The Corpse Of Democracy

The results are in and despite what you have observed in your own life and on-line, Biden’s Gates of Hell speech was a huge success. According to a new poll close to 60% of Americans now think Donald Trump and his nefarious “MAGA movement” are a threat to our democracy. Not only that, 60% of Republicans do not think the MAGA movement represents the majority of the party. It looks like it is all over for Trump and the tens of millions who support him.

Now, most MAGA people will dismiss the poll as just another example of the craven efforts by the regime to prop up their chief stooge. This is, of course, the result of Putin’s propaganda and disinformation campaign. These conspiracy theorists questioning the veracity of polling, especially this poll, are just doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin and are probably semi-fascists. They are semi-fascists because they do not know they are being turned into fascists by the Trump movement.

Granted, the details of the poll are not available so there is no way to examine the crosstabs to see if it supports the press release. The only clue in the press releases is that the poll was weighted toward self-identified Democrats. It also subtly suggests that only 25% of the self-identified Republicans in the poll agree with the claim that Trump is a danger to the planet. There is growing evidence that the dispossessed are no longer identifying as Republican, so there is that.

In all seriousness, this is the sort of story that underscores the problem with mass democracy in the mass communication age. This poll could be a complete fraud, but there is no way to know. More important, your favorite news site is never going to check or question it. They just pick it up as a part of the automated service they use to plug into news feeds like Reuters. The left-wing news highlighter Matt Drudge is running this poll in red at the top of his site.

As de Maistre said, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” Drudge is a left-wing partisan, but his site is like most news sites these days in that it relies on feeds to populate itself. Even with site-created content, there is little editorial control. It is easy to inject a false opinion into the system and see it get repeated a million times in minutes.

Of course, there is the other problem. Who cares if a majority of people are falling for the latest conspiracy theory? That is, after all, what all this hysteria about Trump and the MAGA movement is, when you examine it. It relies on the assumption that there are sinister, unseen forces at work behind the scenes. The old people wearing red Trump caps at the diner are not just people who hold contrary opinions. They are part of an invisible army of fascists and evil doers.

Imagine a poll that reported a majority of people thought there are little green men visiting earth on a regular basis. You do not have to imagine it. There was a big global survey half a dozen years ago that claimed a majority of people on earth think there are little green men out there. A majority of Americans believe in ghosts. More people think psychics are real than think Ron Paul is real. Big Foot is ten times more popular than the vice president of the United States.

The point is, most people are stupid, at least when it comes to understanding things that have no direct impact on their lives. They may know accounting or chemistry, but they can also think disagreeing with the government is bad for democracy. This has always been the argument against democracy. Most people lack the desire or capacity to master the material necessary to make good political choices. Giving them a ballot is like giving a toddler a hand grenade.

Of course, opinions change. Fifty years ago, when Joe Biden entered politics, few people thought he should be elected to anything. When he ran for president in 1988, he was laughed off the stage. In 2008, he was seen as a joke candidate to give the media some entertainment. In 2020, his own party preferred an item from the museum of communism, but then everyone changed their mind all of a sudden. The same change of heart happened on election night. Opinions change.

Clearly, a polling outfit would know that their polling is a snapshot in time and may not mean anything in a week. That Reuters poll also reports that close to 60% of the respondents think the speech will make things worse. Half never bothered to watch it and two thirds think Biden is a bum. In other words, the poll is invalid on its face, but it makes for a handy false opinion, so it gets minted and passed onto gullible dupes like the rent boys running the Drudge Report.

This is the problem with mass democracy in a mass media age. Our culture, including the political process, is a giant lie machine. Imagine if people went about their day with people from the state following them around with a bullhorn, constantly shouting random slogans at them. This is what we have today. We are awash in nonsense from the mass media but are expected to have sensible opinions. It is no wonder that the political system is unresponsive to the public will.

It is the irony of mass democracy. The stated point of democracy is to make government more responsive to the public will. Instead, it reveals that the people who are in charge have no interest in the public will. They serve other interests. That means those who oppose the prevailing order should ignore the public will as well. Instead, the focus must always be on who decides. The solution to the ills of democracy is to let democracy murder itself and be ready to bury the corpse.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


195 thoughts on “The Corpse Of Democracy

  1. Pingback: Strange Daze: Always Look for the Union Label and the Silver Lining

  2. Democracy did two things: it gave every fool the right to promote his own interests, and it made every fool’s interests of equal moral value to those of everyone else. As a result, the world is now run by fools. But what is the alternative? – I haven’t heard.

    Fear not, I have a system. It’s a type of meritocracy so novel that no one has heard of the word for it, which is noocracy. It works as follows:

    Only the most competent are allowed to vote. People must pass a test to drive a car so why not have a test for suffrage? The electorate would be limited to the most capable third—those who prove themselves most fit according to sophisticated criteria of IQ, comprehension, and general knowledge (devising and conducting the tests would become an academic field and major industry in itself). A sliding scale of votability would apply. The most capable voters would be allotted several votes per vote, giving their voice more weight; those who just scraped into the electorate would only get one. Voters would be retested every five years to retain their voting rights. Those who did not vote regularly would lose their vote but the absolute number of voters would still always be one-third of the population. Every issue previously voted for in a parliament or congress could be voted on by this objectively qualified electorate in a two-stage process. First an issue would be raised by any individual or group of individuals, and if it got enough support, the alternatives would be laid out and it would go to a final vote. Votes not resulting in a clear majority may not be voted upon again for five years. Votes would take place every day and would be advertised in advance, allowing time for due diligence and deliberation.

    No system can ever be perfect but this avoids the basic errors of universal suffrage and one-man-one-vote, while avoiding a slide into autocracy.

    Let me know when you want to put up my statue somewhere – I have a design ready.

    5
    1
    • The childless should get no or half votes. Women should not vote, or alternatively men heading households should get a number of vote equal to the total people in their household (including children). No naturalizations ever, no dual citizens ever, foreigners deported for the first serious crime or for any crime against a citizen. Revocation of all citizenship granted under prior rules, with possibilty to reapply after fifteen years of lawful and productive residency.

      Abolish government schools, cap high school at 40% of population and college admissions at 20% of population. Legalize qualification tests for all industries.

      All the fellow whites must go, fortunately we set up and funded and defended a whole country just for that purpose where they can live as they see choose.

      Blacks could be repatriated to any african country with $200K cash payment and permanent surrender of citizenship. We would establish friendly diplomatic relations with this country but no transfer payments by law.

      No foreign ownership of US equity or reap property, no foreign investment by citizens.

      Lower house members selected by lottery, upper house elected by state according to whatever means they choose.

      No non christian religious observances allowed with the exceptions of indians (if they surrender citizenship) on indian reservations.

      10
      2
    • How about the original system? Only male property owners were allowed to vote, which resulted in a tiny and vastly more sensible political establishment…

      • That was before America was pozzed and ZOGed.

        Now you’ll have Jew hedge-fund managers and think-tank fucks running the show (which they already do).

  3. That’s done it. The sniveling poltroons on MSNBC have declared our Queen’s passing a paen to the greatness of Barack Obama.

    That obnoxious rentaboy.
    That gibbering baboon.
    The Corpse of Democracy.

    Like, hate, or ignore her, she was the last of the Titans. An age has passed.

    The Queen is dead, long live the King!

    17
    3
    • Charles in Charge now

      Will the BBC make it into a reality program with Meghan recurring as guest star as the ugly obnoxious American?

      Honestly, that would be a pretty good show.

      But in all seriousness, RIP Queen Elizabeth. Never knew you but many loved you, and God bless.

      11
      4
    • The queen stood silent while her people were destroyed. She never said one word about mass third world immigration. No one in the royal family did.

      43
      2
      • She also enabled the horrific pedo Jimmy Savile. It is well noted her son’s affinity for the monster, and you cannot tell me that if Johnny Rotten knew about him in the 70s and made public statements about him, the Queen, with MI6, didn’t know. Not to mention her teddy bear obsessed son, Andrew. She was a disgusting ghoul. This is just the obvious stuff. There are less documented stories I have read about her involvement in depraved activities. Too bad no TV is flashing pictures of her giving the ol’ Heil Hitler on home video.

        15
        8
        • Is there some fact I stated that the Queen’s grooms of the stool disliked? On a site about distrusting the media, it surprises me that several feel emotionally attached to someone they never met.

          5
          2
  4. So people who believe in ghosts are stupid. I guess that includes all those good Christian folks the Right claims are the Real Americans, yes?

    3
    15
    • Is Mr O’Meara suggesting that God is a ghost?

      That’s quite a stretch if that’s your suggestion. A force powerful enough to create a universe and put you and me in it having a conversation via electricity is compared to the idea that one’s energy while living and breathing may linger on after his heart stops?

      Ghosts are metaphorical and a sign of hope and desire that their loved ones don’t just evaporate.

      I will never understand this aggressive dislike of people and their desires, their simple emotions, their simple superstitions, such as believing that love may be eternal. What precisely is wrong with that? Anyone who finds something to dislike about it says more about his sorry mental and spiritual state than it does about the person in question. If you ask me.

      13
      1
  5. Heh. Rush Limbaugh was so pissed when the election was stolen, he kicked the bucket.

    Then our Glorious Sovereign, the Queen, got the news about Liz Truss…

  6. Speaking of corpses…

    The woman who inherited a sturdy kingdom has left us with a broken s**thole who’s led by a person named Liz.

    28
    • The one gratifying thing that the Queen could have done, refusing Liz Truss the position of Prime minister, was unfortunately left undone. Porentially within her powers, yes, but for all practical purposes, impossible. It would have been a nice FU from her, though.

      https://royalcentral.co.uk/features/can-the-queen-reject-the-new-prime-minister-chosen-by-the-conservative-party-179915/

      At least the late queen won’t have to see what a hash Truss makes of it.

      • Unfortunately the Sovereign was more interested in dinner arrangements, fancy hats, and Welsh Corgis than keeping Britain British. I’m not sure how much she could’ve done to stop English ethnomasochism in the political and media classes though. But she was the cloudiest of cloud people so she probably didn’t know that (South) Asians were taking over.

        18
        1
        • In 50 years or less, objective historians will rate Elizabeth II as the worst English monarch since Aethelred the Unready, who very nearly lost all of England to the invading Danes. And Charles is no Alfred the Great. Elizabeth II always cared more about the Commonwealth than she did about England, and the state of [formerly] Great Britain show the results. Not that this was all her fault, but she contributed substantially.

          15
          1
        • trumpton: Agree. While she technically had minimal to no political power, she did have a great deal of moral and cultural impact. She could easily have said or done things to boost the White working class or at the very least indicate displeasure re population replacement. Instead she went on constant colonial visits and knighted various subcon invaders. And Charles is an open admirer of Muslims and a climate change fanatic. The English deserve better.

          17
          • The English have not had an English Royal family since the Tudor imposters did a take over.

            Its then been colonial bullshit for 150 years.

        • Yep, trumpton.

          I expect to see a lot of revisionism here and there as things get really bad but, ultimately, you are right. There is mention even here that Elizabeth Deux helped usher in Brexit. Is that really true or early historical revisionism? I suspect the latter. Regardless, expect more of how she stood firm, although against what will not dare be mentioned.

          The primary goal of a successful monarch is to ensure his or her people, particularly the weakest and most vulnerable among them, go unharmed. Is the indigenous Briton in Leeds or Somerset better off today than 70 years ago? Can an indigenous working- or lower middle-class Briton–a real one– even live in most of the City of London?

          To ask the question is to answer it.

          People may mourn what E2 symbolized, but what she actually did deserves rich condemnation if one even pauses to look over their shoulder on the way to ‘Hell.

  7. well there’s this: https://dossier.substack.com/p/world-economic-forum-bolsters-china The CCP has been a huge player in the WEF for years and they are masters of propaganda, political corruption, and internet censorship. Trump is the first president in a lifetime who pushed back on the Chinese domination of the American economy. The timing of the Wu flu, jan-mar 2000, springing to life AFTER Bernie showed a clear dominance in the first 3 democratic primaries may not be a coincidence. at that point trump was beating any democratic opponent in the polls by double digits. maybe these groups got together and came up with a plan to end the orange threat.

    10
    • Saw the woman’s crazy eyes and heard her weird pre-teen voice in the first clip and gave up after 10 seconds.

      7
      1
  8. Polls are as temporary as sheets of newspaper. The factors that go into making a poll valid are the same as I learned in Stats 230 in university. Mathematics are eternal; newspapers are ephemeral. The contradiction has intelligent men scratching their head.

    4
    1
  9. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Corpse of Democracy

  10. Pingback: The Corpse of Democracy | American Freedom News

  11. “The point is, most people are stupid…”

    That’s it, in a nutshell. I suspect that many (most?) intelligent people haven’t thought that one through:

    Discussing the question of intelligence, there seems to be a consensus that an IQ of around 120-125 is the minimum needed for occupations like engineer, lawyer, research scientist, computer coder, etc.

    (It would be interesting to know what the average IQ is of people reading Z’s blog and commenting here; I’d expect it to be considerably higher than average, average being 100.)

    What’s scary is when you realize— if the average IQ of White Americans is 100, and Americans’ IQ distribution takes the shape of a bell curve— that *there are as many people to the left of the 100 median point as there are to the right of it*. That is, for every smarter-than-average person on the right side of the bell curve, there has to be a correspondingly dumber-than-average person on the left side.

    That is, for every person with an IQ of 120, there’s a corresponding person with an IQ of 80.

    Corresponding to the cohort of people with IQs of 120 and above, there’s an equally-sized cohort of people with IQs of 80 and below.

    In other words, there are a lot of stupid people out there….

    Of course, intelligence isn’t all there is. Given the choice between a neighbor who is brilliant, but also dishonest and greedy, and one who is not so smart, but is a person of honor and integrity, most of us would pick the latter.

    Nevertheless, there would seem to be a large cohort of Americans whose ability to grasp complex topics is limited or non-existent.

    Yet these folks are out there voting…

    28
      • Right.

        And it’s further complicated by the fact that you have *smart people believing stupid ideas*— we can call them the smart-and-‘woke’— and not-so-smart people believing reasonable ideas (like race realism and human biodiversity).

        I’m thinking that— despite being less intelligent— the latter group is better off.

        If the ideas you believe are valid, your conclusions are likely to be correct, even if you’re not the sharpest pencil in the box.

        OTOH, if the ideas you believe are wrong, no amount of smarts is going to get you to the correct conclusion.

        13
        • “OTOH, if the ideas you believe are wrong, no amount of smarts is going to get you to the correct conclusion.”

          At the same time, if you are very smart and ambitious, but believe insane ideas and are rewarded by believing in, spreading and implementing them, well, therein lies the problem with our, “elites”, and the existential problem they have created for all of us.

          • Yep!

            There are plenty of brilliant, high-performing psychopaths out there, holding important positions in government, the military, industry, and academia.

            Since the insane ideas they embrace are those which are currently in fashion, they’ll experience plenty of positive feedback and rewards from the society at large, which shares those insane ideas.

            And yes: that’s definitely a problem for the rest of us!

      • Almost as if nature made average intelligence as being integral to survival of the species

        Mother Nature knows if you’re too smart you might wander off the reproduction reservation chasing windmills.

        I also suspect that homosexuality may be a way for nature to keep people from becoming too comfortable, where homosexuality seems to thrive among the affluent. Homosexuals don’t breed, so fewer babies being born into luxury. The overarching theme here is that nature wants us to struggle and suffer — physically, or in this case financially — as a means to developing hardiness that allows us to survive as a species. So in comes the purpose of the people with average and lower intelligence and their never-ending lives of suffering and struggle.

        And why I see now in my older age the true wisdom of the old Catholic Church in its shunning of everyone becoming too comfortable and wealthy. And why prosperity is at direct odds with the Church’s teachings, and why a true religious life is incompatible with our modern society. The former wanted us to thrive as people while never becoming too soft and too comfortable, the latter wanting us to make lots of money but, in turn, become weak and die off.

        I am not so sure the brains behind modern society saw this progression at first, but they have to know it now and are using prosperity as a weapon — counter-intuitive as it may sound

        • True growth and development is almost always the result of life challenges, if not outright hardship.

          On the other hand, there are some prominent counterexamples. Trump and Gates are both people born into wealthy families that have gone on to larger success and influence.

          I hesitate to put Musk and Bezos in the same class because they have received absolutely enormous government subsidies over the years. If they had not received all that outright government support, would they be where they are now?

          • I think trump and gates have something of a legacy intelligence coming from their fathers and grandfathers. Wealth doesn’t mean luxury, in all cases, and Trumps dad was an immigrant if memory serves, so he undoubtedly had to rise up the hard way and employ his wits and exercise that brain muscle to achieve great things. Trump seems to exist in his afterglow. I think Trump’s kids are a better indication of the things we are talking about, and none of them is impressive in the least. Not sure about Barron, but the other kids are average and would be nothing without their dad imo

            Point being that even in today’s life of ease and luxury for even the poorest among us, there are still guys with that old fashioned streak and ways that harken back to tougher times.

    • The importance of IQ is dwarfed by the existential peril which is posed by Personality.

      Some folks simply lack any propensity whatsoever for Common Sense [which likely originates in a organ called the Amygdala], and are instead psychologically allured & enraptured & imprisoned by the siren song of fantasy and delusion and transcendence [which likely originates in an organ called the Insula].

      A nation can prosper without too much in the way of smarts, but a nation will quickly be eradicated and kicked off into the dustbin of history if too many of its citizenry are seduced & imprisoned & psychologically executed via fantasy and delusion and transcendental narcissism.

      [Enter Stage Left, one Sigmund Freud, and his nephew, Edward Bernays…]

    • Which is why voting harder is doomed to fail.

      And one of the side-effects of the low IQ voter is that they see politics in a simplistic and short term manner; IOW “what’s in it for me?” These voters are easily bribed or herded, which explains why we have so many corrupt idiots representing us in DC. And it’s a vicious cycle that only gets worse over time. Hence, the collapse is the cure.

      17
      2
      • Yep: the Democrats have certainly figured out that being the Party of Free Stuff is going to get them a large following; especially among those not smart enough to realize that nothing is “free”

        Get enough folks on the welfare rolls— and convince them that that this is an “entitlement” which they deserve…. let in enough “asylum seekers” who automatically get plugged-in to the benefits system— and *you’ve got a bought-and-paid-for constituency whose only concern is to keep those checks coming in*

        Welcome to George Floyd America!

        15
    • A well ordered nation has dignified and important roles for all its kinsmen of all inclinations. Asian strivers and middle eastern subversives have higher than average IQs and this only enables them to efficiently screw over the honest locals.

      White kids getting into elite schools today are significantly above average… but have you had the displeasure of talking to any of them? A society of super IQ people would be dysfunctional also. Variances exist for functional reasons.

      Intelligence is helpful for many things and harmful for others, its not synonymous with wisdom. The online rights focus on black dysfunction has made us a myopic on this, the worst and most poisonous blacks are now often their higher IQ mulattos.

      19
      • Agreed: intelligence is not synomous with wisdom.

        Intelligence by itself is neither good nor bad:
        Ted Bundy provides an example of what happens when ‘smart’ combines with ‘evil’:
        it was Bundy’s extreme intelligence which allowed him to “succeed” in doing so much harm.

        Given the choice between ‘good’ or ‘smart’, I’d rather my neighbor or co-worker be good.

        > But ‘good AND smart’ is the best of all.

        And there are some tasks which only smart people are capable of performing at the highest levels. Civilization has been advanced by the ‘brilliant few’: the DaVinci’s and Newton’s and Einstein’s and Musk’s.

        And yeah: virtually every successful high-performing Black appears to have a high percentage of White blood: Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, Barack Obama, Jason Riley are all examples. Offhand, I can’t think of a successful Black for whom that’s not the case.

      • “Intelligence is helpful for many things and harmful for others, its not synonymous with wisdom. The online rights focus on black dysfunction has made us a myopic on this …”

        Spot on NoOneAtAll. I think that rightist black reverend, Jesse something-or-rather, has called this rightly. The dissident right often sounds no different than the black underclass’ “leaders.” It is right to point out the dysfunction, but it can become its own dysfunction that prevents effective tactical and strategic action in pursuit of our own individual and group interest.

      • Agreed: intelligence is not the same as wisdom. You can be ‘smart but not wise’.

        Ted Bundy provided an example of what high intelligence combined with evil intent looks like: he was able to “succeed” to the extent he did only because he was so smart.

        OTOH, civilization has advanced on the accomplishments of brilliant people: the DaVinci’s and Newton’s and Einstein’s and Musk’s.

        And yeah: pretty much every successful Black you see appears to have a good admixture of European blood.

        The average-IQ gradient bears this out:
        White Americans: 100
        African-Americans: 85
        Sub-Saharan Africans: 65-75

        Many have suggested that it’s the dearth of super-smart people that has prevented Africa from making any significant contribution to human knowledge.

    • Best intelligent test as of late is in the opposition to the vaccination.

      Intelligence and desire to survive go hand in hand in this case

      IQ tests are severely lacking in the current context

      Human Lemmings with high IQs will still walk over that cliff

      18
      • Falcone,

        Agreed: high IQ is no guarantee against holding stupid ideas.

        Especially in today’s intellectual climate— in which the ridiculous dogmas of ‘woke egalitarianism’ reign supreme— it’s easy enough, and quite common, for smart people to hold stupid ideas.

        • But I think also there are different kinds of IQ

          Both will measure the same, but the mechanisms for getting there are different

          Example, our IQ tests today are measuring almost an intelligence borne of sitting around and doing nothing but studying and getting good grades. It’s almost a “lazy IQ”.

          Contrast with a man from some time ago who had to push his brains and thinking to the limit to come up with new ideas, inventions, etc. It was a high IQ that had to put the person through a crucible. Sure, he would pass on his genes, intelligence would spread around the gene pool, but it was almost the afterglow of genius, the remnants of genius that gives us our high IQ people today.

          Moral of the story, true intelligence — the kind that makes things, invents, does stuff, thinks critically most importantly — and high lazy IQ borne of leisure are diverging.

          And why I think the vaccine position is probably a better measure of one’s true intelligence than an IQ test. In today’s world t beats. I mean, scoring high on an IQ test in 2022 while being too distracted to make babies and otherwise being too mindless and vapid to question an experimental vaccine can’t exactly be said to be the mark of a truly intelligent person. Put it this way, all of these lazy high IQ Ben Shapiro types wouldn’t hold a candle to a great mind with a similar IQ from 100 years ago.

          Something else is in play

          7
          1
          • Falcone,

            I’d like to see some evidence for your claim that “our IQ tests today are measuring almost an intelligence borne of sitting around and doing nothing but studying and getting good grades. It’s almost a “lazy IQ”.”

            It was decades ago that the charge was first levied that IQ tests weren’t really measuring intelligence— defined as a “intelligence” defined as a general ability to learn, and to accomplish whatever you set out to achieve; whether that be making things, inventing things, or thinking critically.

            Since those charges were first levied, test makers have gone to great lengths to ensure that intelligence tests are actually measuring intelligence, and not some other factor. I personally knew a psych professor and psychometrician who was involved in that work.

            And as it turns out, IQ score does have a very strong correlation with other measures of success in life.

            As with any other generality concerning all of humankind, there are plenty of exceptions: very smart people who don’t succeed. If you’re smart and mentally unstable, your intelligence may be subverted by your craziness.

            But in general, IQ tests are a reliable measure of a person’s intelligence, defined as their ability to learn and accomplish things.

          • @ the real bill

            Since I can’t reply directly.

            In summary, I don’t put much stock in the correlation between life success and IQ. For one, life success is very easy today on a relative basis. You don’t have to be all that bright to make money. The hard work was already done, the building of the schools, the writing of the great works, the paths being cleared for us before we were born. We stumbled into very fortunate circumstances by our mere being born at the right time. So what exactly is Iq telling us? Essentially, if you are good at math there are lots of jobs that pay well for that skill set. If you suck at math, oops, go sell clothes at the Gap. iQ tests in my experience test for things that simply lend themselves to the place and time of a county that needed guys with math and engineering skills because that’s just what was needed at the time. Take away those jobs, and do you still think there will be a correlation with high IQ and success? I don’t. The smart guys would be back to building farmhouses and tilling
            the land and figuring out how to grow important crops. Those things require the same kind of intelligence as engineering and computers and so forth but won’t pay nearly as much.

            Yes, it’s hard to really say there is a correlation, a lasting one, an eternal one, and irrefutable one, between a high IQ score and success when the paths to success have been quite easy for our generations.

            Again there is something else in play where I think true intelligence can’t be measured by a test but by one’s actions and decisions in life and probably most importantly by what one produces in life, be it a building or a book or a poem or a house. There is virtually no way in hell all these tech bros I see around me with their very high IQs can truly be said to be highly intelligent when they fell for the vaccination scam, showed no intellectual resistance or skepticism, and walked off a cliff.

            Again, something else is in play. And using success in today’s world of ease as a measuring stick for intelligence is misguided. Wait until TomA’s collapse comes, and let’s see all these high scoring IQ guys find a way out of their sudden shitty situation. Five bucks they fall flat on their faces. 99% of them.

      • “Human Lemmings with high IQs will still walk over that cliff”

        Intelligence is pattern recognition capability. Stupidity is lack of pattern recognition capability. People who score abysmally on IQ tests are Type 1 stupid. They CANNOT see patterns because they were born with an excess of mutational loading in their genome. The hardware isn’t there to run the software. When Type 1 human lemmings walk over the cliff, it’s not their fault, but rather the fault of whoever set them in motion.

        Human lemmings with high IQs are Type 2 stupid. Their deficiency is software, not hardware. Their stupidity isn’t revealed by IQ tests. They suffer from an excess of emotion that shackles the reasoning mind: hatred, insecurity, envy, fear, low self esteem, etc. While in many cases it many not be their fault that they are afflicted with emotional malfunction, it is nevertheless their responsibility before God’s judgement by natural selection to exercise will to overcome. When they walk over the cliff, it is substantially their fault. Those who set them in motion still have some responsibility, but if you let predators use you like a food animal, then they will.

        • Very informative post wrt Types of stupidity

          I am not into the science of brain and intelligence measurements and so forth and just go by what I see and keep things in my purely laymen’s terms, which serves me well. But nice to see there is sconce out there corroborating what I see. Thank you.

          Yes, that we live among predators is a big problem, and why I hesitate to gin up much hatred, disgust, exasperation, for my Type 2 stupid brothers and sisters. I try to accept people for their warts and all.

    • “. That is, for every smarter-than-average person on the right side of the bell curve, there has to be a correspondingly dumber-than-average person on the left side.”

      Of course not.
      It’s not a true bell curve.
      On the left side of the curve there’s a cutoff point for functionality, not so on the right. I know a couple of people above 160, none below 40.

      • While I don’t disagree with anything you say, my understanding is that human intelligence *does* aggregate into a (roughly) bell-shaped curve; such that for every person with an IQ of 160, there will be someone with an IQ of 40.

        > Is that not the case? Do you have evidence that it’s otherwise?

        (I’ve got no dog in this fight, no investment in being right. I’m happy to change my opinion if I see evidence that I’m wrong).

        Certainly it’s true that the person with an IQ of 40 will be classified as severely mentally-retarded; so you’re not likely to run into them on the street. But my understanding is that they’re there.

        But I’m happy to be proven wrong….

        • IQ also considers one’s ability to function

          I am sure there are guys, say clinically retarded, who can’t even tie their own shoes or put a pencil to paper to take an IQ test

          Wouldn’t they have IQs of 40 or so?

          Probably lower because their intelligence may almost be beyond measurement.

          • It turns out that there’s a strong correlation between reaction time— sitting in front of a touch screen, how fast can a person push all the blue buttons that appear?— and other measures of intelligence. The same folks who score high on conventional intelligence tests also have very quick reaction times, and vice versa (who knew?).

            So even someone who has trouble putting pencil to paper can still be tested.

            And it may well be that at the lower extremes— like the 40’s in an IQ test— that testing becomes less precise.

            But I’m not sure how much that matters…. while there’s social utility in distinguishing between people with an IQ of 120 and those with an IQ of 140, the same is not true for distinguishing between people with an IQ of 40 and those with an IQ of 60.

    • Smart people fly airplanes into the ground on a regular basis. Without good judgment intelligence can kill you – and your way of life.

      • No doubt!

        There’s a sense in which someone can be smart and stupid at the same time: smart in the sense of having high intelligence, but stupid in the sense of believing things which aren’t in fact true.

        No matter how smart a person is, if he’s operating on a set of beliefs which are not congruent with reality, his smarts aren’t going to make up for his fubdamental misconceptions about the way things work.

        It’s also true that we humans operate holistically, such that other traits— such as impulsiveness, or anxiety, or obsession— can subvert our intelligence.

    • Nature creates a distribution of abilities,

      And thus some have received more gifts than others.

      And so we see here: those who claim to have received more gifts disparage those who got less.

      And yet they are not smart enough to realize that it was the role of those who got more to lead the others.

      And now, as it is all turning into feces, we see the smarty ones laughing at the others.

    • There is a theory which explains your dilemma Bill, the theory that we as a people are getting stupider. See Dutton’s “The Genius Famine”. Dutton and others now state forcefully that we as a people now have the intellectual ability of an 18-19th century person living at that time.

      Remember, IQ is a number that every so often is “reset” such that the average Joe is *arbitrarily* given a score of 100. Couple of hundred years ago, a pretty good engineering candidate might have only needed an IQ score of 105-110. And correspondingly, those on the other end of the curve 90-95 would have made quite good workers in the skilled trades or lower level white collar professions. Of course, the acquired level of science and understanding was not what it is today, so the level of that society was what it was—but that’s not to say it was not capable if transplanted into today’s world.

  12. “ The results are in and despite what you have observed in your own life and on-line, Biden’s Gates of Hell speech was a huge success.”

    Precisely why I knew a fix was involved in the 2020 election results before the data as to such rolled in. You have to believe in observable reality and to have faith in “your lying eyes”. You’ve no other sources these days you can trust.

    Here in the majority Hispanic Dem city where I live and post from, there was a impromptu pro Trump demonstration a few days before the 2020 election. By word of mouth a caravan of cars was to assemble in the parking lot of our far North shopping mall and proceed down main streets and drive by all the other large malls in town and then end in the Far East side of the city. Along the way and especially within the mall parking lots were assembled Trump supporters. Wife got the word a few hours before this “happening”, grabbed her car keys, called a few of her friends, then drove to the nearest mall lot and waited.

    The car assembly was so large it took literally a few hours to arrive and leave the far North mall start point. The police “official count” was 995 cars! There was no permitting, and the police dare not interfere—they simply stopped traffic at all intersections to speed the parade through. Along the way were hundreds of spectators. Signs, horn honking, the works! At the mall parking lots were also hundreds waving and cheering.

    There has never been a demonstration in this town, hell not even an official parade, of this magnitude. Yet, we are told Trump “lost” AZ by 10k or so votes. 😉

    Now of course, too late to change the AZ electors’ decision, the details of the election fraud leaks out—non-resident voters, unverified via signature mail-in ballots, and copious drop box ballot “harvesting.” And in the case of ballot harvesting, some of the parties involved (Dem affiliated) have been charged and pleaded guilty, so the charge *is* validated, only the effect of such is argued.

    Not rehashing the election. Biden cheated fair and square. But I will never allow history I’ve lived through and directly experienced to be “rewritten” through repetitious lying by MSM hacks while I draw breath.

    32
    • The heuristic of “are you going to believe your lying eyes” is why smart people get suckered by bullshit so easily. They’re smart enough to rationalize a roundabout explanation running contrary to common sense.

      This works with science where you have to be able to accept counter-intuitive results, like atoms being mostly empty space and objects only being “solid” because of electric charge. It doesn’t work in any field where sophistry is rife, namely law and social sciences.

  13. I talk with a 51-year-old guy, minimal education, thinks he’s bright, inherited a business that provides him with a living free from consequences. Loves the GOP, wars, guns, and finding “the Dems” committing “hypocrisies” all day long.

    I’ve nearly had him physically attack me several times in the last few years when I’ve pressed him on the value of voting. He lives in a blue state, has no representation, and doesn’t care. Is obsessed with the act of casting a ballot. When I ask him, what do you do between elections when you see that none of your preferences are ever reflected in affairs of state, and his answer is, nothing: “I’ll vote them out.” “Okay, and after that?” “I’ll vote again.” “No end to this?” “No end.” And then the irritation and anger set in, almost by design.

    I’d encourage people to try this and see what results they come up with. Mine have been very, very disappointing. It’s like hitting the wall with the postcard painted on it in “The Thirteenth Floor.” Their minds have almost been programmed to stop when questioned about why we engage in politics at all: it’s to vote.

    All process, no content, as Schmitt explored in “Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.” This formalism at the level of making choices that affect one’s life (effectively divorcing the person from thinking about the *purpose* of voting) always leaves this sort breaking rocks in work camps if born at the wrong time. I think many in ours are headed that way.

    28
    1
    • The response of anger has always been puzzling to me. But really, it’s the result of a lifetime of propaganda on a daily basis starting when he was a child.

      The bottom line is you cannot reason your way out of a belief you were not reasoned into. They did not sit down and examine evidence to come to their currently strongly held beliefs. They were beat into them over a lifetime. Every belief they have is heavily reinforced in a hundred different and emotionally manipulative ways. That is why they respond emotionally to what you are saying, even if what you are saying is not emotional.

      18
    • I have a similar experience, minus the anger part. I have two very close friends – both smart, very high IQ, very conservative, but very deluded. One of them literally sent me a message telling me to have patience because the pendulum will swing the other way. Another one tells me that he understands my views on voting, but he prefers the “lesser” damage done by republicans (which I also disagree with him on because I see no difference). It is amazing how deeply ingrained this system is in their DNA. They just cannot get past it.

      Another friend has recently come to our side of the great divide. Less than a year ago, he was a “we’re all one race” kind of guy. Now he is a race realist. He has also started to understand that voting is a waste of time. It was easier with him. I simply had to ask him (over time), tell me exactly what values of yours were conserved through your representation? He couldn’t come up with anything and that was an ah-ha moment.

      For me, it was in my late 20s when I started to pay more attention and I would make comments about how incredibly stupid people were allowed to vote. I found it ridiculous that someone who could not present any sort of intelligent argument for or against important issues were allowed to have any say in how it affects me. The last time I voted was in 2016. Voting in 2020 was a laughable idea and anyone with an IQ over 50 knew how it was going to work.

      “The point is, most people are stupid, at least when it comes to understanding things that have no direct impact on their lives. They may know accounting or chemistry, but they can also think disagreeing with the government is bad for democracy. This has always been the argument against democracy. Most people lack the desire or capacity to master the material necessary to make good political choices. Giving them a ballot is like giving a toddler a hand grenade.”

      This line by our esteemed host hits the nail on the head. Democracy is a joke.

      11
      1
      • NOT voting as some kind of grand strategy for is the special sacred groupthink of this otherwise mostly interesting comment section.

        Can easily see it as a way to save 20 minutes every couple years, but if youve spent more than that arguing trying to get other basically likeminded people *not* to vote, consider youve now adopted a new kooky superstition of you own.

        2
        9
        • I’m not arguing to get them not to vote. I am simply stating my views to them regarding voting and why I choose to abstain. They have a hard time understanding my POV. The more you choose to participate in the broken system, the more you will perpetuate that system.

          12
          1
          • No, the system is perpetuated because the people with all the power are perpetuating it.
            If it depended on MY consent, the guilottines would be humming merrily away. Americans have this charming but odd insistence on believing in their infinite personal agency.

            As soon as we cease to believe voting is the way we we control everything we start believing the even stranger notion that NOT voting is the way we can control everything.

            We’re on a historical rollercoaster with no brakes, even the literal president is not really in charge, much less you and I. This is a frightening thought maybe, but a freeing one.

            We have responsibility for our own family and to influence our own sphere positively. That’s about all.

            2
            2
          • NoOneAtAll. The rubes are told they have a “say” in society through their franchise. When they vote and things change even for the worse, they are told to suck it up, quite whining, and try again next cycle.

            The ones running the show keep this up to placate the rubes. It’s an “invisible” electric fence of sorts used to protect their (TPTB) status from the rightful end they deserve.

            As long as this cycle continues, the rubes will continue to work for change in a fruitless process. Something has to break this endless feedback loop.

            That something is withdrawal. As the numbers of voters go down, there can be no pretense of “you did this to yourself”. There can be no pretense of compliance. And definitely no implicit agreement with the (corrupt) process.

            Here’s another, smaller, example (taken from real life) of how this concept could work.

            In the recent news of women’s sports are the delusional and mentally ill “male-to-female” trans-women (trannies) that insist they have a right to compete with biological women. In this case, swimmers.

            The real women are made to enter the pool and compete with men, one of whom has set multiple women’s swimming records during “her” recent competitions. The competition is in essence, “fixed”, and therefore corrupt.

            Now how long would this farce go on if the real, biological women refused to enter the pool? What would happen if after the starting gun, the real women dived into the pool and swam around aimlessly, chatting with each other, while the delusional male “swam his heart out?” What would happen to this trannie’s psyche if he alone had to mount the podium to receive his “gold medal?” What if the crowd in shame did the right thing and boo’d him off the stage?

            8
            1
          • If no one voted the system would have a legitimacy crisis… but if everyone voted i primaries for the most right wing candidate a same or even better result would be accomplished.

            I used to put a lot of stock in systems and strategies… now I believe its really the quality of the people themselves that matter.

            As it stands were not going to convince everyone to stop voting any more than were going to convince everyone to succesfully primary trump from the right.

            Both are things that COULD be meaningful IF people were other than what they are. As a great african scholar said

            “They think it dont be like it is, but it do”

            1
            2
          • NoOneAtAll. Not a chance. You assume the winner of such a fanciful elections/promaries would keep his/her word. They do not.

            This is the big shake up being attempted right now in AZ between Maga folk and RINO’s (assuming Rep’s are your savior). The primaries are a joke and in many cases rigged by the opposition party through the entry and support of “ringers” to split the vote—those folk placed in the running to draw off votes from the “real” candidates.

            Happened in the Rep Gov primary. The ringer candidate pulled out at the last minute and tossed his support behind the RINO. Of course, too late for all those mail-in’s—those are now dead ballots.

            Also the elections in Blue States and areas will never produce the people you assume will work for you, they of course won’t.

            Don’t confuse getting a bone tossed your way every now and then for real progress in the democratic process. I did for forty years, and here we are—which is no where.

            1
            2
          • The advantage to not voting over voting (aside from not wasting time) is that you have a legitimate right to complain. If you vote, it is like playing cards with known criminals and then complaining they cheat to win. You knew that going in, so you have no reason to complain.

            2
            1
          • Compsci makes a good point, but if they lie about the results, why wouldn’t they lie about the participation rate? And treat anyone who questions the participation rate the same way they treated the questioners of the 2020 results?

            For his swimmer analogy, they just would just cgi the competitors and crowds.

    • I’ve had a similar experience. I’m afraid a lot of conservatives are stuck on a very tactical level. They see the physical act of voting as the place where real power is exercised!

      6
      1
      • They want to believe that our systems still function. Humans are believing machines. This makes them no different from leftists, conceptually. Accepting as truth what you WANT to be true versus facing the reality of what IS true.

        When no one participates in the farce that is liberal democracy, or when all of the folks on our side stop participating, that is when the system loses its power. The more you continue to “voot harder!”, the more you feed the power of the corruption machine. You could replace all 535 seats and the president with the people we want, and it would still end up in the same place.

        You can vote all you want, but you are a retard if you believe that it will do anything positive for our society.

        5
        2
  14. “Instead, the focus must always be on who decides.”

    Carl Schmitt laughs triumphantly from the grave.

    On another note, Critical Theory gets a lot of flak in dissident circles, but what they got right was the focus on power structures. While conservatives and liberals want You to believe in the System (and blame bad actors), Critical Theory asked: who wields the real power in the system and how the system deals with dissent?

    The gravy train of liberal democracy has been working for so long, because it deals with dissent by incorporating it (new Left, antifa), commodifying it (buy my merch to own the libs, RESIST with your gay flag in profile), directing into dead-ends (vote your way out, build your own X) or excommunicating from polite society (no public space for you, fascist). It’s the most effective system ever developed to neutralize dissent and yet it’s failing. Measures are getting increasingly brutal and confidence is plummeting. The System lashes out at any sign of real dissent that 20 years ago would have been dismissed with smug haughtiness or not even noticed. Its proxies run wild not even pretending to obey the rules and worst of all, it openly hates the majority of people it manages. Globalism sapped the strength of nation-states, messed up their info-spheres (swamping it with noise and destroying autonomy), while offering an over-bureaucratized, fragile and unwieldy architecture in return.

    The zombie of liberal democracy is now waiting for a long-deserved killing blow.

    25
    1
    • Lani Guinier, Clinton’s 1st pick as attorney general, came under attack from both libs and conservatives for quoting John Calhoun and Schmitt back in the 1980s and early 1990s in law review articles. They quickly disposed of her. I might be wrong, but I think the folks at Chronicles magazine were the only ones to understand that she presaged the future, and noted that the left was making use of theory on the practical level at a time when most conservatives had “Ideas Have Consequences” t-shirts and little else.

      • Incidentally, in Europe Schmitt found his comeback among neo-marxists.
        Chantal Mouffe from Belgium is one of political philosophy academics, who refers to Schmitt in her criticism of neoliberal democracy. She describes right-wing populism as reaction to supplanting politics with moralizing.

  15. I can’t remember if it was Z or a commenter that noted this, but it’s striking. During the Bush II years, one of the most common bumper stickers/slogans I would see here in lefty world on Subarus was “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Funny how those have all disappeared.

    25
  16. I am struggling with today’s topic as a vehicle for wedging in another of my PSAs on remedy (and thereby trigger my new troll), but frankly I’m at a loss for a reasonable cross-linking meme. Best I can do is to, once again, advise others that watching TV news is the equivalent of bathing in feces, so kill your TV today if you still have one. You can even use this opportunity to practice your newly honed skill set. Wait for your TV to be distracted by the vacuum cleaner, then sneak up behind it and accidentally run over it with your riding lawnmower. Think outside the box.

    12
    2
    • Honestly, I think tv and mass media are much more dangerous to those that haven’t been “red pilled” or on this side of the divide. As dissidents we can watch a know we’re being lied to. Furthermore, I do think it’s useful to keep an eye on which way the enemy wind is blowing.

      8
      1
      • This was mentioned here or somewhere else, but it bears repeating.

        Back in WWII American prisoners of war were often read the latest NAZI propaganda about battles and victories by the Germans against the allies. Upon hearing of these battles, particularly for major cities and territories, the prisoners often cheered. The Germans were baffled to say the least. The prisoners knew that the info was BS, but also that the cities and territories where the fighting was occurring came closer and closer to their camps in Germany. In reality, the Germans were announcing they were losing the war and the progression of that loss.

        Similarly, I use the same technique to follow the Russia/Ukrainian conflict. For example, some of the worse brain dead pro Ukrainian propaganda sites talk about the mounting Russian casualties—one site even holding to the count of 200k Russian casualties—yet when speaking of the current contact points of the conflict always move farther and farther into former Ukrainian held territory. 😉

        Disclaimer: There is recently a Ukrainian counter offensive taking place. We’ll see how that works out. But prior to that, the above logic held.

        10
      • The fentanyl epidemic is also harming and killing off a lot of stupid young people who were enticed or seduced into addiction. Does that mean that people in the DR should start using fentanyl in order to conduct reconnaissance on the drug culture?

        5
        2
        • No and that was not the point of what I said. Your analogy completely fails and you are better than that.

          If a drug is a sure killer, or at least highly addictive, you’d not take it to confirm—the stakes being life and death. However, viewing pro Ukrainian sites gives one insight into their propaganda techniques and the simplistic thinking of those who cheer such sites on—albeit, these comments could all be fabrication as well. Certainly the numbers of views and comments are reassuringly low, which seems a very good tell that the site is a channel developed by Ukrainian Intelligence operatives or losers who feel they can generate clicks and revenue.

          It is a reconnaissance of the enemy and a double check on Z-man’s wise analysis. I’m surprised that a regular reader such as yourself would denounce such when it is obvious that such “reconnaissance” is part and parcel of Z-man’s process in generating his daily insights and in the persuasive arguments he presents.

          • Fear not, I was responding to the comment by “The Greek”, not you Compsci. More specifically, I was referring to TV news addiction as being the fentanyl of the airwaves. Like most commenters here, I rely on selected internet sources for my knowledge retrieval.

  17. Re: Biden actually being elected POTUS, I’m always reminded of the joke in the movie Back to the Future, when Marty tells 1955 Doc that Ronald Reagan is POTUS in 1985.

    Doc: “Ronald Reagan? The actor?! And who’s vice president? Jerry Lewis?!”

    Tell anyone in 1990 that Biden would be elected 30 years in the future and you’d have gotten an equally incredulous reaction.

    22
  18. An example of this point is “Jussie’s Revenge.”

    A black volleyball player (this time it’s Duke volleyball not Duke lacrosse) fancies she hears the n word being shouted at her though no one else seems to have heard it except her godmother way off in Texas. The media grifters like Stephen A. go nuts, the governor grovels and BYU’s prez tosses some special needs kid under the bus.

    Wiser heads, Black and non-Black, warn of the mischief in these ploys but nobody listens ’til it’s too late. Meanwhile, my friends are taking part in a five mile run this weekend to “Finish the Run” dedicated to the woman in Memphis who was kidnapped and killed by some guy.

    22
    • Virtue signaling all. Although the murder angers me as much as other decent people, I’ve no need to participate in such displays to show anger or share “victim status”.

      13
      1
      • There is one exception that has occurred. Waaay back when there was that faux Christian sect church that would show up at funerals for dead American soldiers from the sandbox. They’d interrupt the services and denounce the dead soldier and “make a statement” by being most cruel to the soldier’s family and loved ones.

        Before laws were passed, there began counter demonstrations were bikers and truckers and who ever would assemble and create a “wall” separating the church members from the funeral ceremony. And perhaps a little street justice handed out if necessary.

        I supported this when such an occurrence happened in this town. Some things are simply unacceptable.

      • Is this some kind of joke?

        Black Lives Matter has been one of the most consequential social movements in decades and its rallying cry was the well deserved deaths of dindu nuffins.

        We cant be bothered to care about the outrageous murder of one of our even when shes actually innocent? Why the hell not?

        Why does the right think endless losses is some kind of principled thing?

        5
        1
        • NoOneAtAll: Running a race in a slaughtered White woman’s memory does . . . what, exactly? Are her children no longer rendered motherless? Does the runners’ moral fervor suddenly dissuade the black rapists and murderers? How many of said runners would even dare criticize said murderers and their strong demographic component?

          It’s simply a more mobile version of putting teddy bears and flowers on a gravesite. It makes the participants feel they’ve done something good, without any real effort or changing anything at all.

          • If we had the sympathy of the majority of the white population none of this would be possible

            Martyrs are one of the chief ways movements grow! Our middle eastern friends got a country plus billions a year partly out of a precocious girl who invented the ballpoint pen to write a diary and then died of typhus. Not being robbed by joggers is basically a hate crime thanks to a black rushing a cop and trying to take his gun.

            The world runs off ideas and feelings. Not understanding and making use of this (justly, in our case) is what the kids now call absolute autism.

        • No one said “I don’t care”. I said, I don’t show reaction that has little to no effect on the current situation nor future situations. That is what 5k runs and “angry” postings on social media do—nothing to effect change. They simply make the poster feel “good”. Like the Ukrainian flag colors popping up all over or ending your comments with “Slava Ukraini”.

          What I added was that the one time such group action had an effect, or was organized to have an effect, I *did* make arrangements to take part. That of attending a funeral service to present a “wall” between the Westboro Baptist Church crazies and the cemetery services.

          This was an effective “counter protest” to prevent these crazies from getting near the mourners and chanting their hateful obscenities. When the “Church” heard of the organizing of this counter protest—literally hundreds of truckers and bikers, and just decent citizens of any stripe—they canceled their “protest”. Good thing too. bikers in other States showed they were not inclined to be peaceful in these matters. 😉

          3
          1
      • If it’s virtue signaling, no. If, however, it’s underlain by an undercurrent of white solidarity, yes.

    • ‘Meanwhile, my friends are taking part in a five mile run this weekend to “Finish the Run” dedicated to the woman in Memphis who was kidnapped and killed by some guy.’

      SMDHing.

      WTF is it with White people and the cringe symbolism of their virtue snivelling?

      It’s days like today which make me feel ashamed for Inner Hajnalia.

      SMDHing.

    • Judging by the Duke basketball team, it was always at the forefront of promoting mulattos — hence race-mixing as the new ideal

      Sick institution. It is dying to compete with the Ivies in the worst of everything woke and anti-white and anti-west. It couldn’t just be content to be seen as an excellent southern school on par with the nation’s best — No, it had to go out of its way to outdo the Ivies in the worst of everything.

      Sold it soul for those college rankings

        • Duke took it upon itself to be at the forefront of the worship of the mulatto athlete.

          Maybe you didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but it was very apparent to me. My very good childhood friend went to Duke and we’d watch the games back in the 90s and later and it was always some mulatto being thrust into my face. I don’t remember many other schools making such a spectacle of it. Most other teams were either/or. Clearly white or clearly black.

          So let’s just agree, the lasting legacy of Duke University is it was that place of higher learning in that country they used to call the USA that was leading the charge in the glorification of the halfbreed, 😉

          • Duke recruits good basketball players who have a little something on the ball, so to speak. The halfbreeds qualify. They get a lot of hoops ability from their Hutu pappies, and whatever thinking ability they possess from their mudshark mammies. Coach K wasn’t crusading for Carameltopia, he was attempting to win natties. The fact that the faculty and administrators doubtless cheered the presence of the halflings was a haphazard byproduct of Coach K’s effort to win big while trying to recruit semi-literate players.

  19. “Imagine if people went about their day with people from the state following them around with a bullhorn, constantly shouting random slogans at them. This is what we have today.

    Hmmm. Sounds remarkably like life in those old communist dictatorships…

    • imagine what would happen if the internet went down, just the internet. we could still make phone calls on landline phones and newspapers would still be published, but so much of the daily blather and spite would just disappear-I mean the nutjobs would still be there but they would have no outlet for their nonsense but each other.

      15
      1
      • That is something I have had to remind myself. All of this insanity isn’t new, as Z Man has stated before. It is just that in the mass media era we live in, the fringe nut jobs got a platform, and they were smart enough to understand that to win you need to win the morality argument. Facts and reason are no match for the established morality.

        • Alas, the fringe nutjobs now constitute the orthodox core of AINO. At bare minimum, they control all of the institutions that matter.

    • Funnily enough, as with most authoritarian systems , communist dictatorships often contributed to de-politicizing ruled populations as propaganda slowly turned into empty rituals even the Party treated like Sunday mass.
      Democracy on the other hand, triumphed with the advent of mass media and the Internet. The levels of polarization are unprecedented and people willingly castrate themselves intellectually to get on with the latest moralistic bandwagon. From a college professor to a local barista.
      Communists could only dream about such eager co-operation.

      • AINO, and I assume virtually ever other Western nation, are anti-white Leftist heteronomies. Their ideology is not Marxist, but it as every bit as far to the Left as communism, if not more so.

        What is new is that only within the last 10-15 years have the Leftists secured absolute hegemony. This monopoly on power inaugurates a new epoch every much as did the Bolshevik revolution. And while it is certainly true that public life in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact from the mid-60s on was typefied by the bland and empty formalities you describe, that most certainly was not the case in the earlier phases of Communist rule, which engaged in relentless, full-blown propaganda that prefigured what we see in the West today. Western Europe and AINO in 2022 are akin to the USSR 1922 but fueled by digital technology and anti-white postmodern theory.

  20. “Change of mind.” “Change of heart.” Good ones, indeed, Z. Especially the latter, since it came at around 3am CST on the morning after the polls had closed. Apparently, the people didn’t have the same “change of heart” (OR mind) regarding The Principled Liz Cheney. (I didn’t know that personal animosity constituted a principle or conviction. Different times, I guess.)

  21. Drudge? Damn! I forgot all about that guy. He must have gotten a handsome payoff from somebody to kill his site the way he did.

    15
    • Everybody was getting a pay off during corona to toe the .gov line. Heck so did you if you got a stimulus check or a PPP loan. I doubt drudge was any different. I first learned about drudge in college, the conservative nerd told me that is where he got his conservative news. His about face in the past few years has been extreme.

      • The turn around happened about the time of Trump’s election and installment, but was complete before Covid arrived. I was Drudge reader and found the site interesting as I do AmRen. The change was notable—and I’m less than astute in these matters!

      • I’ve *somewhat* reliably heard that Drudge’s way of handling his mid-life crisis was to let his “identity,” gayness, consume his whole life and mind, and he changed and/or sold his site to reflect that. It’s plausible.

        An ex-colleague of mine hit the wall that way. Like Drudge he was a prominent contrarian in his youth, so the most public part of his conversion to full-time (or full-mind) gay was becoming a rabid defender of the establishment.

    • It’s amazing to me that on page 1 of the press there is an article extolling the virtues of electric cars and how an EV fleet is a done deal.. Further down the fold are articles decrying the state of the grid and predicting rolling blackouts.

      It takes like 370 million gallons of petrol a day to propel the passenger vehicle fleet down the roads of America. They want to add that equivalent to electric demand over the next 10 years. Assuming their reporting is accurate, which granted is a very large assumption, the grid is already being over utilized.

      10
      • The power grid needs less of your white boi calculations and statistics and more black girl magic. Thats how we’ll get to all electric cars, same way we got to the moon!

        22
      • The bet is on the time of use wrt recharge, i.e., night-time charging, which is the minimal use (of grid) period. The fallacy as I see it, is that is also the time when alternative energy generation is also at it’s lowest. 🙂

        So I see a logical—and amusing—conflict developing between Lefties/Greenies. At the present time, there is no feasible storage of surplus solar and wind over generation, so if night time grid use picks up, the fossil fuel generators must kick in or remain active—which is precisely what the greenies want to eliminate.

        In any event, such mixed generation will *increase* electric costs as it is inefficient.

        • One idea I saw bandied about was for “alternate” energy to pump water back into a reservoir, essentially using the reservoir as a giant battery. It was less an endorsement than to point out “well, if they were serious, at least this kinda, sorta works; makes an idiotic idea slightly less idiotic”.

          • This tech has been around and in widespread use for decades (pumped hydro storage). Problem is, it needs a particular local conditions. If you have the right conditions, it’s excellent and dirt cheap.

      • There is not enough Lithium on the planet to replace all the ICE’s, and that is the point. Uber was spawned and allowed to operate illegally as a test for a no car ownership society,

        • Yep, that’s where they are going with self driving cars. Maybe first with drivers in Uber, but eventually driverless cars.

          Confession: For those of you who may think I may be forward thinking, it did not dawn on me until a couple of years ago. Until then I was a proponent and thought such would be great for these old folks in their 80’s-90’s who are home bound or worse, clog up the roads and are dangerous (we’ve had incidents galore). Then I realized, they were making cars so expensive, they’d drive them out of private ownership for just about everybody, including me. 🙁

  22. “The solution to the ills of democracy is to let democracy murder itself and be ready to bury the corpse”

    Well, I’m not sure that democracy can murder itself without murdering all of us. That’s the problem.

    41
    1
  23. As defined, there is no such thing as democracy anywhere and there likely never has been. Historically even very small tribes weren’t governed by the outcome of the tally of individual votes but instead operated by consensus. Since everyone knew everyone else personally they were also able to successfully evaluate their ideas and solutions to problems. Men with dominant personalities weren’t able to overcome disinterested people who had grown up with them. In countries of millions this is not the case. Only a handful of people are personally familiar with any national political figure or their own representative of senator. The elite, who feed and train the political class, have the same responsibility toward the elected as you might have for your Lhasa Apso.

    12
    • About 2300 years ago, Plato identified one of the key flaws in democracy, which is that it selects for con men and smooth talkers, not smart and wise leaders. It turns people hysterical and rash (Thucydides talked about this too). How could anyone dispute that today? We see it moment-to-moment, every day. He also said that democracies will always backslide into tyranny, which we are seeing today. People figured this out long ago.

      There is a reason why kids are not taught the classics anymore. In my mind, whenever I read the media or the Biden entity blabbing about “our democracy”, this is what I think of, and why I have no desire to participate in it. Of course, being White, they have made it clear that there is not place in it for me, either.

      19
  24. A few short years ago, it was “basket of deplorables” now it’s “domestic terrorists”. Trump is old news and let us down repeatedly but it would be so great if he would just say “Eliza Fletcher could have been my daughter.”

    Spent some time on the NC coast surrounded by whites families. The only hint of danger were the riptides. Not a concern about a crazy savage hunting down white women or targeting and shooting white men because they are white.
    Movie night was “Master and Commander”. It was a dvd, so no need to regurgitate commercials with black men and white women on camping trips.
    It’s such a beautiful film but sad to realize how far off course we have fallen.

    57
    1
    • We also recently watched “Master and Commander.” It came out 2003 and is based on the novels of Patrick O’Brian. It’s an excellent film and I think most expected to see more movies based on those novels, but that never happened. But if it does happen, we all know the what the cast will look like.

      19
    • Melissa: at the other end of NC (but not Asheville) hiking in the Blue Ridge – you’ll get the same sensation.

      • I used to go up to rural MN and the Dakotas pheasant and grouse hunting. After a week or so up there it was horrible to go home and that was 10 years or so ago. Going in a restaurant or diner with no diversity and polite, quiet rural and small town people made me miss something that I never experienced.

        12
        • It’s still the way you describe up there in the small towns. The most populous area in the N. Minnesota-North Dakota area, Fargo-Moorhead, had very little diversity for a long time, but unfortunately that’s changing. The horrific murder of young Jupiter Paulsen is a prime example of the consequences of bringing in the third world.

    • “Deplorables” were only subject to derision and insults, “Terrorists” are subject to arrest without charges, speedy trial, nor bail. Better to be a Deplorable. 🙁

    • A box office flop AFAIK, best film I saw in a long time. They have plenty of book for sequels, but the public want more comic book movies

      • Master and Commander ended up making money, but just barely. It was a critical success though, and received 10 Oscar nominations, but only ended up winning two, with Return of the King winning the rest of them.

  25. I have never had a high opinion of politicians from any party. The last two years have shown that today’s politicians are not fit to fetch coffee for the politicians of Margaret Thatcher’s day.
    American politics seem to have a bit of blood and thunder,while British politics is full of mealy-mouthed weasely third-raters.
    I would be interested to learn the Zman’s opinion on the new Prime Minister Liz Truss. I think she’ll be worse than Theresa May and David Cameron combined and they’ll be a General Election in January.

    21
    1
    • When your first act as the new national executive is to announce price controls (energy bills) you’re not off to a good start.

      “Hi boys, I’m the new PM. Has anyone ever told you about the glories of rampant inflation? You’re going to love it!”

      22
      • Truss is humiliatingly stupid. During the run-up to Russia’s incursion into Europe’s fakest country she made some comment about Britain never consenting to Russian control of areas that were integral parts of Russia, not the Ukraine. The Russian foreign minister laughed in her face. Read a damn map sugar-tits.

        27
        • And in recent news, came the story out of East London about 100 Hutus slashing at each other with machetes. Good times.

          With news such as this, coupled with the selection of Liz Truss as Prime Minister, one has to wonder about whether there is any truth to the old saying, “There will always be an England”. Best of luck to you.

          11
          • The Sun has set on the British empire. And yes, she also confused the Baltic and Black seas. Now, I am poor at geography, but even I know the difference.

          • All the stories have been told
            Of kings and days of old
            But there’s no England now
            All the wars that were won and lost
            Somehow don’t seem to matter very much anymore

    • Her top advisors do not include a white man for the first time in British history. A nation of Saturnine Norsemen is led through an existential crisis by a woman who won’t appoint a single man from the population whose ancestors lived on the continent for milllenia. At the same time the population films an African invasion washing up on their shores.

      I don’t blame Liz Truss. I blame the British men who have gone missing. Some day they are going to have to stand up, make a claim and back it up.

      36
      1
      • And in recent news, came the story out of East London about 100 Hutus slashing at each other with machetes. Good times.

        With news such as this, coupled with the selection of Liz Truss as Prime Minister, one has to wonder about whether there is any truth to the old saying, “There will always be an England”. Best of luck to you.

          • Yes, you are correct, Stranger. Just disconcerting not knowing what you did wrong.

            Well, last I heard, one of the Hutus was killed. Reminds me of the old joke; “What are 10 dead lawyers at the bottom of the Marianas Trench? A start.”

            John Cleese’s recent observation that London was no longer English was amply confirmed when the New East Enders go to town with their pangas, and all that results is some few arrests. Try shoot to kill instead, because your claim to civilization is at stake. Won’t happen of course, as the former Looney Left is now running the place. But after our late Mostly Peaceful Protests, we’ve got no leg to stand on, now do we?

      • Here is one thought that may relate my off topic post to the topic of the post as well as yesterday’s post. The British executive is going to have to manage the country through a very rocky time. I don’t wish the Brits or anyone a crisis, but it is inevitable. I don’t see how any politician who is opposed to the population and nation they rule.is going to manage through this with any success. This crisis will require honesty, difficult decisions, and a population and a set of executives and representatives who fight together in a common cause making sacrifices and efforts to support it.

        It is a shame and a vile crime what the international oligarchic order has done with the puppet white men they have used to front them: the drunken fool Boris Yeltsin; the feckless slob Boris Johnson; the completely incapable Joe Biden. It stokes a fire to see these departures from Peter, Alfred and Washington. One can’t help but think it has been intentional – an optic designed to demoralize and render the old order illegitimate. To mock it and to mock those these buffoons were supposed to lead and to represent.

        Democracy is already a long dead corpse – at issue is who will cease to ceremoniously animate it first – the people or the oligarchy.

        In any case, if this cabinet succeeds in managing the crisis for the benefit of Britain and the British People, then the regime’s project of feminist, multi-culturalism has some legitimacy by way of competence and accomplishment.

        If not, and the failure is dire enough, then we could be adding to the pile the corpses of feminist, multi-culturalism and mass third-to-first-world immigration. The men of the native people will still be required to stand up, make a claim and succeed in backing it up.

        It is possible that if the latter happens, another corpse thrown on the heap will be the current British monarch’s familial claim. In its place a new Englishman and council of nobles may stand coronated in its place. Whatever corpses lie in any particular wave’s wake they will wash ashore on the tides of serious turmoil.

      • And remember folks, GB does not have the minority demographic percentages that the USA has. What was said once, “How many drops of dog crap does it take to spoil a gallon of vanilla ice cream?”

        Yeah, I’m being a bit crude here.

        • Compsci: It’s not crude – it’s a very vivid mental image meant to have an impact. Derbyshire’s beloved ‘salt in the soup’ may sound more mannered, but it’s a justification for miscegenation and a claim that there’s something inherently lacking in a homogeneous nation. I doubt his Han wife thinks China is lacking and in need of a certain percentage of White men and women.

          I used that very image (of fecal matter in ice cream) at Sailer the other day in a critical response to a commenter I used to think fairly well of. He was claiming a certain limited number of any sort of non-Whites would be a good addition to a neighborhood but the problem was determining how many was too many.

          I corrected him that even one was too many, i.e. drops of shite in ice cream.

  26. With all due respects to Plato and the giants on whose shoulders we stand, the cool kids said it best, and heeding the Bard’s dictum, in brevitis: “it’s all fake and gay.” FnG. The devolution of 2,000 years of accumulated wisdom encapsulated in, appropriately enough, an acronym.

    21
  27. I can’t say I will ever understand the people around me even the seemingly intelligent ones. I think of myself as somewhat intelligent but looking back thirty years I can’t believe that dumbass is me. Same IQ supposedly.

    A lot of people I know,even siblings are good in the smarts and accomplishment department but are ridiculously obtuse about the world, politics or self agency. It all seems hopeless.

    37
    • Most upper class people have never have to deal with the basic state of Nature, living their lives in air conditioned offices and scheduled routines. If they rebelled at all, it was in the approved ways.

      Given many of them lived in the controlled education bubble until they were twenty-five, they literally can not see a world where the authority school teacher does not grade what they do, and they’re smart enough to know how to get that smiley face sticker.

      It’s always fun that these same people will lecture you about how Priests used to control every aspect of people’s lives, and only recently have we become truly free from such shackles.

      35
      • It’s the pox of the B+ students, smart enough to memorize thr answers for the test, not smart enough to have actually independently understood or thought through any of it. They do the same trick repeating slogsns back and forth and upvoting the slogans on reddit.

        Incidentally this also seems to be the essential nature of upper class pajeets, probably why theyre slotting into our ruling class so seemlessly even our local hostile foreign subversive class might be concerned.

        11
    • David

      Great word, obtuse. Slow to learn/understand.

      My adult kids are that way. Hard working, devoted, loyal, but as gullible as a three year old. I regularly send stuff for them to read and they complain because I send “negative” articles/posts. They don’t want to know just how effed up the world is. I tell them that it’s ok, the world will let you know itself.

      With regards to looking back and cringing at ones past, it’s pretty clear that when I was 23 I knew everything. At this point in my life, I’m like Jon Snow;

      I know nothing.

      22
      • Ditto. But as I look back in fairness, they are only doing as *I* trained them to do. At their age I was as they are! I was a CivNat of the highest order—repressing those increasing bad thoughts and cheering the parade on. In short, I was a hopeless optimist as they are. Add to that the time they need to spend to survive and thrive—establish themselves, produce and raise a family, all even more difficult than in my day—and it is understandable.

        The tragedy of course, is that my awakening happens so late in life that there is little effect I can have on the situation we all decry. 🙁

    • Right David. This is why Zman’s “theory of emergent behavior” amongst the Elite is such a plausible, indeed powerful, theory. Right before the GFC, I was in a room full of billionaires and Masters of the Universe (at a famous “power” conference) and nobody knew what was happening. I’ve had trouble wrapping my head around purported Elite conspiracies ever since.

      This “obtuseness” you cite is by itself no reason for hopelessness. The goal is to learn from experience. When people refuse to learn from experience is when I feel despair.

      13
      • Moses Moldbug has ridden his theory of emergent behavior to a pretty cushy media career and some major thielbucks. Its a nice theory because it means you dont have to call anyone evil and all the bad things just sort of happened by accident.

        This is a way better theory than say… one in which Moldbug’s cousins were once again an intentionally malign influence and the accelerating collapse of our culture can be readily and directly traced to their increasing involvement in it.

        Particularly since the “emergent” emergence of emergent emergencies depends on media communication of such completely organic ideas… and therefore such emergence can only happen with the connivance of the owners of such. But unfortunately these owners have nothing in common. Just totally emergent guys!

        14
      • We all do this, unfortunately (i.e., fail to learn effectively from experience). It’s almost as if our minds get wiped on a daily basis. I try not to think about the implications.

    • Same here. Lots of stupid opinions over the years for lack of experience, probably some now I might regret someday. Oh well. At least I’m increasingly aware of my own ignorance, even if it doesn’t solve any political problems.

      The thing is, Democracy! demands a broad wisdom nobody has, so we have media to inform (in theory), and we end up holding others’ opinions on faith, eventually taking them as our own. That’s why it selects for liars, grifters, and scum. Feels good being an informed and engaged citizen lol.

      It’s a terrible system for anything but local politics, where the average person might know what he’s talking about and be capable of making good decisions.

  28. Here is an example of who the canadian gov’t and msm use for polling https://nanos.co/our-experience/advocacy-and-associations/ , there are dozens of red flags in the way they word the entire site….”an advocate for change” is among my all time favourites.
    Of course, it’s used in the same way…”authoritative sources” and “canadians have spoken” and all the rest the B.S. we’re way past tired of. Today’s article and normies belief in polls go to show “it’s the counting of the votes that matters.”

  29. “It is the irony of mass democracy. The stated point of democracy is to make government more responsive to the public will. Instead, it reveals that the people who are in charge have no interest in the public will. They serve other interests. That means those who oppose the prevailing order should ignore the public will as well. Instead, the focus must always be on who decides. The solution to the ills of democracy is to let democracy murder itself and be ready to bury the corpse.”

    As far as I know, the old question of which political system is best and who should rule goes back to Plato and his “The Republic.” And I confess I haven’t the foggiest idea of which system is best — if indeed any system can be “the best.” But I do have convictions about which is the worst. To my mind the worst is when you don’t even know who your real rulers are. That’s the system we live in. Everything is smoke and mirrors, and the ruling class operates through stooges and marionettes, the most egregious of whom is currently the brain-dead zombie Biden.

    38
    • “To my mind the worst is when you don’t even know who your real rulers are. That’s the system we live in. Everything is smoke and mirrors, and the ruling class operates through stooges and marionettes, the most egregious of whom is currently the brain-dead zombie Biden.”

      There has never been anything like this new totalitarian system in the rump West. Yes, the politicians and administrators were whores and puppets during the Gilded Age, too, but we did know which Robber Barons paid them to work their moneymakers. Even warlords can be identified. Expect the system to become opaquer as hatred of it grows and the actual powers desire more obscurity.

      13
  30. One of my relatives is a doctorate with one of his specializations being psychology in polling questions. The short story is there are a thousand ways to subtly manipulate polling questions to get to a predetermined output. This, of course, is a big problem for people who actually want to get a truthful pulse of a people, but a bonanza for less scrupulous people.

    Wouldn’t really be surprised if it was a reasonably balanced set of people asked, but can also guarantee that a good percentage of that 60% would turn around and vote for Trump and not see any contradiction. Just like the no fly zone question where people agree to have it over Ukraine until it’s clarified no fly zone requires shooting down planes.

    For any dissident, the message is clear: Forget polls, project strength.

    27
    • “there are a thousand ways to subtly manipulate polling questions to get to a predetermined output.”

      Statistics is a powerful tool to understand reality and even make limited predictions about the future, but when the prerequisites for veracity (like random sampling) are deliberately and skillfully violated, it becomes a powerful tool to tell lies plausible to the unwitting.

      17
        • Yep. It’s a very difficult concept to get across. If you do a Briggs and simply state, “The models predict what you tell them to predict”, people reject the statement reflexively.

          If you explain to them that the above statement means that the modeler in essence states by creating the particular model that he understands the phenomena being modeled *in its entirety*, then they look at you blankly.

          I’ve never felt successful in explaining such, but the second explanation seems more workable for the naive.

      • As someone once said, statistics are like a lamp post for a drunk. They can enlighten or offer a means of support.

    • I have long suspected that, more often than not, a poll tells us more about those who conducted the poll than it does those who responded to/participated in it. Using polls to make sweeping statements about the general public seems like a con in the vast majority of cases. And, as you indicate in your comment, human beings tend to be fickle. What many of them think at one moment could shift in an opposite direction on a mere whim. One gets a distinct impression that most folks are largely oblivious and lack fixed conceptualizations and principles. They do not have a fundamental intellectual core that would produce any consistency of mindset or opinion. Their opinions are often whatever is fashionable at the immediate hour. It goes no deeper than that.

      As to the sacrosanct (yet wholly fraudulent) phenomenon known as “democracy,” I think H. L. Mencken got it right when he quipped, “Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses.”

      13
    • With the demographics of AINO pushing 50% PoC, it is entirely possible that some of these bizarre and counterintuitive poll results could be fairly accurate. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll live to see the day when an honest-to-goodness witch doctor occupies the Anti-White House. And I’m not joking. No outcome, no matter how outrageous, is any longer outside the realm of possibility.

      • Witch doc, or a hutu-ess such as we have here in SC running for the US senate – campaign slogan: treat white people like sh*t. I have no doubt she’d get votes from more than a few uber-obtuse white people.

        • I wouldn’t be surprised if at least 20 % of American Whites would drool all over themselves in eagerness to vote for the most explicitly and aggressively anti-White candidate imaginable. I don’t believe that most of these anti-White Whites are suicidal. I doubt many of them suffer from any sincerely felt “White guilt.” Rather, I suspect that most of them aim to send a message to the world roughly equivalent to the following: “We are the GoodWhites. As such, we hate the BadWhites too and hope to see them suffer, as they deserve. Of course, being GoodWhites, it goes without saying that we will be exempt from that suffering ourselves.” Such self-identified GoodWhites operate under the disastrously mistaken assumption that they will avoid the hangman when the moment of ultimate reckoning arrives.

      • Same thing occured to me. When you see some “legislator” in south Africa making monkey sounds or going full worldstar brawl in government houses or running on a platform of kill white people to eliminate the bad juju and bring back the electricity or whatever… you dont think “wow this must be fake!” You think “wow what a people they have there!”

        Getting to the same place here with the US now. There is still fraud to steal elections and fake polls but they need less and less all the time

Comments are closed.