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In the 18th century, Right and Left as political designations were limited to just one place and revolved around the old order. We get these terms from the French Revolution, where the defenders of the crown sat to the right of the president in the National Constitutive Assembly, while the opponents were on the left. There is also the tradition in the West of the honored guest being seated to the right of the host, who is usually the head of the family.
Into the 19th century this right-left arrangement evolved as the politics of the West evolved, often reflecting the nature of the people. The French Right lost its aristocratic flavor while the German Right embraced it. In Britain, the aristocracy was in decline politically, but the Right was the defender of empire and the order that was required to maintain the empire. In America, there was never an order to defend, so this dichotomy did not arrive until much later.
The point is that the definition of Right and Left has evolved. Since the middle of the last century, the Right has been assigned the job of defending the status quo, while the Left has been assigned the role of embracing change. One of the weird results of this arrangement is that both sides have been drained of ideology. The Right just opposes the Left if it pays well. The Left embraces one deranged fad after another, just so they have a way to organize a street mob.
An example of the irrationality of the two sides is this weird story about the far-left governor of Colorado criticizing the moderate governor of Florida. The far-left guy is calling the middle-of-the-road guy a socialist because he signed off on a bill that stripped special privileges for a multinational corporation. In reality, the far-left guy is signaling his support for child rape, but he cannot be that explicit, so he used a term he thinks would sting the guy he considers right-wing.
Right there we see the bankruptcy of language. Ideologically, government taking a neutral stance on business is the opposite of socialism. On the other hand, it is explicitly not right-wing, as the Right has always viewed economics as a means to an end, not an object of worship. The Right wants stability, so the disruptions of capitalism need to be minimized by the state. The moves by DeSantis are right-wing in that he is defending the family and their absolute right to protect their children.
Of course, there is no in left-wing ideology that says child molesters must have easy access to children. The Jacobins were not pro-pederasty. The Marxists were quite prudish about sex in general. The American Left had its sexual liberation phase, but that was always limited to feminism. The truth is, Progressives have always lived like white nationalist with Victorian sensibilities. The only thing left-wing about defending the groomers is that it is anti-establishment.
The fact is, America, and maybe the West in general, has entered a post-ideological phase in which there is no logic behind the old labels. What passes for radicalism is nothing more than bourgeois neuroticism. There remains a vague sense of a promised land after the struggle, but that is just a carryover from the past. They never bother to describe what comes after the revolution. No one even bothers to ask them to explain the point of their agitations. There is no point.
The other side is just as lost. It is trite to say it now, but conservatives have conserved nothing and they have no desire to conserve anything. Of course, the reason they have no desire to conserve anything is there is nothing left to conserve. It goes beyond the practical, however, as you see in the National Review post. The point of politics is to shape public morality. Politics is about deciding right and wrong. If your politics leads you to abandon that debate, then you have no reason to exist.
Politics in America have become unmoored from reason. The Left is simply in favor of chaos for the sake of chaos. Post-Marx culturalism promised a new era for mankind if they seized control of the centers of cultural production. Instead, they got what the old Marxists feared came after capitalism. That is a society devoid of morality and dominated by transactionalism. The end of the cult-Marx rainbow is sterile materialism and pointless consumerism.
In such an age there is no place for a defense of order, so there is no reason for the old-style conservatism to exist. Why would any sane person want to defend this order against the violence of the Left? This is the age of post-Marx culturalism, so if they are unhappy with their creation, let them destroy it. Maybe what comes next is the chance to build anew. In other words, the alternative to the modern Left is not conservatism but culture jamming and accelerationism.
Where we find ourselves is beyond the maps of the known world. Like the first ships that went over the horizon, the old rules and lessons of Western politics are not much of a guide in navigating the present. Like the basics of sailing, the basics of politics remain the same, but the purpose is what demands the reimagination of the effort. To continue the analogy, we have not reached the new world, but we can no longer make out the old world either. We are in the great political dead space.
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I give your brillignat observations a glowing recommendation!
this is for scott spence below.
The unnamed “far-left governor” featured in this post is named Jared Polis Schulz, scion of the Schulz family of book and greeting card dynasty, Blue Mountain Arts. He dropped the patrilineal surname in favor of his mother’s maiden name (whether because he was afraid it betrayed his Jewish heritage or, more likely, he envied his father for being married to the woman he, Jared wanted to bed and wed, viz., his mommy. Hello, Oedipus.) As he aged, our “far left governor” became more outre, always seeking revenge on his father; homosexuality, out-and-flaming variety, left-wing politics, the whole schmegeggy. He found a home in left-wing, i.e., Democrat Party politics and advanced through the ranks, alway seeking and being elected to office in the comfortable confines of predominantly progressive Democrat precincts. His most recent forays into epating le bourgeoisie include support for pederasty in schools in the name of ,,, what, exactly? Democracy? Equality? Diversity? Actually, his interest in the youth of the nation is probably grounded in his very actively homosexual lifestyle. The on-line homosexual fanzine Queerty named Polis one of the Pride50 “trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people.” Like most similarly inclined degenerates, he secretly–and sometimes noy-so-secretly–abhors “straight” people and their normal lifestyle and wants nothing more than their destruction or, if he can’t outright get that, their subjugation. That he and his ilk have been allowed to demand a place in our society, and largely succeeded in getting one at the head of the table speaks volumes for the state of affairs in which we now find ourselves. These societal ltermites have steadily chewed through much of our national foundation to the point that it is only a matter of time before the edifice collapses. The only good thing about the collapse is that it will be on their heads, but unfortunately, also upon the heads of our progeny.
Arsenal of Democracy breaking down as Raytheon CEO predicts delays in Stinger production:
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/stinger-missile-production-hit-delays-raytheon-ceo-warns
His comments about component availability are spot on.
In my own space I’ve been seeing a ramp in waivers/requests to use substitute parts over the past month or two.
“The Right just opposes the Left if it pays well. The Left embraces one deranged fad after another, just so they have a way to organize a street mob.”
Place that one on the Mount Rushmore of Z quotes
A good essay! I’m not sure it adds much, but I start by stating the obvious: It is the radical (the liberal, the reformer) who challenges the status quo, the established order. The change may be positive, negative or undecided. The reformer himself may succeed or fail, be lauded or punished or just ignored. What happens, though, when the agitation for change is not just a political or economic impossibility, rather a plain old impossibility. The usurper well grounded in reality can commandeer the Golden Goose. He now controls the means of production, but it’ll only produce on egg per day. A rational thief will be satisfied with that, as he knows that is a limit set by reality (play along with me; our pretend world has gold-laying birds, OK?) Problem: Enter the radical revolutionary not well versed in reality. He seizes the Goose in the name of the People, and decrees the goose shall produce two, then ten eggs per day. When she can’t he cuts her open to find out what the blockage is.
Of course, the above fable is just that — a story. But here’s my point: Our culture, perhaps the whole world, may be in one of those times in history — relatively rare — where nihilism is on the ascent. We’ve had the term “postmodern” in use for many years. It means more or less, the disregard for old standards. Well, nihilism is that applied to politics, society, virtually everything, the total rejection of all values. Examples abound. Look at at our “justice” system and what is — and isn’t — penalized any more. Medical science? Look no further than the mRNA “vaccines” — an untried technology approved in the name of emergency, virtually all traditional safeguards and standards sidestepped, hints of fraud, enriching and empowering a relative few at scant realized benefit to hundreds of millions, with unknown long term costs. Did you know that a person can select his sex? Men can get pregnant? Apple now includes a “pregnant man” icon with your Iphone. Just one more step in normalizing unreality — or at least the propaganda angle.
How often does the official narrative change, at times openly contradicting what was said just before? It doesn’t matter whether it’s some new virus in China, or a war in Ukraine. It’s as though the perveyors of media aren’t even trying to tell a coherent story — it’s more “stream of consciousness” as if to narrate some epic tale that is being written in real time.
Nihilism is ultimately a battle against reality. If life is meaningless, then anything goes. Eventually no left nor right wing, just a pile of bloody corpses and, perhaps, a few survivors picking through the wreckage and with luck, starting over again.
Ben: Very well said.
I’m a child of the 80s. Progs are my establishment. Politics has always been a war of wills in my experience, and one side lacks the will, periodic teases aside. Nothing to lose, speaking politically. It’s a strange reality having known America well enough to know I was being robbed of something, but not enough to feel the loss. Not born broken-spirited, but not knowing exactly what to fight for, either. It’s not even a matter of vengeance but of making room for yourself in a society that wants you ended. The idea of building anew speaks to me. I wouldn’t know how else it could be.
Paintersforms: Well said. Poignant. Ultimately tragic.
Z-man, I think you are quite wrong on this one.
Making schools and Disney safe for Child Molesters is part of the Left’s coalition politics. It is a central demand by gays and lesbians: White kids belong to them, not their parents. Terry McAuliffe said it best, that parents have no role in raising their children, only the STATE does. A family, after all, is a single black mother with one or more different kids, each by different fathers. So of course this is part of the Left’s demand. White women like that Disney exec bragging on her kids, one trans and the other gay or something, are also a key part of the constituency, and must be made happy.
As far as the future, the Left has been very clear on that. The Great Reset: White people abolished, a vast seething sea of non-White humanity in pods, watching rich black actors mime Regency dramas, eating bugs and recycling each other for the planet while a few big shots jet around to Majorca or New Zealand. They shout this from the Davos rooftops, so its pretty hard to miss.
And right on schedule, Biden says that kids when in the classroom belong to the teachers. That they are not other people’s children but the teachers. State ownership of children. A key demand of gays and lesbians.
The grift isn’t selling merch, it’s trying to convince folks that the Disney corporation is raping children without anything credible to back that up. Ironic how the only organizations ever caught doing this are those that support rightwing causes like the Boy Scouts or the Church.
Cool story bro…
OT: this could be something, or it could be nothing. evidently kamala is taking a covid medication that is indicated for high risk patients. taking her out via the coof would definitely be the first step to operation remove mr potatus head.
Kamala ho hasn’t died from an STD yet, she’s obviously immortal.
It’s her and Maxine Waters’ turn to perform the cult liturgy for their members.
Zman, i think that what would really show you had made it to the “bigs”, is a sidekick; like Ed McMahon was for Johnny Carson.
Maybe he could hire David French. Jonah Goldberg? Kevin Williamson?
hmmm, wiliamson might be decent, especially if zman is willing to slap him around a couple of times each show.
“The point of politics is to shape public morality. Politics is about deciding right and wrong.”
No. Religion, not politics, is about deciding right and wrong and shaping public morality.
Politics is about fighting the people, the enemy, violating public morality and smashing up our notion of right and wrong.
Because “there is no politics without an enemy.”
Neither the Left nor the Right wants to face the world that their immigration policies and their undermining of European culture will create.
Hell, even the non-whites don’t want that world. They just want a bigger slice of the pie that once existed.
Can’t move forward. Can’t move backward. Except nature doesn’t work that way. Sooner or later, nature always wins.
“The truth is, Progressives have always lived like white nationalist with Victorian sensibilities. The only thing left-wing about defending the groomers is that it is anti-establishment.”
Bingo. Except for a handful of useful idiots, the Left lives and thinks exactly like the Right (since the Right is common sense), but promotes its bizarre notions just to poke normal people in the eye and signal their superiority. It’s all for show. Even the “socialism” back in the day was just about their distaste for those lower class “merchants” and “businessmen.” They never actually wanted to live under socialism (again, except for a few useful idiots like Brecht). They were happy to stay in the West (“the belly of the beast”) rather than move to a socialist paradise; same with immigration, building homeless shelters, giving needles to drug addicts, etc., while they stay in their de facto Whitopias (e.g. Bernie in Vermont).
The Frankfurt Schoolers were German Jews who had a full scale German classical education, but hated their wealthy merchant fathers who made it possible, so they glommed onto “Marxism” to stick it to dad. Adorno hated jazz, Horkheimer loved Schopenhauer, they were more cultured than Americans, but officially it was “Authoritarian personality” and “critical theory” and “one dimensional man” etc. All just “chin music,” as the Yids would say.
A good promotional catchphrase for the merchandise would be: “ It’s really quite remarkable “. In re today’s article that last sentence’s intellectual and emotional impact approaches that of high-quality poetry. When is that book coming out?
If were suggesting catch phrases, I vote for “putting that aside”.
How about “10% for the Z-Guy”? Or, pull a Lampoon and put a picture of a cute dog with a gun to its head. “Buy my stuff or the dog gets it!”
don’t use a dog, use whiskey.
Also, if I may, it seems the recurring theme of the merchandise shop suggestion is more personality. Quips, catchphrases, and other personal idiosyncrasies help push the personality that make people enjoy your product. You may rejoinder, “But I have little personality,” but that is not fair. You are dry (like a fine cabernet). The Z alone is too bland; make a product that reflects that dry and wry side of you – Xirl Scientist, for example.
claim an endorsement from the Xirl Science Council
Perhaps using “Lagos on The Chesapeake” could lead to a joint venture with the Baltimore Tourism Association..
After all:
“Baltimore Tourist Attractions – Travel Channel
http://www.travelchannel.com/destinations/us/md/baltimore/photos/b...
Baltimore’s No. 1 tourist attraction? The world-famous National Aquarium, which sees over 1.6 visitors per year. With more than 16,000 creatures”
Perhaps they might make the magical mark of 2 whole visitors next year.
Nice post. I again push Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” as an excellent treatise on your point regards words signaling nothing; 1984 is this action in process. This loss of meaning also allows the constant substitution of values in a subjective tyranny – one plus one = whatever ‘they’ say. The Left can adopt any morality and dismiss it as a hermit crab dismisses a shell when a new one comes along because the stability of the code is important, not the meaning.
You mean like refusing to pay for the gas you have consumed is somehow now not stealing, but blackmail?
See how easy it is to change the language.
WRT Merch:
One of your pithier sayings would jazz it up a bit.
Such as:
Z
This will not end well.
“Where talmudic parsing intersects with common sense!”
I would love this printed on a tie.
What is leftwing–postmodernist leftwing, to be more precise–about defending groomers and every other form of perversion and deviance, is that it is an attack upon the norms of white civilization. When innocent children are no longer sacrosanct and their parents can no longer protect them from evil predators, civilization has been effectively replaced by hellish savagery. And the children, preyed upon and abused wantonly, will become demonic predators themselves upon reaching adulthood.
What we are dealing with are modern Carthagenians updated by Michel Foucault.
Well, it even goes back to the nihilism of Sade. It’s just an intellectual wrecking ball.
Foucault was an admirer of Sade, BTW. Shocking, I know.
the Marquis or the singer?
You’re a smooth operator
Looks like Russia already has you beat on the Z merchandise, could commission a mascot to get around this current Z hysteria 😉 . You plug minter and richter designs, will they let you incorporate their designs / patterns into your merch perhaps, because that stuff is pretty nice.
“There remains a vague sense of a promised land after the struggle, but that is just a carryover from the past. They never bother to describe what comes after the revolution.”
We Lefties (I’ve been kicked but but still have my registration) have been describing, in detail, what comes after: a more rural, deracinated, riverrine, village-style economy and way of life, much poorer than today with most folks having no acess to the grid, heat with wood or turving, motorized transport mostly a thing of the past. Today’s medical care system, gone. It’s horses and buggies and shelter built from scrap materials. Only the preppers pay us any mind.
The lefties I know wouldn’t last a month in that environment. So what lefties yearn for is a world without lefties? Sounds lunatic enough for that crowd.
They yearn for the Hollywood version of that. All idyllic sunny 70-degree days, the crops are always ripe and ready for harvest, the wood is always chopped and split. Nobody ever has a wound go septic from lack of simple antibiotics. If the village has a problem it can be resolved in 44 minutes and everyone hugs at the end.
and negroes are always happy and singing
Zippedy doo-da/
Zippedy day/
My, oh my, what a wonderful day!
Vizzini: Green Acres crossed with The Beverly Hillbillies.
The unspoken part of that ideal is that you have to exterminate 90% of the world’s population to make it sustainable. And leftists are the last people you want deciding who gets to exist in the future.
The teeming hordes of proletariat are fed by industrialized farming, and having 7 billion people heat their homes with wood and cow shit would produce ruinous amounts of air pollution.
Prior to the industrial revolution humanity was at its Malthusian cap of about half a billion people.
Ah, that’s where the magic 500,000,000 figures comes from? Certainly plausible, and explains why it was chosen to be chiseled onto the Georgia Guidestones.
You are perfectly describing the Green New Deal…You will live in the 17th century and be happy! Or else….
“There remains a vague sense of a promised land after the struggle, but that is just a carryover from the past. They never bother to describe what comes after the revolution. No one even bothers to ask them to explain the point of their agitations. There is no point.”
Of course there is a point! Control! Again, the seeming illogical ravings of the foot soldiers is not the strategy of the General Staff. By promoting chaos and goals that have nothing to do with human nature or reality, TPTB induce insecurity into the populace. The majority of Karens, soy boys, and elderly will look to these same demons to solve the problem the demons have created. The logical thing to do in the current situation is for the millions of armed productive people to take back their localities and stop feeding the beasts/Beast in the large urban areas. This will not happen because too many of the internet paper tigers clamoring to “do something” will not support the people that will do so. As always, Western Man will not revolt as long as their bellies are full and they can watch sports ball on the one-eyed-God. Which is why I do not understand why TPTB are destroying food processing plants, supply chains, and attempting to return to a “green” pre-industrial economy. I have to assume it is keep internal wars simmering to promote more insecurity and mental instability in the populace.
or there are multiple factions battling it out.
“Which is why I do not understand why TPTB are destroying food processing plants, supply chains, and attempting to return to a “green” pre-industrial economy.”
I’ve never bought into the idea that “they” want civil strife between “us” and [fill in the blank] b/c, as in all wars, it cannot be controlled.
What they *can* control, though, is the production and transportation/delivery of food. And it’s a much more direct–and economical–means of killing an entire population.
It costs less to do nothing than to do something. It is easier to do nothing than to do something. It is easier and cheaper to destroy than to build.
Just remove the food supply and forget messy civil wars, which simply can *not* be controlled or even predicted.
And a hungry population is a docile population. But a population engaged in war–*especially* civil war–is utterly unpredictable, let alone controllable.
I think that’s what we are watching. It’s what Stalin did to the Ukraine.
We are all Kulaks now.
“We are all Kulaks now.”
Pretty much. And as a reminder, the Bolshies way before Stalin did his thing had raided outlying food supplies to feed the cities, and first did so less than two years after the 1917 revolution. This is the direction our tranny Reds want to go. It appears they are too inept and weak to pull it off but the same was thought of the early commies to a lesser extent. Also, urban areas in the United States have much more exposed infrastructure (or even infrastructure, compared to its predecessor).
Infant: This is getting a bit spooky. After discussing this precise subject with my husband the other night, he concluded with almost your exact words: “And we’re the kulaks now.”
American liberals are about telling a little brown girl that no one will hurt her.
American conservatives are about telling a little brown girl that she can start a business.
That’s about the only substance the two parties have anymore.
Marco:
Telling a little brown girl that no one will hurt her is a lie. How many brown people get shot up in Chicago, Detroit, LA, NYC, and Philly every day?
Telling a little brown girl that she MAY start a business is not the same as telling her that she CAN start a business.
“Telling a little brown girl that she MAY start a business is not the same as telling her that she CAN start a business.”
It is in Clown World today! After all, it would only be the “systemic racism” of the “White Male Patriarchy” that would/could stop a vibrant POC from being successful. Although, I’m not sure why anyone would believe this given the thousands of years brown girls didn’t do squat before they ever came in contact with “racism” and White people. Maybe they’re just confused?
“Maybe they’re just confused?”
Or maybe they’re just little brown girls.
It’s hard to tell the diff most of the time.
Anonymous White Male: The bigotry of softer expectations. Remember, family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.
No. American “liberals” are all about telling a little brown girl that the Blue-eyed Ice Devils want to hurt her very, very badly.
There’s only 1 party, the small hat Termite party. They print the money, pimp out politicians and pump out the fuckin news.
We’ve been sailing in this part of the ocean for 20-30 years now. Despite the big news events of the day, from 9/11 to Covid, we’ve been in the doldrums. The dry, eerily calm horse attitudes of the late boomer nesting period. I’m pretty sure we’re almost out of them, but I will have lived about 25% to 30% of my life in this era. A sad, petty, gray era, where the olds locked down the system for themselves and anyone younger than 50 just had to put their shoulder to the wheel to scratch a living together. A lot of them didn’t and just dropped out or became vagrant drug addicts.
This will all be flipped on its head, as the most valuable asset of the next 25 years will be youth. Sadly, someone in middle age won’t even have that. All middle aged people will have is the satisfaction of watching old coots lose their nest eggs for which they sold out the western world. The fist shaking and gnashing of teeth will be something as they watch all the Lululemon stock in their brokerage accounts vaporize. They will have to sell their homes to cover their losses on overpriced yoga pants, and then spend their last 15 years or so “bootstrapping it” as they liked to tell the kids. They’ll still watch Hannity though.
The boomer-hate is strong in this one
“The boomer-hate is strong in this one.”
Yep. It smacks of Boomer Derangement Syndrome.
More contempt than hate. And quite justified.
Old boomer coots destroyed this country and blamed it on their parents. Truly the worst generation.
Your narrative is so off on this one and resentment skews your judgement.
ask him to point to the doll where the bad man touched him.
Is he a boomer? If so, he can get his black granddaughter to do it for him. Also, make sure the doll is race neutral because boomers “don’t see race.” The back of the doll should also be stamped with a Made In China label because that’s where they shipped all the doll-making plants.
dude, i had to live through the 70’s *and* this shit fest.
George H. W. Bush was not a boomer. Just sayin’.
The bad guys have chosen a more useful binary than left vs. right: Our Democracy vs. White Supremacy.
It will become law this week with H.R.350, the “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022,” which officializes the turn of the whole anti-terrorism machine inward, orders denazification purges of the military and law enforcement, etc.
Most notably, it borrows its authority from a Times editorial.
Methinks the regime is seriously overestimating the number of PC bros they will have available to lead this effort.
Look at the Ukraine: Jews are supporting actual real nazis that have the swastika tats to prove it. The moral and ethical high ground is literally held by a Russian mob boss.
I wonder if DeSantis isn’t signaling the beginning of a counterrevolution?
“Jews are supporting actual real nazis …”
Jews are EMPLOYING actual real nazis. Kolomoisky (among others) bankrolled their movement including developing military capability in exchange for their suppression of ethnic Russian nationalism in the east where he had (heh) massive business investments. Neither Kolomoisky nor any of his internationalist fellow travelers have any problem with getting one band of nationalists to kill another band of nationalists as long as the money keep rolling in.
It will be interesting to see what the war crimes tribunal situation looks like after the smoke clears. I expect INTERPOL warrants which won’t be honored, furthering delegitimization of GAE institutions.
“I wonder if DeSantis isn’t signaling the beginning of a counterrevolution?”
It is by no means just Desantis. There are numerous governors who have refused to “go along,” but Desantis has gotten all the press.
We are just about to the point at which we are going to see what our governors and general assemblies are made of.
And ourselves.
We have been too affluent for too long and have become way too soft as a people. Having eliminated all forms of real hardship and existential threat has reduced us to weak-limbed whiners when the going get tough. Even in battle, we push buttons now rather than swing a long sword, or perhaps pull a trigger with a single finger. And even then, aiming is automated and you are not even tasked with taking into account windage. In short, we are morphing into parasitic blobs of organic squish rather than lean and swift hunters like our ancient ancestors. And this has got to change soon.
The disease cells must go. We can no longer pretend that a cavalry is coming over the hill to save us or that voting harder will bring forth a new messiah. Those of us who still possess a swinging pair will need to become antibodies in the near future. It can be no other way.
Please do let us know how your bolt from the blue goes!
Not conservatism (for the reasons stated), but reaction. It getting to the starting line requires a little accelerationsim, then accelerate.
“It getting to the starting line requires a little accelerationsim, then accelerate.”
Revanchism!
Dear Zman,
The Zman t-shirt cured my psoriasis! Also, my 102-year-old grandmother has been drinking only out of her Zman mug and is still alive at 102 years of age, so I think this is strong evidence that drinking from the Zman mug grants immortality!*
Regards,
Vizzini
*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Zman products are not intended as a treatment for any condition. Please see your certified homeopathic witch doctor for medical advice.
If the mugs save just one 102 year old grandma’s life then we must force everyone to purchase them, or lock them in their homes and chase them from employment until they comply.
As we all know her mug will not work, unless everyone has one.
Bless you for caring about my grandma’s life. She’s so young, it would be a tragedy if her life were cut short by mug-denying morons. It would be literally murder.
MY TV and FB followers say its the moral thing to do.
I have already injected a poison into all 10 of my children and restricted their oxygen supply and social development to stunt their brain growth for the rest of their life so she may survive another few days.
What good independent person I am.
“What good independent person I am.”
Not to mention clear-headed!
After the Great Patriotic War was over in 1945, Triumphalism took over. And it gathered itself up in many different forms: politics, civic nationalism, corporatism, religious activities, sports, education…in almost all spheres of life. Probably, it was most noticeable in the entertainment media, where the greatest fantasizing could take place. The great liberal victory could now express itself unchecked in limitless ways. The fuel of this Post War Triumphalism was bound to burn itself out in all of the spheres of life where it had provided the primary energy. And it did. Radical egalitarianism burned out with CRT. Sexual liberation burned itself out with porn and mental illness. Patriotism burned itself out with endless wars. Civic pride burned itself out in modern architectural hellscapes and drug addiction. Civil rights burned itself out in inner-city decay. Consumerism burned itself out with a surfeit of choice. Education burned itself out on the conceit that everyone could be educated.
In the end, we have pushed ourselves to the farthest point in which we imagine we can be distanced from Hitler’s National Socialism. We have reached the end of the limb on the topmost branch of the tree of Post-War Triumphalism. And here we sit…waiting for lightning to strike. It’s a brittle position to be in.
“It’s a brittle position to be in.”
Well said! Truly a first-rate comment.
We might be tensely waiting for lightning to strike the branch but much of the left is like the meme of the man sitting on the branch, sawing away where it leaves the trunk, oblivious to what comes next.
A good analysis of our post war progressivism
That’s the great thing about nihilism. When it burns itself out, there is nothing left. 🙂
not sure if this is on-topic or not. as mentioned already (in comments) democracy’s fatal flaw is universal voting rights lead inevitably to collapse of the society. there seems to be an innate impulse in people to allow everyone to vote for “fairness” sake. one way to circumvent this, i think, is to do a form of profit sharing, whereby every voter/citizen gets an equal share of the country’s annual revenue. this would cause people to want to minimize the number of such shares, rather than expand them.
under this scheme, only voters could work for the government (at any level) but every voter would *have* to work for the government; i.e. all govt work is paid for from this shared revenue, and would be limited to 5% or so of available work time.
native tribes actively sought to shrink their membership roles once they started generating revenue from their reservations. that is the dynamic the above scheme would be tapping into. it also addresses the problem of govt being run by a seperate, parasitical class.
It seems like a more practical solution is simply passing a law establishing an Election Day that runs from 7am to 7pm on the first Tuesday in November, which bars judges from extending the hours, which eliminates mail in voting, which requires photo ID, and which bars the practice of provisional balloting (don’t allow people not registered in a precinct to vote anyway). All electronic voting records with full HD ballot scans are public property and all machines are subject to a full audit by any citizen.
Take away the convenience of voting, and the voting % drops.
Universal voting is a huge problem because stupid lazy people can still vote, and it’s too easy to defraud.
Nobody in power would allow the above to happen, because it defeats their purpose.
I tend to agree, but you would leave out those willing to vote, but not willing to take their place alongside productive citizens. To wit, those living off of the public teat. There are many that are all too happy to vote extra burdens on their fellow citizens that directly go to their own benefit.
I’ve long said that voting should be reserved to those who pay more in taxes than they receive in welfare benefits or government pay with the exception of active duty military.
That would take many retirees out of the voting pool, welfare recipients, and government employees/contractors.
That wouldn’t fly either, but only people with skin in the game should be allowed to vote.
Sounds remarkably like an updated version of “wealthy White landowners.” Now, where have I heard that concept before??? 😀
The Founders knew what they were doing when they limited the franchise.
“The Founders knew what they were doing when they limited the franchise.”
And citizenship. Check out the first naturalization laws.
“The Marxists were quite prudish about sex in general.”
Tangential to your post, I realize, but it’s kinda funny that in the fullness of time, this will come to be seen as the real reason Western intellectuals abandoned the Soviet Union. They could live with pretty much everything else Stalin did. Cutting a deal with Mustache Guy? Ok. Then turning around and killing more special folks than Mustache Guy himself? Ok. Wars of conquest and all the rest? Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, comrade.
But they will never, ever forgive him for telling the Alexandra Kollontai types to shut up and get back in the kitchen.
Or for defeating Trotsky and the bourgeois egghead drawing room professional revolutionaries and making the new Soviet elite former Dirt People peasants like himself. Culminating, of course with an ice pick to Trotsky’s smart brain in 1940, courtesy the GPU.
“But they will never, ever forgive him for telling the Alexandra Kollontai types to shut up and get back in the kitchen.”
From the legalization of divorce in Portugal (after the Socialist revolution of 1910) to the legalization of abortion in Mexico (during the Communist period from 1927 – 1930), *all* Socialist/Communist triumphs have taken aim at the family right from the moment of their takeovers.
Comment would be superfluous.
“Targeting the family” is entirely different from “telling Alexandra Kollontai to shut up and get back in the kitchen.” Collectivists of all stripes — be they Commies or Fascists — hate the family, because it’s prior to The State. Stalin didn’t want women to get back in the kitchen to raise kids; he wanted them there to make kids, which would then be turned over to the State by their Hero-Mothers of the Soviet Union (a real decoration, with a medal and everything). When they weren’t pumping out kids, they were to be soldiers and workers on the home front, winning the Battle for Bread.
As I said: targeting the family.
There is the face of a woman who disapproves of you and knows what’s best for you:
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/images/alexandra-kollontai-1.jpg
“Serving as the People’s Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin’s government in 1917–1918…”
Uh-huh.
As the “Game” guys say, physiognomy is real. And Kollontai was one of the best looking of the Bolshie-chicks. The average is closer to Emma Goldman. Now there’s a face that can stop a clock. It’s a 100% true scientific fact that a mere glance at the women’s section of the Congress of People’s Deputies back in the day will turn you stone cold homo.
Although I must say — and apologies for getting way off on a tangent here — the Bolshies had a real knack for titles. Maybe it’s just the translations, I dunno, but a fellow named Anatoly Lunacharsky was put in charge of proletarian cultural uplift. His title? Enlightenment Commissar.
Hey Z, when it all goes down and you’re dictator, can I be your Enlightenment Commissar? Because that would be awesome.
Would look great on some of that new merch: “Certified Enlighten Commissar.”
Enlightenment* is obviously what that was supposed to say.
This is what the left/right political narrative feels like these days: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zp9cL458Qns
Interesting. Some of us were discussing on another blog that something like this is the best conceptual framework:
https://youtu.be/NdEkgCspCQo
(Play back at 2x speed for best results)
In sailing terms, we’re in the doldrums or horse latitudes. According to what I quickly read, after some time being stuck, crews would often chuck any dead and dying animals overboard to preserve water. I guess if there’s anything at all left to preserve here, either politically or culturally, leftards and other assorted freaks need to be tossed overboard as well – and literally, not figuratively.
“They never bother to describe what comes after the revolution. No one even bothers to ask them to explain the point of their agitations. There is no point.”
How many times have we heard this trite statement during any number of progressive political speeches: “We’ve come a long way, BUT we’ve still got a long way to go!”
Where have we come from? Where are we going? How do we get there? They never have time to explain, because that’s usually the rallying cry that ends the speech.
Constant change, constant destruction without purpose…
I once described the modern progressive politician who touts this line as a delusional mountain climber. In fact every mountain climb has a fixed pinnacle, an apex, a mountaintop at which point there is nowhere else to go. If you attempt to climb on in delusion you will fall to your peril. I used this description as satire. Then I read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. He literally used this image as his ideal radical.
https://readsomebooksthisyear.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/rules-for-radicals-saul-alinsky/
Alinsky: “If we think of the struggle as a climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the “real” top ahead of us and strive for it, only to find we’ve reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.”
[I need to finish that book!] I think Alinsky’s comment is valid when framed a certain way. The Radical’s ideal is to always be struggling. The Communists, I think, had the similar concept of the never-ending revolution. Alinsky’s mountaineer is always climbing, as new territory is revealed. The peak remains an ideal, as yet unreached.
Now of course, in the real world, there always is a peak. Questions to ponder:
1. If the Radical reaches the true peak, what then should he do? It’s already been noted above that many radical movements (or religions for that matter), leave unstated, or at best poorly defined, what the desired end point looks like. At least religions have the decency to confine Heaven to a promised coming world. But political radicals typically promise some version of Paradise here on Earth, just need to work on the details a bit more!
2. If the peak is not reached, at what point will the climbing party tire, make camp, starve for lack of supplies, fall to their deaths, what?
It’s like being forced to living in a homeless shelter in LA.
I would not look to the left or right.
I would root for the earthquake.
We have not reached that point yet but we are on that journey in the political realm.
I particularly enjoyed the closing methaphor about ships sailing into uncharted waters.
As I recall from the old maps, there be dragons.
Steady as she goes Cap’n.
To further the analogy that we have sailed to point where we can’t see the New World or the Old World than we have passed the spot in the journey called the point of no return. It is a longer trip back than the trip is forward.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, and with all apologies to the Immortal Bard, we’re in some HIV-positive version of MacBeth: “I in fake-and-gay am so far in stepped, that ‘twould be as tedious to go back as to go o’er.”
It has been so much better now that the voices touting “Trump/Candace Owens! Trump/Tim Scott and Trump!…” are dwindling away.
Don’t the normie cons notice a pattern and can they ever break free?
Trump may have provided a ray of light at one point, he may have been the Great Orange Hope.
Perhaps the great White Hope is on the horizon. Maybe a perfect cross between Enoch Powell and Pinochet.
normies don’t do noticing! and get very agitated if you try and make them.
It drives my conservative normie relatives crazy every time I point out that they’re being played. At least they stopped posting or sending me Ben Shapiro links…
He’ll throw you out of a helicopter, but you’ll hear some classy speech before getting the final push.
Pinochet = the long awaited chopper rides..
“the alternative to the modern Left is not conservatism but culture jamming and accelerationism.”
Now you see eye to eye with Richard Spencer 🙂
I also think the honored guest was seated to the right of the host because that is the place away from the host’s heart and a sign that the guest was not there to cause harm and is not a threat
Incidentally why I understand that most people are right handed because when you throw with your right you are not exposing your heart to potential threats. A pitching coach told me this. I guess we evolved with that in mind.
Well, there is one thing in left-wing ideology that says child molesters must have easy access to children, which is that it’s anti-Christian. Seething hatred of the Christian religion has been the central tenet of leftism since its inception, and the one principle within it that has never changed.
For all his faults, maybe Richard Spencer was right that leftism is a fire that just has to burn itself out. It did in the former communist bloc, one way or another, and, as it is unsustainable, will everyplace else it exists too. The questions that remain are: how much damage will it do before it falls, and what comes after it?
There are still a significant number of White people around, so the left has plenty of anti-white work to do.
the trouble is, the more you remove whites from the system, the faster it collapses. plus you then have the most capable part of the population on the ‘outside’ actively working against you. the kiddie diddling project has already got the female normies stirred up to an unprecedented level, and looks to cause the entire public school edifice to collapse.
Collapse of the public schools would be a great victory, but the teacher’s unions seem way too strong. Even here in AZ—the most progressive state wrt charter schools—the teacher’s unions prevail time and again wrt to bad ideas and more funding of those ideas.
“Seething hatred of the Christian religion has been the central tenet of leftism since its inception, and the one principle within it that has never changed.”
“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
— Denis Diderot
Hard to surpass that sentiment as an example of your point.
He left out lawyers.
Who do you think will do the strangling?
And now if we had a better comment system I could edit my original comment and soften it up
But my feeling is that this comment system is losing you customers and dampening interest and enthusiasm especially when the convo gets going and then you run out of room to reply. What sets this website and Z apart is that he understands business. The guys at counter currents, for comparison, do not understand business and treat the customers like crap, and Greg is often rude and condescending. That is why they will never really go anywhere. Then I see a place the Duran where they treat all their commenters respectfully and do not snicker at their stupid questions etc. class act.
My two cents. . .
The plan is to have the new site ready by autumn. It is based on different code, so conversion is one challenge. I want to preserve the comments and content from this system. I also have been learning the new software, which has many more features than this system. I have been working on a new comment system that will have all the things you want, but I want to make sure it it is solid.
The general plan is allow for paying users to have special access and special abilities with regards to commenting, along with special identifiers. I’m also planning to open up for guest posting. That is new turf and requires special attention as that can get out of hand quickly.
Yeah I think too open a comment system can be more headache and get unwieldy.
When you get it set up I will sign up.
OMG, not the dreaded check of speciality!!?? We paying customers are not worthy, nor do we desire such notoriety. LOL.
Love the closing analogy of ships sailing into the uncharted.
There be dragons.
You know what? A blue check badge is a great idea.
I’m taking the under on the number of minutes it takes before someone suggests a yellow star for the anointed ones. The connection with money is so obvious it has to be.
Fortunately for me, I’m aware of the “die is cast” situation here, so it keeps me honest. Also, the commentariat here is not quite like the Keepers Of Obscure Knowledge Syndicate at Ron’s site, so I’ve yet to be filled with remorse once I’ve sent a comment on its way.
The problem with the left-right paradigm is this:
The left’s self conception is that of the rebel and the right’s is that of defending the established order.
But the left has been the establishment for well on a century at this point.
Which leaves the left rebelling against itself and right defending the left of yesterday.
The cognitive dissonance this situation creates is driving both sides insane, The left-establishment is trying to destroy itself and the right-anti establishment is trying to conserve that which it opposes.
If you read regime history, the left were the underdogs in the Civil Rights battle, the pro-sodomy movement, health care battles, McCarthyism, etc. etc.
People are filled in their heads from their youth that the left’s victories are always on the right side of history, while in reality few are. The only one that comes to mind that was actually good for our society are rights to a lawyer, though in a system where 90+% of cases are plead and they intentionally try to destroy people who don’t accept a plea,this is getting more useless.
“The only one that comes to mind that was actually good for our society are rights to a lawyer, … .”
And the presumption of innocence, which I would place above even the right to counsel.
I have come to believe that presumption of innocence was a fairy tale: a thing that we were told that was never ever true.
“If they arrested him, he must be guilty”.
“If they arrested him, he must be guilty”.
Yep. Arises from the same mentality, I should think, from which fervent belief in the Chinkypox also arises.
“They couldn’t say it on TV if it weren’t true!”
It’s a real problem.
Another argument against universal suffrage (as though another were needed).
“The cognitive dissonance this situation creates is driving both sides insane.”
Yeah, well, there wasn’t far to go. And there’s yet more to come.
The root of the problem (aside from human nature itself) is the twin notions (I won’t call them ideas) of equality and democracy.
Once every.single.person in the entire population has a vote, then everything must perforce become political, even the law. Natural law is cast off in favor of positive law. There’s no way around that.
So “the personal is political.” And “the private life is dead.”
And “permanent revolution” becomes not merely desirable (for certifiable lunatics), but unavoidable.
Without legitimate authority and hierarchy, everybody in the lifeboat thinks himself the captain, and his commands equal in authority to all other commands, and the lifeboat is swamped and goes down with al hands.
And here we are.
call it Plato’s Dilemma.
Infant: Oh well said, sir. The ultimate critique of democracy.
To be blunt, why don’t you fix up the website first and put your efforts into that and get a better comment system? Nothing is worse than waking up and coming out with a fresh idea and then having it sit in limbo when it should be immediately out there for everyone. I just get fed up and leave. Plus the other comment issues
That said…. I think the color scheme on the Erich is bland and looks like 1970s gym clothes. But is that the retro look you want? Maybe it could spark a trend. I don’t know.
I’m suddenly having second thoughts about inviting criticism.
: )))
The only critic one needs to appease is that harshest one……thyself.
Ha ha
Just the complaints of a man who finds his comments in moderation purgatory all the time.
I comment frequently here but am under no illusion if anyone really cares. The world awaits my wakening in the morning for great insights? I come here to read good content and to keep sanity.
The rest is gravy.
Humility…..if only more tried to practice it!
“Humility…..if only more tried to practice it!”
Wow. That’s got some real potential, bro!
I’m thinkin’ …
a Humility Pride Parade.
For starters.
I like the way you think. We can follow it up with a Pride parade…..oh, wait, been done too many times, too many deviants to count.
My capacity for humility is the greatest. There’s never been anyone better at being humble than me! People are in awe of my humility! I will crush anyone who thinks they can out-humble me!
(Why did that all come out in Trump’s voice in my head?)
I have been dosing myself with bolus doses of humility for lo these many years. I’ve built up such a level of humility I pity the fool who would go against me.
Only one thing will resolve this. Humility cage match!
“My capacity for humility is the greatest. There’s never been anyone better at being humble than me!”
That literally made me LOL.
Well done!
Well David Wright I might be more conversational than you perhaps and when I write something I want it to be immediate like when I am talking. Having to wait just kills the sexy mood
It is not that I think I have great insights, I just expect the flow to not be interrupted. Like if you have something you need to get out and tell someone you call them up right? You don’t send them a postcard.
It is all about the flow. Nothing more, nothing less. Not saying I want it to be like a chat room but a little faster pace would be nice for me personally. But not my website. C’est la vie.
someone piss on your cheerios this morning? instead moaning so much, start your own blog and show us all how it is done.
The only thing that really needs to be fixed on the website would be the order of the comments – rather than newest first, I preferred the oldest first (just my humble preference). Other than that (and return of the edit function), I come for the written content, not the aesthetics.
” I come for the written content, not the aesthetics.”
Ditto. It’s a kind of online support group, where intellectual contact with *sane* and *literate* people is a given.
Where the members of the commentariat are both serious *and* good-humored, unlike, say, “Jim’s Blog” or
Vox Day, where there is altogether too much jabbering about some really arcane BS and a lot of maladjusted adolescent boys burning incense at the shrine of the Dark Lord or some such comic-bookish foolishness.
It’s even better than the Takimag comments used to be.
And a host/blogger who is a national treasure.
I’d like to recommend a t-shirt with a great quote from Mohammed Atta, perhaps a picture of him.
“Just stay quite and you will be OK.”
Whatever happened to that guy?
he’s a pilot for United now.
“Whatever happened to that guy?”
I think he’s still quite.
Quite. Jolly good.
Years ago, I had an older client who purchased a fully restored ’67 Mustang convertible. He was at an age where he had gone to the funerals of most of his friends, and wasn’t much for road trips. Nevertheless, he would drive the car as frequently as the weather permitted, but never drove anywhere in particular.
Politics in this day and age feels a lot like that, in that the attitude of federal pols seems to be the same as that of my former client: we have this nice machine, we may as well use it. The lack of purpose behind using it is irrelevant, and of course there’s a total obliviousness to the waste of resources that comes from using something needlessly. Nonetheless, we have this machine so we might as well use it, and hopefully at some point we’ll figure out why we’re using it.
There was a mini-series in the 90’s called Wild Palms, a cyberpunk soap opera about a totalitarian US and a cult-leader senator trying to reach immortality via technology. That’s how I saw it back then, when I was a kid.
Yesterday, I have seen an episode of it again, after ~30 years, and realized that it was a boomer fantasy about social libertarians fighting fascism. Basically, the same thing they have been doing their whole lives – fantasy fighting against phantom enemies, while the country and the West was going to shit without any meaningful resistance.
They are still doing it, always focused on fantasies, like Nazis being racist or Nazis being the real racists (depending on whether the Nazis are Republican or Democrat). Utterly confused.
I’ve lost track of whether the Nazis are on the left or right, good or bad, real or imaginary.
” … we have this nice machine, we may as well use it. The lack of purpose behind using it is irrelevant, … .”
This has been with us for a long time. The most egregious examples (imho) are the notion that members of Congress or state legislatures are supposed to pass laws. Even “conservatives” complain specifically about politicians not passing laws, which is seen as “their job.”
And stupid people are all the time saying that it’s the president’s job to “run the country.”
The first is the poisonous fruit of universal suffrage and a belief in equality. And the second is the result of a slave mentality, the fruit of Socialism.
The Constitution should be amended such that no new law may be passed unless and until two old laws are repealed and stricken from the books.
And do the same with Congressmen.
>The Constitution should be amended such that no new law may be passed unless and until two old laws are repealed and stricken from the books.<
I like the way you think. I’ve arrived at a similar idea, but me thinks a *10:1* ratio might be a better place to start, for at least a couple generations (assuming the empire lasts that much longer).
” … but me thinks a *10:1* ratio might be a better place to start, … .”
Testify, brothah, testify!
Excellent idea! And it would still take us *years* to whittle all the laws down to a state even approaching reasonable and civilized.
The country did just fine before people got the notion that the president ought to “run it.”
I agree on a philosophical level with the law removal.
However as the US is inherently immoral, filled with ends justify the means Lefties, people greedier than High Priest of Mammon and is corrupt as any 2nd or 3rd tier country , laws will proliferate.
The trick is everything practically down to how the elected and appointed walk and hold a fork will have to be in precise clear language with heavy enforcement and draconian penalties for breaches.
Otherwise even if the DR rewrites everything , it will just regress to the mean .