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In the political heyday of Conservative Inc., back in the Bush years, Karl Rove would speak about the benefits of “big tent” conservatism. The main upside was that it provided a winning coalition politically. This not only gave the people controlling it power, it made it easier for the coalition they assembled to ignore their differences, as there would be plenty of goodies for everyone. This was the theory behind the FDR coalition that ruled politics for half a century.
The Rove argument never held together for the simple reason that most of the people in this new coalition were never going to get anything. They were being lied to by the neoconservatives who seized control of the conservatism. Their singular quest was to use the American empire to further the long term goals of the neocons. This became clear in the Bush years where we got pointless wars of choice, a massive expansion of government and the creation of a police state.
That said, there was some bit of truth in the Rove claim. A successful political movement is always making compromises with itself. Regardless of the types of politics, practical necessity means cutting corners when it comes to ideology. The communists figured this out after they gained control of Russia. This means there is always going to be tension between the true believers and the ambitious. Success is what allows both sides to look past these differences.
Again, this was true with the communists in Russia. When they were easily crushed by the tsarist system, they spent their time squabbling with one another. When the tsarist system began to wobble and victory became a possibility, the various factions of Russian communism came together to fight the system. The Bolshevik coalition held together through the resulting civil war. Once victory was achieved, the factions began to go at one another.
There is much more to it than that, of course, but the point is that winning and the prospect of more winning can keep opposites attracting. Logically, losing or the dim prospects of winning will highlight the differences. That is what we are seeing inside the conservative industrial complex. The array of ideological groups is starting to turn on one another as their prospects dim. Faced with a shrinking pie and a growing threat from outsider politics, they are turning on one another.
For example, we have this post from the submissions editor of National Review Online attacking the Claremont people. The first thing to note is the post was published in the far-left conspiracy site The Daily Beast. The cozy relationship between people in the conservative ecosystem and the people they claim to oppose has always been a tell, but this is like satire of that old dynamic. If NRO was anything like it claims, Jack Butler would have been fired immediately.
The other thing to note is that the post is supposed to be a rant against the internet character Bronze Age Pervert, but it is an effort to purge Claremont. This may explain recent behavior of some Claremont people. Behind the scenes, where money changes hands and the donors do their best Randolph and Mortimer Duke impressions, a decision has been made to do something about Claremont. Jonah Goldberg’s flunky Jack Butler is playing the Billy Ray Valentine role.
Alternatively, the yesterday men of National Review may simply be going to their Trotskyite roots and taking a shot at the winners of the internal power struggle within the conservative entertainment wing. Claremont did not roll out a real person to respond to this attack and instead used an internet character. This post at American Greatness is mostly laughing at the ridiculousness of that Butler post. He restates the dissident case against conservatism made a decade ago.
In fairness, this spat is between low ranking parties in the conservative industrial complex and may not reflect what is happening inside it. Both National Review and American Greatness struggle to stay in business. The former relies on school children to produce much of their content. the latter relies mostly on unpaid volunteer writers to produce its content. Their respective not-for-profit operations take in a few million per year according to their tax returns.
In comparison, the neocon outfit American Enterprise Institute takes in over $100 million per year and has its tentacles wrapped around the Republican Party. Similarly, The Heritage Foundation takes in over $100 million and remains the primary engine for Reagan nostalgia in the system. Then you have the left-libertarian Cato Institute that takes in $30 million to promote globalism. In other words, two pipsqueak operations beefing with one another is a tempest in a teapot.
The billion dollar thicket of not-for profits that controls the conservative ecosystem remains unified in its opposition to the people they claim to represent. In other words, at the top of the system, the three legs of conservatism remain on reasonable terms with one another, mostly sharing the same donors. Endless war (AEI), liberal internationalism (Cato) and romance for a long lost past (Heritage) continue to hoover up cash to animate the shuffling husk of conservatism.
Even so, the turf wars between the low ranking soldiers of conservatism suggest the system has far deeper problems than personal squabbles among some of the circus freaks they put on stage. The institutions that control funding of conservative operations are now clearly suffering from Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. These operations care only about hoovering up as much cash as they can in order to keep the leadership of these groups in the lifestyle they think they deserve.
This is why they failed to thwart the Trump insurgency in 2016 and why they are struggling to produce a coherent alternative for 2024. The slobbering over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott suggests they have learned nothing. It is also why they have failed to coopt ideas and people from the dissident space. A guy like Bronze Age Pervert should have been easy to crush or corrupt, but the system is now too sluggish and stupid to handle such tasks. It is a fighter past its prime.
All of that said, we are a long way from see the collapse of Conservative Inc., even as its influence fades to black. Even so, it is encouraging to see it pick fights with itself, as it confirms it is entering the end stage. From the dissident perspective, this dispute between Team Claremont and Team Buckley is like seeing your ex-wife drive your new Mercedes over a cliff. You hate to see BAP get singled out for extra treatment, but the bigger picture makes it tolerable.
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The CATO Institute — BTW, why the caps? There is a slew of funny alternate acronyms I hope — really are POS. Yes, I know many pre-yuppie libertarians discovered this fact first. At this point they are straight up laying cuckoo’s eggs in the remains of the American right. It’s not just WSJ open borders religion any more, they are a vector of cosmotarian revenge, whether it’s for hire or not. From some occasional shots taken by Joel Kotkin, a California-centric non-conservative who shows up in the Claremont-sphere from time to time, I learned of their coordination with YIMBY i.e. Hobo Lib activists in Southern California favela-land, which I guess is an easy way for the Beltway think-tanker parasites to rack up PR victories, even easier than the immigrant tractor beam (now many of which cannot afford a West L.A. tent). We are in need of them being “read out of the movement” by some William F. Pervert Jr. character.
The American Mind podcast two weeks ago discussed immigration. Effectively they just stated the fact that at least 50-60 million illegals are in America. Then they said on one extreme you have send them home and on the other you have keep it coming. They had no stance, no interesting analysis. Feckled.
ConInc has its plan. You have Haley/Scott. They used their majority to penetrate DIE into the financial services committees far deeper and wider than Maxine Waters ever did. Their big prize is in Virginia. You have Carlyle Group being represented by Glenn Youngkin and at his side a black, immigrant veteran. ConInc is going to start to look like going into CVS in presidential politics. If there is a white guy, he will be a MIC employee.
Nobody is going to go for that in sufficient numbers – not as TGR becomes front and center in the consciousness of even Normies. Last Friday, some sixth grader POCs forced some whites to kneel and say BLM. When some refused they were beaten pretty savagely. The school didn’t notify the parents until the following Monday. This will happen more and more and will become impossible to ignore.
The future of the DR is in a ground game to support the parents and children of all such savagery against our people. Being of service to our people who increasingly need it is how the movement grows. Whoever is there, in a meaningful way, when they need help is who they will trust and listen to in a system that is not to be trusted.
That, and beating up select School Board members.
RealityRules: Yes, this will happen more and more but no, it will not be impossible to ignore. There are quite few in the Dissident Right whose parents forced them to attend integrated schools where they were robbed or beaten or verbally abused almost daily. Vast majority of parents still send their kids to public schools where the demographics worsen year by year. Parents will no longer sacrifice to protect their children – they wouldn’t want to be thought of as rayciss. That’s not nice.
Spot on. This really got kicked into gear in the Seventies and Eighties when students from nice ‘burbs were bused to inner city schools. Those former students are the most based people I know. So are some of their parents who still had delusions.
As for those Whites mostly being in public schools still, that’s largely confined to non-diverse regions (not that there aren’t other problems). Urban public school districts are almost exclusively non-White in most places.
Heck, the attending a bad school to receive daily beatings from youfs effect even worked on Howard Stern for many years until the coof hysteria reset him to his normal tribal predilections.
or was that when his handlers finally activated him
I suspect it’s more a product of the IQ decline that Dutton writes about. Whites are adapting to the environment to behave more like blacks with r-selected low parental investment child rearing. Sending your kid off to a public school full of jungle bunnies is simply acknowledging that you view your child as a disposable inconvenience.
@3g4me
Bingo – you are spot on. Being called racist is far worse than losing a child to black savagery. The country is truly lost. Only a separate nation can have any chance of escaping the worship of the criminal race.
And for anyone who tells me to stop calling them the “criminal race”, GFY. They are a cancer on the world, and there is no convincing me otherwise.
They are violent, dangerous creatures.
To be avoided at all cost.
It will be ignored until it happens to the “right” people. By then, it will be too late to fix.
“Karl Rove would speak about the benefits of “big tent” conservatism. The main upside was that it provided a winning coalition politically.”
A winning coalition just BARELY in the 2000s. Lots of conservatives were indignant at the hispandering of Rove/Bush to squeak out the weakest possible victories. The whole point of W. (as fantasized by conservatives) was that Reagan would return and all would be right with White Chrisitian America again. But W. of couse Dubay’ed and we had endless war, bailed out banks, and open borders unabated even after 9/11.
There was no joy in Mudville, Reagan would not return.
The thing about Reagan is this: he was a GREAT communicator and made people very happy; a cross between grandfather knows best and Superman. The 80s were an optimistic time, it SEEMED like we were shutting the door on the 60s and would be America again. Stuff like the hippies and the whole civil rights deal were the past, out of style, and passe. Seemed like we closed the book on all that. The country was still confidently (implictly, not explicitly) majority white and popular culture actually had a lot to offer in quality and inspiration (with more mild liberal bias, as compared to today). The economy was strong and the USSR was sinking.
Conservatives assumed it would stay this way given Reagan’s landslide victories. But that was not the plan and that was not what happened. Once Clinton was in, Reagan and the 80s were quickly memory-holed by the powers that be and we shifted into moral relativism; and of course the open border guaranteed the change of the electorate. 80s didn’t matter because ultimately the Left had taken control of the real levers of power like entertainment, university, and finance. The social rot of feminism, porn had deeply set in and US jobs were being folded up. It’s funny now to think that in the 80s, corporate America was thought of as Republican. It was globo-capitalism then as it was now, but still old school enough and pre-total offshoring to seem patriotic, sort of.
It’s hard to know now what was real about the 80s exactly. Perhaps, the REAL powers decided it was time to wrap up the Cold War, name America as the winner, and the let the rubes have a few happy years before the globalist project went to the next phase. Reagan was certainly controlled and compromised by the fact of 86 amnesty and poppy Bush was his VP. I gotta think Reagan was the real deal to some respect as evidence by his near assassination. If you think Hinckley Jr was just some random nut who liked Jodie Foster, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I hear you can get a good deal on Hinckley concert tickets these
days. . .
Convincing white Christian Americans that he gave a damn about them was Dubya’s greatest accomplishment. They bear some percentage of the blame for being hoodwinked. As time goes by, I think probably the majority of it. When you get lied to repeatedly, sooner or later there comes a point when it’s your fault for believing it, not their fault for lying. This has been very much on my mind as I look around at Civnat G. Normiecon’s support for the regime’s efforts in Ukraine.
“Fool me once. . .shame on you. . .fool me twice. . .you can’t get fooled again!” -Dubya
I liked his other one better:
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time – and those are the ones to concentrate on.
>>>sooner or later there comes a point when it’s your fault for believing it, not their fault for lying.
As a former subscriber to ‘National Review’, I heartily endorse this eternal truth.
Great post, fakeemail. Actually, anything that has appeared to be economic prosperity since Nixon took us totally off the gold standard has been an illusion. Come to think of it, go all the way back to the Devil’s midwifery of the Fed in 1913.
Reagan accomplished much, and could have accomplished more, had he had people around him who supported his vision. David Stockman’s book, ‘The Triumph of Politics”, leaves no doubt as to the treachery in Washington during the ’80s. Congress was never going to balance the budget, despite its promises when the blessed tax cuts were passed. Even then, America as we knew it was dying, with the drip-drip-drip of the euthanasia known as middle class entitlements and televised sports.
Conservatives assumed it would stay this way given Reagan’s landslide victories. But that was not the plan and that was not what happened. Once Clinton was in, Reagan and the 80s were quickly memory-holed…
The Reagan era ended with Poppa Bush, not Clinton.
America is a very large and diverse place, any given year is the aggregation of multiple trends in different sectors all moving to their own rhythms.
So no era, good or bad, is going to last long. And there is absolutely no going back to an imagined past.
The 60s and 70s had really made my Dad lose faith in the USA. Reagan revived his faith, at least for a few years. Maybe we could turn the country around after it had gone so wrong.
Since my Dad ran a small business, balancing the budget was very important to him. Aside from the promise of rolling back the cultural revolution, the hope of getting the country’s finances under control really inspired him.
Later on, he was so disappointed to learn that the size of government grew under Reagan and that the big rearmament of the military was paid for with debt.
Great column, but that’s not at all where I thought you were going with that title. I figured you’re having as much fun as I am watching the Left’s little warlords staking out their various turfs in the sucking power vacuum that is Brandon’s DC.
I guess the Left deserves some kind of credit for keeping that “eternal victim” mentality. I don’t know how they managed, but it kept them from the worst effects of Victory Disease. But now it’s obvious to even the most dimwitted of Leftist true believers that they control everything, so they’re starting to get a pretty serious case of VD (on top of all the other kind of VD they undoubtedly have).
Crying out in pain as you strike at people tends to keep you in a mindset that you aren’t actually “winning”. Remember the wisdom of George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
I wouldn’t underestimate how many of the rank and file leftists, particularly the younger ones, believe they are living in/fighting against a right wing dystopia
I’m aware how preposterous it is, how divorced from reality, but they believe it all the same. It is hard to encapsulate their insanity with words
It really is stunning how they pull off this mental feat. They re-frame getting 90% of what they want as living under “far-right oppression.” Every little hiccup in the progressive project becomes “proof” of their righteousness. How many times have we listened to how the world is becoming a real life Handmaiden’s Tale since Roe being overturned. One minor hiccup and they think we’re on the verge of an alleged (I haven’t read the book) anti-woman dystopia.
Leftists are disengaged from reality because they have to be. They create a fantasy world filled with dragons to slay. Their “solutions” are for imaginary problems, but the effects of those solutions have real world ramifications. Again however, all this is necessary because, for the Left to survive, it has needs be at war with the status quo. And for there to be a war, there must be horrific problems (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) to solve. And if there are no real problems of any consequence, they must be conjured ex nihilo. It is the only way the Left can persist. And as it does so, it plunges ever deeper into the abyss of madness, dragging the sane world with it.
” a fantasy world filled with dragons”
The need to slay dragons, and making the nation with the most nukes the hobgoblin du juor, has made this a very dangerous moment. We cannot discount that much of the brass is just as delusional and detached from reality. I once thought if a nuclear warhead was thought to be near launch these types would soil themselves, flee from Martha’s Vineyard and call the whole thing off. I’m no longer sanguine on that point.
I don’t want to live in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust but given those in authority over me are deranged, it may not be a choice.
Severian mentions, “watching the Left’s little warlords staking out their various turfs in the sucking power vacuum that is Brandon’s DC.”
I enjoy watching the battles of the various victim groups because you get a sense of which are most powerful at the moment.
In the past, blacks steamrollered over feminists, when feminists complained about misogyny in hip hop.
Today, h0mo black Don Lemon is taking a beating because he said that Nikki Haley was past her prime. I would have expected h0mo black to beat multiracial feminism.
The Anglo nations are not ruled by blacks. Righties gotta let go of this sweet teat. Blacks do not drive policy in the Anglo nations.
Instead, Anglo nations are ruled by the collective power of women, expressed ideo-politically as feminism. Been that way for 50 years in America already.
To take but one example, blacks do not indoctrinate the new generations with Woke. Women are the source of that propaganda, from K to doctorate.
Men — including ‘conservative’ and ‘Christian’ men — have spent the past half-century doing everything in their power to ignore the reality that their wives, daughters, sisters, grannies, and all the rest, rule over them and have driven their nations into tyranny. Instead, men wanna believe it is blacks. But it ain’t. The truth hurts.
This problem of female betrayal goes all the way back to the beginning of the human race. It never goes away and is always available to malevolent elites as a control-mechanism to silence and neuter the males of nations. Like they just did to America, Britain, Australia, NZ, Canada, and Western Europe.
You cannot overcome an enemy you are unwilling to identify.
@Ray
Spot-on. You nailed it.
The women have not been put in their place, collectively, in more than 50 years.
They use these silly “tempest in a teapot” squabbles as proof of how “healthy” conservatism is because it has “vigorous debate” within conservatism.
All of these outfits need to lose their not-for-profit tax exempt status. The tax code has turned most charities into money laundering outfits while also allowing the super wealthy to maintain huge propaganda mills.
It’s clowns all the way down.
“The slobbering over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott suggests they have learned nothing.”
I agree, but for a different reason/example. After the 2020 and especially the 2022 elections, these groups quickly and completely rejected any aspect of election corruption and fraud. They all circled the wagons. Indeed, any mention of such by others—say call-in’s to their talk shows—were completely rejected and the callers never allowed to speak or present evidence of their claims. They were demonized as “nutters”. This remains the case in my State especially.
That “the game is rigged” is not allowed to be discussed and the official stance of these groups is that we (Rep’s) must learn to play the game as the opposition does, which entails mail-in balloting. The implication is that the only thing amiss during the election was the failure of Rep’s to show up on election Tuesday in the numbers needed, and that this “problem” would be solved if every Rep signed up for early, mail-in ballots, and every Rep voter then immediately mailed back their ballot upon receiving it,
That the State already has 80% early ballot registered voters, seems not to dawn on them. To further add insult to injury they cite as evidence of “election denial” the Court’s consistent finding of “nothing to see here” and the losses in their suits to overturn the election results. As I previously mentioned, the Court system is loathe to involve itself in the political process—at least that involving fraud. As proof of this, Kari Lake (defeated Gov candidate) lawyers were instructed by the presiding judge that the burden of evidence/proof they must meet/show, “…that the ballot ‘fraud’ was ‘deliberate’ (as to simply negligent) and would have altered the final election ‘results’…”
This is simply an unobtainable burden of proof. The Courts are not interested in process corruption and therefore voting “harder” will not change results.
I do tend to agree with an aspect of the crowd that continues to scream we have to learn to use the early, mail-in ballot system as the Dem’s have. My assertion is that we need to not only use the system, but to use it as the Dem machine does—harvest ballots, submit votes for the dead or absent, and if needed generate new ballots to be dropped off at polling places (where deemed needed).
The problem for the right, re: ballot harvesting, is that there’s no one stop shop for massive numbers of R votes like the left has with college campuses. Previously, 80-90% of those kids usually couldn’t be bothered to vote, but now, they are close to 100% voting D. Legally.
There was nothing wrong with R turnout in 2020. It was unprecedented. I’m dubious that ballot harvesting will be enough to make up the difference.
“we are a long way from see the collapse of Conservative Inc., even as its influence fades to black.”
Enter Nikki Haley and Tim Scott. Conservative Inc. will never be Sari as they fade to black.
Spot on, except the court loves getting involved in electoral politics, just not on the Republican side. It’s the courts which have allowed foreigners to vote in our elections. When gay marriage couldn’t even pass in California by voting, the courts came riding in to the rescue.
For the most part, the courts are just another arm of the Democrat party. Law itself is completely captured by the progressives in the Democrat party. There are only a couple of other fields which compare in their progressive chops to the field of law.
It’s because the Amish are overrepresented in the legal profession.
Maybe I’m too much of a grouch but I find the Claremont types to be without self awareness when they talk about conservative inc. I mean ffs they are still sort of conservative Inc but a spicier variant. same with Breitbart.
Someone like the comedian Dave Smith or the mises caucus seem much more truly outside the box.
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Con Inc was successful at its primary mission, which was kneecapping popular (very popular) opposition to the GR until it was a fait accompli. I know this was their primary mission because they chose it over gaining power. Not much can make those folks eschew wielding power, but we have seen what does. The GR is just that important to them.
“Endless war (AEI), liberal internationalism (Cato) and romance for a long lost past (Heritage)” — One thing they all agree on is prioritizing corporate profits and minorities over the well-being of white Americans.
On a semi-related note, one of the Z man’s best insights was to describe the “neoconservatives” as hyper-violent liberals.
Speaking of endless war, I was interested in seeing just how many people would show up at the Lincoln Memorial’ “Rage Against the War Machine” protest. I know very well that it was assorted cranks who put this event on. But one thing about cranks, I’ve known a lot of cranks, the kind who live in Ojai, and places like that, they can have flashes of truth in their meandering thoughts as they burn incense in their living rooms.
One of those flashes of truth is that we are indeed a horrifying, dangerous, imperial war state. So it made me sad and disheartened to see the video of perhaps a hundred people there, in the middle of a metro area that perhaps has five or six million. At least it feels that big. It goes to show just how much the anti-war movement atrophied on the left. It started when Clinton began shelling Serbia and they never looked back.
There’s ZERO influence in that town for anything resembling peace. All these hippie-crits with their Ukrainian decals. Especially the olds. “Save the whales” has become “bombs away!” I would expect this from some hick in a South Carolina double wine pulling down a Navy pension. The neo-cons greatest influence is their capture of both parties. The times in which we live are far more dangerous than people think.
As recently as 2008 the left was still the peace party. Or thought it was. The grassroots of it anyway. Now there’s not even any pretense of being so. In less than 15 years.
I’ve seen it personally too, the pink pussy hat wearing wife of a friend who once thought Dick Cheney was satan incarnate, now wants his daughter to run for president.
So sad. And the left is the real power nexus in this country so it only tells me that with this mindset a foreign policy tragedy is a near certainty. And I don’t mean a fiasco like the Afghan pullout or the Iraq war. Something worse.
I’m afraid you’re right, JR. Irrational people in complete control of the world’s largest military and stockplile of armaments cannot be a good thing. Inevitably, their madness will produce a monstrous misstep. Or perhaps a manifestly evil demarche.
Ostei Kozelskii: “Irrational people in complete control of the world’s largest military and stockplile of armaments cannot be a good thing.”
We make a very grave categorical error when we posit that the Sanhedrin of the Frankfurt School are irrational.
We can certainly observe that the Sanhedrin MANIPULATE the innate insanity of the deep inner Hajnalian sh!tlib personality type, but the insanity and the manipulability belong to the sh!tlib, rather than to the Sanhedrin.
We could even hypothesize that the Sanhedrin are playing with [psycho-sociological] fire, and might be taking more risks than would be actuarially prudent on their part.
But the Sanhedrin are brutally hyper-cynically logical in their rationality.
They deploy a logic of illogic which has served them supremely well going on 5000 years now.
Boil the frog slowly, and always push the envelope.
Keep pushing that envelope.
Never stop pushing the envelope…
Anyone seen Cindy Sheehan lately?
Anyone?
To Sheehan’s credit, she still is advocating against war. The media embargo has been total, which is why you don’t know that. If this insanity goes hot, Biden and Garland will put Wilson and Palmer to shame and Ms. Cindy will be lucky if she just does time in the D.C. Gulag.
You live in a gynocracy. Have for many decades. The hidden dynamo of the gynocracy is the ‘conservative’ and ‘Christian’ daddies of daughters.
Add this demographic onto the collective political power of women, combined with the ‘minorities’ of POCs, LGBTQ, massive ‘immigration’ and elites, and you have an unassailable and permanent majority.
Once daddy has a precious princess, he becomes an instant feminist for life. He will call himself a conservative, he will call himself a Christian and a servant of God, and he will deny the label feminist with all his might . . . but he is a feminist, and is secretly ecstatic that he dwells in a feminist nation that will elevate and prioritize his daughter over Some Other Sucker’s Son for the duration of her life.
A daughter puts lots of gibs, monetary advantages, and privileges in daddy’s lap for daughter’s entire life. Instead of having to hunt down a son and marry her off at an early age — and pay for her lifelong if she is not married — suddenly the State becomes the hubby, benefactor, and enforcer of his daughter. A great deal! Enrages heaven and destroys the nation . . . but such a deal!
The proof is in the last five decades of culture in America, Britain, Australia, NZ, Canada, and so on.
People were probably a little skittish about being thrown in a DC dungeon for years pending trial and without probable cause of any kind. And speaking of where are the civil liberties leftists of yore – I just read that one of the J6ers was blinded in one eye after being beaten by a guard.
The orange menace is gone. Anyone in that town and surrounding area was free to stand there on the mall and sip a non-fat latte and no one showed up. There’s just no appetite for anything resembling not bombing people for five minutes. Only five or six hermits on the very far left and a tiny peppering over hatchback driving libertarians.
Everything the Left once claimed as a foundational belief–see, for instance, free speech–they now renounce wholeheartedly. This is no mere cynicism, it is black nihilism. It is who they are. ’14
I also watched and for the same reasons, and I reached the same conclusions. The Regime felt no reason to use Antifa and/or the FBI to disrupt the event precisely because it is toothless and retro cosplay.
Some people may think I’m a monomaniac about it, but we are in greater danger of dying in a nuclear war than any time since the weapons were developed. A best case scenario at this point is a massive, financially crippling conventional war. It is the same madness we witnessed in the run-up to the Iraq War times 1,000.
White Southerners and Midwesterners who always comprised the bulk of the cannon fodder are not lining up to join the military. Can such a war be fought without a draft? It is hard to see that, but apparently the thought is it can be.
I think you’re right.
I agree, however, if they re-instituted a draft, how many people would actually comply?
@steve:
That’s the problem they face. Everyone knows Shaneeka and Shitavious will not comply, and Juan and Maria probably won’t, but Jeb and Sue and Clark and Mary refusing to obey will stink up the whole thing. Lately there have been a lot of PSA’s about “your patriotic duty to register with Selective Service.” That tells me the young aren’t even registering in a time of ostensible peace.
The Empire probably is stuck with hybrid proxy wars the remainder of its run, which is to say strongarming others into using their children as cannon fodder and shoring it up with those stupid and desperate enough to volunteer in the United States.
A lot of dissidents think if things go hot throngs will line up to serve. They are just as wrong as the Conservatards and the Left on that point, and I suspect that already has been revealed by non-compliance with registration requirements.
Jack,
I disagree on the idea of throngs lining up, should this go kinetic in real time, perhaps in your neck of the woods that might be so, but not here where I live. I know of only one family who’s child has signed up for the service and it was the AF for the college money.
I have personally talked a number of kids of the people I know out of throwing their lives away. One of the big reasons why is because I was in a number of years ago and have first hand experience with what the life is like.
What I hear from most of these kids is, “What do you mean a draft? I’m supposed to put my life on hold and possibly lose it to clean up their mistakes? When their own kids are on the front line, then maybe I’ll go.”
Hopefully this attitude is spread far and wide.
A lot of dissidents think if things go hot throngs will line up to serve
For which side?
I suspect our military still believes that its technology can substitute for boots on the ground, having learned nothing from the last two imperial wars. And that’s precisely why the risk of a nuclear war is so great: if all that hardware turns out to be overpriced crap and gets easily swept away, the US would almost certainly fire off nukes in a blind panic. It’s also very likely the reason you don’t see Putin going on an all out military offensive in Ukraine, the Russians want to keep NATO feeling like they’re in a neocon Bush War and not a real war.
” It’s also very likely the reason you don’t see Putin going on an all out military offensive in Ukraine, the Russians want to keep NATO feeling like they’re in a neocon Bush War and not a real war.”
Smart take and quite plausible. I think one of the main reasons for provoking the war was to separate Europe from Russia. The inverse would be karma.
To reply to Steve:
If current military recruitment is insufficient for GAE’s misadventures and a draft is enacted I will personally participate in the new ‘Underground Railroad’ that would shuffle young men (the young women have other methods of avoiding the draft) to safety somewhere.
Sadly though, it will be much more difficult to escape the GAE draft than it was for anyone of the Vietnam war era as there will be less safe places to run to.
Bluebeard,
Nice avatar by the way! The idea of a new underground RR for our peoples children is something that heretofore, I hadn’t thought about. Thank you for mentioning it and yes, I would happily volunteer to help as well!
If this were ten years ago I wouldn’t bat an eye at the “When Susan and Clark say no, that will cause a stink.” comment, but since we are now ruled over by “people” who are insanely cruel, I can see a “president” harris giving a press conference, “While it is true that the children of whites are being disproportionately singled out for the draft in order to insure the survival of “our democracy”, let us not forget that it was their ancestors who started it all here. As a result, it is they who should shoulder the burden to ensure that it continues. After all, democracy is a White, European concept.”
Tell me you couldn’t see her saying that at a press conference?
As for not helping out White girls? without them, our people die off, so they must be included as well.
But isn’t it strange? I don’t sense fear in the air. I imagine it was very different in 1962. Hell, it was quite different in 1982.
do they really need a draft when they can get Eurotrash to fight? When they can just “drone” it in? a land war in Europe is existential for Europe, not the GAE.
Speaking of endless war, Biden is in “Keev” today to pay homage to his Semitic bribemasters, Zelenskyy and Kolomoiskyi:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-zelenskyy-biden-f00af220669457d5ba07127c7e57a27b
Somehow he didn’t manage to make it to East “Palestine,” though.
Appropriate name, I must say. It might as well be the “Occupied Territories on the West Bank” of the Ohio…
Perhaps he was also there to hastily close bank accounts. Was Hunter there to sign the signature card on the safe deposit boxes? I guess they’ll have to drill them. I also like the Zalenskyy sock puppet line about driving tanks into red square. Way to have a cool, responsible foreign policy that doesn’t give the entire Russian population flashbacks to the siege of Stalingrad.
What a dam’ shame it would have been if a stray SAM had taken out Air Force One.
One common thing about dying organizations, including all the ones mentioned that belong to CON-Inc. is the total lack of humorlessness. When you’re a con artist peddling a clunky ideology, you take on a mindset “I will not be made the fool of!!!” And you militantly enforce that mindset. Bubble poppers terrify them. So when someone like BAP comes along and throws a water balloon, they go nuts. They then attack by trying to dismantle and rebuke, on a line by line basis, the things BAP says, only making them 10 times funnier when they do it. Despite all the time and money they spend perfecting their acts, even trying to do the “mega preacher in skinny jeans” look, they come off as Dean Wormers. Only in some way even worse.
The insecurity is quite justified. There will be no tribute bands and residuals once these types are too infirm to prance on stage.
Exactly what happened to Trump in 2016 too
Throw the woke into that mix, too.
Dean Wormer was the hero of that movie:
“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”
“Claremont did not roll out a real person to respond to this attack and instead used an internet character”.
Heh. I think we can be reasonably certain that “@apemandog” isn’t a pseudonym for Michael Anton.
Anton seems to have subscribed to the Curtis Yarvin school of writing:
“Never say in 500 words what you can say in 10,000”.
Brevity being the soul of wit, wot…
The type of people we are up against are best exemplified in Harvey Mansfield, a man who would regularly get manicures in Harvard Square, and, like Mike Anton, is most interested in tailored English suits. Straussians who laugh at Heidegger in the 1930s — “he did nothing but speak of Being” — but who themselves do nothing but write.
He’s now got a wife 40+ years his junior, who described him thusly a few years ago:
“At Crema Café, Schmidt—a 37-year-old with wavy hair, a fur coat, glasses, and too much energy for 9 a.m.—says her husband is not exactly what you would expect from the author of ‘Manliness.’ When it comes to moving furniture around the house as they renovate the living room, she’s the one doing any heavy lifting. And in debates—which she typically instigates, rather than her more subdued husband—she says she can hold her own. She’s perhaps most critical of her husband not when he talks about feminism but when he spends too much time and energy watching sports.”
Re Friday’s podcast, I couldn’t imagine better examples than Black Hollywood producing the Grammy’s, Woke Hollywood producing Star Wars, the Kardashians, or the producers of the last ten or so Superbowl halftime shows.
Or, commercial advertising in general and the National Review!
Oh my gosh. Two paragraphs into today’s, I see the Zman is speaking to the exact same theme. Today’s nitwits playing dress-up in their parent’s clothes.
Good news, at that. For example,
in Ireland and elsewhere there are approximately 24 to 54 key people in opposition that are very privileged and pivotal in holding cultural genocide power.
Like a deck of 52 cards.
TomA might very well have a good point indeed, if any former professionals can take a hint. It might even become an industry, and then, a standard in politics!
Was watching Idiocracy last night on a station that showed commercials. The commercials were for various blackity black things. The juxtaposition was more entertaining than the movie.
Clown world grows as the white proportion shrinks. America is a white nation (without even getting into religion and ideology), a white project, always has been. We can talk about grifts and fake news, name the Jew, or whatever else, but that’s the fact, and there’s much work to be done after acknowledging it. All efforts— even the greedy parasitic ones— will fail without a nation to build on. (Or feed on lol.)
If it wasn’t for right wing dissidents noticing the decline and collapse of ConInc. I doubt anybody else would. They can’t keep running to their lefty overseers, those people hate you more.
Fox News and NewsMax are the amplifiers into which they plug in. “Brought to you by Pfizer, J&J, and various penis pills pushed by Dr. Gorka.” He is a doctor after all. You’ll know the CON inc is in trouble is the ratings are slipping away for these Networks. I don’t check them, I’m hoping they’re down.
Speaking of turf wars within “conservatism,” Ann Coulter just told Nikki Haley to go back to India:
https://nypost.com/2023/02/17/ann-coulter-tells-nikki-haley-go-back-to-your-own-country/
There are many negative things to be said about Coulter, such as being a childless old mudshark, but she does give the impression that she is redpilled on “certain” issues and the Tribe has disinvited her from participating in some of the “mainstream” conservative circus acts because of it:
https://www.jta.org/2015/09/17/politics/ann-coulter-slammed-for-tweets-on-jews-israel-in-gop-debate-commentary
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/10/02/national-review-cans-columnist-ann-coulter/4128f3be-7a64-47e9-a350-eb801757d376/
The comments about Haley will probably amount to nothing more that an entertaining catfight, but sometimes it is nonetheless refreshing to hear someone saying this kind of thing out loud.
When she is good, she is very, very, very good . . .
Also, she’s funny. You can be forgiven a lot of faults if you’re funny.
Humor is often the essence of communication. The rank-and-file will understand a funny sentence way before they understand three paragraphs of profundities. And boy do we ever need the rank-and-file to grasp what is going on right now
And when she’s good, it’s because she’s very, very bad… ’14
Coulter was never anything more than a sexually frustrated attention-whore. She needs to quit hitting the snooze button on her 15 minutes and get a hobby.
Interesting to see so many Indians all of the sudden be pushed into the political mix. For example – Sunak (UK) and basically the whole Conservative party, Jagmeet Singh (Canada), Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, some other Indian Republican guy, PM of Portugal, the guy in Ireland. Most of them are “off” Indians, ie. born in former colonies, or mixed.
A good question is “why”? Why now, and so suddenly? Have they been selected to be put into place by the powers that be, who want a new Indian ruling class – and if so, why? Or are they simply a new generation making the most of Western woke idiocy and retiring Boomers & neo-cons?
The next head of the Scottish Nationalist Party could be Humza Yousaf, a Muslim who thinks Scotland is too white. You cannot make this stuff up.
“A good question is “why”? Why now, and so suddenly?”
Because Subcontinentals qualify as “nonwhite” when tallying up the diversity numbers, but the upper-caste ones are far more educated and intelligent than Bantus (Kamala Harris excepted).
Expect to see more of this as whites are increasingly denied access to power, while sub-Saharans simultaneously demonstrate over and over again that they are unable and unwilling to replace competent whites, no matter how many affirmative-action preferences they get.
One need not approve of nor endorse Haley to see that there is a world of difference between her and Cori Bush, Hank Johnson, Stacy Abrams and Maxine Waters.
Yeah thats the Indian political niche, one part of the scam is the need to never tell people their real opinion of Africans. if they talked about that in an open way, a KKK member would say they were OTT
Because Hindoos are Superjoos. And India is still full of babies, and will surpass China’s population in a few years.
In the near future, we’ll be looking back fondly at a time when a people only hovering around 2% in the US (and much less on the world stage) ran things.
“Her [Haley’s] candidacy did remind me that I need to immigrate to India so I can demand they start taking down parts of their history.”
That’s a fairly amusing and well-earned line referencing Haley’s rebuke of the Confederate flag while serving as governor of South Carolina. Coulter’s schtick has never been much to my liking. She has long struck me as what Zman calls an “edgetarian.” Rarely if ever has she exhibited any unique insight. Nevertheless, she occasionally throws out a good zinger [see above].
And those zingers do more communicating to normies than any three paragraphs of profound observations.
“The slobbering over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott suggests they have learned nothing.”
The transition from farcical and deceptive to straight up stupid and delusional probably means learning is beyond them. That out of the way, National Review does reflect the viewpoint of the increasingly irrelevant two percent who run the Republican Party in opposition to the ninety-eight percent who vote for that kabuki show. NR amplifies that corrupt and dangerous minority’s current grifts. Most Republican voters want the Ukraine War ended immediately with peace negotiations, but NR will amplify Mitch McConnell’s false and deranged claim that the MIC’s latest insanity is the Number One concern of his party members. Republican voters are idiots for the most part but even they no longer take this stuff seriously.
American Greatness represents what Conservatism, Inc., writ large would be if it could adapt ever so slightly: a bit heretical but still in thrall to the worst impulses–blank slate nuttery, for example. From time to time actual dissidence appears there but the vibe is it requires a lot of nose-holding. Ultimately AG mostly is the same product in different packaging. To be fair, Julie Kelley has been awesome on the January 6 political prisoners and FBI/DOJ corruption, but what she does is less opinion than it is the advocacy and investigatory journalism that once was the hallmark of American journalism before it decided to get with the program after the United States began to turn into a totalitarian dystopia. Victor Davis Hanson’s presence there show the reality of AG–Ye Ol’ Conservatism that once had a home on Fox.
Obviously AEI, Cato, and Heritage remain lavishly rackets but their time also is winding down. Billionaires have shifted many of their funds to transparently leftwing outfits like the Bulwark that employ grifters once associated with Con, Inc. These frauds will rely more on Chatbox in the near future but circus freaks still are on display. Also, the Regime has started to crackdown more openly on dissent and these type holding pens will be their controlled opposition over time.
The sunset of Conservatism, Inc., reminds me much of the ending of THERE WILL BE BLOOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyKNmvJYO7o
To borrow from the Turks, the dogs bark but the caravan rolls on.
Funny thing I’ve noted about Hanson—I’ve read several of his books on Classics to fill in the gaps that my academic focus in school created—and listen to his podcasts on occasion for the same reason. He has acquired a harder edged “red pill” tone in the last few years. Much harder edged. Which I find a bit remarkable for an “Inc” guy with a Swedish temperament.
All I hear is CON Inc. saying, “Hanson, you run right cornerback!….hut hut….break!”
Hanson is a part-time farmer. It keeps him grounded.
Perhaps as the vector of events has become inescapably noticeable, as a historian he has come to reflect that “historical events” were once things happening in the now, and that that is where the history he studies, momentous or mundane as the case may be, was made. Our “now” is no different, and similarly contains within it the ends of some things, and the potential beginnings of other, often pernicious beginnings. Get off the sny, old man, recognize the red pills for what they are…
” Get off the sny, old man, recognize the red pills for what they are…”
He can’t change course. The Hanson types are like leftists who cannot process reality. It doesn’t register because it cannot register.
“American Greatness”: the very name strongly suggests that the organization is populated by patriotards hellbent on going down with the ship. They’re the type of folks who will refuse to wake up until the knife is firmly lodged against their throats. These people tend to be far more out of touch than are the progressive wokester yahoos. Wokesters welcome advanced degeneracy with open arms; meanwhile, the professional conservative class pretends to oppose the degeneracy while making endless concessions to it. Pitiful and contemptible.
Great comment, Jack Dobson!
All of the above is true, but he was the first “mainstream” commentator I heard openly talking about CW 2.0, as well as his take on why it’s time to partition the country and break it up, as we cannot get along anymore.
“The slobbering over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott suggests they have learned nothing.”
Or it suggests they know their role as the Washington Generals to the left’s Globetrotters.
The Golden Rule – the people with the money make the rules.
And no one person at the bottom of the pyramid is going to change that dynamic. The current president and all the leadership in Congress were bought and paid for, which is why we are being lead by corrupt and incompetent buffoons. And we now have an electorate with declining IQ being seeded with millions of illegals that will reflex-vote for the bozo promising the most gravy, so the Bongino vote-harder paradigm guarantees that the plates will eventually stop spinning.
Cheering the distress of ConInc poseurs is not a solution to anything. It doesn’t make you laugh anymore, or even muster the energy to feel resentment toward the insanity of our current dilemma. Better is to focus on self-improvement and increasing your robustness. Plan to stay alive through the interregnum and be fit enough to do something proactive when the time is right. That is how you make a tangible contribution in the present.
There’s a lot of truth here, but schadenfreude has its place.
The point of crushing these gatekeepers is to remove the mask of representative democracy. These money men want to mask their self-interest in moral platitudes, which is why they spend so much money trying to propagandize the masses. It gets far more dangerous for them when the veneer of representation vanishes in the average man.
I agree with this. But are their enough sane people left in America to make attempts at persuasion worthwhile? IOW, even if you ridicule the Cloud People sufficient to cause them embarrassment among the masses, will that make a difference? They already ignore our wishes with respect to open borders and endless war. Why would they care about their image when you can feasibly manufacture all the ballots and votes you need to sustain incumbency?
Human nature is such that fat-ass normie is going to stay on the couch and pretend voting matters rather than go to the range and practice his aim. This will only change when he can no longer afford beer and Cheetos.
I’d class Anton’s cytokine storm response to you in the same category. Like his writing and he’s done an awful lost of good work for our side, but he suddenly regressed to a three year old rolling in the grocery aisle because you refuse buy him Poptarts. Still seems the plate tectonics of this are inexorably grinding against the neocons/NR types. For whatever Congress is worth, most of the new entrants simply owe the Goldberg et al crew nothing. And they despise irrelevance above all else. Jonah will never get over his wife not getting that plum job in the Hillary administration and the hit he took to his speech rate card
This is all about generational change more than anything else. The “yesterday men” of National Review debate the old fogies at Claremont…whatever. I’ve not yet met a young conservative who reads/discusses any of this stuff. Reagan is a history book figure to these kids. They grew up in LGBT churches if they even attended services/mass at all.
So the vitalism/neo-Nietzsche trend among some of the younger set (like BAP) makes a ton of sense in this context. Nostalgia won’t win the next election and, worse yet, it’s quite obvious elections (whether “fortified” before or Deep State-nullified after) don’t matter anymore (if they ever did). It’s impossible to channel youthful energy/Testosterone into the “conservative” restoration project of Mayberry RFD.
It’s logical that BAP and his ilk question the utility of the American Christian ethos, having seen the tragic results of the last 30 years. If we older guys have to go back to loincloths and Paganism to defeat the left, I’m okay with it. We can dust off the Bible later after we have won and try to start over.
Ruh-Roh…
Biden makes surprise visit to Ukraine for first time since full-scale war began
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4132377/posts
Not. Good.
It richly illustrates how disposable Biden is for the Regime. Don’t put it past them to either whack Biden like they did Kennedy or to conduct a faux attempt to do so and to turn him into a martyr and as a catalyst to go kinetic. This is dangerous and psychotic, of course, but not at all atypical of the evil people who run the United States.
Most Americans are quite stupid but many will see this as the total act of reckless puppetry it is.
Won’t whack Biden. Half the country cheering would be bad optics.
The thing is, I am in my fifties and Reagan/Buckley feels like my parents idea of interesting. If you are in your 40’s, you have little recollection of Reagan. If you are in your 30’s, the 1980’s are no different from the 1950’s or 1850’s.
I’m older and I vaguely remember Reagan had nice hair for an old guy.
Yeah, I still joke that my paternal grandad had “Ronald Reagan hair”. Almost no gray and still got brush cuts up his death at 76. Unfortunately got the premature gray from my moms side, but more grateful for inheriting his hair follicles.
I’m in my 40s so Reagan seemed like a real person to me, but the “Reagan” in my mind is mostly songs bitching and lying about him.
Old punk records with their ROCK AGAINST REAGAN flyer inserts intact are yuppie collectors’ items.
Reagan does bring back fond memories – my first real election, watched it on TV at the University Student lounge, and me and my friend the only ones cheering as he took state after state after state . . . good times.
Im old enough to remember Reagan and the 80s well.
80s Reagan was fully civnat. The dems opposed to him were closer to todays dissident right than he was. A lot closer. 2016 Trump was really an 80s democrat frozen in Amber.
All of which says something about just how contrived our political system and parties are.
reagan was never as good as his publicity. He was too easily led. he was sure that all the bad guys were in Moscow.
Or you may see a much more “muscular” Christianity move to the fore. Been keeping an eye on this KY college thing for a couple weeks. Kids streaming in from 50 states now and it’s been going on for 2 weeks. Reminds me of tent revival I attended as a kid. Just a fuck ton bigger.
But I vaguely recall some from Friedrich along the lines of “will you become a bigger monster than the monster that will consume you if you do nothing?”
Yes it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the younger Christians. I hope Zman writes about this because I’m interested in his thoughts and everyone’s here on this topic.
I’ve been fascinated by this younger cohort. Nothing like the “oh, man we gotta go to Church” of my generation. Could see them wearing a Templar cross tunic and carrying a sword in a different century.
Been watching this KY thing too. Interviews with the participants don’t seem to show anything more muscular than love, love love, lovety, love, love. That’s always been my problem with my chosen faith over the past 40 years. It’s become feminized to the point that most pastors act gay even if they’re not. “Hug on” your neighbor, kiss ’em with a brotherly kiss, etc. I guess I’m just a old time, ready for the bone yard “smite them hip and thigh” Old Testament type.
The Nicene creed was developed to avoid that love, love lovety love error. In particular with reference to the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father and the Son.
Christianity in the modern U.S. is nothing but Jezebel’s favorite eunuch. . . that Preachy One she enjoys so much!
Masculinity is about as valued in the Prot congregations as it is at a Pussy Hat Demonstration.
@c matt
I think we are a loooooooooooong way from these feminized (but I’m sure lovely) Kentucky gents reverting to The Faith (to which you refer, regarding the Nicene Creed) and becoming warriors.
Say what you will about the Crusades, but those men were Catholic warriors and they got [stuff] done.
Jes sayin’.
The fact the NR writer thought the Daily Beast, which is another old and aged whore, was a hip place to go to sell out the Right speaks volumes. DB is to the Left what NR was to the Right in 2016. DB will be the New Republic in the near future.
Captain Willard: Thought-provoking comment. As a unicorn among old ladydom myself, I think you’re right. I skim blogs and online headlines and I’m constantly, constantly reminded of my own iteration of MacArthur’s famous quote on old soldiers. Old pols and old pol commentators never die, and never go away. They just go on . . . and on . . . and on.
Back in 1982, when I first returned from Europe as a brand-new patriot/conservatard, I spent two years doing secretarial work via temp agencies. My first job was in the headquarters of a large national teachers’ union, an area I hitherto knew nothing about whatsoever. The second was in the first DC nascent lobbying/liaison office of a Korean multinational company. The people I got to meet and/or learned about second hand were all the big names in politics and think tanks at the time.
Now, 40 years later, I still hear about all those same people. Some have died, some have been replaced by the uberwoke, most have retreated to various think tanks and NGOs, but they’ve all remained in the same political place and continually recycled the same ‘new’ ideas from the Reagan administration.
I regard it as ancient history in my life – I’ve moved on both personally and certainly politically. But most people my age who defined themselves as ‘conservatives’ back then seem locked in amber. And they propagate themselves the same way a particular sexual demographic does – through preying on and inculcating the youth of others. Thus today’s repuke ‘youth’ organizations and ministers.
All this to say you’re spot on – it’s very much a generational thing. It seems most can never let go, never allow themselves to gracefully retire and cede their place to others. Witness DC’s political gerontocracy. Why in the hell is anyone reading Bob Woodward any more? Why is he still employed by anyone? We’re endlessly repeating our dissolute history. Today all I can find online are encomiums to Jimmy Carter as some sort of saint. Because he was an amazingly crappy president and then helped non-Whites everywhere. But all those White civnats, aged 25-85, are in complete agreement.
And these old fools are part of the ‘competent’ generation we’re losing. God, we are f**ked.
Most of our generation (I think we ‘re about the same age), just want to retire and “die in peace”. So many of my buddies are like this. They have had good lives and the Reagan-era doctrines with which they grew up served them well, more or less, or so they think. Therefore they have enormous psychological inertia, as demonstrated (and exploited) by Conservatism Inc., NR, Claremont et al.
You are unusual in that you are willing to think, move to a new home and question the past, present and future. It is very hard to do this at our age. Perhaps all we can do at this point is to encourage the young and to remind our peers that they will not be allowed to die in peace.
Captain Willard: Well said. My husband had a long conversation with a high school buddy yesterday (they do this every few months). This guy admits my husband is right about what has and is going to happen, but will make no changes in his life. He somehow feels utterly safe and protected by his government pension while living in a 90%+ non-White border city. He’s encouraged his son to follow the same path. He followed the rules (got a degree, worked hard, saved his pennies, invested, etc.) and it put him where he is now – retired and financially comfortable. So he remains convinced that’s the path to success for the infinite future, all evidence to the contrary.
The psychological inertia is absolutely impossible to overcome. I’m going to share your comment with my husband – and I thank you. His talk with his friend had him frustrated and upset.
I think we are about the same vintage, 3g4m3, and I second your post. What the hell with the sainthood of the sniveling, jealous, vicious, in-the-dictionary-under-failure-there’s-his-picture Jimmy Carter? Actually, I don’t need to ask that, because under the cover of being a smug Southern Baptist, he laid the groundwork for the greens and the wokes as had no one before him. He heaved a hammer at a few nails for Habitat for Humanity while the good ship America was slowly sinking thanks to him and his CFR/Rockefeller ilk, and the canonization was complete.
I kicked off the ’80s free trade and militarism concrete boots listening to and reading the fearless Ron Paul. I had interviewed him during his presidential run in 1987 and, as I watched him depart the television station, had thought that here was the small government successor to Ronald Reagan, if only the Republicans would listen. Silly me.
When he ran for president in the noughts, it was the first time since my 20s that I once again found myself in the company of the 20-something crowd, because Dr. Paul roused youngsters with his talk of freedom like nobody else since — well, Reagan, who had nonetheless had Jeffrey Bell can a gold standard campaign ad after it accidentally aired once because he didn’t want to get Milton Friedman all torqued off. Dr. Paul didn’t care whom he offended, which was probably a large part of his charm for the younger crowd.
And no, legalization of pot wasn’t Dr. Paul’s main magnet, thanks for asking. He recognized that the corporations, military, and media were in charge, and he was rebelling against the new Establishment, that kind of clarion call nearly always being intoxicating to youth.
I once again find myself aligned with the new crop of young dissidents in many ways. Godspeed, and may you break free of (1) the Greatest Generation’s far-reaching mistakes and neglect committed in their alcoholic/consumer/cruise ship haze, and (2) the utter irredeemability of most Boomers.
WhereAreTheVikings: Thank you, and best wishes to you and yours, Sir. I suppose I’m part of Generation Jones, but I’ve always been a contrarian and independent thinker and generally ornery cuss.
Thank you. By the way, I’m a ma’am, sweetie. That’s okay. You aren’t the first and won’t be the last to think the ol’ Vike is a guy due to her writing style. I used to think that using my stiletto heels as my avatar would end the confusion, but these days it would probably just label me a transsexual. So I shall struggle on without what would have once been a definitive visual clue.
WhereAreTheVikings: Well met!! I cannot count how many times other commenters have assumed I’m a guy based on arguing style/logic employed. I regard it as a compliment.
Today, if a prime Carter ran against a prime Reagan, Carter wins in a landslide. CA goes Carter.
Honestly, if I was american, I wouldn’t know how I should vote.
I know in peaceful times, the 3rd party option is hopeless, but in our clown era?…
(that said, Constitution party is not exciting at all, national justice seems creepy/fed, I don’t know the other ones.)
(one thing is certain, a party should offers what people want, based on their social class views, even if thid concept of social classes seems heretic for a lot of US pp.
What they want? Peace, prosperity, not much taxes, freedom. How to manage that with an (necessary) anti-egalitarian pillar? I really don’t know.)
Would you know how to vote in any other country?
True alternatives are not allowed in the west and adjacent areas.
It’s not a debate you should be having. You should simply abandon voting, which is a useless exercise that exists only to perpetuate a flawed, corrupt system.
“Honestly, if I was american, I wouldn’t know how I should vote.”
Hahaha, you think it is viable to vote at all.
@pasaran
If you were American, all of us here would tell you NOT to vote!!
I remember the Bronze Age Mindset as a pretty good book. Maybe it’s time to reread it to see if it still feels fresh.
Heritage, Claremont, whatever. I give these grifters neither thought nor credibility.
Certainly, they do maintain some sway over the lumpen-cons that dwell on Breitbart and suchlike. The blind leading the dickless.
“The blind leading the dickless.”
Gods, I hope that someday, in the far future, that’s quoted like a Roman maxim.
If you are a Southern Nationalist, enjoy the spectacle. You can sit back and watch the Judeo-Puritans savage one another while scalawags like Lindsey Graham scurry about looking for someone to stab in the back.
“Lindsey Graham scurry about looking for someone to stab in the back.”
I think you mean “Lindsey Graham scurry about looking for someone to fuck in the ass.”
Though maybe he’s a catcher?
Lindsey has “bottom” written all over him.
Fudgepackers take turns
There was a story not long ago about a male prostitute spilling the beans about Miss Lindsey’s proclivities. Lindsey was talking about his “little lady bugs”.
The reason that might be true is, who would make that up
Or maybe both at the same time.
Lucius Sulla: “Though maybe he’s a catcher?”
Rumor has it that he caught a bunch of Lady Bugs.
> This post at American Greatness is mostly laughing at the ridiculousness of that Butler post. He restates the dissident case against conservatism made a decade ago.
To be fair, if I was losing my clout to a guy named *checks notes* apemandog, I’d probably be seething to.
There was another outcry at First Things, which was once a neocon rag, but for Catholics. A twitter anon named Lomez posted an article about the Longhouse, which caused an uproar with the tough talking Integralist types.
More pearl clutching happened when Chris Rufo gave an interview to IM1776. One commentator even brought up the dissident ascendancy against the gatekeepers as “breaking containment”.
Now, there’s plenty of much richer right wing outlets to win against, including Daily Wire, Breitbart, and Fox News, but dissidents winning these small skirmishes are starting to put these guys on edge, as dissident targets are only going to get bigger, with more powerful people getting on board.
The fact is, the only place with interesting discussion is the dissident space. What they call the left is just shrieking lunatics. The so-called right is boring and stupid. I am skeptical about these edgytarians of conservatism sampling dissident content, but it does underscore the point that the only thinking interesting going on is on this side of the great divide.
Exactly. I’m not even sure it is accurate to call Con, Inc., “mainstream” any longer. It is a sad relic like Norma Desmond. Your description of them as “85’ers” was spot on.
All of the normie-ish “conservative” websites – NR, AG, AT et., pretty much operate from the standpoint that the system and be reformed or repaired. Wrong kemo sabe – the system needs to be wiped away so it can be replaced, period.
The older conservatives are down to single digits in years. Places like Boston College’s political science department, which is still dominated by elderly Straussians, are gasping for air and their youthful Zionist tendencies are returning for one last go-round.
They hated Trump, they gleefully went along with Covid, they despise J6ers, BAP, and anyone who does not want to spend his life reading de Tocqueville and playing around with footnotes. These weak men have spent their lives absorbed in Machiavelli, Hobbes, and learned absolutely nothing from decades of reading and reflection. In practice, they are indistinguishable from the new hires in the gender studies program. Soon they will be gone and their toil will have amounted to nothing, their books cast into their sea by the barbarians they embraced.
I have often thought I should wage jihad against Strauss, but I have never got around to it. He was the L. Ron Hubbard of political philosophy in the 20th century.
Wait a few more years until the students of his students are gone. Not worth the headache until then. They have nothing but time, and are enraged that someone like BAP dared put his mitts on Strauss and used him for purposes other than brown-bag seminars.
Sorry: honest –if silly– question: what does “BAP” stand for?
Brandon-as-President?
Yes, Patrick Deneen, author of “Why Liberalism Failed,” is going around ringing the alarums to the left to wake up, wake up, the British are coming, and probably looking into building a Panic Room in his mansion.
If we were smart, we would lure all of these Passive Aggressive turds into knifing one another in the back [whilst we just lounged around sipping on bubbly from the general vicinity of Ay or Epernay or Reims].
The older I get, the more I feel like the most important book I ever read in muh entire life was the children’s classic, “Millions of Cats”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millions_of_Cats
Bourbon: I have two copies of that – one in English and one in Bulgarian. A book with a broad reach.
@Bourbon:
Um, maybe re-think Epernay or Reims.
While lovely places, they are, alas, in France. Which, at this time, is becoming over-run with Mohammed-worshipping humans.
And Reims is up in the vicinity of the Belgian border, which is also filled with similar folks.