The final show of the year is a double album set. That means two hours of the dulcet sound of my voice jumping through twenty topics. There were a lot of good questions this time, so rather than try to figure out which ones were the best, I decided to do a two hour show and cover them all. There were some left out only because they were duplicates or not appropriate for a family show.
A few will become full shows in the new year. While I was talking about Strauss it occurred to me that it would make for a good trio of shows. One hour on Strauss, one hour on the neocons and one hour on Claremont. All three are tangled up together and all three are relevant to the next administration. There are more than a few people from the Jaffa cult in the Trump team.
Another thing that occurred to me while doing the show is a good feature of the new site would be a way to submit show ideas and questions/topics for these multi-topic shows that people seem to like. Over the holidays I am hoping to make some progress on the new site and maybe have it done next month. If anyone has ideas feel free to post them up in the comments
Otherwise, this is the final show of the year, other than the green door show. There will be a Sunday show and maybe some video experiments. That is another project on the drawing board. I did some experiments from the back of the truck the other day, so I might test those out over the holiday break. On the other hand, if they are terrible, I might save myself the trouble and scrap the idea.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- Intro
- Liberalism
- Black Pilled
- Leo Strauss
- Dissident Art
- Our Bolsheviks
- Juvenile Politics
- AI
- Cunning & Evil
- Music
- Marriage & Family
- Civilizationalism
- Jewish Lobby & Christian
- Profilicity
- South Asians
- Populism Versus Dissident Right
- The Fuentes Business
- Video & Writing
- Christianity & Liberalism
- Israel & Jews
- Be Not Afraid
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Merry Christmas to Zman and to all on this side of the Great Divide. This side will prevail because reality will not be mocked, but probably not in my lifetime.
Merry Christmas Brother hope you are doing well…
I think I will actually try to listen to this, off and on, over the weekend – sounds quite interesting. Wishing a very Merry Christmas to all here. Spent several hours yesterday raking leaves (bought a gas blower but it’s still in its box in the garage) and laboriously carrying firewood up the hill and stairs to the rack on the porch (bought a wheeled caddy but that, too, is still in its box). Now I’m enjoying the wood stove and figuring out how many days to defrost the Christmas rib roast. The world is a woke mess, but up… Read more »
Merry Christmas to you as well Sister…
Thank you. Hope you and your family have a blessed Christmas.
Yeah, it’s good; especially the two hour end-of-year show was nice touch.
@3g –
Outstanding. I’m stuck in a newly diversified suburb, but not for long… I’m blessed with like-minded friends and family, and an amazing wife, so things aren’t too bad. Merry Christmas.
Hang in there – it’s good that you have a solid network of friends and family. Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to Z and all. I once referred to myself as a constitutional conservative or classic liberal, but I’ve adopted the dissident right label as a shorthand for my views since I began reading your essays (it was a long time before I ever listened to the podcasts, now I hear your voice when I read you). None of us are fans of the current order, so the dissident banner could be quite broad. I am a Southerner who enjoys telling conservatives that the Constitution died in 1865 and that their civic nationalism betrays their own people. My perfect… Read more »
I like the way you think. Merry Christms.
I had a banana seat Stingray with a 5” gear shift mounted on the bar that connected the seat riser to the handle bars. A 5 speed.
They didn’t really think through the mechanics of inertia when a boy had to stop fast.
Merry Christmas to all the members and posters . This is my first stop in the morning, and the comments are second to none.
I had that same bike until it was stolen. First encounter with diversity broke a little boy’s heart.
Merry Christmas to the Zman and all commenters! I found the music question and some of the discussion around it interesting. My contention is that mass popular culture is almost completely dead, having been killed by the perpetually offended Wokesters. The stagnation began appearing in the musical arena in the 2000s and 2010s. I went and looked at Rolling Stone‘s list of, “100 Best Songs,” for each decade. Between the two lists there are four, maybe five songs that people still listen to or get played on the radio today. Anecdotally, I was just at a good-sized ski area. All… Read more »
I hate going to the grocery store in my diversity-infested area. I find that when I go in the very early morning after they open (6AM), there is (white) American music playing (that you will NEVER hear in afternoons and evenings), and a MUCH higher percentage of white people shopping and working (getting up early to get the hard part of the day’s work done->white).
Like many whites, I suspect, I drive somewhat out of my way to shop at the whiter grocery stores. For obvious reasons.
I tuned out of pop music and pop culture in general in March, 1992 at the ripe old age of 24. It was at that point that there was no longer any pop music I had the remotest interest in purchasing on CD. Prior to that point, every time I got paid I made a beeline to the Sound Warehouse to snag some new record/CD.
I’m just curious, but what in that month triggered this change? Was it personal reasons or was it something in the cultural zeitgeist? At the very least, in March, 1992 popular music was enjoying something of a renaissance.
It was just an accumulation of indifference on my part. For several months my interest in current pop was on the wane, and the threshold of total ennui was broken in that month.
Was it grunge that put you off? The “I’m a suicidal loser” attitude of grunge turned off a lot of rockers. My brother observed that the young guys who still wanted masculine swagger in their music had no other option but rap, which he couldn’t stomach.
In the mid 80s, most metal sacrificed melody for exhilarating aggression, following Metallica. Many loved melody more so rejected the trade.
Me, I still loved Metallica and Alice in Chains, in spite of the drawbacks.
I quit at Rap/Nu Metal. Not going to listen to wiggers, even if I couldn’t explain why.
Points taken, but the Seattle sound was still predicated on testosterone. That’s why the chicks had to invent the Lillith Faire scene a couple years later, because they didn’t want to hear Layne Staley or Chris Cornell scream.
On another subject, I was at Lollapalooza ’92 (it was a very male scene) and when Pearl Jam came out early in the day and broke into “Alive” it was the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing a Gen-X “moment”. That must have been what those dirty hippies at Yasgur’s farm felt. For a brief moment, the world belonged to us.
Yeah, Pearl Jam was never as dark as many of the other bands. Eddie was a SoCal surfer after all. “Alive” is especially an outlier because, although it begins with a story of pain, it ends with rising above it. I can imagine how powerful that moment you described was.
As long as we are swapping concert stories, I used to see Alice before they were signed, when they were more of a hard rock band with punk energy. No one knew Jerry could write great songs then, probably not even Jerry.
Not grunge in particular. I just felt all of it had come to suck.
Ah yes, Ostei. Sound Warehouse. In my ’70s and ’80s town, the cavernous (and in a later incarnation on the same street, cozy) scene of some of my best memories. Jack Jones, George Strait, Charley Pride, and Wang Chung all went home with me at one time or another.
I’ve been listening to some Jack Jones Christmas music lately, SAGEB. Good heavens what pipes that man had. Passed away only recently, God bless him.
Check out his appearances on Jerry Lewis telethons on YouTube, Ostei. He owns The American Songbook.
By 1992 I was in grad school and had a four-year old and had recognized that pop culture was stupidity at best, and pure degenerate filth at worst, so yeah, I was done with it by then, too. Songs about deviant sex and drug use aren’t the kind of thing you want to expose a child to. Reading Bloom’s Plato-influenced critique of pop culture in The Closing of the American Mind and Socrates’ discussion of the censorship of music in The Republic had really opened my eyes, too. Right around that time I started listening to a lot more country… Read more »
I never even thought Madonna was all that pretty.
Pop music has always sucked. Except for the late 1960s to late 1970s. Only in that decade could both Yes and Chuck Mangione be popular. Starting in the 1980s, music producers started “creating” acts instead of “finding” them. But guitar-based bands were still popular, and it was difficult to astroturf a guitar band, since the best groups usually had practiced together for 5+ years. I think that’s why vocalists and rappers are the pop acts now…they are singular and respond to money and fame better than a group of dudes who may or may not be in it “for the… Read more »
Pop music has always sucked. Except for the late 1960s to late 1970s. Only in that decade could both Yes and Chuck Mangione be popular. Ok boomer… I’m (obviously) FAR younger than you, and even I would say 50s music also has some great pop acts and ushered in Rock & Roll for those 60s and 70s Boomer era musicians you so adore. The 80s had their own weird “retro future” style, and the 90s killed the glam hair bands and brought us grunge, alternative, etc. The early 00s is when the decline started though we did get Nu-Metal and… Read more »
I’m not a Boomer though. Drawing from the depths of my intellect, my refined taste, and my lauded dispassion, I can without reservation declare that the years 1969 to 1979 were in fact the best years of popular music. I’m not saying that it was all awesome, but the scale and scope of 1970s music beats any decade. Not even just guitar shit: that decade had the best soul music, the best dance music, the best country music, the best jazz music, the best soundtracks, and the best avant-garde music as well. Maybe it was the just drugs and filthy… Read more »
I neither agree nor disagree with you, but your position is certainly defensible.
Fifties thru Seventies, best popular music the world’s ever seen.
The interesting popular music of the 20th century Anglosphere was a highly unusual and unlikely phenomenon found nowhere else in the world (except in pastiche) that died to corporate homogenization, to managerialism and finance—which is what “wokeness” is. The strange electrical folk music(s) of an extreme outlier technological civilization took over the world. It can’t happen again. It’s not allowed and we’re not smart enough anymore. The guy who named the civilizational enemy “globohomo” got it exactly right. That’s why neither the left nor conservatives ever adopted the term. It rightly accuses them both. They do like “global American empire,”… Read more »
To me another factor complicating things was/is the existence of gatekeeping mechanisms and institutions. In the XX century you needed capital to create a cultural product of high quality and promote it. It is notorious how every artist is a plant one way or another, even original talent needed the support of a don that financed the production. These combines with who controls the banking to create an effective censoring machine. On the other side there is infinite money for debauchery and art that demoralizes the population. The great opportunity of today is how low is the cost to produce… Read more »
There was a time when “some” of the music industry execs cared (at least a little) about promoting quality art. It’s been a long time. Happened to coincide with the period Marko was talking about.
Same with film I hear. Lots of daring stuff in the 70s, then commercial arts got shy for whatever reason and haven’t recovered other than indie-driven outburst in the 90s.
Heaven’s Gate specifically, along with a few other box office bombs about that same time, ended the auteur era of filmmaking, and ushered in an era of greater studio control instead of director control.
Odd how this subject came up. The two girls who run the counter at our local bakery were talking about this this morning. Both are in their early twenties, one sings, the other is learning guitar. The singer said that she will not listen to any music from later than 1993. The guitarist echoed her sentiments, saying that her favorite guitar music is from the bands of the 1970’s. I told her to check out Steve Howe’s “Sketches in the sun” and she punched it up on her phone. After watching it for around thirty seconds, she said, “Oh yeah,… Read more »
There are some green shoots. Some young people, when confronted by the yawning chasm in merit between music produced in 2024 and that made in 1984, strongly prefer the former. It is just possible that there is some thermocline below which culture cannot sink and still retain a sentient audience. And AINO’s “culture” has not only breached that barrier, but has plunged into the briny deep beneath it.
There need to be, if not some new instruments, then at least some new instruments brought to the fore. Pretty much everything that can be done with guitar/bass/drums has been. Especially insofar as it’s accessible to the masses.
One of your pet theses.
Naw, the only thing that’s missing to is the ability to write great songs and sing with passionate phrasing without autotune.
My twenty-something son loves ’80s music and music videos. The beautiful women of that era who populate said time capsules don’t exactly drive him away. Difficult to find a view like that these days. MAGA – Make America Gorgeous Again.
My twenty-something son (and daughter to a lesser extent) also loves music from the 80s as well as the 60s, 70s, 90s, 00s. It’s really not the era for him, it’s the quality of the music. There was more of it then compared to now. One of his favorite albums is Brian Eno’s “Another Green World,” from the mid-70s, which he thinks sounds timeless. For him all of the music from those eras aren’t old, but new and waiting to be discovered.
How did your son discover Eno? That is some serious obscurity. Phil Collins demonstrates what a unique drummer he is on that album. Eno shows what visionary music a non-musician can create.
Tell your son that I especially love “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Golden Hours.” Robert Fripp’s guitar work is gorgeous on both!
I just finished watching the 2 hour Collins interview that was released this week by Drumeo. It’s absolutely heart-breaking to see his physical state but it was quite a good video as far as these things go. When you take a step back and realize how many acts Collins was involved with, on top of the gorillion records he sold as part of Genesis and his solo career, it’s absolutely mind-boggling.
I think he discovered Eno going through my old vinyl records. I can’t remember, maybe he liked the artwork. I’ll let him know you love those songs. He does as well, especially St. Elmo’s Fire and the song The Big Ship. The album is a masterpiece.
Yes, Phil Collins shines on that album, as he always does on drums. It’s a remarkable story how he became a singer, and then turned into an international superstar, when really he’s first and foremost a drummer.
The persistence of ’80s popular music and ’80s nights based around that music is explained by a very simple fact.
That fact is that ’80s music is FUN. Even the ’80s songs that tackle more serious topics like problematic relationships still sound very bright and lively while they are underpinned by snappy basslines.
You’re exactly right, TWGH. The videos gave them another dimension. And ’80s tunes were actual MUSIC. I’m thinking, for example, of the improbably named Spandau Ballet. Also, Survivor and all those great Jim Peterik songs.
The 70s were smooth and slick (Steely Dan) and the 80s were eccentric and manic (Talking Heads). I love them both.
“strongly prefer the latter” :rolleyes:
A very blessed and Merry Christmas to you all, by the way!
Steve, we may have our disagreements, but it is a nice surprise that we both love the music of Steve Howe. “Clap” and “Mood for a Day” are still a struggle for me to play.
Merry Christmas.
(Do you have any idea why the singer set 1993 as her cut-off year?)
Merry Christmas to all. We all give each other the gift of sanity in an insane world.
Yes, Merry Christmas to all. Let’s hope it’s not the last one. Here’s a question for a future show.
Why mysterious drones patrolling NJ now? Perhaps a false-flag in the works just in time to compromise the Jan 6th election certification vote. Romania cancelled its recent election of a populist president. A Georgian stooge president is defeated and refuses to leave office. Macron and Scholz are dead men walking but remain in power. Can it happen here?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I prefer the speculation that such activity can only be at the behest of the military, and further the reason is anti-terrorism—as in searching for radioactive material. Hence the silence wrt who/what of the drones. All other reasons fail one or more logic tests.
Can’t remember the last time a media hysteria signified any real thing. So I’d guess people heard about a “drone scare” on TV—perhaps based on a newsworthy sighting, but probably not—and started flying their neglected drones around, perpetuating the story.
That’s how the 2016 clown terror worked. “Oh right, I have a clown suit…”
That too preceded a Trump inauguration.
Ha, thanks, Evil Clown Panic had been memoryholed.
I suppose we can expect a lot of bizarre fuckery from all directions until Jan 20. I’m sure there are still Lefties and Deep State swamp monsters who will try some pretty desperate stuff in hopes of somehow preventing Trump from being sworn in. There are plenty of hysterical pussyhatters (of both sexes) who not-so-secretly wish the US or one of its puppet states to kick off WWIII before then because they don’t want to live in a world where OMB is President. Governor Nuisance in CA is already trying to drum up a new scamdemic by declaring a state… Read more »
9/11 and Pearl Harbor hit the American public like bolts from the blue. Why would the regime telegraph a false flag by flying a bunch of drones around first?
*raises hand* Oh, teacher, I know this one! Can I try to answer? “Sorry American Goyim Grillers! We could not tell you because it was SUPER SECRET but yes, we WERE searching for a loose WMD all those weeks with sniffer drones. Now that Newark, NJ and the 5 mile radius around it (we should be so lucky!) has been turned to radioactive glass we can finally tell you we TRIED to prevent this. The (Russians, Iranians, insert enemy here) have been planning this because they hate us for our brainless goy cattle freedoms! I know everyone is angry but… Read more »
Nope. Then they’d have to take the blame for not warning anybody. Wouldn’t put themselves in that position.
Unlikely. This assumes a unity among factions that doesn’t exist outside of the fever swamp and its attendant derangement. The governors wouldn’t survive a failure to warn even if they agree with the Administration on about everything else; self-interest is paramount even in police states. There is some reason for the attempt to gin up panic but that’s not it. In fact, there seems to be some disappointment that people aren’t sufficiently panicking.
Merry Christmas to you also Brother…
Some of these drones are reportedly “Pickup truck sized.”
But somehow, no clear videos. In a world where you can’t pick your nose or scratch your [redacted] wihout it going up on social media.
Weird.
Probably an Operation Northwoods-style false flag that can be blamed on the Iranians as a pretext to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf. A drone laden with explosives can hit some target, cause a huge media event, and the public would have no way of knowing if it had originated from and been controlled by Langley, LOL. The “conservative” retards will get into high dudgeon about “them raghead turr-rists attackin’ ‘Murican soil” and Linsey Graham will bark for war as sure as a trained seal in the circus will bark for a fish. You cannot possibly tell me with a straight… Read more »
Thank you for a great year of thought provoking essays and audio streams Z-Man.
Thank you for a great year of thought provoking comments and musings. They edify me and it is also good to not feel alone. We are legion, and that will become apparent some day.
Merry Christmas Z-Man. Merry Christmas Z-Blog commenters, fellow Americans and men and women of the Occident.
Merry Christmas to you as well Brother hope you have a great time…
Good grief, here I thought the Zman was getting tired. It must be all that dreadfully clean living…I guess my strategy of max overtime on the wages of sin is maybe not the brightest idea?
Anyhoo, a Merry Christmas to all and best for the New Year.
Maybe God is sending not one, but two asteroids! Just to be sure.
‘Maybe God is sending not one, but two asteroids! Just to be sure.’
You have a beautiful mind.
Spot on re the Right’s need for artists. I actually think this could explode since the Left has become so drab and stultified. It is happening now around the edges, actually, but the leftwing chokehold on distribution and exhibition has slowed its flourishing. Still, that likely cannot hold. I agree the United States has eerie similarities to the former USSR, but in all truth it is still not quite as bad, at least yet, in America. For an example, I guess an analogy can be drawn between the largely successful campaign against translating into English Solzhenitsyn’s TWO HUNDRED YEARS TOGETHER… Read more »
Happy Christmas to you, and all of the commenters here, from Londonistan.
May next year bring interesting times.
Merry Christmas to you, too. Alas, all I foresee for the immediate future are “interesting” times.
If I had the artistic talent to do it, I’d paint pictures of 7-11s and Targets being looted and set on fire by the fellas. Title it like, A Day in the Hood or Da’Quan’s First Looting. Or maybe a Waffle House with a huge fight going on inside and maybe a few windows broke. Or maybe a 300 pound African American woman twerking on top of a city bus. There is just so much material.
Kunstler does it with McDonald’s and his happy motoring meme.
I’m just starting the show and will listen to it on and off throughout the day as a Christmas present in between my work. Thank you and Merry Christmas!
Sorry about this clownshow but many may have missed it. Some dude last night tried to (reportedly) kill Nick Fuentes. According to police, the dude committed a triple homicide, somewhere else in IL, then tried to gain entry to Fuentes home with a pistol, crossbow, and “incendiary devices” and fled into a neighbor’s yard when confronted by police killing two of the neighbors dogs. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nick-fuentes-survives-apparent-assassination-attempt-after-doxxing-suspect-shot-dead Zero Hedge Link above. Laura Loomer is reporting that Milo Yianappolis or however you spell his name, who is Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “intern” doxxed Fuentes and offered “bounties” on Fuentes. So that old Jewish lady… Read more »
One thing that (((David Samuels))) glosses over in that piece is that there was no shortage at all of not just willing, but eager participants in the “permission structure machine.” Which no doubt included him for a time. It probably feels better for him to blame it all on the top figure or two in the hierarchy. There’s a lot of other omissions. Reads like a limited hangout. He definitely wants the reader to reach certain conclusions and blame certain people.
The Pogues wrote the greatest Christmas song. Thanks for the reminder.
Well, that’s 4:02 I’ll never get back, but I listened all the way through so I won’t have to again.
Great show, Z. And among other great topics, two salient points; don’t be afraid to fail and don’t be afraid to ask for advice. A very Merry Christmas and a (hopefully) happy new year to Z and all the awesome commenters here! This site is an automatic go to every single day. Many thanks to all.
G Gordon Liddy’s radio show was terrific. He not only reviewed the news in detail, which I loved, but covered new books of interest and I read several of them. He turned me on to Silent Coup, for example, which goes down the Watergate rabbit-hole.
G. Gordon Liddy’s “Stacked and Packed” (Babes posing with guns) was from another era.
Good stuff.
“Vigorous and Potent”
I remember fearing sharp cheddar cheese because I thought it would cut up my mouth.
To The Zman: Thank you for the work you put into your site. There’s a lot of content out there; yours is my go-to on a daily basis.
(shame on those who don’t $upport it!)
To the commenters here: It’s an odd thing; after years, you recognize “the regulars”. Thank you for keeping it civil. It’s a good thing to know there are like minded people in the world.
Merry Christmas all here.
Video…you described yourself looking as “Rasputin with a mohawk”. Could work.
Thanks for going on Jaffa patrol, Z. Seems that all great Neptune’s ocean cannot cleanse us of this scourge. And now even Zeus 2024 continues to enlist its presence.
Merry Christmas to all.
Shane, gone now just over a year, is said to have said to Sam, gone thirty-five now in two days, who repurposed it:
“Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”
Merry Christmas to all, especially ZMan! I’ll miss your Friday program, but am consoled that you are getting some well deserved time off, hope you get some socializing in along with the solitude. God bless you all.
Great show! Regarding our local musician’s post about creative endeavors, I’m a sci-fi writer myself. Not going to spam you guys, but does anyone have any suggestions about platforms for promotion to this side of the Divide? Besides the usual suspects, that is.
I’d be interested in this as well. I’d like to be able advertise my business to people in Our Thing but in a way that isn’t too expensive and doesn’t preclude getting normie business either.
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