Montesquieu observed that each form of political system had what he called a spring, but what we would call a mindset, that animated the people. For example, in aristocratic systems the people were motivated by honor. You wanted to please the man you served, so you were loyal to him. In a republican system, the citizens were loyal to the institutions and processes. You served the office, rather than the man. Tyrants, of course, relied upon the fear of the people.
Democracy was not mentioned and liberal democracy as we understand it did not exist, so Montesquieu did not have a spring for these. What we think we know about Athenian society tells us that morality was the spring of their democracy. The people were motivated by what they understand to be the shared beliefs of the people. In fact, Socrates was put on trial for impiety. He questioned the generally held beliefs of the people, which was viewed as a threat to order.
Managerialism was not something Montesquieu could discuss, because it did not exist until long after his time, but we can see it operates a lot like democracy. As with democracy, there is the need for consensus. Dissent is viewed with suspicion as it calls into question the majority’s sense that they are acting in the best interests of the whole of society. Therefore, everyone seeks to be viewed as pious, the more pious the better, so it is a race to the center of the consensus.
The thing is, this is not a front brain activity. People are not looking around on every issue, counting noses and anticipating the majority. Instead it is an instinctual thing, arrived at by interacting with the people in close proximity. It is why the metaphor of the hive is so important. Like drones in a hive, the people in the managerial class do not know why they believe what they believe. They just know everyone they know supports men in dresses, so it must be the right thing to do.
We have a couple of good recent examples from the courts. In theory, this is where kooky beliefs like transgenderism should slam into reality. The courts exist only because they operate upon fixed rules. Even the subversives of the legal profession acknowledge that it is a rules-based system, even as they gnaw away at those rules with clever manipulation of the language. The law is rules and without rules there is no law, so this should be the graveyard of belief.
In the case of the Proud Boys, who are being charged with trying to overthrow the government, the FBI accidently revealed that they had been actively working to destroy exculpatory evidence and frame the defendants. In most cases, this would have resulted in the case being dismissed with prejudice. In some cases, the defense would simply use it to destroy the credibility of the state. In this case, the judge is preventing the defense from using this in their defense.
In a related case, Douglas Mackey, the man behind the infamous Twitter account Ricky Vaughn, is on trial for being funny at the expense of Hillary Clinton. The judge in the case has denied the defense the right to confront his accuser. There is a secret witness that the defense is barred from knowing about in advance. More importantly, the judge has laughed off a clear case of witness intimidation by the state. Apparently, prosecutors had the SPLC harass a defense witness.
This is not the first time we have seen federal judges throw the law out the window in order to persecute people with beliefs contrary to the ruling consensus. The judge in the Michael Flynn case went to the Supreme Court demanding the right to be both judge and prosecutor in that trial. In fact, this is becoming so common it is right to view the federal system as something like Sharia courts. The written law and the traditions behind it are unimportant. Managerial morality is the standard.
The reason for this is the people who exist in these systems feel they must be seen as pious by everyone else in the system. If you are a judge providing a fair trial for the Proud Boys or Douglas Mackey, you are suspect. Your friends and associates in the system will begin to question your commitment. After all, everyone knows these are bad people who must be punished. A judge that allows for these bad people to avoid punishment could be viewed as a bad person.
The way to understand what is happening is to imagine a religious cult taking over the primary institutions of society. Imagine if the Scientologists gained control of the judiciary and started demanding thetan readings in court. The irrationality of thetan levels is unimportant. The people who believe it are not about to be talked out of it and even if that was possible, the selection pressure favors believers. Therefore, faking it has far more benefit than questioning it.
This is why facts and reason have no role in our debates. The people in charge either believe the current fads or they are pretending to believe them because that is what is required for membership in their portion of the polyarchy. Judges burn law books, carnies burn Bibles and politicians burn the Constitution not because they are destroyers, but because the system requires it. If the system needs the Bible, then they will quickly become Bible defenders.
Another troubling fact about the current crisis is that the existence of this hive mentality atop the system shows that the current structure of our cultural, political and economic universe is what makes this outcome possible. Make a small change in how America evolved in the 20th century and we get a vastly different result. What this means is changing the people gets more of the same, even more extreme results, because the system is tuned to produce the hive mind.
Much in the same way that the end of the aristocratic order required the French Revolution and the American Revolution, the end of this crisis in the West means erasing the history that made this system possible. Revolution puts a period on a historical process and begins a new process. The end of managerial polyarchy requires the repudiation of the history that created it. The system and the process that created it is the enemy, not the people in it.
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The managerial state is outcome based. The world as a factory. So, output must be consistent. Hence the drive for equality and equity. To the high IQ types who rule, this is only natural, as IQ is the measurement of those habits of intellect best suited for science, engineering, and management. This triumvirate working together is why we can make jet airplanes out of the stuff from the ground below us. By the mid nineteenth century, it started to be considered applicable to human society. The earliest systems were known as Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism. Modern Neo-Liberalism is a… Read more »
The term “managerialsm” became so mangled for the past 50 years as to entirely lose any meaning when used in right-wing discourse.
What we have now is definitely not driven by growth calculations, or whatever else Burnham envisioned in his deeply flawed interwar book.
We don’t as much have a “factory state” as a mental asylum one, with the therapeutic aspect of the term also applicable. I think Paul Gottfried made an attempt to bring Burnham’s notions a bit up-to-date in his “Therapeutic State”.
If we start calling “what the ruling class believe, nowadays” a Religion – then we have no such thing as Religion. What They have is IDEOLOGY – the concept of Ideology was invented/ employed to describe what They espouse, distinct from religion. An analogy (somewhat) is when political correctness started using Gender (how someone identifies) instead of (Biological) Sex – and, after a while, there was no Sex but only Gender – Sex became Gender. The terms conflated in a Left-helping way. If anti-Religious people are allowed to called anti-Religion “Religion” then Religion is absorbed-into (what was) Ideology. Again: the… Read more »
The difference between religion and modern ideology, anti-religion, is that religions center on super natural explanations of life and eschatology. An attempt by man to understand the forces that control his fate. Modern man rejects the concept of the supernatural. Everything is, or can be, understood as a part of the natural order that operates according to strict laws that can be understood. Which is ultimately unsatisfying to human ego and cognition. We have a bias to seeing agency and patterns where none exist. And see ourselves as the center of everything. So people created “anti-religion” to square the circle.… Read more »
Anybody remember Ernst Zundel? In this shocking and shameful case, the rules were brazenly thrown out the window by the governments of three different “civilized” nations.
Off topic: Morrissey, the archetypal depressed English singer, just had all of his videos removed from YouTube. This could be just a technical hiccup, but it could also mean that the space that he has always occupied as a free-thinking liberal is being bulldozed. He is a homosexual and ridiculously strident vegan. However, his opinions have never been constrained by liberal orthodoxy. He said, “I don’t hate Pakistanis, but I dislike them immensely.” In defending himself from charges of racism, he said that, “everyone prefers their own race.” He wrote a sympathetic song about a young man who joined Britain’s… Read more »
Looks like a temporary glitch, but YouTube’s failings are correctly blamed on “pajeet code,” and one of Morrissey’s first handful of racist outrages back in the ’80s was “Bengali in Platforms,” a supposedly anti-subcon song*. He’ll be sabotaged away someday.
* Of course it isn’t. It’s about how immigrant assimilation is an embarrassment to immigrant and host nation alike. If literacy survives**, he’ll be remembered as the great poet-chronicler of the death of the Anglosphere.
** It already hasn’t.
Never mind, the videos are back.
I couldn’t make it through the entire article. Notice how the writer uses terms like “his reprehensible views”. Yes – he has “reprehensible” views because he wants to be around people like himself? Because he wants to sustain his culture? Because he doesn’t want to live around low IQ savages who know nothing but barbaric violence, rape and theft?
Every day my hatred for leftists gets more and more out of control.
Me too .
Comment rejected, too short.
I think a lot of the current plethora of problems that plague our society and culture stem from the gradual and recently accelerating deification of blacks everywhere as well as elevating women into the upper echelons of not only the corporate workplace, but government. And their upward movement has wafted other unworthies such as queers, trannies and various shades of foreign mud that don’t belong here. There’s much system repudiation, particularly of the past 60 odd years, that needs to take place.
I am glad to see this is getting more publicized, the directions the courts have gone. I have litigated cases with much lesser stakes and this is simply much more common that people realize, outside the criminal realm (which I do not practice in). I have lost nearly all faith in the system I have participated in for much of my adult life as result. Any if you have ever had to appear at a judicially-blessed “administrative law” hearing, for any reason, you have likely experienced it even more intensely as well. “The law” when before a judge more than… Read more »
Much like all other levels of politics/ governance, the general public (not most commenters here, obviously) have no idea what mediocrities those above us truly are capable of being. Judge’s are no different (with obvious exceptions).
Democracy is just mob rule in the end.
“The system and the process that created it is the enemy, not the people in it.”
There is a great line in Morgan’s “Altered Carbon” on the persistent nature of the tendency towards oligarchy. I don’t know if it made it into the cinema version (netflix?), which I assumed was woke trash and didn’t watch.
“This enemy you cannot kill. You can only drive it back into the depths and teach your children to watch the waves for its return.”
I think another contributing factor to the hive-mindset is the transition over the last hundred years or so to a moral system of individual expression over all other imposed structures – that in itself has turned into a moral structure that is nebulous and hard to pin down. The ‘tastemakers’ of this new structure benefit from the fact it is unspoken because it lets them pulls strings and point the masses in directions that benefit them while virtue signaling to be the most pious. Religion, honor, codified laws, and even the laws of nature are externally created and managed systems… Read more »
This thing would agree with you, Why Credit Swiss is bust,
“With her shiny blond hair, nails polished pink and personality radiating pure vivaciousness, Pippa Bunce breaks like a ray of sunlight through the cloud that has been hanging over the Swiss bank.”
«Expression is so important,» Pippa Bunce said, perfectly done up for our 30-minute zoom interview.
https://www.finews.com/news/english-news/50725-credit-suisse-pippa-bunce-diversity
Agitation is the core mandate of progressivism. It must always agitate against something, or someone. Or it ceases to exist. It isn’t progressive anymore. If it ran out of enemies to agitate against, it would have to create some. In a world of plenty, a virtual earthly paradise insofar as anyone has known such a thing, which the USA became in the later 20th century, progressivism had to create clown world or die. The “left” may have become the establishment today, but that doesn’t mean it has become what it beheld. It would rather die than become what it beheld.… Read more »
I think that is because to pause after accomplishing a goal and then assessing if the goal accomplished has been a net benefit is to see failure. Of course, it can’t localize the change either and adhere to the most fundamental principles of scientific experimentation – one variable and one control. It must burn the evidence by forcing global change or adoption. When women voting doesn’t make women’s live better or society better move to the next change so nobody says the obvious – that change was a waste of time and energy. Or, say that change just didn’t go… Read more »
I’d recommend reading (around in, or reviews of) Ernst Fraenkel’s The Prerogative State, and to a lesser extent Neumann’s Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism. They’re not worth reading cover to cover, as they were written in the 1930s and 40s and so contain lots of irrelevant detail (a lot of it speculative in the latter, as Germany was a closed society then for the most part). But Fraenkel’s description of State Prerogative is spot on: You could get real, impartial justice in the Third Reich. You get busted for jaywalking, you pay your fine and go home.… Read more »
Pardon me while I slowly sink into ennui.
The reason the West is collapsing before our eyes: financial slow-motion collapse, railroad collapse, air traffic collapse, political collapse, etc. is that the Woke Religion of the Managerial class is both destructive in its effect and non-universal. The Managerial Elite can only be special and important to themselves emotionally if everyone else is the Devil. The Enemy. Dirt People. Deplorables. Thus there is not only no effort to proselytize among the un-Woke, every effort is made to prevent the un-Woke from being Woke. Particularly among the Dirt People. This is similar to Islam, which suffers the same problem. Muslims in… Read more »
Also, there’s a change a generations as the liberals retire and are replaced by totalitarian wokesters. They are what they affect to oppose.
It’s also a probable reaction to the trauma of 9/11, which left me cold by the way.
Left you cold, did it, Kerdasi? Knock me over with a bleedin’ feather.
Your post’s theme reminds me of a screenshot of the top six rows of MSNBC.com going around the other day. The only function of corporate consensus media is morally policing the ranks, there’s no information. Less clunky than Pravda, because there is a high degree of fashion and keeping up appearances which the commies had formerly inverted. But it is nonetheless a Debordian going-through-the-motions spectacle. Anyway, this screengrab presented 11 headlines about Trump (paying off the video prostitute; I am led to believe he will be packed off to Alcatraz or Devil’s Island any day now), 1 headline about SVB… Read more »
The economy has already failed. This is papered over by the unprecedented status enjoyed by the printed at will US dollar. There has never been another currency like it. If its value were lost, everyone would quickly find out how much of the economy is real, and how much of it is fake.
Sort of off topic, so I apologize in advance. There is an Asimov story (forget the title) where the last two big empires of the future are at war. An EMO of some sort has wiped out all electronics. Thing is, both sides have depended on AI and computers to the point that no one has even rudimentary skills at math or science. They then discover a janitor who can add, subtract, divide and multiply and make him their “secret weapon” since he can get their weapons on target with a pencil and pad. Are we heading there? Our “economists”… Read more »
EMP. Stupid keyboard:)
“The thing is, this is not a front brain activity. People are not looking around on every issue, counting noses and anticipating the majority. Instead it is an instinctual thing, arrived at by interacting with the people in close proximity.” Keep this observation in mind. It explains how so many people who otherwise come across as lucid and intelligent could change, for example, from regarding “gay marriage” as a stand-up comedy topic in their twenties to a sacred right worthy of more reverence than real marriage, now in their forties. Most people, perhaps especially midwits, sense at first the direction… Read more »
It’s almost entirely a midwit phenomenon. Half-wits can’t adapt to the ever-changing moral consensus, they get left behind telling jokes with racial slurs or making fun of transvestites. Although arguably the cause and effect could be backwards here: half-wits also aren’t trying to get ahead in professional careers that demand twisting your morality into a new knot every year. No one asks the septic sucking service guy for his pronouns, as a large mass of human dung tends to whiplash one back into practical concerns.
An example is the COVID shots. PhDs were the least likely to get jabbed followed by those without a college degree. Those in the middle education groups were most likely to get the shots and believe everything they were told about the virus.
Have a gander at this Senior Director of Credit Suisse:
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/mistranslated-i-split-my-time-as-pippa-and-philip-20171002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pips_Bunce
The bank just got bailed out to the tune of $54 billion by the Swiss government, so I guess he’ll continue to get paid to wear heels and lipstick…
Not just unserious but ridiculous people in charge seems to be the common thread in these bank bailouts. I conservatively deduce that close to half of corporate America is so led, and increasing by the day.
X man
See, it’s stuff like this that make me confident in my desire for the collapse to come as soon as possible.
All kidding aside, how can a reasonable, lucid person take an organization like Credit Suisse seriously with mentally I’ll creatures like that at the helm.
Because it is backstopped by the government. Like most industries in the West is runs according to Palace Economy not free market rules. Profitability is determined by how much goodies the Palace hands out, which in turn is determined by how good, holy, and holy-woke the company has been. Santa hands out the presents all year long! This is nothing new, this was the fatal flaw in most civilizations that ran on this principle: the Bronze Age civilizations: Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites, Mycenaean Greece, the Minoans, up through the Classical and much of the Medieval period. It was not… Read more »
Zero Hedge headlines this morning:
6:12 AM
Bailout Arrives: Credit Suisse To Borrow $54BN From SNB To “Pre-emptively Strengthen Liquidity”
6:52
Credit Suisse liquidity actions assist sentiment, the tone is tentative pre-ECB – Newsquawk US Market Open
7:27
ECB Preview: “None Of The Available Options Come Without A Cost”
7:39
Wall Street Reacts To Credit Suisse Rescue: Stock Gains Fade Amid Doubts SNB Support Not Enough:
10:36
‘Bailout Bust’? European Bank Default Risk Rises As Credit Suisse Stock Tumbles
If 54 $BN buys you 4 1/2 hours, pretty soon it’s real money.
Tomorrow’s headline?
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money.
“In 2018, Bunce was awarded one of the Top 100 Women in Business”
Sorry, ladies, but your plumbing cannot prevent the Patriarchy from spoiling your hen party. I mean, what finally is the point of feminism when anyone can be a woman by mere personal declaration? It’s not an exclusive club any longer. In fact, any woman could simply say she’s a man and presto: no more oppression, because she’s now one of the guys. But complaining about male oppression scores victim points, so the gals will never man up (ahem) and do it.
Wiki wrote his pronouns as, “they.” It is impossible to read articles where English grammar and its correct pronouns are abandoned. Perhaps it is intended to disorient and confuse the reader in the same way the subject of the article is about their sex.
[…] Save The Future, Kill The Past […]
IMHO, the Ricky Vaughn case is the opportunity our managers have been looking for since they failed with Kyle Rittenhouse. The only reason Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t made an example of was because there was so much blatant video evidence that it was impossible even for the left to disavow. This case is the real golden ticket for them. If they manage to convict and destroy this guy then the real crackdown can begin with the precedent being set. If you are found out to have said mean things about sacred blax, juice (especially juice) or men in dresses – you… Read more »
especially juice
That guy in New Jersey was arrested and extradited to Florida to be tried for something that is (supposedly) illegal in Florida (but not in New Jersey, where he committed his “crime”). A look at his persecutors reveals what is probably some gleeful axe grinding.
https://newjersey.news12.com/south-brunswick-nj-man-arrested-threatening-shoot-florida-sheriff
There is a silver lining to this. Systems that have to take the iron fist out of the velvet gloves feel threatened and put on their heels. Look at how they reacted to these very issues in the 1970’s and 80’s at the height of the post-war cultural mop-up operation. Everyone across the board defending free speech without limits. Nazis could even walk through Skokie, IL and not be charged. Today they would all be in a Super-max. It’s because at that time, all counterpoints were nearly completely vanquished. You didn’t even have much real opposition to the abortion issue… Read more »
“Systems that have to take the iron fist out of the velvet gloves feel threatened and put on their heels.” Rational systems act this way. This system is not rational. It may indeed be threatened, and most likely is, but it would respond the same even if it were not threatened due to its irrationality/psychosis. I don’t know when it happened, but the reputed leadership in this madhouse started to believe its own propaganda some time back. To be clear, the impulsivity and irrationality spawned by the craziness as well as reality works against the system’s interests and is a… Read more »
“If the system needs the Bible, then they will quickly become Bible defenders”………. “Jesus was a refugee!” The obvious rejoinder to such, which I unfortunately never hear, is “Oh, so you want to live in a theocracy now? I’m down.” But that’s just ‘owning the libs’ which is about all I’m good for. I am certain that we are in the “end times.” The end of what, more importantly the beginning of what, that remains unanswered. Speaking of religion, the one thing we all worship, bipartisanly, omnipartisanly, whether shitlib, normiecon, or DR, is the almighty US dollar. And I am… Read more »
Certainly, the Woke religion is a hive mind, blatantly insectoid, voracious, semi-conscious, derived from similar blood/fertility cults that dominated the ancient world, across millennia and cultures. One variant, the Eleusinian Mysteries (kore/mater/crone ‘mother right’ trinity) lasted over a thousand years in classical phase. But it never really went anywhere, see Dealey Plaza for illustration. So much for ‘patriarchy’. Also correct about the mass corruption of the courts by feminism and related Prog doctrines. The grrls have been pouring out of the law schools for almost fifty years. Many are now on the bench and you do not want to be… Read more »
Yep, the belief in “equity” over “rules”. Very dangerous.
Though it has gotten far worse in recent years, the weaponization of the law has been going on for decades. The law used to protect people, now it just a tool of oppression. This is one of the reasons the system is beyond reform. You cannot rule-nazi people who don’t respect rules. It’s not just at the top either. It’s in police departments across the US. It’s the DAs with their selective charging and abuse of their extremely broad discretion.
Exactly. Step one – make everything illegal. Step 2 – selectively enforce the laws against your enemies. Step 3 – proclaim you are following the law.
@Z-man – There is a self-contradiction in your analysis. Having accurately described the proximate reason for the phenomenon (ruling class solidarity based upon proximity and interaction) you then describe this as religious phenomenon. But that is exactly what it is not. Man has lived in accordance with a religion through all history and everywhere, except in the West for the past few generations. And in all that time there was never anything like what is ‘normal’ in the USA today. All religions are at root positive systems of belief, practice, symbolism etc relating to a world beyond this one; and… Read more »
That was a great comment and therefore I did not downvote it, but it is utterly wrong. All religions have a devil, and this one’s the White man. Most have gods and this one has them as well–blacks and trannies. This one has a creed and rituals and all the other indicia of religion. In fact, the United States and certainly Europe are far more religious now than at any point in the last century. That the religion is appalling, dangerous, and ludicrous is irrelevant.
Bingo Jack! It was a great post, but Bruce gets caught up in semantics over what constitutes a “religion”. For my money this stuff is still a religion and a religion needn’t have an eschatology, just a creed (as you point out) and sacred objects. The nutjobs also have:
Sacraments – abortion, p3do, drugs
Sins – belief in God, doing an honest day’s work.
They also have
Rites: pronouns; land acknowledgements; allyship/accomplicehood declarations; protesting and rioting
Catechisms: Das Kapital; CRT; Europid Abolition/Eradication doctrines (Ignatiev and Moss)
Garb and Symbols: pussy hats; yard signs; hair dye; bumper stickers; co-opted, iconic counter-culture brands (doc martin, converse, trash and vaudeville …); flags (blm, rainbow, lgbtqic+)
Sacraments: vegan diet; binge drinking; psychedelics;
Rituals: Burning Man; techno clubs; fine dining and foodie posting; …
Captain, Jack, Bruce:
Great post, and responses. Punchline for me…”There is no limit to the incoherence, inversional absurdity, and falsity – until the absolute collapse of civilization to the point that our ruling class are themselves overwhelmed by the destruction”…
In ways I cannot begin to comprehend, said ruling class incoherence, absurdity, & falsity have been synthesized into some rational (in their minds) doctrine. A grim harvest of destruction will ensue – unfortunately not only for the ruling class, but many innocents will be trampled underfoot in the process.
Apologies fir the fat finger down vote. I enjoyed your comment
I was initially going to respond to Ray’s post above about the Eleusinian Mysteries but I’ll comment here because I also think Bruce’s post is excellent but also somewhat wrong. The average person today has access to vast amounts of scientific knowledge that explain away most of the things the ancients found mysterious and baffling. At the same he (and especially she, xhe, etc..) isn’t any smarter than his ancestors and his world, in practice, is just as puzzling as when the ancients speculated that a chariot carried the sun across the sky. There’s also the fact that actual scientific… Read more »
You make a really good point. I would respectfully suggest that we not get bogged down in semantics over what constitutes a “religion”. You define religion as something focused on eschatology. But it’s pretty clear these lunatics are trying to bring about their version of “heaven on Earth” today, not on Judgment Day. For me, that’s still a religion, but I still agree overall with your post. Camus discussed this whole issue at length in The Rebel. For him, Communists were indistinguishable from Christians in that they expected the mysterious workings of “scientific” History to create heaven on Earth soon… Read more »
Real Christians who follow Scripture do not believe in mankind bringing heaven to Earth. That is false doctrine. Christians know that only God can bring heaven to Earth, by His presence here in person.
There’s hardly any such thing as absence of religion. I am reminded of a friend who once was a staunch atheist who quickly converted from that to being a devout catholic (more recently of the woke variety). She was/is equally religious throughout all those phases.
The religious aspects of it are kind of irrelevant as is the “system” What we have is an extremely corrupt and illegitimate elite and inverted morality. Morality has always been part of the ruling ethos in every society. People always frame what they do as moral and good. Think about the stories they tell themselves. We dissidents are the bad guys who “hate” for no reason. We live to oppress people. That if we had power, we would all be living in a dystopian hellscape. But they are the heroes of the story. They’re the good people who protect our… Read more »
The morality comes as a post-hoc rationalization after power. Our current crop of managerial overlords are middle-class boomers who were mistakenly over-educated and became a counter-elite that took over. Liberal bullshit ended up being their excuse for seizing power, but the excuse itself could have been Islamism, Fascism, or cake-farting. It’s all just noises that people make in the end.
That was my point. They are corrupt and use their morality to justify doing what they want to do. But they also believe it. It’s “framing”
I do not think religiosity is limited to supernatural spirituality. There have been many “Earth” religions, as well as “Luna” and “Sol” religions that centered their worship around 100% tangible things, like the seasons, cycle of life, fertility, etc. Modernity is a cult of self. It has all of the characteristics of religion. I can agree that it could be characterized as “anti-religion” in a manner of speaking, but when opposition to religion becomes zealous, it becomes its own sort of religion. Atheism is the perfect example of this. I can think of few self professed atheists who aren’t religious… Read more »
Good post. One quibble: “What ruling class in history would strategically destroy the effectiveness, even challenging the existence, of its police and military (of all things!)?”
They are not questioning the police. They are trying to destroy local police in order to transition to a national police force. I also no longer hear criticisms from the left regarding the military, now that Milley and the tranny brigades are in charge.
“They are not questioning the police. They are trying to destroy local police in order to transition to a national police force. I also no longer hear criticisms from the left regarding the military, now that Milley and the tranny brigades are in charge.”
This cannot be emphasized enough. Badge lickers and Muh Military types are in for a very rude awakening as the next few years unfold.
Indeed, I have not heard one single call, from anybody, (other than the DR) to defund the federal police.
Satan is the ape of God, and wokeism is the cartoon chimp of the Divine. But at heart, despite the comic absurdities, it is ‘non serviam,’ and actively engaged in denying God’s love for the humanity He created by promoting the opposite: hatred of beauty, of tradition, of true love as opposed to the false love the world offers. Wealth, power, fame, all yours, if only you bow down and worship satan. “You can be as gods” by mutilating yourself, destroying families and society, and rejecting any worship directed to Christ, the Savior of the World. Instead of ‘fiat lux,’… Read more »
Whittaker Chambers on the enduring mindset of communism (ie, wokeism) as “man’s second oldest faith”: It [Communism] is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist… Read more »
I talk a lot about indifference, but that’s maybe too strong. Maybe dispassion is better. Idk. I look at it like getting over something. Love and hatred are two sides of the the same coin in that they’re feelings of strong attachment. They get you stuck. I suppose getting stuck in a virtuous cycle would be a good thing, but when it’s irretrievably bad, you have to get out. Beyond love and hate lie indifference, dispassion, or whatever word you want to use. That’s how you move on, but to destroy or forget the past is to lose the lesson.… Read more »
“”I talk a lot about indifference, but that’s maybe too strong. Maybe dispassion is better. Idk.”” Many of us had dreams we pursued while younger. Sports, Music, Acting…etc. Then at some point an honest assessment of our talents motivates one to drop those dreams and pursue more realistic goals. Having spent so much time among conservatives and the broader right, I have come to the conclusion that these people are just incapable of stopping the left. Trying to build an effective movement out of “plan trusters” and “meme war veterans” is like trying to build a house out of sand… Read more »
No argument here, not that I think it matters anymore. I’m ready to get on with whatever comes next.
Between the late 14th Century until 1641 there was a court in England referred to as the High Court of Star Chamber, because the room in which it sat had a ceiling decorated with stars. It was founded originally to consider cases of people of sufficiently high standing that the ordinary common law and equity courts might be unable to render judgments against them. But it evolved under the Tudors into a system in which the ordinary judicial procedures did not apply and in which judgment was rendered based mainly on the opinion held of the defendant by the judges,… Read more »
“Anyone hoping that the courts (like the press) will be a serious obstacle to the present managerial despotism is going to be very disappointed.”
Precisely. While I don’t know for certain, it is likely that the jurists in the original Star Chambers had far more character than the American and European apparatchiks in the new versions. You will get no justice and be happy, or not, because it doesn’t matter.
The last judicial guardrails are going if not already gone.
Yeah then they got Cromwell and we will get our version too.
Hear, hear. Let’s hope our Cromwell arrives soon.
Our Cromwell will probably wear skinny tight jeans and wear tennis shoes though.
Oh well, as long as he can swing a sword at the kings armies.
In all of history you think the Star Chamber was the worst thing ever?
What do you think the courts of Louis XVI were like, or the USSR?
The courts under the Medicis were a byword for judicial impartaility?
You think cases held in New York are impartial if you’re not on board with the project eg the Proud Boys trial where the judge in his summation argued for their imprisonment because their views upset some New Yorkers.
It’s weird how even on a blog like this you get the leftist framing of history.
it’s relative to what is expected from the system. no one expected anything but terror out of the ussr, etc.
The USSR had a fundamental problem when it came to meeting out justice to individuals because in Soviet “jurisprudence” there really were no individuals, only classes. Everyone’s actions had to be seen in light of advancing or retarding the goals of the revolution or the proletariat. Actions were judged by who was doing them and whether they were members of an officially despised or lauded class. Woke justice has the same problem except that race and sexual identity replace economic class to decide whether something warrants a medal or a prison sentence.
My comment was not meant to imply that Star Chamber was the heigth of judicial politicization. As I said, historians differ on how politicized Star Chamber was. Star Chamber was, however, derived from the common law tradition, in a way that the courts of France or of the USSR were not. The abolition of Star Chamber reflected a realization that an overly politicized judiciary loses its credibility.
Well with all these bank collapses we’re hearing about maybe the party has already started.
Yes. The judiciary is hosed – even now. Take a look at Columbia Law Schools lauding its 2025 crop. Take a look at Yale’s law school. Take a look at the goings on at Stanford Law School. Obama was a judicial wrecking ball in his first two terms. Biden is using Obama’s third term to make his first two pale in comparison. America is gone. The first Silicon Valley or Energy company billionaire who champions heritage Americans in some primary municipality or jurisdiction as the first Orania is going to find themselves with a legion of popular support. It will… Read more »
It reminds me of stories from China where the case would sit in flux until the court got their marching orders from upstream. There also seemed to be an implication that if no one upstream cared then it might be possible to actually get a fair trial. Overall though, at least at the Federal level, the Chinese system is preferable since they don’t even pretend that a fair trial is in the offing.
When one looks upon what is streaming out of the law schools today, it is hard to escape the conclusion that if something doesn’t happen to stop them first, they will ensure that all of us here posting today die in prison. They are not only ideologically disposed to make that happen, they will soon be technologically empowered to make it happen, if they aren’t already.
I’d say you’ll know if someone is serious about doing this if he starts, not finishes, but starts, by hiring a private army. This is more to protect himself from Arkancide than to clear and hold any particular location though it could certainly grow into that role. Personal loyalty rather than “the law” will need to return as the main organizing principle for a new order, at least until people can figure out a way to return to what used to be called “ordered liberty”. In practice though modernized feudalism is still preferable to the anarcho-tyranny our insect overlords have… Read more »
Fantastic post, thanks Z. The DOD’s “independent naming commission” has decided to dismantle the Confederate monument at Arlington cemetery. It won’t end until it’s all been eradicated. General Wolsely met heads of state and said that no one was as dignified as Lee. “When Americans review the history of their last great rebellion with calm impartiality, I believe all will admit that General Lee towered far above all men on either side in that great struggle. I believe he will be regarded not only as the most prominent figure of the confederacy, but as the great American of the 19th… Read more »
Yes. A bunch of whites decided to act like blacks and appropriate many tens of millions, (maybe even hundreds, I can’t remember), to remove every reference to the Confederacy in every last corner of the military. I am sure they are connected to the contractors who will be paid very handsomely to do the purging.
Columbus’ gorgeous statue just came down in Newark. You should see the abomination of Tubman that went up in its place.
Michelle Howard is hard at work assisting them, as well. She’s a retired navy admiral who looks like she may be closely related to the dark guppy Lori Lightfoot.
Thetanism, about which I know nothing, probably is more sensible than current thinking which vilifies parents and schools that don’t permit minors to make life-changing decisions regarding mutilating sex-change surgery.
Excellent analogy, Z.
Here is a hard-hitting article that discusses how the hive-mind in having a nasty impact on rural areas in red states. It’s very hard-hitting.
https://americanmind.org/salvo/hicklibs-on-parade/
That’s very good, but in truth there is a huge amount of pushback against transgenderism. Some states have not only banned genital mutilation and puberty blockers but also the attendance of children at drag shows. The evil pig Biden the other day expressed outrage about these local actions as he conducts a potentially nuclear war in no small part over the same insanity.
The author’s larger point, despite that major flaw, is indeed true. A mind virus knows no geographical boundaries. She is delusional if she really thinks it ends peacefully, though.
While our nation has largely turned its back on God, the majority of Westerners haven’t abandoned His primitive gift of common sense. But that moral majority needs to be much more vocal and much more active going forward.
“If you google any small town in “red” America and the phrase “drag brunch,” you’ll find them everywhere. The plague of low cut-top-wearing locusts is devouring the dust bowl and raiding the ranchlands. ” Fortunately the only “drag” that comes up for my county is “drag racing,” which still doesn’t involve perverts in dresses. So far. But I don’t doubt the author is right. The downtown mains street in my county seat has become a cancerous tumor of social and mental health services organizations feeding parasitically off government grant money dumped into our impoverished area. With that many SJW leeches… Read more »
“It’s a trick. Get an ax!”
I’ll swallow your soul!
the only kids at those drag functions are the spawn of soi -parents; degraded whites. the kids were never going to be anything but more of the same. these are the same parents that declare their 2 year olds as trans. the real crime is that people like that are allowed to reproduce.
That was one scary link.
And I note it is women that are at the crux of it!
Yes. Forming the Speech Committees. Organizing the Diversity Festival. The women lead and the men fall into line.
Or else (supra, feminism and the courts).
Götterdamn-it-all : Thank you for the link. I had not yet heard about the drag brunches. It’s evil all the way down. No laws against genital mutilation are going to change what these perverted parents are doing in their homes; no public morality crusades are going to stop the demonic mental abuse of these poor children.
Laws and rules enable this evil. Only death will end it.
Just another one of those stories that I file away for the time when I’m hunting rats to eat in my seventies. I’ll ask myself, “why would God do this to us?”, and I’ll look in the old file and be like:
“Oh yeah that’s right.”
The internet is the sludge river that pumps this directly into everyone’s living room.
There’s no moving to a red state to avoid the hive mind anymore.
I read that and the lomez twitter essay and I felt there was a subtle looking down on rural america. I could be wrong but that’s the vibe I got. I feel that there is some things that statistics can’t fully quantify. Like I remember in 2017 when I was much more philo-semitic when I was arguing with the more hardcore natsoc guys about why they thought they were parasites. My argument was that there are low rates of divorce, drug use, illegitimacy, crime etc among them and in many ways they are the model americans. The whole COVID incident… Read more »
Its subject matter aside, that article is a great example in itself of the irreversible pornification of society in that it casually uses a term, “pussy hat,” that would have been considered unsuitable for publication pretty recently in any serious political media, certainly by or in anything calling itself conservative. And to be fair, that’s just normal language now. It’s the world we live in. Kind of like if our kids have out of wedlock babies in their teens, we’re just grateful that “at least they’re not gay.”
We should have known this immediately after the vagina “protest” in DC upon Trump’s inauguration. I confess to have been puzzled—but revolted—at what the event was about. Now we have drag queen “story hours” (really a homosexual burlesque show) springing up all over the country. Here in Tucson, we have one—highly publicized—set for next week at a local bookstore. Even with the aura of child molestation accusations, the event organizers emphasize that all ages are welcome to attend. The few remaining “normies” in this town are attempting to organize a protest outside the bookstore durning the event. I’ll keep folk… Read more »
I thought then and still think today that Bill Clinton normalizing the discussion of “oral sex” on the tv news was a seminal (I’m sorry, there is no better word) moment in our nation’s history. Although I’m not sure the responsibility for that was 100% his.
Yep. I remember it well. I had to drive the son to school and everyday heard about “our” President and his revolting demeaning of the office on the radio. Clinton robbed my son of his youth.
Again, I was too naive to put it all together, but not anymore.
Agree 100% with your observation. I can recall how shocked I was at the time to hear certain acquaintances refer to it – particularly by various…colloquialisms. The general coarsening of the culture mainstreamed by both Bill & Hil.
Back in the 80’s, my grandfather (born in 1904) was revulsed by TV commercials for feminine products, even though they all danced around their true purpose and merely showed gauzy scenes of meadows and flowers (to imply freshness). I have no idea how he’d tolerate today’s firehose of sewage, where you can be watching the most innocuous of shows only to have it interrupted by a slovenly female promising that if you rub her product down your crack, your crotch odor will disappear for more than 10 hours. There are no signs, none, that our slide into filth is abating… Read more »
And then there was the time during the campaign when he went on MTV, and in response to a question about whether he wore boxers or briefs, he responded rather than declining to answer on grounds of the inappropriateness of even posing such a question. Well, there you had it, right there, narcissistic trashiness, big and bad.
Just noting that Texas Governor Abbot could put a hard stop to kids attending drag shows with one executive order instructing law enforcement and child protective services to crack down on this practice. The fact that he has not done so tells you everything you need to know about Abbot. The same is true for other red state governors.
Not a DeSantis fan, but to his credit he is starting to crack down in Florida.
That was a very good article until the end where she went full Hopium.
Ricky Vaughn, is on trial for being funny at the expense of Hillary Clinton.
Ricky Vaugh is on trial for running a pro-white account that was more popular than CNN.
If he was super serious like most WigNats here would have been doxed and forgotten, but he mocked the pieties of the hive and that can never be forgiven.
True. His persecutors should wear Puritan garb, carry blunderbusses, and deploy the stocks. It’s been the same people and same old routine since Plymouth. If anything, this secular version punishes blasphemy even more harshly. A substantial portion of the Soviet citizenry resisted the insane dogma it was force-fed. I doubt that the percentage of Americans who dismiss the nonsense is quite as high.
It has been said that you can’t have empathy if you’ve not had shared experiences. Well, I’m feeling more and more for those former citizens of the USSR. Even to this moment, there are non-stop radio commercials—from the CDC—informing people to get their Covid booster shots to stay healthy. A lie told often enough…
Dalrymple wrote a while back that the true purpose of propaganda was not to *convince*, but to *demoralized*. How true.
I feel the same, Comsci, but always had some empathy for the earlier guys.
Culmination of a long-term project.
In the early ’90s a bookstore in the Portland/Seattle area (don’t remember exactly) was prosecuted for carrying Jim Goad’s anti-leftist comedy magazine. At the time it was no big deal, one of a thousand crazy overreaches against the First Amendment by the feminist/evangelical alliance, like trying to put 2 Live Crew in prison for saying “pussy,” a stunt prosecution with no hope of succeeding.
Now the system has adapted.
Many people, including dissidents, clung to the naive belief the judiciary somehow would act as a brake on the spreading totalitarianism. It is an “independent” judiciary, right? It turns out federal judges, in particular, are State functionaries no different in reality than their Soviet predecessors. The ideologies differ to some degree but the results are the same. Decisions, as you point out, are based on perceived morality rather than legal and constitutional considerations. This previously was true around the edges of the legal system but now represents the entirety of it. The naivete persisted even after it emerged that federal… Read more »
“Many people, including dissidents, clung to the naive belief the judiciary somehow would act as a brake on the spreading totalitarianism.”
What? The judiciary has been the major engine of the corruption and totalitarianism. To the extent that actual laws were passed, the judiciary upheld them.
Great post Jack. But this whole thing was deliberate. A bunch of crooked judges can do the bidding of our Overlords more easily than them going through the hard work of legislating our rights away. As an added bonus, it is more palatable to grillers.
“Well yes, but he got a trial after all……the system works….medium rare please”.
Here is an example of how the legal people do not care about the law whatsoever, but rather about their social status within the hive: Paul Clement (the former Solicitor General of the United f–ing States, no less!) got kicked out of his law firm for WINNING the NYSRPA v. Bruen gun-rights case. This should have been a slam-dunk anyway, because “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” is pretty unambiguous. Remember when lawyers were considered honor-bound to represent scum like pornographers, sodomites and murderers? Today you can’t even have a lawyer win… Read more »
There is a move afoot to remove the ancient requirement of an attorney’s first obligation being to his client. It will prevail. There were some conscientious lawyers in the old Soviet system, believe it or not, who stayed true to their clients. There are here as well but they are going away.
I had an exchange with a public defender representing a family member and he came right out and said that he would act in what he thought was in the client’s best interest, not what the client thought was in the client’s best interest.
Subtle distinction there, but “what I think is in the client’s best interest” is a dodge big enough to drive a semi full of “screw the client” through.
If he thought it would be in the client’s best interest to be in jail, would he be vigorous in the client’s defense? I’m guessing not.
In a somewhat better era, this was the case with only juveniles, somewhat in locus parentis. Increasingly adults also have their “best” legal interests determined for them, too.
Yes. And this was an adult client.
“honor-bound to represent scum like pornographers, sodomites”……. you could say their true values were right there in front of us the whole time
The idea that everyone accused by the government in a court of law is entitled to a vigorous defense and a fair trial is indeed an honorable value, and was a “thing” back when the Bill of Rights actually meant something.
After all, it’s not as if the cops have never lied about a defendant, planted evidence, or fabricated charges…
In this post today, Z is describing (with excellent examples) the reality that we have crossed over the Stage 4 threshold in the cancer analogy of a dysfunctional society. When the legal system becomes fully corrupted, the last straw has fallen. Dan Bongino can set himself on fire (literally) in support of voting harder, but the die is cast and no amount of cheerleading is going to fix the systemic rot of a failed culture and state. But here is the hard part. You cannot wish this away. There is no easy road to redemption. Hard men must do hard… Read more »
I would publicly advocate for fighting age men to avoid military service if it came to that. It’s beyond obvious that the case for war is being crafted as we sit here and there is no value in going to die for this system. None whatsoever.
The last society that went this insane on a mass scale was the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” with its teenage/young adult “Red Guards”. It was a cynical play by Mao’s wife to maintain power.
After many excesses, it was finally arrested by direct and brutal Chinese army intervention.
Problem: the US Military it already as “woke”as the rest of the US population.
So I agree…no one is coming to save US. Going to a long slog with enormous waste and suffering.
i badly want a Bongino action figure, that can shoot flames out its backside, while “saying” ‘vote harder, vote harder’.
Given the demographic slide of whites + mass non-white migrants to America, I’m confident the new colonizers will address the fixation on the “sacred object” people in their own ways. I don’t expect those on the receiving end will care for it. The trans thing, though? Sterilizing children en masse and physically removing body parts is the most disgusting and disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. Even allowing that it’s probably legit for an infinitesimally small subset of the population, pushing this decision on children is evil beyond belief. European counties who push this make ADULTS wait for YEARS, because it’s… Read more »