A central feature of the democratic society is mendacity. The more democratic the culture, the less honest the participants. The reason for that is simple. The goal in a democratic system, whether it is a marketplace for goods and service or a political system for setting public policy, is to win the crowd. You do not necessarily have to win a majority, but you need enough to lie about having a majority. To do that you must say anything to bring the mob to your side.
This is the reason we know or care about Socrates. Ancient Athens was a democratic society, where rhetoric was the prized skill. The reason for that is status was rewarded to those who could win over their fellow citizens through argument. Inevitably the truth stopped mattering very much, as people tend to believe a good story, especially one that flatters them, over objective reality. Socrates skillfully argued in favor of the truth over rhetoric, so the Athenians voted to kill him.
Lying is a funny thing as everyone lies about something, usually in a moment of weakness or in an effort to be prudent. As a result, normal people think of lying as a thing you do reluctantly. You lie about not having broken something at work, even though in the long run honestly would be your better option. You tell the friend that his new car is great, even though you think it is ridiculous for a middle-aged man to be driving around in a Miata. It hurts to say it, but friendship requires it.
While everyone lies, most people are honest. They think the truth matters, even if the truth is unwelcome. You want the doctor to tell you the truth about your health, not because it will have an impact on your health, but because it is your health, and you have a right to know the truth about it. This sense of entitlement with regards to the truth stems from the fact that all humans possess the tools to conceive of what with think is reality and therefore we are entitled to reality.
It is why most people struggle to accept that there are people who are not honest, so they do not struggle with the lie. In fact, they take pleasure in tricking people, even when the truth would serve their interest. Unlike the honest person, the Democratic Man sees truth telling as a weakness. He speaks the truth only when forced into it and seems to see it as a weakness. For him, the truth is bait to lure in the honest to trick them into something they would otherwise resist.
An example of this is in The Atlantic, a publication that has become the symbol of democratic mendacity. In less democratic times, it was a journal for the intellectual class of the WASP ruling elite. Now it is a vulgar tabloid used to insert falsehoods into the media ecosystem. This post from David Frum is a perfect example. Everything about it is a lie from the very first sentence. From there is a clever monument to the art of lying to trick the intended audience.
“For more than four decades before Donald Trump assumed the presidency, the FBI director was a position above politics” is what someone once described as a lie so colossal that people assume there must be some truth to it because they cannot believe that anyone would lie so infamously. Bill Clinton fired the FBI Director, Bill Sessions, as soon as he came to power. He replaced the capable Sessions with the thoroughly incompetent Janet Reno.
The fact is every position in Washington is political. You cannot be in politics without being political, which means taking a side. David Frum surely knows this, but he likes lying and he has an agenda. One of the funny things about this type is they often start with a kernel of truth around which they wrap their lies. In this case, the kernel of truth is that the FBI helped the media drive off Nixon. The schemers are hoping a similar thing happens (again) once Trump takes office.
This is just one recent example. You can scan the regime media sites and find hundreds of examples on a daily basis. We live in a time when the only reasons to consume mass media are entertainment and to learn what is not true. People like David Frum make being funny on social media much easier. If you see an assertion of fact in the Wall Street Journal, then you know what is not true about that particular subject and can eliminate it from the set of possible truths.
The question, from a sociological and analytical perspective, is whether the system produces the mendacious or whether it simply elevates them. Since Grog sold Trog a bad wheel, lying has been a part of human society. Along with it we have evolved various ways to guard against it, both individually and collectively. Among European people, social rules evolved to sort people between the trusted and the untrustworthy, creating moral societies rather than tribal ones.
Therefore, if liars have always been an issue for human society, it means the proliferation of liars is a product of the current rules. We are becoming a low trust society either because we are conditioning each generation to prize mendacity over the truth or the system rewards the mendacious over the honest, thus flooding the public square with shameless liars. The lack of shame is a critical piece, as moral societies rely on shame to govern behavior.
The counter to this is someone like Tutus Oates. He was an English priest who fabricated a conspiracy to kill Charles II. This was the “Popish Plot” that made him quite famous and wealthy for a time. This was just one of his many lies and schemes that often had no obvious benefit to him. Like Hillary Clinton, he loved lying. Eventually, people caught onto his tricks, but again like Hillary Clinton, he used more tricks to escape the hangman’s noose and continue with his mendacity.
This perfect example of the modern pundit lived in the 17th century when democracy was limited to arguments among nobles after too many drinks. This was the restoration, a time when popular government had a very bad odor. Of course, one could argue that the flickers of democracy under Cromwell fertilized the ground where the seeds of mendacity had lied dormant. Still, in a decidedly undemocratic society a trickster like Oates was able to thrive for a little while.
None of this may seem to matter, but Western people evolved over thousands of generations to exist in high trust societies. Unlike the tribal people of sub-Saharan Africa who organize around the tribe or the people in the Middle East who organize around the clan, Europeans organize around a set of moral codes. The proliferation of liars who have undermined social trust are making Western societies unlivable. The next step is they become ungovernable.
What that means for the reform minded is that for reform to work, Western societies must become hostile to people like David Frum. Either they sink in status to the point where they are nothing more than a warning to others or they find life in a high trust society too terrifying, so they self-deport. In other words, the goal of reform must be elevating candor to the highest quality, as the necessary antidote to the mendacity that has come to dominate the modern West.
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The high trust society concept needs a much broader discussion. When I bring it up to normies most of them have never heard the term or ever contemplated it before. The high trust society had reached a point where it was completely taken for granted and people lost sight of what made it possible in the first place. These discussions need to happen in order to bring it back.
“When I bring it up to normies most of them have never heard the term or ever contemplated it before.”
What can you expect from guys whose most momentous decision is whether to buy Maker’s Mark or Woodford Reserve for the big game?
Yes. The Greek virtues were skill in battle and wise, articulate counsel. The latter required rhetorical skills. But what kept things under control was the possibility you’d have to back up your words with steel. If Frum and his ilk could be called out for a little swordplay at dawn, the country would be in better shape. At a minimum, they would have to go fight in the wars they’re always instigating.
There are small anecdotal examples that hint at a high-trust society. Like the fruit and vegetables stalls in rural areas along the road. People just put stuff for sale there with a box. The idea is you pick up what you want and drop the money in the box. In our society, the stall is cleaned out the first time a vibrant drives past. Then he posts about it on instagram and the horde descends to clean out the entire area. No more stall. Something even simpler, though, would you feel totally and 100% comfortable leaving your door unlocked at… Read more »
I have no experience re China, but no one in Singapore left their doors unlocked. And people I knew who’d lived in Taiwan and Bangkok said the same – and I’m speaking of locals, not expats/diplomats. Fwiw, a neighbor has always left his door unlocked and continues to do so, even when away for a week. We have not followed suit, and continue to lock our doors. High trust may work in the middle of the woods, but I don’t believe those in the closest small town leave their doors unlocked, although the problem isn’t diversity so much as it… Read more »
Singapore is a multicultural hellhole, it just functions and is nice because they are high IQ Asians and it is run as a totalitarian police state. But no, someone telling me Singapore is low trust is not that surprising. In any case it’s a broad example.
I have some experience in China. Walking around you’d think there was African-tier lawlessness…bars on all the apartment windows. Even high up. Doors locked and manned at all times. Security guards everywhere. Yet, you see young women wandering around late at night without escorts. Unless you’re looking for trouble, China is incredibly safe. It’s a little baffling, but I think it’s similar to a rural white culture of safety. Their communities are often very safe, with strong bonds, yet they are armed to the teeth and constantly watching out for strangers. More than a lefty who lives within earshot of… Read more »
This is correct. Property theft is a thing and is what all the security guards, etc. are there to prevent. Same goes for Hong Kong. The thing with East Asia is that being rather more evolved (sorry, just the facts) and higher mean IQ (albeit with tighter SD) they’re less prone to random violence and acts of criminal stupidity. More crime is white collar. Women *can* and do walk the streets safely at all times of day and night. People live in high rise apartments in close proximity to tens of thousands of other people and don’t go ape shit… Read more »
I know from experience that many or most people in small towns in the north and midwest left their doors unlocked, and in many cases, keys in the ignition up through the 1960’s. I assume that practice ended soon after but I wasn’t there to see. I don’t believe discussion (talk) will ever bring back a high trust society. Neither did Kirk, or does as I will imprudently claim, Zman. Only the coming of a Black Swan would make positive demographic or geological change possible (if it doesn’t make things worse). Anglo-Saxons, and to a somewhat lesser extent Europeans, are… Read more »
In AINO, the door lock itself is a lie, as the majority of locks, and the majority of doors (residential I mean), are easily overcome by anyone who is not afraid to break something. I have seen sturdier doors and locks be the norm in some other countries.
Regardless, that small impediment will deter a certain percentage of burglars. Conversely, leaving a door wide open would attract them. The tougher you make it on them, the more likely they’ll head on down the road to an easier mark.
Getting still further off topic, I saw a poll of convicts that said the two biggest deterrents for them were dogs and TVs/radios on.
An old saying goes locks keep a good man honest.
Exactly. Locks only keep the honest people out. Their only use is at night to maybe give you some time/warning of a home invasion.
Even in deep red areas social trust has been damaged. The two main contributors to it historically have been Christian religious beliefs and the social stigma that would come with violating it. Essentially, fear of God or fear of social/legal punishment. At Thanksgiving I was talking to a relative who lives in a rural county that went over 80% for Trump. He owns pasture land and says the few home owners have been dealing with theft/break ins on their properties. This was unheard of a generation ago, people would have left their doors unlocked, keys in their cars, etc. I… Read more »
The term ‘WEIRD culture’ is still acceptable in polite society. It’s a good wedge way of opening the issue.
“become hostile to people like David Frum“ I find these terms very, very agreeable.
It has been noted hereabouts that these people must taste their own blood before they realize that the bad whites mean business.
I would take this a step further and suggest that it comes down to whether people like Frum taste the blood of their own children, or yours.
“An example of this is in The Atlantic, a publication that has become the symbol of democratic mendacity. In less democratic times, it was a journal for the intellectual class of the WASP ruling elite.”
Well, The Atlantic is now a publication of the Jewish elite. (Perhaps they ought to change the masthead to The Eastern Mediterranean, LOL?)
As Christ pointed out in Matthew 23, lying, deception and hypocrisy were the highest arts of the Pharisees…
And still are.
The Atlantic is now owned by Steve Jobs’ widow. She is most definitely not Jewish. Yes she has left Jeffrey Goldberg in place, and yes The Atlantic’s messaging is obvious, but let’s just be real here about what is going on.
Sigh. How many times we gotta post this, dude? “Goldberg is Jewish and was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ellen and Daniel Goldberg. Goldberg has described his parents as “very left-wing.” His grandfather was from the shtetl of Leova, Moldova. He grew up in suburban Malverne on Long Island, a predominately Catholic neighborhood which he once described as “a wasteland of Irish pogromists.” Retroactively, when describing his first trip to Israel as a teen, Goldberg recalled the sense of empowerment he felt Israel embodied. Goldberg attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was editor-in-chief of The Daily… Read more »
Sounds like a real cutie-pie…
This explains the culture problem of assimilating the tribes that have been imported into the west.
Their behavioral patterns have worked for them for thousands of years, except when they didn’t. The Holocaust was neither the first nor the worst. Three great wars saw their organized civilization destroyed during the Roman era, AD 66-71 Jewish War (Josephus), AD116 war (Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev), and ~AD135 Bar Kochba war. Modern Ashkenazi are descended from the handful of survivors living on the edge of other people’s civilizations who ended up having to take gentile wives to repopulate. If you can’t learn from that, you can’t learn from anything. They aren’t going to assimilate (change). When I was a… Read more »
The term confabulation applies to the phenomenon of people who “fill in” parts of their memories that they can’t recall due to brain damage or disease. They may know what they did but can’t really remember why so the brain invents a story or even some false memories to construct a holistic narrative. I think a lot of human culture is actually that. People act on instinct and then invent reasons for the actions retro-actively. The example that always comes to mind is the way I observed as a young man that the girls who were the most feminist were… Read more »
Because culture is downstream from biology. The foreign tribes will never assimilate because they are a different people. You might as well ask a turtle to assimilate into eagle culture.
Yes, the majority can force a foreign people to live by the dominant culture if the majority is willing to ruthlessly enforce its rules on the foreign people. But that’s like a holding a chair over your head. You can only do it for so long.
You don’t need to hold the chair over your head. All you need to do is grab it every once in a while and put it to good use. I have no idea how one can get to adulthood and have children of his own without understanding that it’s not the force itself that rears healthy productive children, but the usually implied promise of corrective force.
So, your plan is for whites to impose our culture – our biological culture – on other people forever. From now until the end of time, we force blacks to be less violent with the threat of violence. We force Asians to not grind so much. We force Jews to stop lying.
How is that possible? Even if it was, why would you want to do that other groups? Why would you want to turn whites into the Great Enforcer?
These aren’t our children. They’re someone else’s children. We shouldn’t be telling them how to live.
Then perhaps we should be showing them how to die?
They just need to go home. We may have to give up land, too.
Some children – and some members of our race – merely need the hint of corrective force. Other children and races need the guarantee of punitive force. Still others demand the force itself – again and again – and still cannot and will not conform to expected standards of behavior. There will always be those for whom “Pour encourager les autres” does not deter malfeasance. That’s why there has always been a history of things like capital punishment and/or banishment. If you’ve never had to deal with a chronically unruly teen, you have no idea of the mental and physical… Read more »
My brother spent several months in Cameroon. He would watch the school kids walk home every day and described brutality as the ruling force even among six year olds.
Placing humans who have, remarkably, survived 50 or 100 thousand years unchanged in that enviroment, into an alien culture is no kindness but our goodthinkers don’t see it that way.
We would do better thinking of ourselves as the aliens and others as closer to the earth.
Excellent point. In many ways, Whites truly have become ‘alien’ to common sense and common humanity. The hideous, idiot female who recently ‘rescued’ a bat in her school and got bitten and died from rabies was a leftist, but that’s the same motivation one sees in White women ‘adopting’ a non-White as a pet cause, regardless of the danger to themselves and their children. And the Swedes – even now – seem not have warned their young daughters to avoid the non-White immigrants – sacrificing their own progeny on the bloody altar of diversity. It is truly alien and utterly… Read more »
” not the force itself that rears healthy productive children, but the usually implied promise of corrective force.” Kids catch onto empty threats pretty quickly. If parent proves to be erratic discipline, they will also behave erratically themselves. I have lost count of the parents that I watched bleat any number of threats at their children, and they continue on their disrespect and misbehavior, knowing fully well it’s all BS. An implied promise can do little and frankly if it’s fulfilled in wild explosive anger it makes problems worse. Real punishments for known, rational rules with plenty of chances to comply… Read more »
‘Wait until your father hears about this!’ worked pretty well on me.
Same here. But with my mom it was, “Wait until your daddy gets home from work!”
For the rest of the day I’d live in dread of that blue ’64 Chevy pickup pulling alongside the curb.
Yep, dad’s are like that. Wife used to do same. One day I said, you handle it. She said—truthfully and with great frustration—I can’t hit them!
About the only time she admitted the stark truth about gender differences. She had her place and I had mine.
“Yes, the majority can force a foreign people to live by the dominant culture if the majority is willing to ruthlessly enforce its rules on the foreign people. But that’s like a holding a chair over your head. You can only do it for so long.” The classic case in point being the negro in America. For roughly a century–1865 to 1965–white people demanded negroes behave according to white norms and at least make an attempt to be somewhat civilized. Alas, postwar whites grew soft, indolent and diffident and removed the lid from the pressure cooker. Black Jack the Savage… Read more »
Exactly. The majority can never let its guard down.
Which is why it’s an incredibly stupid system that will never work. It’s not fair to the majority or the minority. Better to separate and let people live as their biology tells them to live.
Weaponized Negros were not the result of softness as much as machinations by a far more dangerous tribe. And maybe I’m hitting the hopium pipe here, but there seems to be a trend toward putting them back in the pressure cooker albeit under the auspices of fairness rather than necessity. I’m shorting blackness because the fatigue is mounting.
On your second point, I hope you’re right, and it’s possible you are. On your first, it was a combination of postwar softness and semitic scheming, although whites were very prominent in the New Left, too. Regardless, if there were no negroes around, they couldn’t be weaponized.
Fair. I probably bristled at “softness” since it was more a case of powerlessness, but, yes, whites were prominent in the New Left. That group, which falls under the rubric of “Puritan,” seems to be tightening the vise on the Tribe and its Negro foot soldiers of late. Win/win.
Well, all I can say is if you compare the average white man from 1934 to the average white manlet of 2024, well…there’s just really no comparison in terms of toughness. Negrophilic snowflakes were few and far between back then, and white guys weren’t clamoring for safe spaces and whinging about microaggressions.
You are not doing a group any favors by allowing the thugs among them to run riot.
Yes, but. That century of free Negoes lived in their own towns and neighborhoods whether by choice or not (not so much the crush of southern immigants into cities). An authentic middle class evolved which filled the function of rule over the unruly. I’ve spoken at length with blacks who grew up in the thirties through the fifties and they are nostolgic about that part of their lives but never wonder why.
“Alas, postwar whites grew soft, indolent and diffident and removed the lid from the pressure cooker.” True, but there’s more to it than that. The U.S. had no business siding with the communist USSR and involving itself in a war against Germany on the European continent. It did not go to war to save the Jews, it went to war because it was creating a global empire, in direct contradiction to its founding principles. After the war was over, it needed to create a mythos granting moral legitimacy to is actions and its war crimes. At Nuremberg it seized upon… Read more »
“people tend to believe a good story, especially one that flatters them, over objective reality.” This is a very important point. The lies that whites believe flatter them. “Immigrants want to come here because they want to be just like you” is the ultimate lie. “We have to help Israel because they’re the Western beacon in the Middle East” is another. Thankfully, the lying has become so much that even whites (or some whites) are getting wise to the con. Trust is sinking. Whites were the fertile, untouched land for low-trust groups who arrived and couldn’t believe their luck. But,… Read more »
Information technology has sped this along, and it explains the widespread panic over its easy availability. Whites aren’t waking up as much as being unable to sleep now.
Hella good, and pithy.
To paraphrase Bastiat, Democracy is a system where everyone strives to live at the expense of everyone else….And to do that, you have to be a skillful prevaricator….like Bill Clinton…
Great column sir! I think it is important to understand that honesty/pursuit of the truth is a uniquely Christian virtue. Anyone who has ever done business in Asia or the Middle East can attest to the fact that truth telling in those parts of the world is regarded as foolish and naïve. Tomás Martín Rosado had an excellent discussion of the importance of truth and honesty to a Christian: “The honest person is not one who tells the truth at all moments because they are too stupid or think that truth will magically make everything easy. Nor is it mere… Read more »
The entire concept of bargaining is predicated on the seller setting a dishonest price for his goods.
It’s not necessarily a dishonest price. It can be, if misrepresentation is involved, but, generally not, any more than the potential worker is setting a dishonest price for his labor. He’d just prefer more than he’s willing to settle for.
I don’t see that as “dishonest”.
Just as disinformation, as a legal concept, requires there to be an official truth, for bargaining to be dishonest there would have to be an official price. And there isn’t.
I’m talking about the kind of bargaining that goes on in markets throughout Asia. The starting price is always inflated, often well above what most readers of this blog would consider reasonably profitable. It’s not like selling a home or requesting a salary in America, where the market value is constantly in flux and is based on psychological factors. I’m talking about goods for which the costs of production and procurement are consistent and known. As a man of the West, I would find it dishonest to request $10 for an item that would sell for $2 under normal circumstances.… Read more »
“I would find it dishonest to request $10 for an item that would sell for $2 under normal circumstances”
Sheeeit. Try this on for size–a large Coke in a theatre. I assume you aren’t enough of a sucker to shell out for that, but lots of people are.
FIFY: What must be done to hardheaded retards among us who believe that moral degenerates like (((Jesus of Nazareth))), (((Simeon Bar Koseva))), (((Shabbetai Zevi))), and (((Menachem Mendel Schneerson))) are honest with theirselves?
Jesus of Nazareth has no particular ethnicity by Christian teaching. He’s most probably New Adam, the potential of all mankind. However, every creed is “became man”. It’s not “became Jewish”. His Jewish apostles would have been the first to discuss his ethnicity. They hardly ever mention “Son of David” other than to prove the prophecies (by his step father Joseph). Neither do most Christians through history. “Jesus is a Jew” is thoroughly a modernism, and possibly in origin from modern Jews themselves. Jesus, granted, was raised by 1st century Jewish parents, in a 1st century Jewish society. However, that is… Read more »
Now you’re just trying to stir up sh*t and piss people off.
If honesty is going to be used against you, then it is foolish to be honest. There no problem lying when there is no upside to honesty, and the people/organization to whom one is lying are going to punish you for the truth.
Be practical.
There is more power in truth than lies. That’s why the system punishes people for the truth. However, those consequences are usually short lived. Anyone who has found themselves ejected from a toxic situation will tell you it was for the best in the long run.
Yes, there is prudence too, so it’s not like wandering around with no filter whatsoever. However, ironically, the long term practical is with honesty and not the lies.
It’s not a case of a lie here and there. The major achievement is to construct a whole intellectual framework of interconnected lies, so that feeble-minded dupes cannot think outside that framework. This is where the middle-brow and “upper-middle-brow” media comes in. This media is designed for people who want a conceptual framework but don’t have the intelligence or drive to see that the whole mesh is a sticky spider’s web and that to get out of it what is required is (to use a term of Thomas Kuhn) a “paradigm shift.” This sticky spider’s web is why even the… Read more »
And they learned how to bleat and bray in unison from academia, which is a dynamo whose purpose is to spin out a false, anti-white master narrative.
Can’t get the politically allied job without the degree. Academia has become the bottleneck, the filter, for political ‘correctness’.
Its the synthesis of gnosticism and satanism. They’ve become the demiurge.
Good column but Louis Freeh succeeded Sessions as FBI Director. Janet Reno was AG. That would be the Louis Freeh who gave Joe Biden’s grandkids trust $100,000so he could get business from the government. Clinton fired him ostensibly for misuse of government property; he didn’t report limo and plane rides on taxes. Sessions was disliked by FBI personnel because he pushed hard for DEI before it was called DEI so he had little institutional support. My cousin had a high position in the FBI and he told me and other white guys that if we became agents, we would likely… Read more »
As an aside, Reno was tapped for AG for one reason and one reason only–she was a stone-cold babe…
She could give a dog a bone.
Lies don’t get you very far without there being lots of naive and ingenuous people who believe them. Similar to a bad movie that becomes a blockbuster, or awful music that tops the charts, there has to be a large, uncritical, unthinking, undiscerning audience. This group is a bigger problem than the liars. Politically, women’s suffrage increased their numbers dramatically, since there is no more gullible creature on God’s green earth than the white human female. In other times, norms existed whereby men provided a bulwark to protect women from their gullibility, I believe it went by terms like chivalry… Read more »
Tocqueville spoke of universal sufrage as the bane of democracy. In his words universal suffrage was nothing but a revolutionary instrument, and he was speaking of men only. Women’s sufrage was beyond comprehension.
Democracy is not a god, it is an instument for the most ruthless and cunning. Madison and Hamilton wrote hilarious essays about democracy and meant to put chains on it through Republic. 1789-1861 RIP
I guess this means no more women in politics…
The nations can survive easily a few good women of their own in politics, but they are doomed to degradation, servility, and destruction by the presence of even a single Noahist e.g. David Frum.
Hey man. Cool it with the anti-semitism
Is the FBI reformable? It has been a corrupt organization long before the present regime and increasingly resembles some sort of secret police.
The FBI has always been “political” and, like all bureaucracies, concerned first and foremost with its own institutional self-interest. But in the old days it focused its dirty tricks on genuine threats like communists and black radicals. When the elites turned against normal people, so did the Bureau–and all the other institutions.
Agreed. Maybe they have always lied – but I have never seen it this blatant before. And as for the liars themselves – good lord… they were much better at it than the clowns that dance and caper and taunt us today. David Frum is small potatoes. He is just a muppet with a jewish hand up his arse, reciting his lines. The owners of The Atlantic need to be boiled in oil and the next Inquisition should work its way up from there. You can’t run a country like this. Say what ya want – in China, when they… Read more »
From Tocqueville’s time, Francois Rene de Chateaubriand
There are fits of forgetfulness or deceit which terrify; you open your ears, you rub your eyes, not knowing whether you are awake or asleep. When the imperturbable individual to whom you owe such assertions descends from the rostrum and takes his seat impassively, you follow him with your gaze, suspended as you are, between a kind of astonishment and a sort of admiration; you are unsure whether the man has not received some authority from nature giving him the power to recreate or annihilate the truth.
It’s been interesting to see the left and conservacucks the past couple weeks. They got knocked down from the election, walked around in a daze for a week, but you are starting to see them get off the mat. Thing is, they are just engaging in the same tricks they did in 2015 – the concern trolling (this is especially true of the neocons, National Review, etc.), talking about our institutions, trying to stick a scandal on every one of Trump’s nominees, bringing in traitors and losers (like Scaramucci) to talk about Trump’s mistakes, trying to “Trump proof” the government… Read more »
If Trump were serious about cleaning up the Army, say, he could easily start the ball rolling there, by making mendacity pay and integrity count. He could convene a kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Afghanistan bugout. He could go through the command staff and ask them to explain themselves. If General So-and-So answers “I did X because I thought it was a good idea; this was my reasoning, but it turns out I was wrong,” he’s ok. If he starts hemming and hawing, though, he’s gone. Since most of them have never faced any consequences for lying… Read more »
The president does not need some commission to purge the military leadership. All military officers serve at his pleasure, by his appointment, and he can fire any or all of them for any reason or no reason. There could be a political price to pay, as there was for Truman, but for a one term president that shouldn’t be much of a concern.
I know. But if he wanted to start Making Accountability Great Again, this would be a nice, public way to do it. So much of this stuff starts at the top. Around 1990 or so, the Elite started asking themselves why they bother with things like “telling the truth.” And they didn’t have an answer, so they stopped doing it. Which is why nobody bothers anymore. The people take their cues from the Elite, and if the Elite no longer care, they must be made to care.
1990, About the time being called “An unusually good liar” became a compliment.
“…and he can fire any or all of them for any reason or no reason.”
As Stalin learned, you purge your officer ranks at your own peril.
It’s partly a matter of scale. In a small society or market, dishonesty can more easily have consequences than in a large one. If Joe’s company lied to its customers, most people find out and avoid dealing with it. If Joe changes the name of his company, everyone knows it’s still run by a dishonest person. However, the situation changes in a large society or market. If Joe’s company lies to its customers, most people don’t know who is to blame. To erase the company’s bad reputation, Joe can simply change its name to one that most people won’t recognize… Read more »
There is truth in this. I grew up in a small community, a county of less than 10,000 people with a hub of 500 people in the county seat Everyone knew whom to trust and not trust, everyone knew the reputation of people and their families, a lie was not easily kept going in the public sphere and certainly a person could not start a new life based on a lie. Large cities, atomized individuals, the financialization of everything, the destruction of traditions, religion, and families creates a society easily manipulated and lied to by people whom receive no punishment… Read more »
In Helsinki, a city the size of Baltimore, crime is rare and people leave their bikes unlocked in front of shops. Walking home one night from the pub, I saw a couple babushkas walking home. There is crime, but it is a high trust society because no one wants to be the nail that sticks up. This used to be true in the Nordic countries, still is amongst the natives, but the importation of aliens has destroyed public trust.
Exactly. The “small town” explanation doesn’t cut it. It’s just another form of blank-slate culture BS. Yes, culture matters, so, yes, a small-town culture will have impact on the population to a degree versus a big city, but what matters far, far more is biology.
Also, where do people think culture comes from? Ultimately, biology trumps all unless a foreign culture is imposed on a people with ruthless force.
There is a bit of both in this. It is very hard to be dishonest in a small community, so cities attract the dishonest, but a city of white people will always be far less dishonest than a city of Africans.
You definitely have selection bias, even among whites. But normies are so susceptible to the culture argument that it needs to be slapped down fast and hard.
“ Ultimately, biology trumps all unless a foreign culture is imposed on a people with ruthless force.”
It’s problem though, to try to boil it all down to biology. The same Danes who today leave their bikes unlocked in another era were Vikings, who made dangerous long sea trips to steal stuff. Obviously the ideas and culture running through our heads capture us as much as our biology. Both nature and nurture matter.
I guess that’s why I said, “Yes, culture matters . . .”
Culture is important, but biology is more important and the part of the equation that can’t be changed – at least not in a time frame that matters. I suppose if we have 1,000 years and were willing to do what it takes, that we could changes the genetics of American blacks, though 200 years of imposing our culture on them didn’t change their genetics much.
“Culture is important, but biology is more important”
This is other emphasis in what feels like a “toe-ma-toe, toe-mah-toe” type discussion. Biology is literally God’s problem. I agree we can’t fix it, because we can’t. If God wanted to make everyone European, He would have done that.
With real borders and less visions of world peace, etc the problems of other people aren’t our problems. Then we can work on what we can control and make an environment where Europeans thrive. And blacks can figure that out for themselves, etc.
Sort of. Before they became credential mills, licensing boards and colleges and guilds and professional associations filled that role. You knew that if a potential hire had a degree from a certain school, that school could be counted on to have trained him well. Only the best students went there, and were willing to pay a premium to become one of the best in the field. UL, Consumers Union, Better Business Bureau, Moody’s, Fitch, &c. served a similar purpose, but all have suffered to some extent by grifters and guilt by association. And compounded by a plethora of regulations like… Read more »
This is a theory I’ve also been working on and impacts the dating/marriage/birth rates as well. Simply put: urbanization inevitably leads to atomization and anonymization, which directly enable and incentivize anti-social behavior. Replacing the population with already low-trust people would accelerate this.
You make a good point. We have been in decline for a kong time.
The city makes other people a problem. They’re experienced as traffic, lines, impediments. There are a few you know and some who appear to be like you—you’d like them to recognize you—but there are a million others, never individuated, never doing anything but being in the way. Somebody broke in your apartment and took your $10,000 bike, your only valuable thing, the machine that makes your life work. Who did it? Somebody. The cops don’t care to know. If they knew they wouldn’t tell you. They do know. To them, the problem is you. The waiting list for an apartment… Read more »
To look at it another way, if every corporation in a market economy lies (and they do), how does one punish the specific liar? You can’t really punish Nike by refusing to buy their shoes and transferring your patronage to Addidas, Converse and New Balance because they lie just as shamelessly and in identical ways. You’re sticking it to Baal and granting a benison to Moloch.
A plausible theory of the cause of the European “high trust” bubble (from Renaissance to moon landing, approximately): centuries of killing criminals.
It’s a testable theory.
Janet Reno was the Attorney General, Sessions was replaced by some interim person I think then Louis J. Freeh, a total political animal who led the charge against conservatives as militia members and violent threats. Reno was the one who gave the orders to assault the compound of the Branch Davidians even though there were sizeable amount of kids under 12 there who were by any measurement helpless innocents deserving of protection. The excuse? Agents were “tired” after the stand-off (real reason it made the FBI look bad). Lies however are innate to the system, based as it is on… Read more »
Fun fact: after it became undeniable Freeh and Reno essentially massacred men, women and children in cold blood, they attended a sensitivity session and all was deemed good. Just a nice reminder of how bad things have been for how long.
With Reno it’s a legitimate question whether it was incompetence or malevolence. In her case I lean more to the former. With Freeh, definitely the latter.
Reno was a poorly closeted lesbian, and a long time political player. Which meant that politics was rotten (it did not filter her out) for a very long time. Given that she had a thirty year career as a prosecutor, this meant that by 1993 politics had been rotten at least as far back as the Kennedy Administration. Now think of what President AOC, or Stacey Abrams can accomplish. The fundamental process of political machines should be to eliminate upcoming threats of either malevolence or incompetence (both are threats to the machine as these people move up) and promote those… Read more »
It’s plausible that she was promoted primarily because she was a lesbian. The next D administration that came after the Clintons certainly did plenty of that. Which is a separate question from why the people of Dade County elected her 5 times.
What a scumbag. He and his fellows are all pretending the weaponization of the law never happened. The shameless lying and hypocrisy is breathtaking to behold. They are all afraid Trump will do what they’ve been doing for the last 4 years.
The problem we always run into is the Monty Python “Argument Clinic” problem: ”That’s a lie!” ”No it isn’t!” <repeat> There are simply too many people at this point who not only accept liars like Frum, but applaud them. But I have adopted a line of questioning that seems to help. People now realize they were lied to about COVID, the vaccines, the various ongoing wars, and recently, Hunter’s pardon. The line of questioning, “OK, so what ELSE are they lying to you about?” You have to pick lies that are somewhat apolitical at this point. Frum’s FBI lie isn’t… Read more »
This problem is actually worse than just politics. You cannot do engineering without the necessity of recognizing reality. No building or bridge can remain standing based upon narrative or persuasion. And yet, sadly, the creep of manufactured unreality is now infecting the hard sciences and medicine. Today, we are building evermore sophisticated iPhones, but our roads must be rebuilt every 10 years because no one in government wants to build a road like the Romans did. We cannot survive a slow remedy.
Socrates was executed because he consorted w/ the Thirty, not for his argumentation. The accusers lied about it because political prosecutions of this sort were illegal in Athens.
“Tutus Oates”. Thanks for that rabbit hole. No, seriously, I didn’t have a lot of work to get done in the last hour, or deadlines to meet before half the world takes off for Christmas. FYI, using a hyperlink just enables shiftless behavior.
Just a reminder, although many, if not most of the comment section knows this, David Frum was the author of the “Unpatriotic Conservatives” cover story in National Review. It was a condemnation of the sensible pundits who opposed the Iraq War. Never forget.
Physical removal is not an option?
What that means for the reform minded is that for reform to work, Western societies must become hostile to people like David Frum. Information technology is extremely hostile to liars, no? There is widespread panic over the availability of truth or rough approximations thereof via new media. Schlomo can pay Liars of Color to put on prevaricating minstrel shows, for example, but the value of such ludicrous performances diminishes daily. The efforts to plug non-stop information that counters official lies have fallen short for the most part and exposed people and places like Starmer’s Britain as totalitarian shitholes. Only a… Read more »
“successful censorship has proven futile.”
Magatards are gonna be so surprised by Trump’s admin.
JD Vance and his eyeliner are not going to save you…
I assume that’s an insult if you squint hard enough and employ an Ouija Board, but damned if I follow it.
Titus seems to have been quite the fellow. He would have thrived today as a media “influencer.”
He was the Nick Fuentes of his age!
Over at the Treehouse, a suggestion was made for Trump Day 1: Declassify everything. Only the President has that power…except, don’t hand it to the media. Instead, put it on Truth Social and X. (I’m hoping that’s what the decrepit Truth Social was made for.) Expose all the players, the plotters, and the schemes. The internet has thousands of internet sleuths as volunteers waiting for the call-up. Rather than be handed another tedious tangle of lies, the million truths would be broadcast by the people themselves. I see it as much more. A parallel society needs a kernel, a core… Read more »
Frum’s face is further proof of Physiognomy. Does it look like the truth comes out of that face?
Just for accuracy’s sake, Sessions was dismissed and replaced by Louis Freeh by Clinton. Janet Reno was AG.
Both Fifties and current culture were ‘democracies’. But Fifties culture largely embraced probity and trust because it was masculine and — at popular level — Christian. Whatever they were doing in N.Y. and goddess Columbia’s District, we weren’t into it out in the neighborhoods. Christianity, unlike e.g., Islam, places an emphasis so high on honesty and truth that its very King, Christ, is the source and embodiment of Truth, with a capital T. Christian parents, real Christian parents, punish lying consistently, and do does the culture they populate. Likewise, masculine societies are relatively high in honesty and trust, as personal… Read more »
[…] ZMan does a deep dive. […]
It is strange but true that some people lie even when the truth serves their purpose. But of course some people just hate humans in general. The worst part is not human nature but that technology places far too much power in the hands of humans and therefore also in the hands of such miscreants. Will mankind see the dawn of the 22nd century? Odds are lower than they seem
The thing about lying is that it is mainly done by those in weak positions, especially by children and women. Democratic society makes us more like kids and bitches as a whole — immature, bratty, vain, nasty, gossipy. It’s a vicious circle down to television’s The View.
— Greg (my blog: http://www.dark.sport.blog)
Greg, you really should stab yourself in the neck with a rusty knife. It would make the world a better place.
Stop shilling your shitty blog.