The Cost Of Custodialism

Note: The weekly Taki post is up. It ties in with the post today about the cost of the custodial state. Behind the green door is the weekly podcast.


In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter argues that societies collapse when their investment is sustaining their societies reaches the point of diminishing returns. The complex systems they evolved to solve the problems they have faced come with a cost. Complexity itself brings a cost, as maintaining any complex system has special requirements. These costs are not fixed. They increase over time and at some point, they exceed the benefits.

In modern life, this is obvious in software systems. They are initially created to solve a specific set of problems like accounting or tracking parts in a warehouse. Over time they become increasing complicated as they are expanded to solve other problems like tracking costs or forecasting cash flows. They are patched, upgraded and modified continuously until they reach a point where the cost of maintaining them is greater than the cost of replacing them with something new.

This idea of diminishing returns is useful in thinking about how the custodial state is evolving and how it will end. There is a cost to making sure you are not using the wrong pronouns or teaching your kids the wrong values. There is a cost to bullying people into taking certain medicines or avoiding certain foods. Of course, there is a cost to dreaming up these new taboos. The American university system, which is the primary source of production for this stuff, is not cheap.

In prior societies, the care, custody and control of the population was not much of a concern to the ruling class. The duty of the king, for example, was to make sure his lands were safe from threats. Otherwise, his people were on their own as far as raising crops and managing their affairs. They had duties to their lord, but those were in terms of labor and produce. The church made sure everyone followed the cultural rules, but the cost of that was paid for through rents as well.

Even in liberal societies of the 19th and early 20th century, the people in charge did not invest much into making sure people had the right thoughts. Public education was focused on improving the workforce. Public safety was about securing the property and safety of rich people. Public administration was still largely focused on collecting taxes for the state. In 19th century America, social reform was a private affair, financed by the wealthy as a form of public piety.

It is in the 20th century things began to change. Public education became universal in the West and shifted from the basics to moral and social conditioning. When politicians say that parents should have no role in the training of their children, this is not the radical idea that many claim. Inside the ruling class, this is just assumed and has been for a very long time. A century ago, Progressive reformers assumed education was necessary to train people to be good social democrats.

The little light on the dashboard of your car telling you that you are too close to another car and the warnings about drinking the contents of the shampoo bottle are all part of the custodial state and they come with a cost. The federal government spent over six trillion dollars in fiscal year 2021. That is 30% of the GDP. State and local government spent another three trillion. Roughly half of the U.S. GDP is consumed with the cost of governance. This is true throughout the West.

This is not the end of it. Regulatory costs do not show up in the government budget, but they show up in private budgets. When companies impose vaccine mandates, they are incurring a real cost. Some percentage of their workforce will quit. The cost of hiring and training employees is substantial. Then there is the cost of making sure everyone has the Nth booster shot. This is just one example, but there are thousands of these sorts of costs incurred by every business.

One way the managerial system has made this work is through socializing the costs around the world via the currency. The U.S. exports the cost through dollar production and trade. They create money which is spent on foreign goods. This exports the inflation to the foreign producer, but some of it comes back as foreign investment in government bonds and equities. American asset values go up while the quality of life goes up without causing domestic inflation.

This is one reason European consumer culture lagged behind America. The individual countries with their own currencies could not do this trick. Once the Euro was in place, consumerism in Europe took off. The consumer culture of the West, a feature of the custodial state, was made possible by shifting costs to low cost countries in the newly “free” east, South America and Asia. The spike in inflation suggests this has run its course and the West can no longer export the cost of custodialism.

The problem we see with Covid, is the custodial state comes with an ideology that justifies it and drives its development. Covid was a real problem, but the system wildly overreacted because it exists to manage these problems to an ever increasing level of detail that has now taken on a life of its own. The extreme example of this is New Zealand, where the ditzy Prime Minister has said that her Covid tyranny is now a permanent feature of life. She is the Kiwi den mother.

Another problem in addition to the direct cost is the cost of what managerialism does to the population of a society. Public services are declining rapidly as the people in those jobs no longer feel any duty to them. Like children shirking their chores, people in the custodial state stop caring about their work. The great Covid sick out we are experiencing is a glimpse of things to come. If your needs are the responsibility of the custodial state, why should you work hard and be conscientious?

One of the realities of Soviet communism was that it was more expensive to maintain than it was worth. It was a system that had a 70-year run and if you net out the years through the war, it was a two generation system, give or take. There have been kings that have served longer. The reason it was short-lived is it turned social capital into the fuel to maintain the system. Worse yet, it consumed the means of producing social capital, which accelerated the collapse of the system.

The Western system took longer to form up than communism. Its development was retarded by the necessity of the Cold War. In the thirty years since the end of communisms the custodial system has evolved quickly. Along with it the social costs have gone up and the stock of social capital has declined. In the 1980’s, no one saw the collapse of the Soviet empire coming, but the signs were there. Similarly, Western custodialism is headed to collapse for the same reason.


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265 thoughts on “The Cost Of Custodialism

  1. As I await approval for comment in moderation hell, Custodial States are also like hothouse flowers in that they cannot survive hungry and aggressive competitors. Macron can play bully all he wants, but two can play at Color Revolution games, and Putin’s got plenty of hybrid war experience and a lot of anger over Biden’s pushing (admittedly on an open doorway) the latest color revolution Kazahstan. Putin can create trouble there, in the UK, in the US even.
    Can a Custodial State produce enough ability in its top and mid level people, and enough loyalty and initiative in its lower level people, to deter foreign competitors and aggressive minded inner competitors particularly various mini dyansties sure to form? So far the answer from History has been a resounding no. Political entities that have been stable have either been self-organizing for the most part with initiative and power pushed down: the Netherlands, Switzerland, Scandinavia until recently, or severely isolationist, populations with no to zero diversity, and protected by geography from dangerous competitors: China, Japan basically.
    All of societies western and non western alike depend on more and more complex systems of delivering energy and manufactured goods and food in more and more complex ways. This puts a demand on sheer competency that say the Cromwell Protectorate or the Tokagawa Shogunate never had to deal with just to stay afloat. Already states and organizations have had to back off rules for vaxx compliance due to critical labor shortage. Its not as if airlines can just grab dudes off the street for pilot duty.

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    • I think it will exceedingly difficult to find enough talented people to fill all those custodial jobs. They will never be satisfied or challenged. Retention will be in the toilet.

      However…

      now giving this some thought, I think we are living through a stage right now in the custodial state where it has found a way to compete with the private sector for talent. Remember it wasn’t long ago when a person with talent would opt for the private sector while public sector government jobs fell to the losers. So the government had to up its game and offer a lucrative lifestyle via grift and low risk high reward propositions. Hence the revolving doors between government and private sector, which is not new but the numbers of people going though those doors has certainly expanded significantly, and the size of it is what’s new.

      In a more general sense, public sector pay has caught up or gotten close, and the private sector has become so shitty and degraded turn and government-like but sans pensions, so there is going to be a good number of talented people who say, might as well work for the government, pay is about the same, can’t get fired, get a pension and I get to make some serious contacts inside the government I can always parlay into a big private sector gig should want that down the road.

      Yes, a somewhat overlooked aspect of the world today is that working for the government has become a much more attractive career option than it was even a few years ago.

      • very true , but since the government produces friction in the system reducing the production of everything , the more ” effective” your gov.the faster your society decelerates and locks up.

    • If you try to do too much, you end up being able to do nothing at all.

      Most current western societies cannot even get out of their own way, and subsist solely on inertia. There are rocks ahead, the rudder is broken, and the engine room won’t answer.

  2. The problem with a custodial state is that it creates no loyalty, and ends up in a bloody mess most of the time. After Cromwell died his Protectorate lasted only a few years, his son was simply not competent enough nor generated enough loyalty to keep it running. Same with the Soviet Union. It gets worse and falls apart FASTER when there are lots and lots of ethnicities and races fighting each other. Macron’s statement is pretty much the Frankish/Norman contempt for the Gallic/Roman underclass that animates most of French history. And is likely to be amplified by new imported players: Muslims and Africans. China can afford a custodial state — its people always had it and they are nearly all Han. Same with Japan which pushed group micromanaging to a new level not seen before during the Shogunate.

    Already Whites need not apply for Covid-19 treatment in NY State, Texas, California, and many major cities. NYC has a “don’t arrest blacks for anything” policy and allows non-citizens to vote. Citizenship means nothing, race is everything underneath the platitudes of the Custodial State. Which will give rise and probably has already to various ethnic mafias, this time explicitly White, as in the Soviet Union and Japan and China. No Whites need apply to the ruling class and its administrative elite, but what then? Outsiders in the Soviet Union including but not limited to: Jews, Georgians, Poles, Baltics, and Central Asians formed their own nepotistic ethnic gangs that ended up running most of the state after it collapsed, and played a part in the collapse as these networks ended up controlling vast resources sub-rosa. Mexico is another good example of the failure of the custodial state. No nation tries to do more explicitly and fails more completely than Mexico. A society built upon black HR ladies will be run behind the scenes by Tony Soprano and Walter White types.

  3. ‘ In the 1980’s, no one saw the collapse of the Soviet empire coming, but the signs were there. Similarly, Western custodialism is headed to collapse for the same reason.’

    This is correct except some people in the ’80s saw it coming but got the timing wrong. It happened much faster than even the people that thought it would happen forecast.

  4. OT: an era comes to a close…Dobey Gillis has died :(. a moment of silence, please. R.I.P. Dwayne Hickman.

    in case anyone is interested, both Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld were in that show 🙂

      • i suspect you entered a comment that was too short (for the checker), hit the “back” button, and made your comment longer, then submitted it again. that’s how comments end up at the “top” level of the page (instead of within a thread).

  5. In the long term, transaction cost always increase. That is because, if a system (or person) survives, it tends to constantly increase in complexity throughout its life as it encounters new (to it) situations.

    That is to say, the longer something goes on, the more expensive, both in implicit and explicit costs, it becomes for that “something” to make decisions and to take actions.

    Eventually, the cost of making decisions and taking actions outweighs any value gained from doing so. At this point, one of two things happens.

    1. The system keeps taking actions that ultimately destroy itself, and the very premise of its existence. This occurs if the system is effectively in a vacuum. A good general example of this are natural resource founded societies that exhaust their mineral wealth.

    2.The system is destroyed/absorbed by another system, which does not face the same transaction costs issues. A good specific example of this is what the United Stated did to the British empire in the first half of the 20th century.

    As far as current year America goes, I think that;s what the issue is. None of the problems in the US ( or internationally) are, on paper, unsolvable. In fact, most of them are quiet straightforward to fix. But getting all the diverse people, diverse interest, opposing agendas etc to agree to anything, to decide on something, to collectivley act on something, well, that’s the issue.

    And I dont think its solvable, within the current system.

    • not only do decisions get expensive, but eventually such systems get to a point where any change causes something to break – including attempts to repair previous breaks.

      nasa used to have a policy of not changing software, when a work around could be found.

  6. Computers may extend the lifespan of the West significantly.

    If you can automate many factories, the goods keep pouring out. Computers “sound” complex, but really in many cases they make things more simple. Their primary function is to take data, twist and turn it like a Rubik’s Cube, and find a new configuration for it all. The end result is a new scenario, a different reality from the beginning, wherein the inputs have found themselves changed.

    (Note: It is likely computers and industrial engineering in conjunction whose increasing effectiveness have been confiscated by the top 1% economically. If the rich didn’t take it, it would have gone to the middle class.)

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      • *shrugs* I didn’t say it would be easy. And it’s not my problem. I don’t expect to live forever. I expect it to be a multi-generational problem handed down from group to group somewhere down the line. I’m also not saying all the jobs would disappear, just that one problem — physical production of basic goods — would be taken care of.

    • Way easier said than done. Also pall those computers guzzle power and we are not only not capable of building new nuke plants, the only reliable source or of cleaning up after them but we are actively shutting down power these sources in favor of unreliable green power

      Even if somehow that can be avoided, no one is having children. It does no good if the fertility rate declines year after year. to the point even immigrants aren’t having kids.

      Simply, collapse is going to happen. Period and instead of hoping abroad the Enterprise to go to the starts, the Enterprise might sail to Europe . Long term? Massive decline in tech and back to horse and buggy with a few trains , maybe . If very lucky, a few airplanes running on nigh priceless gas or bio fuel.

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  7. It’s even worse than appears on paper. How many “consultants” are out there and what is the increase over the last 30 years? Everyone is a damn consultant these days. These so called private sector jobs, many high paying, once included as part of the system’s entourage, shrink the pool of private enterprise even more. A distinct minority of the population, especially in states like California, is genuinely private sector, which brings us to the sordid topic of the coin. Right now, a 1% increase in interest rates would equal about $300 billion in ADDITIONAL interest payments by just the Federal government, not including states and municipalities. They couldn’t raise interest rates if they tried. Sure a .25% potential increase to prove that they’re not outright liars. It won’t move the needle except to pop the bubble. The financial throttle is stuck open…FO-EVAHH. What this really means is that the system will fumble around in a stasis even as the bubble pops, but will come into crisis when some threshold of pain is reached on the 90% that aren’t the top 10%. I don’t know what the pain tolerance will be, but there’s some magic inflation % where the population will go haywire.

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  8. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Cost of Custodialism

    • Assuming the same number of deaths and critically ill wouldn’t it just make it less dangerous if it was even more common or am I missing something?

      • You need to get with the program – it’s a CASEdemic! Which is worse than a billion cows farting at once causing a pole shift while an asteroid is heading for Nancy Pelosi’s twin sub-zeros and Eric Swallwell has been made Secretary of Defense. Come on man.

  9. Bad news in Canada. PM Trudeau followed in the footsteps of Macron, and called the unvaccinated “racist” and “misogynist” and said was musing on how to deal with “these people”.

    Recently the Canadian Health Minister said that nationwide mandatory vaccines “may” happen. The cuckservative provincial leaders have vowed that they will never allow this in their province – which means that it’s going to happen soon with almost 100% certainty. (The cuckservatives also vowed no more lockdowns, and no vaccine passports).

    They didn’t hint what form the mandatory vaccines would take, but it will likely be fines, or perhaps the inability to renew license plates, etc. In about a month I will likely become an illegal in my own country. Keep in mind the province of Quebec also hinted that only 3 doses will be considered fully vaxxed in the coming months.

    Not sure what’s going to happen but it appears the Western ruling class is going full Bolshevik (full retard) on covid vaccines. The USA is currently the exception for freedom, but for how long?

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    • This is the decisive year. Frustrating that I can’t offer more than moral support and prayers for Canada, and all western nations, really. Godspeed, stay frosty up there.

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    • B125: For whatever it’s worth to you, my sympathy and my prayers. I think something similar is coming to a significant portion of the US – not because of the disease du jour, but because it’s all about control, as we’ve always known. I read recently it’s going to be made mandatory in Marin County, CA (I know, CA, NY – I don’t care) as of August of this year. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend’s husband is probably going to lose his job because he won’t take the vexx.

      There’s a real schizophrenia in the headlines re all this of late – about half go on about how “omicron” isn’t particularly serious or deadly and how ‘we’ must learn to live with ‘the virus.’ The other half shriek about numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. They may gradually tone down the shrieking, but my belief is it will be accompanied by an iron-clad belief in forever trusting ‘the science’ and obediently accepting endless ‘boosters.’

      Many who have thus far resisted will give in, due to financial concerns or nagging wives. But some of us will not. At that point things become a bit unpredictable, but I expect to remain part of a shrinking minority.

      Stay strong.

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      • Its going to be the strange sight of the milder it is the more extreme the requirements around masks, passports and injections and punishments. You can see this happening in Europe, Aus and Canada now.

        Otherwise how do you know you should be afraid?

        At some point that is all that will be left and people will be unable to pinpoint exactly why they are needed.

    • Yes, the girly men ‘leaders’ in the form of Macron and Trudeau are digging their manicured fingernails into their palms, fuming that anyone would defy their edicts. Their ‘moment’ is now, they cannot turn back from their dream, total submission to their power.

      Since they are girly men, they use girly language to describe those that stand against them. They use feminine language, ‘I hear no one likes you’ and such. ‘I am just telling you this because I like you…’

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    • Don’t take the jab. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with the vaxx. But:

      – it is unusual, and strange if not suspicious, for the FDA to want to sit on side effect reports for 75 years

      – mRNA therapy is new in humans therefore side effects are unknown

      – there are genuine experts in the relevant fields who are aggressively advising against it (to be fair most relevant credentialized are advocating it. But most physicians are spineless twats)

      – there are unexplained claims of drastically increased mortality of working age people, ranging from athletes allegedly dropping dead in high numbers to insurance company claims (OneAmerica). Not sure if I should add that I saw my first ‘Celebrities we’ve lost in 2022’ headline a few days ago. I’ve never, ever seen such a headline a week into a new year.

      – it makes no sense that vaxx propaganda has gone up as the morbidity of the evolving virus variants has gone down. This is ESPECIALLY the case with children

      – the vaxx evidently does not prevent infection. It is dubious at the very least that it causes a milder case.

      Possibly more reasons than, pls feel free to add reasons to hold on being vaccinated. Some of these are probably their own disinformation or wildly exaggerated. But are they all? And most importantly, why is it not a screaming headline if a major insurance company sees a 40% rise in working age mortality. That’s a Civil War level in the US or Thirty Year’s War level rise in Europe. If this is true, why is EVERYBODY not talking about this right now? If it is not true, why on earth did an easily verifiable CEO of a major insurance company say it? I’m not passing judgment, I’m not panicking, I’m just saying there’s enough info in the noise to say something is completely wrong about something or several things.

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      • It’s another race, just like the race for the elites to flood the West with aliens before the people awaken.

        This one is a race to get needles in every arm before the people see that many deaths and adverse events result from the jab.

        For both, the elites are going full speed ahead. Now the question is, why do they want to inject this crap in everyone?

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        • Fact: the leaders of Western nations are replacing heritage populations

          Fact: they talk in contemptuous, sometimes almost genocidal, ways about the same, i.e. whites

          Fact: normalcy bias is a common thing. I’m often hit by it myself. It would work to make one dismiss the above.

          Given these, what can you now infer about the concern these elites have for the welfare of their peoples? Why could there not be a plan of unspeakable wickedness and cruelty at work here? True, how would you keep it secret?

          On the other hand, just asking, how many whistle blowers were there to the Holocaust or Holodomor? More than the ‘conspiracy theorists’ claiming the vaxx is about depopulation? Why would you think a general practitioner, with virtually no training in chemistry and only general training in immunology, has any real knowledge about what he is injecting in you, other than what he has been told by ‘medical experts’ and the label they wrote for him?

          Are the current elites less worried about climate change and overpopulation than the Nazis were about Jewish subversion or Stalin about counterrevolutionaries? The former seem to be pretty worried about it to me. And how long did it take for it to be generally acknowledged that the Nazis and Soviets were genocidal? What does this add up to?

          At the very least, taking a rain check on the jab. Even if you’re ‘mired in shit’, as the French prez promised. At the very least.

          • True, how would you keep it secret?

            What exactly have they kept secret? It is obvious the vax doesn’t work, there is info out there on its toxicity, etc. They haven’t really kept their desire to reduce populations a “secret”. They simply lie brazenly, because they can.

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          • They don’t need to keep it a secret.

            They just lie and lie and lie and NPCs are not going to look at anything for themselves.

            so a few thousand people on the internet talking about it to each other on niche forums most people have never heard of, isn’t going to threaten anyone.

            As decades of information about the other massive historical fake BS has not made a dent either.

        • It’s worse than that. Since most docs and paras now belong to a “network” (you remember, the ones that were going to improve care and lower costs LOL!) it’s become your livelihood or your license if you dissent.

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    • I can’t say in writing what needs to be done to Trudeau and his ilk, but everyone konws what it is and no one is willing to do it.

      Western governments are going full-bore on gun confiscation for a reason, though…

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    • Its bad enough I hear rumblings that Canada might go hot and while its a big might and that if they do it doesn’t stop till its over.

      One thing to understand about Canadians,historically they are calmer in general than Americans but once worked up much more vicious. They mean just that, won’t stop till its done, no holds barred.

      Frankly the best thing to do is to form new nations anyway, parts of what was Canada can join the Western States.

      This idea is way on the back burner but its out there and we have a decent chance of seeing a USSR style collapse into new nations.

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      • Where are you hearing it might go hot?

        Canadians were known for their fighting ability during World War 1 and 2. It’s probably one of the few times Canada actually made an impact on the global stage, (unfortunately forgotten by most people & delusional leftists who think that our “diversity” is making an impact.)

        But most of our history was pretty cucked and we never had a revolution. Just kind of stayed loyal to Britain until they kind of gave us independence.

        From what I’ve seen, our beloved POCs, especially younger men, are the most agitated against more lockdowns. Some white men are getting fed up too. I’d say it could blow if they make it mandatory. But it might not. And by “blow” i would imagine low level vandalism, and civil disobedience, not necessarily a full on revolution, off the top. There also won’t be violent mass protests and riots like there are in Europe and AUS.

        • I’m not in Canada but from what are apparently Canadians I’d guess mostly in more rural provinces.

          Its the web though may not be reliable and its tied as you noted to mandatory vaccination.

  10. Every plan for organizing or controlling human beings eventually either succeeds or fails depending in part on how well it accords with human nature.

    Of course, extreme progs insist that there’s no such thing as human nature: that people are products of their circumstances, not their genes, and thus are infinitely malleable.

    That was one of Marx’s key assumptions: that the communist state would inevitably result in the arising of the communist man, who was perfectly happy to give all he could while taking only what he needed. Marx saw acquisitiveness and self-interest as being creations of the capitalist system, which would vanish under a communist system.

    The failure of communism wherever it was attempted was due in large part to Marx’s flawed understanding of what people are like, and why. He didn’t realize that our genetic inheritance— which varies among the various racial groups, while having a lot of commonalities as well— meant that certain aspects of our human nature will not change with a change of system. Wanting to keep the products of your labor turns out to be part of ‘who we are’ as human beings.

    That’s why capitalism, for all its imperfections, has continued to survive, and why the ChiComs have adapted a form of it into their communist authoritarian system: it accords with human nature, and thus, ‘works’.

    And human nature also explains why the welfare system was so detrimental to Blacks: it’s perfectly natural— when faced with the choice of working a 40-hour week and bringing home $300, or being free all week and getting an $850 monthly check— to choose the latter.

    But genetic variation among the various racial groups also means that human nature varies. Asians tend to be more compliant, and Blacks tend to be more violent. A system that works well with one human group might not work as well on others.

    White legacy Americans as a group have been shaped by both our western European genetic heritage, and our experience. The American frontier served as a filter: only certain sorts of people were willing to cross the Atlantic on tiny wooden ships and move into a largely-unexplored and only partly civilized landscape. Certain qualities were needed to survive and thrive on the American frontier; and ready compliance was NOT one of them!

    Of course, that was many generations ago; and the case can be made that we as a people are rapidly losing those qualities which frontier living bred into us.
    Modern standards of wokeness are in many ways the opposite of those frontier values of independence, self-sufficiency, not complaining in the face of hardship, pride in what you’ve accomplished, and resistance to being manipulated or coerced.

    Wokeness, by comparison, is much more attractive to those taking comfort in being part of a group; and justifying the correctness of their beliefs with the observation that ‘this is what all good people believe’. Groupthink vs independent thought. And there’s no doubt that “educators”, the msm, Hollywood, are united in their effort to convert everyone to the groupthink of woke beliefs.

    So the current attempts on the part of our rulers to demand compliance with the dictates of the managerial state, will meet with various responses, depending on what type of American we’re talking about.

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      • My parents had me late in life.
        Their values and those they looked up to were of the late nineteenth century. It was important to knowhow to cut & split wood.
        How to build a fire. How to grow a garden. Catch fish. ” there are no kings here, there are no kings deer”
        Owning dirt was always the goal
        How lucky I was. what’s important today will be legacy tomorrow.

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    • I have a formula for that: “Americans are too rich, too secure, too well-fed, and have WAY too much time on their hands.”

      Take that away, and it already IS being taken away, and the old national character will quickly re-assert itself.

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  11. Serious question:

    But is anyone here encouraging their younger family or extended family to move east in the near future? By east I do mean Eastern Europe to include Russia. Dutton has made light of this and I believe he is currently residing in Finland and teaching in Eastern Europe.

    • and do they speak any of the eastern european languages? and why do they thing eastern european countries want them?

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      • I second Karl’s questions. “Move to Finland or Russia after getting married?” Seriously? Why would a random Westerner want such a drastic change, why would the target society want him and who promised that this would be a lasting solution to his problems?

        Don’t give people advice along the lines of “give up your entire life as you’ve ever known it”.

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        • If you are going to be an alien in your country, it might at least be easier to be one in a different country where you are actually the same race as the inhabitants, the entire official culture is not anti your existence and the govt is not trying to kill you.

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          • You are virtue-signaling, sir.

            You aren’t really advocating people move to Russia/EE. You see them isolating themselves from Globohomo and you envy them, especially if they have a strong figurehead that you respect.

            Do you give any assistance to the people you tell to move across the planet into a foreign land? No. Do you really expect them to completely rebuild their lives just on your advice? No. Are you overlooking reasons to NOT go there, such as the Ukraine crisis? Yes. You are “we should be like them!” wishful thinking.

            Take a moment. Introspect. You telling random people to raise their kids in Russia is the exact same impulse that leads an SJW to demand a J6 tribunal. Neither of you really cares if it happens. You just think it’s a really good idea and want to be seen saying so.

            Stable societies with strong borders ARE a good idea but there are better ways to wish for one.

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          • Maybe you should be less of a dickhead in your reply.

            I was making a point about the motivations of people who do this, not encouraging people en mass to do it.

            I left my own country a few years ago for exactly this reason as it no longer exists in a meaningful way except as a memory.

            So perhaps you might want to re-evaluate that some people may actually get off the couch and follow through on their views .

      • I hear this advice from time to time on here. Karl is right, do you think they want you or that you will adapt even if you could?

        These countries although allied with us in some of our fights really don’t care that much for Americans or Canadians personally.

        • People are easy. Doesn’t take much to get to know them and fit in no matter where you go.

          I’ve moved around quite a bit in my adult life, and certain personality types are just built for it. Others aren’t. But for those who are, it’s not a big deal to pull up stakes and go somewhere new and meet new people and feel at home in a short time. Plus all kinds of groups built around welcoming new people, social events, and in cases of going aboard lots of emigre communities etc.

          Put it this way, if we’re thinking it, people have already done it and have begun to set up shop abroad so it’s easier for people like us to make the move. It’s not that big a deal. Plus it’s an adventure.

    • I would, if any would listen. But it will be interesting to see what the younger generations will do as the opportunities to move away from their lot rapidly decrease. As they attempt to cluster in mid-western states, those states get squeezed by other populations. The backwoods of border states like Maine likewise get slowly filled up. Fleeing to Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Not much of an option. Re-populating western Europe? More of the same. Eastern Europe is tempting, but they are not interested in being a refuge unless we offer something in return.

      In short, there is nowhere to run, really. As a practical point, every family should probably have at least one relative in another country, but as a long-term solution to our problems, it doesn’t make much difference.

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      • Great points. Me, I grew up and live in western NY. It’s my home, I know its history, I know its towns and geography. It is part of me. As bad as things are, and as bad as they will probably become, I feel – as no doubt the Seneca felt when ‘our people’ drove them out 250 years ago – that I am rooted here by family history and innate affection.

        I choose to stay, despite the financial and spiritual burdens that come with living in a political system that has declared war on me and people like me. I like it here. I will die here. I don’t care.

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    • Nope, the bones of our ancestors lay in this ground. they took it, & built it for us. this country is ours. We will be taking it back

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    • you think you can just walk into any country you want, don’t you? this is quintessential TV logic.

      • It is logic conditioned on Americans by what we’ve grown up with. Apparently anyone can waltz into the United States and squat here. We assume that is how the rest of the world works.

        Of course, it does not.

    • Big differences between places like Russia and Finland IMO.

      All the Russian STEM people I know are trying to leave Russia. Russian STEM people want to leave because salary there is low (less than 1/3 US salary) and, while education through high school is quite good compared to US, the feeling is that professional opportunities are much better in US. Russia is a natural resource based economy, so not much high tech industry opportunity exists there. Many Russian STEM professionals feel that they have to leave, going to Germany, US, Israel, etc. US gets maybe 50% of these Russian tech emigres. This has been true for last 25 years and has not changed recently AFAIK. These Russians sort of look past weird US political situation and see opportunity for betterment of their family in long run here.

      Never met a Finn that moved to the US for work or school. It must be nice there now, if none of them leave to come here.

      If I was looking to leave the US, I would consider Mexico perhaps (best of the Latin American countries), Gulf States (max income), or maybe back to the UK where most of my family came from many generations ago (despite the bad political situation).

  12. I still have some doubts as to whether the system will collapse. Life is very good at the top. They are almost entirely insulated from their dictates. The third world people they are importing don’t have the same high standards the heritage whites do about what the country needs to be like and single women will believe whatever the media tells them. Things are going to have to really deteriorate before they are as bad as India, Mexico or El Salvador. Our current elite will be at least partly replaced by Chinese and Indian newcomers who won’t have the same omparisons our current ruling class has so they should be happy too

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    • While not denying any of what you say, I’m wondering whether our rulers may have unleashed forces beyond their control?

      One interesting aspect of the current ‘racial reckoning’ is how— no matter how much they’re pandered-to, and how many benefits and privileges they’re granted— Blacks never seem to be satisfied. The current uprising of “workers of color” at ultra-woke NPR— where exiting Blacks are accusing NPR of having “White supremacist” policies— is just the latest example.

      Contrary to liberal expectations, Blacks are not satisfied with attaining equality, or even “equity”; it’s become clear that what the racial reckoning means to them is nothing more or less than getting revenge: punishing Whitey and putting him in his place.

      Will our prog rulers be able to contain this monster they’ve unleashed?

      Or are the smash-and-grabs we’re seeing in Chicago and Hollywood a taste of things to come?

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      • Bill: Noggers are never satisfied because their hatred is based on envy of Whites. Despite their well-documented high self esteem, they still seem to know, somewhere in their hind brain, that they’ll never be as smart or capable or good-looking or accepted or esteemed as Whites. This creates a cognitive dissonance with their massive (and baseless) self esteem and that dissonance turns to rage in their febrile brains.

        The reason the progs won’t be able to maintain control is because it’s ultimately a numbers game. The White progs are aging (how many more facelifts can Pelosi manage?) and are not as invincible as they are convinced they are (Chuckie Schumer fancies himself a ‘big Juice’ lol). AOC and her gang and the colored tsunami the progs have unleashed on us (on all White westerners) is going to come crashing down. It will drown many of the progs; many others will be swept out with the undertow.

        Get to higher ground. Get away from the city and the suburbs.

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        • 3g4me

          You have hit the nail on the head. I always wondered why “The Magic Negro” and his mystery gender mate always seemed to be angry and bitter.
          # President; twice!
          # Millionaire
          # Adored by good whites the world over.

          And at the end of the day, angry and bitter.

          Because in the end, they know, deep down, they will always be a couple of Noggers. No money or status can ever change that, and it galls them.

          And let me simplify your final sentiment;

          Avoid the groid.

          Nothing good comes from interacting with them.

      • There is absolutely no doubt the Progs have unleashed forces beyond their control. This almost always happens with revolutions and explains why they go so horribly wrong from the perspective of the leaders, who often get rifle butts smashed into their skulls. It is a feature and not a bug–or cliche–that revolutions eat their own.

        Most of these people thought they could pull the plug whenever they wanted. Despite their platitudes, they know as well as anyone the intellectual limitations of most blacks, among others. While it probably (although not certainly) might be in the best interests of blacks and others to be good dogs and receive treats, the mental limitations invariably will mean the White Progs will be on the receiving end of their rage. The narcissism and delusions of Western communists makes them think they are invincible. Look really hard at White leftist politicians and the obese White chicks, even the dykes, in human resources and similar positions. These people are gone, and their pets will take the rest of their shit, too. Playing the Tribe card will be useless for those accustomed to it.

        While the uber rich have bolts holes, some of those places have started to look askance at taking them, too. The downside is our lives will be upended right along with them.

      • Blacks are only a problem because of the tribe. During Jim Crow both races were better off. Most of the propaganda getting blacks to hate whites and fight the voodoo of systemic racism can be easily traced back to the tribe too.

    • Your comment assumes a lot: That the country will continue in its present form (it won’t; it can’t); that the collapse is somehow a future event (it isn’t; it is already well underway). And so on.

      Fifteen years for now, the map of North America will be radically different from that of today.

      That’s baked into the cake.

      “Collapse” doesn’t mean “one day” or “overnight.” It’s a long process, and it is well underway and well advanced. And there’s no stopping it b/c the population doesn’t want the country to continue in its present form. There’s too much division and hatred, and it is real.

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  13. Insightful. Add Ed Dutton’s point that intelligence has been declining since 1870 by what now is a total of 15 IQ points, and there aren’t enough smart people to keep this system going.

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    • Nothing cloning couldn’t set right?

      Dig up the bones of past greats, clone them, nurture them to life, and presto. IQ problem solved.

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      • That might reproduce the *capacity* for smartness, but that smartness would have to be developed, and in AINO these days, how would have happen? Harvard and Yale?

    • So, that said, it may be time when ‘we’ – people in general – agree to reduce complexity in the system. If the system requires gigantic IQs under ever-expanding specialization then it may be that the system itself has to be simplified. It’s not like humanity failed under simpler systems: ‘we’ have been around for 100,000 years or more, depending on your definition of humanity.

      If 1870 was a high-water mark for human IQ then it would be a natural decision to revert to life as it was lived in 1870. Perhaps they knew what was what?

      • A related issue is this: Since most people do not have high IQs, and given the – admittedly humane – assumption that the purpose we all have is to live normal and decent lives, and grant or at any rate hope for the same for others, what role do the high IQ people serve other than to maintain a system so complicated that they, and they alone, are awarded and benefitted?

        What is life ‘for’ exactly? Are we obligated to just stay on the treadmill, for ever and ever? Is every technical advance just added to the second-order ‘nature’ that we must adapt to?

        • nothing you use in your life was invented or developed by low or mid IQ people. nothing. so to find out what high IQ people are good for, walk naked into a big forest in winter. then get back to us.

  14. The collapse is the cure, and that is a positive thing. Like the proverbial 2×4 upside the head, nothing creates existential motivation like a empty stomach and hungry thugs kicking in your front door. Nothing will change until the environment changes, and a collapse is the most realistic and least painful way to accomplish that task.

    Whining and fretting will not save you, nor will yakking and voting harder. Large cities will become melee pits, so get out now. Move somewhere safe and remote. Shed the fat and build some muscle. Practice your aim. Survive.

    When the fog moves in, fight back smarter. One disease cell at a time. From the shadows, only from the shadows. A successful bolt from the blue will echo across hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of miles. And then they will leave us alone.

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  15. Mask mandates came back to my area overnight. I thought I was prepared mentally but I was wrong. Nothing makes me more contemptuous than having third-world trash and faggots scold me about covering my face with cloth.

    I have no doubt this is part of a renewed vaxx campaign. The reason even the vaxxed have to wear masks is the unvaxxed are bad people. You see masks and vaxxes don’t work unless everyone submits. I’m afraid the hammer is about to come back down.

    Fortunately it’s a lot easier to apply pressure to state and local governments than the federal one.

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    • I’m in Florida for the time being and for the pat few days was in tampa and to my surprise lots of people are still nuts with all the mask wearing. Lots of white millennial age men are big into mask wearing, almost more than the women I think. Saw lots of white dads in masks too.

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      • Odd. Definitely not the case here, then again, I haven’t been down Philly way in a long time.

      • Thanks for posting that. It gives me a different view from that of my cousins in Tampa, who tell me that “nobody” is wearing masks. Which you have now made me understand that nobody that *they* know or associate with is wearing masks, but people my cousins to see are doing it. Valuable comment. Thanks.

        • “People they do not see … ” is what I was trying to say when my typing skills deserted me.

        • If they question where I was, I was at international plaza which is the big mall near the stadium and that I am from Tampa and was driving around Hyde Park and saw tons of people in masks, even walking dogs. It could be different in the burbs, but I’m from the city (aka South Tampa) and only hang out there.

          Slight caveat. International plaza is also next to airport, and a few of the bartenders were telling me that they get a lot of travelers so management wants them in masks. Many of the masks wearers could have been in town for the Bucs game, possibly, But Hyde Park is a neighborhood and not a big tourist area, and the masks were prevalent there too.

          Don’t get me started on Gainesville, which is a college town. It is mask central.

          • International Mall is the least representative sample of Tampa you could possibly get for make wearing. It’s an overpriced yuppy gentrified haven. About 90% Biden voters walk thru that place.

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      • Here in NY, I see “men” masked in their cars, more than women. It’s maybe 1 in 10, but still, that’s a lot. Same with people walking their dogs or taking a stroll. The ‘men’ are at least as bad as the women.

    • I wonder if SC splits the difference and leaves the vaxx mandate up to the states. Even Biden admits the feds aren’t what they used to be. A grudging return to federalism is in the air. Maybe a precursor of collapse, maybe an attempt to forestall it, maybe political judo?

    • The same in Utah. Woman health director, woman mayor for city, woman mayor for county. They’re “our” mom, better safe than sorry, etc.

      Running theory: Government/citizenry are now like a couple in an abusive relationship.

      The first time someone looses their cool and swings with a fist (or cast iron frying pan), they gain control, even though the other side is shocked beyond belief as they’re cowed into submission.

      This state of affairs can go on for years until the abused finally says “enough.”

      That where we’re at with the mask mandates. Petty tyrants slapping our faces with masks “for our own good.” They totally won’t do it again, except we all know they will.

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      • There remain plenty of free states. People wear masks or don’t. People wear motorcycle helmets when they ride, or the don’t. Plenty of states leave that stuff to the citizen.

  16. Commenting here on the Taki post from France. The word Macron used in reference to uninoculated was “emmerder,” which has generally been translated as “piss off,” but which means literally, “mire in shit.” “F-ck over” would not be an unfair translation; it’s that vulgar. Macron faces an election in the spring, and he is now genuinely worried about Valéry Pécresse, the candidate of Les Republicains. Unfortunately, according to polls, about half the French populace agree with Macron’s characterization of the uninoculated. Macron is seeking to make the uninoculated the scapegoat for the failure of the healthcare system of France. Beginning at least during the government of Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) the French government began cutting back on funding for hospitals and health care providers. The fact that the ministry responsible for health care is the Ministry for Solidarity and Health is telling–note which word is first. The French health care system, which was at one time very good (better than the U.K.’s National Health System) has become increasingly strained–the Covid panic pushed it over the limit. Rather than taking responsibility for that failure of the “custodial state,” (Macron has been in office since 2017 and could have reversed the situation) he’s demonizing the part of the population that refuses the products of Big Pharma for the continuing problems of the hospitals and doctors. Sadly, it’ll probably work–the Vaccine Passport passed overwhelmingly in the National Assembly, is fairly popular with the populace, and will almost certainly be followed later this year by compulsory inoculation.

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    • It wasn’t a ‘hot mic’ incident right? Just the fact that the leader of a major country would use such vulgar language is suggestive of a collapsing culture. I don’t think Lincoln, Jeff Davis, Churchill or even Hitler publicly talked about ‘f*cking over’ the enemy. When decorum, part of the rituals of elevated dignity, cracks, leaders end up demoting themselves out of power. That’s why a king is well-advised not to become too ‘folksy’

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      • It was not a hot mike or unguarded moment incident. Macron’s choice of words was deliberate and part of a scapegoat strategy. He also added that uninoculated people were irresponsible and that irresponsible people were not citizens. There might even be an effort to deny uninoculated people access to voting later this year.

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    • Diversity Heretic: I don’t know, but would highly suspect the Mohammedans in France would be less likely to accept anything compulsory, particularly the vexx. Add that with their birth rates, and the death of the French people is pretty much assured. Absolutely tragic.

    • I remember the reaction to la loi Taubira. and WHO was that? Ordinary folks, Entire families–along with children–in And they pursued it for months. Even in the outre-mer departments–New Caledonia and even St Pierre et Miquelon. In NO other country did the people–in their millions–do such a thing. I’ve not forgotten les manifs pour tous.”

      And was it last Christmas or the one before when the gilets jaunes gave Macron quite a fright? This article leaves out some info as I recall the incident, but that’s not the point ”
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6536031/Mob-Yellow-Vest-protestors-try-storm-island-fort-French-President-Emmanuel-Macron.html

      I don’t write the French off. They have brought their government to heel numerous times. And if half the population opposes forced vaccinations and internal passports, I have confidence that they will make the government back down. But we shall see. France is not Austria or Germany. Or Australia or Canada.

      On verra.

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      • “They have brought their government to heel numerous times.”

        Don’t take too long though. I’m happy to be led by any Western people that decides enough is enough.

  17. The de-criminalization of much non-white collar crime is a way of socializing the cost of domestic re-inflation (the dollars, like chickens, coming home to roost.) Watching the looting on the TV last year, I found myself thinking that the write off of the looted inventory is going to reduce the cost of goods sold and increase a business’ taxable income when they can least afford it. Like slavery, the prison system may end when the cost of maintaining prisoners exceeds the marginal value of what prison labor can produce.

    Another socializing effect of what might be called psychological or intellectual re-inflation is what Black conservatives like Jason Whitlock and Candace Owens have been warning about: critical race theory creating an environment of identitarian entitlement that will leave the entitled without the social and material skills necessary to survive in widely impoverished, post-Soviet America. Whether it’s CRT, Covid or Democrat hegemony of the political process, call it the “re-inflation of grift.” Ding the Ping and the CCCP may be laughing all the way to the Berlt and Road Bank and not caring if we catch on.

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    • “…the prison system may end when the cost of maintaining prisoners exceeds the marginal value of what prison labor can produce.”

      Prison costs far exceed the value of prison labor. We have prisons because we, myself included here, are not willing to just kill criminals off. In the Middle Ages society was scraping by just north of the minimum requirements of life and could not afford to give anti-social elements free room and board. So, they killed them instead.

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      • Correct. In those days the philosophy was that most “crimes” deserved *death*. What distinguished between them was the type of death meted out. Hanging (short drop) being the least onerous—drawn and quartered for treason one of the worse.

        About the time of the 1800’s, minor theft was a capital crime and even children were executed. Only when juries began to rebel and fail to bring in guilty verdicts did the system change to acknowledge misdemeanor (imprisonment mainly) from felonies (execution).

        • And people today, wrongly, think they were primitive and brutish back then. What they fail to understand is, when just producing enough to sustain life and raise children, takes so much effort that it little surplus, you can’t afford to be magnanimous. If you work hard all the time and your children are still starving, and some scumbag comes along to steal your bread, that’s a pretty serious problem and needs to be stopped and deterred.

          40
        • they also had “poor houses”:

          “Poorhouses were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were *required* to go if they could not support themselves. They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now days call “welfare” – what was called “outdoor relief” in those days.”

          10
    • Diversity Heretic: I don’t know, but would highly suspect the Mohammedans in France would be less likely to accept anything compulsory, particularly the vexx. Add that with their birth rates, and the death of the French people is pretty much assured. Absolutely tragic.

    • imbroglio: “black grifters” like Owens always feather their beds first – she moved from attacking White privilege to making bank by becoming every conservatard’s favorite numinous nogger, and finally married an Englishman and produced a mulatto.

      What was that you were saying about noggers being left somehow without the skills to survive? Why on earth would you be concerned by such a thing?

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      • he cares so much for his lil blackuns, and they love him back…guffaw. there is no love so pure, as that a normie feels for negroes. you could bake a cake with it…

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  18. The Decline of the American Education System was planned from the beginning. Our literacy peaked in 1920 and has been in decline ever since then. Recently I read it is now where it was in 1840.

    The root of destruction was rooted in the reading methods. From around 1851 to 1920 we used the McGuffey Readers Series, where literacy was taught by the combined phonics and look-see method. Generations of Americans came from that and became our inventors, skilled tradesmen, and industrialists. It was replaced by the notorious Dick and Jane books, where phonics was forbidden and an entire era of illiteracy was begun.

    Here we are and that edifice of rot a.k.a. American Education is on its last ropes. I am amazed it has lasted as long as it has. When this sucker goes down with everything else, the end will indeed short, nasty, and vicious.

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    • I had both as a child in the mid 70s. I’m going by memory here, which is kind of fuzzy, but we had the Dick and Jane books, but we also had phonics books. By the 2nd or 3rd grade I was reading entire regular books. But I went to a Catholic school for elementary school. By the time my kids were in school, that was all gone. Now they have done similar stuff with math and other subjects.

      Everything they do is wrong. Yet, no amount of failure ever dissuades them. We now have entire school districts where not a single child can read and compute at grade level. Even when you take diversity into consideration, that outcome is appalling. The bell curve may have shifted leftwards, but there are still at least some kids in those schools on the right hand side. I
      t’s like there is some kind of iron law of the government where the more money you spend on something, the worse it becomes.

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    • One should also consider the content of a McGuffey reader. The ones I’ve seen are centered around being a moral person in the time. Now, the readers are not only “dumbed down”, but the lessons “taught” are toxic to the max. Read “Heather has to mommies” for an example.

      11
      • I have a 7 year old daughter and can report that the entirety of the children’s book section in the library is pozzed. If a book doesn’t outright promote woke morality, at the very least it will be centered around the glories of vibrancy. I suspect you can’t get published if your illustrator doesn’t reach for the darker hues in his box of crayons.

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        • Buy all of the McGuffey reader books (“First Eclectic Reader” and so on). Make sure you get the versions with illustrations and read them aloud.

        • “I have a 7 year old daughter and can report that the entirety of the children’s book section in the library is pozzed.”

          Take your daughter out of school.

          This is a fully accredited, diploma-granting, 100% online school that uses the classical trivium for grades 1 – 7 and the classical quadrivium for the upper grades. And it is *very* affordable:

          https://wittenbergacademy.org/

          • She’s in a decent K-8 parochial school right now, that’s 98% white. For now that will suffice. Come the high school years, she’ll almost certainly be learning from home.

            And in the meantime I keep tabs on what books come home from our public library.

      • I am a high school mathematics and science teacher with 31 years of experience. I have taken so-called new 12 grade books of various topics and laid them next to various McGuffey Readers, of which I have a complete set.
        Every one of those new 12th grade books rank no higher than a McGuffey 3.5 reading level. There are very few compound sentences in the new books.
        The United States Military ASVAB Testing is still rooted in reality, having been continuously developed since the early 1900’s. They say to be considered literate, you need to possess a 4th Grade reading level. That’s a reading level from the early 1900’s, NOT 2022.
        It is scary that a student who can “read” at a 12th grade level is still rather illiterate.

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    • I don’t want to be the “well, akshually” person but . . . in 1790 the former colonies had higher literacy (~90% in New England) than most of Western Europe including England and France. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” sold the equivalent of a modern-day “Oprah” book. Now, apparently, 54% of US adults read below 6th grade level. https://tinyurl.com/yckpbfek

  19. It would be interesting to find out what the regulatory compliance figures look like. Already, pre-Covid the combined government cost Americans around 8 trillion Dollars. Now that it is up over 9 trillion, it makes me wonder what the total cost is. 11 trillion maybe? As bad as these numbers are, it’s worse than it appears because GDP is fake. My favorite example of just how fake the GDP number is, is the example of “homeowner’s rent.” This is money you pay yourself if you own your own home. This number was a trillion Dollars 12 years ago. Because the BLS so understates inflation, a large part of the GDP is inflation (the official inflation rate is subtracted from GDP).

    The funny thing is, despite this enormous price tag, the government only does the bare minimum of what it is supposed to be doing. The infrastructure is falling apart. The postal service doesn’t work well anymore. Cops are not solving most crime anymore. Murders are solved at a fraction of what they used to be solved (63% vs over 90% in the 60s). The courts are a joke. Borders are not secure. The military is incapable of defending us.

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      • Yep. If there is one Christian imperative most misunderstood, it must be, “Love thine enemies…”. Trust me, Hitler ain’t in heaven.

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          • And you know this how? Or do you simply amuse yourself by taking cheap shots, as many atheists seem to do. This accomplishes nothing of merit or import—smiley face disclaimer not withstanding.

            But this does create animosity among those fellow travelers you wish to associate with on this group. I’ve had yet to read a derogatory put down of any atheist posting here from a believer. Defense of faith, yes. But never a put down. We are a small enough group, do we need to squabble among ourselves over such a point of personal belief.

            Our common belief in morals and values should unit us. Where we believe those morals and values come from is secondary at best.

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          • i’m not an atheist.

            compsci, i understand your particular situation makes you fearful of the next step.

            “heaven” is a concept that human beings concocted in order to better handle death, keep people in line while alive, etc.

            every single religion is also a product of mankind.

            jesus christ was indeed a real person. he was not the son of god, however.

            I am sorry to offend everyone here, but AH acted far more inline with maker’s will, than any christian ever did. genocide is a feature of human nature, not a bug.

            this is god’s will in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtTmsA-6v7c&ab_channel=WildlifeOfAfrica

            did that zebra go to heaven too? how about the lions? do only humans go to heaven? why?

            one final question: what makes you think you know who goes or doesn’t go to heaven?

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        • This is in large part because people read the Bible selectively (if at all) and interpret it selfishly. Love thy neighbor does not mean turn a blind eye to their depravity and cruelty and act as if it’s OK. When Jesus said to the crowd ‘let he who is without sin throw the first stone’ he followed it up by telling the person they were throwing stones at to ‘sin no more’. No moral relativist.

        • Not to mention the idiotic superstition that “God is love” means also that “Love is God.”

        • One of the only true meanings of “judge not” is judgment as to the salvation of another’s soul.

    • I saw my first MSN ‘Celebrities we have lost in 2022’ a few days ago. Some Korean actress had died at 29. I don’t recall ever before having seen ‘Celebrities we’ve lost this year’ headlines barely a week into a new year and it made me think of the vaccines and the OneAmerica insurance company numbers. Do you know if Saget had been vaccinated (of course he had been I’m tempted to say)?

      I’m not ready to jump onto the wilder theories about the vaxx being a hidden genocide. But something very disturbing is going.

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      • I saw a video clip from the middle of December in which he discussed having got his booster shot a day or two earlier.

      • Saget had been pricked–more than once. There’s a video out there today, in fact, of him explaining that he had taken the shot and the boosters, etc. About 10 seconds long. Can’t remember for the life of me where I saw it this morning. But yes, he had had multiple pricks.

    • Pray that your enemies live long enough to repent, then die. No offense but you sound like that Castro bastard up north.

      “If you kill your enemies; they win.”

    • @Maniac

      Salem and Essex County are moonbat central. The Episcopalian Churches have “Join the conversation” banners everywhere and Godless adherents in the pews. Also, check the Blackety Black census data, you’ll notice another ridiculous pattern.

      • It’s a Liberal safe haven like most of Massachusetts, but some of its museums are very nice. Oh well, at least their historical cemeteries aren’t off-limits…yet.

        • They’re hypocrites of the highest order. Think Sobran and Z man’s anecdotes regarding their mating habits. Howie Carr lived in Westin, just outside 128. They never bother to question any of this shit. But you know what they don’t have? A Malcolm X boulevard. Plenty of BLM signs too.

    • Maniac: I suppose if you consider her merely ‘mistaken,’ you could pray for her eyes to be opened. If, on the other hand, one considers her to be not merely ignorant but actively evil (as I do) then it is a sin as a Christian to pray for the health and success of such a creature.

    • She hasn’t contracted anything.

      Its obviously a stunt from the outset (including the original photo and twitter stuff) to try and make a propaganda narrative about Florida’s mask and vex policies.

      Its a fake coof, like a fake noose.

  20. I think the growth in educational indoctrination is related to the collapse of religion in Western society coupled with a far more diverse society. Religion provided a basic ‘ideology’ through which to understand most things. Remove that and you are now herding cats. I’m not particularly religious myself and sort of consider Christianity the first ill-advised import from the Middle East. But be that as it may, it is far more attractive than the Pandora’s Box of -isms that grew out of the vacuum it left.

    If you ascribe an economic reason to the collapse of the Soviet Union I think there’s a real risk of overestimating the importance of economics, including hidden costs and such, to history. Of course it matters but I think what killed the Soviet Union was that people, including at the very top, stopped believing in it. Society needs to provide a generally accepted framework wherein people find notions of such things as ‘justice’ and ‘meaning’ that they can accept. Once society cannot any longer provide that, leaders start ending up like the guy giving a speech with the audience just talking among themselves. I think we are on the way to this. People are paying less and less attention to what leaders are saying.

    I think this, not economics, is why the USSR collapsed and it may be why it was so peaceful. Spiritual fatigue is one problem and tends to lead to more peaceful revolutions. Economic collapse is a whole different ball game, and far uglier. If we get uncontrollable inflation I think this could get unbelievably ugly. And I think dissidents need a common core belief besides ‘rejectionism’ (ie rejection of multiculturalism, wokeism, feminism and all that nonsense). Maybe Christianity is the best one or maybe it’s a spent force. Russia spent the 90s and 00s scratching out a mix of Orthodox Christianity and Russian nationalism/patriotism to believe in and seem finally to be getting their act together after they lost all roadmaps to ‘meaning’. I think we need to think about something along those lines as well.

    But it is true that the current regime is headed for a fall. The current paradigme is becoming ridiculous and this incongruety between claimed and perceived status, status being a if not the central social currency, is what is going to wear it out.

    30
    • Right: the way a people responds to economic collapse will have a lot to do with their values, whether spiritual or secular. And what used to be known as “strength of character”

      14
    • Your thoughts tie in well with today’s Taki post too. In it Z calls out the moral order of the regime “…the new moral order as defined by the administrative state.” I believe this is the achilles heel of the regime since the new moral order has no basis in human cultural first principles except those negative ones found in the catalogue of cardinal sins. If there is a contest with the regime it should be relentlessly attacked for its moral bankruptcy, its evil nature, both to impose a discouraging effect to the enemy but more importantly to energize and buttress our own will. The message to our side is that they aren’t just wrong, they are evil. That it is right and good to destroy them for their willful alignment with evil. To refuse to passively tolerate those who would support the regime, even by remaining silent.
      If we accept the premise that it would be useful to adopt such a morally fortifying stance that begs the obvious follow on question: What should be the moral framework that will serve as the foundation of strength from which the enemy will be attacked? Where can we find a moral tradition with a demonstrated record of motivating people to engage in the ultimate contest of will? What opposing moral tradition would most readily be accepted by the greatest number of potential combatants and supporters?

      14
      • We need to make it virtuous, ie high status, to attack the regime and this is best done by attacking them on moral grounds. They are evil and should be called evil. They are wrecking millennia old cultures like drunken vandals and destroying the future prospects of the people whose interests are their main duty to preserve. That is pretty damn evil.

        19
        • It’s not rhetoric that will resonate with many, but I call them “Satan’s minions upon this Earth.”

  21. “The U.S. exports the cost through dollar production and trade. They create money which is spent on foreign goods. This exports the inflation to the foreign producer, but some of it comes back as foreign investment in government bonds and equities. American asset values go up while the quality of life goes up without causing domestic inflation.”

    The biggest disaster for the American empire isn’t a military defeat in a far away country but of the almighty dollar losing its status of the world’s reserve currency, if this happened US would have out of control inflation like it’s happening in Turkey right now.

    I think this why a significant part of Anglo-American establishment has become more hostile to the European Union and is pushing for war with Russia, if Continental Europe had its independence from America and stabilized its relationship with Russia it would likely make the Euro the world’s reserve currrecy.

    13
    1
    • “The biggest disaster for the American empire isn’t a military defeat in a far away country but of the almighty dollar losing its status of the world’s reserve currency, if this happened US would have out of control inflation like it’s happening in Turkey right now. ”

      Absolutely. If the gazillions of dollars stored in bonds and other investments around the world, suddenly came home I don’t see how anyone could retain control of society. Much as I would like to see the current regime fall, I would like it to fall as peacefully as possible. And a runaway inflation could produce anarchy. Allowing this vulnerability to build up over the decades is one of the many crimes of the current regime.

      13
    • It looks like they’re trying to back pedal on the war with Russia theme.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIRBUj_cwlA ( This vid is a bit long winded but seems a reasonable argument) The costs could easily escalate and bite them on the arse come election time, and if it accelerates a move away from dollar denominated global trade that may be the least of their problems.
      I can’t help feeling that that’s not the only reason a NATO/Russia war is a really bad idea, something to do with two massive nuclear arsenals possibly.

  22. It seems like the whole existence of the custodial state revolves around pretending REAL reality doesn’t exist. No amount of factual data or proof will shake the leviathan from it’s ideological beliefs. Covid is an existential threat, the covid vax is the safest and most effective ever produced, historic weather patterns are an existential threat, joggers don’t commit more crime than anyone else, jogger criminal proclivities are only due to White systemic racism, men can be women and vis versa and on and on. One wouldn’t think such a farce of a government, willfully and happily ignoring nature (or thinking they can control it) here and abroad couldn’t continue to maintain power much longer, but I guess we’ll see. There are obvious cracks in the edifice and the dike is leaking…

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    • “There are obvious cracks in the edifice and the dike is leaking…”

      There is a Hillary Clinton joke in there somewhere, but I’m too tired to make it.

      19
    • Right. But the ‘reality’ one sees depends on where he gets his facts. Apart from those seeking out dissident-right sources, the world being presented is the one our rulers want us to see.

    • You can ignore reality and force other people to if you have sufficient instruments of force available to you.

      That is all it comes down to. Those who wield the whip decide the song.

      Until you pull it out of their hands and strangle them with it.

  23. As Adam Smith said: “There is much ruin in a Nation”. Unfortunately, I think the decay of the Administrative State which our host predicts can last longer than most of our life spans.

    Even if our GDP stats are b.s., which I think they are, and even though we’ve been borrowing from the future with excessive debt, we can leak 1% from GDP per capita due to Administrative State inefficiency for the next twenty years before reaching even Canadian or French levels of wealth (just from a statistical point of view, and they have their problems too).

    It’s going to take another colossal screw-up by the US political/oligarch class to blow this thing up. Obviously they are fully capable of this and have plenty of opportunity – Ukraine, Taiwan, further Covid insanity, etc.

    Now, other Western countries are in much worse shape and much closer to the edge than the US – more debt, lower GDP per capita and fewer natural resources. We will see France, Spain or Italy fail before we do. This is why we saw the outrageous attitude of Macron regarding his unvaxxed citizens Zman discussed in his Taki post. They see what’s coming but the system cannot reform itself.

    19
  24. Re: the vax mandates specifically, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them ending up the way Obamacare did — the employer “self-certifies” that everyone meets the requirements, and that “self-certification” is based on the employees “self-certifying.” I’ve seen some of that starting already — the word from HR comes down that you have to either be vaxed, or tested weekly… but you should upload your own vax card to the HR self-service system (what would ya say ya do here, HR lady?), and make your own arrangements for weekly testing.

    In other words, translated from Corporate CYA-speak: ain’t nobody going to be checking up on nothing, so let’s all pinky swear we’re in compliance and never mention it again.

    23
    • You’re optimistic today! I would consider this to be the absolute best-case scenario.

      10
    • It is a possibility, but this has gone much further than Obamacare. Covid is becoming a way of life. In your look the other way scenario, one busy body could create havoc for everyone, which is an incentive no busy body can ignore.

      36
      • I suppose I’m assuming what I must now state as strictly a hypothetical, that no one should actually ever do, because it is a terrible horrible no good very bad think that only the most deplorable would ever even contemplate: If you’re self-uploading your “vax” card, you might also be…ummmm… “self-certifying” that vax card, IYKWIMAITYD.

        • That’s only a temporary solution.

          Eventually the busy bodies are going to get around to checking everyone’s jab certs against a state or federal database.

          7
          1
    • The mandate for my company went from jab or else you’re canned (including work-at-home types) to jab or else weekly test and mask. Obviously, the WAH people can ignore this latest idea, unless they happen to wander in to the office one day.

    • we have a pretty decent experiment going on right now, vis a vis the topic of this post. blue states (and pseudo red states like ohio) are going into authoritarian decay mode, while stocked full of mud people. the handful or so of non-insane states (Florida, Texas, Iowa, ??) are headed in the opposite direction. and white people are voting with uhaul trailers and trucks; moving out of decaying blue states in unprecedented numbers.

      it won’t take long before the blue states implode, while the red states prosper. and if we catch a break, we will have white majority populations in those states 🙂

      15
      • But, there is a variable that will impede this process. The “blueing” of Florida and Texas. Eventually they will be ruined, too. There’s no place to run to that won’t eventually become where you ran from. Part of this is the fact that the “refugees” from Mexifornia and The Peoples’ Republic of New York will bring their stupidity with them. But, more of it will be due to the collapse of the economic system and the maze of laws already on the books that ignore reality but will kill any chance of avoiding the inevitable. There is no painless way out of our mess. And maybe this is good. Future generations will be able see the chaos that results from the collapse. And they will, provided they actually have the information available. We will need something similar to monasteries to document and retain the knowledge that otherwise will be lost.

        19
        • Beyond that, there os the additional factor of federal funding to the states.

          I’m actually surprised we haven’t seen the DC regime use that more actively against the states that aren’t falling in line.

        • reportedly that isn’t going on now/this time. maybe, maybe not. all will be revealed in the fullness of time…

      • karl: It will take a hell of a lot of Californians to overcome the mestizo birth rate and the Han/pajeet immigration rate in Texas (and half the cars I see with CA license plates are driven by Han and pajeets). And the repuke politicians here are timid and slimy, like Abbott and Cornyn. And even if some sort of White majority were to suddenly appear, it would be White conservatards/moderates/civic nationalists. I’d rather they stay in their blue states or die off.

      • Don’t know about Florida, but I think you have a skewed view of Texas. The only reason Texas remains a faint shade of pink is the rural areas. Rural remains red by a 60-40 margin. The Big cities (except maybe Fort Worth) lean blue probably 52-48, but that is shade of blue is deepening every election cycle. Soon, it will overcome the red shades, at least at the state wide level.

      • Unfortunately, I see that turning into a Federal bailout for those states in authoritarian decay, as you put it (CA, IL, NY, etc.), paid for by the successful states.

    • Yep, that’s what will end up happening.

      It’s the Latin American way.

      They make laws, we ignore them.

  25. this cancer like growth of bureaucracy has driven up the cost of everything. before social spending exploded in the 60’s, people at all income levels (i.e. working poor too) could afford some kind of life; i.e. food, shelter, etc. now, the “floor” for non-government-subsidised living is what, $50k a year for a nuclear family? latinos pack 15 people into a house, with everyone kicking in $…and it works. but it also destroys all the infrastructure in the area, and leads to tons of petty (and not so petty) crimes.

    all the money subtracted from the private economy is wasted on tax eaters, who are completely useless to society. unfortunately this now includes the military. no worries though, this system is crashing hard right now; no pensions for you! or SS benes for me 🙁

    30
    • In the years from the end of WWII until the early ’60s, Black home ownership, employment, and income were steadily rising.

      Once the system of welfare benefits kicked in, all of that changed.

      10
      2
      • yep. not to mention this: “Nonmarital births were always more common among black Americans than among whites, but as recently as 1950, the great majority—83 percent—of black mothers were married, with a husband present”.

        12
      • Bill: I see you subscribe to the Thomas Sowell theory of nogger economic development. There are a number of long, extensively researched posts at ThoseWhoCanSee blog that definitively disprove this.

        • disprove what, that under segregation the black community was a self-contained world, with their own stores, lawyers, doctors, and so forth? the things bill said are documented facts. he didn’t talk about an american wakanda 🙂

          • karl: Everyone always reverts to “before LBJ/welfare, the nogger family was ‘x'” and most of this is not documented fact (and I never believe any of the government numbers). Their home-ownership or employment may have been increasing, but it was still due to government policies and White money, and it came at the expense of ethnic and working-class White communities.

            The website https://thosewhocansee.blogspot.com/ has looked into this (and other issues) at great length. Some of the posts I’m referring to are perhaps five years old – but nogger crime rates and illegitimacy etc. were always multiples of Whites, and often undercounted. Even their official ‘marriage rate’ didn’t account for the ‘married women’ abandoned or whose husbands had multiple side families.

            My overall point is, regardless of government policy, there exists a very small fraction – much smaller than then mythical 10% – of noggers who are capable of functioning and achieving in White civilization without help or on their own merits. And even that tiny percent is no real benefit to a White nation, but just creates division because of reversion to the mean, their desire to see more of their own racial kin, etc.

            The go-to conservatard excuse is “without government intervention and handouts, the noggers would have risen to the White level because of muh magic free enterprise” and it’s just not true. It’s become a conservatard trope and I will not let it go unchallenged.

            10
      • I suspect that “blacks were responsible before welfare” is a conservative lie.

        Black everywhere, as a group, are unable to participate in civilization.

        I guess that to the extent that blacks, as a group, succeeded is due to the constraints of Jim Crow. That’s my guess.

        • Think of blacks like dogs. They need structure and discipline, they crave it.

          If you don’t train or discipline a dog, make it clear what are the rules and who is in charge, it will be out of control and make a mess of your house.

          Same with blacks. When they were given specific guardrails and mostly well-disciplined, they could reasonably function within that structure. Now that they are not provided this structure, they make messes on any rug they come in contact with – they are completely degenerate.

        • Black Twitter proves it.

          Joking about “grandma was a babymama with children by 4 men in the 1920s” type stuff.

    • Too many people only look at the dole. Yes, the dole costs money, but it’s the least of our worries. A pretty substantial portion of allegedly working people, that is, people with full time jobs earning pretty good money only exist because of the state.

      To make matters worse, they are not just imposing their costs of living/salary on the rest of us, they are also imposing many other costs on society at large and on the tax payers. Like all of these prison and CJS reformers. Not only are we paying either directly or indirectly their large salaries, but we have the additional cost of the criminality they enable imposed on us as well.

      13
      • Once a majority of voters are relying on those monthly “entitlement” checks, won’t the Dems have achieved a permanent majority of people certain to vote for the Party of Free Stuff?

        • Bill: “once . . . permanent majority”??!! It happened a number of years ago. The actual number of working and producing Whites was long ago swamped by the worthless eaters of all colors.

      • A recurrent fault line in our circles is the desire to excise the unintelligent whites versus the desire to care for our people.

        While I used to side with the former, I am now firmly in favor of the latter.

        While I still subscribe to the “he who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat” I want the state to help the productive but relative unintelligent to have good lives. One of the best ways to do this is to bring manufacturing back home and impose protectionism.

        In case anyone brings it up, I am against dysengic policies. For example, if you are on welfare then you must be on birth control.

        • Line: I agree with you, fwiw. I also used to be firmly in the first camp; now I side with “community first.” That being said, from limited personal experience and from what I’ve read from others with a lot of personal experience, the less fortunate Whites seem to clearly divide into distinct strata – those who, with some guidance and assistance, can lead productive lives, and those who, despite repeated help, cannot get their sh&t together and will forever need assistance. I do think in the latter case there comes a point where you cut your losses, but I cannot say precisely what that point is. But the proper role of better educated and more capable Whites is to provide examples and assistance to uplift their brethren.

          • Same as it ever was for society. A section will always be a burden and if it gets too large it will overwhelm it.

            The new poor laws in the UK in 1834 was mainly instituted because the tax burden under the original Elizabethan poor laws had become so onerous that it was causing major political issues, along with rising numbers of wandering vagrants in all parishes that used the outdoor relief as a permanent income.

            As ever the attempt at community is exploited. what one can do about such things are another matter.

  26. Horace Mann, the father of public education in America, said that the purpose of public education was to remove kids from parents before the ignorance of the past could be passed on. Pure Enlightenment poison. There was a reason that they had to send the National Guard in to force kids to public ed when it was being instituted – many people realized back then (late 1800s) the evil that was coming.

    26
    • i doubt the resistance was because of perceived evil (how is that working out for the normies now, with the coof?). how about you provide some references to go with that statement?

        • what part of my comment did you find rude? that i disagreed with you? that i asked you for something to support your argument?

          • karl: Read Gatto. Or read what John Dewey or Horace Mann actually said. Eloi’s comment about the roots of public education are thoroughly and legitimately documented – not quantified with government numbers, but actual verbatim quotes. Home schooling provided America with the highest literacy rate in the world prior to the War Between the States. Public education was instituted along with mass immigration, to ‘civilize’ and homogenize the mass of immigrants – even though they were White and mostly Christian. They still weren’t Anglo-Saxons and the integration was never complete – and most of the fictional ‘melting pot’ occurred with the drafts of WWI and II, and the destruction of urban ethnic enclaves and thus mixed suburbs and mixed marriages.

          • How you wrote. “How about you” strikes a contrarian tone with a dash of ‘you made it up.’ Maybe say “Do you have some sources?” Has nothing to do with disagreement.

        • it is my understanding that mandatory attendance of school does not specify public schools. and of course there have been schools affiliated with various religious orders (and of course the mackerel eaters) since day 1. so basically the upset people you are referring to, didn’t want their kids educated at all?

          • No – the laws vary, but, in short, the New England schools required primary schools. Apprenticeships, parochial of any sort, and homeschooling. The law of 1852 in required the parents to send the kids to the school or risk losing their kids. The schools were compulsory – no alternatives accepted. The Supreme Court would eventually overturn these laws.

    • It has been noted that one of purposes of higher education in the 1930s was to remove some of the parent’s values and replace with the more progressive forms in the incoming college students.

      Now the rot is complete and totally systemic.

      21
    • Now that homeschooling is mainstream at >10% of students, and there’s a preference cascade in both the left and the right, it’s going to be interesting to see how they try to regain control. Within 20 years it’s going to probably creep up to a quarter of people using informal education as the stigma has disappeared and becomes easier as more and more people in their social circle take that route.

      Homeschool rights are very well established in the courts, and there are wide enough networks that mass noncompliance will become a nightmare for the administrative state. The only real stick they have is to make college hard to access to homeschoolers, but even the college stick is getting pretty worn.

      19
      • Wat I fond interesting in my daily life whenever the homeschooling issue comes up is older white recoil in horror at the idea. They seem to view it as a rejection of how they raised their kids. I have this conversation with a few Boomers and they all say “The kids need to be socialized” which they mean hang out with the peers, but the fact that they all say it suggests they are not thinking it through. It is away to avoid the conversation as it makes them uncomfortable.

        27
        • “The kids need to be socialized”

          I counter that kids can be sadistic little b@stards. Especially to their classmates. We all know it. We all were children once. 😏

          25
          • More importantly, socialized into what? The latest sexual perversity fad? Homeschooled children will do just fine separated from that nonsense. The sad fact is that those parents will be required to pay for the system regardless.

            11
        • There was a recent thread where the poster said, in complete earnest, that a disadvantage of homeschooling is the homeschooler will not know how to deal with incompetent and spiteful authority figures.

          28
          • I actually think that’s a valid observation. In modern life you’re going to run across assholes with authority, in government and also at work. Know how to deal with them to get what you want is a valuable life skill.

            Sort of how losing and how to deal with it is the real value of team sports.

          • It would be a fair point if it were just restricted to older children. Six year olds don’t have enough cognitive independence to fight the fight their parents should be fighting. And of course, even teenagers are incredibly naive and easy to manipulate. Let them experience the actively malicious and incompetent once they have had a chance to properly grow up.

        • Every homeschooling family I’ve known has included socialization activities as part of their plan

          21
          • We had a family of homeschooled children who lived across the street from us. They had to move out earlier this year (Dad took a new job in another town). Aside from not seeing them walk out to the school bus stop every morning, they were as “normal” as children could be and when the siblings weren’t playing games amongst themselves, they played with neighbor children and ran around outside and played games and made a giant racket just being normal, goofy kids.

            I actually miss that family.

            25
          • My daughter took that approach with her children. Maybe my bias is creeping through, but I swear my grandkids had more active imaginations than their pubschool peers. Another difference was their internet time was regulated and there were no video games in the house.

            12
        • ” … a few Boomers and they all say “The kids need to be socialized” … .”

          This happened to me once, and I just said, “How were children–or anybody else–‘socialized’ before public schools came down the pike? Did human interaction never exist before ‘schools’ came along? If not, where did babies come from before that? As far as I can tell, people always managed somehow to meet and greet even in the absence of schools.”

          She was speechless (thank God).

          30
          • Exactly. In my son’s neighborhood (White, LDS), he had a recent experience worth noting. A small girl, about 6, knocked on their door and when he answered, she asked if he had a daughter and could his daughter come out and “play”. (The girl lived on another street and was told there was a young girl “a block over”.) Of course, the girl was admitted and both her and granddaughter hit it off.

            I found the story amazing, but sad, as this type of boldness and trust is so uncommon this day and age. Gawd, I hate the society we’ve become…

            16
        • Socialized, like prisoners are. Without school not other form of human interaction is possible I suppose.

          17
        • Sending kids to a mass group of basically unsupervised other teenagers is like sending pre-teens unescorted to a max security prison for sex ed.

          Public schools expose kids to drugs, gangs, prostitution, violence, and the disease if social media at a time they’re not equipped to deal with any of it.

          Every objective study (there are many) completely debunks the “socialization” myth.

          Homeschoolers as a group do much better on just about everything.

          But then public school is about warehousing kids (day care) first, funneling money to teachers unions second, state indoctrination third. Any education that takes place is a complete accident.

          30
          • Pushing all the women into the workforce has significantly enhanced the power of the public schools and teachers unions. They can now more easily push social control through the schools.

            Why do so many parents put up with face diapers in schools? They need someone to watch their kids while they are both at work.

            19
          • I know a lot of homeschool families, including one who’s father is a professional pilot and is building an airplane with his son. Everyone of the kids is socialized just fine. The difference is that the parents have a bit more control and a lot more awareness, of who their kids are socialized with.

        • just my opinion here, but most boomers (i.e. older whites) had a very different experience in public schools, than is currently going on. most of their kids were in K – 12 during the 70s and 80s. My kids were there from 2000 – 2018, so i have a much more realistic view of things.

          also, being normies, they absolutely cannot conceive of anything different than what they experienced (and are currently experiencing). you see the same reaction when you say don’t vote. or that blacks on the whole are savage beasts, etc etc etc.

          i thought of the perfect metaphor for the normie: a cow munching happily away at the food trough…on a feedlot.

          17
        • Irony is, schooled kids often are socially awkward, at first, but they seem to catch on fast. I guess they have far less to unlearn than your typical publically-educated kid.

        • It’s reflexive tribal conservatism in the small c sense of the word.

          You see a similar phenomenon when people defend “their” school or church when child abuse allegations first arise.

        • I think what people fail to perceive is that homeschooled kids are used to working with adults and viewing adults as people to learn from. Public schooling creates the us versus adults mentality, which leads to much of the age politics we see in the era. Taking all these kids from the business of the world and locking them amongst people of the same age is cruelty; it is wildly unnatural. As a note, we also do this exact same thing to our old folks.
          This dynamic also keeps the kids infantilized, leading to the childishness endemic to younger generations these days – they stay in the perpetual present of their peers, instead of having adulthood to be modeled and strived for.

          • “Teen mass” and the “crying rooms” in the back of post Vatican 2 churches are another example. You have to make sure the teenagers never see any old folks or the old folks are not bothered by snot nosed kids.
            Make sure everyone is in the correct pen.

        • Folks in my generation (late boomers) succeeded by following the rules. Homeschooling reminds them of the early 70’s, hippies in the woods, etc. They don’t know anything about it, so they reject it. Keep in mind that many/most of our parents only graduated high school, if that, so it was drilled into us that good people graduate high school and, if possible, college. I had to beg a friend to consider homeschooling for her kid, who was suffering with depression, migraines, etc. in public school. She was convinced no college would accept him if he didn’t have the approved diploma. Eventually, she relented, and it was great for her and him. He graduated college and has a great job. Rule following generally worked for my group, so we thought it would work for our kids. (I think the people here describe this mindset as normie behavior. Learning the patois, gradually.)

          • Lettie: I agree with your summary of the situation. My own parents got decent educations in public school (even with public ed’s roots in Dewey and Mann, standards in the 1930s and 1940s were far more rigorous than today) and assumed we (their children) did too. Although my public school district was supposed to be one of the best in the country, I know now I was mis-educated at best. My husband and I chose both private Christian school and homeschooling for our sons, although we were both the products of public schools. It’s a generational change that most over age 50 can’t get their minds around.

            And yes, that is what is referred to as ‘normie’ or ‘boomer’ behavior and thinking.

      • > The only real stick they have is to make college hard to access to homeschoolers

        That won’t turn out like the elites would hope.

        14
    • One major purpose of schooling is to creche children so that mothers can work. How else can we keep the economy growing! Any learning that happens is largely incidental.

  27. As with the former Soviet system, most people will color within the lines and quietly obey each new mandate and rule, and repeat the required catechism of the moment. A few will figure out what can be ignored and/or worked around in order to get by.

    12
    • The old joke in Russia was, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” A similar mindset has always existed in large corporations, but only in a minority of the staff. Government bureaucrats were always time-servers, but they did the tasks assigned to them. We are starting to see sloth creep in everywhere, even in the management layer.

      22
      • And as long as you’re among the ‘compliers’— and you’re watching the non-compliers in your organization get the boot— there’s even more reason to think you can shirk your duties with no repercussions: ‘I’m one of the good guys!’

      • Another one was “He who does not steal, is robbing his own family”

        The elites and dindus have already embraced this one.

        16
      • one thing that hammered soviet production, was the need for people to leave work and stand in line for hours to get food. but like that old joke said, they also did not give a damn about their jobs – and why would they?

        another salient feature of the cccp, is that doctors were very low paying, low status; mostly women. with the concomitant quality of care that brings. all the big wigs had to leave the country for care, just like in commie countries today.

        • Re: CCCP doctors…

          Back in 1991, the Detroit Red Wings needed only ~$30k in bribe money to get multiple Soviet doctors to produce a fake diagnosis of terminal cancer for Vladimir Konstantinov so he could be discharged from the Red Army, get out of his contract, and be taken to the US for treatment.

          https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nhl/red-wings/2018/03/26/russian-five-vladimir-konstantinov-detroit-red-wings/426653002/

          This story also illustrates some of the chaos in the final days of the Soviet Union. While its collapse was comparatively orderly, there was still much chaos.

          • The great d-man ended up paralyzed from a limo accident after the ’97 Stanley Cup. Slava Fetisov emerged relatively unscathed from the accident. They put Konstantinov’s name on the ’98 Cup as well.
            Possibly the greatest Russian of all time died in a car crash before his time, Valery Kharlamov, who dazzled the world at the ’72 Summit Series.

        • My favorite USSR joke was a guy comes home early from work and catches his wife in bed with another man.
          “What are you doing?” he yells, “Today you should be in line for toilet paper.”

          • mine is:

            There’s a Russian joke that fits it perfectly: An American, a Frenchman and a Russian found an antique bottle on a beach and took out the stopper. A genie came out and said, “I’m so grateful to you for releasing me that I will grant you each a wish!” The American wished for a big mansion on the coast of California, with cars, beautiful women and all the money he could ever want. Poof! He had it. The Frenchman wished for the same thing, but on the French Riviera. It was immediately granted. Then it was the Russian’s turn. “My neighbor has a goat, and I don’t have one,” he said. “Kill my neighbor’s goat”

    • Fortunately, the majority is not necessary to effect real change. Including “revolution.”

    • True and sad. I was talking to a friend about that very strategy yesterday, which he advocated.

      Excuse my inner boomer talking, but we’ll lose a little more of the American character 🙂

  28. I wonder if custodialism will extend its shelf life in places like China because of the new and aggressive use of technology coupled with the compliant nature most Chinese feel towards the government. China, I think, is the ideal for what Western elites want to erect across the American and European bloc. Latin America and the Africans don’t have the money for it but provided the money printer keep well supplied with ink then the system might well be able to expand. COVID was a wake-up call for most people regarding the reach of government working hand in hand with our tech overlords.

    The saving grace is that incompetence at high level is the rule rather than the exception. Take comfort in the Peter principle.

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    • China is a strange case, since a lot of the Covid fear porn with their draconian measures was specifically to instill fear and manipulate western governments. A lot of the talk of social credit systems and brutal police videos might be more of the same, giving an idea into China society that simply does not exist.

      I can see a world where Con Inc. people will post pictures of Winnie the Pooh, thinking they have stuck it to China while skilled whites emigrate to China to escape a woke hellscape. Not talking about Tiananmen Square might be worth it to not have to worry about diverse HR commisars.

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      • “skilled whites emigrate to China”. haha what color is the sky, in your world? why haven’t you emigrated there? serious question.

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          • “lived”. past tense.

            again, why haven’t you moved there?

            please tell me one aspect of chinese society that is better than here?

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          • You can’t “move” to China. Not as we consider such. There was a YouTube channel by two expat’s who married Chinese nationals. Even they could not get VISA’s for more than a year, and no path to citizenship. They were finally driven out of China in fear as the mood of the populous became more and more nationalistic. There is even a crime along the lines of “…insulting the national *pride*”. China will use consultants only as long as they need to learn/steal from them.

        • I had a friend who turned prog in college. Lived in China for a few years, became convinced it was the future. Even visited N Korea.

          I will say, from his photos, the sky in Pyongyang was beautiful. Not much traffic. The city looked brutalist in spite of its best efforts to be glorious. I wasn’t inspired to visit the place.

          I really don’t see the appeal of emulating Asian socialism other than getting in on the looting and high-handedness. It also strikes me as 20 years outdated for whatever reason. It’s very suspect, the sinophiles are suspect.

    • how does china thrive once its global customer base crashes? where will they steal IP then?

      you need to understand the lifecycle of parasites; kill the host and you die too.

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      • China has a plan to become a consumer based society once they grow large enough, which I’m pretty sure is about to happen. I’m not sure they can unless they succeed in becoming a national reserve currency as the US is. Bu what do I know.

        • I think you’re absolutely right. I also think, despite deep skepticism of building on a Chinese foundation, it would be a boon to those nations currently laboring under the yoke. Life would be less comfortable, but it’s a hole we could actually work our way out of. May China bear the burden and think it benefits them, as we have.

    • Chinese leaders strike me as being quite competent; certainly compared to our current bunch.

      And compliance has long been seen as a virtue in Asian cultures. Which makes their system of social credit and control a lot easier to enforce, since it accords with that virtue.

      It’s more of a stretch in America, where until recently, the ‘frontier values’ of independence and self-sufficiency were what we admired. So the custodialism we’re seeing now requires a shift in cultural values, at least for legacy White Americans.

      OTOH, since the early ’60s and the advent of the welfare entitlement state, Blacks have become used to depending on the Custodial State for their sustenance and survival.

    • Something glossed over by even Sinophiles like Derbyshire is the clannish nature of Chinese society. Their system works, to the extent that it does, because at a low level it’s all about family units (in the broadest sense) reaching terms of, hmm, “bilateral exploitation” might be the best way to put it, with other family units in their given spheres. Whites in the U.S. (I can’t speak to Europe) just don’t have that. This is something the Western POZ doesn’t have to fall back on, communal obligations being so 19th century.

      They can’t make people participate in the system and people won’t be beholden to either with there being no obligation to anyone else to do so. Yes they could (and probably will) go the “prison system” route but that type of labor is notoriously unproductive.

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