that they had to grind their grain in manorial mills and could not hunt and fish with impunity on noble lands, but they were not required to perform functions they found morally objectionable. But it wasn’t the case that the nobles were precursors to Ludwig von Mises; rather, they simply didn’t have the means to control the peasants’ lives they way our modern Afrofascists do.

      • But it wasn’t the case that the nobles were precursors to Ludwig von Mises; rather, they simply didn’t have the means to control the peasants’ lives they way our modern Afrofascists do.

        You’re making a categorical error here, in assuming that the genetic motivations of Dark Age & Medieval White Christians bear any resemblance whatsoever to the genetic motivations of 21st Century non-White and non-Christian tribes.

        99.999999% or more of our behavior was burned into our genes at conception – there is no nurture, only nature. And that includes the brainwash-a-bility of the Insula-dominant/Amygdala-submissive amongst White Christians, because that very brainwash-a-bility [which is the defining characteristic of their behavior] was burned into their genes at conception.

        • Are non-white non-Christians really so un-susceptible towards brainwashing though? They haven’t faced a decades long campaign to subvert, destroy, and replace them. Not sure they would stand up any better.

          Here in Canada within one generation, Indians, Arabs, and Chinese are raging SJWs, anti-white, low fertility and homo/abortion advocates. Taiwan had 0 gay marriage until 2019 when the supreme Court legalized it. There was not even a debate. Whites fought for decades on the issue.

          I think it’s remarkable that 75 million mostly white Americans voted for Trump despite decades of brainwashing, abuse, and hatred. To me is shows how strong our people are.

          • B125: Are non-white non-Christians really so un-susceptible towards brainwashing though?

            For purposes of classical 20th-Century U.S. demographics, the non-Whites I had in mind were the kneegr0wz, and of course the non-Christians were the Tiny Hats.

            In the 21st Century, obviously the Brahmin and the Mandarin are making an yuge push within the U.S. to supplant the Tiny Hats at the top of the pyramid:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyZsABI8Gk

            And we don’t yet know much about the generic Latino/Mestizo/Central-American-Aboriginal foot-soldiers and their intentions, other than the fact that AOC religiously eschews mocha-flavored-Appendage in favor of vanilla-flavored-Appendage.

            Now getting back to the question of brainwash-a-bility, I’ve known a ton of Tiny Hats over the course of my life, and I can’t think of a single one which wasn’t “In On The Joke” – that it’s all just a giant game of psychological theatrics which the Frankfurt School stages for the proselytization of its shabbos goyische pets.

            If anyone knows otherwise – if anyone has ever met a Tiny Hat who could authentically be fooled by propaganda – then please speak up and go on the record with your observations. [And for the sake of discussion here, doctrinaire Tiny-Hat financial con artists, like Milken/Fastow/Madoff/Sandler/Lehman, do NOT count as having fleeced any victims via proselytizing propaganda].

            On the other hand, getting back to the poor hapless kneegr0wz, they have disastrously low IQs, and are neck-and-neck with MS-13/Santa-Muerte for the title of the most ruthlessly violent race in the world [at least now that Mao & the Khmer Rouge are gone].

            So very stupid, and so very violent.

            But here’s the kicker: Kneegr0wz have OUTSTANDING INTUITION, and are very much in possession of a naturally Street-Wise personality type which simply has to be emanating from their Amygdalae.

            You see it in the steadfast refusal of the kneegr0w to submit to the vaccines, and even On-The-Down-Low-Lebron has warned his race to be extremely cynical about the vaccine agenda.

            Just in the news today there was an EPIC RANT by a kneegre$$ complaining about a female-identifying tranny with its appendage hanging out of its pants as it wandered around inside the women’s locker room at a health spa:

            https://files.catbox.moe/606y5x.mp4

            I defy you to listen to even thirty seconds of that rant and not come to the conclusion that that kneegre$$ has at least a partially functioning Amygdala.

        • The vast majority of our contemporary AWR overlords are whites who descended from white, medieval Christians. Category error, indeed.

          • The vast majority of our contemporary AWR overlords are whites who descended from white, medieval Christians. Category error, indeed.

            PART ONE…

            Chez Z, apparently “AWR” refers to a White which publically professes to be anti-White? [I had to go to a search engine to try to figure that out.]

            With that usage, I don’t know of any AWRs which don’t live in [or who by now haven’t fled to] ultra-White neighborhoods with of course the very best skrewlz.

            Even the Tiny Hats are leaving JYC in droves, and heading to Broward County.

            You are aware that Tater Joe, back when he was a young Senator representing his fellow Tater-kneegr0wz in Delaware, was a virulent [anti-b1ack] racist, and that he was best pals with Gr@nd Drag0n Robert Byrd, right?

            It’s always “Watch what I do, not what I say” with your so-called AWRs.

            There’s a reason that Gavin Newsome hangs out at the French Laundry, and not at the local Santa Muerte disembowelment chamber:

            The vast majority of our contemporary AWR overlords are whites who descended from white, medieval Christians. Category error, indeed.

            PART TWO…

            Now getting back to the genealogical lines of ascent of our 21st-Century AWRs, I’m gonna try to keep this as short as possible and simply cut to the chase.

            This is all you need to know about classical American history [through about 1900AD, when the Frankfurt School started flexing its muscles]:

            1700: The Unitardians begin to apologize en masse for the MOST RIGHTEOUS Salem Witch Trials [ergo, three centuries later, the Triggly Puff & Karen phenomena]

            1746: Culloden

            1774-1783 American “Revolutionary” War: Culloden the Sequel, Revenge* of the Presbyterians

            1812 War thereof: Culloden Part III, the denouement [to include the rise of the Presbyterians]

            1861-1864 “Civil War”: Culloden Part IV, Siegfried’s funeral march for the Presbyterian Anti-Federalists and their Constitution

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkOiKy6sXfM

            *PS: Actually, Mel Gibson grossly understated matters in The Patriot:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYl58yK4znE

            After the original Battle of Alamance [which began the “Revolutionary War”], Cornwallis and Fanning had hanged the Presbyterians at Hillsborough, and so the Presbyterians waited patiently for seven long years, until finally they had a chance for revenge, and, in hand-to-hand combat, armed with swords & knives & axes & rocks, they slaughtered more than 90 of the Canterburian Papish traitors in a battle known as “Pyle’s Massacre”.

            PPS: The Unitardian lunatic, John Adams, appointing the Canterburian Papish meta-traitor, John Marshall, to the Supreme Court [in order to build the coffin within which the Constitution would eventually be buried] was entirely analogous to Obama [himself a descendant of Unitardians on the accursed Dunham side of his family] signing the “Gain of Function” biological warfare directive just a few days before he left office.

            PPPS: I have long wondered whether the Canterburian Papist, Robert E Lee, intentionally threw the third day at Gettysburg, in order to hasten the end of the war, so that the Canterburian Papish could return to the business of making money [rather than losing it].

            PPPPS: If you ever get into a conversation with an ackshuall kneegr0w American [i.e. a descendant of colonial chatte1 s1aves], concerning the topic of the American ‘Civil War’, you must say to them, “Bro/Baby, I hate to tell you this, but it didn’t involve any of y’all Africans, it was purely a wypipo thang; you wouldn’t understand.” And then if they’re serioualy curious about your answer, and want to hear more, then you can try to explain to them the difference between a Unitardian and a Presbyterian [from whom many American b1acks ackshually descend, via miscegenation – and if you have gonads the size of grapefruit, then you can try to explain to them the difference between a Presbyterian and a Unitardian, but of course wypipo AWRs would be terrified to go to That Dark Place].

          • Sorry, I got distracted by something moderately urgent, and I was cutting & pasting furiously to try to get that poast past the anti-spambot filter [so that I go deal with the moderately urgent something], with the result being that portions of what got poasted started looking kinda like gibberish [trust me, it looked an helluva lot better before the cutting & pasting].

            Anway, if you have gonads the size of grapefruit, then you can broach the topic of miscegenation with authentic American blacks, and tell them that they very likely have substantial Presbyterian blood in them, with not a trace of Unitardian blood whatsover. [unlike Obama, who is 50% Unitardian].

            But, again, you’re gonna need gonads the size of grapefruit, and you’ll never see any of your AWRs daring to venture to That Dark Place.

13. I object! The communists did too think about the details of the future! Marx himself explained in detail how the future after communism would work. He said once communism arrives you will be able to

    …hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, … without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

    Marx, um, doesn’t seem to have had anything else to say about how things will work once capitalism has been smashed, but hey, isn’t that enough for you guys? Do you really need more detail than that? Doesn’t it sound great!!!

    • What the control freak’ sycophants (marxists) and ambitious achiever types (libertarians) fail to grasp is that economics, accounting and math are just tools to observe how goods, services and RISK are allocated throughout society. Both factions seek to moralize money for their own interests, but money is just the unit of account.

      Kiting checks, which is what the entire banking system is a thin veneer over, powers the entire show by allowing everyone to pretend there is no insolvency and that you can earn your way out of bad financial decisions.

      When the kiting machine hits vapor lock, which can be mathematically modeled, competing narratives emerge among the various control freak factions. The various narratives must explain who is the out-group (loser), what they did wrong to create the financial insolvency and offer a financial reorganization which rewards its adherents (subscribers) with sufficient gibs to maintain or increase the prevailing control freaks’ status and assets.

      The reality is that industrialization and financialization generated massive current surpluses by borrowing from the future and we didn’t just pull forward consumption, we likely pulled forward generations of population in the process.

      Behavioral economics, or big data/tech as it is colloquially known, is a very imperfect tool to analyze behavioral transactions and try to anticipate outcomes. 2016 and 2020 only proved that big tech is not the pied piper they thought it was and will never be.

      TSIHTF

      Gird your loins and remember that violence is the control freaks’ last resort.

      Would you buy or sell this chart if I told you it was anthrocoin?

      • Link to chart didn’t make it in the post, so here it is.

        https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/11/Annual-World-Population-since-10-thousand-BCE-for-OWID-800×498.png

        Buy or sell?

14. Z: “Those cheap burgers turned out to be extremely expensive.”

    That line should have closed the segment followed by the thunderous mic drop effect.

15. Things are so dumbed down now with ghetto-vogue and fag flamboyance that you don’t as often hear the phrase “crass commercialism”. Crass is key. It comes with free-market holy maxims like, “the market rules”, “the customer is always right”, “whatever sells”, and “give the people what they want”. That’s ok in Denmark with cultured Danes and civilized zoning.

    Here in the US it works for sellers because the people can be made to want everything, without being judged. The term “crass” is avoided when possible since it’s class divisional. In the same way “tacky”, “gaudy”, “loud”, and the literal “low-class” are avoided in polite company, which is Left company. Especially now that being a class snob has ramped up to mean you’re a racist too. What? You got a problem with Latinas pulling their thong straps halfway up their back with a half-shirt…in church? Racist.

    I don’t know what I’m on about. I was listening to the podcast while shopping for underwear. On Amazon I scrolled by a pair of briefs that were very brief. No back. Just a string waistband with a pocket in front, saying. F*CK ME HARD. Except no asterisk. The full word. Imagine shopping for clothes with your kid and you run by that one. Nice world. I’m still for gay marriage but the DR is right when they say the slippery slope is real.

    I grew up in 70s and 80s. The only places you’d see crass products were in head-shops (one-stop shops where you could pick up the new Sabbath album while shopping for bongs). They’d have some t-shirts and posters with “Stick it up your ass” type sayings. And in a chain store in malls called “Spencers”, which was a store for teens and ex-hippy moms to buy stuff like Eric Estrada in a Speedo posters and obscene coffee mugs. (They did have some truly cool stuff though that you’d never find at JC Penny. Dry ice. Metal studded belts. Handcuffs. Etc. And expensive, Hollywood horror-flick quality Halloween masks that gave me nightmares.)

    My first encounter with literal crass commercialism was at a ski shop in circa ’78. I was around 9. They had a poster on the wall of Frank Zappa on the toilet. Side view, totally naked, except boots and jeans around his ankles. I really hated it. My friends thought I was a prude for hating such things. It wasn’t that. Rather I think the embryonic Dissident Rightist in me could sense Prog on the horizon sticking its hideous face into decent culture. Through that poster I could almost catch their stench 40 years downwind.

    • my introduction to crass commercialism was ordering shit from the back of a comic book, circa age 10.

      • Did those “X-ray” glasses really work?

        Asking for a [preverted] friend.

        • I can remember being 8 years old and *really* hoping that they did.

    • Zappa was always annoyed by that iconic image of him. It was shot without his permission, and he was a libertarian (approximate) so he said what annoyed him was that he didn’t own the copyright. That wasn’t quite true. As stupid and vulgar as his songs often were, they inveighed against vulgarity and stupidity—and they were surrounded on record by what was probably the last great high-Western art music to reach the popular consciousness. He’d never have pantsed himself for the money.

      • I knew a Zappa fan would come forward to strongly defend him (and hype him to the heavens). I know his music well and I’m not a fan of most of it. I won’t quarrel with you about him. I’ve learned to respect the loyalty you guys show to the man. I’ve never seen anything like it. Rush fans come closest.

        • Same. I really respect the uniqueness and complexity of his work but there is an underlying nastiness to a lot of it that I can’t get past. On the other hand, the song “Joe’s Garage” is warm and catchy. “Don’t you boys know any nice songs?!”

          Speaking of Rush, the best known girl repellent is a Rush tee shirt.

16. “On the one hand, their sense of historical inevitability drove them to smash the present, but it prevented them from thinking about the details of that inevitable future. We see this today with the latest spasms of the cultural revolution. ”

    You see this in primitive Christianity as well; since the Second Coming is any day now, “take no thought for the morrow,” trust God to provide food and clothing (if not, this proves your lack of faith and ‘love of the world’), do not marry and certainly have no children, etc. Eventually everyone either falls away, or sets out to “reinterpret” the old promises, start sto create an ongoing structure of deacons, bishops, etc., who lay down rules on marriage and family, Whether this is a recurring mode of thought or an outright influence on Marxism is a question.

17. The key lesson of the 20th Century is that authoritarian regimes are still prone to killing off its citizens in huge numbers (read 100+ million in a half century) in order to remain in power. Most of this was enabled by industrialization, but also required an elaborate apparatus of bureaucracy and jackboot enforcers. And each tyrant sprang from a different flavor of totalitarianism (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Mugabe, etc). It takes great determination and efficiency to kill on that scale, which ultimately is managerial skill, not ideological purity.

    Some think it cannot happen here. Famous last words. The US government already has such a plan in place. Its called the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” and it is explicitly focused on a cohort of the population designated as white supremacists. And all it takes to be put on the list is “hate speech” on a public forum, referral from a watchdog entity (public or private), or getting flagged by a pre-crime computer model.

    • Yes Tom its hard not to see how the cheka of our time will look more like an IT department than some snappy dressed hit squad. Jackboots down the line for sure but efficiency in the insta-courts of purity has all the infrastructure it needs in Act One. Call it ‘Chekhovs Algorithm’.

    • Just so. There are three possibilities for AINO’s future. 1. Whites will be incarcerated in the millions and possibly massacred Nazi/Bolshevik style. 2. Whites will be turned into 3rd-class serfs with absolutely no rights whatsoever, including self-defense and defense of one’s private property. 3. Whites recognize the probability of outcomes 1. and 2., organize, threaten mass violence, and manage to carve out some form of autonomy.

      • An SS equivalent is already being formed using select personnel from FBI, HLS, and a few other Departments. But they also will be relying heavily on a few contract mercenary organizations of dubious provenance. Planning for detention camps has also been completed under a Continuity of Government Executive Order expanded under Reagan and now again under Biden. As I understand the current plan, they will initially use false flag OPs and entrapment to create an appearance of domestic terrorism and make examples of a few scapegoats. Then comes firearm confiscation and whatever it takes to foment Civil War 2.0.

        • Wanted. Firearms confiscator, must love lead. 18 sheckels per hour, No whites need apply..

          • Most rural county sheriffs will abstain. They know that they would be going up against their neighbors, almost all of which are law-abiding citizens, and very good marksman. And you can’t really divide and conquer in a rural community, because neighbors will stand together in a crisis. This is an ancient behavior that won’t be overridden by cell phone propaganda.

            Big city PDs are a different story. They don’t have the resources to go house-to-house, so their strategy will simply be to arrest someone on pretext criminal violation or complaint. First take them down in neutral space & lock them up, then get a warrant to invade the perp’s house, search & confiscate at will. It’s slow, but many betas will ditch their firearms voluntarily rather than put up with the harassment. Yes, there will likely be a few shoot-outs, but that is what SWAT is for and those guys typically get bored waiting around for something fun to do. And if you haven’t noticed, most SWAT teams are lily white. Moral of this story, get out of the city now.

        • The vaxx casualties will be blamed on the unvaxxed.

          That’ll be their excuse for the agencies to kick into high gear.

          Not a sudden pogrom, but the platform for a Permanent Revolutionary Committee- against us, of course.

      • Still going with holohoax myth, eh..

        • Not a myth, but an exaggeration.

      • I’ll give equal odds to any of the above – 33% each.
        As I am in an unusually optimistic frame of mind today – 0.99% odds the AfroStalinists see the illogic of their positions – shut up and go away. OTOH, I leave room for 0.01 % that Covid wipes us all out.

    • It took a huge bureaucracy and industrial killing equipment for Europeans to kill Europeans, reportedly even then some 15% of SS guards committed suicide, as killing people who look like distant relatives and were mostly women, kids, middle aged men, was not the glory and distinction they were promised.

      HOWEVER, from April through June 1994, Hutus killed about 800,000 to 1.1 million Tutsis and “moderate” Hutus, mostly with rocks and machetes. This was btw the estimated death toll at a certain camp during its entire existence 1941-44. There is also a documentary on the mass killings by Indonesians (mostly of Chinese) during the Suharto coup, the killers gleefully re-enact their killings and have no regrets. Western man does not like killing much as there has been a lot of genetic culling (per Steven Pinker) and cultural pressure to limit this. Not so Third World men as events recently show.
      I do think the mass murder of most Whites is planned and supported at the highest levels, including Gen. Milley. This the direct consequence of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, which painted Whites as irredeemably evil and therefore deserving of a total solution. King probably wanted this anyway.

      • “There is also a documentary on the mass killings by Indonesians (mostly of Chinese) during the Suharto coup, the killers gleefully re-enact their killings and have no regrets.”

        The documentary is “The Act of Killing”. Perhaps this is the scene that you remembered:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZqEzIEWzPk

    • “Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race”.

      Found that little ditty on the White House.Gov site.

      Guess the honkies really are the most dangerous thing to national security.

      I’ll be checking under the bed and behind the bushes in my yard to see if I can find any “white supremacists”.

      Who knew?

      • You forgot that the anti-abortion crowd is ALSO on the list of Dangerous Subversives.

18. Good show.
    A reasonably fair treatment of Austrian Economics.
    The elephant in the room that you (deliberately?) overlooked in the discussion of Marketism is the role of government.

    All of the tech giants, Facebook and Google most famously, are creations of, or were very early adopted children of the Deep State- In-Q-tel usually cited.

    https://sagaciousnewsnetwork.com/cia-funding-of-tech-companies/
    https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-funded-by-cia-2016-9
    This next one makes me smile- an optimistic premise I think.
    http://themillenniumreport.com/2019/05/big-tech-was-created-by-the-pentagon-funded-by-the-u-s-taxpayer-therefore-these-utilities-are-owned-by-we-the-people/
    etc etc

    The Banks have been in bed with the State for so long that we recently celebrated the 100 year anniversary of the institution created by Congress to bail them out every ten or fifteen years.

    Big Pharma, the cause of so much death, plague, pestilence, impoverishment and suicide really started to take off with the Bayh-Dole act of 1980 (I think) which enabled government employees to register patents in their own name which has predictably resulted in turning the CDC into the marketing arm of the drug companies and the removal of any legal recourse by those harmed by their products, even if that harm could be reasonably foreseen (a unique provision for Pharma) .

    I could continue in this vein for hours.

    What you describe as “Marketism” is, of course, fascism, the combination of State and Corporate interests, the framework of which was largely instituted by FDR in the the New Deal.
    Both Messrs Hitler and Mussolini were reputedly impressed by how slickly the system was instituted in the US and this success was to a large degree due to the extent that the book by Freud’s nephew Bernays- Propaganda, laid out the path.

    • In Fascism: the State is supreme. And then, the corporations are made to co-operate. Notice that Russia, China and many others get great military equipment at a reasonable price.

      The United States would be well likened to “Inverted Totalitarianism” because the Banks, et. al. control the State. Notice that United States pays handsomely for ever deteriorating quality.

19. One thing about Marx I always got a kick out of: he said communism would only be possible when the means of production were autonomous, or something like that. It’s been a long time.

    In other words, communism is science fiction! I’d say Marx was a socialist with a theory of communism, regardless, to base one’s ideology on a daydream… people should’ve seen that his revolutionary program wasn’t the product of serious thought.

    Today it’s Science! Yesterday it was philosopher kings. And people keep falling for it.

    • That’s the problem with lefty. He’s capable of great insights, but then he leaps into fantasy.

20. Fine show today, very fine. Many years ago I considered myself a revolutionary communist and was actively involved in the pipe dream of a revolution of the people.

    Then I grew up.

    But the basic principle is not so different. As you point out, Marx‘s analysis of the fundamental social problems of capitalism remains accurate. If big capital has its way, families are destroyed, people are pitted against each other, and many lives are unfulfilled.

    Individuals are members of families, families are members of tribes, and tribes are members of nations. We are, in a sense, an extended family. This remains especially important for people of a Caucasian persuasion.

    Families and nations require a common culture, values, virtue, kinship, connection, rights, and duties.

    Where do we draw the line between libertarian economics and its impingement on the family? It is drawn at the limits of the family itself, and the culture that it undergirds.

    The basic human relation is family – not the deal.

    The basic unit of value is the soul – not the dollar.

    This is why libertarians should be beaten bloody. If everything can be reduced to economics and individualism, then no one can criticize another for selling his mother to a horde of crazy gypsies as long as the price is right. No system, and no person, that would hold such degeneracy blameless is allowed in my home, in my land, in my nation.

21. One thing the libertarians love to do is change the past to agree with their existing economic ideas. Take child labor, for example. They retcon the shit out of this. First, they deny it existed. They re-frame child labor as “labor” by equating helping out on the farm to operating heavy machinery in a factory. Milking the cows before breakfast is exactly the same as a 12 year old schlepping his way to the factory before dawn and working 12 hours therein. But then they do a bait-and-switch and say that the market was actually what drove child labor out of existence when the government came in after all the heavy lifting was done and codified what the market already did into law.
    So it didn’t exist and despite not existing the market solved the problem on its own and then the big bad government came in and took credit by passing laws against it more or less after the fact.
    The stories about anti-trust work the same way. First, they deny it ever happened and say that it cannot happen because greed means price fixing cannot work. Then give some bogus example around Standard Oil and how it was almost bankrupted by a cottage industry of oil companies popping up whose sole reason to exist was to be bought out by Standard oil. Then just deny the gov’s anti-trust efforts had any effect whatsoever.
    The government should exist to arrest libertarians.

    • Priorities matter. Big “L” libertarian bashing is useless venting over a perceived enemy that is really inconsequential in the Grand Scheme of things. Libertarians have no political power and enact nothing. Their only function in society is to be a convenient whipping boy for the lazy and aggrieved within the dissident community. A libertarian is not going to slaughter its nation’s citizens by the tens of millions, but a real tyrant will. And being killed dead is a lot worse than being harangued over some esoteric economic principle. Maybe you should consider redirecting some of your ire at the real villains that do have power in our system of government and use it, in the present tense, to do actual harm.

    • I’m no historian in these matters (or any other matter) but they aren’t completely wrong. A good example was the practice of “shanghai”ing sailors which wasn’t made completely illegal until the practice was largely dead. In this case it wouldn’t surprise me that after the titans of industry discovered that the 40 hour workweek gave the most bang for the buck that they set about codifying it into law.

22. Submitted as shallowest comment of the day:
    I’m now of a certain age and able to have a more rational perspective such that what the, um..little head thinks no longer automatically trumps what the big head thinks. That said, I wonder if Stalin and his ilk just needed to get laid more often in their younger years. Maybe they’d have been less frustrated and had more time to focus on…baser desires.

    • Seems like being sexually unsuccessful when young has lasting negative effects and is never truly gotten over, if people like Gates and Weinstein and so many others are examples. Then there is Bill Clinton who was probably having sex with cousins when seven but is just a perverted horn dog. Or maybe not. Maybe he had issues.

      • bill c’s problem is his mom was a stone whoore, and wasn’t shy about letting lil’bill watch her with johns….

    • According to one of his biographers, young Koba had no problem getting laid. His hatreds stemmed from being born intelligent but dirt poor with a drunk for a father.

      The revolutionary underground in Imperial Russia were hotbeds of sexual revolution too. Banging your way through the vanguard of the proletariat was another way to prove your Bolshevik credentials by rejecting “bourgeois morality”.

      • Agree. Stalin got laid plenty. Yes the political and sexual revolutions moved in parallel. Stalin saw himself first and foremost as a revolutionary (even though his revolution was won by the mid 1920s). The lifestyle he chose left him outside normal family life (distant from his women, children). Until he died he worked like a grad student, meeting with colleagues and working late into the night, then falling asleep on a couch. Not much room for emotional connections.

        Also, its not clear to me that he had “hatreds” or was “frustrated” or anything like that. Instead I think he had a different moral perspective than the modern liberal/Christian perspective most of us in the west grew up with. He was very well aware of the Christian moral perspective (indeed, attended a seminary for several years), but his revolutionary vocation required a different morality. Obviously this morality served him well as he ended up at the top of the heap of revolutionaries, helped keep things running smoothly for USSR during WWII, and constructed a formidable regime that faced down the world (US, Europe, China) for 35 years after his death.

23. Our rulers Z-Man do have a plan. When Whites are gone, (we can all agree that is their step 1 from Biden to Milley), they will simply use the talent of India and China as managers. As America becomes China’s resource farm, with themselves as head managers.

    They’d rather be small frogs in a great pond than big ones (answering to no one) in a slightly smaller one. They chose subordination to China so they can get their anti-White hate on as part of their religion of wokeness and racial utopia.

24. I don’t know about “leftists” in general, but “Marxist” is certainly a widely used self-label in the factories of leftism, which are the universities. They all call themselves Marxists.

25. Marx was correct in a lot of his critique of mid 19th century industrialism. Especially as it developed in big cities in England.

    However, he was also myopic in thinking that the conditions in a few concentrated areas were universal. He also failed to grasp that the conditions in the country weren’t all that great. People were (mostly) voluntarily moving from the country to industrial slums, presumably because life was easier or better in them. The poverty of the slums was obvious to social reformers such as Marx while the rural squalor that pushed people into those slums was invisible. Along those lines, one of the frustrations for Russian revolutionaries in the 1890s was that the proletariat was transient – working in industry as the growing seasons permitted, return to their villages at harvest and sowing time. The social reformers and revolutionaries of the 19th century were all urban dwellers. They deplored the condition of urban poverty and idealize rural life but did not choose the idealized rural life for themselves. They were a bit like modern limousine liberals that push rapid transit for the poor, but would never use it themselves.

    • Marx’s analysis was pretty good.What he failed to provide, and his putative followers have failed to envision and enact, was how to get to the workers paradise. All attempts so far have ended in blood-soaked poverty.

      The rise of China since Deng’s pronouncement that “To grow rich is Glorious” seems to prove the point.

      • What he really failed to understand?

        That there never, ever, will BE a ‘worker’s paradise’–or any OTHER paradise–on Earth.

    • Dino – Important points about rural poverty. Farming is hard work, and trying to do it as a family, without the wherewithal to purchase some of the new labor saving machines, made earning a profit even harder. I was struck, listening to a recording of a distant relative of my husband, about how her Italian-born father much preferred American factory work to his work as an agricultural laborer in Italy. He had no desire to go settle far out west and work his own acreage. He liked having a definite salary and definite hours. Ironic, when so many of us now seek a more rural life, but no one has a monopoly on understanding each man’s motivations, whether Marxist or Austrian.

      • Up until the 20th century most farmer workers in Europe and the US did not own the land they farmed. They were either sets, share croppers or day laborer hired help. So it was incredibly hard for them to “profit” from their efforts. And there was little incentive for them to invest in capital or land improvements. This was noted by a number of reformers i the 19th century. This was especially the case with Russian peasant farmers, who were not even given the same plot of land to farm on an ongoing basis and had to communally share their surplus with their village.

        Stolypin initiated land reform in the 1890s to give ownership of land to peasants – but very few took advantage of the program and fewer still were successful. Those became the kulaks that were slaughtered by the communists in the 1930s. Westerners think they (the kulaks) were the norm of farming in Russia before communism and had a long history of owner occupation. Neither was the case. In reality, the kolkhoz collective farms were not very different from the historic norm of Russian peasants farming land owned by a distant landlord.

26. Austrian economics developed a number of precepts which remain valid today. Diminishing marginal utility, subjective valuation, the socialist calculation problem, time preference and their contribution to emergent order.

    However, they went off the rails with Mises’ business cycle theory and rejection of empiricalism.

    The could never get past the idea that money is exogenous to cultures instead of a social construct.

    • I dislike Boomer bashing as much as the next dissident, but immigration is more or less the fault of Baby boomers entirely. Boomers have known since they were kids that social security would not and could not work if they didn’t have kids. They were well aware of this before the oldest Boomer hit menopause. I can still remember as a kid the articles and tv spots about the demographic time bomb of baby boomer retirement and that there simply would not be enough workers per boomer retiree unless they had kids.
      Then, later, after it was largely too late for Boomers to have kids, it was “we must reform social security!” But instead of reform, they got the Bush social security increase. Our nation is being destroyed so that the wealthiest generation in history can get its goddamned check. They won’t even means test it. They voted for tax cuts and such all of their lives knowing the social security time bomb was waiting to explode in all of our faces.
      It’s not even at all clear that the mass migration to pay for Boomer checks is working or that they diverse hordes have any benefit at all to the social security system. They bring ENORMOUS costs with them. The police state, for one. Medical for two.

      • ” but immigration is more or less the fault of Baby boomers entirely. ”

        The 1965 Immigration act, the biggest single cause of the rise of the mud peoples in America, cannot be blamed on teenage boomers.

        • Mass immigration didn’t start in 65. It started in the 80s and really picked up since 2000. That is largely because by the 2000s, the die was cast and could not be changed. The last of the boomers were in their mid 30s at the turn of the century. Gen-X was too small to do it itself.
          Not coincidentally, the rate of abortion peaked when the mass of Boomer women were in their fertile years. Today abortion is at its lowest since Roe. Divorce peaked in Boomers too.

          I get it. White Boomers are still white and still our people and they are our old. I oppose all the boomer bashing. But this is not Boomer bashing, it’s reality. Boomer women refused to have children. They traded the freedom of raising children for the slavery of the cubicle. They made EVIL choices. We must make sure everyone understands WHY this is happening.

          • Women do not make choices.
            They follow what is popular.

          • It’s notable that the ’80s immigration uptick coincided with the opening cries about social security (and other retirement plans) going insolvent. If you think the WWII generation wouldn’t sell the country and their grandkids down the road for thin slice of retirement comfort then I have a bridge to sell you.

        • Bilejones: The ’65 disaster was heavily pushed by Juice for decades prior to its passage. All relevant politicians blatantly lied about what it was intended to do and what its results would be. Even then, from what I’ve seen, the WWII vets and Silents were not fully onboard. IF it was possible to repeal or ameliorate it, that would have been a job for the boomers, but they were too busy getting high and getting laid and then getting ahead to pay much attention to the quality of life for the country as a whole.

          I will agree with Tars that immigration, or at least seeing the consequences thereof, ramped up in the ’80s. And much of that had nothing to do with the ’65 Act and more to do with muh Reagan’s South American foreign policy. When I returned to the US from my first stretch overseas in 1983, D.C. was filled with Salvadorans and Nicaraguans – whose presence was a profound cultural shock to me. I had grown up with the White/black paradigm and was accustomed to seeing the occasional Oriental or subcon, but the sheer numbers of squat, dark, cat-calling mestizo men was something new and different and highly unwelcome.

      • I’m not big on boomer bashing either, especially as I’m a late boomer and the youngest of six siblings.

        However, there is an emergent factor related to boomers that is causing a lot of our current problems. I ran across it while doing some math on my own family not too long ago.

        Of my five brothers and sister (and their spinous) I’m the only one working in the private sector. The others are all retired, on disability or housewives. That’s one out of twelve people. Add ini the ten children between us and three more work in the private sector. Ones a cop. Two work for schools and two for local government.

        So that’s four out of 22 adults working in the private sector.

        The other 18 care a lot more about cheap stuff than they do about keeping production in the US.

        • “The others are all retired, on disability or housewives. ”

          Well, I at least hope the housewife was raising a large family. Frankly, that was her responsibility, not sitting in a cube.
          Women today act like this was such a bad deal. Be with your kids while they (and she) are young and then go “enjoy” cubicle life when the kids are old enough to make their own sandwiches after school. It’s not that big of a deal and has a lot of upside besides. The “lucky” ones that still managed to have kids, but had to work throughout their childhood got all the downsides of kids with little of the upside. Some stranger teacher or social worker raised your kid! They heard their first words or watched their first steps etc. While you got the hard parts of feeding them and putting them to bed and getting them ready for daycare in the morning.

      • Couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard ‘I won’t be around to have to deal with it.’

        Don’t hear it too much these days. In fact, most of the boomers I know are now awake. That’s a good and shocking development, so the hatchet is buried as far as I’m concerned.

      • One might refresh oneself on who and when wrt SSI. Bush did little to nothing. Last significant change occurred under Reagan. At that time, SSI was deemed “fixed” under early 2000’s—at which point more changes might be in order. Here’s a synopsis (brief) fro Brookings (not a conservative voice):

        https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-crisis-last-time-social-security-reform/

27. Libertarianism is the codification of the cultural norms of one of our country’s founding Anglo-American cultures. The codification pushed the norms to a reduction-ad-absurdum level. But the core of leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone was there from the beginning.

    The real problems with libertarianism is claiming that those values are universal to human nature, as opposed to the preference of our people. And of course, pushing them to ridiculous extremes as some ridiculous intellectual project.

    • The Founders were not libertarians. They would have viewed libertarians as unbalanced lunatics.

      • Well sure, libertarianism didn’t exist as a formal theory at the time. But the base ideas were part of the Sotts-Irish-American culture. Not the puritans or the tidewater pseudo aristocrats. But those weren’t the only cultures in America at the time and not even that of a majority of the people.

        They were the leaders and dominated the government, but wouldn’t have won without the SI.

      • Libertarians are unbalanced lunatics.

      • Libertarianism is very familiar, so it can seem to appear whole in the less familiar old things it descends from, including the (not sure what to call it broadly) martial agrarian republican propertarianism? of the founders.

        Possibly, libertarianism is the “slave morality” mirror of the founding—the soporific form of our capitulation to what was worst/strongest in it.

    • The notion of universal human values and human rights goes back, of course, to the Enlightenment. And it was surely the beginning of the insipid notion that all races are equal, which laid the intellectual groundwork for inundating the West with savages. Postmodernism, which rejects Enlightenment universality, effectively argues that non-white peoples are not only fundamentally different from, but also superior to whites. (They are half right.) This is the boat in which we find ourselves today.

      • Sorry, pal. Universal human rights goes back to the Gospel where the Golden Rule was re-emphasized.

28. You’re about marektism determining our morality by majoritarian support.

    Instead out morality is driven by liberal’s (or progressive whatever you prefer) quasi religion.

    This is easily proved by observing that every time the liberal moral project of the day is opposed or thwarted by majority action it is imposed by i democratic means. Gay marriage was opposed and defeated just about everywhere it was put to a vote. Still became a universal across the land. The tranny bullshit wasn’t even put to a vote, probably because the liberal acolytes knew that it would go down in flames. And yet it’s being imposed.

    You, can run down every liberal initiative of the six decades and see the same pattern. Integration, Abortion, Immigration, Globalism, Gay Rights, Feminism, Soft on Crime, etc. etc. etc. Occasionally, but rarely, majoritarian pushback is strong enough and sustained enough to win a (temporary) victory as with forced busing in the 70s and crime from ~ 1990-2015. But even in those cases, the left returns as they are now, when the problems have been forgotten by a new generation.

    • There are at least tens of billions of dollars backing the alphabet soup stuff.

      The alphabet soup flood didn’t just happen.

      People paid good money to make it happen.

    • Yeah, but the NEXT liberal initiative that comes down the line will be defeated by pure and simple logic, and by dint of voting even harder.

    • Dino – Combination of an older generation failing to pass on lessons learned to their children, and a younger generation freshly and intensely indoctrinated via public school and mass electronic media. The wholesale rejection of the very idea our forbearers had any wisdom to pass on is incredibly frustrating. That, plus the absolution dereliction of duty by so many parents. Saw 2-3 young, fairly attractive White girls at the gym today with black men. They could possibly have been their trainers, but I didn’t get that vibe. That is an utter failure of parenting – particularly of fathers (who probably aren’t even in the picture anymore because of the ‘liberated’ mothers).

      • The bigger failure is raising sons properly. It’s not difficult to see why young women in general don’t want to be around young white men: most of them are soft and spineless. I run a business and my rule is to never hire or sub contract with anyone under 45, and I’m only 30 myself! My direct experience has been that most young white guys tend to be flaky, lazy, and generally lacking in strength and stamina. I don’t like mud sharks, but it’s really hard for me to look at white guys my age or younger and see anything that appeals to anyone. They all just seem really soft.

29. These people’s arrogance is stunning really. They are so sure of themselves and that all their plans will proceed exactly as they want yet from Thucydides imponderables to Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns there were thousands of other people inbetween saying the same and numerous experiences in history proving the they will be foiled. I just want to live to see the day

30. Sunlight, the great disinfectant. Shedding light on it it as usual Zman. The last segment of the podcast really got to me. I build things that could potentially kill someone if not done right. This requires ability to read measuring instruments, simplistic and semi-complicated. Nothing more than a good old old high school education and some passion Was needed for a lifelong career with a reasonable retirement. Both those things are non existent in America today for the most part. I was never a big Walmart fan, not because of the people who shop there, because I could see what it was doing to some of the towns they invaded.
    They actually put the parents of a few of my kids friends on the breadline. Same with Amazon when they were selling just books. The machines I build use to come unassembled, it took months to put them together on site. We had a great time doing it. We went to each other’s house’s on the weekends for the kids birthday party and drank beer in the garage. We never used cordless drills, and we never sent pictures of a brothers mistake to the boss to try to get ahead. These machines come assembled now. It takes 2 guys a week. No one’s buying sandwiches from mr and mrs smith or hardware from mr caldarone. I forget about the collateral damage sometimes. I don’t go out to eat anymore. The back of the house is full of little brown men, the front of the house is full of phone zombies. I won’t even go to Starbucks anymore. Nothing like ordering a cup of coffee and waiting 10 minutes until they make 30 cups of coffee for people who are 4 miles away before they even think about my caffeinated beverage. This is not going to change. We’re just going to have to deal with it best we can and adjust, while enjoying the times and people we care about . All the time sprinkling a little sand in the gears of this juggernaut of so-called civilization. One last thing. If you see ads on the normie search engines for solvent traps, DO NOT CLICK ON THEM. Or try to buy one for the obvious reasons. I saw one ( a video) on yahoo the other day, 3 rd ad down from the headlines….

    • You may recall, as I do, when Wal Mart got its start by only selling things Made in America

      That was their gimmick. American flag emblems on every product.

      Then they did a 180 a few years later, shamelessly, didn’t even have a good story to tell the country whey they were changing their format

      And I had/have a similar problem with places like Bass Pro Shops. I had been living in CA for a long time and want back to FL maybe around 2005 or so and everyone was huge into Bass Pro Shops. And in CA I had been somewhat preserved as a southern person like a fossil, and I was still operating along the lines that you only buy stuff like fishing poles and stuff that are made in America. But all these good southern outdoors people had no qualms about buying stuff made in China, and that was 99% of the products. I remember telling my dad “I’m not buying this shit, made in China,” and I said it a little loud and got dirty looks, like I was killing the party. I never understood the enthusiasm “white America” had for Wal Mart and Bass Pro when all the crap was made in China. But all everyone seemed to care about was price. And they ate that stuff up, cheap lures, cheap reels and rods, cheap tents, cheap everything. They dumped a ton of stuff into carts and were happy as clams. And then for lunch it was always some franchise place to eat. It was a Florida and the South I had never known and had changed. Maybe now it’s changing back with the younger generation of white people, but I don’t know.

      • welcome to the world of proles. shame they are allowed to vote…

31. I just listened to a E. Michael Jones gave where he talked about his ideas on the hellenizing of Christianity to make it accessible to the Greeks. Logos, etc. IIRC he said it’s possible to come to the ultimate reality of God through faith or reason.

    Then I read the opening paragraph of today’s post, how the Bolsheviks were consumed by politics and ideology, which reminded me of the ancient Greeks’ reputation as talkers.

    Idk, just something that stuck out to me for whatever reason.

    • Christianity was already deeply Hellenized. Jesus talks like Socrates in the Gospels. Hellenization was strong in that part of the Med. Less strong in Persia and Babylonia.

      • well, the orthodox church was. catholic church not so much…

32. Great stuff, Z. Your wrapup line should replace that crap on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

    Aside, re. your Gab post on ‘Hate Whitey, the Western’: We have come full circle back to blaxploitation films. The music even has a Shaft vibe.

33. The best observation I have read about communism is that in practice it was a tactic not a political or economic philosophy. Consequently there was no drive to think through the implications beyond will it give the right people power and how do they maintain that power while settling old scores.

    We see that today with all the woke ideology from the oligarchs and most of the rest of the tribe. Some things never change.

    • “The best observation I have read about communism is that in practice it was a tactic not a political or economic philosophy. “

      Politics is Power. All the Philosophy is tactics.
      Socrates was the movement leader and the movement was to overthrow Democracy. Plato was the military leader.
      Alcibiades his most brilliant student. Socrates was executed for “corrupting the youth” but we’d call it sedition and treason.

      In any case people are quite exhausted by all these ideas and won’t march for ideas anymore. We are all Wittgenstein’s now.

      The “Synthesis” that changes our fate will be people, resources (money especially) and a path to Power- and the Synthesis will be Organization.

      This is the natural state of Man. Just our turn.

      • Socrates was a soldier, a mystic, and a philosopher. Philosophers ask questions. Socrates did not seek political power, he just made people uncomfortable by asking too many questions. Socrates was a truth seeker, not a sophist.

34. Unrelatedly, I already miss Mcafee. Shakespearean-tier genius and lunatic.

    • Mcaffee was Satoshi.

      Its all over.

      • McAfee didn’t kill himself.

    • Saw someone jokingly title him “Protagonist of Earth.”

      Not quite, but he was the last character.

      • “One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.’ God doesn’t make many of these guys. When he does, he never takes them back. John McAfee is beyond the great blue yonder now, aboard his eternal freedom boat to sea, a drink in hand, still searching for that great white whale to fuck.”
        H.S. Thompson

35. “Another thing that shines through when reading about the old communists is they had a Calvinist’s faith in their own destiny. The inevitable end of capitalism was as certain to them that the sun would rising in the morning and setting in the evening…they started to assume that events would naturally arrive at some determined end point.”

    “The end is nigh!” “The Kingdom is near” “Communism is inevitable”
    Does every radical movement, beit progressive or reformist, need to have an eschatological claim at its core?
    On the Left we have Climate Change, or the end of the entire planet.
    On the Right we have Demographic Replacement, or the end of the entire race.
    Somewhere in the middle is the decay of the Good Society, or the end of the world as we know it (🎼 but I don’t feel fiiine)

36. When someone said “you can’t turn back the clock,” Chesterton went to a clock on the wall and turned back the hands.

37. “Interestingly, this fixation on the inevitable future led them to do no thinking about the details of that future.”

    I think we see here the Left’s good, old-fashioned Nihilism of the Will to Power, if we can trot out Nietzsche here as back-up QB for Marx, who obviously threw a lot of interceptions. The “neo-Marxism” of the CRT Left is just theoretical camouflage for their main event – Nihilism – that is, the destruction of everything White and the canon of Western thought.

    They haven’t thought about the “details of the future” because they don’t give a crap about the details of the future so long as it doesn’t include Us.

    • Yeah, there’s something to that. Why think of future details of a “world without Whites”, when your ideology claims that all bad things observed/experienced come from Whites? Logically, the world must improve when Whites are removed. How much it improves is simply a detail. I’d spend my time speeding the process along if I were a Lefty of such a bent.

      • They think of all issues in terms of extremely simple problems, with extremely simple solutions. Whites are a contaminate or a tumor. We simply need to excise them from the body and all will be well! Of course they are not surgeons. Not only have they misidentified the problem, but they don’t care to see how the excising of it will affect the entire body.

        Since several people have mentioned Chesterton, its kind of like “Chesterton’s Fence” but worse.

        • Good point. The other side of the coin is that all too often we think in terms of mind blowing complexity leading to inaction. Sometimes simply cutting the Gordian Knot and moving on *is* in order.

          • Ahh yeah, good point. The trap of the midwit. Thinking that the most convoluted theory is always and necessarily the correct one.

          • You made my point better than I did. “I’m going to kill you and take your sh*T” is the agenda and the rest is just intellectual camouflage for the chattering classes.

        • The song Highwayman makes my eyes water up, every time

          These are guys saying they ain’t going away, they’re still here. Something about it speaks to our current situation, and the reality that we aren’t going anywhere. I think it was me and B125 some time ago saying that you go out into multi-culti hell and these foreigners are both aggravated and perplexed that we are still here. I think they believe the hype that we are already dead and forgotten.

          • Good memory lol. Yes that was us.

38. One of the guys who saw this early on was G.K. Chesterton. His observation: All systems should be measured by whether they are good for the family. If feudalism or barbarism or a palace economy allows a man to raise a family, then they are good. If capitalism or communism or anything else does not, then they are bad.

    Simple as.

39. Z, I get what you’re saying about “build your own internet”. I get it. No it’s not fair, it ain’t right.

    But heels bells – life isn’t fair. Not only do we have to build our own internet, we have to build our own country now, with its own institutions. At this point it’s obvious.

    The old commies aren’t the only ones that ignore the nuts and bolts of implementing their agenda. The dissidents really need to address this if they intend to make something of themselves…

    • we don’t have to build our own internet, just stop supporting the existing internet. so to speak.

    • The eternal problem is, we did all that, and here they come a-runnin’

40. “Interestingly, this fixation on the inevitable future led them to do no thinking about the details of that future.

    On the one hand, their sense of historical inevitability drove them to smash the present, but it prevented them from thinking about the details of that inevitable future.”

    They are Generals focusing on conquering territory on a map, with no regard on how to minister to the conquered or the condition of the captured territory. That shall be left to others. Their concern is to advance ever forward with no regard to losses. The objective must and will be taken.

    • “They are Generals focusing on conquering territory on a map, with no regard on how to minister to the conquered or the condition of the captured territory. That shall be left to others.”

      I’d go a step further. Today these “generals” don’t even think about logistics, but assume infinite materials and mobility. When reality intervenes they never take account, blame everyone else, and continue to scream for “MOAR!”

      • Yes but they always get MOAR. and he’s correct. They are in conquest and now consolidation mode.

        They mean to ERASE 60% of the country. Explicitly. Of course they don’t care about the common good.

        “Hey this stuff never works” – 😂

        It ALWAYS WORKS if you judge by results.
        As opposed to the sales pitch.

        There seems to be some insurmountable difficulty in accepting they mean harm, no matter what they have done, what they do, no matter how many times they tell us our Doom.

        Because until they do it to you, its not real.
        When they do it , its too late.

        ^that is our epitaph^

41. I had never read The Communist Manifesto, but your take on it I enjoyed immensely. Particularly the more moral take someone like Marx had on these ‘new social structures’ that are being created and that may be bad for the people. Who, in the MSM ask this now? If the new social structure of our age involve the information industry, who is now loudly asking such questions. Companies like Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram and a whole host of others, and their products can be rightly judged in many cases as bad for society.

    On the Austrians, the only books I have read that fall into this school were Rothbard’s What Has Our Government Done To Our Money and Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. Both I found explained their subject matter well, from an economic perspective. But that’s it. In fact, Austrian economics seems as close as possible to a description of how price systems and all that stuff works – but what good is that when your government hates your lilly-white arse?

42. Possibly your best show yet. Thanks for making me think about Marxism as a reactionary movement to the troubles of that time.

    • Seeing the terrible working conditions, the industrial pollution, the unnatural living arrangements, and the fat cats at the top, I don’t blame Marxism for setting the world on fire. I’m a bit surprised that it has lasted as long as it has, and evolved into what it has, instead of being one of those curious time & place movements like temperance. More curious that non-European peoples had adopted it whole-heartedly. Why is Beijing, for example, still so dedicated to it? Couldn’t they have grabbed any number of bullshit theories from their past to justify their present tyranny?

      • One is tempted to say something about “the Oriental mind” here. Marx always anticipated that The Revolution would happen in Germany, Britain, or the United States, those being the most advanced industrial nations in the world at the time. So did Lenin (who was as surprised as anyone when it happened in Russia), but I recall the Bolshies admitting, in a rare moment of candor, that the long more-than-half-Asiatic tradition of serfdom made Russia an ideal breeding ground for Socialism.

        Asians, especially East Asians, have always been collectivists. As our host keeps saying about the Swedes, you can’t fence in the sea (or, in this case, the Yangtze); the harsh environment requires a high degree of cooperation. When you come right down to it, that’s one of the big reasons the Japanese were so… Japanese… in the run up to WW2 — the cult of the Emperor was widely seen as a bulwark against the “natural” Communism running through the rest of East Asia.

      • WRT China, I’d posit that the CCP is not Marxist/Leninist. I’d say it’s more along the fascist line. Where did we see, before the 90’s, any Communist country with capitalism created billionaires? Communism in China, is not Marxist. Rather it is a new entity we’ve not observed before. A logical adaptation to the inherent flaws in Marxist theory. As a more modern Chinese leader said: “What care we the color of the cat, as long as it catches mice?”

        The only similarity to the old commies is an unquenchable thirst for control and power over it’s people. That we see increasing as China becomes more and more prosperous.

        • It certainly isn’t Marxist-Leninist now, though the country is still into all the symbology. It’s not uncommon to see pictures of Marx in classrooms, and the nightly news has a hammer and sickle logo when they’re talking about the deeds of the local Communists. Point is, the highly-nationalistic Chinese could’ve used any number of ideologies from their past, yet they cling onto a German Jew’s fantasy writings. As do other peoples such as Vietnamese, Cubans, and Arabs. I know this is a holdover from the Soviet period, but it’s crazy how Marxism has been utilized so thoroughly for non-European tyranny, as opposed to any number of historical figures and ideas from the local catalogue. Maybe Marxism was the first stab at globohomo…

          • Third world Marxism is an odd artifact of colonialism. Throughout the third world, local elites with a lot of cynical ambition and some measure of sociopathy would send their kids away to the universities in whatever Western country had conquered their people. Some of those kids would return home and of course when they did, they had the Marxist framework already in their heads since it was basically the de facto “rebellion” ideology of the West.

            Unlike the more subtle ideas they were learning at university about Western philosophy, science, mathematical reasoning and logic, Marxism was a simplistic formalism that any moron could grasp. It was also, at least officially, race-blind and not anchored in the culture of any particular Western people. Well, except for a certain trans-national tribe we all know.

            Once home, they would look around at their country’s problems with poverty, colonial rule, squalor, the beginnings of the population explosion, the beginning of rural to urban migration and factory labor, and apply the only intellectual tool they had in which to frame dissatisfaction with the status quo. In hindsight, Marxism was a block of wood with lots of square holes in it but these determined yet uncreative young people managed to smash the round pegs of their peoples’ problems into them nonetheless.

            Proletariat? well that’s sort of like the peasants. Bourgeoisie? well that’s sort of like the local feudal lords and village chiefs. Alternately, maybe the invading colonialists are the bourgeois and the revolution and workers’ paradise means getting rid of them and returning to native rule. It didn’t matter that none of it really fit. The returning elites’ naked ambition was the hammer they used to pound in all those pegs.

        • It certainly isn’t Marxist-Leninist now, though the country is still into all the symbology. It’s not uncommon to see pictures of Marx in classrooms, and the nightly news has a hammer and sickle logo when they’re talking about the deeds of the local Communists. Point is, the highly-nationalistic Chinese could’ve used any number of ideologies from their past, yet they cling onto a German Jew’s fantasy writings. As do other peoples such as Vietnamese, Cubans, and Arabs. I know this is a holdover from the Soviet period, but it’s crazy how Marxism has been utilized so thoroughly for non-European tyranny, as opposed to any number of historical figures and ideas from the local catalogue. Maybe Marxism was the first try at globohomo…

      • haha you actually think, no, believe, that marx gave a shit for the condition of the working class! too precious.

43. Interestingly, this fixation on the inevitable future led them to do no thinking about the details of that future.

    There doesn’t see to be much agreement about what occurred in the past so how likely is it that anyone can predict details of the future? Unforeseen events keep messing up those details. A case could be made that Tsarevitch Alexei’s hemophilia so distracted his parents that it in itself enabled the Bolshevik revolution. Who, at that time, could have foreseen that?

    We don’t know, and won’t know for some time to come, all the details that will be the result of the great Covid pandemic. It will be awhile before we know the ramifications of the Ron Klain regency in the US.

44. Great post–‘conservatism’, at least the Anglo-American variety, is just dumb.

45. Humans are remarkably myopic and prone to self-deception. It’s a failing of the species, and not just the Marxists. Think back to the 1960s and realize that nearly every major disaster that has occurred since has been predicted by someone and ignored by the masses and those who rule them.

    1960s: Ending immigration quotas –> Critics: America will become majority non-White and multicultural nations are rarely stable. Verdict: true.

    1980s: Corporate deregulation –> Critics: a few people will control the news, meaning they’ll also control your minds. Verdict: true.

    1990s: Free trade –> Critics: our critical industries will be outsourced, leaving us vulnerable during a crisis and destroying the middle-class. Verdict: true.

    2000s: China MFN –> Critics: a billion Chinese geniuses will steal our technology, make it cheaper, and then sell it back to us and crowd us out of global markets. Verdict: true.

    2010s: National Review “take down Confederate statues” –> Critics: this won’t stop with Confederate statues. Verdict: true.

    2020s: Defund the police –> Critics: crime will skyrocket. Verdict: true.

    Democracy is a continual attempt to lead a mule to water only for him not to drink anything when he gets there.

    • “The moral arc of the universe is long, but bends towards justice” –

      by every politician since MLK who wants to trample your god given rights and said with the blind faith of a fanatic

    • Also 2020s: Anti-White Critical Race Theory taught in schools –> Critics: Will lead to White genocide. Verdict: To be determined…

    • “Take down the Confederate statues.” Sam Francis, in 2000 wrote: In this new order, whites — whether Southern or not — would be denied any public affirmation of their cultural and historical identity, and the denial of their identity would more easily allow their cultural and political subjugation to the non-white majority that has been projected to emerge in the United States in the next half century. The end result of the attack on Confederate symbolism, in other words, is not merely the disappearance of the Confederate flag, “Dixie,” and other symbols and customs of interest mainly to Southerners and Civil War buffs but, in time, the eradication of all symbols from pre-1960s America that suggest a white-based or “Eurocentric” public identity. With their disappearance and the cultural and racial dispossession it represents would come the racial domination of white Americans by the non-white majority of the next century.

      • it’s not enough to save hard-copy of all the old books, we must also save hard-copies of all the old photos of America prior to the 1970s.
        the photos of street scenes, then vs. now, shows the huge changes in racial and cultural norms.
        a picture is worth a thousand words.

        • Mindblowing.

          “Colorizing” photos used to mean going from black and white to color.

          Future “colorizing” will be “touching up” vintage USA stock photos to make pre 1960’s America look diverse.

      • A few days ago someone commented about American amnesia in regard to its European cultural roots, to much derision. Apparently the American culture, whatever that might be, isn’t strong enough to resist the influence of barbarian invaders and their domestic enablers. Part of this sad situation is the brief existence of the US itself and its deep divisions from its inception. In its attempts to forge an impossible national unity it cancelled the historical background and culture of its immigrant components. Americans thus have a historical legacy of a few generations, the last widow of a Civil War veteran died only a couple of years ago. The forgotten ancestors of the immigrants lived many centuries ago, establishing traits and traditions that still survive. It’s little wonder that the Americans have a tenuous grasp on any form of culture at all.

    • Don’t forget all the alphabet soup critics that were also proved correct.

    • Stockman, you forgot one. Hubert Humphrey argued as VP for the Civil Rights act (which laid the basis for AA) would *not* result in quota hiring and burocratic sanctions, but only allow a fair shot at the “American Dream” for minorities. That went into the crapper by the early 70’s.

      LBJ argued *for* AA after the Act, stating that it was only fair that people starting so far “behind” be given a head start. In the 80’s, SCOTUS recognized the illegitimacy of AA, but said it should not be removed at this time—maybe in 30 years or so. And here we (Whites) are in 2021 on the verge of an existential (political and demographic) crisis.

46. Bukharin, cool! Which one? I’ve got Conquest’s book about him somewhere on my shelf but haven’t managed to start it yet; I’ll have to move it up the stack.

    (He’s another one of those very important writers for Our Thing who is just… dull. No zip to the prose. A. James Gregor, Paul Hollander, Robert Service…. all would be required reading if I were still in the syllabus making biz, but jeez they can be a real slog).

    • Scratch that, the book I have is Stephen Cohen, “Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution.” Is there a newer, better one?

      • That is the one I’m reading. I found in a pile of books and never read it or at least I don’t recall reading it. I have too many books.

        I have to say, Cohen is a real slog. I can’t put my finger on why the test feels like running through quicksand, but it is a struggle. Maybe that is the point, to make the struggle real.

        • In grad school I learned that historians tend to write like their sources. A buddy of mine, for instance, studies the 17th century. He talks like a normal guy, but you can always tell when he’s working on a new book or article — even his text messages get byzantine. For commies, turgid prose really WAS the point (“the kind of stuff you could cut and sell by the yard,” as either Orwell or Derb wrote).

          • Cohen was an interesting guy in his own right. He was on the Left, but not terribly strident and never all that interested in American politics. He was on the international Left, which has been a sock puppet for US and British intelligence since the 1950′. They Nation Magazine may as well be located in Langley. I often wondered if his politics were just a way for him to have maximum access to his subject.

          • Years before Mr. Cohen succumbed (lung cancer, I believe), I often tuned in to John Batchelor’s syndicated radio show out of WABC in New York. Cohen was a regular Tuesday guest, usually appearing at around 9pm CST, concentrating on current events in today’s Russia. Though he had the reputation of being a Lefty, he pushed back against the hysterical (yet cynical) Russophobia that was shared by both the Left and Neocon, Inc. He was a most concise and reasonable proponent of real detente with Russia, never losing his cool even when he suffered fools like Max Boot on Tucker’s show; pointing out the U.S./E.U./ NGO coup in Kiev that preceded the Novorossiya revolt and the bloodless takeover of the Crimea. He will be–is–missed.

        • Btw, the myth20th guys just did a show on the camp of the saints. Concerning the show here, I think it’s long past time that the tech oligarchs should be reigned in, by brute force if necessary. In fact I’ve always thought it would make a good book to explore how the small hats captured Facebook and Google (dominate search engine). There were Alternatives at the time, and it’s not like zuck and brin were great inventors or anything. I guess bezos is a goy, but a monstrous one.

          • Good recommendation. Great book (I own a PRINTED copy..boy howdy, that’s a forbidden book. Original copy would send you to the poorhouse.).

            Thanks for the promo.

47. Excellent precís. The key takeaway from talks like this is the mantra, the market should serve Man, not Man servile to the market. I find this much more instructive proslyetizing normie friends than a traditional conservative v. liberals harangue. The hidden costs, the loss of social capital that they sense, but cant quite put their finger on, becomes clear when framed as you did so wonderfully in this pod.

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