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Imagine you are the CEO of a large corporation and you have to make a big decision about a critical issue facing the company. Your team in the C-suites have been busy putting together all of the information they can about the issue. There have been meetings and presentations on all aspects of the issue. Experts have been brought in to explain various aspects of the issue. After having digested all of the information on the issue, it is now time to act. What do you do?
Obviously, the right answer, even without knowing any of the details about the issue in this hypothetical, is to put it up to a vote. First, you will have the various sides on the issue make their case to the employees. Maybe have a series of Zoom debates and let the parties put up posters around the offices. Perhaps the principles representing the various positions will have an all hands on deck meeting. At some point, you have the employees log in and cast their vote.
Of course, this is ridiculous. No company would ever do such an insane thing, at least not in this age. In the 19th century there were some efforts to create socialist companies, but they ended poorly. Usually, these democratic companies were part of a utopian society. In the modern age, no one thinks the principles of democracy have any place in something important like a corporation. The truth is the commies were right about American business. It runs on fascist principles.
It is not just major corporations that avoid democracy. There is no military in this world that embraces democracy. The nearest thing to democracy in warfare was the pirate ship, which often voted on where to plunder. Even on a pirate ship, there was a captain who made the big decisions. His men might “vote him off the ship” but they would quickly elect a new captain. Otherwise, every military on the planet has a vertical chain of command and no democratic principles.
A good rule of life is that when any organization reaches sufficient size to employ a full time leader, it employs a full time leader. A small group of men working to a common goal might operate from a consensus, but even in small groups someone is the de facto leader to whom everyone looks for the final decision. It is fair to say that an organization without a leader is unnatural. Human beings, even women, always organize around a leader, even when everyone is agreement.
This natural lack of democracy is most evident in science. If someone comes along claiming that he has discovered a new element, the science men do not call together a meeting and vote on the claim. The claim must be backed with proof and that proof is analyzed and challenged to verify it. Despite what the Gaia worshippers say, consensus only exists within science where proof is not present. The word “consensus” is a signal of doubt, not proof of the claim.
A good rule of life is that anything important is excluded from anything resembling the democratic process. No business runs on democratic lines. Armies do not run according to democratic principles. Those two areas are arguably two of the most important bits of any human society and they run according to fascist principles. Even family life avoids democracy as much as possible. The expression “head of the household” exists because households naturally have a leader.
If one wants to understand why voting is a pointless waste of time, you just have to ask why no important things are ever put to a vote? Immigration is arguably the most important issue facing the country. Politicians avoid it like the plague. Even the “good politicians” speak in tongues when the issue is raised. Meanwhile, they scheme in private to do what they know is against the interests of the people. No one voting for it will dare mention it when on the campaign trail.
The fact is our elections are meaningless. The candidates speak in vague terms about abstract items. It is all in-group/out-group signaling. “We have to secure our southern border” is just echolalic babbling used to titillate a certain population. “We need affordable healthcare for all” is emotive noise for different people. None of the things candidates say while campaigning has anything to do with how they will vote once in office or the policies that will become law.
You could easily replace the people with colored blocks of wood. How would the current Georgia senate election be any different if the choice were between red block of wood and blue block of wood? Alternatively, the candidates could be replaced with lights that flash different colors in response to different noises. Say the word “immigration” and one light flashes green and the other flashes red. The expensive humans could be replaced with cheap robots.
The reason our elections are meaningless, of course, is that no human society ever subjects important things to democracy. The old joke about if voting mattered, they would not let us do it was funny because it is true. There is no correlation between public opinion and public policy. This study from 2014 went through 1800 issues and found no link between what the people told the politicians they wanted and what the politicians eventually did.
If nothing important is ever subjected to democracy and democracy never results in the public will manifesting in public policy, then why are people hooked on the act of voting and why is democracy an object of worship. Based on observation it appears there is no argument that can be made to convince the bulk of the people to end this absurd charade we call voting. Suggest a boycott of the process and the typical suburban peasant gives you a sermon about democracy.
Compounding this bizarre worship of democracy is that most modern people live a third of their lives as fascists. The self-employed person has almost disappeared from the labor market. Small business is following the self-employed into the abyss as big business dominates the marketplace. That means most people work in companies that operate along fascist principles. If half of your waking life is committed to fascism, how in the world has democracy become an object of worship?
Societies can have moments of madness. The 1970’s saw America embrace leisure suits and disco, while cities were turned into war zones. Much of that period has been politely forgotten because no one can make sense of it. Maybe this age and its fetish from democracy is something similar. The chanting about democracy and obsession with politics is another fit of madness. Instead of afros and sideburns we have brain damaged hobos in the Senate and black Nazis.
Alternatively, this great delusion about the importance of participating in elections is a form of escapism. As people become more dependent on the system for the basics of their lives, they need to believe they have some say in how the big machine that is the modern society runs their life. Democracy and the various identity cults are a way to feel like you have control when you are effectively living as a prisoner. Democracy lets the inmates feel they are in charge of the asylum.
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Amy Robach story make me think, are white women are natural born race traitor?
Why white women are so traitorous, becoming such backstabbing whore?
Any one give me some answers, it makes me crazy and great torment
I like that “Human beings, even women . . .”
ROTFLMAO!!!!
scrivener3 on December 6, 2022 at 2:47 pm said: Fascists organize people through force, police action compels compliance with the Fascist. Corporations organize people through agreement and consent. Very few corporations maintain substantial private police forces. Corporations do not call the police, public or private, to compel that employees arrive at work on time or produce work product. Corporations say come and cooperate and we will give you a position, support and pay. If you find a better place you are free to go there. Scrivener got a lot of hate for posting that comment. Thing is he’s not wrong.… Read more »
No, you are free. It’s just that your freedom has a high cost. This however, has always been true. The real problem is that most people have come to believe the foolish notion that “freedom is free”. It has always been much easier for people to sell their freedom for some perceived benefit than to pay that high price.
Or, you can walk across town and work for a “competitor” corp. that is exactly the same,or worse. These corporations are all the same. And they are nests of turf protecting narcissists and cliques for whom the supposed goals of the company come in second to their own agendas.
Voting still matters in America and to Americans for a couple of big reasons. First: Elections and voting are an integral element of American culture (or cultures if you prefer). As much as sushi is to Japanese culture or worshipping cows is to Hindu cultures. Belief in the efficacy of voting is an element of the Americans having an internal locus of control. Which even if largely delusional is central to Americans self conception and individual success. Attacking the very concept of voting and elections will be reflexively rejected and reflect negatively on the person proposing it as anti-American –… Read more »
Im going to anticipate some rejections to the above comment and respond preemptively with a very broad brush.
One of the reasons the right and especially the dissident right consistently lose is that we’ve come to believe that:
The truth will set us free
All we have to do is expose the TRUTH and voila we win.
Bad news for you kemosabes.
Thats bullshit. A flat out lie.
The truth doesn’t matter for shit in politics and persuasion.
A compelling lie beats the truth ten times out of ten.
Accepting that is first step to stop losing.
So….. let me make sure I understand this….. You’re suggesting that a belief which is “largely delusional”— “belief in the efficacy of voting”— is nevertheless “central to Americans self-conception”, and— although largely delusional— allows us to maintain the illusiory-but-comforting feeling of having “an internal locus of control”? And because this shared delusion of control is “an integral element of American culture”— like “worshipping cows is to Hindu cultures”— it should not be attacked? Really? Because our attack on it “will be reflexively rejected [by the deluded] and reflect negatively on the person proposing it”, it should not be done? Really?… Read more »
You’re suggesting that a belief which is “largely delusional”— “belief in the efficacy of voting”— is nevertheless “central to Americans self-conception”, and— although largely delusional— allows us to maintain the illusiory-but-comforting feeling of having “an internal locus of control”? And because this shared delusion of control is “an integral element of American culture”— like “worshipping cows is to Hindu cultures”— it should not be attacked? Pretty much. If you want to persuade people to your point of view or take some action. But go a head and do it anyway, if all you care about is proving that your smarter… Read more »
At this late date, how “joe/jane normies” can have any confidence that voting harder is going to accomplish anything is beyond me. The propagandizing brainwash runs deep.
Fascists organize people through force, police action compels compliance with the Fascist.
Corporations organize people through agreement and consent.
Very few corporations maintain substantial private police forces. Corporations do not call the police, public or private, to compel that employees arrive at work on time or produce work product.
Corporations say come and cooperate and we will give you a position, support and pay. If you find a better place you are free to go there.
You appear to have very little reading on previous countries that had what is commonly described as “fascism” as a govt model such as Italy, Germany, Spain, Chile etc.
Maybe do some reading.
Nearly every country on the face of the Earth has corporations and business enterprises.
Are they all fascist?
In the European fascist States there was a merger of State and private business. There were Party members put on the board of all large enterprises. The government compelled the corporation with police powers just as it compelled the individual citizens. As the big M said:
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Benito Mussolini
You appear to be slightly retarded or infected with an infantile world view of history and social operations.
Perhaps it is impossible for you to grasp as to how people in those systems actually lived and voluntarily acted within them because of the bad word your professor told you.
Maybe put down your big coloring book of politics and read some actual real accounts.
Are they all fascist? Better question is are they working in a fascist system and cooperating.
Yeah, I get my views from the History Channel too…
It’s nice to post an idea and get an insult in response.
I think the Zman is wrong to say corporations are organized on a fascist model. Corporations are voluntary organizations. Under political fascism the State controls every aspect of the corporation, the corporation becomes an instrument of the State.
The state becomes an instrument of the corporation.
Scrivener3 – I assume you are well intended. Fascism is an economic arrangement where the the means of production are held and managed by the private sector, but they are effectively controlled by the state via taxes and regulations. The GAE and late phase progressivism, can accurately be described as a fascist state it can also be described as communist in the sense that so much of the economic activity and the flow of money is dictated by the Central Bank. It is central planning via interest rate manipulation and As for your view of corporations, have you worked in… Read more »
They become fascist when they pay the gov’t o protect them. As the big companies did fine during the Covidcon, but small mom and pops were wiped out.
I did not realize Dave French reads the blog
His wife reads it to him using different voices while he’s caged.
“…to compel that employees arrive at work on time or produce work product.”
Nah, just submit to whatever medical treatments you want or you’re fired. Not coercive at all. This has literally been a point made thousands of times by normies and DR alike the past two years but you seem unwilling to draw the connection.
If you cannot see it at this point it is because you do not want to see it.
And in the United States, railway workers, ahem, might not agree with this rosy picture in current year.
Are we are conflating “voting” with “universal suffrage”—as in everyone gets to vote. Most people are too stupid or duplicitous to vote, and therefore destroy whatever value there is to consensus as determined by vote. Z-man makes a pretty good argument under a premise of the unknowing having a inclusion in decision making, but I’m not sure that such is always the case. For example, large businesses are not always autocracies. The ones I am familiar with have a Board of Directors who are empowered to vote up or down on major decisions on company directions. One we often hear… Read more »
The Swiss have national referendums where the People can vote on the weightiest issues. We have the referendum process here in Cal and sometimes we do vote on critical issues like Prop 187 and against queer marriage but then the courts destroy these little rebellions quite nicely for the powers that be.
IMO the courts will no longer need to do that phase of their masters’ bidding in the future.
@Compsci
good post. Also, as our esteemed host has often pointed out, the question of “who are we?” needs to be answered as a people. It is impossible to do this now in the North American Economic Trading Zone. We do not have a nation of people who are united under what defines them. Instead, we have a mixture of people who do not share any common values, culture or even a language.
When simply asking, “Who are we?”, I don’t think that question can be answered.
Depends who you define as “we” within a geographic boundary occupied by multiple groups.
The trick is probably to reduce in one’s mind the scope to your own aligned group and not worry abut the wider historical definition that no longer exists, but we all sort of carry around in our heads as a formed idea from earlier life
If there is no nation left as we, then do as the other groups do and redefine nation for yourself. Then work from there.
“Instead of afros and sideburns we have brain damaged hobos in the Senate and black Nazis.”
Caligula’s horse in the Roman Senate was a more honest exposure of the farce we are faced with today.
Seems to me that was to make a point in public as to what a facade the senate in that era was.
And from the last election, I gather we’ve come full circle. To me the “hobo election” means quite plainly that the politicians are simply paid actors who perform as per the direction of “others”. But we knew that already.
The seem more like extras than actors.
I would prefer to have Incitatus in the Senate than the mess we have inherited. The damage any single Senator horse can do is limited to where and on what he can shit, who he can kick, etc. Small stuff. Maybe a lowly stay at home senator gets his face kicked off. Not so bad!
But these people? Not good.
I sum it up as Democracy is the illusion that IQ is additive.
[…] ZMan jerks back the curtain. […]
A Fascist knew how to die-Il Duce Democracy is soldiers voting or it’s Fraud. – me, and all of history from Athens forward. I’m glad you found something to believe in, although top down leadership has limits even (especially) in the military. Also military leaders must know how to die, or there will be new leaders. Now in terms of working with who we’ve got, I don’t care for the present crop of kiddy raping thieves, so we must think carefully about what we do, assuming anyone does anything, present company excepted. Good news is Oligarchs are defecting to America,… Read more »
Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. The passive observer problem. Most Americans recognize that the country is off the rails, headed for the ditch, and the train wreck is just a matter of time. How can it be otherwise with a dementia patient in the White House and PA just elected a stoke victim retard to the Senate? But Normie stays on the couch because it’s soft, and he can still watch sportsball while drinking beer and eating Cheetos. Until he has gone 3 days without a meal, he will remain a passive observer of the… Read more »
TomA,
Excellent comment. May I share the text of the comment on other platforms? I will crop out your screen name, but still attribute it to an anonymous post?
Just as we remark that Christianity was not meant to be a suicide pact, so too must we insist that masochism needn’t be a necessary prerequisite for Dissent. Jimmy Carter was a masochist.*** Ronald Reagan was a dissident. ============== ***Or at least Jimmy Carter pretended to be a masochist. We know that Tater Joe is a sadist [with a particular penchant for tweaking the nipples of pre-pubescent little girls]; I don’t know what the group photo was supposed to have symbolized [everything is symbolic with these molochists], but it’s creepy as hell: https://tinyurl.com/35yk2dh7 Maybe that was the entire purpose of… Read more »
… headed for the ditch, and the train wreck is just a matter of time.How can it be otherwise with a dementia patient in the White House … Dementia patients don’t actually run things. Biden etc are merely the puppet. Perhaps his cabinet makeup explains who is running things. I think it does explain, do you? To point to the puppet, misdirects attention away from those are puppet-mastering. The puppet-masters are few, their power is the power to do misdeeds in the shadows. Exposed, their power wanes. As much fun as the cold dark meanness of a collapse may seem,… Read more »
What I’m worried about now is the extent to which an obviously sadistic leprechaun like Tater Joe is all too happy to play the role of the puppet.
There isn’t a doubt in my mind but that Tater Joe’s first wife [ Neilia Hunter Biden] attempted to kill all of her children [via motor vehicle collision] in order to save those children from any further molestation by their father.
Every time I see a story about the immigration floodgates being opened at our southern border now, in my mind’s eye, I see myriad jesuits giggling sadistically at us.
First, a close family member suffered from dementia, so I know it when I see it. Biden is a clinical case study in dementia and is likely being treated as such by the White House physician.
Second, there have always been people behind the scenes pulling the strings of politicians, so that is nothing new. The key point is that a large cohort of the electorate voted for Dementia Joe. That is not a trivial problem because you can’t fix stupid.
Third, the collapse will create a fog of chaos which is an essential element for quick and successful remedy.
The biggest benefit of collapse is the alleviation of penalties for “removing” the scum from our society.
@(Bourbon, TomA) The Traitor Tator seems to enjoy sabotaging Americans, seeing us struggle, while subsiding the replacers. In the beginning of his reign, sitting at his desk, a document was placed before him. Biden says, “I don’t know what I’m signing.” An off camera voice says “just sign it,” and so he did. He seems demented at least sometimes and happy to do us wrong when he is lucid. And All the time he and his family are crooks. He and they could all go to prison except for Biden doing the bidding of the bad-ones. His proclivities towards children… Read more »
I don’t disagree, but unfortunately, we cannot discount the possibility that a collapse could be just as likely to empower a more totalitarian government than the one we already have. What do you think Joe Normie is gonna do int he even of a collapse — get his kit and become a Max Max road warrior, or beg for a stronger government to provide his needs? The problem with collapses is that they are not always as total and as freedom-inducing as we’d like to believe. Our current Leviathan got its origins in the Depression, when the public happily gave… Read more »
@TomA, I don’t disagree with you and I want you to be right, but I don’t think you’ll see that happen. TPTB are just clever enough to prevent normie from losing THAT much. Sure, he will have a lifestyle decline, but not one to where he is completely destitute. Look around you – The football stadiums are full, Thanksgiving saw the most watched NFL game in history. Consumerism is still in full swing, Disney’s parks are still full, etc. etc. All the while normie is still waving his flag shouting that we’re all one race. Hell, my own conservative friends… Read more »
No argument, just notes, maybe food for thought. I’m wondering what the connection between voting and democracy is. As far as I know, the United States has always been representative, i.e., hierarchical. The US has never set policy by plebiscite, again as far as I know. Some states will have referenda, but mostly we’re voting to establish hierarchy. It’s more legalistic and civilized than open combat, supposedly less corrupt than informal means. Critically, voting is baked into our political culture, probably the most-well founded element of American culture. Maybe the only well-founded one. Otoh, there’s the delusion of equality, which… Read more »
” Human beings, even women, always organize around a leader, even when everyone is agreement”
I’ll be using that.
I suspect I’m not alone.
Zman’s post today highlights the prevailing issue that most people who embrace civic nationalism, and a belief in the infallibility of Democracy. That issue acts as blinders to the reality on the ground. They continue to hold the faith that if they “Just, Vote, Harder,” then eventually all will be restored and made whole. This is not criticism against them, only an observation. I am not judging, especially since I used to believe in the system as well. It was not until around the age of 30 that the picture began to fully come into focus on the political realities… Read more »
[…] The Great Delusion […]
But “could” democracy, in some shape or form, work? Suppose some future country is racially, culturally, ideologically and religiously homogeneous. Suppose, furthermore, that this nation has a comparatively small population and that voting is limited only to citizens who have demonstrated beyond question that they have good character and are contributing members of society rather then social pests or economic liabilities. The electorate might be no more than 20 percent of the adult population. Would such a set of dynamics change the nature of democracy and render it viable?
If you had 3 kids would you let voting work in your house?
That’s beside the point. In the scenario I outlined, the voters would be far more qualified to vote than any children and adolescents. And they would be greatly more qualified than 90 percent of people currently voting in Western nations.
Not really.
It comes down to ownership of power, not qualification.
The measures you outline must be created and enforced by a smaller set than those voting by necessity, so the owners of the power to decide must decide the voting population.
The owners and the minimal voters are then smaller than the larger population. It comes down to power to enforce such a decision.
The question of who is the owner of the power is the actual one.
Its no different than in the children case.
The question is not who has the power but whether there is some flaw in the scenario I outlined that would make that form of democracy dysfunctional. Obviously, there are disparities in power. Always is it thus. But if the ideals and objectives of those with power are substantially aligned with those who have little power, then the system could, it seems, work. This is not an argument for democracy as a reified form. It is a pragmatic argument.
@Ostei Perhaps I am not explaining myself. You propose a limited franchise for some small percentage who are the better percentage of the population and the rest are effectively children. Who decides these people (not the 80% -so themselves? someone else? some selecting commitee? peers? some form of competition? What is the actual criteria? war? business? some other achievement? who physically ensures this restriction against the rest of the population’s power base? In a pragmatic sense you have described a pre-modern English gentry/aristocracy model or a similar higher class/citizen oriented system a la Athens or Sparta, not a democracy. that… Read more »
@trumpton I am speaking of a hypothetical future nation, just as one may have spoken of a hypothetical future United States in 1756. And just as a set of highly intelligent people coalesced and created the schema for the future US, and a sufficient number of colonials went along with it, so it could happen for a future Whiteland. Keep in mind, furthermore, that the US franchise in the late 18th century was extraordinarily restricted compared to today and may have been even more restrictive then what I have roughly proposed for Whiteland, yet the those excluded from political power… Read more »
Ostei: ‘could’ democracy work given those parameters? I think so.
However, given the current crop of humanity on planet earth, I can’t envision any society that meets more than a very few of the parameters you posit.
Possibly, SISL. But I am envisaging a future self-selecting nation of intelligent, industrious white people. No freeloaders, felons and fruitcakes (more or less coterminous with Leftists) allowed. The human capital of such a nation would far outstrip any current nation with the possible exception of Switzerland.
I’ll gladly sign on.
There are two underlying assumptions in the original pre-oligarchic American system. First, most people are incapable of intelligent much less wise decision-making when it comes to civilizational issues. Allowing them to directly decide (democracy) is a terrible idea because they will always get it wrong and oligarchy will flourish, followed by tyranny. Second, ruling governments ALWAYS go bad and need personnel refresh. Our system was set up so that factions within the ruling class would compete for power within the federal system and that a restricted electorate drawn from the masses of an intelligent and moral people (white men with… Read more »
That’s a start, but as Trumpton points out, even then we’d have those with little understanding, perhaps emotionality, and limited intellect voting.
From the schemer article ZMan referenced:
“Half a dozen Republican members have privately expressed the need for farmworkers to fill jobs in their rural communities, but know that even that bipartisan measure will probably face a blockade by staunch conservatives.”
Tens of thousands of people have been laid off from Twitter and other tech companies. Most if not all of them surely parasites engaged in valueless or even outright destructive work.
Perfect candidates to pick strawberries. Send the sinecures to the farms and the migrant laborers back to their homes.
Down to the countryside with the lot of them.
Step one of the Pol Pot Policy Redux…
North Korea is a democracy. Says so right in the name. China is a republic. Says that in the name too. What we are in America is United. Again, check the name. And we most definitely are. When the regime propaganda system which unites us gave the word, everyone put masks on! From coast to coast! Never tell me we aren’t united. When I went to vote in 2020, the voting precinct was in a public building where the sign on the door said masks were required. And everyone, regardless of who they were voting for, put one on. Even… Read more »
No, it’s not true that “everyone put masks on from coast to coast”. In the place I live— a small town in the mountains of western Colorado—many people never wore masks. At the local grocery store, some had them on, and some didn’t; but nobody gave anybody any shit about not wearing one. And in the social circles I hang out in, people were not only not masking and not social distancing, they were still hugging each other and passing joints around. But when I went to Denver for a weekend, everybody there was masked, with no exceptions; so, of… Read more »
During the lockdown my wife and I left our metro area to spend a few days in a rural small town just to get away. The city we left behind was 90% masked, even outdoors. In the small town, over the course of 3 days, we didn’t see one masked person.
There was a joke back in the 80s, maybe from P J O’Rourke, that any country with “Republic” or “Democratic” in its name, was neither. In addition to your examples, don’t forget the German Democratic Republic, no less: aka East Germany.
This joke was popular among those who also said that “social” meant “not” as in social science, social work, etc.
West Germany was “The Peoples Republic of Germany” or in German “Bundesrepublik Deutschland.”
People here, in AZ where I live, were offered to option of maskless, curbside voting—but I get your point.
Ja, and at the end a guy handed me one of those “I Voted” stickers, which I tossed in the trash on my way out. I only came out to vote against my current Member of the House of “Representatives” (unsuccessfully, natch).
“Democracy” is a propaganda term for the technocratic oligarchs who wield power. For the great masses who have no power, “democracy” is primarily a cope. It’s a way of convincing themselves of the “palpably not true” (to borrow a phrase from Mencken). Better to face the reality of one’s own powerlessness.
Yep: if they can supply a narrative, where people can feel good about themselves, many (most?) people will go for it.
The COVIDiocy fiasco is what you get when you let democracy into science. Same as 4 out of 5 dentists agree they want to shill for this toothpaste.
> The claim must be backed with proof and that proof is analyzed and challenged to verify it.
Well, unless you’re Dr. Watson making a forbidden statement, then you’re cast into the void for violating consensus, expertise be damned.
Only one man controls the Nuclear Football, and those who run the show make sure it isn’t John McCain.
Twelve Republican Senators just gave us federal-level gay “marriage”, and why? Because their voters back in Missouri and West Virginia so desperately wanted it? No – because the everyone inside Versai– erm, the Beltway has the same opinion on the issue, and they don’t want to go against it. And this is where we are now, in our crumbling empire. It’s no different from every crumbling empire, really. It’s what I call the Versailles Effect. Same though, with the Forbidden City in Beijing or the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The elites live, work, and see only what is inside… Read more »
The act is not for gay marriage.
It is worse. It is entirely structured to allow federal agencies to persecute, change the tax status and revoke licensing for organizations that will not support it.
It is a compelling behavior act, not an enabling act.
Saw a video of the former commissar of Trust and Safety at Twitter. I believe his name is Yoel Roth. He is a dangerous psychopath. At some point, even Kings dealt with some reality of nature – hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, some aspect of farming and livestock. I don’t know if the 17th century Bourbons had to. It kept them at least somewhat grounded in reality. A guy like Yoel Roth – has he ever done anything in his life other than try to avoid reality? Zero Hedge posted an interview of him hosted by the Knight Foundation. If you… Read more »
A couple of online commentators I saw called his interview proof that Twitter was banned people based on “rule by theater kids.” It shows you how much power a certain group has that Musk had to keep him around after firing the Indians and continue to suck up to him while simultaneously trying to alienate him to the point with Roth quit. Almost like the stereotypes are true.
As Steely Dan put it in a lyric of theirs, “Show business kids making movies of themselves, you know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else”.
Yoel Roth. With a name like that he’s gotta be Norwegian.
I saw that interview as well. Even the Mrs. – who sometimes is a little too middle-of-the-road for her own good, or mine for that matter – said out loud, “Who the hell is this faggot drama queen and who let it near the levers of power!”
Truer words were never spoken. Don’t get me started!
Every. Single. Time.
Reality Rules: “There is no greater potential for evil than a person whose entire life has been lived in the halls of power, who is wholly disconnected from the realities of the world and who is convinced that he is not only a victim of the world, but that he is the great and irreplaceable champion of all other such victims who must stand up to all of the forces of evil in the universe that his imagination sees as closing in on him.” We make an existential Error of Category when we place the chicken before the egg. Yoel… Read more »
The Beltway Versailles knows our opinions well – they just don’t care.
I’m not sure that’s the case. I remember how puzzled all the TV ‘pundits’ were after Trump won in 2016. They were genuinely baffled as to why anyone would vote for him. Clearly they had no idea how ordinary people thought. But it was also clear that— prior to Trump getting elected— they *thought* they “had their finger on the national pulse”. Trump’s victory proved otherwise: forced the realization on them that people did not think like they did. It was a revelation that left them baffled: they now realized that ordinary people had a different mindset than they did;… Read more »
“…they now realized that ordinary people had a different mindset than they did; though they still couldn’t imagine what it might be.”
…but whatever the dirt people might have been thinking in 2016, their betters vowed, “Never again”.
…and of that you may be certain.
This short, easy read explains democracy nicely:
https://www.alibris.com/The-End-of-Democracy-Christophe-Buffin-de-Chosal/book/38976052?matches=8
“Elections” give the rulers legitimacy. Also, law itself is corrupted by democracy so that whatever the government does becomes “the will of the people” even if it’s not. Same-sex marriage is a first-rate example.
Well worth wreading.
Such as when Californians voted to ban gay marriage but the establishment felt they voted the wrong way and ignored the result?
As I understand, prior to the Supreme Court finding “a right to gay marriage” in the Constitution, there had been 33 state referendums on the question, and all but one had voted ‘No’.
(If I understand correctly) The Court did not find a right for Gay marriage as we understand Roe vs Wade was decided, but rather decided it under the 14th Amendment. The reasoning being that many States had Gay marriage laws on the books, so “unequal rights” were at issue.
That may be the case; I don’t recall all the details. But in any event, didn’t they end up announcing the gays have a legal right to be married?
Immigration in California too. In the 90s, the California voters passed what I think was a citizen’s initiative to deny public services to illegals. Then the same voters elected Grey Davis and he said that he would not defend the initiative against the inevitable court cases.
I don’t know why disco gets such a bad rap. A lot of it is good and most of it is better than what’s on the radio today. The fashion and decor of the 70s was awful, I’ll give you that.
Neither disco nor leisure suits deserve this kind of rough treatment.
The disco orchestra, especially, is a wonderful, but mostly forgotten art form. If not for streaming music services making those old recordings available, it would probably be completely forgotten.
Hooked on Classics? A Fifth of Beethoven? ELO even. Is this what you are talking about? I was just a kid in the 70s, so anything that was esoteric, I wouldn’t have been aware of.
I was speaking more along the lines of the Salsoul Orchestra, MSFB, Montana, the AC Soul Symphony, and the Love Unlimited Orchestra
Don’t especially care for that Beethoveen rendition. Or ELO for that matter.
As a coming of age in disco person, my impression is that disco was following/ending a time of hippie free for all and rebellion and therefore was seen to be “retro” and pretentious in nature. A swing of the pendulum to the opposite side so to speak. In the end, we got a music scene something more towards the middle.
IMHO, the 70s music (in general, not just Disco) holds up much better than the 80s music I came of age to. Plus, 80s music has been in constant play since the 80s, while most 70s non-classic-rock music died in the 70s.
An astute observation and one I see enacted on our local,”oldies”, station. “Oldies” they all may be, but 80’s they mostly are.
I love the pop of both the 70s and 80s. The former was smoother and the latter more frenetic, but both were very good, certainly the equal of the more ballyhooed 60s music.
Correction–disco was better than ‘everything’ that is on the radio today. That’s not to say it was Beethoven, but disco players were generally good musicians and singers, their music was usually appealing and even sometimes exciting, and the rhythms and melodies were pretty good by pop standards. By today’s appalling musical standards, disco pretty much ‘was’ Beethoven.
I have never been to a city council meeting which is readying to vote on some local matter in which the decision hasn’t already been made. They let us vent, thank us for doing our civic duty and then stick it to us and take the corporate money. I quit two citizen committee assignments when even when the committee voted a certain way the decision by the government member over rode us. If I seem too jaded you can understand why. Btw, what was that proposition in California decades ago about that the citizens overwhelmingly voted for? Immigration? Only to… Read more »
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the bureaucracy refused to enforce it.
KVH The bureaucracy also prevented a propositional vote from making it onto the ballot that would have allowed the voters to decide if the state should be divided into 3 states. While I have lived in California for 15 years, (actually hit the 15 milestone this month. Ugh.) I am a native Texan, born and raised. That said, I have a perspective of still being an outsider looking in when it comes to the policies and politics of Cali. The history of the people of California trying to contain and repel the influx of illegal immigrants proves Zman’s post today.… Read more »
The strongest anti-AA law was passed in CA. It was—and still is—simply ignored by one and all in authority.
i am (was) 5th generation californian, and left for florida last year. not happy about leaving, but relieved to be out of there. it is impossible to convey how insane the majority of people there, are.
I think you are using “fascism” in the colloquial sense of “something I don’t like.” Having worked on MilSpecs, in both filling and writing (most people probably do not know that the suppliers write the specs, and are tailored specifically for their product, hopefully something patented that cannot be copied by another potential supplier), economically the US military is actually strongly mercantilist, not fascist. And organizationally, it’s much closer to our elementary school version of continental feudalism. Apart from that, great article. Might I suggest someday including something along the lines of the qualities of leaders and specialists? The aphorism… Read more »
The use of the term is intentional. Leftie mean it that way (stuff leftie does not like), but that does not mean the term indicates things that are bad. If you analyze things as they are in reality, much of what our society does correspond to the definition of fascism. The issue here is that many terms and ideas have been made taboo and you risk looking bad to the normies if you phrase things in a certain way. But if you follow definitions and logic even the normies are happy (and leftie is extremely happy) with our fascist corporations… Read more »
I would view corporations closer to a constitutional monarchy, or perhaps a “constitutional dictatorship” if there is such a thing – something like a strongman but answerable to a politburo or similar high level small group. The CEO would take the position of monarch/dictator, but he is answerable to the board of directors who can yank him/throw him under the bus if need be (e.g., shareholders po’ed and they need a fall guy). For the most part, the CEO reigns with a free hand as long as the BoD is ok with it. The monarchy metaphor works well because you… Read more »
Jesus asked his disciples who the people thought He was in an attempt to figure out a system of governance for His church here on Earth but all He got were multiple incorrect answers. Which explains democracy pretty well. So in the course of like three sentences He determined His Church was gonna be run by one guy, Peter a pope.
Although the Pope has the advantage of making some decisions that are infallible it’s rarely invoked and most of what be does is limited by doctrine.
” … but all He got were multiple incorrect answers.”
Nope. You’d better re-read that passage. The correct answer is given quite clearly.
The idea that “voting doesn’t matter” is overstated regarding the local and state level. It makes a hell of a big difference on issues like gun control, taxes, abortion, and welfare if you live in a state that votes GOP, like Idaho or North Dakota, as opposed to a state like New York or California. Where voting matters a whole lot less is on the federal level, where you have the inertia of a Leviathan that is $30 trillion in debt, spends $6 trillion a year, and has a global army. Elected officials go to Washington and run up against… Read more »
Yes: the federal government intrudes into our lives in a way that the founders never intended. And it seems to me, that in addition to the process you point out— where well-intentioned legislators run into the brick wall of entrenched interests— another process also occurs, in which they see what a sweet position they’ve landed in: all the perks, all the attention, a decent salary for very little actual work— and they become fixated first and foremost on getting reelected. And they quickly realize that that involves substantial sums of money; and raising substantial sums of money involves recruiting and… Read more »
In practice the local politics has proven to be as immune to change as the federal government. We cannot even keep perverts off the school board.
Well, there are some localities in which the local people are prevailing over the school boards. My sister and her kids and grandkids live in Loudoun County, Virginia, where that battle has been raging. And where are the parents have been winning. At some point, the teachers and the teachers union realized that they had pissed-off the wrong group of people: this particular group of parents was well-educated, well-informed, well-connected, not afraid of a fight, and unwilling to stand for any woke bullshit being taught to their kids. Unfortunately, I expect that’s not the usual situation. As you pull it… Read more »
The real Bill: Get back to us on when those ‘winning’ parents get placed in charge of teacher certification and hiring, as well as textbook writing and purchases.
I hear you. I haven’t been keeping up, but last I heard a lot of the parents were taking their kids out of the public schools, and starting private schools where they had control over those things. Which they could do, being relatively well-off.
But as I pointed out to my sister, that may end up in a bifurcated system: where the public school teachers can continue to preach woke doctrine, since all the parents who objected had jumped ship.
You CAN keep the perverts off the school board if you’re as committed and activist as they are. The problem arises when school administrators decide to teach kindergarteners anal fisting, and when normal people object they get overruled by some appointed federal judge.
(Of course it’s always a possibility then when the perverts win school board elections, their victory is a genuine reflection of the will of the community… i.e. San Francisco).
Here is AZ, the real answer has been to make the school boards obsolete. Private and charter schools abound and funding follows the student. We shall see if this situation will be challenged successfully under the new Democratic regime that stole the current election.
Xman: So great to see that voting kept Somalis out of Wyoming . . . and that there are neither Jevvs nor pride parades in Idaho.
Kings had accountability. The buck stopped there.
Our current rulers are unknown to the people so there’s never any accountability to the people. If the peasants get a bit restless, our rulers throw one of their actors under the bus but not so much that the other actors get too nervous, i.e., no one ever goes to jail. Their punishment is a very cozy life out of the limelight.
“Kings had accountability. The buck stopped there.”
Agree with the rest of your post but what accountability did kings have? If you were incompetent in matters military or foreign, your country might be invaded. In matters domestic, if you acted against the interests of the nobility, a group of powerful barons and earls, headed by some challenger, might contest your throne. But of course if you were a villein or serf, you had no say in any of this.
Plenty of accountability. They could be killed, and fairly easily to boot. Sure, serfs couldn’t touch the monarch, but the monarch couldn’t really touch the serfs either. Problems and complaints were hierarchical.
Montesquieu would argue that monarchs either rule according to fixed and well defined laws/customs, OR by being despots.
The former could work quite well, despots tend to lose control quickly.
Separately, monarchies/aristocracies derive their legitimization through reciprocal obligations flowing both ways.
The single king ruling via absolute whim and with terror (think N Korea) are incredibly unstable and tend not to last.
Richard of York, Richard III, Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI – all weak kings. Those early kings (at least of England) were flawed, but they were tough, smart, and of incredible vitality. The above listed group lacked that. The weakness of a King immediately affected the land, and it was often dealt with in short order. Certainly one may reference John, Stephen, Henry III, but they were actually not as bad as people may initially say. The nobility and peasantry did respect the Great Chain of Being, and its antecedents, but there did become points where the king’s actions… Read more »
The contesting of the throne is actually rare, at least in English monarchy. Generally, contests only arose out of the weakness or wickedness of a particular monarch. And only really a potential claimant to the throne ever stepped forth, with the exception of the War of the Roses. There, the Tudors, Welsh ne’er-do-wells, only lightly related to Edward III and Henry V (Henry V’s widow was the mother of Henry Tudor’s grandfather upon remarriage), and, again, this was the result of the gross weakness of Henry VI, who was probably strangled for his weakness.
“The weakness of a King immediately affected the land, and it was often dealt with in short order.” Agreed. But dealt with by by a group of dukes, earls, and barons. In a sense the king was “primus inter pares.” This was the ruling class of yore. The feudal hierarchy — villein, freeman, squire, knight, baron, earl, duke, king. As the cities produced an increasingly wealthy merchant class, who wanted a say in politics, the House of Commons gradually became more important. But I digress. The king was principally accountable to the oligarchy of noblemen. Only much later, with the… Read more »
Absolutely correct. But I would point out that this is the type of accountability that one would desire. You have the duchies and their subdivisions striking a balance between national (as much as “nation” as a concept applies) and regional interests, in contrast to the too regional peasant whining or the pressures of the international community. Those dukes, et al. represent knowledgeable people who can help balance those concerns; in short, they are qualified critics (generally, broadly, and simplistically speaking).
“what accountability did kings have?” Ask Charles I or Louis XVI. And you say “you might get invaded” like that’s no big deal. When a foreign ruler conquers a nation, the first order of business is to exterminate the former leader and his family. But there’s more to it than that. Z Man has discussed this before. When a land is ruled by a king, the king sees the land as “his.” Thus he feels a sense of proprietorship and stewardship over the land. When you own something, you take care of it, plus he wants to preserve something good… Read more »
Many politicians have been in office for their entire lives.
Many are the offspring of politicians themselves.
Europe has the same problem and it is not in the middle of 2 oceans.
Yet the looting, wanton destruction of society and boot on the face control is the same.
“Ask Charles I or Louis XVI.”
If you’re au fait with European history, you’ll know this came pretty late in the day, and this is “early modern Europe” we’re talking about, The conflict of Charles 1 with the Parliamentarians led to his beheading. Likewise, the deposing of Louis XVI was only possible because France was no longer a feudal society but was increasingly a bourgeoisie one. In a feudal society the king is only really accountable to the group of leading nobles who have fiefdoms of their own.
(Thrilled, he was, to hear the barkeep had the same irritation in mind!
But now, the skinhead freezes, then slowly lowers the chair. Nonchalant- none are fooled- he oozes to the bar; if he can cop a pint, he might sulk in a dark corner.
He grouses, nursing his Carly. How in bloody ‘ell is he going to raise a pile of quid? Not one of the daft knobs he talked to had even heard of Alex Jones.)
I think that most people remain committed to voting is because it’s easy. We have been too affluent for too long, and laziness has become an addiction. I call it the Comfort First Imperative. Voting is much, much easier than doing the right thing. And this cannot change until real hardship returns. For example, if the local DA turns pedophiles loose in your neighborhood, and one of them rapes and murders your 11 year old daughter, then the “community” will attempt to solve this problem via voting; which almost never works because most voters are stupid and most elections are… Read more »
“I think that most people remain committed to voting is because it’s easy.” Democratic process and stuffing a piece of paper into a ballot box every few years have been conflated. Attempting to be democratic involves active participation — if that is possible. If you’re a suburban peasant, it’s usually not possible. Your “community” consists of other people in your development, with whom you have no real ties (assuming you’re even acquainted with them). You drive to work in some fascist organisation. You drive to shop. The structure of American life makes active participation well-nigh impossible. As a suburban peasant… Read more »
“The structure of American life makes active participation well-nigh impossible.”
Important insight. Well stated.
The problem with democracy is two-fold. Not only must the stupid be filtered out, but the constituents must be homogenous. Not just racially but culturally as well. They must want the same things. The blue haired, cat lady who lives on welfare and has had ten state sponsored abortions has the exact same amount of political power as you. This piece hits the proverbial nail on the head. Voting is a waste of time. I will never vote again. One needs to look no further than the public opinion about entering WW2 and see what happened anyway. Now you’ll see… Read more »
The corruption of the local CJS is something to behold. We literally have cops robbing people on the side of the road while the criminal class roams free to prey on us. Everyone involved has immunity. Cops shoot up the neighborhood like it’s the OK-Coral with no regard for anyone. They engage in 120-150mph chases for trivial offenses and shoot up highways with total impunity. The DAs refuse to charge any of them. The criminal class largely just float between short stays at the county jail. No matter how much evidence they have against the criminal they are always willing… Read more »
Substitute “class” with “race”.
Universal suffrage exposed out modern “democracy” to be the sham it truly is: both easily manipulated while simultaneously unable to remove bad actors because of the overwhelming number of low information, low outcome invested voters.
With serious talk of expanding the franchise to illegal aliens, children, and convicted felons, one wonders if the PTB haven’t gone a bit to far and tipped their hand on just how ridiculous they believe voting is….along with their incessant craving for faux legitimacy bestowed from the masses.
Voting is retarded.
In the last stages of its collapse Rome made everyone a citizen. Things can get even crazier then they are now, buckle up. Wait until they create laws stipulating you have to work in the industry your father worked in……….
TomA: To add to your Comfort First Imperative – l suggest also the Everyone’s Smarter Than Average assumption. Each voter is convinced he/she understands the issue, or knows/trusts the candidate and/or the process. They feel large and in charge when they go vote because they will make their voices heard. You know, all those ‘We The People’ boomer comments. And all those here who still think that local voting (where local can mean anything from a rural township to a state with millions of diverse cretins) matters – totally contradicting the experience of anyone with any character who has ever… Read more »
Corporations may operate along fascist principles, but that is not necessarily the lived experience of most people who work there. Middle managers regularly put things to vote. Some out of incompetence and others set up the vote in a way that any possible result leads to what they wanted in the first place. It’s a great (and cheap) way to skirt responsibility and to make low-level employees feel like they are “stakeholders”. They can’t complain if they vote for whatever was asked of them, right? Just like in real democracy. I am sure there are plenty of people here who… Read more »
I see that voting does matter, but only in the sense of “one vote, one time”, as in Weimar Germany or third world states like Venezuela, California or the US.
In theory, the US is still governed by a document which was agreed to and accepted by people born in the early to mid 18th century.
If you don’t care to live under that document, you can ask the Confederate States of America how to unwind things.
Your document gave you the government you have, or was powerless to prevent it…
If so great, explain Liberia…
Mow,
I think the case can be made— I believe Robert Bork made it in a book many years ago— that we have long ago departed— “deviated” may be a better word— from the government specified in the Constitution.
The 10th Amendment, which was meant to function as a hard limit on the powers of the federal government, has been gradually negated, starting with the Reconstruction following the War of Northern Aggression. (Which— perhaps not coincidentally?— was also the beginning of the elevation of Blacks, and the first attempt among many to make them equal to Whites.)
{ I see that voting does matter, but only in the sense of “one vote, one time” }
Only if you get it right. If not, they’ll do it again until you see the light.
Bilejones: Bingo. Wait a bit, import a few more million diverse ‘new’ natives, and rinse and repeat.
Just like in the EU.
Many observers have noted the strong tendency among us human beings to deceive ourselves: to tell ourselves things that make us feel good, but which we don’t have sufficient reason to know are true. We’re very adept at fooling ourselves, and the urge to do so is often very strong. Hemingway summed that tendency up nicely, in the words of one of his characters in The Sun Also Rises: “Isn’t it pretty to think so? ” speaking of which: it should be clear to anybody that your one vote can’t possibly make any difference; so the notion that the act… Read more »
Democracy is the same as activism in its poison effects. No one apparently asks these activists “why don’t you just build the thing you want to see instead of constant attempts to destroy the things other people have wrought.” The drive is always towards vandalism and destruction internalized as if it is a form of moral achievement. Mass democracy is the same in that it cannot seemingly create anything or be turned to a build mentality for society as a whole.. Everything in the west of use that still functions was created pretty much prior to any modern democracy and… Read more »
Right. And that’s why ‘progressives’ want to get rid of the electoral college, and turn our republic into a genuine democracy.
“One can only conclude it was intended as a tool of destruction in and of itself by those agitating for it at the start of the 20th century.”
This short, readable book says that very thing. “End” means both “termination point” and “goal” or “purpose.” Author says we have come to the end of what people call “democracy” and he also explains the purposes for which it was put in place:
https://www.alibris.com/The-End-of-Democracy-Christophe-Buffin-de-Chosal/book/38976052?matches=8
Thanks. Not come across it. Will give it a go.
Musk was the darling of the ruling regime. In practice, his genius for business was really the result of identifying industries that get huge government subsidies. He also had the timing of the fiat regime heaping paper wealth anticipating future gains on technology companies and levered up through stock market speculation in a negative interest rate environment. In that sense, he is the poster child of the regime. Moreover, his businesses entrance two key constituencies – Gaia worshipers and technology star struck boys-regardless-of-age. For those who understand the workings of the regime and Musk’s role in buttressing its core premises,… Read more »
PeriheliusLux, I’m not really following your train of thought: When you say that Musk’s “genius for business was really the result of identifying industries that get huge government subsidies. He also had the timing of the fiat regime heaping paper wealth anticipating future gains on technology companies and levered up through stock market speculation in a negative interest rate environment. In that sense, he is the poster child of the regime. Moreover, his businesses entrance two key constituencies – Gaia worshipers and technology star struck boys-regardless-of-age” it strikes me that you’re simply not aware of the magnitude of his achievements.… Read more »
But was it him, or the people whom he hired? Granted, recognizing and promoting talent in and of itself requires intelligence.
Yeah, as I understand it, it was both:
He obviously hires great engineers, but he also seems to be very hands-on in his approach, intimately involved in the engineering, design, and fabrication process.
He describes himself as “Chief Engineer” of SpaceX— that’s the job title he’s given himself— and from what I understand, he is very involved in the details of what they’re doing. He spends a lot of time on the factory floor, and is able to converse with his engineers on their level, regarding the technological details of what they’re doing.
This is a critical thing to remember whenever one is inclined towards CEO worship. Tech companies in particular seem to follow a pattern whereby a sociopathic extrovert latches himself onto an autistic weirdo with high IQ and uses the weirdo’s genius to launch a new product. Once the company gets big, history is retconned into the sociopath being the “nerd genius” and the actual nerd is forgotten.
Elon Musk’s proclivities as an attention-seeking fuckboy with scads of illegitimate children tells you all you need to know.
Hi Real Bill, My weakness is being succinct, but I will try. My biggest criticism of Musk is his promoting the premises of the CAGW thesis – that man’s CO2 emissions are making the planet uninhabitable. That is a demonstrably false thesis. Musk in his genius should know that. Musk has made absurd statements – claiming that you can generate just as much energy using solar panels on the same amount of land as nuclear energy. That is irresponsible. In fact, I think it is criminal. I think very recently he has started to acknowledge the value of nuclear energy.… Read more »
Hey Peri, I’m pleased to see that there’s much we agree on. I agree that America is not yet ready for “green energy” on a large scale. And I agree with all the practical pitfalls you point out, of imagining solar ever meeting America’s energy needs on a large scale. But it also seems incontrovertible that— carbon emissions notwithstanding— at some point, most of our energy will have to be coming from sources other than fossil fuels. It likely won’t be anytime soon; but sooner or later that will have to be the case, as eventually fossil fuels are going… Read more »
I don’t think we agree. We already have the energy source of the future – nuclear energy. We just need to decriminalize it. As for the battery storage, “if”, is always the word used. Here is Musk in ’18 advocating for shutting down California’s nuclear power plants. Why? He has solar panels to sell. I think lowering peope’s living standards and dismantling your energy sources is criminal. https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/12/28/elon-musks-tesla-calls-for-killing-californias-largest-source-of-clean-energy-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant For years he said things like this: ‘In fact, here’s a little tidbit. If you take a nuclear plant and you took its current output and compared that to just taking solar… Read more »
C’mon, P-Lux: flesh-out that word salad:
“He also had the timing of the fiat regime heaping paper wealth anticipating future gains on technology companies and levered up through stock market speculation in a negative interest rate environment.”
I’m assuming you must have had something in mind….
Well, actually, while this “word salad” is rather laconic, it is actually pretty clear if you but deconstruct it into intelligible units, and follow the logiic.
He breaks it out in considerable detail right above your comment to which I am responding.
I tried to think of something clever to contribute to the thesis this morning, but I came up empty. The idea behind this post has been perfectly stated, needing no more and no less. Would it be instructive to look at history and examine how different eras and regimes around the world made use of the franchise? In times where the franchise was far more limited and infrequent, was it more effective? Or has voting always been a mere fig leaf for any given ruling class?
In the early days, voting was limited to male property owners in most States, and Senators were elected by the State legislatures, and answered to them…It was a very different, and much more effective system, because elected officials had skin in the game…
They still have skin in the game – your skin. And they want to keep skinning it.
“The old joke about if voting mattered, they would not let us do it was funny because it is true.” It is funny how concise quotes delivered generations ago capture an entire argument. I do not know who said this (I had a feeling it was either Twain or Wilde, but who knows, eh?), but it surely does ring truer every day. But society in general does not seem geared – any longer – to handling serious issues. It is all obfuscated by reams of mass-marketing and jargon peddled by Evil Managers, of course. Often to justify themselves. I’ve seen… Read more »
And where did that person get the ideas that they have internalized? how have they arrived at apparent firmly held e with no intermediate stages of support? why does no reasoning in person ever affect the embedded loops? We have to start accepting that all the literature and endless words about human free will, self interest and rational understanding is completely and utterly false in the age of mass social conditioning via saturation moving pictures and sound. That age has passed long ago. You are making faint noises barely perceived while the conditioning is blaring at 120 decibels in their… Read more »
i think the conditioning has been made incarnate; the conditioning is the wiring.
I agree.
A bicameral bronze age has been recreated on a gigantic scale and media is the constant commanding voice.
The phone is the hand idol and the TV/computer the likeness of the city God that used to be in every house as the hallucinated voice of authority.
Modern conscious humans are now a minority and have mostly ceased to exist as we have understood them for the last 200 years or so.
Its not going to get any better.
And, should Y. Harari and his ilk realize their vision, you won’t care it’s no better, or will have no concept of ‘better, or you simply will never have existed.
It stands to reason that lower IQ renders free will more susceptible to conditioning, and lowering the IQ seems to be the raison d’ etre of modern education.
The other side of that is coercion – so even higher IQ folks can be overcome by either punishment or reward. Truly takes heroic efforts not to be overcome by all this.
The coof surely puts pay to that idea?
Those in the middling IQ to mid upper were all on board.
Indeed, look around, that segment is the most genetically prone to this for any conditioning vector one cares to name.
Probably has more to do with socio-economic status. The masks, hand sanitizers, and clot shots were all pushed using peer pressure and the desire to maintain social respectability. Recall all those news articles during the pandemic where they interviewed people in the hospital with covid, invariably it would be some ugly working class conservative. The point wasn’t to scare you with the idea of getting sick, the point was to scare you into thinking if you didn’t get your vaccine then people would think you’re a gross blue collar person who votes Republican.
trumpton: My husband’s aware of only 1-2 other people in his office who did not get the vax. Many of his vaxxed erstwhile coworkers have worked from home for the past 2 years (husband has gone to the office daily). Many of them are also sick right now. A casual high school friend of my husband – not necessarily higher IQ but definitely earned a lot more money over the years somewhere in the IT field – is now facing a year of intense rehabilitation therapy after open heart surgery (multiple blocked veins), a subsequent stroke and brain bleed and… Read more »
Not sure about the GA election, but a blue block of wood won the Senate seat in PA.
We are doomed.
Dude looks like Karl Childers.
Karl could probably govern better.
Karl would govern better.
Karl did govern better:
He understood the situation he found himself in, identified the problem with it, understood and articulated the inevitable result if the problem was allowed to continue, and then acted selflessly and ruthlessly to extirpate it.
How many Karls would it take to reestablish our national sovereignty?
No so many, I think.
“I like dem der french fried potaters, mmm, hmm. I reckon I’ll have me some of the bigguns.”
More profound thought than anything that came out of the mouth of that turnip they elected.
No different in Georgia, a black grifter preacher running against a black brain damaged football player. Clown world dialed up to eleven.
Yeah, but come on now, the one function of representational democracy is to assure folks get their kind to represent them. It appears to me that Blacks can’t lose in the Georgia election. 😉
So … is there a choice of some kind in the Georgia election today? If so, what is it?
The choice is between Ralph Walker and Herschel Warnock.
Well, you cannot discuss the “democracy problem” without addressing the Scale Problem. What might work in a tribal group or a small town doesn’t work as well in a huge country. This is true for business enterprises too, as endless professorial and consulting firm ink has been spilled over “agency effects” and “managerial slack” in large business organizations versus lean start-ups etc. Warren Buffett famously advised folks to “buy stock in companies that an idiot could run, because one day, one will”. I think this probably applies to government too, in the sense that complexity is the enemy of good… Read more »
Captain Willard,
The scale problem is indeed one of most pressing. I rarely see it discussed in the MSM, although The Evil have a way of addressing it: use phoney events to push for the reduction of the overall standard of living; sow despair and degeneracy, too, then the buggers won’t want to breed!
Complexity is to be expected. We have some of the most complex systems around but are spiritually spent. This complexity, in almost everything now, is horrendous and I’d say a direct cause of incredible aggravation in most peoples’ daily lives.
the complexity is a consequence of concentrating things into a small coterie of incompetents.
Captain Willard,
Yes, I think the case can be made that our republic as constituted could only work in a relatively small, and relatively homogeneous, population; and that at some point along the line, we’ve become so diverse, that the common ground necessary to achieve anything, no longer exists.
Democracy doesn’t even work in small scale of unions. I belong to a local union of about 300 guys. The union presidents are always boobs or loudmouths. The really good, intelligent men that would be best at the job never run. They say, “eff that. Why would I take that thankless job. I have better things to do.” This clearly happens at the larger scale of democracy as well. Plato remarked on this phenomena as well when he noted that those that desire power are precisely those unfit for it.
In earlier times there a plenty of stories of monks, aristocrats, military leaders, etc. who don’t want to rule, but then a mass of people beg to lead them when times start to get hard and current leadership has proven to be ineffectual. Mind you, many of these stories are just humility narratives for a person who actually wants power, but at least it signifies a better public morality. Frankly, the current way of politicians making grandiose speeches on why they would be a great political leader sounds just plain tacky. One’s leadership chops should be obvious for anyone worth… Read more »
Yes: somewhere in his writing, CS Lewis points that out: that the logic behind the ancient leadership of kings and aristocrats— “nobleman”— was that they truly were noble: the best among us. They understood that leader ship was service, and they were the people most capable of doing it well. Obviously, at some point along the line, that ceased to be the case; if it ever was. But it seems to me that that was still true to some degree, when America was founded: that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were noble and aristocratic in a way… Read more »
‘Member when America’s founding politicians had to all feign disinterest in holding office until compelled to do so, by the party or the people?
I think up until the 20th century, it was considered bad form to be “ambitious”.
Now whoring for the teevee and the donorbux are expected.
Presidential candidates would refuse to go on the hustings; wouldn’t attend the early nominating conventions, in order to appear sufficiently humble in their ambitions.
The Greek,
Yes, and it strikes me that with the rise of television, and celebrity culture— where public figures and politicians are now also celebrities— that narcissistic attention whores are being attracted to politics in a way that wasn’t the case before.
The bit about politicians being lights attached to speech recognition software is true and a great image. The same is true of the electorate. We know that lawmakers do not write, or even read, the laws. Attorneys write them and the flashing lights vote yay or nay after consulting the party voting guidelines. The laws at that point in the assembly line are not letters of the law but, “guidelines.” Then the bureaucracy takes them and another group of lawyers fill in the blank to make the letter of the law. Now that I think about it, we know who… Read more »
Attorneys only do what they get paid to do. The employment source is the problem.
This is all true. And also quite obvious. What’s bizarre is how it has become a mass cult. Perhaps because of the barrage of mass propaganda. Maybe voting made sense in the late 18th century when the USA was composed of just 13 seaboard states and the vote was restricted to white men of property: they needed to reach some sort of consensus on how to further their common interests, particularly when there might be divided opinions. But the mass “democracy” of today is nothing but a carnival. What I’ve noticed in “intentional communities” is that even though there is… Read more »
Yeah, that’s pretty much a great win for Evil-Aligned Actors: operating behind the scenes whilst giving the plebs the illusion of control.
Very difficult to assign proper blame in a democracy, very easy to find a patsy.
The coof unified worldwide action in suppression of their “own populations” in 120 countries in lockstep is the obvious signal of a wider control system.
For those that can’t bring themselves to accept it, you are living in a dreamworld created by the chaos noise in the media of fake events and fake opposition.
” … .you are living in a dreamworld … .”
We are living in a James Bond movie. There really IS a cabal of villains trying to take over the world.
that part already happened and few noticed.
Now is the reshaping that is the consequence.
Quite true. Democracy is the perfect cover for the people actually running the show.
Control the chokepoints: media, finance, academia and political donors/organization along with backing everything up with some Mossad alumni on the ground to blackmail and intimidate. Then just trot out whoever the people want to entertain themselves while the real decisions are made behind the scenes.
If you vote, you are giving your stamp of approval to this system.
“If you vote, you are giving your stamp of approval to this system.”
Exactly. Your vote is essentially an indication of approbation for the system, a signal that you believe the system works, and in your favor. it demonstrates that you’re a complete chump. But I’m saying nothing new: probably everyone in the alt right says the same.
If you really want to have a say in governance in the USA, you buy politicians, you employ professional lobbyists, you create or become an influential member of a lobby (pharma, military industrial, media, tech, Israel, whatever).
You do what the scientologists did when the IRS started trying to revoke their tax status. They used their own people to monitor, infiltratet the IRS, investigate the agent;s personal lives and in a couple of cases set up entrapment for the actual IRS chain of command assigned to their case. They did this in tandem with front groups bringing multiple law suits over a span of decades. Instead of arguing their tax position, they rocked up to the meeting with a whole load of blackmail material that they shared with the investigators. They ended up paying 12.5 million to… Read more »
Bingo!!!
A thousand times this.
These CivNats who think this is a college debate are insane. You need your own group that bands together and pushes back as hard as needed.
As Z has mentioned, you make the cost of occupation too high. That’s how you win, not by showing another graph or appealing to the other side’s sense of generosity or, heaven forbid, their sense of dignity and fair play.
> There is no military in this world that embraces democracy.
It’s even worse in that the modern military is actually far less democratic than some historical militaries, in that small squads now have very limited to no flexibility in how to achieve their objectives.
There was a military historian who told the whopper that American soldiers defeated the Germans because the American soldiers knew how to make decisions democratically, which anyone with the slightest idea of German vs. American command structure in WWI and WWII knows is complete nonsense.
No kidding. In Europe the US tactical advantage stemmed from “time on target” artillery+ logistics + tactical air support. Until very late in the war, Heer NCOs were vastly better trained and focus of German squad level tactics on maneuver around MG-42 fire support was much superior to American and British squad level tactics.
The Wehrmacht was much more flexible and faster adapting than the US Army during the war. They had an uncanny ability to almost instantly counterattack with ad hoc kampfgruppen after being driven out of their positions.
“There is no military in this world that embraces democracy.”
I lived in Germany for most of the 1980s, and at that time, anyway, if not now, the German Army was unionized. I’d bet the rent that it still is.
But NATO is pushing hell-for-leather for a war with Russia.