Narrative Collapse

The overused cliché about the truth being the first casualty of war is an overused cliché because it is so obviously true. Wars are the result of rulers on both sides seeing advantage in the suffering of their people. That means producing a story to explain to the people why they must sacrifice for the ruler. The war in the Ukraine is no exception, but it may be the first war to be turbocharged by the narrative industrial complex through the internet.

For several months, the usual suspects have been promoting a narrative framework with regards to a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Tens of billions of Western arms have been shipped to Ukraine, along with plane loads of cash. This has been done to great political fanfare in every Western capital. Slowly, the story evolved into the great spring offensive in which a newly formed Ukrainian army using Western super-weapons would smash through the Russian lines and send them fleeing.

The explanation for how this would work or why it should be attempted was never provided, but a good story is worth skipping over the details. Russia has about half a million men in Ukraine at the moment. They have air superiority, and they have a growing advantage in firepower. How a seventy-thousand-man attack force could smash through their lines was left to the imagination. That is where people like Edward Luttwak filled the void with serious sounding plans for the attack.

In the age of narrative, facts about firepower and troop strength are no match for a really good story. The story was so good, in fact, that last week the internet was full of rumors that the Ukrainians had launched a counterattack in Bakhmut, sending the Russians fleeing. The prophesies were true! It turned out that it was nothing more than a faint to try and evacuate Azov fighters trapped by Wagner forces, who continue to grind down the remaining forces in the city.

Eventually reality does prevail, and we may be entering a phase of the war in which reality slowly overcomes the current narratives. We are a month from summer and there is no sign of a counter-offensive. Zelensky has been on a tour of European capitals, demanding more weapons and money. He says they lack the weapons to conduct an offensive and his advisors are echoing his claims. Even Washington is starting to back off the spring counter-offensive narrative.

The reason for this is those facts on the ground. For close to a year the Russians have been launching drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid. It was assumed that they were trying to turn off the lights, but in reality, they were exhausting the Ukrainian air defense system. They determined that Ukraine had a finite number of surface-to-air-missiles. The West had no replacements, so once that stock was exhausted, the air defense system would collapse.

This is where things are now. The Russians are now using their air force to attack high value targets in Ukraine. The Russian hit a large warehouse facility where Ukraine was stockpiling weapons. The resulting mushroom cloud revealed that it was a massive facility, perhaps holding depleted uranium shells supplied by Britain. The increase in gamma radiation seems to confirm it. Some reports claim half a billion dollars in weapons were destroyed in that one strike.

A few days ago, there was another missile strike on Kiev aimed at a high value target, this time a Patriot missile system. The West has supplied two of these to defend Zelensky from a decapitation strike. A Russian missile struck in or around the system, after it expended all of its missiles to defend itself. Even CNN had to concede that the video of the strike was real. Reliable reports say one launcher was destroyed, one launcher was severely damaged, and one launcher survived.

What we are seeing over the last month is both an increase in the use of the Russian air force over Ukraine and their greater success. The Russian are now hitting high value targets with increasing regularity. One theory for why there has been no Ukrainian offensive is the Russians keep blowing up their equipment. Some of the shiny new Western equipment has been turning up in Bakhmut, suggesting Ukraine has had no choice but to repurpose this material.

There is something else lurking over all of this. The West is out of ammo. All of the old Soviet era stockpiles have been depleted. The stockpiles of Western weapons have been run down as well. The thirty Patriot missiles Ukraine fired off the other night cost five million a copy. The waiting list for new ones is over a year. Just as Russia is getting better at destroying Ukrainian weapons, the supply is running low. It is not hard to see what will happen in the not-so-distant future.

Since the war started, there was a gap between what the narrative industrial complex was emitting and what was happening in reality. That gap was concealed by media perfidy and the glacial pace of the war of attrition. Those slow changes in the battlefield were easily obscured by the tsunami of storytelling in the media. We are now entering a phase where that gap cannot be concealed. We can see what is happening on the ground does not match the current narratives.

The expression “narrative collapse” is most often used with regards to a political scandal or a scandal with famous people. The story offered to explain things is slowly undermined by reality. At some point, even the creators of the narrative have to admit it is not reality. The release of the Durham report is a case in point. The Trump haters like Jonah Goldberg have had to finally admit they were lying. Their Russia collusion narrative had finally collapsed.

We are about to see something similar with the Ukraine war. We are now entering the narrative collapse phase. The sharps are already heading for the exits, while stupid people like David French wait for the signal. It will not happen overnight, but the process has begun and by the end of the year, the brooms will be out in the media, assigned to sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Like prior failed narratives, this one will be deposited in the memory hole.


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


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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


207 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Castellano
Castellano
1 year ago

Narrative collapse hits the pro-Russian dissident right hard too. Russia was often represented as a self-sufficient, morally sound, socially healthy nation with a legitimate gripe against the globohomo West. Screwing up their invasion ripped the bandaid off. People looked deeper; revealing a corrupt, incompetent, low-trust, institutionally homosexual drugs-and-STDs-infested multi-ethnic empire ruled by Chosen espionage bureaucrats dependent on foreign industry. The credibility earned by accurate predictions with race realism or domestic political critiques suddenly has to be balanced against blithe confidence in the grossly wrong. When attacked by leftists in the future, many dissidents will no longer be able to say… Read more »

Tarl Cabot
Tarl Cabot
1 year ago

Narrative collapse doesn’t help if it’s a fake narrative in the first place. Neocon involvement is crucial to understand this. The “War on Terror “ was a failure, but the real war to make the neighborhood safer for Israel was arguably a success. Likewise, defending the plucky Ukrainians from Russian aggression will probably end with most of them dead (at least the men), but setting up a Khazar bazaar athwart China’s Belt and Road is a smart play.

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 year ago

It’s implicit in a narrative collapsing that it is fake or false, so what exactly is your point supposed to be?

Tarl Cabot
Tarl Cabot
Reply to  Bloated Boomer
1 year ago

That even the lies are lies.

Alexander Scipio
Alexander Scipio
1 year ago

The Narrative Industrial Complex fails to understand Russian strategy. This is because American military leaders are illiterate as to military history. Ike’s Broad Front strategy – reviled by some historians since – was to collapse slowly and comprehensively on Berlin, his order from Marshall, to “Destroy the German Army in the field” so it would not rise again in 20 years as it had 1918-1938. American military leadership, instead, gives us the “Thunder Run” into Baghdad – leaving trained, armed men all over Iraq to continue killing Americans for years. Speed is not always the best option; killing the enemy… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Alexander Scipio
1 year ago

The fact that Market Garden happened suggests Ike got talked out of this broad front strategy, at least for a moment.

Sumguy
Sumguy
1 year ago

5 million for a single Patriot missile

At least 90% of the readers of this blog have little hope of making that much money in our lifetimes of work. That means that one explosive weapon is literally of more value to our rulers than a lifetime of individual labor and productivity.

When you frame it that way in your mind, and just consider that for a moment, the idea that this country is somehow better or more moral than Russia evaporates instantly.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  Sumguy
1 year ago

The Patriot system destroyed cost $1.2 billion and 30 missiles cost $150 million–all destroyed in 2 minutes..How many homeless veterans could have been given lodging and care for that kind of money?

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  pyrrhus
1 year ago

Am I mistaken for believing your typical homeless “veteran” is usually some guy who got kicked out of boot camp in the second week?

Sumguy
Sumguy
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

I doubt that.

I mean, is it possible that some of the idiots standing at the overpass with a cardboard sign that says “homeless veteran” are what you describe. Sure. But as far as official statistics go, someone kicked out of basic training or boot camp doesn’t qualify to be called a “veteran”
https://usveteransmagazine.com/2019/11/qualifies-someone-veteran/

Also source: myself, a homeowner veteran who endured 2 months of basic training, 6 months of AIT, and a 4 year enlistment.

Götterdamn-it-all
Götterdamn-it-all
Reply to  Sumguy
1 year ago

I admire your misplaced patriotism, but question your common sense. I’ll bet if you had known what you know today, you would have stayed out. Amiright?

Gespenst
Gespenst
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

I’m inclined to think you are mistaken.

Good ol' Rebel
Good ol' Rebel
Reply to  pyrrhus
1 year ago

When the Ggrrlpower navy pilot plowed the f35 into the deck, thatvwas about $90,000,000 in 8 seconds, 11.25 million per second. 30 Patriot missles in 90 seconds is 1.7 million per second.
Conclusion: white women can still outspend Jews ten-to-one.

JerseyJeffersonian
JerseyJeffersonian
Reply to  pyrrhus
1 year ago

Apparently, this is not any kind of priority in some quarters, as homeless vets in NYC are being disposessed of their apartments to provide living spaces for illegal migrants.

But the same situation applies for retired people in Switzerland and/or Germany, who are being given the boot for those countries’ illegal migrants.

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  pyrrhus
1 year ago

How many homeless veterans would come to the (at least rhetorical) defense of Daniel Penny?

Wayward PEZ Dispenser
Wayward PEZ Dispenser
Reply to  Sumguy
1 year ago

Post-WWII, the heritage American citizen should have sustained a living standard at least equal to Swiss citizens. High quality lifestyle and infrastructure. The stars were aligned. However, the MIC, security apparatus and global bankers had other plans for us, namely, enriching and empowering themselves without limit while pulling up the ladder behind them. And we sheeple undertook no response of consequence when there was opportunity to right the ship. Timothy McVeigh was the clarion call but given the current state of Ameri-mutts, there will be no resistance and we will become slaves unless the cloud people destroy themselves. I find… Read more »

NoOneAtAll
NoOneAtAll
Reply to  Wayward PEZ Dispenser
1 year ago

“Timothy McVeigh was the clarion call”

Just like Timothy McVeigh you’re a fed or such a counterproductive retard that you might as well be

Krustykurmudgeon
Krustykurmudgeon
1 year ago

One argument I’ve never understood is the feminist argument about equal pay. I don’t believe in the 77 cents thing but if it was real,wouldn’t that mean hiring women would be a smart idea because you’d only have to pay them 77 percent of what you would a man

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Krustykurmudgeon
1 year ago

That’s assuming you would get at least 77 percent of the output of a man.
And to be fair, that’s not fair to good women. Lord knows my wife works harder than me, cumulatively. I have my hobbies outside of work, whereas she spends her out of work hours keeping the house going.
But, to be fair to me, I’m not a bum, and I absolutely take care of the kids and cook a lot.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

I believe prior studies have shown the 77% stat to be a myth once pay is controlled for jobs taken. In other words, men do harder manual labor and more dangerous jobs which most women eschew. Other factors, such as seniority and total work hours per week also contribute somewhat, but occupation choice is the biggie. This is why we have had proposals in the past (as far back as the Reagan administration) for setting comparable pay levels for different occupations in which we find sex differences. In other words, if a committee decides that a receptionist’s job is as… Read more »

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Krustykurmudgeon
1 year ago

It’s not worth it, the menses attract bears.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

Hi. My name is Poindexter, and my IQ is one-hund…..aaaaaaaargh!!!

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Krustykurmudgeon
1 year ago

Yes. Those greedy capitalists who care only about maximizing profits would fire all the men they could and replace them with women who make 23% less. The firm who did that first would crush the competition either on price or price and reinvestment or both.

So the myth of the gender pay gap is not on praxeological disproven, but it also uses their caricature/cartoon version of a capitalist against itself.

But, we are far past owning and laughing at these clowns. They are laughing at us as they shut us out of the system using their myths and lies.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

The pay difference has been debunked many times…Adjusting for experience, credentials, and hours actually worked, women make more per hour than men…

Xman
Xman
1 year ago

The problem I have with the whole “narrative collapse” argument is that it implies that when the narrative collapses, the public will become redpilled and say “A-ha! The bastards were lying! We’ll never believe them again!” But they never do. Every narrative has collapsed — that we needed to kill Huns in 1917 to “make the world safe for democracy,” that “Hitler woulda had us all speakin’ German,” the Gulf of Tonkin and the “domino theory,” “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, the “war on Terror” in Afghanistan to “keep us safe,” to supporting the Kurds in Syria against our… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

tbf, the typical AINO griller and shitlib still believe, to this day, that Hitler would have had us all speaking German

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

There are worse things.

Maus
Maus
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Ich möchte Deutsch sprechen.

There’s a reason The Man in the High Castle got the gay, feminist and POC treatment by Amazon Prime in latter seasons. Nazi-occupied America looked too damned desirable to ordinary folks.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

The one narrative collapse that has not been forgotten, at least in comparison to the others, has been Covid. That some of the viral fraud still is on rare occasion mentioned and remarked upon from time to time seems to cause a great deal of discomfit. I’ll grant it isn’t much but it is there. Contrast that with the total memoryholing of Afghanistan, for example, and the withdrawal debacle at the tail end of Covid. It might as well have been a dream. You are otherwise 100 percent accurate. Along with propaganda, the Regime pumps out volumes of unrelated useless… Read more »

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 year ago

Most narrative collapses don’t kill 300,000 people or inflict millions more with short- or long-term debilities ranging from mild and (apparently) temporary to chronic and/or life-threatening. We are only in month 30 since the mRNA jabs were deployed. Collateral damage from such interventions may be measured in years, decades. Oh, and that’s another funny thing…there seems to be very little measurement going on, in fact discussing, much less properly investigating these issues seems to be strongly discouraged. But when a 24-year-old NFL player has a heart attack on the field, or numerous other incidents, it’s hard to hide that something… Read more »

Pozymandias
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 year ago

I wonder sometimes if people have some kind of special compartment in their minds for official “truth” that is a bit different from the ones they use for truths like “the garden hose is leaking”, “my car is hard to start”. People will make sensible plans to cope with an unreliable car like getting a rental or taking a cab if they have something important like a job interview to get to. Somehow the idea that the government is lying about a war where real people are dying though… It’s like realizing that there’s a plot hole in some dumb… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Pozymandias
1 year ago

That’s a great hypothesis. I suspect information overload reinforces the hierarchy of importance and by sheer volume limits the importance of accuracy to the immediate. The car situation is more immediate and the distant war is abstract, so getting the first right is paramount. Although, again, Covid was immediate for many and the obvious lies were brushed aside like those told about the distant war.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 year ago

I was actually thinking more of Covid but for some reason the best example I could think of was the various war lies. There’s nothing too mysterious about people ignoring the government lying about bombing peasants in the Middle East. When they’re telling you that you can’t go to the store because of a viral bogeyman or that you need to let them inject you with mystery sauce because of that – and you don’t question it… That requires an explanation. To me the obvious explanation is, well, religion. Religions have always asked people to make sacrifices large and small… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 year ago

Pozy, they didn’t merely fail to question injecting the mystery sauce, they were EAGER, not only to take it, but to judge others for abstaining.

Something had happened to these folks before covid ever came along. Usually we just call it mind virus, or point to the Milgram experiment or something. Maybe it’s impossible for some schlep like me to pin it down any firmer than that.

But I have a suspicion phones are involved

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

Back in the early 70s I was a pre-teen who enjoyed MAD magazine. I remember one gag had the famous Lincoln quote: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time.” There’s a photo of Nixon. He’s saying “Now I’m going to make a liar out of Lincoln.”
(This probably predates Watergate.) But my point: In iocus, veritas.

Celt Darnell
Member
1 year ago

May be difficult to memory hole this one…too many narrative collapses have happened recently — Covid and “the jab” still underway. At some point, even the dumbest normie is going to wake up because they’re starting to hit like Russian Kalibers.

To coin a phrase, one exposure is an accident, two is incompetence. We’re on number three or four…at some point narrative collapse equals regime collapse.

Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
1 year ago

Hrrrrrrrmmmmmmm. I wonder if the entire narrative media complex isn’t in a state of collapse, Z? It took me a couple weeks to finally concede that shenannigans blew the last US election. I suspected the Covid caper the second it came out, and confirmed it about 24 hours in. (Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity). The second I heard of the Uke war I fact checked it and saw right through it. Within hours I was splitting a gut laughing when the photo-ops of young Uke hotties and old Baba’s with AK47’s came out, with… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Glenfilthie
1 year ago

The Covid “tell” for me was of two fold. One, the modeling of predicted deaths by the discredited British academic, Neil Ferguson, who has *never* been correct yet in any predictions. The second was the insistent conflation of the death rates across age groups in the narrative when it was known from the get go to be a deadly disease of the old and co-morbid. This was known, but ignored, by Feb/Apr of 2020. Both of the above were used to panic the citizenry (of whatever country) into ceding their most basic rights—most of which have not been retaken by… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Compsci, my favorite “tell” was that when the BLM riots coincided with the lockdowns and no one mentioned that many of the non-white protesters and rioters did not wear masks.

If the elites really believed in BLM and c0vi1d, then they would have found it intolerable that all those precious black lives were being endangered by c0vi1d.

It still makes me laugh.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 year ago

I seem to recall that it was said at the time that the health risk to vibrants at the hands of white oppression was greater than the health risk of covid, as justification

You know, science

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

In both cases the “threat” was next to nil.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

From day one, that stank like an obese man on a nothing but sausage diet launching a silent but deadly with a little something extra for the crowd leaking out. My confirming sign was when New York city announced triumphantly that they had converted some sports complex to a 500 bed hospital facility, and that some navy ship in the harbor would provide a couple hundred more beds. A few hundred extra beds in a metropolitan area of well over 9 million people? Acting like that would make a difference in the face of a catastrophic, deadly pandemic confirmed that… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

NY election results have been trending redder. There are others like him who don’t know anything better to do about their dissatisfaction than vote republican

David Wright
Member
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

Pleas post more often Ann.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

I will admit – when China first started locking people in their homes and freezing work output from a major steel producing city, I was freaked out. Shoot – would it be unbelievable for the Chinese to have leaked something horribly virulent out of their biolabs? My reasoning is that the Chinese would rather kill most of their workers than risk their economic situation. However, quickly it became apparent, and my views amended, as this became a tool for control and the ridiculous manipulation of stats. As soon as I saw the made up state of emergencies and the ridiculous… Read more »

usNthem
usNthem
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

I was concerned initially when China first quarantined wuhan city and then the whole province – like what the hell is going on? Then when the media hysteria began to ramp up here, it became quickly pretty obvious it was bulls***. I mean, all they’d been doing was lying about Trump day in and day out for four years, and now I’m supposed to believe the F-ers? No chance – and quite obviously, we’ve been proven right. It’d be nice if Sailer, among others would acknowledge as much.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

What did it for me was the mRNA animal trials 10 years earlier..where all the animals died due to destroyed immune systems..Then two longtime friends took the jab and got malignant cancers within 6 months…

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  pyrrhus
1 year ago

The “animals all died” has been a common internet story. As with many stories, it’s not accurate, but it’s got more than a grain of truth. If I recall correctly, there were early experiments where most or all animals died, but the vaccine under trial was NOT an mRNA. In my scattered reading, I also got the gist that earlier mRNA gene therapies were disappointing in that the desired effect on the body (an immunie response) was relatively weak and of short duration. Additional doses were worse. Instead the research though that vaccines might be more promising. Well, we all… Read more »

ann thompson
Reply to  Glenfilthie
1 year ago

… I am an elderly of 92 and I used not to believe much but when COVID hysteria broke out I no longer believe anything. However I am surprised that you put your faith in Wiki (whacky) – to each his own I suppose but I have found them very biased and often wrong …

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  ann thompson
1 year ago

Ann, it’s nice hear from a grande dame. Has your skepticism caused you any trouble with friends or family?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  ann thompson
1 year ago

Wiki is indeed biased, for reasons we need not rehash. However, some aspects of their postings have more potential for truth than others. If your (out of place?) remark is concerning my posting, I only used the biographical aspect of the Wiki for Luttwak. I assume a man who makes his daily bread as a “renown” military analyst would tout his direct experience in the military. I was not surprised to find little.

NoOneAtAll
NoOneAtAll
Reply to  ann thompson
1 year ago

God bless you grandmother!

ray
ray
Reply to  NoOneAtAll
1 year ago

‘Grandmother’. lol

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  ann thompson
1 year ago

You can’t trust anything anymore, but with the internet, you can see what everybody is saying and get a feel for the truth. Not ideal, but it works 😀

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  ann thompson
1 year ago

To be sure Wikipedia (any source, to be honest) should be suspected for bias with political or other partisan issues. This is especially so in a time where powerfu interests easily corrupt such gateways of information or control. No matter, I find Wiki quite reliable for (say) routine natural science questions. I’ve even sent small donations a few times. No matter how much world Jewry and insane progressives may have corrupted institutions, I’m reasonably sure that the Wikipedia entry about low density lipoprotein is reasonably free of bias 😀

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
1 year ago

Agreed, but not necessarily wrt your stated example: “I find Wiki quite reliable for (say) routine natural science questions.” To wit. The great Wiki scandal of a decade or so ago wrt the Global Warming debate. It was revealed that those agreeing with the “science” had secured high standing as Wiki editors and used that influence to communicate/coordinate with each other to block all perceived contradictory postings or changes to current entries—even those not necessarily disagreeing with the basic premise of the “warmists”, but adding bits of potentially “confusing” information to the narrative. Nothing is beyond folks who do not… Read more »

Krustykurmudgeon
Krustykurmudgeon
Reply to  Glenfilthie
1 year ago

I was suspicious of COVID almost immediately. Like the whole thing felt like they were doing an experimental deep fake.

Obviously the disease exists but the people who are casualties were people born in the 1920s and 1930s

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Krustykurmudgeon
1 year ago

After Peach Mints Round 2 flopped, I was wondering what the next Thing was. Not like they could just let it go early in his re-election year with the economy seemingly doing well. So I pretty well knew the moment it dropped.

Trish Regan said the same thing on Fox Business at the time. Her last show. They fired her for that.

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  Glenfilthie
1 year ago

I’d like to read or hear something from the online Bigot-osphere about why they were so gung ho about Corona in the early days circa late 2019, as opposed to the mainstream, and then for the most part both sides flipped right past each other around March/April the next year. The Libtard/maintstream didn’t even give it much thought or coverage at the start, this was even before the Italian left telling people to hug Chinese immigrants in solidarity. My memory is that bigots tended to have a smug “you’ll be sorry for ignoring this” outlook. I don’t remember exactly when… Read more »

Intelligent Dasein
Intelligent Dasein
Member
1 year ago

If Steve Sailer is not ruthlessly torched out of all alternative websites, striped of credibility, and consigned to oblivion, then I have no respect for the Dissident Right and no faith that they will ever lift a finger to do anything. Steve Sailer is a joke. Here is a man who has been wrong about literally everything he has ever said (including HBD, by the way, but indisputably about Covid and Ukraine), and yet a fair number of dissidents still hold him in some kind of awe. It boggles the mind. If dissidents have no regard for the truth, then… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

In this group, I don’t remember much positive said wrt Sailor. So what is your problem—that his name is mentioned at all? So a DR type must adopt the tactic of “casting into the void” those whom they disagree with? Seems an idea much closer to our Leftist adversaries than a prescription for DR advancement. I had a major professor in my younger years as a grad student who would sometimes be challenged in class by an out-spoken and sophomoric student. In those halcyon days, he was patient and never lost his cool. He would counter with the student respectfully,… Read more »

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

i have noticed that GAB (for example) has a lot of people – whom i suspect are in their 20s and 30s – that are hyper vigilant to the point of paranoia; and are very quick to attack anyone that is not absolutely pure, ideologically. they signify their disapproval by calling the suspected “spy” a fag.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

I’ve commented here upon this type of reaction more than once. Ideological purity has its place, but is inherently *subtractive* whereas a small developing movement must attempt to aim to be *additive*.

I sense I’ve never been persuasive in this admonishment.

Pattern
Pattern
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

” He would counter with the student respectfully, then add, “but you have a right to be wrong, let’s move on”.”

GTFO libertarian

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Pattern
1 year ago

Huh? Can you elaborate? I seem not to be as advanced in understanding as yourself wrt “libertarian” aspect of you comment.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

ID, your post brings up an unsettled question for me. Are people like Sailer, Tucker, Claremont, the American Conservative, Patrick Casey, and Scott Greer gateways or gatekeepers? Many hardcore radicals, like TRS and William Pierce before them, believe that conservatives who avoid certain topics or seem to pull their punches are our biggest enemies because they dissipate popular energy that could go to more radical ends. On the other hand, I continue to learn a lot from Steve and he didn’t prevent me from further radicalization. Most people can’t get to where we are in one step. What did Sailer… Read more »

Intelligent Dasein
Intelligent Dasein
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 year ago

LisS, I would characterize Sailer as neither a gateway nor a gatekeeper, but a day-trader. He found an exploitable market niche by catering to a bunch of disaffected white grumps desperate to hear something different, and he doesn’t go any deeper than that. He never has and never will be ready to play with the big boys. His quest is for personal fame and comfort, and his interests are sportsball and Hollywood. He is no kind of leader of anything. As far as HBD goes, the problem with this is the ‘B’ part, not the ‘D’ part. It is certainly… Read more »

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

Do I misunderstand you, or are you saying biology is not rooted in genetics? Or is ‘molecular genetics” something different?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  c matt
1 year ago

Not sure ID understands himself. With such a muddled and confused explanation he will win no converts to the movement. Sailorism could not be worse.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

I rarely downvote anyone here. As a person with a BS degree (although not in the natural sciences I wiill concede), your offhand dismissal of Darwin marks you, quite frankly, as an ignoramus. As the grad student example just above, you are of course free to believe as you wish. In the case of Darwin and evolution, you are denying that nearly two centuries of science is wrong?

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 year ago

A heuristic I’ve found effective is that gateways move to the right over time, while gatekeepers swim leftwards right behind Cthulhu.

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

Say what you want about Sailer but he’s 100x better than Curtis Yarvin’s relentless and worthless pilpul

NoOneAtAll
NoOneAtAll
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

Sailer is kind of a normie himself… just armed with the knowledge of group IQ stats. That’s always been his one big trick and although its a commonplace for us its still a nuclear weapon for hapless normies, boomercon and shitlib alike So he serves a role for sure. Personally I think the secular right always leads to a dead end though. I mean you can know the truth, but really who cares? Mouthing the pieties leads to all the rewards and if theres no higher external order to appeal to why say the truth and be martyred for nothing.… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

Been a long time since I read any Sailer, but he writes very well–no mean thing–and often has interesting things to say about cultural artifacts such as sports, rock n’ roll, and movies. He did a retrospective on The Graduate, which is one of the most interesting columns I’ve ever read.

Vajynabush
Vajynabush
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

Ruthlessly torched, eh? Sounds like the Jacobins purging the Girondins or the Bolsheviks purging the Mensheviks.

A tiny ideologically pure cohort of DR’s. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Vajynabush
1 year ago

Yep, the inevitable result is “an army of one”. Now where have we heard that before…

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

I probably wouldn’t be reading this site were it not for Derb and Sailer, but whatever

Henrytherodent
Henrytherodent
1 year ago

Remember, the same people that will ‘fight the Russians to the last Ukranian’ will also:

‘fight Russians to the last Finn/Pole/Balt”

and

‘fight Russians to the last… YOUR children”

Crunch down on some tasty crickets and reflect on that.

Forever Templar
Forever Templar
Reply to  Henrytherodent
1 year ago

Eh, no-surrender types are pretty rare, and more often than not not the ones fighting on the line.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

The Ukraine narrative cannot just “go away” anymore than the GAE itself can. Unless you think that the GAE is willing to just go away. It has put itself in a position where it has to stand or fall east of the Dnieper. I sacrificed 5 min of my life to read the Luttwak piece. The Russian offensive near Kiev 15 months ago failed because tanks and other such armored vehicles are obsolete. A Ukrainian offensive will fail for the same reason. That is the lesson of this war. While Luttwak is correct in a sense to invoke the attrition… Read more »

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

I do not understand your reasoning. TPTB made the same point about Afghanistan and Iraq – lines in the sand that we must defend and stake the fate of the empire upon. And the Afghan catastrophe is already forgotten. Hell – we now make deals with the Taliban.
I understand the enmity towards Russia is deeper, but I think the more likely is that this scenario will drift into the background as it no longer suits the fiction.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

It’s not about the GAE’s stated mission (which is usually bs anyway). It’s that it can’t back down from a nearer peer without showing its toothlessness. It’s not at all the same thing as failing to nation build in a conquered place. Everybody knew it could flatten Iraq or Afghanistan if it wanted to, but it chose not to. In those places, GAE chose to go in, and it chose to go out. It was never forced in either direction. In Ukraine, on the other hand, somebody is actually able to (so far) resist its will. It’s kind of like… Read more »

NoOneAtAll
NoOneAtAll
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

“Everybody knew it could flatten Iraq or Afghanistan if it wanted to”

Everybody knows this how? When has this capacity been demonstrated? At this point and approaching 100 years of lost wars… it all looks like a whole bunch of posturing.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  NoOneAtAll
1 year ago

I’d think they were at least as capable as the Union army in the Civil War but they didn’t treat those places nearly as badly as they did the American South.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

The US did spend the effort – the bin laden hunt was a catastrophe. IEDs embarrassed the US. Natural cave formations showed the absolute limitation of aerial warfare and satellites – in open country! (High tech beats low tech. Low tech beats high tech – a lesson being shown, not learned, in Ukraine right now)
Yes, in theory we could have dropped nuclear weapons (if they even work anymore), but, short of that, the US seemed impotent.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Worried about civilian casualties = not spending the effort

Dresden, now that was spending some effort. Without nukes btw. Hamburg. Tokyo. Etc. Nor does it take aerial bombardment to flatten a city either. Artillery works fine. Make enough examples, the rest will submit sooner or later.

I’m not saying that’s right or desirable. I’m just saying.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Seems to me that the GAE has less at stake precisely when it doesn’t put boots on the ground (the Ukraine) than when it did (Iraq/Afghanistan), ergo it will be easier to soft peddle and then memory hole the defeat in the Ukraine than in Afghanistan. The GAE can blame the Ukrainian defeat on the Ukes whereas it could do no such thing with the Afghans.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

One of Dad’s moral lessons that’s always stayed with me:

In the jungle there are big cats and small cats. The big cats could take the small ones anytime they wanted to. But the reason they don’t is because the cost of doing so is very, very high.

[Although Dad didn’t work in nature, not even close, during his working years he was on not one, but two continents with honest-to-God jungles and suitable felines. I don’t know, but I suspect his story came from one of these places.]

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Difference being, the Taliban was never a GAE world hegemon competitor, and never will be.

Russia/China otoh . . . .

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

In a sense, the GAE has made Ukraine an existential war without having had to. It has sunk its credibility into it (able to defend an ally, able to punish with sanctions, able to dangle the dollar). The rest of the world is quickly learning who is the strong horse and who is the paper eagle.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  c matt
1 year ago

They thought it was going to be easy and Russia would collapse in the first couple of months. If they’d known what they were in for they wouldn’t have done it. Common theme in many, many wars.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  c matt
1 year ago

My point is that this is not existential – meaning, from my perspective, the US will not collapse if we withdraw. Yes, is this another sign that the empire is losing hegemonic status – absolutely! But the reason Ukraine will soon be forgotten is because the battle is not existential, though it will continue to erode US power around the world.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

The GAE took a geopolitical hit in Afghanistan, just as it will in the Ukraine. But I certainly do not see the outcome in the latter is demonstrably more consequential than the one in Afghanistan. A loss in the Ukraine will not cause the GAE to spontaneously collapse, or anything close to it. More’s the pity.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

I agree with all but one point – more’s the pity. I have kids. I fear the world they will know. Say what you will about the GAE and its degeneracy, we have a nice quality of life (even if it has eroded for 50 years). An forward, tho I canna see, I guess an fear!

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

does EU stay in the GAE if ukraine is lost? is there even an ‘E’ left in that case?

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

@Eloi:

That’s a sober take. The fall is going to be painful despite the glee many of us will take. Poverty sucks.

JerseyJeffersonian
JerseyJeffersonian
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Eloi,

Thanks for that bit of Robert Burns with which you conclude your comment.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

As you might have deduced, I think this one, if the GAE isn’t able to turn it around, is the Suez moment. No that shouldn’t cause the immediate collapse of the regime, but it will be plain for all to see. Which has consequences.

Wayward PEZ Dispenser
Wayward PEZ Dispenser
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Other countries will no longer fear the paper tiger. The US will put hits on their leadership, the recalcitrants will respond in kind. The US security apparatus will tighten up on those present in the US. The anaconda will increase our strangulation.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Pretty much. There may be some half-assed defeat disguised as a peace treaty, but it will have the same effect. They really thought the sanctions were a silver bullet and they turned out to be blanks. Dear God that was stupid. I think it will be more like post-Bretton Woods Britain than the Suez Crisis if they can finagle something short of a spectacular loss, but they have proved utterly inept on most things so far.

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Oh. but it is far more existential than I think many are willing to admit. Our economy depends on the dollar being force fed throughout the globe. This war is accelerating the dollar’s demise. True, we won’t be a hollowed out Dresden after Allied bombing, but the Great Depression 2.0 is no funland either. Governments have perished for less.

Snooze
Snooze
Reply to  c matt
1 year ago

A bit off topic, but I recommend the new Netflix docu-series Chimp
Empire, though I’m dreading the episode where they served cold fries.

Compsci
Compsci
1 year ago

Edward Luttwak, who is this guy? He has a Wiki page citation. Seems his only military “experience” might have been a 5 year stint with the Israeli Defense dept in Israel (((???))). Notably absent is a combat record, military rank, or leadership experience. Basically, Edward Luttwak reads like a wannabe academic military analyst. I don’t believe he’d have enough qualification to teach in any war college.

Compare this to notables like Col Douglas McGregor who regularly speaks on the Ukrainian conflict, then decide who is believable and who is a shill.

William Corliss
Member
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

He is an old Cold Warrior who has outlived his contemporaries and maintains a very sharp mind into his old age. Interestingly enough, he is also friends with BAP, from his days at Yale and beyond.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  William Corliss
1 year ago

That was not particularly my point. My point was not that he has no track record of military commentary, just that he has no modern (or perhaps any) military experience wrt to actual combat in the field of battle, yet feels competent to lecture the public and more importantly, others who do. These are the *worse* type of academics—credentialed, yet with no real life experience in what they teach. He is at best, a military historian attempting to apply long past historical lessons onto modern situations of which he directly knows little. I’m sure, if we were talking about Victor… Read more »

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
1 year ago

I would really like to think that just as the Russians ruined Bonaparte’s dreams of a Jacobin imperium, this bloody fiasco will be the ruin of the “american” empire.

What the US is doing in Ukraine is beyond evil.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Enoch Cade
1 year ago

No, not beyond evil. It is SOP fo the GAE. I remember the Vietnam debacle. We did the same thing, more or less. We convinced a country to sacrifice themselves in our interest. When the war effort—which we directed—failed, we cut and ran. Ukraine will be no different, except that their enemy, Russia, will perhaps be a bit more gentle in their treatment of fellow slav’s (after the appropriate handling of Ukraine’s corrupt leadership and their NAZI henchmen).

Chimeral
Chimeral
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

On 2 November 1963, the president of South Vietnam, Diem, was arrested and assassinated…

On 22 November 1963 POTUS John F. Kennedy was assassinated…

And I ask you, who put the palettes of bricks in the big cities for the St. George rioters to hurl in our modern day days of broken glass?

Who?

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Good points. I do hope that Lincoln, down in hell, is proud of the monster he and the republican party birthed.

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

But how many of those Vietnamese took their millions in corruption and fled to Israel?

Diversity Heretic
Member
1 year ago

With the Ukraine narrative starting to collapse, will Normie have any skepticism toward the narrative that will be advanced to justify a war with China over Taiwan or Chinese claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea? I hope Normie will be skeptical but I doubt it. Remember when Kabul was going to hold for two years?

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Diversity Heretic
1 year ago

Remember when Covid was going to kill us all unless we wore our masks in our cars and took the clot shot? Remember flatten the curve? Remember I did not have sexual relations with that woman? Remember Gulf of Tonkin? Remember WMD’s? Remember we came we saw he died? Remember POW’s in ‘nam? Remember transient inflation? Remember Bear Stearns? Remember the kids of thalidomide? Remember no boots on the ground? Remember…
Not being snarky – just trying to illustrate the normalcy bias – things keep getting worse, and Normie is still asleep.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Remember, “We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here”, ???

Ask the Vermont social workers how that worked out or the doughy white political activists in Minnesota how importing Somalia is working out?

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

If it weren’t for that Churchillian Hero Zelensky we’d all be speaking Russian now

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Zelensky is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being that has ever lived…

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

The shorter list would be what did the Regime NOT lie about?

. . . I got nothing.

Getreal
Getreal
Reply to  c matt
1 year ago

Hmmm, lemme see. Woodrow Wilson campaign plank, ‘keep our boys out of war…’

Uh, nope.

Hmmm, lemme see. Hidden Cripple Roosevelt campaign plank, ‘keep our boys out of war…’

Uh, nope.

Saddam’s yellow cake? The Huns are bayoneting Belgian infants. Hell, the Turks bayoneting Bulgarian infants during the Seige of Plevna, 1877? Lusitania?

Nope, more nope.

Trump “Russian collusion?”

Oh look, the Durham wheels of justice grind conveniently slow…. nope.

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Remember “the South started the war because they fired on Fort Sumter”?

Boarwild
Boarwild
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Eloi –

Speaking of POW’s left behind in ‘Nam – here’s a direct witness of that: https://youtu.be/JeF9HAQo3Oo

Apparently the last guy shot down in ‘Nam was a former Blue Angel flight leader & the North Vietnamese & Russians kept him because of his celebrity status. His wife was severely maltreated by both John Kerry & John McStain. Told her to “shut up about it” in a congressional hearing.

It’ll make your blood boil. It does this Veteran’s to this day. And he put in 38yrs active service.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Boarwild
1 year ago

Disgusting. The audio spy spikes that could be programmed and were used by captured pilots entering their id always made me sick. Can you imagine the desperation and possible hope when they found those spikes as they entered their information. Then for piece of filth like mcstain and kerry to cover it up and parade arpund as heroes. Wicked.

Good ol' Rebel
Good ol' Rebel
Reply to  Eloi
1 year ago

Remember the Lusitania. Remember the Maine. That rabbit hole goes incredibly deep, and SHOCKINGLY is coextant with democratic-ish governments. I’m sure there was some trireme the dastardly whatevers sank that the Athenians were clammoring about in the streets.

Getthemoneyfromtheseskels
Getthemoneyfromtheseskels
Reply to  Diversity Heretic
1 year ago

Normie just has to keep the MIC’s hands off his children. He can sit in front of the tube, get fat and munch chips after that.

trackback
1 year ago

[…] ZMan dispels the fog. […]

TomA
TomA
1 year ago

“You can’t fix stupid” is another aphorism firmly grounded in ancient truth. The reason the narrative industry exists is because it works. We have become a nation of gullible idiots who slavishly monitor their cell phones as the primary window onto the world. We swallow endless bits of propaganda flowing through this portal like an invisible mind virus eating away at primal cognition skill. Tens of millions of Americans voting to put a dementia patient in the White House, and those chickens have come home to roost, but normie remains glued to the couch. The Left is selling bullshit and… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

“We have become a nation of gullible idiots who slavishly monitor their cell phones as the primary window onto the world. ” The propaganda machine long predates the cell phone. We have been fed a steady diet of lies, half-truths and emotional rhetoric since at least the 1940s, but probably even longer than that. At least the cell phone offers a chance at learning some truth for those who seek it. The Z-Blog would be a mimeographed monthly newsletter mailed to a few hundred people at most. Or maybe the podcast would be mailed via reel to reel or compact… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

“ At least the cell phone offers a chance at learning some truth for those who seek it. ”

Only for those with the ability to *reason*. Logical thinking is an absolute prerequisite to such understanding/learning in a climate of competing narratives. Unfortunately this ability limits Z-man’s audience and effectiveness. How much is the current unknown.

I say we’ve not reached maximum effectiveness. But it’s out there somewhere. The situation is fluid.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

William Randolph Hearst and the Yellow Press. The pamphleteers of the American Revolution. Probably Jacobins. Political graffiti in ancient Greece and Rome.

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

Reminded me of ‘Brian’ (Graham Chapman) scrawling graffiti in bad Latin and being corrected like an errant schoolboy by the Centurion (John Cleese).

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  BigJimSportCamper
1 year ago

Yes! Vintage Python humo[u]r. I “get” it, but probably is funnier for someone who had a “classical education.” Is that even available any more?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Fine, fine. So the sail foam allows for greater dissemination of info, for better and for worse. At the end of the day, however, I’m convinced constant use of the sail foam–addiction?–atrophies the mind and makes people stupider. And that is unlikely to be a good thing.

RasQball
RasQball
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Dopamine ‘diction
Interferes with cognition:
The…Screen…Is…NOT…Good…!

TomA
TomA
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Tars – the key to successful indoctrination is consistency of message and repetition. Nothing in our specie’s history can compete with the cell phone as an instrument of repetition. Most young people today are glued to the damn thing on a near continuous basis. And it stimulates three sensory organs simultaneously (vision, hearing, and touch interface using finger dexterity for control) which is a force-multiplier in terms of brain re-wiring. And it’s changing our skill sets in fundamental ways. Most young men that I know couldn’t change a tire if their life depended on it, but they can call AAA… Read more »

usNthem
usNthem
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

After the revolution, no one under the age of majority will be allowed a sail foam with internet/social media access, period. As a matter of fact, you may have to be a land holder and tax payer in order to have one…

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

If the Depression had produced such an uprising, we very likely would have become some English-speaking analog of the Soviet Union. Based upon my (admittedly scant) knowledge of American history, the elite were worried precisely about such a revolt.

I’m a student of enough world history to know that popular revolutions almost always leave most people worse off. Oftentimes, much worse.

Cymry Dragon
Cymry Dragon
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

No one tries to “fix stupid”. Stupid is propped up, promoted and celebrated. America- Land of the Gullible, home of the Stupid.

Smitty
Smitty
1 year ago

Thank You,

A. Phreeloter

RealityRules
RealityRules
1 year ago

The narrative exists to enlist support. In the states, who did the narrative enlist? It enlisted the professional class and their youth. In other words, people who would forfeit their future existence in the name of a violent criminal who overdosed on drugs after resisting arrest. People who gleefully cheer the dissolution of the borders to their homeland. People who probably don’t have the concept of a homeland and thus can’t see the slow motion ethnic cleansing they perpetrate against themselves. People who fall over themselves to celebrate man-on-man sodomy and kink as a high virtue. People who fall over… Read more »

Diversity Heretic
Member
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

I wish that I could add something, but your comment is so thorough and eloquent, I can but express my sincere admiration. Well and truly said, sir!

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

The “left” was not anti-war. It was just anti wars waged by republican presidents. Vietnam turned out to be the exception that proves this rule, but even in that case, the left’s anti war fervor didn’t ramp up to its full height until the democrat left office and the republican came in. Since then, there have been no exceptions.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Jeff, that’s a bit of a stretch wrt history as I lived through it. The antiwar sentiment began effectively under LBJ. It was LBJ’s direction of the war effort that got us almost 700k soldiers in Vietnam—and—the Tet offensive. Tet broke the back of the narrative and caused LBJ to reverse course and state on television to the nation that ‘…I will not seek nomination for the presidency, nor will I accept my party’s nomination. If nominated, I will not run, If elected, I will not serve…’. Nixon, easily won election with his “secret plan” to end the war. His… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Just so, Compsci. The vitriol the Left heaped upon LBJ was not unlike what they did to Trump. Then again, I’ve never shed a ruddy tear for LBJ.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

The Left, particularly the New Left, opposed any war waged by whites, and especially war against non-whites. Now that AINO is effectively a non-white nation, the Left’s anti-war fervor is decidedly muted. The Left’s attitude toward war is determined by its anti-white racism.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

That’s why they love the Ukraine War so much, whites slaughtering other whites in a pointless meatgrinder that could have been easily negotiated if not for our meddling. That sort of butchering is what they wish they could do if they hadn’t been pumped full of soy estrogen.

Cymry Dragon
Cymry Dragon
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

As I put on my tinfoil hat (an act that seems more and more reliable as time passes) I see a possible end game in all this. As AINO gins up foreign conflict after foreign conflict, the very people who might be enlisted to fight back the POC hoards streaming across the Rio Grande will be sent to fight for “democracy” across the globe. This will be a fine opportunity (after deputizing said POC hoard) to suddenly go door to door confiscating firearms, with only old farts like myself to make them pay a little for their actions. Then again,… Read more »

c matt
c matt
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

Who supports? Those who either think they will gain, or those who think they are exempt from losing.

David Wright
Member
1 year ago

I should have chosen arms dealing as a career path way back when.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  David Wright
1 year ago

“Arms dealer.” Hmmmm…Here’s a flashback from my childhood: I lived in several different Northern Virgina neighborhoods growing up (1960s-70s).One of these could be fairly described as “working class CIA neighborhood.” I wasn’t even ten, and that would describe at least three or four of the families whose kids I played with. Their dad worked for the government. So what? Fast forward 10 or 12 years, to ca. 1980. My parents are long retired. We’re up late watching Nightline with Ted Koppel. His guest that night was — you guessed it — an international arms trader. He was live via satellite… Read more »

ArthurinCali
1 year ago

Why do people still put total faith in what mainstream media says about this conflict? To hear normally sane, rational folks regurgitate the latest NYT/WaPo/MSNBC talking point as if they have received the Gospel, or ancient tome of wisdom is amazing. They truly feel like these regime reporters and pundits are sitting in the strategic planning room and receiving the straight facts directly from field generals. Many seem to have learned nothing from the last 20+ years of war reporting from the OEF/OIF in the middle east. During my time there, it was almost comical to occasionally catch a segment… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

“They truly feel like these regime reporters and pundits are sitting in the strategic planning room and receiving the straight facts directly from field generals.”

I haven’t watched since they made the movie, “Operation Desert Storm.” I think they believe this because that is how the narrative is presented – this is the word straight from the War Room. In fact, the news desk is dressed up as the War Room. It was at least in Year 0 of The End of History.

ArthurinCali
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

RealityRules,

I cannot remember who the reporter was, but one of the funniest scenes from last year during a WH briefing was when the Pentagon official finished reading off the briefing page on the Ukraine conflict and asked if there were any questions. The reporter, who I if I recall correctly was from a foreign outlet, merely asked, “How do we know that info is correct?” The look from the Pentagon spokesman reminded me of the orphanage scene in Oliver! when he asked for another bowl of soup. “Because I told you” was his response.

La-Z-Man
La-Z-Man
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

The video was surely memoryholed cause I can’t find it with numerous word searches. The reporter was a veteran American journo who laughed when Sullivan went on to accuse him of being Putin’s pawn.

La-Z-Man
La-Z-Man
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

Ned Price being grilled by Matt Lee.

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

“Why do people still put total faith in what mainstream media says about this conflict?” Because they put total faith in what mainstream media said about the scamdemic. It’s the same morons. Sadly, that’s most Americans. They will never admit they were duped. And still are. “To hear normally sane, rational folks regurgitate the latest NYT/WaPo/MSNBC talking point as if they have received the Gospel, or ancient tome of wisdom is amazing.” This is the part that has so deeply demoralized me. I thought sane, rational folks (friends and family to boot) would see thru the bullshit. Instead, they swallowed… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  BigJimSportCamper
1 year ago

Yep, people are lazy and stupid. That’s harsh, but really is not meant as such. I have noted before that such was myself a decade or so ago, and certainly even more so when I was a young man.

What is essential in the meaning of our lives? Family, friends, community, perhaps religion—not national/world politics. I give most folks a pass in that, with such priorities, they tend to go light on matters not under their control.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

Arthur wonders, “Why do people still put total faith in what mainstream media says about this conflict?” The liberals and progressives I know are addicted to the feelings of smug superiority that they get when they listen to and repeat NPR, MSNBC, Colbert, … They have been programmed by those who control the media to see NPR/MSNBC as the coolest of cool kids and people can join the cool kids club by listening to and repeating the message. Then, they radiate smugness. The actual content being communicated is almost secondary to the act of joining the cool kids club by… Read more »

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 year ago

The self-righteous ranting is funny. I was on a walk with my dad and chatting with some guy in his yard, and the guy just starts going on about how Dominion voting machines are perfectly 100% secure. This had literally nothing to do with the price of tea in China, I think all I had said was something about how housing prices had gone up quite a bit in the neighborhood.

I see this sort of monomaniacal fixation in only three kinds of people: lefties, religious wackos, and someone who has to go to the bathroom really badly.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

Reminds me of when I was having lunch with a couple of shitlib friends some years ago, I think it was 2019. We weren’t talking about politics at all, and for some reason the name Donald Trump came out of my friend’s mouth, came out practically as a snarl, he was suddenly so angry, evidently at the mere thought of him.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

This is an important clue, thanks.
He’s making the same connections as you are, sub-consciously, but the morality filter of the conditioned corpus callosum (Freud’s “superego”) is preventing him from verbalizing a hypothesis.

In boys, we call such behavior ‘acting out’. Girls too, as Heartiste noted, acting contrary to what their hindbrain demands.

For example, someone did a closeup of the pretty CNN brunette sparring with Trump, and noted her pupils were fully dilated- she was actually getting turned on by his attitude.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 year ago

(Addendum: *housing prices going up, as the consequence of a stolen election, in a war on Whites)

JerseyJeffersonian
JerseyJeffersonian
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

Actually, those three kinds of people were likely embodied in that one fellow. How so? Well, he was clearly a leftist, but as The Narrative is analogous to fervent belief in a religious catechism, that assimilates the religious fanatic. But how about the third kind, how is that accounted for? Well, needing to go to the bathroom really badly is an expression of a sub-rational, compelling need. Bear with me here; the Australians have a wonderful phrase that wraps together malice, deception, and sub-rational compulsion, and that is when someone is said to be pissing in your pocket. So here… Read more »

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

It’s especially see the likes of space lawyer Glenn Reynolds and his cast of boomer neocons at Instapundit breathlessly repeat the MSM and ISW bullshit.

Alex
Alex
1 year ago

Its a shame Luttwak has jumped on this train. He should have known better, but I guess very old hatreds die hard.

To those impatient with the decline of the GAE, these narratives are important to propping up The People In Charge. Once normal people begin to notice there is not an ounce of truth to their statements, a few more will peel off to this side.

usNthem
usNthem
1 year ago

Fast Eddy Luttwak – color me shocked. It’s nice to see all of these bogus narratives foisted on us, collapse. The real problem is that those who are doing the foisting and the subsequent damage aren’t paying any real price at all, other than maybe a bit of sullied reputation. That’s not good enough and must change.

nifkinsbridge
nifkinsbridge
1 year ago

Ok, so then what will be the next Flag Emoji in my Twitter Profile?

Marko
Marko
Reply to  nifkinsbridge
1 year ago

If I were a betting man:
Turkey +200
Belarus +800
Taiwan +1500
Sudan +20,000
Israel +6,000,000

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Marko
1 year ago

At those odds I would take that Sudan bet

mmack
mmack
Reply to  nifkinsbridge
1 year ago

Perfidious Chinee!

#WeStandWithTaiwan

David Wright
Member
Reply to  nifkinsbridge
1 year ago

Not sure but always keep the GAE flag first and most prominent.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  David Wright
1 year ago

It is tough to keep up with the ever increasing number of stripes and colors put on it.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  David Wright
1 year ago

A rainbow encircling a tranny exposing himself to a 5-year-old boy?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

The “jackboot on the neck” is preferable.

joey jünger
joey jünger
1 year ago

We tend to think of “The Narrative,” as a more recent invention, but it has antecedents in the time before America went completely insane. I think the First Gulf War—while not an internet hit—did give Americans the sense that war no longer had to be painful, at least for Americans. You could watch it through an NVG green filter on TV and there wouldn’t be any pesky body bags, like in the Vietnam War. Hell, there weren’t even any people. There were just phosphorus white rounds streaking through a sky and hitting buildings in a mostly abandoned city. It came… Read more »

Chet Rollins
Chet Rollins
Reply to  joey jünger
1 year ago

> We tend to think of “The Narrative,” as a more recent invention, but it has antecedents in the time before America went completely insane. The U.S. has been extremely effective in controlling “The Narrative”, for ages, especially with regards to war. Lincoln jailed journalists without blinking, and FDR went so far as to create the FCC to ban anti-war radio host Coughlin as he prepped for WWII (using the excuse of anti-semitism, showing how little some things change). When the man kept up his mailing pamphlets, the post office refused to send them. Freedom of the Press has only… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Chet Rollins
1 year ago

The system idolizes the two most bloodthirsty maniacs to ever hold the presidency, FDR and Lincoln. Everyone on the left loves FDR and the right loves Lincoln. They’ve spun narratives turning these men into heroes of the republic.

Celt Darnell
Member
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

The left loves Lincoln, too. Only criticism I’ve ever heard of him (Thomas DiLorenzo; Mel Bradford) came from the right….

Steve w
Steve w
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

You say that the right loves Lincoln. Well, at the Z blog we’re pretty far right, I’d say, but we know better than to say anything in defense of old Abe here. That his policies were a disaster for the country’s future is a case that can be made, but ‘a bloodthirsty maniac?’ Come on.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Steve w
1 year ago

I call starting a completely unnecessary war killing 600,000, bloodthirsty, not to mention a tyrant. Not to mention so much of the South raped, pillaged and destroyed.
He basically killed the republic and gave us an empire.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  joey jünger
1 year ago

Arthur “Scud Stud” Kent, is like unto a god to me…

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  joey jünger
1 year ago

“We tend to think of “The Narrative,” as a more recent invention, but it has antecedents in the time before America went completely insane.”

Warning: Bible verses lol

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Yeah, Narrative. Fun stuff!

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  joey jünger
1 year ago

The ’91 Gulf War was indeed about the worst thing that could have happened to the GAE. Imbued it with an unwarranted sense of invincibility. Led to recklessness. And now here we are 30 years later in Ukraine.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Yes, but there was a second lesson for all to see, who would see. That the military failed to “win the peace”. The military defeat and occupation of Iraq (Gulf War deux) gained us nothing, but lost treasure and American lives.

The concept of “nation building” as we practiced it was a complete and total failure which produced no lasting beneficial effect and arguably left a *negative* effect. Why this was as compared to Japan, Germany, and Korea has been debated here before. I’ll not rehash.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

We learned the wrong lesson from WW2. They think Afghanistan is Germany and Iraq is Japan. The thing they leave out is both Germany and Japan were advanced civilized people before the war. All that really happened is they accepted that they lost and moved on and back to the way they used to live, civilized. The system we imposed didn’t really matter. They reverted back to the people they were.

Instead, they believed they turned barbarians into democrats.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Just as they believe they can turn “African-American” savages into devotees of Plato, Mozart, Shakespeare and Cezanne.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Tars, exactly. There are no functioning democracies with national IQ’s under 90, albeit no one has adequately explained India to my satisfaction. The entire Middle East is baseline in that (national IQ) respect. Toss in a pernicious religious inclination to Islam and you’ve got a recipe for failure.

Barnard
Barnard
1 year ago

Goldberg doesn’t really give any ground on the Russia hoax though. His is almost “well all those lies were for a noble cause of stopping that no good liar Trump.” As with French and others, he doesn’t seem to think this impacts his own credibility at all.

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Barnard
1 year ago

He’s not wrong – you can’t impact what doesn’t exist.

Chet Rollins
Chet Rollins
1 year ago

The Western propaganda machine has led Dmitry Medvedev to some absolutely glorious quips that makes Trump sound outright restrained.

https://twitter.com/MedvedevRussiaE/status/1658373339096686592

“A certain person calling himself the president of France said that Russia had already lost geopolitically, and was transforming into the other countries’ vassal.

The president of the Republic was obviously harmed by socializing with the Kiev junkie.

He inhaled too much of the warm Paris air mixed with Ukrainian cocaine waste, that his guest was emitting.”

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Chet Rollins
1 year ago

“A certain person calling himself [office name] of [country name]” is a great turn of phrase. Western “leadership” in a nutshell.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Marko
1 year ago

Yes, that’s a devlish little barb, alright. Brandon Bidet is the president of France.

Whitney
Member
1 year ago

Narrative collapse? The people following the narrative they don’t care. They’ll find some way to justify everything. I mean we’ve seen it with covid, with masks, with the Durham report, with Russia collusion, with Ukraine. This list could go on and on. The only thing that will bring them to reality is hard reality. It’s very sad for all of us.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Whitney
1 year ago

Yes, that’s the rub, isn’t it. The Ukraine narrative will collapse and a week later will never be spoken of again. And no one will pay a price. Nuland, Sullivan, Blinken, the whole Neocon crew will count their money made on the Ukraine affair and move on to the next narrative, probably “China bad.” It will all start over again because we are ruled by a foreign elite who have zero accountability to any other group – white, black, Hispanic, Asian, etc. – in this country. Their rule is absolute. No one dare even mention their name much less challenge… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Bu…bu…but…what about our Democracy?

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

We absolutely have the right to pick whichever one of the two candidates that our foreign rulers choose. 😉

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Whitney
1 year ago

I’ve actually seen some retention about the Covid lying–a teeny, tiny amount but still some–and that is quite the outlier. Otherwise I completely agree. It will take cold and hunger (which are coming) and even then few dots will be connected.

And, to be fair, there is widespread consensus and acceptance that most things are lies.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Jack Dodson
1 year ago

TomA has apparently missed his cue. So I’ll ad-lib some lines in his style.

Cold and hunger can be highly motivating. Dots will be connected, scores settled. The antibodies will arise to the long overdue job of eliminating the pathogens. Then, and only then, can the body begin to heal.

Panzernutter
Panzernutter
1 year ago

The Duran guys have been calling it the spring summer autumn winter, spring summer autumn winter , spring summer autumn winter offensive.

mmack
mmack
Reply to  Panzernutter
1 year ago

“Der Manstein Kommt!”

Excited rumours ran round the Sixth Army. ‘Manstein is coming!’ soldiers said to each other, almost like the Easter greeting of the Orthodox Church.

Stalingrad – Antony Beevor.

Panzernutter
Panzernutter
Reply to  mmack
1 year ago

Jedem das Seine

Diversity Heretic
Member
Reply to  mmack
1 year ago

Despite Beevor, I think that most German troops in the Stalingrad pocket were hoping for relief by Colonel General Hermann “Papa” Hoth, in immediate command of the failed relief effort.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Panzernutter
1 year ago

Well, who in their right mind would listen to Simon LeBon’s geopolitical pronouncements? Then again, perhaps the “Rio” he sang about back in the eighties actually referred to the Dnieper…

mmack
mmack
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Well people are hungry like the wolf for information from wild boys, so . . . . . . .

I mean it’s a reflex.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  mmack
1 year ago

What they really want is a view to a kill, with Putler in the gunsites.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
1 year ago

another narrative collapse is the one for covid. all the columns of the temple seem to be crashing down at the same time…

Marko
Marko
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

Yes, for our side, and for some normies. But have you seen images coming out of certain government offices, and progressive Democrat gatherings? Masks still abound.

They won’t let go of 2020, where the twin “crises” of Floyd and Covid gave these deranged little mutants a taste of what they consider sense and purpose in their otherwise sad, media-addicted, bugman lives. 2020 was the height of their power. It’s been downhill for them since then. The mask reminds them of the power they once had.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Marko
1 year ago

it’s funny, for some people the masks are now little face flags.

Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
1 year ago

Luttwak was a Cold War strategist we all read and took seriously in the 80s. After reading his current nonsense, we’re lucky the Red Army didn’t take over the world.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jack Boniface
1 year ago

I’d rather listen to the wisdom o’ Ludwig von Drake…