An aspect of modern politics that does not get discussed is that it is less about the practical things politics is supposed to address and mostly about esoteric and abstract ideas that have meaning only because we pretend so. Look at the current crop of campaign ads and the candidates may as well be running against the bogeyman or in favor of the good juju. Without the party labels, it would be impossible to know anything about the candidates.
This was not always the case. The old joke about politics was that every candidate ran around promising two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. The point was they all had plans about how to increase material prosperity. Even though no politician speaks to anything specific these days, the economy remains the top issue with voters because the prevailing assumption inherited from the past is that politics is supposed to be about practical things like fixing potholes.
One reason for the shift in political rhetoric is that the public square has become the domain of clever midwits playing word games with one another. Public discourse is now controlled by credentialed experts who have no idea how anything works, other than the complex game of relationships that defines the managerial class. That means they are good at constructing complicated intellectual structures that are useful in rhetorical jousting but have no connection to reality.
One result of this is that mainstream politics rests on the false choice. The “sides” in any debate struggle with one another to see who can impose their false dichotomy on the debate in order to gain the moral high ground. One way this is done is to conjure a nightmare scenario from the other side’s proposal and then claim the choice is between that nightmare and present reality. Alternatively, they will conjure a glorious fantasy out of their ideas and compare that to present reality.
A good example of how this works is this post at the libertarian site Lawn & Liberty that wags the bony finger at people on the right who have praised the crime policies of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Crime has plummeted in El Salvador since they began rounding up the gangs and putting them in isolation. The government has effectively cut the gangs out of society and placed them in a facility from which there is no communication to the outside world.
What the writer of that post is doing is pretending that it is possible to build a civil libertarian paradise in El Salvador. That is the ideal against which he is measuring the highly effective policies of Bukele. This is the false dichotomy. On the one hand we have the rough, but effective justice used by the government to address the crime problem and on the other hand we have this magical reality where there is no crime and no rough justice to deal with crime.
This line gets at the problem. “It’s easy to see why so many on the right have become enamored with Bukele. They too lack basic respect for rules and institutions. They, like him, are largely unanchored by any coherent set of ideas or philosophy.” It is the old joke about libertarians saying, “Sure, the policy works in the real world but does to work in theory?” The writer cares more about his precious abstractions than about the thousands of lives saved by these policies.
What is not so obvious is that his definition of “coherent set of ideas or philosophy” is normative one. Bukele has a coherent set of ideas. It starts with doing what works to solve the crime problem. He identified the problem, evaluated various ways to address the problem and settled on that which creates the best result. That is about as coherent as one can get from public policy, but because it violates the writers sense of moral justice, he flings his poo at the policies.
This false choice modeling of modern political rhetoric gets to another reality that lies at the heart of our politics. All of it is progressive. The various camps, conservative, libertarian, liberal, and so on are all operating within the larger progressive framework which is built on the assumption that the future must be a glorious one as we in the present are compelled to work toward that glorious future. G. Patrick Lynch, the author of that piece, is no different than Ocasio-Cortez in this regard.
The reason that many Americans, mostly those who used to identify as conservative or right-wing, admire what Bukele is doing is the practicality of it. Our political space is littered with discount preachers like G. Patrick Lynch, waving their bony fingers at us while listing off our sins. The stage is packed with dreamers who conjured creative visions of a glorious future that work only in the minds of the dreamer. What we lack are men willing to use the state to solve actual problems.
In the end, the reason that things seem to be coming apart is that our politics are dominated by bourgeois posers who have no practical knowledge, so they spend their days conjuring clever word games to play with one another. The point is never to solve a problem, but to establish one side or the other has the king of the moral high ground, which exists only in their imaginations. The moral high ground is just a place in the stands, far away from the action.
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> This line gets at the problem. “It’s easy to see why so many on the right have become enamored with Bukele. They too lack basic respect for rules and institutions. They, like him, are largely unanchored by any coherent set of ideas or philosophy.” This is the “that’s not who we are” argument for higher brow people. Here’s a little tip. If a guy has tattoos that they can only receive by raping and murdering people, and are part of a notorious gangs that has terrorized a community for decades, you probably don’t need two years to build a… Read more »
It gets back to this misconception a lot of “conservative whites” have in the US: They think The Constitution (and by extension our justice system) is something that can be applied to all people. The Constitution was written by and meant for a very select group of European men. Its writers almost certainly knew that it would never work for people from Africa or Asia, nor Central/South America. People today on the right believe it is “Magic Paper” just like leftists believe in magic dirt. Different kinds of people require different kinds of rules. Bukele probably realizes this on some… Read more »
People on the right, especially people who served in the military or are Evangelical Christians seem to revere the Constitution like it was one of the biblical texts. It drives them nuts when you remind them the Constitution is just a fancy name for a law that’s hard to change.
The Con is the name of a fake law imposed by liars, idiots, and cowards, and nobody needs to change a fake law.
Constitution is just a fancy name for a law that’s hard to change.
Bravo!
John Adams stated bluntly that the Constitution would work only for a moral, Christian society….and no other…He was right..But Patrick Henry said that it wouldn’t even work for the existing white, Christian America, because it simply gave too much power to a central government…He was righter….
Every concern and criticism the anti-Federalists had has come to pass.
Mike (and others)
I’ve said for quite a while that the Constitutional system only works for moral, intelligent people who conduct themselves in good faith.
It fails utterly when the system is taken over by Marxist sociopaths who operate in bad faith because their only goals are attaining and retaining power.
But do moral, intelligent people who conduct themselves in good faith really need a constitution?
The UK doesn’t have one, and for a long time that was ok, but here lately…..
No. The Constitution was already a compromise among people who mostly but didn’t entirely trust each other.
Ostei. A constitution? We are the sons of Adam not angels.
“Different kinds of people require different kinds of rules. Bukele probably realizes this on some level.”
Not on some level. He has said exactly this plain and clear, including in the United Nations General Assembly.
Greetings from El Salvador
No pity for the gangs. The problem with unrestricted police state power is to not end up in the wrong end of it. I have a sense globohomo is taking notes on the El Salvadoran experiment and we might not like their conclusions
It reminds me of all conservatives. I just got a email from a 2a group that said there is a case somewhere in the Midwest about illegals being allowed to carry. The head of thisb2a group said “this is a real soul searching moment”. Meaning , he supported the “right” of illegals being able to own guns.
I wrote back asking if the illegals searched their souls about all they are stealing and all the laws they are breaking. When your enemies don’t play the game you are playing, you’d better start playing their game. And that’s just winning.
I bypass the entire argument by rejecting the inferred premise that a non-citizen, e.g., illegal aliens is in any way protected by the Constitution.
Normal White people aren’t either.
Exactly Right Brother…The only thing protecting the rights of White People is the might of other White People… Wish our side could grasp that fact…
The mainstream right/”right,” and an increasing proportion of the actual/dissident right, has no intellectual content. It’s a consumer identity, a mediated self. Don’t you want to be [insert guy you don’t know]? If he’s from Plutarch or Ayn Rand, or maybe he just kinda reminds you of those kinda guys in one small way, you’re right wing. Enjoy your purchase. Strip off the rhetoric and actual existing leftism is identification with the aggressor (the next winner), while rightism is identification with the winner (the previous aggressor). Losers care about crime. Its victims are losers by definition. Being a loser is… Read more »
Buy a red hat! Winning!
It seems likely that this poseur wears a neat suit jacket with a bowtie, like George Will…that’s the great thing about the libertarians..They have very tidy political theories, and reality never enters the picture..The fact that no libertarian society has ever existed (or could exist) makes no difference at all….
I think the American version of this is how San Fransisco was able to entirely solve their problems of crime and homelessness and violence during the days leading up to a visit from the Chinese. Turns out, you solve problems by solving them. Not that difficult, barely an inconvenience.
All our problems are like this – immigration is solved very easily, for example. But the American ideology, which is necessarily progressive and liberal, makes it impossible.
It has to go.
Absolutely correct. Laws are meaningless. All power comes from the barrel of a gun, and things get done when those with the guns decide to exercise power. All chaos or order flows directly from which way the gun is pointed.
I don’t think so, Jack. That is a favourite pretty lie of the left: punishment does not deter crime. They’ll tell you with a straight face that poverty and misfortune drive crime and that capital and corporal punishment are inhumane. America has foolishly conceded that point despite the fact that they work – and work well – to deter crime. Laws need punishments for infractions and they are VERY meaningful when they are so applied.
Its even worse up here in Canada where catch and release policies make sure that violent criminals don’t spend a day in jail.
Poverty doesn’t cause crime. Negroes cause crime.
I believe it was Franz Brentano who said that…
Every complex problem has a simple, easy to understand, wrong answer.
There has always been a baseline murder rate even before blacks moved into our cities. It’s just that blacks do not increase crime linearly, but closer to exponentially.
We used to have most of the FBI Most Wanted, but not since about Dillinger, though we still had honorable mention until about D.B. Cooper.
This ^^^ 100%. They are a fucking menace.
Wow a real life “old Catholic”
If it wasn’t Brentano, it was St. Augustine…
You have a point and made my point. Those laws worked when the people with the guns enforced them. Even with the laws on the books, those with the guns have decided not to enforce them and in fact will put you in their scope if you get too uppity about it. Laws are only has good as those who enforce and implement them, hence, today.
“San Fransisco was able to entirely solve their problems of crime and homelessness and violence during the days leading up to a visit from the Chinese …”
They brushed them under the rug for a few days but didn’t solve the problem. I’m sure the crime and homelessness is back.
No doubt. The significance was it showed action can be taken, regardless of efficacy, and that will happen only when there is reason larger than public welfare. The border also is an example of this.
Bukele gave an interesting talk at CPAC not long ago, which is worthwhile to watch. He included facts and figures, and described how, before his government took action, Soros’s NGO gangs worked along with the El Salvadoran criminal gangs and the media to wreck society and particularly people’s safety.
As if Soros, the Left, and Globalists have any “basic respect for rules and institutions.” No one in history has been as destructive as they have.
Not that Bukele is perfect, but he’s providing a very interesting case study which the Left and Globalists very much want to discredit or hide.
They are doing the same thing here. As soon as they took control of the NYC government under DeBlasio, they started dismantling everything that revitalized the city and kept it functional. Emptying the jails, prohibiting arrest for QoL crimes (public urination, squeegee, vandalism, public drug use, etc.), banning stop-and-frisk, abusing prosecutorial discretion, eliminate cash bail to keep criminals on the streets, you name it. Of course with all of these they had either sophistry or a “study” that their own people did that backed up what they were doing. For a few years the situation looked okay as it had… Read more »
Yes, the whole thing sounds very familiar, wherever these “NGO’s” do their termiting work.
And don’t forget, a lot of federal dollars go to those NGOs. Creating instability elsewhere is what we are famous for, whether the American population realizes that or not. It’s the old divide and conquer game, funded with funny money.
Case in point is mass migration. The GAE used this for decades against its imperial colonies in the Pacific, small, isolated pockets and islands where the native populations were inundated with “Americans” from nearby Asia. The template for what is underway is quite old and proven. The British did the same earlier. NGO’s are just a new form of delivery.
Fascinating… I had a (n ex-) girlfriend – highly intelligent and a total SmokeShow! – who spent 5 years at UN Headquarters (NYC) as a “sustainability champion.” (If her passion was showbiz I would have likewise “let it slide,” because the contentment of people I love is more important than..you know…and I honestly didn’t see the harm…) Anyway, in Sept. of 2016, she announced that she was going to work for the (US) State Department in Tuvalu, of all places. “It’s as easy as that? You work for the UN, and the State Department takes you on, “no… Read more »
For some reason when I read this, the image of the huge St. George of Minneapolis banner hanging from the US Embassy in Kabul popped into my cabeza. Again, exporting our psychodramas. Can’t we just leave these poor SOBs alone?
Of course not.
To recall that old cliche, “This is why they hate us!”
She sounds perfect for the job, actually.
Yes, it’s on purpose. There is not some misunderstanding or good intentioned mistakes here
Time to stop ascribing good faith to our opponents; its time to demonize them. They never gave us the benefit of the doubt.
How very odd that the Leftist idea of utopia is thoroughly dystopian to the rest of us. There are two possible explanations for this. First, Leftist policy springing from Leftist ideology simply makes the world a worse place. Because Leftist ideology is divorced from reality, the policy springing therefrom is irrational and therefore pernicious. Second, the Left isn’t really utopian at all. Its utopian rhetoric is actually a stalking horse for their actual nihilistic agenda of watching the world burn. In the second case, their Satanic behavior creates the Satanic Inversion.
They will burn down everything including themselves to achieve what they want… Wish our side had the same zeal in saving our people…
And I guess they figured that not enough New Yorkers or their “new voters” would remember how Giuliani and his police administrators cleaned up New York and made it safer, compared with the previous admins. For those here who don’t remember, those quality of life crimes which seemed to some like minor annoyances were rightly targeted, which made things better for all. Was it a sensible sociologist, Wilson, who advocated that, and talked about the broken-window syndrome? Soros’s people don’t worry about others’ broken windows. Obviously tolerating things like graffiti doesn’t just lead just to ugliness, but it leads to… Read more »
I keep a can of spray paint in my car. And in those rare instances I see a grifitto in by nabe, I spray it out of existence. Not going to allow the savages to colonize ny little corner of the city if I can help it.
That’s awesome! Really a good idea.
They aided the sleight of hand by giving Bloomberg the credit for what Giuliani had done. So that the willfully retarded didn’t associate the cleaner safer NYC with the distasteful republican
WRT NYC, I remember Giuliani. Even last time I was back there you could see the remnants of his law and order stance in the city subway stations. In those initial days, there was blatant “fare skipping”. Subway cops arrested all they caught and penned them in cages built by the main token booths. These cages, now unused, can be seen all over. Ah, the good old days….
It’s impossible to come to any other conclusion but the pre-Bukele El Salvador is the society they want for us all.
Yes yes they do question is what is your plan to stop it from happening to you or for any other White Person…
One of the great blessings that my parents instilled in me was a respect for manual labor. As a teenager, I bailed hay, worked on a shrimp boat and worked at a grocery store, both as a bagger and as a stocker. I still love fixing things around the house, chopping firewood and doing yard work. It’s good exercise and it’s fulfilling work. It made me appreciate that I could work using my brains, not my brawn more than those who never get their hands dirty. It made me a “whole man.” Our ruling class and the chattering nabobs of… Read more »
“chattering nabobs of negativism”
Did someone just call up the ghost of Spiro Agnew?
But I’m told those nabobs of negativity natter rather than chatter…
And God bless you brother Pat.
Safire…
William Safire…
You’re on fire today, rasqball…
Richard Nixon told me it was Pat Buchanan who wrote Agnew’s provocative speeches.
This is why more and more isolated, rural communities are developing parallel governing bodies. It’s just easier to ignore Uncle Sugar, or the current state. There is a road that runs by my place, that is used rarely, and when it is, it’s mostly combines and those big honkin dump trucks that haul crops from field areas. The road is beat up every year, and every year the individuals who use/benefit from the road, resurface it with road pack and make it usable. no permits no work crews no closures no EPA no “studies” Just a task that has to… Read more »
You can ignore the state, but can you ignore the masses of migrants the state throws at your area?
“Ignore.” Well, you know, there are ways of dealing with that problem? They require a willingness to solve the problem.
I couldn’t have said it any better.
thank you.
I have heard this a million times and nothing ever happens, while the founding population of the US and the native populations of Europe are being replaced.
Well, you know, people need to do the needful. Someone I know very well tells the story of an undesirable “family” who moved into her neighborhood back in the day. The neighbors, get this, did not complain or say anything at all, but instead did a few unpleasant things that, in short order, got the undesirables to move out.
You know, sometimes you get what you frickin’ deserve, I guess. But don’t act like such things are impossible.
This doesn’t work with millions crossing the border. What are you even talking about? We are way past these little local solutions and there is nowhere to run.
The real solution would have to be at a much higher level than a neighborhood watch and it requires a strong and determined leader. This is precisely why Bukele is so interesting and appealing, but so far there is nobody in the west wiling to rise to his level.
Before my time, but I’ve been told/
They never come back from Copperhead Road…
Steve Earle…is NOT the solution! ;- )
No. But even a numbskulled ninny of nihilism finds an ear of corn every once in a while…
But maybe David Allen Coe is just what we need…
You have to work with your neighbors to buy up any property that someone is considering selling, so that you can keep the Section 8 housing out of your community.
What’s the point of earning money if not to make your little corner of the world a little better for you and yours?
But, but, but that would take cooperation and selflessness and we can’t be having none of that here in the dissident sphere…
Like I mentioned above, these small local solutions don’t work. Maybe 20 years ago they did, but now, with an unlimited influx of migrants into the West, it’s easy to overwhelm a neighborhood. Now is time for much bigger solutions.
Migrants? Surely you can come up with a saltier term for them than that.
I feel that calling them invaders gives them too much credit. They are more like human refuse being thrown at us by an alien entity.
I agree, it’s time for this https://northwestfront.info/ way past time to be honest..
Now that’s shovel ready!
I get the sense that Law(n) and Liberty wasn’t a typo on the Zman’s part. I was sort of following along with Lynch until he began whining about the hero Pinochet, the man who saved Chile and made it the envy of Latin America to this day. There is no reason to make apologies for this great man. His enemies were communists, and he did with them what you’re supposed to do with communists. It’s common, if you get out and about in AINO, to meet aliens from all over Latin America. I have met precisely one from Chile. That… Read more »
Rather, he did to communists what the communists would do to everyone else.
The thought occurs to me how the ancient Romans solved their Republican governmental dilemma in the face of grave calamity—the *Dictator*. A dictator was appointed among the people (elites) for a particular duration and purpose. The power invested in this man was absolute—even greater than Kings, who were often constrained by competing power factions or precedent/tradition. The great fear of course was that the dictator appointed would not return power once the crisis was addressed. This is why Cincinnatus is remembered and praised to this day. The relinquishing of power is always problematic. We see something similar to this in… Read more »
I have no hope for an AINO strongman because AINO is not one nation anymore. In all your examples, there was still a people to rally behind him. In our case, the best that a strongman can hope for, any faction’s strongman, is to have 1/3 or very best case 1/2 of the people on his side. That’s not gonna cut it. So I expect chaos more than authoritarianism, although whoever is in power will attempt, unsuccessfully, the latter.
The surveillance State is quite new and growing. There never was such power at the hands of a potential dictator/strongman. In the military, they call this a force multiplier. When the CCP falls from power in China, we can continue this conversation. Until then it’s a “draw”.
That might be sooner than you think.
Think of the lives that would be saved and the financial costs of the chaos that would be eliminated if we had someone who looked at the ” gun violence” problem in America and said yep, ban blacks from having guns. Maybe make an exception for a Clarence Thomas or have a IQ test or something for the talented 10%.
The murder rate in America would over night look like Switzerland.
But we cant seem to get politicians that make things safe and working properly.
So we admire the guy who can down in El Salvador.
>ban blacks from having guns.
I can think of a much more effective policy – deport them to Wakanda, Nigeria.
Reminds me of a twitter exchange following the case of the black jogger in GA who was shot by shot the McMichaels in self defense. A woman posted “Is there no safe place for black people?!?” Someone responded with “Africa, large continent south of Europe, you can’t miss it.”
And the response to that was: “Too dangerous, it’s full of blacks.”
Yup, the multi racial experiment is over
G Gordon Liddy: Your suggestion of a “law” to fix a real-world demographic problem is just more of respecting ‘rules and institutions’ rather than reality. Your ‘solution’ would create yet more laws and regulations and bureaucracies and solve NOTHING. Guns are tools; blacks are the problem. The sole solution is either spend time and treasure trying to keep them all corralled, or permanently remove them from your society.
Radical freedom of association would solve 80% of this problem.
Not only freedom of association, but freedom to exclude, with maximal prejudice if needs be.
Instead of modern “commonsense gun control”, we used to have a thing called “commonsense negro control”, which worked quite well.
But how?
The magic number appears to be around 3% of the populace. Below that, it’s hard to effect major social change. So how do we go about getting to that 3%? Hint: It’s not going to be by recruiting blacks or jews or lefties, and we are doing everything we can to alienate the right…
The so-called “Right” is no longer right, in both senses of the word.
It would take collective will and violence, neither of which White people in AINO possess any longer. All the laws and proposals in the world won’t make a bit of difference until Whites unite and protect their own identity and interests with extreme prejudice.
Never said i was opposed to repatriation to the dark continent.
Yeah, I’ve toyed with the idea myself. British used to have such punishment “Transportation”, of course they banished those folk to empty lands. Nonetheless, make a deal with some African hell hole and banish them.
A freighter ship full of beads and trinkets should do the trick.
They call it “bling” these days.
This should be precisely the position of “compassionate conservatism” in the US. It doesn’t even need to be all blacks. Gun violence statistics show that this is not a 13/52 type of problem–it’s more like a 0.01/70 problem. This will be an unpopular statement here, but statistics show that the overwhelming majority of blacks are law-abiding, hard-working citizens. There is a tiny minority of blacks, comprised mostly of black men between the ages of 14-30, who commit horrendous levels of crime, including gun violence. Many of these young men become decent, productive members of society after age 30, if they… Read more »
Why is the economic top 10% of blacks more criminal than the bottom 10% of Whites?
That is pretty funny in so many ways.
Libertarians also have a massive hard on for endless immigration and outsourcing your labor, resources and capital if it allows for more profits next quarter. It leads to endless misery and churns through the population with leaving nothing behind besides number on paper or a comp screen. Just the other side of the coin of the lefty realm like z-man alluded to here.
Sad but true. Hoppe at least has a sensible view of the immigration issue. Illegal immigrants are in effect trespassers. Outsourcing is largely a result of bad tax policy that favors the well-connected billionaires. Libertarians who see outsourcing as only an issue of free enterprise miss the point.
Outsourcing is largely a result of bad tax policy.
Outsourcing is mostly quarterly thinking by CEOs. Greed and shortsightedness. If I move the production to a lower cost area I will improve profits and the stock price will go up. I win.
The idea of continuity and long term planning for industry was killed off by the financialization of the economy.
The concept that a modern complex civilization requires a middle class seems completely lost on the wealthy and political class and the brain damaged on the left.
Third world countries tend not to have a middle class.
It’s neither tax or greed and shortsightedness.
Corporate profits can always be expensed away. They pay only as much tax as needed to keep people thinking it has some effect.
And the people running corporations are no more greedy and shortsighted than they ever have been. It’s just that it’s not until recently that those characteristics were rewarded by government policies.
GDP uber alles. More, more, MORE! Everybody gets to wear a Patek Philippe while driving his Mercedes on the streets of Hell that have been paved with gold.
I used to practically deify Ayn Rand when I was a yonker, just starting out on the road to adulthood. I was a proud LIBERTARIAN (yes, I even said it in capital letters) until….the realities of life rose out of life’s waters and bit me squarely in the ass. I found out that people don’t WANT to leave me alone, and don’t WANT me to leave them alone to deal with their problems and that full legalization of drugs doesn’t lead to liberty but a drugged out community full of criminals. I was only in my 30’s when I began… Read more »
Everyone is allowed a libertarian and/or hippie phase as a young adult. It’s the 35-70 year old versions that are worrisome.
Another outstanding post. I have 2 siblings and my parents are in their late 70s. One of my sisters is a leftist. She is very much estranged from the family because she is a rotten sociopath. My other sister and I despise her. One of the many reasons why is that she is exactly the type of person that Z describes here. She lives in a New Jersey neighborhood that is 75% Js who make upwards of 7 figures a year. There are ZERO blacks in her neighborhood. Zero. In fact, there isn’t much “diversity” at all. Some Whites and… Read more »
I’ve wondered if we have the resources to flip the tables on them. Buy up a property in their neighborhoods, turn it into Section 8 housing, and scrounge up the absolute worst of the worst to move in.
Problem is it’s multi-millions to buy in, and they will trash it, so you will be out the cash. On the other hand, maybe there’s a way to Kelo them…
Not far off. They live in propertied areas of extreme value, “block busting” is unlikely. Not so for the rest of us. Even in my neighborhood, it seems a simple problem/possibility to rezone from “single residential” to “multi family”. This was the push toward the end of the Obama era and now once again with a Biden. From there a builder can get government loans and subsidies to erect high density apartments with reserved section 8 housing units on what was once two or three adjacent single family housing plots. It’s a variation the “magic dirt” theory—spread the pathology around… Read more »
Tantalizing idea, but exceedingly expensive for schadenfreude.
“I’ve wondered if we have the resources to flip the tables on them.”
The money’s not there, and even more importantly, the political power isn’t there. When they’re galvanised to protect their neighborhoods and property prices, elected officials listen to them.
Anton Chigurh: If the rules you followed brought you to this place, of what value were the rules.
Excellent comment, but you really need to provide the reference and context so you aren’t just writing in some sort of secret code accessible only to those who get the inside joke.
For normies who might be browsing, the quote is from a psychopathic serial killer in the book/movie No Country for Old Men. The killer delivers the line to a rules-driven man just before his murders him.
Same sentiment in Lysander Spooner’s Constitution of No Authority —
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
Sorry. Chigurh is the villain in the movie, “No Country for Old Men.” He asked that question of a man and then killed him.
Wasn’t the guy’s life spared after he called the coin toss correctly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p93w7MpbZRw
“The writer cares more about his precious abstractions than about the thousands of lives saved by these policies.” Quite so. The world inhabited by the politicians, the mass media, the committees is make-believe, of endless jabbering, of futile jousting over semantics. Nothing practical. In my neck of the woods a short strip of road — maybe a quarter mile long — has been closed down for two years while it gets broadened. It’s inconvenient for most of us who have hitherto used it. Each time I take the unpleasant detour it occurs to me that the Chinese would have done… Read more »
The obsession with ideology has been a ~250 year long sideshow, while the liberal/progressive/revolutionary/Enlightenment operation has trudged on. The fact is, if you get a bunch of people of European (or East Asian, I suppose) descent in a place and tell them to organize a government, whatever they do, it will work fine, and if it doesn’t, they’ll try something different. The way it is set up doesn’t really matter. Ideology provides an easy way to distract and divide people. Safety is more important than free market ideals or human rights for criminals. Everybody knows this. Also, crime is a… Read more »
Bukele has done wonders so far. How long until he is cast as the next Saddam and gets color revolution’d?
As soon as he says bum sex is for losers?
Bravo mikebravo.
And sierra golf whisky tango foxtrot, while I’m about it…
Quiet competence is a cardinal sin for our chattering elite. Virtue is being garrulous, ideologically kosher, and utterly incompetent.
Reminds me of one of my favorites lines from Shakespeare: Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
account dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defense,
To say I have done no harm?
“The old joke about politics was that every candidate ran around promising two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot.”
For about 100 years, this was the problem. Every stupid or evil thing politicians wanted to do was justified by the alleged economic benefits. Even today this is the case. We have to have mass immigration to appease “The Economy.” Every single time some politician talks about “our economy,” you’re about to get bent over.
There’s some truth to that. But equally important in the postmodern age is the asinine notion that diversity is its own good. Mass immigration diversifies us, and that is a holy thing.
In the end, the reason that things seem to be coming apart is that our politics are dominated by bourgeois posers who have no practical knowledge, so they spend their days conjuring clever word games to play with one another. Things coming apart are a feature and not a bug. Since anarcho-tyranny is the means toward the endpoint, lots of eggs have to be intentionally dropped to make the omelet. The elected bourgeois poseurs are well-paid bit players with no actual power other than to implement their employers’ goals. If they actually try to fix things, TPTB will remove and… Read more »
Jack.
Do you think TPTB have a clue as to the level of chaos and dysfunction they are inviting in to modern society with their Imigration, environmental and energy policies as well as the tribalism and loss of productive capacity.
It seems they live in a fantasy world where things happen because they want them to, or they lack the imagination of a policy having undesirable consequences.
They know. They are causing chaos and dysfunction on purpose because they hate you. You should hate them back.
They do so to their peril; I do a lot of things they want done yet lack the skill or desire to do. Get rid of us and you have Haiti.
My conclusion is they are very stupid.
Yes, they know. As long as they can have people distracted by their clowns, hos, and help, and things deteriorate and make people afraid and needy, TPTB are perfectly happy.
“It seems they live in a fantasy world where things happen because they want them to, or they lack the imagination of a policy having undesirable consequences.”
No, they live in the real world—it’s just not your world. (There I go again with “midwittery” semantics). As noted here many times, these people live and deal with themselves for the most part and have resources the average person can only dream of. If inflation causes you to have to decide between food and rent, for them it’s just another zero on a check.
Right. They are getting their desired outcome. If it is catastrophic for them, and I think it will be, is irrelevant. The bottom line is no matter how fantastical their beliefs, they are able to implement them.
As always, what everyone fears from “The Right” is a figure who refuses to play the game by the rules of the Left, which is, of course Rule 1, which is how we got the Vichy Right in AINO. The Bad Orange Man is a transitional figure, at least in his first term, who began breaking some rules like respecting our broken institutions, and truly terrifying them by hinting he might break others, such as his threat to jail Clinton. Obviously, the BOM’s rhetoric far exceeded his reality, but that’s why he is a transitional figure to an American Bukele,… Read more »
There’s no way I’ll live to see the end but I feel blessed to at least see the beginning of the beginning. Realistically this is our only hope.
Midwits have no idea how the real world works because they don’t live in the real world. Sadly, even when the real world steals their lawn mower and plays the knock-out game with their daughter they’ll still blame YT.
I have not seen any articles praising Bukele, only articles complaining about the changes he made to the government and about how heavy handed the gang policy is.
This puts their ideology in sharp focus. Most journalists care far more about the supposed rights of gang members over having a peaceful society where people don’t have to worry about being shot, extorted or robbed. They do the same thing here. They only worry about victimizers and not those victimized. They live in a fantasy world even more disconnected from reality than the libertarians.
Shorter: Hilariously Blinken showed up in Kiev, and went to a bar (filmed by CNN) to “rock out” playing Neil Young’s “Rocking in the Free World,” while half the Ukranian army dies outside Kharkiv.
No one in his staff told him this was stupid. Nor his support for Zelensky ruling Ukraine as a dictator after his term expires late May — as a signal perhaps that Biden will simply not leave if he loses?
THAT could certainly happen. Biden just refusing to leave; and ruling by decree. Its a plan so stupid only his team could think it up.
His staff was procured from the same “talent” pool that put out the NATO Star Wars tweet
Don’t forget that Blinky, a true connoisseur of the world, went on a homo date with his Ukrainian counterpart for the traditional Ukrainian evening meal of…pizza.
Truly, the GAE is blessed to have men of such titanic capability in charge.
Many years ago when I was in the AF, I went to a school for mid-level captains. Ostensibly, it’s professional military education, but really it’s a weed-out program. As part of that 10-12 wk training, you do all sorts of classroom and war games and team building games. One of them is called flickerball, which is a weird combination of ultimate frisbee, football, and soccer. Like Calvinball, from the comics, it has intentionally Byzantine rules. Half of winning is being able to overcome and score despite these rules. it was during flickerball that I learned how effective simply yelling really… Read more »
Ultimate frisbee. This doesn’t do anything to dispel the Chair Force meme
That’s not the half of it. You couldn’t run forward. Only back.
Anyone who doesn’t despise “policies” and “institutions” is not a genuine dissident – he is a conservatard larping as edgy. Just like all those who propose endless laws and changes as ‘magic fixes’ regarding the franchise or citizenship or immigration policy. Lots of sound and fury which utterly ignores demographic reality. Change the people; change the system. Simple. Instead we get proposals and suggestions and rules. Everyone over 35 wants an outline, a specific ‘plan.’ Get a study team together. Put forth policy proposals. Most of you remain utterly locked within the liberal philosophical and governmental framework, and cannot see… Read more »
Breaking the conditioning is a stumbling block for many, and something even we nonconformists can take some time to arrive at. As for “tipping over the table,” anything involving violence or even opinions suggesting the necessity of such à la Tom Jefferson are likely to bring the security state and its stooges down upon your head. As individuals, we face obvious limitations. On the other hand, organizing in groups is likely to get you legal scrutiny (such as law-fare) and maybe even infiltration by Feds. I’m a proponent of parallelism—establishing communities of like-minded people in support of nondestructive lifestyles. We… Read more »
I don’t want to live like a mennonite…I’m a little contemptuous of the parochialism of hicks – er, “rurals”…I’m an urban person…I want to take the city back, and that almost certainly means “decorating the lampposts” with gibbets. I want to go listen to live world-class jazz all afternoon at an event at the Down Town Association (Public Home (thedta.com), while drinking with my sons and nephews and discussing polyphany and Stan Kenton. I don’t want to be a farmer. I mean, if I have to be… The Plow is not for me – I want to be the guy… Read more »
I can feel that vibe. Portland, Oregon, used to be a great place to be. Even New York City. But when the dindus take over the urban areas things become a lot less congenial. Still an economic necessity to live in for many, so we may have to take a lesson from the Afrikaners and make it work for us.
By the way, the Mennonites (actually, Hutterites) I spoke of work in agriculture more as a sideline nowadays. Most practice some kind of light industry to support the majority of their colonists.
I hear you. However, AINO’s cities are beyond redemption. Barring some unforeseeable violent expulsion of malefactors from those cities, we are not retaking them. That being the case, at some point we will have to build our own cities. I predict that, 150 years hence, many towns that now have a population of 5K will be bustling white cities of 250K. We won’t be around to see them, but we just might play a role in building them.
You are well and truly fucked then..
Fuck I’d ride in the back of the truck but there’s no one left hoss
As mention by Z-man any number of times (and commenters here as well) we have come to think that the process is synonymous with result. Managers we all are at this level.
As I’ve mention previously, I had a way of “dealing” with university committees I headed up. I’d simply address a decision hesitant group with a simple line, “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong”. Usually worked to get a decision, write it up, and disband.
It goes deep. Here I am lately questioning Christianity itself lol. Praying in private, saving up treasures in heaven, the spirit of the law instead of the letter, thought instead of deed. Christianity traditionally favors monarchy, God’s kingdom is within you— all sounds pretty middle class to me! The development of a conscience, the breeding of a man capable of governing himself. Progress! And yet, the church, the liturgy, the sacraments, the hierarchy. We’re stuck in between. It’s a crisis of the middle class. Do we progress or go back? If progress, obviously we need to figure out a different… Read more »
Paintersform: You certainly seem to enjoy tying yourself in knots. It’s quite simple: Whom do you serve, God or Satan? If God, then begin by caring for (and that means the physical and mental well being, not soppy emotion) your family and genuine friends, and as able extend that to your people. Alien races and religions are not your neighbors.
I think by habit, but at least it’s enjoyable. Life is simple, but people will get in your way. You can run them over, or you can give them a WHY. They like the WHY. They might even follow you for it.
Anyway, crisis and reformation. It’s on to the reformation part.
God’s Kingdom is something we inherit and we can lose our inheritance. America is fond of “Christ is King” without really wanting to understand what a king of any sort involves.
Yep. It’s the Puritan ethic, which is very in the middle.
“Larping normies, the lot of you.” Hey, it’s worked so far. Big house, barn, four cars, tractor, two-dozen firearms, six weeks vacation…Wake me up when the revolution starts.
Please share anything practical you have in mind.
What precisely do you mean by institutions? There are concrete institutions such as universities, but also more amorphous ones such as the institution of Christmas. I wholeheartedly support the more nebulous institutions because they are repositories of our civilization’s traditions and customs.
I remember a student of mine. His body appeared on the beach, torn into pieces. I remember going on the bus and having to bend when the bus was being shot because he has not paid extortion to gang members. Or the nephew of an acquaintance of mine, who was killed because he did not pay extortion. He left a family with no income. Or some members of my prayer group. They used to arrive two hours late, because they were waiting for the gang members to authorize them to get out from their own neighborhood. Or my father-in-law, who… Read more »
What did we in America have to do with Bukele’s turnaround project other than naysaying and obstructionism before it was complete and, later, naysaying and cheering about the success? I’d wager that the truth is awkward. Following the money used by those “humanitarian” organizations during the bad times is certain to lead back to tax policy favored by Western “conservatives” for charitable contributions. It will lead also to law and public policy which favors gigantic, market-dominating concentrations of assets, also favored by “conservatives”. Remember now how long do-gooders planned their revenge against Pinochet on the pretext of human rights. They… Read more »
It gets back to how monumentally stupid the protected classes are and how divorced they are from reality. Here is a picture of “Doctor” G. Patrick Lynch, trying to look serious I guess.
https://www.aier.org/people/g-patrick-lynch/
You just want to slap this f*cker.
He gives the appearance of someone who after wiping himself, realizes he missed something squishy.
Heh heh. Stomach-turning yet somehow amusing…
Guy’s a dead ringer for my Aunt Brenda.
What a mug…I say, “closed fist.”
A few points: First, here is the bio for G. Patrick Lynch. I’m certain he is a good and decent man, but he went straight from undergrad to a masters and PhD program into academics and then to think tank side gigs. It appears he has never held a job in the dreaded private sector, and has probably lived in academic and demographic bubbles his entire life. https://www.adamsmithworks.org/people/g-patrick-lynch Second, on the national level in the US the shift in rhetoric from the practical to the aspirational started with the Obama campaign in 2008. That time period coincides nicely with the… Read more »
Great point about straight to grad school types.
That’s why Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines was appealing. Don’t know how committed or honest he was to getting rid of the drug dealers, but he gave no quarter in his rhetoric and made for one hell of a fun D.A.R.E. T-shirt.
but anyway the Marcos family reign again so go figure
I was surprised to learn- I just looked it up- that Imelda is still alive.
I think I ran into her at DSW
Shoe department?
“Discount Shoe Wearhouse” Big Lots for shoes
Hrrrrrmmmmmmmm. Is the insistence on playing witty word games a cause, or an effect? ”What we lack are men willing to use the state to solve actual problems…” I’m not sure I agree. If someone does come forward and actually tries to do something, the managerials, the swamp creatures and special interest groups will tear him to shreds. I think our side needs to do a Soviet style purge where the managerials and elite are stood up against a wall and shot at random as a warning to the others. As it is none of these guys can even play… Read more »
We are still in Claire’s awkward stage.
But it’s past time to start making lists and checking them twice.
Our side better start getting serious about accountability and corruption…
I would say our side better get serious about building Tribe or the corruption will roll over them like a tidal wave…
Practicality is the bottom line for everything. Unfortunately for us, the tards in charge worship at the alter of pretendicality. Until they’re removed with extreme prejudice, expect more of the same…
…the tards in charge worship at the alter of pretendicality…
Beautiful…!
Scratch a Libertarian, and you will usually discover an authoritarian. That their authoritarianism is slanted toward enforced anarchy (rather than enforced order) doesn’t change this.
Scratch a “libertarian”, and you will find a knave or a dupe of Judeo-European turbocapitialism. Virtually the whole point of it all is to atomize resistance, as this guy could surely tell you in private if he were in a mood to let slip some truth about it. The name Grove, too, is highly suspect. Reading up and down the roster of knaves and dupes one finds the usual “Western” superabundance of Heebish names, which no good nationalism can have for long without it being or becoming one with Zion’s axis of darkness and biocide.
The libertarians were the first to call for lock downs during COVID craziness.
Bukele is doing the obvious thing. That said, I do wonder if GAEs support for it could be because they see it as a trial run for unleashing the full fury of the state closer to home. Against people reading sites like this one?
Perhaps, but perhaps such a reaction here would be to recognize that the “Constitution” and “muh rights” is not a suicide pact.
Exhibit A: Rod Dreher
I noticed the genocidal maniacs have a coordinated mass-murder denial campaign going on led by having having blackmailed the UN to publicly pretend the Israeli’s aren’t really slaughtering and starving all the Palestinian women and children. At the very same time principled jewish officers in the DIA, who obviously have much better window on the truth, are making news by publicly resigning their posts in protest of our government’s complicity in the Israeli crimes. It’s strangely satisfying to see how the people I already find despicable go out of their way to make themselves ever more hideous.
…The stage is packed with dreamers who conjured creative visions of a glorious future that work only in the minds of the dreamer…
Creativity is the ne-plus-ultra, s’what everybody “wants to be.” But it’s a rare gift: very few have it. And those that DO have it, cannot apply it universally and ubiquitously.
(“Folks” have a very dfficult time acknowledging that (high) intelligence and creativity are not necessarily correlated.)
I’d kill to be a clever midwit. I’m lower-middle wit at best.
but seriously, it’s almost hard to believe someone actually wrote this it’s so out of touch, and just weird:
“It’s easy to see why so many on the right have become enamored with Bukele. They too lack basic respect for rules and institutions. They, like him, are largely unanchored by any coherent set of ideas or philosophy.”
Yeah, I caught that myself. Perfect example of midwit thinking—can’t recognize the irony of the statement as the ability to do so is beyond their IQ limits. Author is really saying your ideas and philosophy are not my ideas and philosophy, therefore I refuse to recognize them as such—or even that they represent a cogent alternative philosophy.
The moral high ground is just a place in the stands, far away from the action. That the ‘high ground’ is still underwater makes little difference. Drowning in water 2 feet over one’s head is the same as if 2 miles over head – you still drowned.
Yea the only thing depth of the water determines is how long before you are found…
My favorite false dichotomy comes from Dan, and you know who I’m talking about.
First he repeatedly spouts the phrase “kill the Jews” like he has Tourette’s Syndrome. And then proclaims that the only two options in Gaza are to genocide innocent Palestinian women and children or allow Hamas to exist and threaten the Israelis. And he clearly favors the former solution. And he is a Jesus fanatic. And he sees no contradictions whatsoever in the above.
“Pseudo-Intellectual Posers”
Geez man, you didn’t have to come at me like that…
“…pretending that it is possible to build a civil libertarian paradise in El Salvador. That is the ideal against which he is measuring the highly effective policies of Bukele.”
Somehow in that article, I keep replacing Bukele with “Putin” and the author with the typical GAE’s apologists. Fits well IMHO.
Somewhat long but related: Ghandi and King understood that having the proto-AWFLs on their side and not posing too much of a threat to most White men could have their way. This worked like gangbusters on Western, affluent, oligarchical societies where rich White women habitually get most of their way most of the time. [Both spent a LOT of time hanging out with socialites. If you take my meaning and I am sure you do.] HOWEVER, the flip side which we are seeing in Israel, in China, in Burma, now in Ireland (small but growing), Japan, and other places is… Read more »
If you would “love ” my comments, how come you blocked me on Gab?
Ugh, guys like that give libertarianism a bad name. What’s worse is I used to think that way. Freedom is wonderful and necessary, but this fellow has the “I have only a hammer so everything’s a nail” syndrome. What is government for if not to protect its citizens from violent crime? We don’t want to go full fascist because the deregulation approach doesn’t work in this case. But before we can discuss the fine points of civil rights there has to be an environment where civil discourse is possible.
Libertarianism gives libertarianism a bad name. And we do, indeed, want to go full fascist, friend.
National communism by any other name is still just national communism.
National Communist parties, be!
That’s where we part ways. I want nothing to do with forced socialism of any variety.
Fortunately, those who do want full fascist are too few in number to make any difference, but I’m more than willing to refuel helicopters loading up the fascists and communists alike…
In whose name(s) are the helicopters owned?
Looks like your own militarist police state is the camel’s nose of what you pretend to oppose.
This is just the old saw about Mussolini making the trains run on time. Such policies are often wildly popular in the beginning but they have a tendency not to end well. The bourgeoisie loves a “tough-on-crime” guy when they need someone to dig them out of the mess, but then they become ever more indulgent and demanding, placing eventually unsupportable strains on the national treasury. The same politician who once rode that tiger to victory is seldom the one who has enough fortitude to leap off it and tell it to stop.
ID. However what was shown as examples was not Mussolini, but Cincinnatus and Pinochet. There are others, of modern times, as well, e.g. Franco of Spain. Your assertion (dictators will inevitably produce worse outcomes than what they were created to solve) is simply and adequately refuted by those examples. Not much different between good Kings and bad Kings throughout history, or the series of “good” emperors listed/described by ancient Roman historians.
A drowning man does indeed clutch at straws, but sometimes those straws are strong enough to save him.
One could add Sulla and Diocletian to that roster as well, although Christians might balk at the latter.
I am glad increasingly few people here see fit to respond to your retarded ass these days.