Note: The Monday Taki post is up. It is somewhat relate to the theme of this post, bit from the perspective of the mass media. For those supporting the efforts here, there is a new podcast up behind the green door.
From the middle of the last century until the current age, the choice presented to Americans is the party of more central government versus the party of less central government. State and local government tends to be left out of the discussion, as there is no money in debating it. Regardless, even local elections tend to revolve around the central question of how much government. Team Blue is more, and Team Red is less or not quite as much.
This is one of the central contradictions of liberal democracy. The claim is that democratic systems are inclusive, which means all members of society are able to participate in the process. The political theorist Robert Dahl listed inclusiveness as one of his prerequisites of democracy. Not only are all people included in the process, but all ideas are given a chance to reach the public square. A requirement of democracy is that all ideas are fully heard and fully considered.
The composition of the two parties in America, Team Red and Team Blue, makes it clear that the choices are narrow and exclusive. Despite the fact that both parties preach about the need to get everyone involved, both work to make sure the choices on offer never change. You can have more involvement by the central government in your life or you can have less of it. Put another way, you can have more of what you don’t want, or you can have less of what you need.
A good example is in this American Thinker piece on taxes. The site is fairly representative of Team Red. The claim of the post is that two thirds of Americans paid no federal income taxes. The source is a government sponsored think tank called Tax Policy Center, which publishes this sort of stuff every year. They play the role of Team Red, demanding lower tax rates for rich people. The post concludes that the 60% not paying taxes are being mean to the nation’s rich people.
Interestingly, this sort of rhetoric is not aimed at rich people but aimed at the middle and working class. Rich people are not reading the American Thinker or any of these sites from Conservative Inc. The closest they come is the upper-middle-class person who imagines himself as rich. Otherwise, these sites cater to the people who take orders in exchange for a salary. Many of whom are in that two-thirds the author thinks are selfish jerks for not paying taxes.
Of course, there is another side to this. The mass media is full of opinion writers who make mid-six-figure salaries. Their audience is often the middling members of the managerial class who make similar salaries. The demand here is for the rich to pay their fair share of income taxes, despite the fact that the genuinely rich make their money from things other than salary. In other words, in the name of fairness, the servants of the rich need to pay more tax.
The paradox of modern liberal democracy is that despite its constant exhortations in favor of inclusion, it systematically excludes most options. It is a tails the rich people win or heads the rest of the people lose. There is no option for the guy making $250K per year to get more of what he wants from government at a better rate. The people not paying income tax do not have an option that promises to do some of things they want at a reasonable cost in taxes to them.
The fact is, most of the people who vote Republican want the government to defend cultural norms so they can live their lives in peace. They don’t mind paying taxes and they do not resent rich people for being rich. The people voting Democrat want the government to do a better job looking after the poor and to provide useful services to the middle-class. The people running both parties hate all of that and spend their time pitting the two sides against one another.
That American Thinker post is a good example of how it is done. The claim itself is implausible, which is why the sourcing is so convoluted. Even dishwashers pay some income taxes, so how are two-thirds of households managing to pay their bills if they have no taxable income? The devil lies in the definitions, but the people who churn this stuff out know that no one digs into the details. Instead, it is fed to Team Red with an executive summary they can use in their posts.
In other words, the point of the exercise is to maintain the false choice between the two factions in politics. One side promises that you will get more of what you do not want from government and the other side promises to make sure the government never does any of the things you want from government. Both sides invest a lot of time telling you the other side is to blame for this. Democracy is a false choice in which both sides blame the other for outcomes neither side wanted.
This is why there is no correlation between voting patterns, public opinion, and the final policy results. The more you participate within the parameters of the system, the less you get of the things you want from the system. With each election, this paradox becomes more evident. Voter participation goes up, while voter frustration with the results goes up as well. This illusion of choice logically must lead to some untenable point where the frustration exceeds the capacity of the system.
One of the implications of Robert Dahl’s thinking was that democracy was impossible in a society of any size. Instead, he proposed that what we get from popular government is something he called polyarchy, “a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people”. The state follows certain procedures in order to maintain “the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals”.
Clearly, modern liberal democracy is not responsive to the preferences of the citizens and the people at the top do not see the citizens as equals. Not only is the system not democratic by definition, it is not even the compromise imagined by Dahl. In other words, the real contradiction of liberal democracy is that in its full flowering it is neither liberal nor democratic. It is a collection of false choices and deceptions to mask the realty of a ruling elite impervious to the popular will.
The great irony of liberal democratic politics is that to make it more democratic, more responsive to the will of the people, means abandoning the system entirely. This leads to another contradiction in that the people in it, knowing the choices are not what they desire, insist on picking from the options presented, thinking this will change the options at some future date. Liberal democracy is a madhouse of contradictions that slowly drives the victims of it insane.
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[…] The mass media is full of opinion writers who make mid-six-figure salaries. Their audience is often the middling members of the managerial class who make similar salaries. The demand here is for the rich to pay their fair share of income taxes, despite the fact that the genuinely rich make their money from things other than salary. In other words, in the name of fairness, the servants of the rich need to pay more tax. […]
My key point is that there is NO MASS MEDIA. Glen Greenwald has an excerpt from his substack on Zerohedge. He makes the same point with the Intercept, but the same can be said for TV. The dude “Critical Drinker” notes his review videos on Youtube outperform the CW show Batwoman. Greenwald notes the Intercept has articles with almost no traffic, their videos have no views. Who read the NYT, the Washington Post, the local newspaper? My next-door neighbor sadly passed away, I’ve been picking up his subscription of the local paper here as a courtesy for his executor (so… Read more »
I suppose advertisers are interested in obtaining the data of demographics that have money or access to credit and are willing to splash it around.
Many of those 45M white men see which way the wind is blowing so they’re living frugally, investing in low-cost index funds or rural land, and if they buy anything it’s going to be essentials for a difficult future, not high margin consumer products.
The summer of George Floyd has been great for my health. I used to eat fast food here and there, and it really adds up. The corporate responses turned me off for good. I now eat out at any kind of restaurant only when absolutely necessary
No need to deal with a bunch of scowling turban heads to get a coffee. Or somalians working at McDonald’s. Even worse, the corporate people encouraged violence against white people last summer.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s putting less and less money into the system.
The entire media is adopting the mechanisms that large newspapers/news networks have run with for well over a hundred years. Pretty much every national newspaper/news station loses money, the owner is more than willing to fund them year after year for the benefit of controlling public agenda, not as a profit business model, and some money is recouped via selling the subscriber base data. The media will never shake out as the point is not revenue, the point is setting the agenda. For the owners this is a just a loss leader on their other profit ventures. There is a… Read more »
It’s stunning, really, when you think about it. This ol’world keeps on spinning around and nobody knows nothing. O there are those who have expertise in a narrow field, but even they, when they wander off outside those boundaries, they know next to nothing, or what they know is not true, as we are constantly fed lies, information, misinformation, propaganda. Most policy decisions are founded on lies. At some point, the mountain of lies grows too high, reality steps in, the gods of the copy book headings arrive to again turn out the lights in Rome.
The Founding Fathers were leery about putting too much democracy in their new Republic. They wanted to avoid the mob situation of direct democracy, partly by having three main bodies : Executive, Legislative, Judicial, co-balancing one another. It’s worked reasonably well. America entered the dark ages when television appeared on the scene, television to warp the minds of the masses with what is and what isn’t accepted opinion. Television moved the Overton Window in a politically Democratic State.
People consume too much media, live in the fake world of the screen, forget about the real world. Control the screen, and you control it all.
Every day I get a little closer to the Amish perspective 🙂
I just found the straw that breaks the camel’s back, our shot heard round the world:
BLM – Beagles’ Lives Matter!
It doesn’t have to make sense in a madhouse.
It only needs to work- and boy, everybody can relate to that one.
(Credit to Hereward the Woke at Kunstler’s)
you would think the oligarchs in this country would see what the ccp is doing to their counterparts in the prc (jack ma et als), and snuff out the hard left right now (here). instead they are nurturing a viper that will one day soon take everything away from the rich — including their lives. for some reason, there seems to be a dark dyonisian element to public killings, like a lynching, or the french revolution guillotining aristos in the street. the roman gladiatorial games are a good example from antiquity. there always seem to be a frenzied quality to… Read more »
The Summer of 2020 was state-sanctioned violence against Whites and is Exhibit A.
It always strikes me that national taxes are essentially pointless in a modern world. In many ways as are sovereign bonds. They made sense in a restricted money environment when hard currency reserves limited the production of paper money. However, that time is long past. There is no reason sovereign entities cannot just print the amount of currency they need to pay for services, as in reality that is what they do anyway. Its a mass pretense that they are not really doing this, and there is no hope or intent of paying any of this back. The idea of… Read more »
Re: Surviving the Modern Age If a person from only a century ago were to travel through time and spend a day in our modern world, they would certainly be desperate to escape after experiencing the way we live our lives. They’d happily wash their clothing by hand and travel by horse. It’s miserable to be wrapped around these screens, emails, notifications, apps. We are too intertwined. Parents are hyper involved in the lives of their kids yet we’ve never been so distant. It all just seems to be a distraction from what truly matters. The need to transcend this… Read more »
A century ago, we enjoyed far more civility, far more Caucasian fertility, and yes, far more liberty.
Anent liberty, there are many CDC, left-libertarian types, who will argue that we have more liberty today and as support for their assertions, they will point to their sail fawn and to the internet. I typically respond that Mitchell Palmer could not instantaneously track your whereabouts or the contents of all of your communications.
Fertility and civility yes. However overall we had less freedom in many areas , harder lives and within a few years the economy would reach a point in which the fertility rate would become much like it is now .It only recovered because of massive government spending and a captive economy and if we didn’t have that, the fairly minor (in real terms) baby boom would likely never have happened We’d have had a stable population with maybe slight growth do to antibiotics. Assuming we had those that is. We certainly sacrificed some economic liberty for security but on the… Read more »
A.B. Prosper: Need to distinguish between ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ and ‘license.’ Most of what you term freedom is pure licentiousness. What many label freedom is actually personal liberty. Words’ meanings are too much in flux today.
I’m a simple man. As G.K. Chesterton put it back in 1935 The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog This means freedom includes all of the above, maybe caveat abortion. You neither have more freedom or liberty by having choices taken at gun point. If you are authoritarian right winger among other right wingers… Read more »
The best analogy I have come across for freedom is playing music. The musician who learns notes, chords, etc. is free to play music. The guy who doesn’t can bang about on the instrument, but he is just making noise.
Depravity is’nt freedom. Without honor and responsibility, there is no freedom, only the illusion of such.
A century ago most Americans were rural farmers with a smattering of townsfolk. Life was hard for them, a trip to the dentist meant having a man pull out a bad tooth with a pair of pliers. The factory workers for the most part worked like dogs until they were exhausted. Working conditions were dangerous as hell and brutal. The textile industry in NYC for example, used women and children who were not allowed to leave the factory until quitting time. 12-16 hour days were common. In short the average worker was treated like shit, when they got uppity the… Read more »
Thanks for remembering.
In Russia the Bolsheviks promised a work week of no more than 50 hours and believe it or not, kept that promise. The people were quite happy.
Its more likely a time traveler from a century ago would be in jail as they would likely be taking their cane to the general population on the street on a fairly frequent basis.
[…] ZMan lays it out. […]
The following relates to your Taki article: My mom, being a good writer, was interested in becoming a journalist, so she took a journalism class in high school in the late 1930s (in the DC school district). But she was totally turned off by it as the teacher revealed the tricks of the trade such as use of the “alleged” claim and popular “unnamed sources” scams the press used to write (fabricate?) their stories. She also remembered the time a reporter came to their house. Her little brother had been “mugged” in a park (I’m wondering if he might have… Read more »
I take everything I see in the lugenpresse with a giant grain of salt. It doesn’t really matter what the topic is or if it is the popular mainstream press or a trade press publication (like a computer magazine or an auto repair trade publication). Everything they say is suspect and should be taken as an unproven claim at best unless they include links to particular documentation like a search warrant or an engineering sheet or some other non-political document. They re-print corporate press releases completely uncritically. Their coverage of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes are fine examples. They just uncritically… Read more »
The movie “His Girl Friday” (the classic one, not the crappy remake) perfectly captures the mendacity of the press corps (and politicians), even if it still puts them somewhat favorably.
“Put another way, you can have more of what you don’t want, or you can have less of what you need.” This perfectly sums up the perverse nature of our politics. The local board of education spends like there’s not tomorrow and if you try to cut back their spending, they cut teachers and school programs. They never clean house in the BOE buildings where high 6 figure people do nothing in furtherance of education of our children or fire the freaks dreaming up a CRT curriculum. It’s always teachers or supplies or something else core to the mission. The… Read more »
“ This leads to another contradiction in that the people in it, knowing the choices are not what they desire, insist on picking from the options presented, thinking this will change the options at some future date.” This is the fast-food aspect of democracy. Everyone knows that fast food is bad for you, yet millions of people eat at these restaurants every day. The reason is that fast food is a quick and easy way to satisfy hunger regardless of the damage. Eating right requires effort and many people are just too lazy so they reach for the Big Mac.… Read more »
Why should any US citizen pay taxes at all? The purpose of maintaining a large and destructive military force isn’t just to protect the country and insure the continuation of its government. All that investment needs to be repaid by confiscating the assets of the enemy. It’s simple arithmetic. Why should Americans shoulder the burden of keeping the sea lanes open? They’re not the only ones using them. Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain should, even now be sending shiploads of stuff to the US at no charge in exchange for being alive. The Romans spent no denarii rebuilding Carthage. The… Read more »
we do empire wrong.
Briefly browsing the abstract of that article Z likes to link to, it seems that the conclusion is only in regards to US policy. What about local government? I have a state/county ballot (that I didn’t request) and I wonder if should actually bother to open it. If I do I’ll probably just vote against all the women that are trying to take over my fairly normal locale.
Astralturf: Don’t give your consent. Don’t tacitly legitimize the system by participating. Don’t vote – irrelevant whether national or state or local. Secede from the system in every way you can.
Was at a MAGA / Qtard meetup this weekend. Mostly because I wanted to go to a bar that allowed unvaxxed people in. Talked to one free market fanatic guy who said “just start your own airline” when United discriminates again you. Then he said that he would just build his own airplane if this new airline didn’t have the capital needed to purchase them. He also said, and I quote, he “doesn’t give a fuck” if middle class jobs are outsourced, because that’s the way it should be (didn’t elaborate). Open borders are fine as long as immigrants don’t… Read more »
The brainwashing is extraordinary. I go back and forth but you may be right that these Con, Inc., pod people are the least reachable.
Airline/airplane guy doesn’t seem to understand the idea of, “barriers to entry,” when starting a business.
Both of those have extremely high barriers to entry versus starting a YouTube channel, TikTok, Only Fans, etc.
DR3 guy doesn’t get that tossing away your heritage is exactly what the Kalergi crowd wants us to do.
The Q true believers are simply hopeless.
You’d be shocked how many actual airline pilots will tell you that “you don’t have a right to be a pilot; your company is a private corporation and can absolutely force you to vaccinate”. This is rapidly sliding into “You don’t have a right to a job”. “You don’t have a right to shop.” “You don’t have a right to move around public spaces.” Pilot jobs are the ultimate in “golden handcuffs.” Hard to get into, but once there, the pay is nice, the job is great, the office view the best in the world. One caveat: because it’s union… Read more »
Oldest son drives 757s for a major.
Got the jab months ago.
Had covid two weeks ago.
.gov & msm doubling down as the covid jab naritive unravels.
Lol
Went to dinner with relatives hadn’t seen in years, heard all about their recent air travel hassles. They believe it’s systems being hacked and poor weather.. I had to bite my tongue & pinch myself to not burst out laughing.
ProZNoV- I don’t know how many pilots have that opinion you stated, but I do know a lot of them are pushing back on the experimental shot mandates. In fact, the airline industry might be the one that stops this madness. You saw a glimpse of that with the Southwest Airlines cancellations a couple of weeks ago. Stay tuned…….also, join freedomflyers.org.
Those guys may be on the sperg end of that special spectrum but in reality there are a lot on the “right” in general who have been living this model for a long time. Their financial success being evidence of its righteousness. Occupying the strata of the vampire economy that middlemans wealth out of the system tends to allow one the kind of classic liberal happy hour sound bytes that are equal parts smart and absurd. Like the libs they love to own on Twitter they too always rely upon the personal: if they are so wrong about how things… Read more »
Before: “We demand democracy, all men must be free!”
After: “Fook it, these people are idiots let’s enslave them”
Our God and his host is red hot.
Your God and his host ain’t diddly squat.
Qtards delegate agency to mystical Tman and his White Hat host to fight the SorosRothSatan and his black hat host. Once the battle is won in that realm, olive garden will have infinite free bread sticks.
Next time you encounter one of these nimrods, you should ask him if he’s willing to do his own thoracic surgery when he has a sucking chest wound from a thru and thru .357 round and just seconds to stop the bleeding. Big L libertarianism is a mental disorder, not a political ideology.
Given how most of modern medicine has seen fit to dance with the devil in this wuhan Faust, I would settle for my brothers being at my side, a buncha opium and if I’m greedy a bourbon chaser and a puddle of O-neg for them to clean up. And hopefully a good ribbing for not checking my corner. I’ve got better places to be if I get drained anyhow. Gallows boasting aside, these people have to pass through two anti-reality wormholes to arrive in their belief. First, that no man that has ever existed does in fact exist, the Libertarian.… Read more »
A lot of MAGApedes seem to be a mix of civnats and libertarians. Most were your classic limbaugh ditto heads who stopped thinking decades ago. This is why they lap up everything Trump says even though he doesn’t mean what he says.
Some have broken away from the Trump cult after realizing the man is part grifter and liar. No one to this day has ever explained why Trump hired nothing but ex Bush and Obama people and fired every nationalist that help get him into the WH.
Sorry Zman, but I cannot agree that “The fact is, most of the people who vote Republican want the government to defend cultural norms so they can live their lives in peace. They don’t mind paying taxes and they do not resent rich people for being rich. The people voting Democrat want the government to do a better job looking after the poor and to provide useful services to the middle-class.” Most people do mind paying taxes, particularly when the few who are bright enough figure out just how much they’re paying and how little they get for it. And… Read more »
And I realize I ought to assume that by ‘people’ you mean normal White people, but I needed to vent.
One consequence of immigration is that the American cultural norm that government is something we all agree to do together is fading away. That conception was always an outlier among all humans. We are reverting to the norm of government as an exogenous force to be avoided or used on an bc ad hoc basis.
So people will increasingly take as much as possible from it and give it as little as they can get away with.
That’s a good point. In fact, to what 3g4me wrote, people were willing to know their money was stolen as long as the illusion persisted that the party they supported was working to do things they wanted. That’s disappeared.
Personally, I am way beyond taxing the rich. I say take everything they have and put three generations of them and all their relatives in prison and take all their stuff too. The ultra rich in America are traitors who stole their money or sold out their countrymen or aren’t American and do not deserve to be free, let alone to be rich. Take good old Mitt Romney. Here’s a guy who became fabulously wealthy practicing “vulture capitalism” buying up profitable companies and then strip mining them and then going into government. He and his entire extended family should be… Read more »
Finally, something worth tuning in to watch.
“Build your own airline in prison!”
Exactly. I’ve thought along these lines with a certain segment of the rich & ultra rich. Removal from whatever positions they occupy, confiscation of all assets save maybe $10k and a one way ticket back to zion – or prison as the case may be.
A better idea would be to force the Romney types fight gladiator games. It would be hilarious watching a lion or hyena chasing Mitt Romney around an arena.
Yeah, they’re all the same. They are here to steal whatever they can, live in comfort, and if they’re lucky, rape or marry a white wimmin (or white man, if the alien is female). They hate the white middle class, because we “have it too good”. They hate the white working class even more, because they see them as trash that needs to be crushed, just like the poor are in their home countries. Never do they stop and consider that wealth actually has to be generated – in theory a strong middle class is better for the non white… Read more »
The worst part is when it all finally collapses, it will be blamed on White people. They just weren’t progressive enough to overcome the institutional and systemic White supremacy.
Today’s post is, once again, an all-to-true heresy about the Great Con that underlies elections. The people that run for federal office are, at the root, actors playing a role. And all candidates (Trump excepted) are thoroughly vetted by a Party process that ensures only compliant stooges may cross the finish line and be allowed onto the stage in DC. The voting canard is only a only psychological ploy intended to keep rebellion in the closet and not on the streets. It’s less odious than pleb cracking skulls or overt genocide. But enough complaining. What to do? First, stop deluding… Read more »
TomA: My older son sums it up as “Ghost Dance versus Cargo Cult.”
Damn… going to steal that.
Can’t…I done stole it first. Dibs! Dibs!
Any change will be paid for in blood. Our side would be smart building local networks to support one another. Because that’s what the Hispanics do. The Salvadorans have their own communities, same with the other nationalities and they look after each other.
Those people will survive a collapse. The lone wolf whitey not so much.because he has no one to help him and given he is one injury away from becoming a well stocked corpse ripe for looting.
The lone wolf is a myth. Wolf are canines and have always lived and hunted in packs. I am not anti-community and have never written a word contrary to bonding with other like-minded people. My point (which I realize is getting annoyingly repetitious) is that if you get together with the “boys” and start talking rebellion, the Stasi undercover agent or CI will likely be recording you and secretly smiling at your stupidity. And if you think I’m wrong, just ask any of the Michigan kidnapping gang or the Jan 6th protestors. Stupid is as stupid does.
The Taki post was excellent! Thankfully, I was cured from Gell-Mann years ago and stopped taking the media seriously in the 80’s.
Indeed!
It’s not that the “opposite” of any news story is the most likely truth, it’s that it’s pretty much all nonsense.
Mencken: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
This article and the Taki piece tie together perfectly. In my experience you can’t talk to anybody irl about the concepts in this article (among countless other things) because when you do their eyes glaze over, they get a weird look on their face, and they change the subject. What you are taking about to them is as strange and foreign as talking to a crackhead about the pitfalls of modern monetary theory. It is totally outside the processing ability of their mind, even if they have the IQ to do it, because they are addicted to a drug more… Read more »
“Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems.”
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
A regime media hit piece this weekend, which I failed to bookmark or copy to my discredit, made me howl. It describes a Democrat tax plan that has emerged that runs counter to the realities Z describes. Essentially, a wealth tax and inclusion of taxes on the unrealized capital gains of about 700 billionaires is on the table since a broad-based plan is getting nowhere. Think Elizabeth Warren writ large. The tone of the article was restrained hysteria and offered such criticisms as it wouldn’t produce enough revenue to fund Shanika’s bastard children and hair extensions. The point of the… Read more »
The amusing thing about these wealth tax propaganda pieces is they could accomplish the same thing by simply treating capital gains as income. Suddenly, the profits from the sale of stock are just additional income. You get taxed when it happens. Problem solved. Instead, they are inventing a wildly complex solution that will end up being a tax on middle-class homes.
You could also eliminate the step-up in basis – at least for publicly held stock and rental real estate. (That would protect small business owners passing the business down to family members.)
The target is White wealth, with a few leftwing exceptions. If you read the plans about elimination of stepped-up basis, it focuses almost solely on residential and rental properties; the unspoken part is that is owned by Whites.
Yeah, I was just showing a way to tax actually rich people. But, naturally, the point of the bill is to stick it to whites, which is different. If you want to stick it to middle and upper middle class whites, then eliminating the step-up in basis for personal residences and single-family rentals would be a good way to do it. Most middle and upper-middle class whites own their own home with a lot of appreciation. Many owns rentals with a lot of appreciation. To protect rich people, you would not include publicly-owned stocks in getting rid of the step-up… Read more »
Its entirely coincidental that the recent AG speech about how Black vs White home ownership is something that “needs addressing”
Maybe another article on how there is no wide ranging conspiracy from the usual suspects is in order.
@Citizen
The rich will always be ok for one very simple reason: businesses don’t pay taxes, people do. Taxes are simply viewed by owners as an overhead expense, factored into the price of goods sold. Rich people own businesses, and their businesses function as the collection department of the IRS. They build the collection of taxes into their revenue model, and price accordingly. I can tell you this because it is exactly what I do as a business owner. I don’t pay taxes, I collect them from customers.
Again, I wish I had saved this particular piece because it reflected a subtle fear something like this could happen. I don’t think that is even remotely possible although, of course, we should encourage wealth taxes on billionaires.
Going after 401k’s and Roths–and people really need to be getting out of those–is where the money is and is the endgame.
They’ve been attacking Roth IRAs because that was way too good of a deal for middle class people. Having a tax-free account that you could add to in amounts only meaningful to a middle-class person still results in enormous wealth over time. Now it’s a huge pot of money nation-wide because the suckers went along with it, and the government will just change the rules and steal it all.
The issue with that is that most wealthy people do not sell stocks. They borrow against their tax holdings in order fund their day to day living needs. And those loan interest payments can be written off.
In essence, they can perpetually never pay any tax.
This is common in commercial real estate. You leverage your property for cash, which you do not treat as income.
The class warfare that animates these tax the rich schemes always overlooks the fact that its not about the “tax” but rather the legal, financial, technological, and administrative infrastructure deemed necessary to implement. Control and grift. In that labyrinth of managerial state manna the “rich” are in the briar patch – oh noes! While the rest of us get to enjoy having our accounts raked, having our strip-mall accountants gash us $500 to save $500 on taxes already collected from us, and then attempt in vein to climb the barriers to entry into actual wealth creation that are now lined… Read more »
The plan is to tax unrealized capital gains, lunacy on its face. Just like income taxes, will slowly seep to lower classes and destroy homeowners.
It’s a desperate ploy that crosses a bridge that should never be crossed. I don’t care if they say it’s about billionaires paying more.
Chet: But they WANT to destroy homeowners. They want White people eating bugs and living like bugmen. Piled on top of one another like the Han, living like the Hindoos. No need for space or privacy or self sufficiency because we’re all absolutely equal and alike and interchangeable ‘murricans, and the ‘authorities’ have our best welfare always in mind. It’s really utterly irrelevant whatever fiscal or social policy they suggest; they’re all fiction designed to pacify various vacuous voters anyhow.
Home ownership has been targeted in multiple ways under the last two administrations. First there was the moratorium on evictions from rental houses (most of which are owned by Whites and passed to their children), and increasingly zoning laws are being nationalized to the fullest extent possible so that single family housing is minimized. The Californians here can correct this if wrong, but from conversations with expats from Cali, one of the reasons pre-existing houses there are so valuable is they are grandfathered into the system and avoid much of the additional costs of recent state environmental regulations. tl;dr: You… Read more »
3g4me-
On point as usual.
The entire point of this proposed wealth tax is to force people into the cities and attempt to starve the resisters to death.
Resisters would do well to take John in A Brave New World as their role model.
I suspect there will be enough lawfare and carve-outs so that it starts and ends with the middle and working classes. Again, if what is being claimed will be done was done, I would fully support going after the “700 billionaires.” I also might start to buy lottery tickets at some point.
Here is the Zero Hedge take on the proposed wealth tax:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pelosi-confirms-wealth-tax-billionaires-unrealized-gains-way
“If tax reform actually raised revenue from the wealthy, they wouldn’t let lawmakers do it.”
Corollary to:
“If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let you do it.”
Do people actually think these ultra rich guys actually have very much in their own names? Does Bill Gates have 10 billion sat around in his checking account? I have known a few in the very upper brackets and they generally own very little in a way you or I would. What they have is interlocking family trusts and foundations that own the assets and blind distribution trusts that provide expenses spending to cover their living and hobbies. I rented from a guy that had close to $100 million in property assets alone including a massive country estate, yet on… Read more »
They no doubt intend to eventually nail the huge BTC profits that many average Joes have been making.
OT, did you guys see the Hill article about Fauci torturing beagle puppies in the name of “science”.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/medical-advances/578086-bipartisan-legislators-demand-answers-from-fauci
If this is what “following the science” leads to, you can count me the F out.
If there is one creature on Earth that deserves special protections and considerations from human beings, it is dogs, in particular the companion/work/hunting/herding breeds. Beagles are exceptionally affectionate and loyal dogs. It is unforgivable what these monsters have done.
One of the most appalling parts of globalization is American organizations being willing to outsource the most barbaric practices to the furthest regions of the Earth.
Dozens of Americans looked at this, said “This is a good idea.” signed the documents, and did the oversight. None will see prison walls.
I think it is notable and demonstrates the type of clown world we live in that the Fauci dog story garners more coverage and outrage than does his:
A. Illegal funding of gain of function research in China which led to this so-called pandemic
B. His sponsoring of a population-wide scientific experiment on American humans
People will always be more sympathetic to dogs than other people, especially whites who have no tribal identity. Other people can be enemies and it’s easy to forego all sympathy for them. Dogs, on the other hand, can always be made a friend and will be loyal no matter who they are. (Except pitpulls – those things are man’s natural universal enemy, only to be feared and despised.)
As Gordon Gekko said, “That’s the thing about WASPs….they love animals, hate people…”
WASPS were, emphasis were our natural ruling class .When they weren’t so distracted by virtue signalling, laziness and selfishness and were willing to put in the work to encourage Anglo Saxon values, they generally did a good job.
That said anyone sensible hates other people . You don’t help mankind because you love them. You shouldn’t care for people outside your tribe.
You help them are hospitable because its your duty
Pits can be decent dogs but many are as unstable as a Leftists on PCP .
They are also incredibly popular and attempts to ban the breed have failed. The only way you’d see them mostly get would be to isolate or get rid of the classes who like them either through assimilation or isolation.
Also lying to Congress about all of it.
Memebro: I read and understand what you wrote – ‘creature’ deserving special protection from humans. And I do not condone torturing any higher-order mammal in the name of ‘science,’ particularly not dogs, who are truly “man’s best friend” by virtue of thousands of years of breeding and environment.
However, I am far more outraged that his torturing of dogs is what might bring down f&&king Fauci, rather than his psychological torturing of human children via masks and fear of fresh air and his plan to physically torture and kill them via the vax.
I understand and agree with the comments about this grand open-air global laboratory experiment on humans and children. I’m angered at the prospect of lifelong psychological impacts, especially with young children who have spent two of their formative years with adult smiles covered by a piece of cloth or paper, and the psychological impact of having less human contact and interaction. It is as if though they want to train this generation to be the most antisocial humans who have ever lived. Having said that, I just find there to be something especially sociopathic about doing this to puppies. At… Read more »
Memebro: Understand and agree. I just don’t know if it’s possible to hate them more than I already do. And while I love my daughter-in-law’s dog, I love my grandson more. But my gut gets your point about helpless, trusting puppies versus children whose parents presumably love and care for them.
They need a fall guy to bring the stove temperature down. Throw the arrogant, masonic ginny into the arena, instead of the fuckin shlomo giving him orders..
“…you can count me the F out.”
Seriously? You can’t smell this as more agenda-driven agitprop, perhaps to ‘ease’ Dr. Fausto out?
The same persons that don’t bat an eye about live infants being birthed, or murdered in the birth canal, then harvested for body parts will surely clutch their pearls over ‘the puppies’. Just like New York’s former Cuomo was taken down for looking at cleavage, not for his policies that might have led to the deaths of thousands of seniors.
So really. It took ‘the puppies’ for you to get off the train? All in until now??
You are overreacting to my comment and jumping to conclusions about where I stand on all the issues, including the other crimes against humanity that Fauci is guilty of.
I don’t have to prioritize my grievances and hold my tongue about the ones who some may perceive as “less grievous”. I can enumerate all of them.
I am making a wider point, see the other comments here about reaching Qtards, etc. My point is pretty straightforward.
You just set yourself up to make my point. I don’t know you, so really, it cannot be about “you”.
I appreciate your wider point, but it was clearly stated:
“ Seriously? You can’t smell this as more agenda-driven agitprop, perhaps to ‘ease’ Dr. Fausto out?”
With the word that made it about “me”, the word “you”, which appeared to be directed at “me”.
I can’t read your mind. Wider ranging comments on issues are always welcome. Thank you for making your valid point.
Memebro,
Fair enough. And thank you for finding my point valid.
Of course, if indeed “you” needed this last sad puppy event to get off the train, then indeed my point would have been about “you”. I accept that it is not, and you have my appreciation for standing your ground rhetorically, in a civilized manner.
May the ghosts of the Beagles assemble as a horde and find their tormenter with fangs bared. Go Beagles!
I get what your saying, and don’t disagree. But if this is what it takes to get him torn limb from limb and tossed on a fire-ant pile, so be it.
Just like the grab ass revelations were a way of shuffling Cuomo off the public stage so the story of his murderous escapades would disappear with him this abomination (which in my in my mind I have to hope is made up by some deranged PR flak to provoke outrage) is a way to finally give Faux-Chi the bum’s rush so his even more heinous misdeeds go uninvestigated. There’s so much beauty and still so many good people on this planet, but the last two years, actually the last 100 years, make me think we’re overdue for a reset of… Read more »
Good analogy with Cuomo there and the fig leaf excused to get him the hell off the stage. Whatever it takes, and since we live in a nation of feminized children, it takes emotion.
Sorry for the repetition of Getreal’s thoughts – always a bad idea. I smashed the Reply button before reading all the replies. At least it shows more than a few people are going to see this ruse for what it is.
“…is a way to finally give Faux-Chi the bum’s rush…”
And he can simply be remembered as the ‘puppy killer’ instead of his role on the world’s stage that led to massive death and misery.
Very pop culture ending, like his wrinkle-headed ilk, Cuomo.
Getreal: Not just pop culture (although that is apt) but also extremely feminine thinking. It’s truly obscene that White women are motivated more by the pain of animals (they way they all emote over Daily Mail portrayals of wild animals eating other wild animals is hysterical) and alien brown children than of their own progeny. It’s just so damned unnatural, the gushing over every mulatto as ‘beautiful’ and baby monkeys eaten by lions as a ‘tragedy.’ Meanwhile, when I hold my infant White grandson and think of what the future likely has in store for him, I am incandescent with… Read more »
Whites are f**ked up in terms of values. When Merck killed 55,000 with Vioxx there as no outcry, When Purdue Pharma poisoned the Rust belt and South East with Oxy people did nothing. When Clinton signed NAFTA and wiped out 8 million jobs in a few year it only elicited a yawn instead of outrage.
The fact is most whites hate each other. This is why the elites can step on us with such ease. We refuse to work together and face the enemy as a united force.
It is beyond belief in its barbarity. One wonders why it came out now. Much that goes on in animal research would horrify most Americans if they truly had to face it. No pun intended.
I see well-meaning people, vaxxed, hugging their first graders in face coverings, at the bus stop. They are in the midst of a medical experiment with them and their offspring in the place of ‘the puppies’.
Are they horrified? No more than larding their children in a lifetime of debt horrified them. Meaning not at all.
Its no different in conception of you see the Beagles as white America.
Drugged, head immobilized in a cage of the uniparty, vocal chords cut and infected with parasites. Just to see what would happen.
Brilliant (additional words needed to post, but brilliant).
Made my blood run cold and my trigger finger itch.
We have had beagles for a long time.
If I meet someone that doesn’t like dogs I know there is something wrong there.
Damn right. Beagles are innocent, neither left nor right. Chosen by these demons because of their innocence, and the “research” sadists have been allowed this far, far too long.
Public hangings are in order- and human experiments would be even better.
I feel the same affection for dogs. If anything is going to make me religious it may be that God gave dogs to humans.
On the other hand, it’s educational to note how different cultures bond with different animals. Asians eat dogs. (Have Asians historically cared for any animals?)
A long time ago, I was working with an Indian IT guy (who was taking a job from an American). We were both quite secular and congratulated each other for it. Then he started telling me about how wonderful cows are and that I shouldn’t eat them.
Line: I have no personal experience with livestock, but have recently watched a lot of homesteading /farming videos online. Goats seem the most easily domesticated and some seem remarkably affectionate. But I watched a video from a Wyoming ranch where they were trying to reintegrate a bottle-fed calf with the herd. He was only alive because humans had fed him (and thus petted and handled and befriended him) but the owner remained fully cognizant that this was a cow and not a pet, and he was destined for someone’s table eventually. Still sad to watch the calf moo in distress… Read more »
I haven’t read about Robert Dahl in 30 years, but his conclusions about American democracy were interesting (although ignored in the public sphere) in the 1980s. Thanks for this reminder, Zman. As I recall, he was an enthusiast for the party system, precisely because they aggregated policy opinions in such a way that the menu of options available to the public could be addressed through a Yes or No: the only vocabulary available to the electorate as a whole. I don’t know if he anticipated the situation Z describes (our present one) of a two party system masking a uniparty—although… Read more »
The difference between balkanization and cosmopolitanism is a bit of a paradox. The great city with many interest groups jostling with one another and forming temporary alliances within the politics of the city can easily become a civil war of factions. Defining the point when that happens is not so easy. Our rulers are the mercurial sort so they see freedom in the great city. They seek to make this the national model, but it most likely ends in balkanization, conflict and collapse.
When you have a minute, Mr. Z, you might want to pick up a copy of St. Augustine’s “City of God”.
1,500 years ago, after the Sack of Rome by Alaric, he lays out the juxtaposition of life in a city on Earth (aka “fallen”) vs. the perfect (& therefore, unattainable) city of God.
Short chapters, for those with internet brain damage.
Damn. That was good even by your usual high standard of writing.
Any government worth noting is inevitably an oligarchy. “Democracy” therefore constitutes an illusion. The shocking element is that so many regular folks fall for the illusion. For the most part, we are not a discerning species.
Agreed. Every system eventually seems to end up as an oligarchy. Many different starting points with many different paths, but the final destination is the same.
The question is how to create the best version of an oligarchy, one that still has some appreciation of the people over whom they rule. Maybe such a thing doesn’t exist, but if it does, I highly suspect that ethno-nationalism plays a role.
uh, once again, Plato.
Every generation, Mr. Hungus, has to learn these things. Over and over again.
Reading and understanding the ancients is HARD.
Staring at a phone and yelling at clouds is easy.
von Hungus, please 😛
it’s amazing how relevant the Greek philosophers still are.
Just wait: we will soon receive an article from on high that, net after government services, only our five handsomest oligarchs pay income taxes. The obvious solution will be national suicide.
I’m excited to see how far this can go.
That’s kind of happening.
WRT the Taki article.
I wonder if mass media will create a type of genetic bottleneck. It seams entirely possible as the people most affected by the hysteria generated by mass media are not reproducing – at all.
With the amount of conservative parents I know who spawned shit-lib offspring, we’re unfortunately a long ways from the genetic bottleneck.
Those conservative parents didn’t eschew mass media though, did they?
The brainwashing is the primary mode of Leftist reproduction.
Our four went to both private and public schools,
There are communist scum in private schools, just not so many.
You have to stay involved, talk with them about current events & history as well.
Interest them in things you may know and enthusiasm for learning new things.
They are warriors producing more children capable of thinking on their own. I’ll admit the luck of a good woman made it possible. I always say if it was just me they would probably be working as traveling Carnys.
BTW, I’d not even know what the terms liberal and conservative, left and right etc. even mean.
AFICT they haven’t really had any objective meaning for generations. Nothing beyond not my team anyway.
One of the tricks that gets played on us is he claim that religiosity is the opposite of leftism. They have the same root. Dig around in the family tree of a shit-lib and you find a religious fanatic. That’s why those conservative churchgoing parents often have crazy left-wing children. Their kids simply joined a different religion.
Went through this myself. Growing up in a religious family, with church a couple times a week, youth choir, bible camps, etc, was very social. At least half of my friends and social time was church-based. My problem though, is that I was never a believer. Oh, I certainly tried, but eventually I realized that it just wasn’t’ in me. Still, as I grew older I kept looking for that type of social scene. Guess where I found it? No really, guess. Yep, left wing politics. Much like religious scenes, left-wingers love to get together regularly, have potlucks (vegetarian, natch)… Read more »
no one is a believer, not in the literal interpretation of a religious doctrine. they just pretend to get all the perceived benefits of membership. quite often dim people will mimic those they believe to be “smart” and you get that a lot with 90 IQ religious folks.
You have an interesting history and perspective. I hope that you hang around and share more of your stories.
Absolutely. Fanaticism taps the human need for religious grounding. Most successful organized religions manage to mitigate this by injecting enough sanity and rationality into the otherwise maniacal, but it is a hard-won feature and Christianity has so far failed to meet the challenge in the modern age.
Not religious myself didn’t get much of that growing up.
Tried church as an adult. Maby not the right churches.
Anyway I don’t think pablum, feel good,take what feels good, non judgemental BS rainbow tranny flag is what is true and or what people want & need to hear. I suspect that may be why so many cults flourish today.
Modernity in general seems to be a long term population killer (low birth rates).
Universal amongst east and west cultures. China and US/Western/Eastern Europe struggling.
imo, low birth rates are related most to the cost of family formation. once population levels drop — and they will, severely — you will see birth rates increase quickly.
left out a part: dropping population levels will lead to a much lower cost of family formation. housing costs go way down, for instance. and the value of labor goes up.
Up Votes for both of ya but no they won’t. High birth rates only make sense in a rural environment and can only happen outside that in a few conditions, social euphoria like the Baby Boom and a kind of Tribal Warfare (think Chechnya) where you attempt to out breed your foes fore social or religious purposes and among people with a genetic and cultural tendency to high fertility to the degree that modernity won’t impact them, After a collapse, fertility will decline for many decades and if there is good stewardship increase some. To use Russia as an example,… Read more »
karl: Problem is whose birth rates. Non-Whites tend to reproduce regardless of living circumstances (famous line about Ah San underliving O’Reilly from “Rising Tide of Color”). The goal seems to be to reduce the number of Whites and then all their homes and assets are available for their Guatemalan and Gujarati and Han replacements, who already have far higher birth rates than Whites. Blacks have been openly calling White home ownership rayciss and demanding that such generational wealth transfer be banned and redirected towards themselves. This is the intended effect of proposed budget and laws.
USA whites seem to see the Blacks in a shame rooted way similar to the mechanism used against the Germans regarding Nazism.
The tropes and language manipulation are very similar in construction.
I wonder if they will lift their head above the conditioning in this regard?
None of those groups have high fertility.other than first gen Guatemalans. Asians invest into one or two kids and the South Asians tend to be like 3, 2, 1.8 like everybody else Mexican and Hispanic fertility is below replacement in the US and in Mexico. The mass immigration wave is certainly driven by a hatred of the Right White but its also the cheaper labor crowd running out of cheap labor everywhere . The Country Club/Chamber of Commerce people given a choice between giving a raise or closing down or heck burning it down will never choose to pay a… Read more »
It’s difficult for state and local governments to maintain relevance given the Feds are the 800# gorilla of the supply and value of money. The possibility of jab mandates being tied to Medicare/Medicaid funds, or the exorbitant OSHA fines are correlates of this. The cloud people will always have a pirates cove to hide in and armies of lawyers to protect their booty. There aren’t enough of them to make a dent in our spending even if we taxed every one of them to zero. What we can do (but never will) is destroy the pirate coves themselves and prevent… Read more »
It’s difficult for state and local governments to maintain relevance …
The concept of joint sovereignty that has evolved via court cases over the last century is not viable over the long term. Either we need a reinvigorated federalism or blatant centralization. It will probably be the latter at least in the short term.
Tangentially, the dollars role as reserve currency gives the feds the ability to create money out of nothing – which undermines both federalism and Republican governance. It’s a development that is orthogonal to our constitutional system and effectively renders it obsolete.
I believe the money printer is primarily composed of the Fed, the equities markets, and all the derivatives based on the equities markets.
This is a source of immense power for the Cloud People.
I believe they will fight to keep it running for as long as possible, until reality says, “Nyet!”
The predicted shortages of magnesium and aluminum should provide an interesting test.
I was honestly looking at a pie tin just now, thinking, “should I save that?”
Chinese hypersonic missles might be booswash, but a looming pie tin shortage can’t be ignored. I might need it for when I’m burning something to stay warm, not kidding!
The ultimate driver of the Plandemic is Federal handout money. The Feds print as many dollars as they want, generously give it to you for free and then threaten to cut you off if you don’t get rid of the unvaxxed. That’s why so many industries are making the Biden Ultimatums happen: they’d rather get Fed money for free than earn an honest living doing their day job of medicine or air travel. If the devil’s greatest trick was convincing people He doesn’t exist then his second greatest trick was inventing ways to commit delayed-action suicide for fun and profit.… Read more »
Liberal democracy is a lie. The very idea I should tolerate my vote being cancelled by a welfare queen, a criminal, an illegal alien, harvested votes, dead people’s votes, massive ballot stuffing, allowing the worst of the worst to count the ballots, social media completely eliminating the voice of one of the people campaigning, crazy Karens and anti American BLM commies proves it. I would rather live under a king than that group of communists and fascists that currently hold elective posts and I sure don’t want 2 million unelected bureaucrats making laws, mandates, rules and regulations that neither apply… Read more »
Patience Lad
It’s destroying itself, slowly now, then right quick. As many have posted on here before, be ready, and have a group/tribe you can count on. It can be as little as one.
I agree entirely.
Democracy over the last century as turned any number of states and localities in this country into shit holes. The number of examples of democracy even temporarily improving such places can be counted on one hand.
I’ve seen it transform my state, CA, from a paradise into a third world shithole over a period of many decades. With no prospect of improvement, but plenty of prospect for further degradation.
I’m completely willing to try some other form of government at this point.
I had a customer (before I the ADL discovered some mean things I said online and sent it to all my customers! ) from India, with that annoying accent…SHe came in one day with a big smile: I’m a citizen now! I can vote in the next election! She also told me her hero was Mark Zuckerbook. My family came to America in the early 17th century. How can one plausibly consider this a sane, consistent system? She had this weird red stuff smeared on her forehead right at the hairline, fargin’ pagan. I have always thought that the point… Read more »
I have always thought that the point of democracy was to disguise the real source of power.
Yes. And make the subjects content with being treated as cattle – after all, they themselves are in power, so complaining is a bit silly, isn’t it?
When you put that x on the ballot, you’re signing your own contract of indentured servitude.
Democracy is always a transition state to tyranny. The system bogs down in competing ids until a strongman appears to force the sewage through the system once again.
Great column. Let me add that it does not matter how many parties you have, that is the lesson from Europe. There may be more parties to bribe but there are largely the same number of politicians, and with more parties, it’s easier to play one against the other. This is what will happen if you form a third party: it will take you twenty years to vote them into meaningful positions of power and by then, they’ll have been subverted by globoheaumeaux long before. This is what happened to the Danish People’s Party, the Norwegian Progress Party, the Sweden… Read more »
And the Alternativ für Deutschland and similar outfits in Sweden are nose jobs, only interested in pitting locals and Mohammadans against each other.
The Sweden Democrats are kind of an exception and as far as I can understand doing very well. They did well enough in the last few elections that they were nearly able to prevent Sweden from forming a government something that hadn’t happened in a couple of centuries, They aren’t that far from having enough votes to form a government on their own , IIRC it oinly takes 37% and I don’t know whether they will do so choke or if they will deport many foreigners/and or stop immigration A few other parties have also adopted the “that’s enough” policy… Read more »
A.B. Prosper: Even if Sweden were to stop immigration now, they are already about 30% foreign-born. Given differential fertility rates and average ages, White Swedes will still go extinct – it just might take a few extra decades. I call that dystopia. Stopping immigration is utterly insufficient – wasn’t enough even a decade ago. Nothing less than massive repatriation and/or death will save White nations from all turning brown within the next 10 to 40 years.
It’s hard to get good demographic data out of Sweden, but at least 10 of those 30% are other Europeans, mostly Scandinavians or Baltics.
It looks bad in Sweden, true, but I’m more worried about Britain because they’re much more cosmopolitan in outlook, much less racist than the Swedes. Since the sixties at least, every European country has had a popular majority against mass migration. Except Britain, where it’s been about 50/50 up until recently.
The Sweden Democrats haven’t had their shit-or-get-off-the-pot-moment, when they have a chance to influence government. They did indeed to extremely well in the last few elections and in 2014, they reached about 20% of the vote. This lead the other eight parties formed an anti-democratic alliance, the so-called December Agreement, where they promised never to form a coalition with them and never vote with them against the government. This meant that any government had a guarantee from the “opposition” that they can not be ousted by a vote of no confidence, effectively disenfranchising SD voters. It also meant that the… Read more »
He is now in court charged with kidnapping I believe for refusing to allow the boats to dock.
He only has himself to blame by cucking with the fake 5 star movement and seemingly being complicit in taking the wind out of the Northen League sails.
trumpton: Amazing how Salvini has totally dropped off the radar. Used to be dozens of articles about him online, and as soon as they removed him and began prosecuting him, absolutely no press coverage in the White west (can’t speak about local Italian coverage).
Matteo Salvini.
*no idea how Jeff got involved in your life up there. Stupid auto correct.
I’ve always thought that a large, under examined turning point was the late 70s, when the Evangelicals got in bed with the GOP. If there was ever a time to create a third party, A Euro style coalition system, that was it. I can see why the Evangelicals felt they couldn’t make common cause with the Democrats, them being all in on abortion and all the horror that flows from listening to feminists. But: Evangelicals are quite clearly big government types. Big government social engineering has always been an Evangelical thing; the original Progressives were all Social Gospelers. That’s antithetical… Read more »
Buckley-style conservatism and social conservatism engaged with the system and were destroyed by it. That is something Sam Francis wrote about fifty years ago. To engage in democratic politics means embracing the rules of democratic politics. One of those rules is the winner gets to make the rules and define truth within those rules. Inevitably, conservatives had to accept the rules that ensured their demise.
“This moment demands that we build back better. “
> The claim of the post is that two thirds of Americans paid no federal income taxes.
Even the original source material for this post only claims that the increase in the number of people who don’t pay federal income tax is temporary, an anomaly caused by the WuFlu lockdowns and related government payouts. It’s right in the title: The COVID-19 Pandemic Drove A Huge, But Temporary, Increase in Households That Did Not Pay Federal Income Tax
That the American Thinker piece fails mention this just shows how they are merely the dishonest purveyors of propaganda.
Isn’t the IRS playing Indian giver with a lot of the stimmy checks?
Gotta love how that phrasing implies the destruction purposively wrought on our system in the first place. One only builds back after hurricanes and the like.
The “Republican coalition” always was a corporate concern that tricked various elements to join it so elections could be won. The causes of the coalition partners were considered jokes. The “partner” that replaced the Religious Right was the national security/military supporters. Of course, the grift was just to fund the MIC by waging low grade wars on poor and backward countries, with the money flowing back to the corporate domo “partner,” with the added benefit of slaughtering young White males. Watching Mitch and the Gang try to show a little leg to the corporate folks who have decided the hell… Read more »
The great irony/humiliation: The Religious Right™ (RIP) was only allowed shows of cultural strength when it was being used as a feminist catspaw: Meese vs. porn, Tipper vs. music, Hillary vs. video games, the “Satanic panic,” etc.
People wonder this great evangelical power they remember suddenly went, why “the parties switched” so fully re: free speech, etc.
Didn’t happen.