The Ghost Of The People’s Party

Note #3: Since we are getting signs of spring, it means it will not be long before it is hot, which means t-shirt weather. Just in time for t-shirt season, we have a new shirt for The Occidental Club, which you can buy here.


Most of the ideas that shaped 20th century America boiled up during the 19th century in the aftermath of the Civil War. Some arrived from the Old World before and during the war, things like nationalism and socialism, but most were homegrown ideas that arose out of American Protestantism and the struggle with secularization. Interestingly, the Progressive ideology that emerged was sparked by the populist forces at the time and is now threatened by the same populist forces.

The 19th century was a wild time in America. Prior to the Civil War, it became increasingly clear to the industrializing North that the Constitutional framework was not working for them. The Hartford Conventions, largely erased from the history books now, were a series of conferences in the North to debate leaving the Union. This process was short-circuited by the War of 1812, but the sentiment merely found a new home in abolitionism and finally flowered in the Civil War.

The post-Civil War period was no less tumultuous. Reconstruction was a failure, but a foreshadowing of what would be a feature of the progressive ideology. That is the belief that societies can be reordered in such a way that the people in those societies change how they think about themselves, their neighbors, and the state. The abolitionist fanatics did not abandon these beliefs after the failure of reconstruction. They continued to refine this belief as progressivism flowered in the 20th century.

Of course, progressivism itself is a 19th century phenomenon. It emerged out of American Protestantism as a belief that human society can only advance through relentless social reform. The same people who were sure they could reinvent society to accommodate the freed slaves as equals were now sure they could use the lessons from industrialization to reorder America and the world. Religious social reform became a secular political movement.

The engine that made progressivism possible was populism, which was not unique to America or even unique to the 19th century, but if you look at the populist movements of the 19th century, you see many of the features of what would later be the progressive movement and then progressivism. The populists were not angry mobs assembled outside of the homes of the rich, demanding redress of their grievances. They had an agenda that was mostly crafted by elites in waiting.

For example, the Ocala Demands were a platform of economic and political reforms that became the basis of the People’s Party. It was “produced” by the various farmer’s alliances that had sprung up as mutual aid societies following the Civil War. These groups were brought together in the Marion Opera House in Ocala, Florida, where they approved this list of demands. This was formally called the Ocala Demands and was adopted by the People’s Party.

When you read the demands, the first thing that is clear is that they were not written by a collection of dirt farmers in the South. It was not the work of the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union either. That was a real group that participated in the Ocala convention, along with the Southern Farmers’ Alliance. These were not people debating the abolishment of the futures markets, the regulation of the money supply or the imposition of a graduated income tax.

The platform was the work of intellectuals and reformers who saw an opportunity to ride the wave of populism to power and influence. They saw a grassroots movement of disaffected farmers as a vehicle for building a coalition in support of their reform ideas, so they attached themselves to it. It is not an accident that the populist agenda looked a lot like the progressive agenda that would emerge in the 20th century. Progressivism would not have been possible without populism.

It is why it is fair to wonder if what we are seeing and have been seeing for the last few decades is the death of the last remaining ideology, progressivism. Populism seems to be an end of cycle phenomenon. It is, after all, a disorganized revolt against the current order, which has reached its maturity and is entering decline. What follows a populist uprising is either a replacement of the old order, a reform that replaces the old elite or a reform effort by the elites themselves.

The assault on the Blob by the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk, is clearly an assault on the old managerial order. Elon Musk is the face of the new technological elite, so it is fitting that he is the point man for this task. Managerialism is the traveling partner of ideology. It was a feature of both fascism and communism. Its looming demise at the hands of the Trump administration, which was powered by a populist uprising against it, fits the historical pattern.

Progressivism has had a long run, but for most of the 20th century it served as a bulwark against fascism and then communism. Its social reforms stopped making any sense by the latter half of the 20th century and either disappeared from the agenda entirely or morphed into bizarre sexual fetishes. Its main reason to exist was to fight communism, but once communism was gone, it was left without a devil, so it has gone insane over the last decades in search of Old Scratch.

The populism that brought Trump to the White House in 2016, sustained him in his wilderness years and then returned him the White House was driven by the excesses and insanity of progressives. Populism is usually framed as the people versus elites, but in this case, it was normal people versus crazy people. The best way to describe the first weeks of the Trump administration is the return of normalcy, unless you are a member of the hive we call the left.

In the fullness of time, what this period may be known for is the death of the last ideology, knocked off by the same forces that spawned it. American populism has always been a check on the excesses of the elite, not as a physical or even political force, but as a cultural force. Ideology is always about changing culture, so it is ironic that the last ideology will be vanquished by a cultural phenomenon. The ghost of the People’s Party has finally called progressivism home.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


Subscribe
Notify of
guest
114 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bruno the Arrogant
Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

I wish I shared your confidence that we’ve finally seen the end of progressivism, but I doubt it. There will be progressives as long as there are perverts, parasites and spiteful mutants, and we’ve got a lot of them. And sadly, they aren’t moving to Canada as promised.

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

Watch Trump’s speech to congress this evening. There will be interruptions. Progressivism is definitely not dead.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Marko
1 day ago

Perhaps at some point we should draw a distinction between progressivism and the childish narcissism it has either spawned or enabled. All ideologies, sooner or later, to some degree or another, get skinsuited by powerful interests with their own agendas. However, progressivism was also skinsuited by degenerates with no agenda other than their own depravity. Which lately has become a stand in for “freedom.” Throwing tantrums is part of that schtick, but it’s not really “progressive.”

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

I’m not sure Progressivism (or, as I prefer to call it, Progressive Liberalism) was ever not shouty and narcissistic. There have been sober center-left Liberal types like Mike Gravel and Tulsi Gabbard, and old class warriors like Tony Benn, but when I think of “progressive” I think of those ugly women in the early 20th century who tried to take our alcohol away.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Marko
1 day ago

Modern hair dyes, piercing guns, junk food, and electric trimmers have given those women new ways to express their inner ugliness outwardly. In a way it’s better now because you won’t mistake them for human beings.

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Pozymandias
20 hours ago

It’s a terrible terrible tragedy, what’s happening to those poor spiritually barren children.

Every single one of them is a soul lost to the Father of Lies.

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

Very interesting observation: progressivism + “mental un-wellness”* = ?

(*and make no mistake: hypermedia “fans the flames”)

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
20 hours ago

Jeffrey Zoar: “childish narcissism… Throwing tantrums…“ The Frankfurt School certainly knew what it was doing when it ripped the lid off of Pandora’s Box, via the “Feminism” psy-op. For at-risk personalities, apparently Cluster-B is one hell of a thrilling ride. I don’t see how we lock up Cluster-B back into Pandora’s Box without having to suffer through something akin to a literal thermonukular war. I’m at the point now where the horror of Cluster-B is dominating an yuge percentage of my daytime musing and a disturbingly large portion of my nighttime dreams. We either “spay” Cluster-B, or it’s gonna “neuter”… Read more »

NoName
NoName
Reply to  NoName
20 hours ago

That’s what the GOP never understood [or else was paid, under the table, to pretend that it never understood]:

That Culture is way the hell UPSTREAM from any possible Politicks.

That if you lose your Culture, your people vanish into extinction.

Hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Marko
16 hours ago

If the high water mark of Progressivism tonight is a few screamers, I’d say they’re in big trouble.

Epaminondas
Member
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

As long as the JQ is alive and well, we’ll continue to have Progressivism in some form or other. It’s a sad, but necessary comment on the way these maniacs think. Most of us can’t/won’t go where this sort of thinking goes. “Perverts, parasites and spiteful mutants” will always be among us, but we cannot allow the Usual Suspects to enlist them. That means shoving these PPSMs back into the closet and locking the door so they can never again be used as political weapons.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Epaminondas
1 day ago

Modern radicals have just modified Marxism a bit. Marx thought of the proletariat as the revolutionary class. Today’s Left is much more interested in mobilizing what he would have called the lumpenproletariat. Petty criminals, the mentally ill, sexual deviants, unmarriageable women, illegal aliens, and the hordes of young stupid people you find around every college today who would never have been admitted until the last 30 years or so; these people are the low grade fuel the modern Left has evolved a way to burn in its demonic engine. Think about the people Kyle Rittenhouse shot. Every one of them… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

Even if it were dead, we have 10s of millions of foreigners in the country. It is simply not the same place, because it’s not the same people. Unless and until they are physically removed, at least most of them, we will never be the same country again.

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 day ago

We’re NEVER going to be “the same country again.” Such notions have to be put aside; and the loonies are on to something (as they very rarely are) when they allege that we “maybe never were.”
The question, then, is “what will we become”?

Horace
Horace
Reply to  rasqball
1 day ago

Whatever we become needs to be something shorn of hostile aliens.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  rasqball
1 day ago

The answer is we will become one of two things: 1) A mishmash of conflicting cultures, and/or 2) A (one) culture that “wins out” and remains predominant—but it won’t be of a Northern European, White Christian ethos. But even that does not paint the correct/total picture as it fails to take fully into account the new average IQ of the population and the myriad problems associated with a mean of 90-92 national IQ. I believe it was Lynn that claimed there were no functional democratic societies with a national IQ below 90-92. The unknowns at this point? Critical “Smart Fraction”,… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Compsci
Anne Arkie
Anne Arkie
Reply to  rasqball
16 hours ago

On a happier note, I went through the Mickey D’s line to get my annual shamrock shake, and every one of the workers was WHITE and spoke ENGLISH–made my day. The illegals must be gone or hiding out.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 day ago

“…we have 10s of millions of foreigners in the country.” This! It’s worse. As of today, officially we have 48.8M foreign born nationals in the US. That’s 14% of the current “official” population. In 1970, it was at 4.7%—its lowest point ever recorded. So in less than 60 years, or a little more than two generations, we’ve tripled the number of foreign born us citizens. These new “citizens” were overwhelmingly non-White, and non-Christian. The rise of Boomers 1946-1964 masked the growing cancer and kept a lid on things to a point—but no longer. By 2040, the majority of Boomers will… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Compsci
Mr. Generic
Mr. Generic
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

There will be progressives as long as there are perverts, parasites and spiteful mutants

Exactly. Current year “progressives” are just deformed freaks looking to rationalize their dysgenic, envious behavior. Progressivism as an actual ideology died out with the failure of the New Deal.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

Well said. I’ll believe it when we’ve “removed” the problem children. The permanent kind…

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Tired Citizen
1 day ago

Because this is a music blog. No wait that’s the other one. Oh what the hell…

https://youtu.be/w3fRBzRngdc?si=VbV1moBvKJh-h5qa

https://youtu.be/S4uwi5cUyco?si=cCh2dS7VLSN6FNWi

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 day ago

Filthie has been spotted sobbing over his poutine and Moosehead because the promised exodus of spiteful mutants to Canada has failed to materialize…

3g4me
3g4me
1 day ago

Zman, the progressives HAVE changed how the people “think about themselves, their neighbors, and the state.” They were definitely a religious and intellectual movement hitching its wagon to populism, but they welcomed and were subsumed by those they considered their “elder brothers” in faith – the Jews. America no longer considers itself a settler nation, but a melting-pot immigrant nation. Instead of a united manifest destiny, we have a multi-racial ‘mosaic’ united in condemning and exterminating White people in order to destroy the bugbear of ‘racism.’ Our neighbors are not those other Whites who support ‘hate,’ they are the Somalis… Read more »

ray
ray
Reply to  3g4me
1 day ago

Premature? Ya think? The courts have not been touched. The unis and colleges? Fully intact and churning out progs and fem-supremacists like it was 1990 forever. The grade schools? Ruled by leftist hags, busily constructing new generations of homos, castrati, proglings and pantsuited superwomen. The military is still pozzed. The corporations openly BRAG that the Ebil Ebil white males need not apply. The Prot churches have been emasculated and conquered for decades. Institutional Feminism is organized and funded to the teeth and has not been budged an inch. Nor even recognized as an enemy. I could go on. Yes, thumping… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by ray
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  ray
1 day ago

Essentially, the entire Leftist archipelago outside of FedGov remains largely untouched by Trusk’s entirely praiseworthy initiatives. Until the institutions, the corporations, the media and Hollywood are gutted and reformed, Leftism will continue running rampant. Right now, we’re barely scratching the surface.

ray
ray
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Nothing wrong with celebrating a few minor victories. But clearly the citizenry doesn’t have what it takes to do what needs doing.

Still too fat ‘n happy, especially the UMC and up. Millions of porcine couch dwellers who are thrilled to hitch their daughters not to men, but to the Fem-Prog Gravy Train that begins in grade school.

A failing economy, crime and invaders everywhere, and streets glutted with throwaway men don’t budge the needle. America needs a masculine and spiritual revival, or it is toast.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  3g4me
1 day ago

Amidst all of this “winning”, not a single soul has been held accountable. Not one arrest, no executions for treason, nothing. All that’s going to happen without accountability is the left will rig something in four years and put it all back. Then they will punish Whites even more. Perhaps outright killing us. This is why the right is filled with losers. The right fails to adopt the tactics of its enemies, which is to vanquish its opposition. To become a vicious attacker with extreme prejudice is the only path to ridding us from this evil.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Tired Citizen
1 day ago

Not trying to be a plan truster, but they have to know this. Not just based on logic, but prior events, going back to the very formation of the Deep State. There is no halfway here. The real question is what do they do with their own people who don’t do the job. Kash Patel is already starting to look like a squish, not surprisingly.

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  Mycale
20 hours ago

What about our boy mike pence? Has he built the wall or fried the queers yet? With his lightning bolts or whatever?

I dont know who kash(miri?) Patel is but sounds like a jeet. Maybe he and ramaswarthy can sign me up for a crpyto scam. Ive been itching to put my life savings into trump coin or dementia meds thoroughly proven to not work.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tired Citizen
1 day ago

Yep, but it’s too soon to proclaim “Trump failure”. We must hang in there. We must play the long game. Evidence? How many of the observations made here over the years concern the Leftist attempts—and failures—due to over playing their hand. Indeed, it has been perhaps Conservatism’s saving Grace. Let’s not make the same mistake.

Last edited 1 day ago by Compsci
Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

Exactly. (Glad I reloaded, or I would have posted almost the same thing.)

What is strongly lacking is not “action” but patience. Spring the trap too early and all the feral hogs escape. Mayhaps the executions will happen, but we have to have all our ducks in a row first.

The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

No. Just no.

“Patience”?? REALLY?? how much patience? For how much longer? Twenty years? Fifty?

And waiting for what exactly? Evidence? MORE evidence” How much is enough? How much will EVER be enough?

And how–exactly–shall we know when all our ducks are in a row?

Steve
Steve
Reply to  The Infant Phenomenon
22 hours ago

Oh, FFS, do what they count on you never doing and think for a second. Arrest them now, they get dragged before a leftie judge, motion to dismiss granted, and the case thrown out with prejudice.

Slow clap. What do you do for an encore?

You might as well not even bother until we can get at least a handful of venues before which to bring them. When is that? Simple. When we can bring them to trial without being immediately freed.

Rented mule
Rented mule
Reply to  Compsci
7 hours ago

The sky is always falling is a hellofa drug

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Tired Citizen
1 day ago

hi

ray
ray
Reply to  Tired Citizen
1 day ago

Hear hear!

No butts of enemies in jail tells me the nation is not serious. Don’t have the groceries to punish enemies of God and country, and there are reasons for that.

Last edited 1 day ago by ray
Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  3g4me
1 day ago

“Amorphous” is right. The Left are nothing if not shape-shifters. Even if some of their more fevered “beliefs” are now being subjected to some ridicule, so what? These are broken people, without shame or self-awareness, who – to put it as Orwell did – think in slogans and talk in bullets.

I’ve enjoyed Trump’s troll-fest as much as anybody, but if he doesn’t go full Franco on our enemies – fast – then nothing will prevent them from going full Mao on us when their turn comes next.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Steve W
23 hours ago

Trump (and Vance who will hopefully follow) needs to focus on doing exactly what the Left does in every state they take over. That means assembling the infrastructure for permanent MAGA dominance that cannot be undone by elections. But, but, but… that’s wrooooooong, that’s what THEY do?!?! Well, of course it is. That’s also why “they” have ruled us for 80+ years.

G Lordon Giddy
G Lordon Giddy
1 day ago

I find it interesting that the entire Democratic side of our national Senate voted for the rights of men in sundresses to take their clothes off in front of teenage girls.
The majority of normal people even in blue states do not support this position and it just reinforces that our representative government is just hired help for a degenerate progressive elite.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  G Lordon Giddy
1 day ago

just hired help for a degenerate progressive elite”

Astute observation and great example of your point.

Horace
Horace
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

Yes, this is a great bit of verbiage. I will show the respect of imitation by stealing it shamelessly and using it.

Trek
Trek
1 day ago

The HBD crowd is going nuts too. They always claimed to be about genetics and practical when it came to politics. But since the election of Trump the first time they have been increasingly rabid in their support of the managerial state. It started with covid lockdowns and then turned into zealous support for Ukraine. And now Greg Cochran is blasting Elon day and night because of DOGE. You’d think Cochran and Sailer would be excited about diversity being challenged. But no, they both hate Trump too much, I guess because he challenges a system they love. I don’t think… Read more »

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Trek
1 day ago

I don’t know enough about Cochran, but I’d argue Sailer’s only ever been on his own side – the coalition of the self-identified global intelligentsia. His HBD was a mile wide and a micrometer thick. He would wax endlessly about black women’s preoccupation with their unappealing physiognomy, but very carefully avoided ‘noticing’ much of anything about east Asians in America, and Jews in America.

Horace
Horace
Reply to  3g4me
1 day ago

I put Cochrane in there with Francis Collins as a disappointment and a reminder that even the most cognitive who get some enduring important things correct, also get important thing wrong. No one bats a thousand, but attaching any element of one’s personal identity into any movement shaped by internationalists will lower it greatly.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Trek
1 day ago

Normally I insult them at length, but fundamentally there’s only this:

HBD/”elite human capital” nerds are nerds, i.e., spiteful mutants.

Look at them.

Ugly people are bad people—bad for other people. Your whole body knows this. Grug knew it, and Aristotle knew it.

That’s it. Never trust a goofy-looking man.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Hemid
1 day ago

It seems you most definitely can judge a book by its cover. And, if one takes a good look around a mall, airport, or busy restaurant, you’ll see an explanation of why AINO is such a repellent cesspit. Ergo, the populace looks terrible and it is terrible. Vile people cannot hide their malevolence. And a putrid people cannot sustain a lovely and prosperous country.

ray
ray
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

The countenance does not lie, especially in mature men.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Trek
1 day ago

The Cochran question has been discussed. He lost most all credibility during COVID, whereas Z-man rose. Not entirely different from Sailer. Nothing detracts from their previous HBD teaching’s and writings however. To take these two individuals and use them to taint HBD science is painting with too broad a brush. What is it we always say about renowned scientists who leave their area of expertise to dwell/comment in socio-economic areas? We hate them, but politely ignore them. So should you.

Trek
Trek
1 day ago

It would be nice if we could quit being slaves to ideology. We need to put our people first not some set of ideas. Institutions, ideas and programs exist to serve our people not the other way around.

Zulu Juliet
Zulu Juliet
Reply to  Trek
1 day ago

Get your thinking straight, comrade; We are not slaves to ideology. We are people enslaved by ideology.

Last edited 1 day ago by Zulu Juliet
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Trek
1 day ago

Focus on furthering our people could be construed as a type of ideology. It’s certainly racialism. Not that there’s a thing wrong with that.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

I read through the comments, reloaded, then read the new comments, then went back and replied to gaps. Looks like I need to do another reload at the end, as your comment was not here last reading.

Very much this. I’m not sure why our host is so consumed with distancing himself from ideology. All I can think of is that he’s using it as a pejorative through some connotation rather than a strict denotation.

The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

“I’m not sure why our host is so consumed with distancing himself from ideology.” Nor can I–or anybody else–without asking him, but I can tell you this: There is NO SUCH THING as “conservative ideology” and there never has been and there never will be because such a thing simply CAN NOT EXIST. Conservatism and ideology are mutually exclusive, period. That is not open to debate for it is not a matter of opinion. Conservatism is founded upon custom, tradition (meaning “lived experience that begets knowledge of the true nature of things”), true religion, and Nature (with a capital N).… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
Reply to  The Infant Phenomenon
1 day ago

“I’m not sure why our host is so consumed with distancing himself from ideology.” Nor can I–or anybody else–without asking him, but I can tell you this: There is NO SUCH THING as “conservative ideology” and there never has been and there never will be because such a thing simply CAN NOT EXIST. Conservatism and ideology are mutually exclusive, period. That is not open to debate for it is not a matter of opinion. Conservatism is founded upon custom, tradition (meaning “lived experience that begets knowledge of the true nature of things”), true religion, and Nature (with a capital N).… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Trek
1 day ago

We need to put our people first not some set of ideas.”

Putting our people first IS an idea. Just one that is, at present, out of favor.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Just one that is, at present, out of favor.”

You are the Michaelangelo of understatement.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
1 day ago

i think you are conflating two distinct issues. the death of ideology *and* a return to normalcy. the latter doesn’t necessarily follow from the first. while trump might harken back to 1950s normalcy, very few of the citizenry do. what comes next IMO is decentralization, and the concomitant ‘splitting’ of large nations into region sized entities. large size is expensive, and a disadvantage when resources are scarce or exspensive.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 day ago

We’ve been with ideology so long it’s tough to know what normalcy even is. Maybe free association is the starting point.

Mycale
Mycale
1 day ago

I’ve been tracking the progressive response to Trump and, well, there just isn’t much of it. Even Trump chucking Zelensky out of the WH like Uncle Phil did to Jazz didn’t muster much of a response. Considering the Ukrainian dwarf has been treated like the world’s greatest hero, that is quite surprising. It sure seems like whatever funding and organization was used to form #TheResistance in 2017 doesn’t really exist anymore, although of course I can’t totally prove it. The fact that Trump’s first move was to shut down USAID of all things also is quite interesting in light of… Read more »

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  Mycale
1 day ago

“..the entire worldview we have been fed our entire lives is totally fake and government funded.”

That’s right: Our weltanschauung, F & G.

(If you had tried to convince me of such 5yrs ago, I would have…resisted.)

Severian
1 day ago

It will be interesting to see how the breakup of Social Media, which you’ve written about, into mutually exclusive silos plays into it. The only real bulwark against Ideology in the broad sense is localism — Progressivism took root in the cities, because that’s the only place it can. If Peak Social Media was, say, 2016, when Trump used it to get elected, now the breakdown of Social Media might ironically encourage localism. Karen can’t hector the entire world on BlueSky, because only fanatics are on BlueSky, so she’ll have to get into NextDoor and do her hectoring “in person.”

Cal
Cal
Reply to  Severian
1 day ago

Silicon Valley seems to be trying to create a new ideology: techno-capitalism. Like previous movements, they have attached themselves to the populists to gain power. That explains their flip to Trump in 2024 and them pushing their protege Vance as VP, hoping that he’ll take over in 2028. There could be some good outcomes if they succeed–return to normalcy on social issues and a focus on economic nationalism for example. But they have ‘bigger’ plans too. The worst include moving to a CBDC and full time surveillance of the population, for their ‘safety and convenience’ of course. If we can… Read more »

Greg Nikolic
Reply to  Cal
1 day ago

A technocracy would delight Elon Musk and his bug men friends at Apple. For the first time in history geeks have an economic purpose — now they’ll have a political one as well.

— Greg (my blog: http://www.dark.sport.blog)

Salmon Jones
Salmon Jones
Reply to  Greg Nikolic
1 day ago

Stop the shilling of your shitty blog already.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Salmon Jones
1 day ago

I’m suspecting the use of an AI being programmed to respond to a daily Z-man commentary. He should be banned for using this group in an experiment.

ray
ray
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

Never responds. Probly a bot.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Cal
19 hours ago

The primary application of the first revision of Skynet will be real-time management of your social credit score and CBDC access by the AI algorithms.

It will only get worse from that point.

Federalist
Federalist
1 day ago

From South Louisiana:
Happy Mardi Gras

BigDaddyAmin
Member
Reply to  Federalist
1 day ago

Having king cake and coffee for breakfast now. Let the good times roll!

Dr_Mantis_Toboggan_MD
Member
Reply to  Federalist
1 day ago

Le bon temps rouler!

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Federalist
1 day ago

I’ve been to the French Quarter twice: once during Mardi Gras, and once on a random day. Both were horrible experiences. Not my thing.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Marko
1 day ago

When people talk of America becoming Brazil North, I think of the utter degeneracy of Carnival. Our culture is already disgusting without incorporating that display of pagan lust.

Federalist
Federalist
Reply to  KGB
1 day ago

Mardi Gras in Louisiana developed separately from Brazi. (The origins of Mardi Gras in Louisiana are French). Of course, you can still hate it, but it’s not incorporating anything from Brazil. It was a part of our culture before Louisiana was American.

ray
ray
Reply to  Federalist
1 day ago

Ain’t part of my culture. Godless, irresponsible, and full of exactly the celebratory degenerates that drive the Left.

Got no beef with a party, but an open festival of fat, drunk pagans and voodoo idjits in costumes is loathsome.

Last edited 1 day ago by ray
Federalist
Federalist
Reply to  ray
22 hours ago

“Pagans and voodoo”
Could some of you be more melodramatic? To complete your virtue signaling: you’ve never seen a sportsball match and you don’t even own a TV.

ray
ray
Reply to  Federalist
22 hours ago

I loved football from the first time I saw it at age 4. Yes, on teevee. Back then it was only one game a week.

Also enjoyed and competed at basketball, baseball and golf.

Shove your ‘melodramatic’ where the sun don’t shine, bitch.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Marko
1 day ago

My wife was there several months ago. Said it was stinky, dirty and riddled with hoodlums huddling on stoops. I’m sure the food is great, but all the same, no thanks.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
23 hours ago

stinky, dirty and riddled with hoodlums huddling on stoops”

Sounds like it’s East Baltimore with better food.

joey jünger
joey jünger
1 day ago

Trump said something—just a sort of throwaway line—which in retrospect seems much more than an off-the-cuff bit. Words to the effect of “We have lots of smart young people working for us.” Even though he’s a part of the gerontocracy—and, gasp! a boomer—he recognizes the problem. I think he also recognizes (unlike a lot of us) that, though whites are already in a minority in the youth cohort—they are going to be able to punch far above their weight. Whites always could (on the frontier, in South Africa, wherever you put us) but lot of our people were cooperating with… Read more »

Anne Arkie
Anne Arkie
Reply to  joey jünger
1 day ago

Everyone is open to temptation no matter how righteous they may seem now, just have to find the right button. If 10 million in Bitcoin doesn’t work, threaten mommy and daddy.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  joey jünger
1 day ago

Trump is just a good businessman. Pick the right tool for the task. The number of X or Booms who have the computer savvy to do what Musk’s Kids are doing are few. That’s why he’s currently running circles around the political class — they are fielding a team wholly unsuited for the current skirmish. Seriously? You are pitting Jamie Raskin or Kirsten Gillibrand against Big Balls?

BTW, this is nothing new. Clinton was also known for bringing kids into the game. Most of your age group will fall for the same scam.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  joey jünger
21 hours ago

Yes. And they are all in charge of the companies that are building the weapons and energy systems of the future. Granted they are not on our side of the divide, but that they are us and the future will become more contentious not less. The left is already moving to an anti-oligarch/tycoon rhetoric. The racial genies they have unleashed aren’t coming back into the bottle. I think sooner than we think the Left will be be the final phase of Marxism. Phase I: the evil capitalist. Phase II: The evil white racist Phase III: The evil white racist tycoon… Read more »

Bloated Boomer
Bloated Boomer
Reply to  joey jünger
14 hours ago

I saw Trump do a hand gesture that looked a little bit like a Q the other day.

Plan Trusting’s back on the menu, boys!

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
1 day ago

As de Tocqueville observed, Americans love creating and joining organizations..the Grange movement, which promoted farming and farmers, nearly elected the orator William Jennings Bryan, on a platform of looser money…Americans have decided that they no longer want to sterilize their children, import foreigners, or spend money they don’t have on foreigners and foreign wars..So what’s next?
Martin Armstrong’s AI predicts the US will break up in the 2030s into likeminded groups of States, which might well work better than the current jumble..Maybe the Hartford Conventions were just a couple of centuries before their time….

ray
ray
1 day ago

‘but most were homegrown ideas that arose out of American Protestantism and the struggle with secularization’ Protestantism is a big word, covering most every Christian that isn’t a Catholic. And that’s a wide field of differences. For example, the elite women that originated Institutional Feminism in America during the mid-nineteenth century largely were rogue Quakers, only nominally Christian. They had very little in common with mainstream, Biblical Protestantism. Yet their anti-Christian movement swept, and finally conquered, most of the Western world. . . with the backing of moneyed elites. The Progressive agenda of the 20th century borrowed far more from… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by ray
Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  ray
1 day ago

One of the delusions of American conservatives was that the USA was founded as a Christian nation. It is true that most 18th century Americans were Christians but the founders leaned toward Deism (Jefferson being the most prominent example), our founding documents do not recognize any religion and the God they mention is the generic god of Deism, not the Christian Trinity.

Xman
Xman
Reply to  Dutchboy
1 day ago

They were nonsectarians, but most of them were Christians. Only a couple of them questioned Christianity, like Jefferson and Paine, and Jefferson admired Christ as an ethicist but questioned his divinity.

ray
ray
Reply to  Dutchboy
23 hours ago

Correct. Sadly.

Deists are fine with folks worshipping Lucifer for example, as that is a ‘deity’. Demeter and Persephone? Deities.

And so on. V. clever in a demonic sorta way, the whole deist scam.

Last edited 23 hours ago by ray
Dutchboy
Dutchboy
1 day ago

The perpetual danger of populist movements is that they will be captured by elites who then use the movements for decidedly unpopulist goals. This happened to 19th century populism and could happen to the 21st century variety too, if the assault on government bureaucracies turns into a license for unchecked corporate plunder. Corporations are no more friends of the little guy than are the federal bureaucracies.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
1 day ago

To finance the Progressive movement, the Elites here built a financial system to sustain America’s global hegemony. Ordered around the dollar as reserve currency, thereby requiring us to run trade/budget deficits, it grew as the Globohomeaux Elite realized they could finance heaven-on-Earth schemes with Eurodollars, debt and swap lines from the Fed. It might have kept working had they not had covid, imported millions of third-world savages and started the Ukraine War. So we face financial and ideological bankruptcy. My guess is that replacing the Dollar will be harder than replacing the ideology.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
1 day ago

Z Man: “Progressivism has had a long run, but for most of the 20th century it served as a bulwark against fascism and then communism.”

It is far more common to hear people say that progressivism was communism at a slower pace. FDR’s progressive administration was full of self-identified communists.

What did Z Man mean?

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

Actual communists (all seventeen of them) tend to think that progressivism is a liberal anti-revolutionary innovation to defang the proletariat. Concessions to socialist economics prevent worker immiseration, officially favored racial and other identities overwrite class consciousness, etc., and revolution is deferred for as long as the pseudo-leftist pseudo-revolution can keep inventing new current_things. True enough, if you buy a couple commie premises. The basic idea is much more popular among our guys than it is with the self-identified left, who aren’t communists (or anything, really) but regime partisans. That is—they are—Progressivism. They do oppose both Communism and Fascism, who are… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

I interpreted it to mean that Progressivism had muscled its way in to being thought of as The American Way, as opposed to the Old World Way. After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between Progressivism and Fascism in the early 30s. But “progress” is so much easier to sell than “beating people with sticks and cutting off their heads” of fascism’s standard.

Last edited 1 day ago by Steve
TomA
TomA
1 day ago

What we are witnessing is the decline of the free money gravy train. The Fed printed fake fiat money endlessly and corrupt politicians used it to buy votes and stay in office endlessly. This grift has been growing exponentially thereby making a financial collapse inevitable. Trump and his team are now putting on the brakes and the parasites are shrieking in existential terror at the prospect of having to actually work for a living. Ideology-du-jour has always been a mask to hide this grift.

Trump-he'll Boldly Go
Trump-he'll Boldly Go
Reply to  TomA
1 day ago

Wait until all those laid off Federal workers start applying for local State government jobs, or lobbying for and working for the Democrats in the next election. Hell hath no fury..

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Trump-he'll Boldly Go
1 day ago

the white ex-feds are screwed, no one is going to hire them.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Trump-he'll Boldly Go
1 day ago

Yesterday, Governor Hochul was begging them to come to Albany and take one of the 7,000 bureaucratic jobs that need filling. She said NYS needs engineers and programmers and accountants. Unfortunately, she’s appealing to hordes of unskilled pencil pushers who are/were nothing but drains on the public coffers.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  KGB
18 hours ago

I was recently in Albany.

Ain’t no one scrambling to move there.

Quite Observer
Quite Observer
1 day ago

At the end of the Roman Empire you get a huge bureaucracy, government graft, bagaudae (bands of peasant insurgents), civil wars, outsiders in the military and finally leading it, colonization by barbarians, and a provincial nobility that decided it was better to cooperate with the locally settled barbarians and not rely the Roman government which could no longer protect them. These aren’t precisely analogies because the times were much different then, but the broad decay resulted in change. A comical take on this is found in the historical novel Fortuna at the Rudder. I hope that we don’t find the shake up as… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Quite Observer
1 day ago

It has occurred to me that Trump is America’s Diocletian. But instead of cabbages, he prefers oceanfront hotels.

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
1 day ago

“It is why it is fair to wonder if what we are seeing and have been seeing for the last few decades is the death of the last remaining ideology, progressivism.” It’s a complex topic. First of all, the post-WW2 elite agenda was to make sure that the Democratic Party expunged most of its really progressive elements. It became a pig with some progressive lipstick on it. From where comes the saying, “The Democratic Party is where progressive movements go to die.” Along with this, the Rockefeller Republicans drifted towards the Democrats in the late ’70s. I think it’s fair… Read more »

Rented mule
Rented mule
1 day ago

A little big brained this early in the morning for me, I ordered a tee shirt, read later.

David Wright
Member
Reply to  Rented mule
1 day ago

T-shirt idea needs work. Given our present Euro relationship i’m not feeling it. Also a little graphic content would help.

Bruno the Arrogant
Bruno the Arrogant
Reply to  David Wright
1 day ago

Yeah, this one is a bit lackluster. I was hoping he would go with the “If you meet a libertarian, beat him” theme. He could have sold brass knuckles and a baseball bat with the words “Your Rights” stenciled on it as knock-on items.

Marko
Marko
Reply to  David Wright
1 day ago

I like the simple design.
If someone made a “Whites Only Laundry” shirt that looked it was worn by a sponsored softball team, I’d totally buy it.

David Wright
Member
Reply to  Marko
1 day ago

Now we are getting some where.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Rented mule
1 day ago

Hopefully, the tee shirt won’t strike you as big-brained. If it does, you might want to look into it…

Bitter reactionary
Bitter reactionary
1 day ago

When ideology is dead, are we simply left with naked competition for access-to/power-over resources? And what will be the dividing lines?

usNthem
usNthem
23 hours ago

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but when I was researching a family that lived in my state in the early twentieth century, the word “progressive” showed up a fair amount in the local newspapers. But it was my interpretation that it referred more to technological progress as opposed to social. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, automobiles, movies, radios etc. There’s no doubt progressives, in our lifetime, have gone WAY off the deep end.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  usNthem
22 hours ago

Reverence for scientific and technological advancement is certainly a hallmark of positivism.

Danny
Danny
22 hours ago

No arrests yet. Still waiting. Time will tell.

Hokkoda
Member
16 hours ago

I think the fascinating thing is nobody has any idea what comes next!

Last edited 16 hours ago by hokkoda
trackback
1 day ago

[…] ZMan does some history. […]