196 thoughts on “Commodus Americanus”

1. A judge in Wisconsin attempted to block 7 people from changing jobs:

   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/wisconsin-judge-amazingly-rules-7-health-care-workers-cannot-switch-jobs

   We are getting perilously close to returning to the law of the jungle…

   • I read the article.

     How is that even enforceable?

     • It’s been reversed. Looks like they were only blocked from changing jobs for a day or two. Still, it’s scandalous that the case made it to court. Judges should throw out frivolous claims on sight and fine the culprits for wasting court resources.
       https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2022/01/21/what-we-know-ascension-thedacare-court-battle-over-employees/6607417001/

   • A gesture toward hereditary occupations? The “elites” want no competition from hoi polloi either for themselves, or for their spawn, hence thoroughgoing limitations on social mobility; so much safer this way to perpetuate the “meritocracy”. Add on to this a racial dimension, and the subcontinentals could feel right at home with the makings of familiar, hereditary castes. With them in the catbird seat, naturally.

     • I just wanted to say that your comment is the first I have seen in ages that correctly uses the term “hoi polloi” instead of the more common (and incorrect) “THE hoi polloi”.

   • You can’t get worked up about legal reporting. It’s all shit because the reporters have no idea what they’re writing about and misinterpret things all the time, yes on our side as well. Mish is very much a midwit in this regard & has been for years.

2. What is happening now is straight out of Glubb, and probably very parallel to Spengler. I have never read Spengler but you can read Glubb in 30 minutes. And there are so many of Glubb’s symptoms of decay present; frivolity, cynicism, areligiousity, corruption, focus on money instead of honor or glory, worship of entertainers instead of people of genuine accomplishment, elevation of women in public life and influx of foreigners to name some.

   One should not be distracted if there are some elements in which America may be more like Athens than Rome. Some have argued that America and Britain are more like Carthage, sea power, than Rome, land power. And that UK/USA victory over France, Germany (especially) and Russia (cold war 1.0) was a reversal of Rome’s land power victory over the sea-going Carthagenians. All this is to lose focus of the bigger picture over some interesting details I think.

   As to what can be done about it, it is possible that nothing effective could be done, that it is as futile, and sort of the societal equivalent of, fighting against advancing, debilitating age. In the absence of a known remedy I would suggest an approach inspired by ER/ICU rationale; you have a patient with an unknown primary disease. He develops circulatory failure. You treat that. He develops kidney failure. Dialysis. Fluid in the lungs. Oxygen, diuretics (if compatible w the kidney failure before, otherwise more intense dialysis). A fever. Broadspectrum antibiotics if agent unknown. And so on and so forth. You treat the serious symptoms if you can’t treat the underlying cause. And you hope that he muddles through.

   In this way I think this is what our political program should be. If we all made a check list between Glubb and what’s going on today, we would probably agree 80-95% on the central symptoms, as mentioned above. So we reverse them, with state power, one at a time. No public frivolity, no women or non-whites in public office, piety and a particular eugenic religion promoted, corruption rooted out, foreigners out. To say that this would require that democracy be put in ‘induced therapeautic coma’ (for its own good, not cynically kidding) and would produce kicking and screaming of another order, goes without saying. The alternative, by all historical accounts, is a new dark age.

   What are the chances of successful intervention? Well, not good. It seems plausible that is now called fascism, was actually an attempt to reverse Glubbean decadence. And it may be a historical tragedy that leadership of fascism was taken over by a bipolar and vulgar little Austrian and possibly that it was founded by a man far better at diagnostics (decadence as a problem was extremely real across the West, especially Europe, in the 1920s; this is never mentioned in explaining the rise of Nazism in Germany) than at therapy (Mussolini). It is also quite possible that Islamism is a subconscious attempt to reverse Glubbean decadence and that it is failing for the same reasons of allowing incompetent zealots to rise to the top. And it is possible – I am just laying out possible interpretations – that Putin represents an attempt to reverse Glubbean decadence. Hopefully far more moderate and measured, than fascism or islamism. And if true, that may give it better chances of success. History says that falling into the ditch of shrill, blind fanaticism is the greatest danger when you try to perform this procedure on society.

   Finally, I do not like to be on the receiving end of the word ‘fascist.’ In part I don’t like it because I’ve been conditioned not to like it and in part because it was run by people who were spectacularly incompetent at taking early successes to the bank and instead increased the stakes until they went down. And in the particular case of Hitler, had a pronounced streak of sadism and unresolved mental issues that made him both vulgar and entirely useless as a role model of any kind. And finally I don’t like fascism because I treasure personal liberty. The problem here is that we may be entering an age where the tradeoff between personal liberty and survival is far starker than the age from which we came. So I am not advocating fascism, I am saying we should look at it as a failed attempt to reverse the problems that are now killing us. And learn from these mistakes instead of repeating them. Otherwise, like the Romans, Golden Age Arabs and before them the Assyrians, we will follow the Glubbean trajectory to its cold, dead end.

   http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

   • Excellent comment. But how does one envision that happening, in the unlikely event that it ever does?

     Probably the most realistic scenario is that the republican party sweeps the midterms and presidency in 2024. Then some generals — not the Mark Milley types — and some in the intelligence community work to destroy the democrat party so that it’s never competitive again; the thing dissolves like the old Whig and Federalist parties while its members (Jan 6th committee) are criminally prosecuted for their crimes. With the democrats gone, the worst elements of Leftism, feminism, and black racial grievance mongering are purged from power. What’s left over is a mostly White ruling party that’s more based due to generational turnover and the recent White Awokening. With a new crop of based republicans, it might be possible to impose immigration limits, institute assimilation policies to iron out diversity, repeal divisive black grievance mongering (Juneteenth), censor leftist media degeneracy, impose republican hiring quotas to get corporations under control, and enact eugenic polices (family formation, perhaps rudimentary genetic engineering if pegged as a means of rooting out communism — political dispensation is heritable).

     Alternatively, secession is a viable option if all else fails. I’d personally rather live in a free red country with my own kind than a blue totalitarian nightmare with “one billion Americans”, if it came to it.

     • Thanks. In the above I restricted to what I think we should do and share your problem with seeing a viable road to doing it. OTOH, from Martin Luther to Lenin to Hitler to Gandhi, most successful revolutionaries, regardless of morality or program, seems to first have formulated an idea of what they needed to do and then went looking for a way to do it according to their circumstances. And serendipity of course plays a major role.

     • Great if it were to happen that way, but it seems the least likely scenario. More likely:

       1. Red wave barely gets majority in Senate, maybe slim majority in house. Even if red wave occurs, enough “based” Goppers cuck to make it pointless. Business continues as per current. 2024 stolen again.

       2. No red wave bc stolen or enough gop voters only have grifters running (cf Cringeshaw). Business as usual. 2024 stolen.

       What will happen is secession, but not through willful choice or force of arms. Rather, the USD will get replaced or ignored as reserve currency commensurate with declining US world influence resulting in central government collapse and regional authorities filling the void. My guess fwiw.

   • Your chance of a reversal is zero sorry to say.

     There are a lot of reasons for it but three stand out to me

     #1 There is no agree upon civic framework or eugenic region.

     #2 We are too apathetic and soft. If we were the type of people willing to use collective punishment, three generational liability and swift brutal public justice i we wouldn’t be here.

     #3 We aren’t Paladins fighting for civilization . We are men and men for for their battle brothers, family or their gain. Nothing is being offered by anyone worth the trouble. And this would be huge cost . Everyone, man, women, child can be armed with light auto weapons and explosives which means everything is contested at a higher cost . This means whatever you pay me has to be correspondingly higher and you can’t afford it.

     • If only Lenin and Hitler had been as realistic as you the West might not have been in such dire straights. Your points are perfectly reasonable. To be a successful revolutionary or rebel leader, you need two contradictory traits; a contemptuous disdain for long odds. And an acute sense of political tactics and opportunities. And a third factor, luck. To be the right age at the right time. There are probably always people with Lenin’s or Hitler’s or, if you want a positive example, George Washington’s, innate abilities for revolution, around. But this is only a useful profile when the mega-macro circumstances happen to align in a way favorable to major chance. Which is not often.

       Specifically to point 3, this is where a fervent new belief system comes in. You don’t offer earthly rewards. You offer eternal glory in the new system’s pantheon of heroes and martyrs. Your last sentence made me think “and this is why economists never lead revolutions. It is the worst possibly mindset for doing something irrationally dangerous that leads to an early grave or lots of pages in the history books, or both”

       Religion, whether secular or divine, is the switch that turns off personal cost-benefit analysis in the individual and allows him to do crazy dangerous and personally irrational things. Until you have your new holy faith you don’t have your revolution to lead.

   • Athens would be a better example of sea power unless you intend to insult the British and Americans. Considering the efforts the French have exerted over the years to undermine the Habsburg empire by allying with the Ottomans, and the incessant attacks against the Catholic church they would be best suited to the role of the alien and ruthless Carthaginians.

3. Replying to my fellow Cossacks below:

   Look, anti-Semitism is jarring as a sales message, and even an ardent follower like me gets bored with it.

   Yes, they punch above their weight in terms of cultural impact, but so do Negroes.
   No, they aren’t the only bad bunch operating. Look how the English treated the Irish.

   So, how to deal with my ardor?
   And such a self-induced obstacle?

   Realize that what we’re seeing has a better descriptor: Gangsterism.

   They were hired as gypsy mercenaries by the Canaanites, and they haven’t changed. Mafias work, they are effective tribal strategies at their scale.

   The Tribe is the oldest, most powerful gang out there- but they aren’t the only one, and their style attracts a ton of ambitious copycats and fellow travelers.

   So if one wants to sell the message of hostile governance, it’s more helpful speak of cultures of Gangsterism.

   *****
   (Although our host wants to pull his hair out, I do thank Apex Predator for reminding us this is the time of the Final Solution to the WQ- the White Question.)

4. Invoking Godwin’s Law in the comments, I do want to thank the Z for slyly pointing out the origin of the insane Holocaust religion, and its the civilizational reset of our moral values- the banal evil of White, MLK Civil Rights, postmodernism’s “there is no truth”, Jaffa’s Lincoln, the hideous Nuremberg kangaroo trials, an industry of historical fiction, etc etc.

   All of this wrecker’s madness…from a single copy of a concocted forgery in a dodgy Communist lawyer’s briefcase:

   The Protocols of the Elders of Wannsee.

5. Ah, Z-Man, you only wrote this piece to cheer me up.

   If only…

6. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Commodus Americanus

7. The ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves’ phenomenon seems to have its roots in human nature, together with the way traits are passed down (or not) from generation to generation:

   The combination of foresight, vision, drive, ambition, ability, opportunity, and perseverance which enabled the founder to succeed, is a rare one; which won’t necessarily be passed down to his children. Some of it is undoubtedly genetic, and some the product of the founder’s circumstances: a unique combination of nature and nurture which his children’s experience will almost certainly not duplicate.

   Like Blacks being offered welfare, the founder’s children are more likely to take the opportunity to relax and enjoy, rather than continue to strive, sacrifice, and create. And their children, raised in comfortable privilege, will likely bear no resemblance to the founder.

   A rough analogy might be an ambitious Black man who moved to Detroit or southern California after WWII to take advantage of the opportunities for work and home ownership; whose grandchildren are now on welfare. Most humans are inclined to seek the easiest path; especially in an environment which rewards it.

   In America’s case, this shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves’ generational pattern was (for the first few centuries of her existence) superimposed on the realities of the frontier: which selected for people of a certain type. To leave the security of Europe and risk journeying across the Atlantic on small wooden ships— and once arrived in the new world, to leave the settled security of the east coast and venture west— took a certain kind of person, and also in the process molded a certain kind of person: rewarding those people who possessed the combination of traits that made for success in that environment. Opportunities were there for men with sufficient vision to recognize them, courage to strive for them, and ability and determination to succeed at them.

   Looking around today, it’s clear that the environment kids are challenged to succeed in, is radically different. Technological, feminized western society calls forth and rewards a completely different sort of person.

   And the ‘digital world’ which modern kids are born into is something completely new in human history.

   While the settling of the American frontier was in most ways a battle with nature— and in that way, shared commonalities with other past human endeavors— the ‘digital frontier’ which kids face today is unlike anything in our human past. In many ways, foreseeing where it will lead involves imagining societies and humans utterly unlike anything that’s come before.

   The case can be made that human history and civilization have advanced on the shoulders of extraordinary men of achievement: ‘outliers’ like Democritus, DaVinci, Newton, Tesla, Edison, and Einstein, whose combination of genius, vision, and drive brought us forward.

   Elon Musk strikes me as the latest example of this type of visionary creative. Will any of his children duplicate his level of obsession and accomplishment? It seems highly unlikely.

   In the ongoing series of changes in which Charles Goodnight morphs into Mark Zuckerberg; what comes next?

8. I thought it was Lincoln who turned America into an empire? The Civil War marked the beginning of the roach motel theory of American statehood, where once you became a state, you can never leave and where the feds became the only real power in the empire.

   It was obviously a lot worse once the second world war created the military industrial complex and massively expanded the size and scope of government. But from what I understand, it is just a difference in degree and that the real damage to the republic was under Lincoln. That’s why the Neocons love Lincoln so much. They even call it the nation’s second founding.

   • That’s my understanding as well:
     that the War of Northern Aggression and its aftermath of ‘Reconstruction’ fundamentally changed the picture, by increasing the power of the FedGov to the point where the States were secondary actors. That’s where the founders’ vision received its death blow. In a sense, everything since then has followed from that one monumental usurpation of power.

     • Not only that, but the Northern Aggressors made sure to give negroes federal citizenship. Have you ever known a country in the history of the world “give” citizenship to non-racial kinsmen? Especially to such a primitive one? Sure, some empires sold citizenship, but “gave” citizenship? Plus, the White people of “America” were lassoed into accepting federal citizenship. Prior to the 14th Amendment, all citizens were considered State citizens. You were not a citizen of the United States, you were a citizen of, say, Texas, which was in the (lower case u) united States, not of a federal jurisdiction. The Constitution had no meaning after that. That’s why current courts make such unconstitutional rulings. It was not done by accident.

       • England, Germany, France, Sweden….

   • Agreed, but happily as the global empire stumbles, it looks like the continental empire might go with it. Power seems to be devolving back to the states by necessity.

     With that said, and in that case, I hope it’s a return to federalism and not a complete collapse. Time will tell.

     • If the regime manages to start a major war in Ukraine with the goal of imposing martial law in the US I would not be surprised if a guy like DeSantis fired up the 10th Amendment.

     • if you find yourself with ability and integrity, run for position in state or local government

       • When does your comedy tour start?

         You can’t exist in a gangster culture unless you are one. The other gangsters will just wipe you out.

         • An honest man of integrity in politics is like a sheep trying to join a pack of wolves. That’s where we are today.

   • It’s a phenomenon I’ve noted where justice is always found by going farther up the ladder

     Your city judge screwed you? He’s a local yokel. Take it to the state court

     Your state screwed you over, denied your rights? Take it to the federal courts.

     The federal courts screwed you? You have to take it to the SCOTUS

     Now we are here at the end of the line. But the population has been conditioned especially since the civil rights era, to take every grievance as high up the chain as possible where you will always find justice in the wisdom of the SCOTUS. The Supremes will save the righteous !!

     You can see this same conditioning in play, or you can see them trying to push it, by making the next higher rung in the justice ladder to be some international court or body. This dovetails with the increasing suspicions people have with SCOTUS, making it go from the crown jewel in our justice system into nothing really more than a corruptible enterprise that needs greater oversight. What they are telling the masses is that if you want your justice, you want the largest government possible, with world government being the best, and to keep the lesser officials farther down the chain in check. And I think many believe that.

9. The current saber-rattling and machinations between Russia and NATO (i. e. The US) could bring on the final act.

   Just think what the survivors of a possible thermonuclear war will say as they sit around the fire. How they will extrapolate on the causes of the war and why a small former satellite providence of the former USSR led to their current horrific existence.

   That’s to say if there is even survivors to begin with.

   • IMO, there’s no way the US goes to war over Ukraine. Or Taiwan either, for that matter.

     If there’s anything that would sink the Biden administration, that would be it.

     The fact that they’re impotently blustering about stopping these invasions— when they have no intention of doing anything more than threatening– is a measure of their extraordinary lack of understanding of how power relations work. Somehow our “statesmen” fail to realize that making a threat, and then not carrying it out, is worse than saying nothing at all.

     But even they are not stupid enough to bring America into a war with Putin’s Russia.

     • I agree with the points raised about how they do not have the intention to begin a war on purpose.

       My concern is that the adversary always has a vote. Putting a strike group in the Black Sea, moving troops around in an attempt at amateur hour on the stage of geopolitical diplomacy is dicey at best.

       If we had actual statesman and not empty suits ruling over us, this would make for less uneasy times.

       • Agreed. And let’s not forget Iran, who we seem to be doing all we can to goad into starting a war. Good for Israel maybe, but not for America.

         It’s not unimaginable that at some point China may decide, on the basis of some pretext, to declare war on us; perhaps even in alliance with Iran and/or Russia. Just not yet.

         One of the worst aspects of our current treatment of Russia, China, and Iran is how our policies seem to be creating a situation where mutual collaboration will be in their best interest.

     • “Somehow our “statesmen” fail to realize that making a threat, and then not carrying it out, is worse than saying nothing at all. ”

       In the age from the spear to the tank this was indisputably true. In the age of the nuke, it is more fuzzy. Conventional strategy, from Alexander the Great to George Patton, is like chess. Nuclear strategy is like poker, no holds barred. Psychologically they are also entirely different. From Caesar to Rommel, you want yoru men fired up maximally. The harder you drive the greater the chance of killing the enemy. World War I may have been a brief interlude in this because of better artillery and fully automatic firearms but no tanks or effective strike aircraft. But that was resolved by the tank and aircraft and then the pattern held.

       Nukes are entirely different, the harder you drive, if the enemy also has them, the greater the chances of annihilation. While I am not sure he was wrong in any way. – he might have been an example of the mad man bluff Nixon made famous – the reason LeMay is scary to listen to is that he was essentially Patton in a bomber instead of a tank. Exactly the right mindset for conventional industrial war. Exactly the ticket to hell in thermonuclear war. You need the mindset of a poker player, not a boxer, with nukes. Nukes are the greatest revolution in military affairs since the bow and arrow, or the atlatl. Despite having been used in combat only twice, and two small, primitive ones at that.

     • Oh, yes, they are.

   • We may not be that lucky.

     Commentators elsewhere have theorized that the regime sees endless war in Ukraine as the replacement for the endless war in Afghanistan grifting operation.

     I think that may be partially correct because there are definitely elements of the regime that want to see the alphabet soup flag flying over the Kremlin.

     • Until Russia says “fuck this I’ve had enough” and obliterates a carrier group.

       Given I live in Europe I really don’t fancy living in a massive continent wide war caused by Mr fucking potato head and his Zionist diaper changers over the butthurt that the parasites got kicked out of Russia 20 years ago.

   • As far as I know Russia began around key cities roughly around the 800s. Novgorod, NE of Moscow and Kyiv, were the two first and Moscow came later or came later to prominence. Ivan the Terrible, from Moscow conquered Novgorod and Kyiv and the ball rolled from there, or something like that. The point is, Kyiv and hence the Ukraine, were about as central to the founding of Russia as Virginia or Massachusetts to America. It is one of the early nuclei, roughly 800 yrs or so before (800s vs 1600s).

     And I know of no sustained period where Kyiv was the capital of anything ‘independent’. They may have been under Russia the whole time or maybe briefly under Poland, Sweden or somebody during their 15 minutes of fame. And occupied by Germany several times but much later of course. IOW, Kyiv was under Russia when George Washington chopped down cherry trees. It was under Russia when Robert E Lee arrived at Gettysburg. Kyiv was still under Russia, at least formally (the Germans might have been sitting on it) when Wilson decided that the Kaiser needed a shave. It was under Russia when Hitler invaded Poland and when Stalin reached Berlin. It was under Russia when Brechnev piled up enough nukes to blow up Nixon’s America, and the rest of the world, several times. It is a simple matter of historical fact that there is no tradition of an independent Ukraine in European history. It does not compare, in this way, to say France, Austria, Denmark or Sweden. These have been more or less independent entities for around a thousand years. The Ukraine for around thirty years.

     And at no time, during all of this, did anyone ever suggest that Kyiv being formally under the sovereignty exercised from the capital of Russia (which was Moscow at some times and St Petersburg at others), was in any way a problem for the welfare and security of the United States.

     And apparently now it is worth a thermonuclear war to keep Kyiv away from Moscow?? Clown world presents very real problems to long-term survival of Whitie, because of its profound dysgenicity. But NUCLEAR clown world, ohh, this could go bad very fast. People fundamentally detached from reality in control of significant nuclear arsenals, this is indeed new territory. Include a Geiger counter in your preparations.

     • In case any people are wondering how Winnie Mandella and the ANC leadership would act with nuclear weapons, it looks like we may be about to find out.

       • Peter Botha or whomever it was, killing the SA nuke program on their way out, was a pivotal example of altruistic race realism.

         At some point, white strategists in France, Britain and America may be faced with a similar dilemma. Oh how we F’ed up….

     • And yet Ukraine has long been thought of a national entity, with a self-identified people who speak a tongue called Ukranian that, while similar to Russian is different enough to be considered a separate language and not a dialect.

       • Like ebonics to English

   • The puppeteers want conflict with Russia and the puppets in charge jump when their strings are jerked.

10. The best posts, like this one, are the ones in which I have nothing to add. I can only make an observation, that I’ve made before. When our Empire goes, unlike so many others, what great works of art and architecture will it leave behind? Our best art was either imported directly from Europe between 1850-1950 or artists themselves who came directly from Europe. Sure we have home grown painters here and there and some home grown literature, just like we have a pretty building here and there. But nothing like the deep bench of a fallen European empire. We’ve left so little beauty. Our empire always worshiped utilitarianism. We did great things with it. All kinds of achievements. The assembly line being the pinnacle of that. Our contribution to building was the cinder block. No future tourist, 500 years from now, will come upon the ruins of a Costco and want to sit at a cafe across the street and take it in.

    • This tragedy is compounded by the concerted efforts of the barbarians within the gates doing their level best to ruin what few great works of art and architecture we have.

      • For those people they cannot let stand any artifact that brings home just how ignorant and useless they are. It is a source of continual internal pain to their self image.

        It is better to destroy all the things that make one feel small and live in a garbage heap, rather than raise your eyes to heaven and be uplifted at the towering achievement of your ancestors.

    • What’s especially maddening is how many of our beautiful cities have been destroyed by diversity and outsourcing. Detroit, in particular, has some grand architecture which has fallen into ruin. Even now, our people could be living and prospering there if only the elites hadn’t favored and/or forced policies that drove our people out.

      As the saying goes, never forget what they took from you.

      • My grandmother’s sister owned a corner store my father grew up next to. Surprisingly, it’s still there. But it’s got a giant EBT card mural across the front of it now. And, of course, bars. Lots of bars on the windows and door. It’s a slum.

        One of the major things which destroyed our cities was WW2. While they weren’t bombed, they got something worse than bombs. IQ testing among other things meant the military was close to a 100% White. A lot of Blacks moved from the rural South up to the North to work in the factories which had labor shortages. Though war was no longer the underlying cause, this continued through the 50s and early 60s and led to the widespread rioting in the 60s, voting themselves into power and ultimately white-flight.

        The cities were the engines of America’s economic power. Now they are the black hole of American money and resources. They would all be a hundred times worse without the massive flow of money from the suburbs into the cities.

        • Indeed!

          Not that long ago, Baltimore was known as “Charm City”!

          America’s cities rapidly declining as they became majority Black and Whites fled from the resulting crime wave; Africa rapidly declining economically and socially after the White European colonizers left; Europe today rapidly degrading as more and more African Blacks invade; the pattern is clear.

      • In the aftermath of the Mount St. Helens eruption, there have been countless “scientists” who’ve expressed surprise at how quickly the surrounding environs have regenerated. It makes me think of our once-beautiful Rust Belt cities. If the vibrancy was removed in one fell swoop, how long would it take for your Detroits, your Milwaukees, or your Buffalos to recapture some portion of the beauty and vitality they once possessed?

        • Remove all the “people of color”, and it would just be a matter of time.

          • And no amount of being proven wrong ever dissuades them. No matter how bad our cities have gotten could ever get them to reevaluate the idea that “diversity” (non-Whites) is just this magical property that makes everything better.

            The failure to predict the recovery in Mount St. Helen’s ecology will never make them doubt themselves. It’s like the concept of self doubt doesn’t exist to them. If anything, failure makes them MORE confident, not less.

      • Much like the meme showing detroit from the end of the war and Hiroshima.

        And then showing them now.

        As it says nuclear weapons are less of a problem than blacks.

        • Yep, you’ve touched on an observation/distinction worth noting. Cities are nothing, except a reflection of their populations. As noted above, to fix Detroit, fix the resident population. That’s why I don’t lose too much sleep over our large metro areas in decline, but I do lose sleep over our demographic change.

      • Part of me wonders if a few well-placed nukes from Putin or Xi would actually help save America and its cities. Allow for a complete rebuild like Hiroshima.

        Would the blast radius reach 20 miles outside of Chicago?

        • Check out Henry Gruver’s visions on Steve Quayle’s website.

    • I’d say the biggest cause of the lack of great achievements in art and architecture here in America was the fact that for most of our history we had our time consumed by the work of settling and taming a frontier. By the time we closed in on settling the wilderness, the rot had already set in. Most of the more impressive examples in the arts are clustered in the Eastern part of the USA, which was the region first settled.

      In contrast, even in the early days of the Greeks and the Romans their homelands had been occupied and settled by people for a very long time. Then you had the Renaissance period which began in Italy and moved from there. They had a lot of the remains of the earlier Roman culture left over to ponder over and be inspired by. Who knows, should some form of human civilization remain in North America a few millennia from now, maybe we will finally have some decent cultural artifacts of our own?

    • I agree with you. However, literature is the one area of the arts in which America made real contributions. Poe, Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, London, Dickinson, Sandberg, Frost, Stevens, Miller, etc. stack up with the greats of any country.

      • This is absolutely true. Literature was a major artistic achievement for the United States, which at one point was about to achieve parity with Russia. Predictably, that has now stopped and the crisis in mediocrity has spread to literature, which features basically subliterate minorities who are published solely because they are subliterate minorities. Literature was the last American artistic contribution to go.

        I read a compelling piece recently that contradicts, to a point, J.R.’s larger point. From the time of the Revolution until about 1850, the United States was seen as a rising star in architecture and even music. D.C., in particular, was viewed as a massive architectural achievement. These developments stopped dead in their tracks. Some blame is attributed to the pending Civil War, some to a pivot to industry, but nonetheless it ended.

        I actually expect the new Ruling Class to dismantle what remains from that brief period of artistic attainment, with iconoclasm spreading to the remaining buildings, including in D.C. and some state capitols viewed as the height of architecture during that period, some in places as unlikely as Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

        For all its faults at the end, Romans did not attack their signature buildings. “Americans” will.

        • Indeed!

          When they’re removing statues of Robert E Lee, and replacing them with statues of George Floyd— and denouncing as “White supremacists” anyone who objects— the process of erasing our heritage has already begun.

          • And as has been pointed out, it won’t stop with removal of Southern hero’s, like Robert E Lee. The other day, Teddy Roosevelt was removed from in front of the NYC Museum of Natural History.

            They remove these *White* historical monuments because they can. It’s all part of the process to demoralize the founding stock of this (once) great nation.

      • Emerson, Thoreau, Melville. William James, although known as a psychologist was a wonderful writer.

        • And Longfellow.

      • Indeed. Being a land of free men, Americans built castles of the mind rather than of stone. A pioneer holding a book with calloused hands, dirt still beneath his nails, and reading it by candlelight or kerosene lamp in his own humble log cabin was far more blessed than a serf collapsing in exhausted sleep after a day of corvee labor done for his overlord’s benefit rather than his own. American literature reflects the American mind, one of unfettered imagination yet grounded in practical common sense. It is replete with stories where cleverness of thought is married to bold action. Reading represents the one joy of my childhood that I can easily recapture in the midst of our present insanity.

      • Yes! Several of the comments today make me think of Willa Cather’s great novel My Antonia about Norwegian immigrants settling in the Midwest. It was a damn hard life, dangerous, and the possibility of starvation was always right around the corner. People forget. They think the US was always one big tacky shopping mall.

      • ” Poe, Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, London, Dickinson, Sandberg, Frost, Stevens, Miller, etc. stack up with the greats of any country.”

        I do like well done satire.

    • We won’t leave behind that Robert E. Lee statue, or the one they just removed in NYC of Teddy Roosevelt, or the one of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and some others. But of course the George Floyd statues will remain.

      • ya’ beat me to it…and lest we forget, with all due respec: The Rev. Dr. (Peace be on Him) Martin Lutha King.

      • Yes all statues or pictures of white people will be removed and destroyed.

        The interesting thing will be that all books will go electronic (Kindle), so the conquerors will be able to remove any record of white people from history by simply putting in the books that Romans, Vikings, British and so forth were black. Change the illustrations to match and boom, done.

        For existing monuments like the Arc de Triomphe, just say the architect Jean-François Chalgrin was black.

        They are already doing it in movies (black Anne Boleyn, black Achilles, etc). I estimate whites will be extinct in about 100 years. Within 150 years there won’t be any record or evidence that we ever existed at all.

        • there won’t be any records left at all because the “griots” cannot write, we will be worshiping the books as objects of veneration like the Eloi..

          • If you think Blacks will be worshiping books I think you might need get your medication altered.

          • You are correct Trumpton.

            As my former partner used to say,”Blacks avoid books like Superman avoids Kryptonite”.

      • Ape historians, 2500 A.D., recovering a George Floyd statue from the ruins:

        “See! Our ancestors built all this!”

        • PS- Ape historians: “…so that was what King George looked like, before he founded his new capitol and renamed himself George Washington.”

      • When the shit hits the proverbial fan, no one will care much about George Floyd statues.

    • The Chrysler Building and the Brooklyn Bridge are pretty cool, but yeah, most of our best architecture isn’t distinctly American, and our arts and letters never developed as they could’ve.

      It’s a matter of timing. America came along with the modern world, and modernity has no use for the human spirit.

    • The moon landing in 1969 was pretty impressive; probably the highlight of the American empire.

      • The three magic negresses aside, watch any footage that relates to the moon landings and something very white and male will jump out at you. When we started letting women in the cockpit and the control room (not to mention insisting that the flight crews resemble a Benneton ad), our program began to atrophy and we lost two vehicles. When Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during launch, it was a white man who troubleshot the ensuing issues in a matter of seconds and probably saved the mission. If that happened today? God speed the crew.

        • On the subject of rewriting history, guess the ethnicity of the toad who started the “the Moon landings were fake” meme.

          Yup. They will leave us nothing.

        • After a pause, American space exploration has bounced back to something of its former spectacular accomplishments. We have advanced mars robot rovers and an accompanying helicopter exploring the Martian surface, plus satellites circling the red planet gathering data and photos that will keep scientific analysts busy for years. Meanwhile other space probes explore the outer planets of the solar system and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

          Recently launched James Webb observatory in orbit around the sun seems to be on track without a hitch. Webb went up on a French heavy lift vehicle from France’s space facilities in South America.

          Days ago I watched the launch of Musk’s Space-X internet Starlink which promises to bring high speed services to the rural world. The launch went off flawlessly the booster landing back at Cape Canaveral ‘Buck Rogers’ style.

          Yet just before the final count-down of Starlink blast off, we had a spokes-k*nt’ come on to remind us of the greatness and nearness of the godlike MLK’s birthday. Better she have said: ‘We want to thank the magnificent Third Reich engineers, scientists, and technicians who gave Americans, Europeans, and Russians such an advanced foundation in rocketry and dreams of space exploration.’ What did MLK do but bitch and complain and bang white whores?

          As for removing monuments, we can start by voting to take down the grotesque Lincoln memorial and the fairly recently added Maoist looking statue to MLK in DC.

          “Whitey On The Moon”
          by Gil-Scott Heron

          A rat done bit my sister Nell
          With Whitey on the moon
          Her face and arms began to swell
          And Whitey’s on the moon

          I can’t pay no doctor bills
          But Whitey’s on the moon
          Ten years from now I’ll be paying still
          While Whitey’s on the moon (..)

          And so the negro resentment is expressed.

          I look for Congress clowns to defund the space programs and divert the ‘monies’ to inner-city black slum, ‘in-fah-struck-shahs’, (i.e., grifts).

      • Like 911 that was a stageshow, an illusion to create a consensus. We’ve been set up, lied to, bullshitted and programmed for a long. long time.

    • I don’t think it is fair to America to say that they have generated little of genuine cultural value compared to Europe. First of, Europe generates nothing of value today. Maybe America is the same now but still. Secondly, Europe had far longer to do it. Thirdly, technology and hence the medium of art, has changed drastically. America spearheaded the cinema, jazz, rock’n’roll, did much in early photography (early jazz and rock WERE culture IMO and should not be judged by the fact that they were later overtaken by decadence and trash to the point that ‘n*gga killin’ bitchin’ cops and yab yab yab’ rap is now considered ‘music’. And such architecture as the skyscraper. As to the last, I don’t think the Empire State Building is ugly but the Chrysler Building is definitely not and Flatiron is not either; the only ones to do skyscrapers before America was Ancient India.

      India, btw, is relevant to the discussion because, like China, it is a splendid ancient civilization that went the whole 9 yards into decline and decay and may now be the second large civilization to reemerge after 1000 years of degradation, after China. It is an example of how long it can last if you really drop the civilizational ball.

      Finally as to American achievements, carving skulptures out of whole mountains, e.g. Mount Rushmore and that one in Georgia, may also be American examples of genuine, interesting art.

      Bottom line, Heritage American culture, like its cousin and origin, European culture, IS worth preserving. So we have a lot of work to do ahead of us.

11. I’d date the origin of the American Empire to the Spanish-American War. Tucker recently lamented the takedown of Teddy Roosevelt’s statue that greeeted visitors at one of the New York museums. Symbolic of the analogy.

    If Victoria was a First and if Edward VI was the indifferent second, George V did appreciably well and it was Edward VII who’d’ve been the feckless Third though a Fourth. Then if George VI was an interim and if Elizabeth II is a First, Charles would be an indifferent second and no one knows what William may become though Harry may well be a feckless Third.

    These models are fun to play with — I like Glubb’s analysis of the periodic rise and fall of empires — but the times may also have something to do wth it. The great robber barrons, the quintessential Firsts, came at an auspicious time when resources were there for the taking. In Rockefeller’s case, David, a Third, certainly doesn’t fit the type

    The Millenials may be First. Don’t know how the Fourth Turning classfies them, but I think Firsts often become Firsts because of necessity driven by poverty. Which I suspect will be the American future.

    • The Empire really started with the Civil War and the subsequent conquest of what remained of the untamed West. The Spanish-American War signaled a turn toward the rest of the world, and the unending occupation of Europe since WWII marked the permanence of Empire.

      Besides the hideous ramifications, the saber rattling with Russia of late has revealed the Europeans may be ready to expel the Empire. We are seeing the first feints that way.

    • Strauss and Howe classify the Millennials as the Hero archetype, same as the Greatest Generation. So far I’m not very impressed.

      • They’re heroes for Globohomo.

        Today, for a young person to be considered a “good person” by society, they’ve got to embrace and support all kinds of degeneracy — gay marriage, trannies, race-mixing, anti-white policies, etc.

        Is it any wonder, considering that the Left controls all of the propaganda centers?

      • As much as I despise Millennials, it’s not hard for me to see. The oldest Millennials aren’t even 40. They’re the generation that grew up with wokeness but are now starting to get red pilled … and they also too old to be involved with idiocies like TikTok. I could see a hero arising in that generation in a decade or two. Napoleon was ~36 at the time of his coronation, but the average French life expectancy was much less. If we adjust for that fact, our Napoleon could be a Millennial in his mid to late 40s sometime in the 2030s.

12. Re: Shirtsleeve-to-shirtsleeve, I wonder what the secret of the small handful of banking dynasties is. A few have avoided the three generation round trip.

    The Rothchilds, of course (founded in the 1760s, so about 10 generations), Hoare & Company in London, also about 10 generations, Warburg founded in Hamburg in 1798, with roots in Rennaisance Venice … somehow they figured out how to create and sustain actual functional dynasties.

    • There are videos of one of them openly discussing how those families, “…keep love in the family.”

      • It worked for the Egyptian royals. Consanguinity (‘cousin’ marriage) reinforces dominant traits, along with the affordable cost of the expendable recessives.

        • Look at a statue of cleopatra and tell me what defining feature stands out?

          https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-Museum-Berlin1.jpg

          Consanguinity and lines that may not be what you think.

13. “Caesar Augustus was the great founder of the empire. Tiberius Caesar Augustus was solid, but he suffered from the predictable maladies of every second generation ruler. Caligula is arguably Rome’s most famous lunatic.”

    Even more frightening is that the superstructure of the Empire remained intact for over three more centuries after Caligula, during which time it was devoured from within by decadence, civil wars, Christianity, and various other forms of decay. I don’t have three centuries to wait.

    Even more frightening is that once the empire’s superstructure finally went kaput in the 470s we had roughly a millennium of violent instability, warlordism and comparative barbarism. True civilization, the kind the Greco-Romans crafted, didn’t make a comeback until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. I don’t have a millennium to wait.

    The 500-year European empire of the post-Enlightenment period appears to be toast. Will the superstructure last another three centuries? I don’t know. I don’t know that I even care anymore. I look at the decadent, woke, inebriated, entertainment-addicted populace of today and think “Screw it! Let the barbarians in!”. Unfortunately, the barbarians will devour everyone, even the few good people we still possess.

    • The pace of change is much greater now than it was in antiquity and the middle ages. We won’t have to wait long…

      • And it’s truly extraordinary when you think about it: the ‘digital age’— of instantly-available information via the internet, and instant global communication via cellphones— has only been with us for the last 20 or 30 years. And look how much it’s already changed us, and the way we conduct our lives.

        Who can imagine what our world will be like 100 years from now?

        • My gut tells me there will be a global cataclysm of some sort within the next 100 years that returns us, if not to the stone age, then at least to the 17th century. From a technological standpoint, we are at the apex of human history. We’re also at the end of the line.

          • Fossil fuel depletion will lead to energy poverty which will lead to economic decay / collapse, which will lead to violent instability, especially in the previously prosperous west.

            The only hope of staving this off is widespread deployment of nuclear power, but that’s become culturally unacceptable and still requires fossil fuels to bootstrap it.

            So you say 17th century which seems about right, but it will take a very long time for mankind to relearn how to do things with technology at that level.

          • Is that like all the fossil fuels on Titan and in the Horsehead Nebula?

          • Trumpton: Ice volcanos and gasoline rivers. Is that ccol or what?

            I denounce Elon and his hardy band of white imperialists venturing forth to oppress the indigenous squids living in harmony with nature under the ice.

          • Nuke power is certainly the way to go for any number of reasons, but not the diminishment of fossil fuels. This country—and others—literally lives on a sea of coal. We measure it in terms of hundreds of years supply—at current use rates. Yeah, it’s dirty and such to burn, but it’s plentiful.

    • Lots of nice cathedrals built and strong philosophy happened between the fall of the empiore and the Renaissance. The Enlightenment itself was just a high from the fumes of the Renaissance.

14. Off the top of my head, the only Senators I can think of who made a living for themselves prior to politics are Ron Johnson and Rand Paul. My Governor (Murphy) made a lot money in the investment banking grift, but it’s not as if he ever had to make a payroll like Johnson – or perform surgery like Paul.

    • I have gone through the list and it is really hard to find anyone who has the life of a normal person. There are some congressman who have done honest work, but they are back benchers who play no role in the larger drama. I suspect it must be very hard for a normal person to live in that world for very long. Imagine Ron Johnson being lectured by some “expert” on a business matter. It must be jarring.

      • Always thought actor/lawyer Fred Thompson was an interesting guy. He was a Senator from TN for a term-an-a-half.

        Had presidential aspirations for a short time. Enjoyed him as an actor, and as a Senator he really conveyed the “I can’t believe I’m working with these idiots” when he was in the Senate.

        Best line as an actor as an Admiral in the Hunt for Red October “Son, the Russians don’t take a dump without a plan.”

        • Thompson was pitch perfect in that film.

          “It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it!”

          https://youtu.be/YZuMe5RvxPQ

    • Senator Mike Rounds from South Dakota was a partner in an insurance firm until he became Governor in 2002. His dad had worked in state government and he had been in the part time legislature also. He is also a back bencher for a Senator. My impression is that most people who have success in business would rather buy access and influence than actually run for office. The process is such a degrading circus now why would they want to do it.

      • Rand Paul is another example.
        He was born into a political family, but practiced ophthalmology in the private sector for 17 years— from1993 until 2010— when he successfully ran for his current seat in the Senate.

        But a couple outlier examples don’t disprove the point: that most Senators have no experience of the real world.

15. Following up the analogies, Kamala is Caligula’s horse

    • Was Incitatus the product of lunacy, or a raised middle finger at the senate?

      I’ve heard historians say that Caligula wasn’t nuts at all. He was the Donald Trump of his day, and he got the same treatment Trump got from the chattering skulls and scribblarians of the day.

      It’s plausible I suppose…

      • Hoofs Up Harris

        • That laugh, like Mr. Ed’s breigh

    • Falcone,

      Methinks you need the services of a visual artist to fully explore that thought…..

    • Not to get spergy, but the point of naming a horse a Senator was to gauge loyalty to the new emperor.

      Anyone questioning it was put on a “naughty” list. The Romans were very creative dealing with “naughties”.

      It’s like the opposite of “the Emperor’s Clothes” story. Where the kid gets garrotted because he wouldn’t go along with the fantasy.

      Going to be the same with knee-pad Harris.

    • That got funnier the more I thought about it.

16. Kind of interesting how the managerial class or ‘deep state’ as some call it evolved as a check against incompetent elites, yet it’s become sclerotic too, and arguably more troublesome.

    Jefferson had some radical ideas about periodic revolution and tearing up the Constitution every couple of decades iirc.

    Tough questions I can only guess at. In theory, you make the kids earn their inheritance, but what if they don’t deserve it, and how, as a parent, do you judge them objectively and resist the urge to ‘help’ them? Yet families and nations go on, so there has to be an answer.

    • It’s probably a matter of aristocratic blood; that is, a true elite. Long lived houses had special genetics that were maintained via careful breeding. Maybe they went back to the Aryan conquerers or even Atlantis! They weren’t just descendants of some guy who improved a manufacturing process and sold a lot of cars. The three generation thing always makes think of a Chinese laundry, not a dynastic house.

      • Yeah, but eventually you get monarchs who look like twins even though they’re cousins lol. European royalty got inbred and lost control to bankers, who are looking inbred too these days, and they seem to be losing their grip as well.

        So yeah, there’s something about the blood, but you need some outcrossing!

      • Why do you think they keep all the peerage records going back centuries (and longer)?

        Its just a horse breeding livestock book to them. Its why they still have lots of arranged marriages get a few children then often divorce and get remarried to an earlier partner.

        The upper classes in England were often doing this all the way back when it was extremely uncommon in the general populace.

    • With children, you give them just enough rope to secure themselves — hopefully with some accompanying life instructions — but not enough to hang themselves if they decide to stray from the path.
      As an attorney with some experience of estate planning, I advise parents to be as fair as possible with their gifts. It’s usually better to teach your children that they have a duty to care for their siblings in times of adversity than it is to favor one over others out of a preconceived notion that he or she likely will have greater need. Of course, this doesn’t apply to a child whose physical or mental limitations, particularly those that are congenital, guarantee that any hope of independence is unwarranted. Yes, life is hard and it’s also unfair; but that’s precisely why we turn to family with the expectation that it’ll provide at least some shelter from the storm. To have that expectation dashed by perceived unfairness from someone entirely unexpected can be mentally devastating.

17. Once again, nuts & bolts.

    The disease is obvious and hence Joe Normie will flock to the polls in November in a vain effort to right the ship by kicking the Ds to the curb. Which is like gulping aspirin to cure your Stage 4 rectal cancer. Simply put, this does not work, it just delays the inevitable surgery. Nothing will change until the environment changes. There has to be a collapse, followed by a fog of chaos, followed a rise of antibodies, followed by an exodus of disease cells, followed by a return of natural fitness selection. The genome is polluted and you cannot cure that with yakking, voting, or hand-wringing.

    If you want to become part of the cure, get to a safe haven, lose weight, get fit, disappear, wait for the fog, and when the time is right, become the bolt from the blue. Jackboots exist and will remain a formidable obstacle. It will take the best of us, operating with innovation and fierce determination to prevail, but that gauntlet is the price of earned evolutionary advancement. It can be no other way.

    • I’m not sure what a bolt from the blue is. Becoming John Rambo is a romantic thought, but I don’t think a “collapse” will happen. Disappearing is no way to live. Let’s hope rational people have some extra resources in case of an emergency, but if the SHTF, we are all going to die.

      For some reason I feel like posts like yours get all us readers placed on watch lists.

      Good hunting!

      • I’m guessing you’re new here, so I will summarize. The Rambo meme came out of your head, not mine; and I have long argued that that archetype is exactly wrong for many reasons. Read up on Medal of Honor recipients for the correct comparison. Second, not becoming incognito is exactly how you get on a list to be rounded up and shipped off to a labor camp. Just ask Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Third, defeatism makes you worthy of dying in a labor camp. Liberty properly belongs to those who will fight for it.

    • The more it changes…
      Human nature stays
      Have been working on the second paragraph stuff ever since I could.
      It’s a never ending herculean task.
      Fingers to the bone. We’ve got the acres the water bullets beans & bandages.
      But time is never on anyone’s side.
      We’re grandparents now. We are accelerating as best we can.
      If & when the really real shtf I don’t expect to see the other side. When you have to fight it don’t always go your way. Just make damn sure it ain’t free for the bastards.
      Goodbye for now y’all & best of luck to ya.

18. Related, interesting poll released today (of course, it is an NBC News poll, so cannot be fully trusted, but maybe they cannot even hide the bad news).

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dark-outlook-dismal-nbc-poll-reveals-most-americans-think-country-going-downhill-and-lost

    Not surprisingly, one thing not broken out in the details (believe me, I went through them) is how this outlook varies (or not) by race. I would love to know if whites have a more dismal outlook for this country as compared to others. They do note that 75% of the respondents to the poll are white, so they have the data, but choose not to share this cut.

    If nothing else, if the overall conclusion is correct, people are and will be more open to alternative politics.

19. Seems the progression may result in something resembling a mash up of three movies: Brazil, Being There, and Idiocracy (maybe Dr. Strangelove too – just for some military hi-jinx)

20. After the chaos of Nero and autocratic blundering of Domitian, Rome got lucky and had some capable emperors who were without sons/heirs. They came upon the convenient and expedient solution of adoption. So we got Trajan, then his nephew Hadrian (who was likely gay in addition to being very capable), Antoninus Pius then Marcus Aurelius, through a series of “adoptions”.

    The Roman elites went along with this expedient because they saw the need to get the most capable people to the top, to avoid chaos and to avoid autocratic, incompetent dynasties. Of course, it only worked for a little while.

    If America has any chance of salvation, we’re going to have to figure out some way of getting better people to the top of the system. The usual idiotic, spoiled children of the Elites can be given token roles in unimportant sinecures, but fresh blood is essential. Otherwise, Zman’s prediction of the next Commodus, or worse yet “Commodia” (Michelle Obama anyone?) is better than even money.

    • One way elites could police their ranks in the past was to send the problems off somewhere to do something harmless. The unstable prince could be sent to a monastery or maybe sent off on crusade. The frivolous son would be placed in a ceremonial role at a charity and the fanatics could be packed off as missionaries. Part of elite over production is that there is no where to send these people.

      I think the most maddening thing about what is happening is there is no obvious point to it. What will be accomplished with a war in Ukraine or even a war with China over Taiwan? What is the upside to having a man in a dress beat females at some sport? It brings to mind the old Simpsons line about post-modernism being weird for the sake of being weird.

      • The Russia/Ukraine situation is stunning. Literally, no one wants what’s going on.

        No one in Europe gives a crap about the Ukraine and most of the European leaders agree with Putin that Russian should have a buffer zone.

        The American public couldn’t find the Ukraine on a map and couldn’t care less about it. They certainly don’t want war with Russia.

        The leaders of the rest of world see this for what it is: America needlessly – and unfairly – poking around in the business of other countries.

        And if that’s not enough, the U.S. will end up looking weak and ineffective when it backs down, which, personally, I find great, but I would assume isn’t the intent of the elite. This whole thing makes Biden look even weaker than he did, which you would think was impossible. He’s either so stupid that he agrees with what these lunatics are doing or he can’t control them.

        The withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad, but this is showing the U.S. to be dangerously stupid. I can only hope that the rest of the world is watching.

        • Oh, they are watching. But something is going on. Putin could take the Ukraine this morning and be mopping up by the time Biden gets his diaper changed. Why the dramatic build up?

          The Iranians raise hob when Americans elect weak leaders. They made Jimmeh Carduh dance while they shot at his feet, and made Obutthole pay for their lunches. They’d have done the same to Clinton but he fired a few Tomahawks at them to sober them up. China has gone suspiciously quiet.

          Something big is up.

        • There are many reasons the regime wants war in Ukraine.

          One that comes to mind is that such a war would enable them to permanently bury all evidence of their grifts.

          Another is that it would give the regime legal cover to impose martial law in the US and start putting people in camps.

          • Another reason-

            The fools in charge can make bank selling US LNG to Europe at eye-watering prices while posturing as greenies for the domestic front.

          • If only Putin’s soldiers could quickly take possession of any and all evidence of Ukranian payouts to Biden, Vindman, et al. and promptly made it public.

        • Obviously somebody wants it. (Perhaps behind the scenes.) The Russia/Ukraine obsession vanished with Trump but has returned with vengeance. Ukraine & Washington DC have a lot in common, both being puppet regimes.

      • FREDO
        Taken care of me. You’re my kid brother and you take care of me. Did you ever think about that — did you ever once think about that. Send FREDO off to do this — send FREDO off to do that! Let FREDO to take care of some Mickey Mouse night club somewhere! Send FREDO to pick somebody up at the airport! I’m your older brother Mike and I was stepped over!

        MICHAEL
        That’s the way Pop wanted it.

        FREDO
        It ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things I’m smart — not like everyone says — not dumb, smart and I want respect!

        Alternatively, in real life, you can see how the Ford family did this, giving the useless son a professional sports franchise to “run” (the Lions) keeping him far away from what Hank the Deuce was running.

      • I know you don’t see ‘j00s in your sandwiches’ but in this case, there pretty much is one in your sandwich.

        Let’s run just the *top* the roster of people fomenting this shall we?

        Victoria Nuland
        Col. Vinman
        Anthony Blinken
        Avril Haines (Director of National Int)
        Ron Klain

        Now figure out what is the common denominator here. You see the problem is there are still too many Europeans in the world. Covid simply did not work fast enough and now that the Chosen People are back at the top of an empire as they were with the early USSR last century; what better way to help this along then grinding Europeans from both continents against Slavs? It is dead white faces all the way around so its a win-win in the largest sense of the word.

        I wish it was more complicated than that but it is not. These people have blood libels that last centuries and they have an axe to grind with both Slavic and European peoples so it is as plain as daylight to me why this fake and gay war is being setup in the way that it is. This worked to GREAT effect last century, why would they not repeat it now that enough time has passed that it is out of the collective memory of gullible White people?

        • Yeah, when I said above that no one wanted trouble with Russia, I meant no one but American Jews.*

          *I don’t think that the Israelis want this either.

          • They repeat the stories from their political history Book, such as the blood libel against King Haman/King Hitler.

            Perhaps we’re seeing a repeat of the book of Kings, Israel at war with Judea.

            This time it would be Tel Aviv against New York/ Brussels,who are setting up Persia to finish off Tel Aviv. They’ll divide control of the oil vassals (until they start to fight over it.)

        • Now, now.

          You know Z-man doesn’t like conspiracies that can;t possibly happen(TM) and anti-semites pointing out how it might not be “emergent fish behavior” given everyone involved is well … .

          Its all a massive coincidence and humans have no planning and volition at all.

          Shame on you for reminding everyone of details.

        • They resurrected spanish flu, might as well resurrect world war. kill Whiteys and profit sheckels off the misery.

      • Revenge on Cossacks, I was at a party several years ago and a Usual Suspect woman blurted out, out of nowhere, “I hate Cossacks.” History, real or imagined, is still alive in their minds.

        Victory Noodleman, Anthony Blinken are both Usual Suspects, as is the president Zelensky. Victoria installed Usual Suspect Yatsenyuk as prime minster in the 2014 takeover and Poroshenko as president, two more Usual Suspects. The cabinet and regional management filled with more of the ilk. Ukraine is a usual suspect colony.

        American-based Usual Suspects can take our money and send it to those usual suspects as graft.

        They hate Russians. Pitting teams of whites against each other to die in bloody and smoking flesh fire. Selling war arms to the US to give to Ukraine. Russia also has negligible debt and vast resources; collateral is the food that debt-money needs to grow. Depriving Russia of the Crimea navel base and giving it to the Usual suspects for their nuke armed subs.

        And more

        • If I were Emperor, I’d impose a 25% tax on all remittances.
          It would piss off all the right people and the enemy would be self identifying.

          What’s not to like?

        • “Ukraine” is another source of crisis to feed their TV and media to put as filler between commercials. . (Everything is always a crisis, yes?)

          It soaks up and directs attention, otherwise we might be talking about our concerns.

          Notice how Syria and Ukraine flip and flop in out of the spotlight. Two poles of a pincher upon the Caucus/Caspian. They already have Azerbaijan and the Kurds on their scorecard.

          They sent our industry over to China. Now their Ukraine scheme and fake Russia Russia Russia is pushing is pushing Russia into Chinese arms.

          Russia is White and Christian, like America nominally is, was. With Russia on our side, we would a northern alliance stretching around the world.

          • Ukraine and Syria are also important to our Middle Eastern friend’s defenders. Funny that. All that focus on those two countries with no concern about what’s best for “our” people’s interests.

      • Perhaps it’s helpful to understand postmodernism as an attack on the logical positivism which arguably served as the foundation for all of western man’s advances: the notion that only those assertions which can be empirically verified— backed-up with demonstrable facts— can be said to be true. From the perspective of logical positivism, if want to make the claim that some proposition is true— say, that this man in a sundress is actually a woman— I’ll need to present verifiable facts to back it up.

        Traditional Western institutions and mores are founded on the assumption— either explicit or implicit— that they represent the best way of conducting human affairs, based on a true understanding of what people are like, and ‘how things are’.

        Asked to defend that understanding, traditionalists will point to human history, and the human nature which history reveals, as providing validation for those particular institutions and ways of doing things: ‘The facts of history back me up: this is how people are, and these are the ways that have been shown to work best at achieving optimal human happiness’.

        Thus the central assertions of postmodernism— that “there’s no such thing as truth”, that all truth-claims are nothing more or less than grabs for power, and that challenging the legitimacy of existing institutions through the process of “deconstructing” them— exposing them as reflections of the ambitions of the ruling class which created them, rather than the embodiment of true, time-tested principles that they claim to be— can be seen as an attempt to subvert the very foundations of Western civilization.

        And if that’s the goal, then any undermining of tradition is good in and of itself.

        It’s a short step from “there’s no such thing as truth” to “there’s no such thing as normal”— and a world where being repulsed or amused by a man in a sundress pretending to be a “trans woman” makes YOU the wierdo.

        “Inclusiveness”, rather than logical examination of the facts, becomes the primary virtue. And at that point— when what you’re asking is not “Is it true?”, but rather, “Is it inclusive?”— then anything goes: society no longer possesses the means to separate truth from falsehood.

        So I’m not sure whether “postmodernist progressives” give a damn about “transgender rights”, so much as they take delight in “deconstructing” the sexual conventions which reflect and embody traditional White European values.

        Seen from that perspective, it matters not a bit that “trans women” are in fact deeply-troubled delusional males; the point of supporting them is that in doing so, traditional notions of sexuality are being “deconstructed” and undermined.

        Traditional ways of being exert a powerful pull on young people; both because they usually do represent a correct understanding of human nature, and because there’s comfort in believing what most people around you believe.

        So seducing young people away from the traditional understanding of human sexuality, can be seen as opening the door to a “deconstruction” of ALL their beliefs, and their blanket rejection of the traditional outlook they grew up with, along with the logical positivism that undergirds it.

        So it hardly matters whether it’s the traditional understanding of sex, or of race, or of history, that’s being attacked and undermined: the goal is the ultimate subversion of the entire logical, fact- and history-based understanding of human life which traditional institutions represent and embody: the world which White men created, and until recently, ruled.

        So far from being wierd for the sake of being wierd, postmodernists are selling wierdness in an attempt to delegitimize the world of traditional beliefs, and to substitute for it a world of their own: where there truly is ‘no such thing as normal’ any more.

        • Post modernism, as you call it, is a direct attack on consciousness, which is why it resonates so well with the NPCs.

          they don’t give a shit about the any foundations of the west, they just want a life without consciousness and the issues that this brings.

          • And speaking of a lack of consciousness:
            they seem oblivious to the fact that their very words are a contradiction in terms: insisting that “there’s no such thing as truth” is itself a truth claim:
            “It’s true that there’s no such thing as truth”.

        • Post Modernism is a tool. A chisel pry bar to insert into culture. The Usual suspects used it to insert themselves into our affairs.

          We Here think of Science as what happens in a test tube. Empirical, and can validated to any degree of validation via repetition and statistics.

          Structuralism / Poststructuralism holds that Science is subject to power relations. It was to be published in a journal to be “True.” In the physical world, Ivermectin has utility in treating the holocoof. But that is not “True” because the media and government controllers say otherwise.

          The Sackler family bought a medial journal to publish articles saying their pills were not additive. They killed hundreds of thousands of us. That’s how it goes.

21. Btw, here’s a fascinating podcast that features a conversation between Steve Sailer and Charles Murray about the causes of the Great Awokening and generally where the country finds itself.

    I haven’t listened to the whole thing but from what I have heard, Murray comes off as willfully (almost insanely) naive. He says himself that he’s “baffled” by what’s happening. Murray comes off like one of the priests at Lindisfarne when the Vikings attacked.

    Sailer, of course, just views everything through the lens of money. It’s all just a grift in his mind. Nothing deeper than that.

    The irony of Murray and Sailer is that they continually point out that because our elites have a huge blind spot – not accepting racial differences – they can’t understand societal outcomes and continue to proscribe ineffective policies; yet, Sailer and Murray suffer from a similar fate.

    Sailer and Murray’s blind spot is not accepting that ethnic loyalty is both natural and good. Because they reject that simple truth, they are continually baffled the direction of society and people’s unwillingness to go along with their colorblind civic nationalism.

    https://ricochet.com/podcast/powerline/a-conversation-with-charles-murray-and-steve-sailer-pt-1/

    • Sorry, meant “prescribe” not proscribe.

    • I don’t think I am going to be able to finish it. Murray comes off as completely clueless, he needs to retire from public life.

      • I gave up at 20 minutes. Sailer starts lecturing and I just start snoring. That other guy? African immigration is driving the black average IQ upwards?!?

        There’s better things to do with my time…

        • I made it to a half hour. Murray was truly oblivious as to the environment on college campuses until he got attacked at Middlebury in 2017. He thinks something caused a drastic shift in 2013 but admits he has no idea what it was. This should be embarrassing to him.

          • Ha, looks like around 20 to 30 minutes is all that we can take. That’s when I had to stop as well.

    • Citizen: That refusal to accept racial/ethnic loyalty is the last hurdle. It’s what sets the self-proclaimed HBD crowd apart from ethnic nationalists. Accepting genetic racial differences is utterly insufficient in understanding the world. Almost no one, confirming such differences and seeing his people come out sub-par, will continue to advocate for policies guaranteed not to benefit his own.

      And that’s where it always breaks down. As you have repeatedly noted here, the vital question is “Who are your people?” I scan the comments at Unz and am rarely inclined to even mock any longer because the source of my mockery is utterly lost on them. If one can seriously claim “They’re trying to divide us” in response to a post about the fatal flaw and failures of conservative ‘inclusion’ (Andrew Joyce at Unz today), then one is not a serious thinker.

      I was having a sincere and as always loving debate with my dearest friend the other evening, because she still clings to the belief that genuinely believing Christians, of whatever nationality, are ultimately her people. Oh, she accepts the Juice question now, and she will even agree with me that loving and accepting another as a Christian does not require intermarriage and the disappearance of one’s people. But she cannot yet face that final hurdle – and I hypothesize the cause is that inherent schism in the Christian understanding of mankind.

      A Nigerian or Han may be your brother in Christian spirituality, but he can never be your biological, blood kin. That is the ‘animal’ nature of mankind which Christianity still struggles to fully accept and integrate. Yes, Christ was both fully God and fully man – it’s why his blood sacrifice was vital, but too many people find that blood thing ‘icky’ so they shy away from it. It’s why so many people are unsettled by the Catholic crucifix as opposed to the simple Christian cross. The image of a man, tortured and suffering, unsettles them. It’s not pretty or comforting, but rather challenging.

      And that is why earlier Christianity is often labeled ‘militant’ Christianity – it remained a fully masculine faith and did not condemn its fighters as innately bad. Rather it baptized them and honored them as “defenders of the Faith.” Feminine Christianity prefers to focus on love and ultimately dying in a state of egalitarian purity of thought rather than martial defense and dying for one’s brother warriors. This is a fundamental clash of world views that cannot be resolved and will not be reconciled by ‘compromise.’ It’s why men must again take charge or all is lost.

      tl;dr: Women ruin everything.

      • To clarify a poorly-worded sentence: The one I am disparaging who claims ‘they’re trying to divide us’ is a typical Unz commenter. Joyce’s post is excellent and on point.

    • Even if Sailer and Murray won’t accept that ethnic loyalty is both natural and good, I’d like to know why they won’t accept that we have to become ethnically loyal at a time when we’re under attack from the other tribes for being White.

    • Sailer started as a mainstream journalist in the 90s, if he was just anonymous writer/blogger he would be more willing to talk about certain subjects, the Derb is the same. they still do good work

      • Yeah, I give Steve a lot of shit, but he has helped our cause a lot and gave up a lot to stick to his guns. He deserve our thanks and respect for that.

        That said, he’s old enough now that he could be more honest. Also, I truly believe that he very much dislikes the idea of whites thinking in ethnic terms and joining the identity politics game. To me, that’s inexcusable.

        He continues to back Citizenism, his form of colorblind civic nationalism without ever noticing that it couldn’t have failed more over the past half century. Everything that Citizenism stands for has gotten worse over that time. In addition, the plight of whites has become dramatically worse.

        That Sailer refuses to acknowledge the failure of his big idea is sad. That Sailer knowingly refuses to acknowledge the biggest questions of our time – should whites join the identity politics game and, if not, how are they supposed to protect themselves – is cowardice, plain and simple.

        I don’t care that he doesn’t agree with me. I care that he knowingly refuses to take his head out of the sand.

22. “Returning to America’s natural divisions” post-Gettysburg is an interesting conundrum. Consider, the people (tribes?) who live in the 2022 empire are radically different.
    There are still English Yankee’s (goodwhites), Cavaliers (badwhites) and black people.
    But where do you fit the Barack Hussein Obama’s/ Sandy Cortezs/ Ilhan Omars and the Indian guys who run Microsoft & Twitter? How about the 3/4 of the white people who are Irish/ German/ Dutch/ Italian/ Polish / ? mongrels whose parents/ grand parents bought into the whole melting pot thing and used to consider themselves “American”?

    • “But where do you fit the Barack Hussein Obama’s/ Sandy Cortezs/ Ilhan Omars and the Indian guys who run Microsoft & Twitter?”

      I don’t know, but wherever you pick, I’m positive a backhoe will help them fit.

    • Mow Noname: You don’t ‘fit’ in the others – that’s why the natural historical divisions will be supplemented by various newer divisions. The Obama/AOC/pajeet divisions will mean return to their countries of origin or the creation of other racial enclaves (if their people are united and martial enough to carve them out once order breaks down). The White ‘mongrels’ who you correctly note bought into the Juice melting pot fallacy are a different story and poignantly illustrate the dangers of masses of differing people thrust together: You create a hybrid people.

      It’s why I always scoff at conservatards who claim Mestizos are White. No, most of them are no ‘whiter’ than Obama, in that they average perhaps 50% European genetics. This varies by locale, for example Mexicans near the border are more European, while others further south are almost entirely Indio, but you get my point. And either way, 50% or even 75% White, they remain mixed. Claiming they are fully White and identify as such means telling them to repudiate their beloved grandma, or great-uncle, or cousin. It’s the same tragedy of the modern hapa writ large. It’s why the women carried off by Vikings who might chance to be rescued would then be torn because they’d born a half-Viking child.

      Blood ties are not simple, black and white things when one is not a simple black or white person. Mixing has consequences. Those mixed Whites who term/termed themselves as merely “American” are, in effect, a new hybridized people. They will either set up separate shop or be accepted and subsumed by other groups of Whites. Ancestry is rather complicated, and further feeds into the primal question of “Who are your people?” Those who accept you and who you will cleave to and fight for.

23. The problem with any form of government that tries to derail the “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” phenomenon is that there’s no force more powerful than love of children and family.

    Whatever system you have, the elite will immediately – and with all their might – attempt to ensure that their children have at the very least a leg up and, preferably, a guaranteed path to elite status. It’s just human nature. And since the elite are in control of the system, the system naturally bends to their will.

    • Which is why yakking, voting, and hand-wringing are useless distractions on the road to remedy. As you so accurately have observed, the elites are not going to “wake up” and change course, because that is against their human nature. This is not a problem that will be fixed with persuasion or psychotherapy. Now connect the dots and be rational. You can only control yourself. That is your resource.

    • Citizen: Perfect truth simply stated. Sailer and others are so wrong when they reduce it to mere money or even power. At heart it’s people (evil, corrupt, twisted people, but people nonetheless) who are determined to ensure the success and primacy of their own progeny. And they will never willingly give that up.

24. Jake Sullivan’s Wikipedia page reads like a satire. One of the highlights:

    “One of Sullivan’s themes in the job is connecting US actions on the world stage to the lives and welfare of ordinary Americans, with the mantra of “a foreign policy for the middle class.”

    Who would know better about what the middle class wants in foreign policy than the son of a Journalism professor who went to Yale and Oxford and has worked in the swamp ever since.

    • The American elite’s viewpoint of working class people falls into two categories.

      Dumb hicks with good hearts who need light direction. (J.D. Vance and Rod Dreher cohort)
      Dumb hicks who are racist, evil, and need to be reeducated or replaced. (your average progressive)

25. The problem of our modern times is the massive overproduction of elites, elites that now have no cohesive mythos of how they should rule outside of punishing the people outside of their circle. The tech brahmins want to snatch power from the historical white ruling class, the Jewish Zionists are flailing wildly as they lose their grasp on power, the banking class refuses to take any hit to their spreadsheet no matter what devastation inflation will inflict, while the ascendant young cohort of radical true believers actually believe the lofty rhetoric of the new woke religion.

    The ruling class was in such disarray they pulled Game of Thrones level shenanigans to clear the path for Biden getting the nomination, with the most unpopular woman in politics as VP.

    As the old white and Jewish power structures wither away in the next twenty years and the ascendant minorities take their place, there’s going to be more solidarity in elite circles, along with rapidly increasing ineptitude and radicalism. The collapse has already happened, and we’re just spectators watching the building crumble to the ground in slow motion.

    The loser, as always, is going to be our children.

    • Yes Chet. Straight out of Peter Turchin’s books. The Romans of yore could send all these folks to distant provinces of the Empire to dissipate tension. We have them all crammed inside the Beltway.

      • And our European forebears sent them off into the empire to be explorers or missionaries.

        Amazing how useful a constantly grinding frontier is.

        • Ah, launch them on exploratory space missions. Flagship of the fleet will be the USS Kornbluth.

26. The worst part (or maybe the best part) is that we haven’t seen these degenerates totally exposed for what they are yet, frankly because enough of the residual social, moral, and literal capital built up by their forebears hasn’t totally been squandered already. We’re getting there, though. Imagine America as a wonderful house with all the amenities, but in the dead of winter and without a heating system. Everyone is shivering under piles of blankets, and breaking the wooden legs off the antique Chippendale chairs just to keep the fire going. If the China-Russia alliance (forced by our establishment) actually topples the dollar, or if something else does it, you’re really going to see how slimy and useless these people are, as the former aristocrats have to move into a small flat and auction off their possessions one by one in order to arrange to pay to smuggle themselves out of a country where they’re hated and blamed for the destruction. They should have saved their card of scapegoating nonelite whites for when they could have actually needed it (or, if they were smart, they would have let Trump have a second term just so that he could be left holding the bag when it all comes down).

    Wealth can paper over a lot of unsavory things about people, and theirs is almost exhausted. In poverty, you either have your virtue and dignity or you have nothing. If these people lead hollow lives filled with self-hatred and ennui now, imagine what it will be like for them when they have no distractions or blandishments. Sure, the elite in corrupt, third-world countries can live lavish lives, but they also have to be vicious (literally and physically) and tough to get or hold power. In a struggle between Nancy Pelosi and Idi Amin, botox-filled flesh is getting fed to the alligators. Maybe America’s future ruler is currently being released from gaol now thanks to Soros-financed prison reform.

27. “Again, Commodus may provide some short term answers. Once he proclaimed himself a living god and renamed the city Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana, it became clear he had to go, so he was assassinated.”

    You mean Russell Crowe didn’t kill him in the Coliseum? Those Weinsteins are such liars!

    In all seriousness, John Adams’ quote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”, is absolutely correct. But, it is true of every form of government. If you do not have a moral grounding and a sense of duty, no country’s government will NOT become an orgy of graft, violence, criminality, and hedonism. And as the saying goes, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”. Apparently, that takes about 3 generations.

    • Russell Crowe did kill him. I saw it on TV.

    • Two naked men strangling each other in a bathhouse during a homosexual liaison would have hit too close to home among the hollywood crowd.

28. Change that expression to, ‘paradise to cesspool in three generations!’

29. This is off topic but what’s going on with the truckers in canada? It seems big but I’m confused about what is the purpose?

    • I so something about it on-line, but I have not followed it. For some reason Canada and America are banning unvaxxed drivers from crossing the border. I have not heard an explanation for why this is happening.

      • Yeah it’s hard to find out too because now the media is reporting as “Truckers protesting bad roads” or something and I know that’s not true.

      • Its obviously to create so many shortages that (for Canada) you will need Govt rationing, that miraculously will be available as a system they somehow already had setup as an extension of the vex pass.

        • What? How is that helpful?

          • I should have clarified I mean the reason the vex requirements are in place is to create the ration system.

            The truck protest is just to try and stop them mandating the vex.

          • It helps the Canadian government obnoxiously arrest a couple, thus prompting the sheeple to fall in line for their boosters?

    • Here is link to a somewhat reliable source on the protest, it’s about the COVID restrictions

      https://bc.ctvnews.ca/truck-convoy-leaves-metro-vancouver-en-route-to-ottawa-vaccine-mandate-protest-1.5751552

    • I was pessimistic about the protest last week. I’ve seen too many of this kind of thing where a couple hundred Boomers show up, honk for a couple hours then go home.

      I’m now cautiously optimistic. Redditors are freaking out, and they seem very nervous on Twitter. The “Canadian Trucker Association” (fake and gay organization) denounced the protests. The Punjabi scab labourers organized a fake driver’s protest for “road conditions” – this was reported on by the media as the trucker strike. https://globalnews.ca/news/8531929/truckers-rally-bc-road-safety/ .

      People are excited and people are joining the convoy as supporters, not just truckers. Some churches are joining up too. Shelves are looking bare and food prices are through the roof. Experts are telling us not to panic, though. There were enormous protests in major cities this past weekend, no media coverage. People are now openly saying “bad things”.

      We’ll see what happens. Of course I’m expecting a let down, but, if there was one event that I could on something bigger happening, it would be this one.

      • Perhaps truckers will be the vanguard of the Revolution and we’ll have a new elite of owner-operators.

      • Punjabi truck drivers are the worst on the planet..

      • B125: This was linked at Western Rifle Shooters, and seems to be an interesting summary and commentary on the situation:

        https://bittercenturion.blogspot.com/2022/01/disconnect.html

30. The problem with trying to analyze stuff like this historically is that event though you see Caligula and Nero as the nadir or Roman madness there has never been an almost majority female hierarchy as we have now.

    Given the inherent madness (especially now) of women we have an endless series of exhibitionistic elite and outright mental cases in lots of authority positions, not just in a few.

    You can’t solve this with a couple of well timed short swords. Its going to take a roll back of pretty much all the ideas of universal sufferage for the last 100 years to sort this shit out, and that is not happening.

    Its probably better using the mass Bronze age collpase era as a closer analogy than the slow grind out of the Roman republic.

    • Women were pretty involved in Roman imperial succession, but behind the scenes. Trajan’s wife engineered the ascent of Hadrian, for example. However, I take your point that the feminization of our system has accelerated the deterioration.

      • “Behind the scenes” is where the shoe pinches. Women are inherently performative, the evolutionary skill that allows them to find a mate. A strong society can suffer the occasional off-stage machinations of a woman; what it can’t allow, however, is a feminized society where women are center stage and even the men – at the expense of doing the heavy lifting – spend their time posturing.

    • Yeah – it’s this idea that goes back at least as far as the English Civil Wars, where one of the surprise demands was universal male suffrage. Even some Roundheads were amazed, because the whole idea is that you can’t expect beggars to have skin in the game.

      So, there’s this whole question about who should have the franchise that extends back centuries.

    • “The problem with trying to analyze stuff like this historically is that event though you see Caligula and Nero as the nadir or Roman madness there has never been an almost majority female hierarchy as we have now.”

      Yep, a much deeper pool of neuroticism and competitive yet solipsistic caring for others. Oh, all this caring by the elites and particularly pre/active/post menstruating elites. Oh my, it will be the death of me.

31. RE: Taki post, I wonder how much of Sinema’s act is to play up to AZ voters specifically. I’m a relatively new transplant, so I never understood how they could tolerate these “maverick” types like McCain and Flake, but the few I’ve talked to about it really like this kind of non-partisan act.

    • People who follow Arizona politics tell me she is very good at picking her fights. She opposed gun grabbing, for example, when her party was 100% into it. Since the majority in the state opposes gun grabbing, she won a lot of friends in the other party with her opposition, even though nit pissed off her party.

      I think what people like Sinema, Manchin, Romney, Graham and so on know is that there is no real punishment for bucking the party, so they make a career of it. Others toe the party line because they want to. In many cases, it is simply the easy thing to do so this appeals to the lazy pols.

      • I read your post at Taki about Sinema first and this scene from Gladiator came to mind. Then I come here and your are referencing Commodus.
        “Win the crowd…”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMKOk6ssCr0

      • And that’s the terrifying thing. I call our current madness the Age of Why Bother? So much of “social capital” takes so little to maintain — if the two wings of the Uniparty had any kind of internal discipline, they could keep shearing the sheep that is the public pretty much forever. But because they lack discipline and leadership, everyone who can is asking themselves “Why bother”?

        All the Swamp’s little platoons are asking themselves that. We’ve seen the CDC achieve revolutionary class consciousness in real time. Why bother going through the motions re: Congress? Why not order an eviction moratorium on their own authority? (I was there, and I still can’t believe that happened). Any kind of party leadership at all would’ve had Fauci’s legs broken for that, but instead they let the courts flip a coin to figure it out. The Media is totally ignoring Brandon now, and just recently the German foreign minister told him to take a hike — a legit military crisis on Europe’s border, and the President of the US isn’t invited to the discussions. Say what?

        I guess that’s how we’ll know the time is at hand — when someone in the Uniparty tells AOC to stay “socially distanced” from her phone or her thumbs will be broken, that’s the Septimius Severus of the new millennium.

        • As Kunstler has put it for a while, “…we live in an age where everything goes and nothing matters.”

      • If one assumes Sinema is bright, she may be playing some 3D-chess. As noted, she has a reputation for bucking the party and playing into to the local politics at hand. Censored or not, she has a track record of success and seems well placed to continue in her job given the change in AZ demographics. This State is blue. Redistricting may put this off for a bit, but turning it is.

        However, she has now set herself up to be a Bernie Sanders of sorts and could go Independent given her record. I suspect she would win easily as there is a sizable non-affiliated voter base here and now lots of disgruntled Rep’s and Dem’s who’d love to send a protest vote.

        Now aside from an easy re-election, what does being known as an Independent, maverick, lesbian, Senator get her? Well, if things continue as they are, i.e., the increasingly polarized Rep’s and the Dem’s battle it out to the disgust of the masses, perhaps a Presidential run as an alternative candidate?

        Hell, If Trump could be elected, nothing is impossible.

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