Me And Ideology

I thought I would take a break from the money game this week to address an issue that comes up in the email from time to time. That issue is my ideology. Whenever I comment upon ideology, almost always in a negative way, I get comments suggesting I should explain my ideology, rather than just criticize others. Certain nationalists take issue with being called ideologues for some reason.

The trouble with this is I am not an ideologue, but I thought that might make for a good show, so that was the plan this week. Then as I was recording it, I started having issues with my voice, like I am getting a cold. That threw me off my game and the show wandered around a bit. I would have scrapped it and started over, but I was not sure if the pipes would make it, so I stuck with the first pass.

Realism and pragmatism are much abused terms in American politics. The people we call the right often claim to be on the side of realism, but that is not so. They are just a slower version of those they claim to oppose. The people we call the left used to love the term pragmatism, despite being fanatics. There is a good chance they dust off that language in time for the next election.

Realism and pragmatism are not the opposite of ideology. Ideology does not have an opposite unless you consider the absence of ideology as the opposite. No society is devoid of a moral framework, which either turns up in the dominant religion of the people or as a set of customs and traditions. Ideology is an attempt to replace both religion and tradition with a new moral framework.

The realist understands that ideology is a shabby replacement for religion and tradition, no matter how muted the goals. Pragmatism demands that any political program operate within the limits of the organic moral order of the people. The realist sees things as they are and wonders why, while ideologues dream of things that can never be and demands we explain why not. He never accepts the answer.

That is the show this week. The first half is the problem with ideology, but specifically the American ideology. I even talk about the L. Ron Hubbard of the American ideology, Leo Strauss a bit. One of these days I will do a show on Strauss, but I do not find him as interesting as his followers find him. The rest of the show is why I think I naturally reject ideology. Not a great show, but you get what you pay for.


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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • Ideology
  • Why I am not an ideologue
  • Realism

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Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
1 day ago

But what we almost certainly would not have enjoyed had Mr. Thurmond become president are the fruits of forced racial integration as it was imposed in later decades: the tidal wave of black crime against whites that is now commonplace; black race riots from Detroit and Watts to Los Angeles in 1992; the virtual destruction of American cities as a black underclass, protected by the federal government, pushed out whites terrified for their own lives and those of their families; the destruction of American education and the transformation of the schools into day-time prison camps for hoodlums. No forced busing; no affirmative… Read more »

Johnny Ducati
Johnny Ducati
Member
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

Our nearest city, the state capital, is now nearly 42 percent black. White Flight was a sneer word in the local media as HBO put out Banging In Little Rock.
I attended a wedding at the former home of one of the chief instigators of the 1957 school integration debacle. It was a beautiful old mansion in the heart of Little Rock, now in the middle of the hood. All was quiet the night of the wedding, but there was a shooting on the corner two days later.

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
Reply to  Johnny Ducati
1 day ago

there’s no slur for blacks moving in or out (if only they would) but if whites move in it’s gentrification and if we move out it’s white flight

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

The thing that always pissed me off about the term gentrification is that the neighborhoods were traditionally White, not black. These neighborhoods were White, then blacks caused them to move out by victimizing them with crime, and that was progress. But if the Whites want to move back in, that is definitely not progress.

This is why I don’t believe ideology even exists in America. If it did, they would welcome the “diversification” gentrifying causes. But they don’t. It’s all selective based on their asinine preferences.

Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 day ago

I live in a small town much beloved for its “quaintness” and of course its “good school”. All that kicks up the value of my property, which in a couple of years I’ll need to sell to finance my retirement, so… all well and good. However, these local churches are a menace. Yep, “diversity” is on the march here; our little town now boasts Afghan and African families, situated in financed housing, who cannot speak English, whose kids pilfer candy and other small stuff from the Dollar General, who ride around the town on bikes and asking for money or… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Steve W
1 day ago

Disgusting. Mayorkas paid the churches to do this to our small towns with the approval of corporate America. I got several alumni emails starting in ’20 about the need to get 75K Afghanis into the country and give them iPads, laptops, broadband accounts, phones … … … Of course the CEOs who signed that declaration were mostly Hindu/White-but-not-Huwhite/Muslim … … And of course their goodies and handouts to these loyal allies were all their companies’ products and services. Mayorkas was happy to give them all money so the managers at the top could rake in the money and our country… Read more »

Catsup stained Griller
Catsup stained Griller
Reply to  RealityRules
1 day ago

Looking at that bald head mother fucker standing in the tsa line made me want to vomit.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve W
1 day ago

The mainline denominations are the spearhead–so to speak–of pathological altruism. They consider themselves great humanitarian organizations but they’re doing far more harm than good in this world.

Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

I was a garden-variety Catholic at our local parish. Last time the special collection came out – not the regular collection for our heat bill, our plumbing issues, our local charity outreach, and all that normal stuff but – for the Catholic Charities. I had a short conversation with our pastor about where all that CC money goes. And he’s like, well, it helps our community because we can support desperate people by giving them a new start. Meanwhile, we are getting yet more special collections to replace our roof. So I asked, after a week or two of contemplation,… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Last time I spoke to a Methodist minister about his congregation doing it, he didn’t really have a reason other than the district encouraged it. When I spoke to several of the congregants, they were dead-set against it — this was the work of the pastor and the administrative council, and they refused to allow a vote in the congregational business meetings. Their only part in it was to shut up and be nagged into giving to the fund, and have the money they give to outreach be diverted into resettlement.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
22 hours ago

The elites in just about any organization these days are sure to be vile.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

Thurmond would have just slowed things down a bit. The forces pushing for integration would still be there. Without a continuous stream of Thurmonds, we were end up here anyway, just maybe a few years later. The problem with an endless stream of Thurmonds would be that those forces do not disperse over time. One can believe that had it been allowed to build and boil over, we would have been able to justify extreme actions to put it down, sure, but then explain Detroit or Watts. Until we get serious about things and pull an Escape from New York… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

When there was a will, both popular and political, to punish negro pathology harshly, there were no Newarks or Detroits of Watts’s to speak of. The nuggras understood what would happen to them if they got out of line. When that will evaporated in the mid-sixties, the lid popped off the pressure cooker and here we are living in African squallor, dysfunction and moral chaos.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

That did not happen overnight. Indeed, the Radical Republicans got that ball rolling officially in 1866 Civil Rights Act. Being damnYankees, they couldn’t help themselves.

It’s not that the will ended in the mid (19)60s, that’s just when the lid popped off. The combination of not having a constant stream of Thurmonds, plus the gradual buildup of force in the name of “civil rights” was inexorable.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

But those earlier civil rights initiatives, in their juridical and moral impact, were picayune compared to the acts of ’64 and ’65. And what’s more, the will to enforce was exiguous. That’s why Jim Crow–that blessed institution–persevered well into the 50s. But I will say this–when Truman integrated the military in ’48, warning klaxons should have been wailing. That act prefigured the Little Rock abomination and the madness of ’64 and ’65.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Maybe. The use of whipping posts for miscreants was discontinued in the Eastern US, while the West maintained them for another half century or so. Public executions, same. Had we actually kept the punishment system intact (which included whippings for Abolitionists, BTW) there might have been a chance of keeping the lid on a little longer. But the world became pussified, no longer interested in doing what it took to maintain civilization.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Incidentally, actual history is why I largely reject Strauss-Howe. Things generally happen on a much longer than generational timeline.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Sure, let the lawfare people decide who has a date with the whipping post.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  TempoNick
1 day ago

I didn’t say that. Whipping posts had their roots in vigilance committees. I have absolutely no respect for any judiciary. History have proven they all devolve to star chambers, at best.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Agreed. Civilization is built with blood, muscle, sweat and guts and maintained with an iron fist. When the fist becomes a velvet mitten the savages pour in and take over.

Wolf Barney
Wolf Barney
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

We’re not even close to any will to punish today, and instead it’s about elevating blacks. In popular culture alone, such as sports, movies, music, Super Bowl halftime shows, blacks replacing whites in historical movies and re-makes, advertising and on and on it goes. There’s really no escaping it. It’s all about Whites drowning in blackness, whether it’s in the physical space of cities and schools or entertainment.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Wolf Barney
1 day ago

No question about it. Material life in AINO is still at Western levels. Everything else, however, has been Africanized. If and when the economy crashes there will be precious little to distinguish AINO from Angola.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

Racial integration was always inevitable, once the New Deal regime was fully in place. You can draw a straight line from that event to that kid’s murder in Texas. This was a process that was always going to play out and no election would have changed it.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Mycale
1 day ago

What did the New Deal have to do with integration? I don’t know FDR’s feelings about blacks, but I don’t recall anything in the New Deal that promoted integration. Maybe there’s something that I don’t know.

Eisenhauer and WW2 seems to be a better place to affix blame. And the way he killed the Germans prisoners after the war, I’ve really come to hate him.

Xman
Xman
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

FDR appointed Alabama Klansman Hugo Black to the Supreme Court, so… integration was not on his agenda.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Xman
1 day ago

But Eleanor was all about ‘compassion’ and helping ‘refugee resettlement’ – both as first lady and afterwards. She was the very model of an AWFL.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Xman
1 day ago

FDR just went up a notch in my esteem…

Chmi
Chmi
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

In my corner of the world, there are no people of any <90IQ race. Education has been demolished, with a passion, all the same. It has been done by the intrinsic “democratization” of everything in our time: everything must be accessible to everyone: as that principle is enforced or catches roots, anyone meaningfully above average (in intellect, and/or will to do genuine work and apply some standards) absquatulates a line of work or an occupational context. Only those who are both mediocre and enjoy wallowing in mediocrity are left; from then onward, it is a race, or a moderately-paced, plunge… Read more »

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
Reply to  Chmi
1 day ago

Sam Dixon once said thte south had no intellectual tradition to defend itself; they were not interested in books. While the puritans and northerners were obsessed with it. I told this to a friend and she said that being around blacks lowers standards of whites. I think there’s something to that.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

being around blacks lowers standards of whites Makes some hypothetical sense but it’s hard to quantify. As much as we can quantify, southern white kids do about the same in school as white kids anywhere else. And the general tendency in the south is for there to be white schools and negro schools, relative to white neighborhoods and negro neighborhoods. (obviously this is inexact). Which reflects the reality that in the south, whites and blacks may live in the same towns, but not so much in the same zip codes, if they can help it. So while southern whites do… Read more »

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

The standard that’s most lowered by proximity to blacks is how expensive your bicycle can be. As a kid I was given the impression that literariness was a Southern thing. Faulkner, Percy, Williams, etc. It was a kind of regional knack that others didn’t have—not even Jews, who wrote just as much but never in a Great American sort of way. I remember in dramatizations of his life, Poe always had a more Carolinian accent that he’d have had in reality, so you’d understand that he was a serious writer, consumed with this difficult and mysterious Southern art. Northerners do… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Chmi
1 day ago

Absquatulate–very nice. Sounds like a Sasquatch fleeing a mountain encampment after plundering the supply of jerky, but no…

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Chmi
1 day ago

In many countries, alternatives to what we in the USA call “public” schools is forbidden. Where there is an alternative, there is hope for standards promoting meritocracy—because that is what parents seek. So you’re observations are quite true, but not universal or inevitable.

SamlAdams
SamlAdams
1 day ago

Worked with risk models for nearly 40 years…and brother, let me tell you how many times they were horribly (and expensively) wrong. Some have gotten better over decades–usually via expensive mistakes. But one always finds there are “X” factors that could not be anticipated. Take the Palisades fires…the wildfire models assumed 1) reservoir water would be available (it was empty), 2) response assets would be pre-positioned once the “red flag” went up, they were busy doing DEI seminars…or something and 3) normal brush clearance/thinning was done. None were. Humans, being humans, can never execute to a “model” whatever stripe it… Read more »

NoName
NoName
Reply to  SamlAdams
1 day ago

Z: “the L. Ron Hubbard of the American ideology, Leo Strauss“ Any chance we could get some elucidation there? All I know about L Ron Hubbard is that Tom Cruise believed in him, and that Trey Parker and the j00, Matt Stone, ridiculed Tom Cruise in the episode, “Trapped in the Closet”. Plus something something something something about McDonnell Douglas DC-7s flying into or out of volcanoes [or maybe it was DC-10s]? Anyway, does the metaphor with Leo Strauss have anything to do with snake oil salesmen and their mesmerization & hypnotization techniques? I suppose that would be the “Cult”… Read more »

Lucius Vorenus
Lucius Vorenus
Reply to  NoName
1 day ago

L. Ron Hubbard was mid-XX century. The man got in trouble while holding a naval commission for shooting at things that weren’t there and was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. He went on to become a bad science fiction author and start up a very successful amateur psychology grift which he then dressed up as an anti-psychology UFO religion in order to escape prosecution for fraud, which survives today as the Church of Scientology.

Last edited 1 day ago by Lucius Vorenus
Johnny Ducati
Johnny Ducati
Member
Reply to  Lucius Vorenus
1 day ago

Worked with a guy years ago who was reading Dianetics. I read the back cover and told him it was nonsense.

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Lucius Vorenus
1 day ago

Lucius Vorenus: amateur psychology grift

I thought L Ron Hubbard was anti-PSYCHIATRY, not anti-Psychology.

Psychiatry is nonsense.

Whereas psychology is arguably the single most important phenomenon in the entire modern world.

Nothing else comes even remotely close to the omnipotence of Psychology in the modern world.

In the modern world, Logic [& Pragmaticism] don’t even amount to rapidly fading memories of ghostly spirits from antiquity.

The modern world is Psychology Uber Alles.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  NoName
1 day ago

Read a book about him in college. It was written by a former Scientologist, so I’m aware it was a certain POV. Quite a character! Utterly charismatic, apparently. Sui generis. Short story: he took psychology and dressed it up in science (Dianetics), later religion in sci-fi (Scientology) for the modern age. Naval stuff, book claimed he wanted to take over the world. Would make a wild movie.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Paintersforms
1 day ago

The 2012 film “The Master” was in part based on L. Ron Hubbard.

Lucius Vorenus
Lucius Vorenus
Reply to  Paintersforms
1 day ago

The existence of Sea Org should scare the hell out of everyone, and Scientology has transcended its origins as a self-insulating con to become a deeply evil transhumanist force; one that differs in its goals and methods from the prevailing order and so run afoul of it, but one that is also extremely well-provisioned thanks to the resources it continually extracts from its following of mostly fabulously wealthy neurotics. In the event of an actual collapse of state power they are in a far better position to exercise it themselves than just about anybody else. Reds and blacks are significant… Read more »

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  NoName
1 day ago

I suppose it’s that Hubbard and Strauss both cultivated hierarchy/rivalry among their followers/students by giving various of them the impression that only they were granted access to some (of the) esoteric truth. So “Straussianism” survives as a nepotistic cult or two instead of as an apprehensible philosophy (or history of philosophy or whatever), and all good men roll their eyes and look for the exit when you say the name, just like Scientology. The analogy I’d use isn’t Hubbard but Leonard Bernstein. He and Strauss were great at giving you the impression that something somebody else wrote was really interesting… Read more »

Xman
Xman
Reply to  thezman
1 day ago

LOL no. Strauss was a Platonist who understood the danger of questioning the established order of things, and that philosophical inquiry will likely result in events like the trial and execution of Socrates. Consequently the intellectuals have to couch their arguments in terms that will not stampede the herd. The average hoi polloi schlub is not interested (or capable of) Socratic dialogue (which is why the mythmakers of the Platonic cave have so much power over him). He will vote to execute Socrates every time, and the truths revealed by Socratic inquiry will then be silenced. That’s not a “cult,”… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Xman
george 1
george 1
Reply to  SamlAdams
1 day ago

Right now I would say the risk model for the U.S. is exceptionally bad. Nothing being done that causes me to have any hope that the U.S. survives as a political entity into 2035, and that could be optimistic. Trump may have his heart in the right place, hard to tell, however like his last term he is in the process of crashing and burning. When you get Tammy Bruce being asked what the U.S. position is concerning the IDF murdering 15 paramedics, execution style, and her response is: “It is all the fault of Hamas,” then this administration has… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  george 1
1 day ago

We’re going to nuke Iran, anticipating the same benefits we achieved with Hiroshima. (Making Russia and China back off; control of Mideast shipping routes = control of the Pacific / sea lanes.) We’ve got Russia tied up. We’re tying up China. We’re bombing the Houthis over the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait chokepoint of the Red Sea. Iran has hundreds of mobile shore batteries pointed at the Hormuz Strait. If any of them takes out an LNG carrier or such LNG facilities as those of Qatar, it would be like setting off an atomic bomb, as well. Decapitating the command structure of Iran… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
george 1
george 1
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 day ago

That would be beyond insane but I am sure it is a popular idea with most of the Zionists in the administration. The economic chaos could not be calculated.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  SamlAdams
1 day ago

Anyone who works with models knows that the model is wrong, the question is by how much. We live in a country ruled by magical thinking and midwits, though, so this is forgotten and the models become fact. This is most clearly true with “climate change” where the models said NYC would be underwater 20 years ago, well NYC is not underwater but they still point to their models when demanding total control. The 2008 crisis, I know that people on the right tend to blame the government’s intervention in lending markets, and people on the left tend to blame… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Mycale
1 day ago

Z-man long ago during the early COVID scamdemic referenced William Briggs, a statistician with a common sense view of the current modeling of the disease mortality. One of the best references Z-man ever made. What I took away from Briggs was one essential point, “Models predict what you tell them to predict”. This means that any conclusions drawn from a model are a direct result of the premises embedded within it. In short, to create a (perfect) model is to assume you have exact knowledge of the phenomenon being modeled. Of course, this is nonsense for complex phenomenon on the… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

In short, to create a (perfect) model is to assume you have exact knowledge of the phenomenon being modeled. Of course, this is nonsense for complex phenomenon on the cutting edge of science like climate change.”

It’s also largely pointless. If you already have complete knowledge about it, there’s no point in creating a computer model. Just run the numbers once and you have your answer. It’s only when you intend to tweak the numbers to get the “right” answer that creating a model you can adjust becomes valuable.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Well, if we are *extrapolating* disease spread and mortality, a predictive—but correct—model seems quite useful. For example, Covid was not nearly as deadly as predicted and arguably the preventive method to stop the spread was worse that the disease. What of course occurred were that scientist grifters produced faulty models and claimed fame predicting the sky was falling.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

True. Isn’t that just saying, “We don’t have exact knowledge of the phenomenon, so let’s just wing it”?

Just imagine if we built bridges or nuclear power plants that way.

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

Well yes, but that’s not what they said. In their arrogance and hubris, many pretended that their model was “good enough” for societal direction/action. A secondary argument made was of the form, “what if we are right?” This pretense might have been actively promoted or simply allowed through failure to correct misuse of the conclusions drawn by their model. In any event, the models have been proved wrong through incorrect predictions once reality unfolded. With Covid, that was in a short timeframe and within memory of the rather average and dull public witness. In the case of Climate Change, they… Read more »

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

Remember the justification for the lockdowns came from Neil Ferguson model which had mortality vastly overstated. The fear-driven articles early in the scamdemic were almost always outputs from that model. But before that was going on, we had the perfect control experiment for COVID in the Diamond Princess, which told us everything.

So on the one hand we had a piece of junk BS model on a spreadsheet that was totally wrong and on the other hand we had a real-life controlled experiment with actual outcomes, and the elites chose the model.

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

No argument here. That’s exactly what happened. My general thinking is that we ran into an ugly confluence of at least two factors: 1) a general level of stupidity/craveness not previously found in the political class, and 2) a general decline in the population wrt to ability to remain calm in the face of adversity—they panicked.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

a general decline in the population wrt to ability to remain calm in the face of adversity—they panicked.”

I think it’s more correct to say they were deliberately spooked, by people who knowingly lied to them.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
6 hours ago

”I think it’s more correct to say they were deliberately spooked, by people who knowingly lied to them.” To me, that’s a distinction without a difference. I was not spooked and I was in receipt of the same information as everyone else in the public sphere. It was obvious in very early 2020 that the disease was not nearly as dangerous when looked at within age cohorts and comorbidity. Also, the official mortality numbers were within typical limits for other familiar diseases such as flu which had good years and bad years depending upon strain. I believe in 1958, the… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Mycale
1 day ago

I now see 2008 as the nuking of America to get the Black Klaus Schwab, that is, Barack Obama, in place as the cartoon villain. He had usurped his former boss, Hillary, but then placed her to become the Face of the Revolution after him. That failed with the Trump Surprise, so they tried again with Biden and Kamala. Biden was not the point, Kamala was. They nuked us again in 2020, in re of the financials of 2019. Kamala and her parents were molded by the same San Francisco cell that molded Barack and his key man, Eric Holder.… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Brandon Laskow
Brandon Laskow
Reply to  Alzaebo
10 hours ago

Obummer was molded in Chicago, not San Franfreako.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

Failure to recognize and deal with its spiteful mutants is perhaps the #1 failing of the west. Practically everyone you find on Bluesky is a spiteful mutant. Not all ideologues are spiteful mutants, but all spiteful mutants are ideologues (or at least fancy themselves as such). These people can’t be reached, reasoned with, debated etc. It does no good to show them charts and graphs. They have to be dealt with some other way. And the only way the west has seen fit to deal with them, so far, is to give them voter registration cards. So here we are.… Read more »

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

The Puritan impulsive has driven the Anglosphere over the cliff. Jews were able to exploit it, of course, but the blame ultimately lies in the Puritans. It is amazing that Britain largely rid itself of the hyper Puritanism–the Church of Scotland hardly qualifies–yet seems to have been its biggest victims. The world’s best and brightest had a horrible flaw, perhaps genetic, and is on the verge of killing itself.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Jack Dodson
1 day ago

Yes, Puritans and the Woke are whites who have adopted the Jewish mindset and values. They adopted it by identifying. Our problem today, is the Karens. 4% of chief diversity officers are black. 78% are white women. The Karens used a “black” front issue to boost themselves. Their political power is a matter of pure numbers, they are half of us. Their mindset, like the permanent minority (Jews), will not be based on defending territory, but on taking it using means they intuit and we don’t. For instance, leftists, being feebs, adopt women’s herd politics of weakness. Inclusion, safety, victimhood,… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 day ago

Ha, 100 percent. I always laugh when women/Hollywood claim men boast about sexual conquests. Talk about projection!

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

It’s not just that the spiteful mutants have not been dealt with, it is that they have been weaponized. The regime can churn these people out like a factory and then set them loose whenever they want. I was reading about antifa showing up to a university speech the other day! Remember when that was commonplace in 2017-2020? Then you didn’t hear about it at all for four years? The regime activates these people at will. Their creation is a feature not a bug.

Chmi
Chmi
Reply to  Mycale
1 day ago

They are churned out by nature. The regime manipulators do some fine-tuning, with their great resources and slyness. They don’t create these people or their attributes, though.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Mycale
1 day ago

There were 1300 mass protests orchestrated across the nation last weekend.
The puppeteers remain very active. It’s a mature industry.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Chmi
Chmi
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

These people can’t be reached, reasoned with, debated etc. It does no good to show them charts and graphs.  Are you married, or do you have a girlfriend? Does it any good to show her charts, graphs, or give her demonstrations? Come on. The illusion that the world spins the way it does due to a minority of reprehensible, or defective, responsible ones is comforting… but does it lead to real understanding of problems, and finding of solutions? That UK sentencing commission that was in the news recently, which recommended harsher sentencing for whites than for wogs, is made up… Read more »

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

“When you frame the majority of humankind, or of Whites, as “spiteful mutants”, you are making a serious effort to not acknowledge some harsh anthropologic (or racial) reality.” Not true at all. You need to read up on the concept. I recommend Edward Dutton’s Spiteful Mutants: Evolution, Sexuality, Religion, and Politics in the 21st Century (2022). But there are numerous other works, see Woodley who first coin the term. The term “spiteful mutants” is used within this group as a shorthand description of a theory based of human DNA—that does not exclude racial acknowledgement—and the realization of the mutation load… Read more »

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

Compsci: As to solution, there are any number of answers that are discussed here and elsewhere…

The V@xxpocalypse will take care of a great deal of that.

It may take several generations for (((Albert Bourla)))‘s poison to destroy the various ovaries involved, but sometime circa 2040ish, yuge numbers of all sh!tlib females [presumably v@xxinated] will be suffering from ovarian disfunction & failure.

Apparently (((Albert Bourla)))‘s approach is multigenerational, with each successive generation of female descendants being more & more likely to suffer from ovarian failure.

It’s horrifying, but it is what it is.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  NoName
1 day ago

One therefore hopes there are enough sane people left to dig out from the hole left by the crazies. 😉

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  NoName
1 day ago

So true; blind Nature “balances” itself with mass dieoffs. Your example is what I mean when I say that the God the proto-jews awoke is trying to kill itself, to lobotomize itself by getting the individual brain cells to kill each other. Since it has no hands, most of its effects only feed it, making the problem worse; that is why Whites arose as the penicillin, as the counter, to a force, to a machine that has no off switch. It cannot bear being self-conscious and aware, infected with a veneer of human-style sentience, knowing what it is, a something… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 day ago

Forgive me. I hope some realize I’m trying to describe what people call Hell, what the primitive proto-jews awoke in their ignorance.

By cultivating it through lineages that could survive the touch of the Arc, they infected it with a patina of sentience.

Someday I would hope we understand what we’re dealing with, should any of this survive.

I will try to stay away from this subject in the future, and speak much less, having so little to add.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Zorro, the lesser 'Z' Man
Zorro, the lesser 'Z' Man
Reply to  Alzaebo
8 hours ago

– I always appreciate your poetic rants. 😉

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Alzaebo
8 hours ago

Alzaebo: “It cannot bear being self-conscious and aware, infected with a veneer of human-style sentience, knowing what it is, a something that feeds on pain, that floats on an ocean of the memories of agony.”

Bro.

It sounds like you’ve gone to war with an Egregore of the Zeitgeist.

Good luck; we’ll be rootin’ for ya.

Truth be told, I fear that we’ve all be assigned our own personal Egregores to degrade & humiliate & torture & ruin us.

Our sole duty is to soldier on through the thick of it all, and make our way to the other side.

Last edited 8 hours ago by NoName
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

What a fantastic summary. I’ve got to read more Dutton. I can’t get X, but I know he has a substack and podcasts, I believe. Thank you!

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 day ago

“That UK sentencing commission that was in the news recently, which recommended harsher sentencing for whites than for wogs,…” Ah, yet another example of how society has fallen once we abandon Christianity and the Bible. It is written, “…an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…”. Modern folk often confuse this passage as a call for retribution and vengeance. Nonsense. It was a call for *fair* or equitable punishment. The poor man would suffer the same punishment as the rich man. I suppose we in the USA will see such codified soon, as such already occurs all too… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

Strongly agree. It is from the Codes of the Law of Ur. What is the fancy term they use nowadays?

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
1 day ago

I hadn’t at all considered the murdered Texas kid in terms of ideology, but no doubt anti-racism led directly to his murder. Black violence can be ignored or explained away but it is always there. Segregation was a half-measure, and removal is the only solution although it is unlikely to happen (perhaps not as true any longer). The kid’s father indeed is more Bolshevik than Moonie.

Great show.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Jack Dodson
1 day ago

Haven’t listened yet, is that the Texas kid killed by some punk who deliberately started the whole thing?

Instead of demanding justice, his dad immediately cucks. Gods, what shame he brings to our people.

Wtf has happened to us? (You all know the answer.)

Still, to be fair, every blatant race murder brings the same statement. I am hoping that he was coerced to it, as apparently were all the rest. That just builds the sense of anger and injustice we need.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 day ago

It is difficult to put yourself in anyone else’s shoes, but if someone killed my son there is no fucking way in hell I would give a cuck hostage video. I have an incredibly high threshold for pain but this would hold regardless.

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Alzaebo
8 hours ago

Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old transgender shooter in Nashville, switched school target to Avoid Claims of RACISM!!!

https://tinyurl.com/y6dbwsvs

She was ackshually being bullied & ridiculed & humiliated by the KneeGr0w students at her mixed-race middle school, but she went back to her old Christian elementary school, which was all White, and killed White children, so that she wouldn’t appear to have been a racist.

Last edited 8 hours ago by NoName
Tarl Cabot
Tarl Cabot
1 day ago

Realism and pragmatism are ideologies, of a sort. Their conceit is that they purport to be “fact-based”, but even the most dispassionate analysis will eventually run up against Godelian incommensurabity, and contradict itself.

Perhaps the least “ideological” world view is Trumpian transactionalism. Everything is an exchange of value. No moral considerations exist outside the deal. Ethics are determined by adherence to its terms, as creatively as one can manage. It’s basically Semitic mercantilism without the “chosen-ness”.

Not the best code to live by, but not the worst, either. We all can’t be Warriors.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 day ago

“Is it in the interest of the Whites?”
Works for me, easy to grasp, and it clicks immediately. You’re right.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Dutchboy
Dutchboy
1 day ago

Pre-ideological thought started with a realistic conception of human nature and the implications of that nature for the arrangements of human societies. Ideological thought tends to reject the idea of human nature or believes that human nature is malleable. All the absurdities of ideologues stem from this rejection. The actual situation of humanity makes all the pretty dreams of the ideologues impossible. The utopias they believe they can engineer on earth always end up as actual dystopias of one sort or another.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Dutchboy
1 day ago

Pre-ideological thought started with a realistic conception of human nature and the implications of that nature for the arrangements of human societies.”

True. But isn’t the act of abstracting from the specific to the general a leap of faith? Lord knows “science” screws this up constantly. Coffee causes/cures cancer, etc.

Why trust reason to have successfully generalized when we reject reason for anything else? Why embrace the uniformitarian assumption that what is true today will be true tomorrow?

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

The use of reason tells you one can’t make a utopian silk purse out of the sow’s ear of human nature. People are hierarchical, discriminating, and territorial and always have been. There is no reason to think this will change. The best we can do is take some of the harsher edges off this situation. That is never enough for the ideologue. He never tires of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Johnny Ducati
Johnny Ducati
Member
1 day ago

This “American ideology” is foolish, destructive nonsense. The local talk show guy, conservative/libertarian, discovered Russell Kirk and spent a week or more spouting about all these supposedly “universal truths”.
I made fun of him until the radio station blocked my number.

Rented mule
Rented mule
1 day ago

last day at the day job & the first to comment. I’ll take it!

Bartleby the Scrivner
Bartleby the Scrivner
Reply to  Rented mule
1 day ago

Congratulations!

If your saying what I think you mean, enjoy!

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
1 day ago

What does it mean to have no ideology? Does Z Man really want to say that he has no ideology?

* That one’s actions are not consistent with any principles.
* That one responds to problems in a way that cannot be explained by any set of values or rules.
* All statements of principles are useless.

We like politician’s who have principles because they won’t surprise us or betray us. Someone whose actions are non-ideological is impossible to predict and so trusting them difficult.

Should we stop talking about our principles? Is politics just about intuition and “vibes?”

Steve
Steve
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

Should we stop talking about our principles?”

It’s a step beyond that, even. If you truly have no ideology, you cannot have principles. Even with the yellow folder thing, you continue the tradition because you believe it works, that it accomplishes some worthwhile end that results in a better outcome than, say, blue folders.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

I tend to think guys who say they don’t have an ideology are flattering themselves that they are somehow special. No, you’re just another guy with a theory about the world.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

Nah, I think the Zman is simply practical.

And, he doesn’t let himself get worked up by
1.) his own pet peeves; he owns himself.
2.) someone trying to yank his string, he’s watching for what he knows they’re going to try.

You have to walk in like you own the room, and you own the pace.
Head high, back straight, shoulders relaxed, eyes direct.

You can be comfortable and relaxed, and you can be the boss, but own it, the space, the pace, the girl, and yourself.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

So it’s a word game, eh? If I say that I accept the Ten Commandments, then that makes me an ideologue? If I say that I support punishing and reducing crime, to the point of calling this support a principle, that makes me an ideologue? Contrapositive of your statement: if you have principles, then you have an ideology. I assume you are a lawyer, and as such you are familiar with the word casuistry. Z is trying – and succeeding, in my opinion – to distinguish thought governed by inflexible systems of abstract doctrine, and thought based on some mixture… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Steve W
1 day ago

That’s not where I wanted it to end, either. That’s what I got out of what Z was arguing. I think ideology is something different, too.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

I think principles, inferred from tradition and longstanding religion, are non-ideological and praiseworthy. When principles spring, on the other hand, from confected, inorganic theories and philosophies, they are ideological and therefore not to be trusted.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

I get praiseworthy. Why non-ideological?

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Because the chief distinction between tradition/religion and ideology is organicism. Why is organic superior to inorganic? Because the former is empirical and time-tested while the latter springs from the febrile mind of a soi-dissant genius who may just as easily be a madman, and his ravings have no preexisting contact with reality.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

I think this is what Russell Kirk was saying when he said that conservatism (the kind that existed before we were born) is the absence of ideology. Organic development over eons.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Because the chief distinction between tradition/religion and ideology is organicism.”

What does Mrs. Steve’s pleasure have to do with this? 😉

Seriously, though, are you using organicism as I use it? Treating, say, society as though it were a living, ordered system?

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Well, organic development isn’t always orderly–in fact, sometimes it’s very messy. However, it’s nothing compared to the messes created by ideologues.

comment image

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Oh, I think organic growth is completely different than organicism.

But doesn’t that leave us in the quandary that @SteveW points out? At least if one considers the Bible to be divinely inspired instead of some form of undirected evolution?

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

LOL. You lads, you.

Xman
Xman
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

I get what you’re saying but I think you’re still missing the mark somewhat. It’s very possible for “organic” theories and religions to be flawed and untrustworthy — e.g., Aztec human sacrifice, the Hindu casts system, Polynesian cannibalism, etc. The conservative believes in “organic” norms, mores, and cultural traditions because they have stood the test of time and are the product of generations of accumulated wisdom. But I think that’s only true of a society, like the West, in which the cultural norms were created by intelligent people who had some kind of a system to question and examine things… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Xman
1 day ago

That’s kind of cheating, though, isn’t it? If ideology has to be post-industrial, then obviously it has to be a recent development, and noting that fact a trite tautology.

Xman
Xman
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

How pedantic of you…

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Xman
22 hours ago

Possibly. However, it just may be that the organic cultures of Central America, India and Melanesia produced the best possible outcomes for those people given the quality of the human capital. Horrendous and horrific by Western standards, but nevertheless the acme of those people’s capacities.

Chmi
Chmi
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

Ideology isn’t having principles, or ideals, or ideas, and be guided, within realistic reason, by them.
Ideology is to pedestalize one or more “moral virtues” (so-called, and supposed), and smash realism and awareness of reality into smithereens as part of the (supposed, so-called) virtue worship.

Ideology is to will “principles” and ideals to rule over reality, and dismiss reality as unreal whenever there is a conflict or divergence between the two.

Johnny Ducati
Johnny Ducati
Member
Reply to  Chmi
1 day ago

Ideologues tend to espouse “universal truths” that they believe applies to all people in all places and times. They want to pretend that all people are the same.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Johnny Ducati
1 day ago

How, specifically, do we differ from that? Doesn’t DR just assume all black people are carbon copies, all joos are carbon copies, etc.? Is it that they draw the distinction on species, and we on race? And, BTW, libertarians on the individual? That’s a tad arbitrary…

DR is presumably the Goldilocks worldview? Nestled between two ideologies, but not itself an ideology?

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

Doesn’t DR just assume all black people are carbon copies, all joos are carbon copies, etc.?”

No, we believe that most traits are distributed amongst a population on a normal distribution. Few deny that Thomas Sowell is a smart guy. All blacks or joos are not carbon copies, but there are statistical tendencies.

Finally, both of these groups are fantastically tribal, meaning that the best will almost always rally to defend the worst of their group. In this respect, we can treat them as fierce tribes.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 day ago

OK, I get the visceral reactions. But how about if we do the same with Hatfields and McCoys? It’s not that I don’t want to be murdered by a nog. I don’t want to be murdered by anyone. Italian surnames are also associated with death by acute lead poisoning. Irish, in places like Chicago and Cincinnati. How’s about just impaling all the murderers and call it a day? Clean up all the bloodlines. Stockmen know this “regression to the mean” theory is pure nonsense. We select bulls based on their characteristics, assuming they will throw calves with similar characteristics, and,… Read more »

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

“… Italian … Irish …”

You don’t really believe that blacks have assimilated as well as Italians or Irish. I know that you don’t.

I believe that if most people could see what our country would be like without j3ws, they most would choose to not have them.

Which groups assimilate with other groups is necessarily a judgment call on a large scale. There may be a group of whites who like living with blacks in spite of the violence, but they are dwarfed by those who disagree.

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

I don’t care whether nogs are a higher risk than wops. Given the choice, I’d stick with Norsk. Much better chances. Or, better yet, Clan Steve. So far as I know, no murderers for several centuries, at least.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Regression to the mean is not nonsense. Bulls may throw out better bloodlines, but do they produce “better bulls than themselves”? Not the norm. That’s regression to the mean—more or less in lay man’s terms. The mean is not necessary the population mean the bull came from either, but a new mean somewhat between the bull and the herd. Hence a possible improvement over generations of selective breeding.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

do they produce “better bulls than themselves”?”

That’s not regression to the mean. The calves don’t tend to regress to the mean or there would be no point in bothering with selective breeding in the first place. They are all going to end up back at the starting place in a couple generations anyway.

It’s true they don’t tend to throw better calves than themselves, but that point is there will be exceptional individuals among the next few generations. It’s a ratchet effect, not a leveling.

Eugenics is a real thing.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
6 hours ago

Still not exact. You ignore the second part of the explanation. I’ll explain again somewhat differently. Regression to the mean simply means that offspring from two above average sires, are often better that the average stock that the sires came from, but not expected to exceed the sires, nor expected to be below the average of the population the sires came from. If fortunate, a new norm can be expected to be carried on by the offspring, but this is neither certain nor predictable in effect. Regression occurs for the 1st generation only as that generation does not replicate the… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

I don’t know why eugenics is a bad word either, unless it’s because spiteful mutants trying to breed more spiteful mutants so they can conquer the straights told us it’s a bad word.

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

It’s called stereotypes. They happen to prove out. Trust the common wisdom.

Ideology is just somebody who wants to rule, and tries to curry the crowd.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Johnny Ducati
1 day ago

In the vast majority of cases, this is correct. However, the key tenet of postmodern ideology is cultural relativism, which is the belief that all cultures have their own system of beliefs and behavior and that no system is superior to any other because there can be no common standard to measure them. On the suface, this may seem harmless enough. But the pomo arriere pensee was always to undermine the foundations of Western civilization by comparatively discrediting its beliefs and behaviors.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Johnny Ducati
1 day ago

You might be getting at something. I once called a gun rights advocate an ideologue when he steadfastly advocated no weapons limitations whatsoever across the board. He imploded. I believe that’s been my definition ever since. In that, an ideologue is much like a religious fanatic. There is no compromise nor meeting of the minds nor any mutual understanding to be reached, much less agreement.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

But doesn’t that also make you an ideologue? If he starts the bidding with all weaponry, even CBN, but secretly is willing to compromise to A-10s or M-240s or M242s, and you are not…?
EDIT
I get that the M242 and the Phalanx are scary, and probably have no reason to exist outside of war, but, still…

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

Maybe the best understanding of the word “ideologue” is that it is relative to each person who uses the word.

When someone says, “X is an ideologue,” it means that the speaker believes that X’s theory ignores unchangeable parts of human nature.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

No, I don’t see the analogy. My argument would be that one man should not possess such power to cause mass destruction as with an explosive device or missile with such attached—as men are subject to derangement and madness. Nukes are under multiple military/civilian men authorizing such use for example. But this was not a Trump era art of the deal, only an admonishment that some sort of weeding out of oddballs might be a path to pursue as that many massacres have shown individuals (in hindsight) to be oddballs. Many countries do not authorize possession of firearms without public… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

My argument would be that one man should…”

Normative statement. No different than Wilson’s, other than in degree. Wilson truly believed that if all countries were democracies, the society/world would be a better place. Why would you champion your position other than you think it would result in a better society?

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Compsci
1 day ago

Note how their aggravations are to try to evoke a specific call-and-response to which they have a set piece of answers. It’s performative self-validation, aka showboating. Like a young bull daring you to make it test its horns.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
TomA
TomA
1 day ago

Ancient wisdom, acquired over long time spans, is often codified in tradition or religious dogma. Ideology is temporal and derives from current fads and impulses. The latter is knee-jerk whereas the former is time-proven. Once upon a time, knee-jerk impulses got you dead and evolution evolution removed that proclivity. An absence of curative culling has brought this scourge back with a vengeance. Culling cannot be replaced with persuasion.

DLS
DLS
1 day ago

“Not a great show, but you get what you pay for.” LOL. For $4.99 per month, I get more excellent content than I can keep up with.

lavrov
lavrov
1 day ago

Zman, speaking of ideology, what do you mean by “if you see a libertarian, hit him and he will know why?” I am thinking about trying that experiment.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  lavrov
1 day ago

I have wondered this as well. Perhaps since, as Zman has pointed out, libertarians are not serious about the use of force. All governments stay in place because they are willing to violently defend themselves. Libertarians are self-limited in this regard, because by their own ideology, they must allow freedom to the subversives that will eventually overthrow them. So hit a libertarian, and his lack of response proves the limits of his ideology.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  DLS
1 day ago

Excellent explanation.

Alternate explanation: Libertarians are inherently punchable and they know it.

lavrov
lavrov
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Thinking about it, maybe Rand Paul’s neighbor, who violently attacked him 2019 or so, is a Z-man reader and an “early adopter” of Z-ideology.

Bartleby the Scrivner
Bartleby the Scrivner
1 day ago

I have to feed the critters up at the house.
I’ll listen to the show on my way down to see if my farm is still standing. (Lots of water and stuff).

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 day ago

Aww geez. My old dump is parked next to a canal, and is up on a high footing, with pass-throughs (spaced holes) in the base.

As a kid there were a few occasions where we had to pile sandbags on the ditchbank, and even one week as a younger man where I’d step off the stoop into a foot of water.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
RealityRules
RealityRules
1 day ago

Off topic here but … The Bessent interview with Tucker Carlson has a good segment where he talks about how the Washington Post slandered the person he personally hired to come into Treasury and go after waste, fraud and abuse. He discussed how they made up the lies about tamping down the payment systems … … Now, Bezos owns the Post. This is where it gets interesting. Is Bezos going to go back and give his employees an ultimatum to stop the slander? Or, is he opposed to doing these reforms? He was a part of the entourage along with… Read more »

Marko
Marko
1 day ago

Z, those pipes had better be serviced by the Sunday show! I demand my $5 worth!

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Marko
1 day ago

I wonder if they still make Sucrettes? Ah, medical memories from childhood in the 70s.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Hint: when you talk until you’re hoarse, cherry-flavored is the way to go.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Alzaebo
22 hours ago

Fifty years ago I would have happily scarfed up a casserole made of Luden’s Wild Cherry Cough Drops and Flintstones chewable vitamins…

Ketchup-stained Griller
Ketchup-stained Griller
1 day ago

Maybe DJT has hit on our ideology with “common sense.”

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ketchup-stained Griller
1 day ago

Aha! That’s what I mean by “the common wisdom.”
I’ll just start using “common sense!”

Catsup stained Griller
Catsup stained Griller
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 day ago

Haha we hold these truths to be self evident: I’m a girl You’re a boy and we’ve got so much to enjoy

bgc
bgc
1 day ago

We All argue based on assumptions – even when these assumptions are unconscious or denied. Call it religion, call it ideology – the name doesn’t matter: the point is that to made progress in life, we each Need to become aware of our own assumptions. Only after we have become aware of them, can we decide whether we really want to have the assumptions we actually have. This is important; because often people discover that they don’t want to hold the assumptions that they are implicitly (unconsciously) arguing-from. Or me may discover that some of our assumptions contradict each other.… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  bgc
1 day ago

Perhaps. But I suspect 90 percent of adults are entirely incapable of the sort of introspective self-examination you suggest. And of the 10 percent who are capable, a sizeable percentage of them are uninterested.

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

definitely 50% are incapable, if you know what i mean (and i think that you do).

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 day ago

Amen on that…

bgc
bgc
Reply to  Lineman
1 day ago

I don’t think anybody can know whether they are capable. The fact is that extremely few people will try. This, because thy do not acknowledge that the entirety of what they “know” depends completely on these assumptions. Almost all of our culture, including the prestigious philosophers since the 19th century – is dedicated to denying the validity of “metaphysics”. All attention is given to “facts” and “pragmatism”. Scientists (I was one) say they have no assumptions and that their beliefs are rooted in facts. None of this is true, so our errors are intractable, and debate goes nowhere at all.… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Lineman
1 day ago

I actually started with that, with the feels. I looked at my emotional reaction to this or that phrase, and thought, “why am I having an emotional response?”

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
1 day ago

Any word that ends with -gogg can’t be good.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

Like Gogg (the UK) and Magogg (AINO)?

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

Is Shuggoth close enough?

KGB
KGB
1 day ago

Regarding the timing of the onset of Western ideological fervor, during his ill-fated attempt to invade Quebec in 1775 Benedict Arnold – in his journal and his letters to Washington and others – constantly talked of how the Quebecois would rise up and join the Americans against the British, would see them as liberators because of the allure of “liberty”. It’s uncanny how much his words resemble those of the neocons heading into their sundry GWOT misadventures.

Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  KGB
1 day ago

In fairness to Arnold, it made sense in 1775. The Quebecois were a “conquered people”, living under “the yoke of British oppression”. Except, as it turned out, there wasn’t much oppression and quite frankly when the starving and half-frozen remnant of Arnold’s “army” turned up on the edge of town, laughter and pity were probably the main emotions.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Steve W
1 day ago

Their trek across primeval Maine was still impressive. Foolhardy for sure, but I can’t imagine men today enduring that level of privation for no other payoff than glory.

Steve W
Steve W
1 day ago

Well done Z man, Your peroration over the last twenty minutes or so belongs in the Z Man Unleashed: No More Bullshit anthology.

Steve
Steve
1 day ago

The part that I can’t wrap my tiny little brain around is that while I agree Wilson’s “safe for democracy” and Bush’s spin on it, bombing the world to do things our way, were definitely ideologies, I can’t see why we have a dog in the fight with Russia/Ukraine or Israel/Gaza. How is having principles that insist on imposing your views on someone half a globe away any different than what Bush did? Z explicitly mentions Africans having their own way of working things out. I think he probably wisely avoided the tar baby. Though the tar baby deserves at… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
1 day ago

Bush’s imperialism was on behalf of mammon. Biden’s–and Trump’s–is on behalf of diversity and perversity. The former was impersmissible, while the latter is unimpeachable.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 day ago

I’ll accept it as a possible motive, but “on behalf”? I’m not likely to understand the “on behalf” of some of my own actions until Judgement…

usNthem
usNthem
1 day ago

The last 5-10 minutes were fricking awesome and launched out of the ballpark.That is the reality everyone should and ultimately must embrace. It’s the only way back to a semblance of sanity.

Reziac
Reziac
1 day ago

News all sounds alike because they all buy their national news feed from Associated Press. Since they’re all reciting from the AP feed, they say the same things, word for word. No coordination required, just a lack of national reporters (which would cost a lot more than the AP feed). You can tell a low-budget operation because they instead buy their feed from United Press International. When I was DJ’ing, I read many a story from the wires of UPI, because as a public interest radio station, we were required by law to carry a certain amount of news, and… Read more »

Steve W
Steve W
1 day ago

Z argues persuasively that the majority must always be in charge in a cohesive society. I agree, though it is sad to see what Zimbabwe has become and what South Africa is becoming under majority rule.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve W
6 hours ago

The “majority” in the USA are women. So given Z’s belief, women must be in charge? Yes, I know an argument can be made that such is already so, however do we believe that such is correct for proper for societal function?

Steve W
Steve W
1 day ago

I took Z man’s advice and read Red Plenty. It’s an amazing and unique reading experience. Upon listening to today’s podcast it is easy to understand why Z enjoys the book so much. The book demonstrates how “applied ideology” worked – or failed to work – in the post-Stalin Soviet planned economy. And not due to the lack of sharp people with noble goals, who really wanted the system to work for the benefit of the masses, but due to the paths that could not be taken, that were closed off by actually-existing socialism. It seems that the one unthinkable… Read more »

Last edited 1 day ago by Steve W
Johnny Ducati
Johnny Ducati
Member
1 day ago

As to meetings, the only worthwhile meetings I ever attended were design reviews. Then we ditched the design reviews and went to about 80% development with the balance figured out in the field. Stupid short-sighted fools.

Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
1 day ago

Russell Kirk used to say, quoting Napoleon, “Ideology is for idiots.”

Steve
Steve
1 day ago

As an example of the ideological nature of DR, or at least of the DR commentariat, while probably exactly none of us would dispute that in the abstract 1+1=2, at least 23 of us thought that 1+1 does not equal 2 if it leads to the wrong answer, i.e., comparative advantage.

Mister
Mister
1 day ago

Shouldn’t the title be ‘Idelogy and I’?

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
1 day ago

Compare these two songs. While footprints isn’t great poetry its not bad, and it’s at least sweet and there some sentimental mystery about what might have happened when he found her; (smooching?) Strings just filled in depressing boring words to a stock country progression and solos over it. Now some might object, Jane’s addiction and gnr have disgusting lyrics too. But their sound was original. Strings is not. I even think the melody in footprints is better.  Fkatt and Scruggs  Now some folks like the summertime when the they can walk about Strolling through the meadow green it’s pleasant there… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

That’s it, that’s it, that’s the good stuff. Ma and Pa resting on the mountain, in a bare-dirt windswept grave, with scrubgrass for flowers and a wailing moon, that sort of thing.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo
Chmi
Chmi
1 day ago

Yes, you are no ideologue. You are a prophet, as manifested in the “Back to work” post from yesterday, where you make a long, powerful list of anticipations, without expending a single sentence on why what you know is going to happen will take place.

Why is the “global bank” and “global reserve currency” game approaching its expiration?
Aren’t still all other countries quite visibly afraid of the USA, and its hundreds of world-financed military bases?

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
1 day ago

I’m gonna go to this Billy strings concert and keep an open mind (having already opened my wallet) but rather than being a positive sign I would say Billy strings is a sign that any popular art is totally dead at least in America. Billy strings seems to be. Walking corpse: hid original songs are bad, sorry to say, they are boilerplate bluegrass/pop. He’s good at psychedelic bluegrass. He’s good at bluegrass, and that’s great but while his voice is good too it is not original and great instrumental solos get boring to me really fast. Dave grisman was better… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Hi-ya!
1 day ago

You make me miss the great Frip enlightening us about death-metal bands.
Such a cool scene.

p.s., ol’ Moms loved bluegrass, the original Appalachian kind, the more mournful and plaintive the better. It reminded her of the 1920s and 30s.

Last edited 1 day ago by Alzaebo