The Show Trials

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Note: The regular Taki post is up. This week it is another dive back into the Covid pool, with an eye to what is happening to the official narrative. Behind the green door is another world class episode of Sunday Thoughts, in addition to a review of Clarkson’s Farm and the detective series Bosch.

In authoritarian societies, the people have no real way of knowing what is happening inside the ruling class. The media is controlled by the regime, so they are not reporting on what is happening internally. Instead, they are broadcasting the official truth from the regime or elements within the regime. Often, regime elements have their own media platforms through which they speak to other regime elements. This is a form of signaling to avoid open confrontation between regime elements.

Otherwise, the public is left to guess about what is happening inside the regime, even when the policy is clear. During the Cold War, Kremlinologists would study what was happening in Russia to try and guess what was happening in the party. If someone stopped showing up to public events, a mountain of narratives would appear building on this one event. We see this with North Korea today. When one of his uncles is missing from the team photo, it is assumed he fell out of favor.

In America, this opacity is complicated by the grand delusion of liberal democracy, which blinds people from the reality of the political arrangements. The trappings of popular government add another layer to party rule. It often means that the signals coming from inside are warped by the pretensions of openness and transparency in party media. The need to pretend the system is working as advertised means that decrees must be dressed up as the result of consent.

With that in mind, the ongoing show trial for the January 6th protests gives an opportunity to do a little regime analysis. Nancy Pelosi has forced through a series of hearings about the protests, despite nothing new to reveal. The right-side of the party engineered their way out of the process. They knew it was a loser for them, so they are now on the sidelines commenting about it. The left side is forging ahead, with the first round wrapping up last week.

The term “show trial” has been with us since the 1920’s, but gained wide currency during Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s. By definition, a show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The point of the trial is to serve as a warning to political opponents of the regime, but also to serve as an expression of power by the dominant elements within the regime. It is all about violence capital within the ruling class.

From the outside, the show trial looks like a display of absolute power. After all, the condemned is usually required to confess to crimes that everyone, including his accusers, know he did not commit. The condemned is forced to humiliate himself as a way of showing his submission to power. Similarly, the people administrating the show trial must pretend to be enthusiastic believers in the proceeding. One element of the show trial is the manufactured appearance of unity.

In reality, show trials are an indication of conflict within the ruling regime, where the dominant camp feels the need to display their power. The point of it is to advertise the violence capital of the side holding the show trial. The reason Stalin had to kill so many old Bolsheviks was he needed to establish himself as the most violent member of the party, the one member willing to kill in order to maintain power. Stalin was making himself into the most dangerous man in a dangerous world.

The thing with Stalin’s purges and show trials is they were not just about his rise to one-man rule of the Soviet state. There were real policy disputes within the party in the 1920’s that are relevant today. The left side of the party, represented by Trotsky, was the accelerationist wing. They wanted rapid adoption of socialism. The right side was the incrementalistic wing, represented by Bukharin. They wanted socialism to evolve over time with party guidance and motivation.

Initially, Stalin sided with the right. In retrospect he chose this course because it gave him time to solidify his hold of the party organization. Stalin was not a theorist or a strategist, but he was an adept organizer. The slow and steady approach, while not living up to the ideals of Bolshevism, meant he could stock the growing bureaucracy with his people. By the late 1920’s when it was clear that the slow approach was far too slow, Stalin switched sides and embraced the accelerationist approach.

The party purges and show trials of the 1930’s coincided with what amounted to a genocide of the Russian peasants. Forced collectivization, execution squads and mass deportations wiped out close to half the agricultural output. Confiscation of crops resulted in widescale famine. It was all part of the revolution from the top in order to turn Russia into an industrial nation. in that regard, it worked. Manufacturing soared and whole cities were created to produce industrial goods.

The point here is the show trial is the bit of the iceberg we can see from outside the ruling regime. The part we don’t see is the party struggle over how to move forward with their stated agenda. In the age of Covid, which started with the chants of “build back better”, it is not unreasonable to see the current show trials in this light. The new rounds of Covid panic, which are a prelude to an autumn lockdown, suggest there is a power struggle inside the party as to how best to force the great reset,

The 18-month campaign against Covid has seen trillions shifted from the white middle-class to elements of the ruling class. The tech oligopoly has profited wildly from the massive changes in society in the name of Covid. Small business has been devastated, much in the same way the kulaks were crushed by Stalin. On the other hand, similar to Stalin’s revolution from above, the great reset is not going to plan. The purge of Trumpism did not end resistance to the party.

Another clue here is the slow maneuvering to pass what is being called an infrastructure plan but is in reality the end of the two-party charade. The $4T plan working its way through the Senate will lock in the gains made by the Left over the last year and foreclose any electoral resistance. The show trial appears to be an effort to whip up support on the left in order to force some elements of the right to sign onto what amounts to their own death certificate.

In our sissified age, the show trial is more about the show than the trial. In this case, men with guns were sent out to arrest the protestors and lock them away in dungeons around the capital. The party leaders lack the courage to bring these people in for a show trial, so they remain incommunicado. Instead of having them shot and air brushed from the history books, they are a silent voice in the proceeding, a reminder to the right side that behind the performance is a will to power.

This is why people should not be fooled by the collection of sissies they rolled out in the first phase. Sure, the those mall cops reading speeches provided to them by the party were ridiculous. One of them was barely literate. The typical mall Santa sees tougher action than these wimps saw on January 6th, but that was never the point of this highly orchestrated drama. Stalin’s show trials were not about public support. The public supported the victims. It was about party politics.

That is the other parallel worth considering. The victims of Stalin were on the side of policies that enjoyed broad public support. Stalin was easily able to overcome this by having control of the instruments of state power. This is why voting harder is not a path out of the current crisis. Your vote does not matter. Instead, what comes next is always what comes next when a ruling elite believes they are the embodiment of the revolutionary dream. The revolution from above will continue.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Understanding The Left

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Taking some of my own advice from last week’s show, this week’s show is a bit of deep dive into the subcultures of the Left. This is one of those shows where I had to leave a ton of stuff on the cutting room floor. It is not so much that they have a rich intellectual history or have interesting things to say, but that it is hard to summarize the jumble of ideas that make up these subcultures. This is especially true of the postmodern or woke Left, which is a dog’s breakfast of ideas and concepts.

Putting it together, I was reminded of when I read Frédéric Bastiat, the 19th century French economic journalist. It occurred to me that once you disconnect from the hard reality of human relations, the train of thought must inevitably lead to ideas that are sharply at odds with reality. As with Bastiat, the intellectual traditions that underpin the modern Left work only if you forget the nature of man. Otherwise, they lack maturity and seriousness and read more like fantasy novels.

The other thing I was reminded of when studying up on this stuff is that most of it takes great care to avoid addressing the moral assertion at the core. That assumption is that it is inherently immoral for European societies to organize themselves in the best interest of the people who make up the society. This is the assumption of Marx. The French workers cannot organize in the best interest of French workers. They must organize, like all workers, in the best interests of workers everywhere.

It is not hard to locate the source of this in Marx. The interesting thing is how the tides of history made it the default assumption in the West. The two great industrial wars of the last century delegitimized nationalism. This left the two internationalist ideologies as the default ideologies. This is the source of the current crisis. The universal open society has never been tested intellectually or practically. Like the experiment with Bolshevism, it is proving to be an unworkable set of assumptions.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: The Populist Left
  • 17:00: The Libertarian Socialists
  • 32:00: The Postmodern Left
  • 52:00: The Anarchist Left

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/T8DMLWdhRaY

Sino-America

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Back in the early days of the internet, some people noticed that the emerging tech sector was helping the Chinese Communist Party use new technology to increase their hold on the people. Specifically, the American tech companies were working on two areas of technology. One was building the “great firewall of China” which prevented outside information from entering China. They were also building out what would became a digital extension of the surveillance state.

At the time, there were few people concerned about this washing back into the West, because after all, that is not who we were. There were people worried that American business was being changed culturally by with China. After all, if profit can cause people with liberal values to overlook slavery, torture and oppression, it means their allegiance to liberal values is up for bid as well. In other words, the concern was over doing business with monsters, not becoming monsters.

There were signs of the latter as far back as the Bush years. Thomas Friedman, the far-left activist at the New York Times was very fond of China. He started writing columns about how China’s one party rule was much more efficient than the sloppy and chaotic democracies of the West. Given that he was installed on an inner party platform, it suggested a change in how the managerial elite was thinking about themselves and their relationship to the people over whom they ruled.

Here we are a decade on and the American regime is slowly transforming itself into something like the Chinese regime. Deng Xiaoping famously said that China will have socialism with Chinese characteristics. Economically this has meant state capitalism where large state enterprises dominate the economy. They have some freedom to operate, but they must answer to the party. A vast thicket of private enterprise is tolerated, but the party keeps a watchful eye on them.

Whether by nature or by design, the managerial class of America is taking on Chinese socialism with American characteristics. Instead of state capitalism in the Marxist sense, it is state capitalism in the corporate sense. A small number of massive corporations dominate the economy. They allow the political parties some freedom, but politics must always serve corporate interests. Private enterprise is tolerated, but it operates in the shadow of the corporate giants.

It is on the political front where this is becoming more obvious. What the tech giants learned helping China build the surveillance state is the logic and spirit that it takes to operate it effectively. Gone unnoticed is the absence of whistle blowers from companies like Twitter and Google. One would expect regular document dumps revealing the internal workings of these firms. We have more defectors from North Korea than from Silicon Valley. The CCP has few defectors as well.

Of course, we are seeing the rollout of a social credit system like that implemented in China, except it is being done by corporations. Mastercard maintains a special blacklist of people who cannot use the credit card system. This was originally intended to combat criminal fraud, but it has now been turned to combat dissent. Note how it is becoming normalized. This is the trick they learned from China. That which is institutionalized quickly becomes part of the public psyche.

Another example of how the American regime is implementing Chinese authoritarianism with American characteristics is in how they are restricting speech. In China, the role of the party is explicit. The language is explicit. In America, the inner party is hidden and the delusion of self rule is their cloaking mechanism. Instead of hunting down violators of party orthodoxy,  the regime is “combating misinformation” on-line. Note how this new term has been repeated by regime actors.

Ten years ago, most people accepted that there was a lot of nonsense on-line and people would often joke about it. That was the point of a free speech zone. Anyone could say what they liked. Today, the usual suspects are cowering in fear at misinformation on-line. Joe Biden claimed that people are being murdered by misinformation, suggesting they have anthropomorphized the concept. In America, misinformation is the deviationism of the ruling regime.

A good example of how politics has taken the second chair to state capitalism is the latest spending bill in Congress. The Senate just voted in favor of a bill that exists only in the realm of forms. It’s not words on a page, but rather a concept that has yet to be given any specifics. What is happening here is the corporate interest are telling the empty suits in Congress to get it passed and they will then supply the text of the bill when the times comes to make it official.

What this means is our clues for what the American regime will do next lies in what China is doing now. For example, the Chinese imposed a law on Hong Kong that allows them round of dissenters and send them off to slave camps in China. The first has been convicted under the new law. The American regime is trying to pass similar laws so they can do the same thing. That is the point of the current show trial being held in Washington. They want to justify new laws against dissent.

The hundreds of dissidents being held incommunicado by the regime are a good mile post when measuring just how far the regime has moved toward this Chinese style of authoritarian rule. It also shows how the media has been completely subverted by the security apparatus of the state. Within living memory the media would have been all over this story, painting the victims as heroes. Today, few in the media bother to notice them at all. When they do, it is to cheer the regime.

There is another lesson from China that applies here. When she tried to apply Marxist-Leninist ideology, it was a disaster. The main reason for that is political-economy is culture specific, so this foreign political-economy could never fit China. The political-economy of China is similarly a poor fit in the West, particularly America. In China, the iron rice bowl still control regime thinking. In America, the seething contempt for the masses prevents such a social contract.

Liberal democracy evolved as a solution to the violence that arose when elites were no longer willing to hold up their end of the bargain. It was a feedback mechanism to signal course changes and reform efforts within the ruling elite. What we think of as liberal government was always a solution to the problem of violent regime change that had been the mode in the West for millennia. The current regime is now back on the road that will inevitably lead to the gallows.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Understanding The Borg

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One of the more challenging things for dissidents to grasp about politics within a liberal democracy is emergent behavior. This is behavior of a group that does not depend on properties of individuals, but on the relationships within the group. Right-wing people tend to reject this in favor of reductionism. Individuals act out of material self-interest, so the actions of a group must be out of self-interest. This means the actions of all groups can be reduced down to individual motivations.

The fact that this form of analysis has never been useful in combating radicalism and irrationalism never seems to matter. There is something about the mind of right-wing people that prevents them from questioning this analysis. Perhaps it is simply the product of the rational mind. People who seek to live orderly lives naturally assume order is the default state of mind. To accept the existence of the hive mind is to question a fundamental understanding of existence.

Regardless, emergent behavior is a real thing and accepting it is key to understanding and predicting the behavior of the forces of darkness. The best example is a flock of birds darting among trees at dusk. There is no lead bird calling out commands to the rest of the birds. Instead, every bird is both a leader and follower, responding to the actions of the birds around it. When a bird on the edge of the group moves toward a bit of food, the rest respond in a cascade of corresponding action.

Another useful way of thinking about it, at least within the context of political behaviors within left-wing systems, is the synchronization of metronomes. Everyone has probably seen the demonstration where they take a group of metronomes operating at different rates and sit them together. In short order they are swinging at the same rate. There is a bit of math to it, but the demonstration is enough to make the point. While not emergent behavior, it is a good way to visualize it.

We have a real world example of it this week at the Olympics. This was supposed to be the Olympics where the glories of black girl magic broke through the toxic masculinity of white supremacist culture. Instead, Naomi Osaka was bounced by a nobody in the tennis competition. Then, Simone Biles led her team to a stunning second place finish in the first phase of the gymnastics competition. She topped it off by quitting on her team in the finals and they lost to the Russians.

Inside the hive, this was not expected. They had prepped their stories celebrating black girl magic and side pieces on diversity being the strength of the team. The jock sniffers were in the pumpkin patch waiting for the great pumpkin to arrive only to have reality turn up instead. Faced with disconfirmation, they did not throw down the paper straws from their soy lattes and question the power of black girl magic. Instead, they frantically scanned their hive looking for support in their belief.

Eventually, one of them came up with a way to fit this unexpected turn of events into the narrative of black girl magic. You see, Biles was not a petulant loser who quit on her team at the biggest moment. No, she is a hero for selflessly omitting herself from the competition so the team could carry on without her. Within minutes every sports reporter was blinking this signal to the other members of the hive. By the end of the day, this was the official narrative being told on every sports show.

The reductionist looks at this and assumes there must have been word from central command that instructed everyone to get on board with the new story. At the hollowed out volcano where the deep state operates, they had a meeting, and this new narrative was created and quickly e-mailed to all sports ninnies. It is an exaggeration, but that is how many on the right assume the media operates. They believe it is carefully choreographed performance operating along rational lines.

Instead, what is the norm, as in the case of the Olympics story, is something similar to what Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter observed in their study of the Seekers, a UFO cult in the 1950’s. Faced with the undeniable disconfirmatory evidence, individuals look to the rest for support in maintaining the belief. If there is strong enough social support, they find a way to rationalize the disconfirmation within the general framework of their beliefs.

This is the natural behavior of radical groups. They have strong social relationships within the group, because it is ultimately the point of the group. The members join as a form of self-abnegation. They swap their hated sense of self with the identity of the group, which is why they are fiercely loyal to the group. It is also why they treat criticism of the group as a physical attack. From their perspective, it is an attack on their person, because their person is fully integrated into the collective.

This is why left-wing groups are immune to reality. The fact-driven right-winger can spend his life presenting his evidence and the radicals will either ignore the disconfirmation or assimilate it into the ideology, like a snake digests its meal. There is no shot caller at the top directing it. The members are not conscious of it. Those silly sports reporters covering for the Simone Biles are not even aware of what they are doing, because they have lost all self-awareness.

This is why that left-wing person in your life acts different in isolation than they do when within their hive. Their on-line behavior, for example, is aggressive in defense of the hive, while in person they are often quite meek. On-line, they have the sense of being in the collective, so they act accordingly. In person, they are the soldier isolated from his unit, thinking of nothing but getting home. It is also why the radicals are the most intensely on-line. Social media has become their virtual hive.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Journey Home

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Way back in the Reagan years, the people taking over the foreign policy establishment were often accused of being Trotskyites. The reason is many of them had been Trotskyites into the 1960’s and 1970’s. They were men of the far left until they were drawn into the neoconservative movement. Most were drawn into the movement through opposition to Stalinist communism. Some broke with the Left over the state of Israel, while others were concerned over the domestic issues.

The accusation was not without roots in reality. Trotsky was the leader of the left-Bolsheviks in the 1920’s. His faction opposed Stalin and Bukharin, who led what was known at the time as the right-Bolsheviks. Of course, Stalin’s faction won the dispute, driving the Trotskyites out of the party and eventually driving an ice ax through the head of Trotsky himself. Stalin’s later suspicion of Zionism would only add to this old dispute between the founding generations of the Left.

The Left-Right dynamic within radical politics is something that gets very little attention, because it does not serve ruling class interests. In 1920’s Russia, the Left side promoted radical reorganization of society, while the Right side wanted to take a gradualist approach. Critics of the conservative movement in America have relied on this comparison to chide them over their diffidence. The paleo criticism of Buckley conservatism was that it was just the slow version of Progressivism.

What this means is that the ruling dynamic of America since the middle of the last century has been a form of party rule. The communist had informal factions within a formal party structure, while the liberal democrats prefer formal factions within an informal party structure. The Democrats are the left-liberals while the Republicans are the right-liberals. They have the same goals, but disagree on the best approach for achieving those goals. They also serve the same interests.

Looked at in this light, the alliance of former radicals with the Buckley conservatives makes much more sense. It was not simply over opposition to the Soviet Union or even communism itself. It was a lesson learned from experience. The Trotskyites were slow to realize the danger of Stalin and it cost them their lives. The neocons were not going to make the same mistake twice. In other words, the shift from the Left to the Right within the ruling party was a continuation of an old struggle.

Within this framing, the recent break between the neocons and their former allies in the decaying Buckley coalition is a journey home, of sorts. Their alliance with the right-liberals, whose appeal was always to the heritage stock of America, was always about the old struggle. The crusades against Islam in order to secure Israel’s dominant position in the region was a natural consequence of winning the Cold War. Now that those battles are done, the Trotskyites are heading home.

This political Aliyah is why someone like Jonah Goldberg are pulling out all the stops to present himself as a grotesque antiwhite fanatic. He dresses it up in anti-Trump sentiment, but his rhetoric would be at home on MSNBC. Bill Kristol, of course, sounds like a socialist history teacher in the 1960’s now. His new venture, The Bulwark is underwritten by a Persian. One suspects that they secretly call him Cyrus and they think of him as freeing them from the right-wing captivity.

The most egregious of the crew, with regards to the bomb throwing at their old friends on the Right, is David French. His physiognomy suggests there are a few surprises in his 23andme, but putting that aside, he now sounds like an adjunct professor teaching critical race theory. It is as if he has been tasked with making it clear to all that the old Trotskyites are not only breaking with the Right, but they are ready to come home and take up their position on the Left.

Now, shape shifting in politics is nothing new. Bismarck was a famous shape-shifter, who would take any side to advance his overall agenda. He wanted to secure a united German empire and would partner with anyone to do it. Churchill is another example of someone who could change form quite easily. The great political operators of history were always men who adapted to their circumstances. They were implacable and tenacious, but always able to survive to fight another day.

For this quality to become a group attribute really is impressive. It suggests there is something preternatural at work. The fact that is seems to be working is an even more amazing phenomenon. The major left-liberal media organs are now welcoming these people home and adopting their foreign policy positions. Note how the Biden administration is growing more hawkish with Iran. Instead of embracing the old Obama approach, they are sticking with the Trump approach.

One cannot help but be impressed with the resiliency of these people. None of them are terribly bright. Jonah Goldberg is just a smarmy simpleton. David French could be legally insane. Bill Kristol is as dumb as a goldfish. Taken as a whole they look like a warning about the perils of inbreeding. Despite this, they are slowly transforming themselves back into that old shape and rejoining the left-liberals. It gives a whole new meaning to the term “drug resistant virus”.

Step back from it a bit further and it brings up an interesting parallel between the Bolshevism of the East and the liberal democracy of the West. Both became single party ideologies with an internal left-right dynamic. Despite destroying the Trotskyites in the 1920’s, Stalin embraced their agenda to secure power. We see the same thing in liberal democracy where “free market capitalism” supposedly won the day, but it is now fully animated by the people it allegedly defeated.

At an even higher level, the war between liberal democracy and communism that defined the late 20th century can now be seen as a macro version of the party politics in 1920’s Russia. The “right-side” defeated the “left-side” in the Cold War, but now the winners are embracing the policies they once criticized. It all suggest the last century or so of history is a drama played out on behalf of people operating in secret. The current crisis is just the final act in that drama.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

College Sportsball

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Note: The weekly Taki post is up. Behind the green door we have the Sunday podcast, a post on the joy of work and a review of the movie Giant, which I hated. Most of this is  available to those who buy me a beer. They are not hosting podcasts yet, so that is exclusive to SubscribeStar for now.

Last week, the American sporting world was sent into a frenzy over news that the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma were planning to leave the Big 12 conference for the Southeastern Conference. In addition to stripping the Big 12 of its flagship institutions, it would make the SEC into a juggernaut. They would have half of the dozen or so major brands in college football. This would no doubt set off a frenzy of moves by the rest of college football in order to keep pace.

For those outside the United States, college athletics is a big business and a big part of the sporting tradition in America. It all started innocently enough when groups of young men at college would challenge the young men of another college in some sort of athletic competition. Before long it was formalized and became a part of the identity of the college, a way for the students and alumni to bond. The colleges found it was good advertising, so they would offer good players free tuition.

Into the 1980’s college sports, not unlike professional sports, was mostly the plaything of rich people. Wealthy alumni would give money to the school so they could build arenas, pay players, and hire top coaches. To be a top donor to a college was a prestigious thing, so successful alumni were motivated to give back. Then the world changed in the 1980’s with the explosion of television. With the spread of cable, television revenue exploded, and it poured into college sports.

It is fair to say that college sports, particularly college football and college basketball, shifted from semi-professional and informal to professional and formal. Prior to the cable age, top coaches made a nice living, but the rest were paid like any other employee of the university. Today, top coaches are the highest paid employees on campus, by a factor of ten. The college athletics department is a 100 million dollar enterprise with hundreds of staff and players.

College football is the primary driver. Football is the most popular television sport in America by far. College basketball also plays a role, but it is primarily football that is driving the economic revolution in college sports. Unlike the NFL, the fans of college football have a bond with the players, as the players, in theory, are attending classes at their school and will be proud alumni one day. Despite the obvious exceptions, this is true, and the players remain part of the community forever.

Both college basketball and college football offer good examples of the dangers of an unregulated marketplace. Into the 1980’s, all college sports were governed by the NCAA, which tried to maintain college athletics as amateur endeavors. With the flood of TV money, the power of the NCAA has declined to the point where they have little say over the governance of football or basketball. Instead, what has erupted is a free market free-for-all where the big try to eat the small and even some of the big.

Prior to the financialization of college sports via the conduit of television money, college sports were a regional enterprise. Schools organized locally into conferences, which supplemented the NCAA in governing the sports and provided local management of the routine items like scheduling and tournaments. With billions in TV money, these conferences were not only empowered to break free of NCAA governance, but they could also go to war with one another in an effort to gain market share.

Contrary to what libertarians claim, this explosion in competition among suppliers did not result in lower prices to consumers or great variety of product, but rather a massive contraction of the marketplace along with spirally costs to consumers. In the 1980’s colleges gave their students free tickets. A college football game was a cheap afternoon of fun for the fans. Today, students pay for seats through their tuition and the fans often have to donate thousands for the right to buy tickets.

Further, the sport of college football is contracting. That is the significance of the latest news about Texas and Oklahoma. The old model was a conference anchored by a few big brands, like Texas and Oklahoma. The league shared revenue and cooperated in scheduling and promotion. The anchor schools got to control the league for allowing the smaller programs to freeload off their brand a little. That model is collapsing as the big brands now seek to combine and exclude the smaller schools.

Like the computer business, college football is headed to a world in which a small number of big names control the market and work to exclude everyone else from the revenue stream. In the 1980’s there was a dozen computer makers with different takes on the home computer. Today there is basically one type of PC. The same happened with mobile phones. The unregulated technology market collapsed into an oligarchy, and we are seeing the same thing happen with college athletics.

Something similar happened with boxing in the 1980’s. It used to be that every large city had weekly boxing shows where up and coming fighters battled one another for recognition and the dream of a title shot. Television put boxing on every week as a normal part of its content. Friday night fights was a thing into the 1970’s, until the cable television explosion. Within short order, greed and corruption removed boxing from the public square and now it is barely an afterthought.

This will probably happen with college sports. There are now minor leagues popping up to pay high school basketball players rather than have them compete in amateur leagues or go to college. It will soon be like tennis, in which promising players turn pro once they hit puberty. Also, like tennis, the interest from the general public will decline. A few stars will make millions, but the rest will be used to maintain a system that was busted out by the usual suspects.

The point of all this is that markets are man-made things. They are not like mushrooms that spring up wherever man leaves nature alone. In order for a market to function, each transaction in the market must have a disinterested third party with the power to enforce both ends of the transaction. It must also have the power to prevent a monopoly of supply or demand. Like a sea wall, this governing authority prevents nature from taking its course and turning the market into an oligarchy.

Boxing never had a governing body to impose order, so it collapsed into a chaos of greed and corruption. College athletics is going through the same process and will meet the same end. Without some entity to guard the interest of the whole, the participants will cannibalize one another until the system collapses. This is the nature of markets and it is why markets can only exist when a controlling authority tasked with preserving the market has the power to impose order on the market actors.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Book of Five Rings

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Clausewitz famously drew the parallel between war and politics when he said, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” Therefore, is makes sense for those engaged in politics to study the tactics of war and the warrior. It is not an accident that many of the great political figures in our history were also military men. Twelve U.S. presidents were generals. For a country founded on the principle of civilian rule, having a quarter of the executives come from the military is telling.

The Book of Five Rings is a book on martial arts written by a legendary Japanese swordsman named Miyamoto Musashi. He was also a philosopher, strategist and luckily for us, a writer. He became famous in 17th century Japan for his unique fighting style and his undefeated record in his 61 duels. He is known to westerners through his book on strategy, but in Japan he is still remembered for his great deeds. There is a shrine named after him, which is supposed to be his burial site.

Back in my youth when I lived in another country also called America, this book was popular among conservatives. Japan Inc. was clobbering American industry and it was claimed that it was due to their superior business strategies. This book was popular with Japanese businessmen, so it became popular with American businessmen who wanted to pretend to be learned strategists. Business tycoons like to imagine themselves as warriors, so it made perfect sense.

This week the show is about this book and the lessons that are contained in it which may apply to our age. Conveniently, it is broken into five sections, so there is a ten minute segment on each of the books that make up the whole book. It is a very short book in total that could easily be classified as a pamphlet. Musashi was not the sort for beating around the bush in his writing. The last book is just one page, a total of 311 words not counting the title and the salutation.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 07:00: The Ground Book
  • 17:00: The Water Book
  • 27:00: The Fire Book
  • 37:00: The Wind Book
  • 47:00: The Boom of The Void
  • 57:00: Closing (Be Like Me)

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/HH7uHlk-AUk

The Partisan State

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It was Lenin who popularized the term partisan, as in someone who is party-minded or exclusively concerned with the interests of his political party. He coined the term to explain why socialists should abandon objective analysis of politics. In a society of antagonistic classes, the owners of property versus the laboring classes, class interests and material conditions of existence determine political outlook. Therefore, all claims to objectivity are delusional or self-serving.

We see this in the dynamics of American politics, but not in the way in which Marxists imagined the concept. The left side of the ruling elite imagines themselves as the vanguard of society. They are the ones leading social change in order to achieve their not always well-define ideals. As a practical matter, this means they are the champions and caretakers of the interests of minority groups or in the language of the moment, “the under-represented and historically excluded groups.”

The opponent is always cast as the face of established interests. After all, the power dynamic would not make a lot of sense if the opponents of the oppressed were powerless or inclusive. In partisan politics, it is always David versus Goliath, even when David is all powerful and Goliath is powerless. For most of the last half century, the American Left has had total control of the high ground in America, but they are sure they are the underdog and the Right controls everything.

What this means is that the power relationship is the keystone of the moral dynamic within partisan politics. The underdog, the oppressed, the excluded, must always be the moral superior. Otherwise, it is possible that the oppressed are being oppressed for good reasons or worse yet, the partisan is in fact the oppressor. We see this today where massive global corporations destroy the lives of ordinary citizens while simultaneously claiming this is being done in self-defense.

In Marxist theory, once the working class conquered the capital class, there would no longer be a need for politics. The workers would usher in a classless society. Without classes, there could be no class conflict and therefore no need for politics. In reality, the partisan needs an opponent to exist. The very definition of the partisan is rooted in the existence of the opponent. If one wanted to identify the inflection point of the Soviet Union, it would be when Brezhnev toasted Nixon.

In America, this problem has been solved by generating an organic opponent, custom made to play the role of oppressor, while never threatening the real power. In the middle of the last century, the American Left was in total control. The New Deal was confirmed by the fact that progressives conquered the economic depression at home and conquered fascism around the world. The best the Republican Party could do is promise to be just like the Democrats, which was pointless.

The birth of conservatism solved a massive problem. Buckley style conservatism began as a revolt against the war socialism that lingered on long after the war, but quickly became a usable opponent when debating the next great crusade, the long twilight struggle against the ancient opponent to the East. Conservatism was quickly packaged as the face of the oppressor, the tool of corporate interests. Soon, every Republican was pictured as the little guy from the Monopoly game.

Back then, the coalition of the oppressed championed by the Left reflected the demographics of the country. It was mostly white urban working class people and rural whites, with blacks as a silent partner. The silent partner grew less silent over time, but the demographics of the country grew darker as well. The original opponent was the white middle-class and has remained so. As the complexion of the coalition has grown darker, the nature of the opponent has grown whiter.

The trouble is the old Buckley conservatism discredited itself after the Cold War and no longer makes for a useful opponent. The system has been desperate to create a new enemy, but so far, they have only come up with cartoon villains. The persecution of the January 6th protestors is as much out of frustration as anything else. The Left is so angry that they cannot find real bad guys, they are taking it out on grandmothers who had the temerity to walk into the people’s house.

The ridiculousness of the new bogeymen does not mean the partisans have thrown in the towel on the project. There are efforts to create a new right-wing, which they have helpfully called the New Right. Members of the Old Right are looking for a reboot, so they are happy to join the project. The heirs of Trotsky are hard at work trying to sort this problem as well. They helped the Old Right avoid putting their ideas into practice for 70 years, so they are hoping to repeat this with the New Right.

Therein lies a critical part of the partisan society. It must always be partisans versus objectivist, with partisans having the power. The partisan puts his ideas into practice, while the objectivist is content to describe the world. The main reason for this is that as soon as the objectivist tries to act on his ideas, he is ruined. We see this in dissident politics, where you can analyze what is happening, but if you hint at any action, the C-suites of global capital are alive with ideas on how to crush you.

The thing is, the partisan state relies upon all parties believing that the struggle is real, not just theater. In America, this has meant that the upper-middle-class radicals must believe the enemy has real power and is willing to use it. On the other side, the perpetual losers must think they can win. Politics in the partisan state is a game of zebras versus lions. The zebras win most skirmishes, but in the end, the lions win the battle, and they only need to win once. The lions control every outcome.

The question is what happens when people stop believing this fantasy. Dissidents see the growing ranks of people who no longer see a point to conservatism or even conventional politics. In a world of rigged elections and grotesque levels of political corruption, voting is an insult. Something similar is happening on the Left, where the disaffected Bernie Bros are questioning the game. They already have a new party that is on the ballot in over twenty states.

The Soviet Union provides a little insight as to what happens when the struggle stops being real for the people. The 1920’s and 1930’s provided the Bolsheviks with enemies they could use to justify themselves. The war provided the ultimate enemy for the system, but then came the peace. The Khrushchev years were about making the dream of socialism real, but when that failed, the partisan state ceased to exist. Instead, it was a generation of oligarchic rule with the tattered trappings of socialism.

It can be argued that the détente with the West is the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from collapsing much earlier. The American empire needed the Soviet Empire, so it was happy to help the Soviets keep their system running. The American empire has no enemy to serve this role. The Chinese are too smart to be trapped into a new Cold War and the Russians are too weak. The instability we see is a partisan state that has run out of enemies and therefore, lost its moral authority.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Corona Warning

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It is becoming increasingly clear that most of what the ruling class has been telling us about the corona virus is false. The virus is real, and people have died from it, but everything else we have been told has not been 100% true. The origin of the virus is the most obvious example. Trump called it the “China Virus”, so the managerial elite denied that was the case. They made claims about it possibly originating somewhere else and just showing up in force in China. That was a lie.

Of course, the big lie to this point is that the measures the government imposed were rooted in science. Mask wearing was about preventing the sick from spreading the virus to the rest of us. Alternatively, it was about keeping healthy people from inhaling the virus as it buzzed around in the air. The social distancing stuff was also supposed to be science! None of the measures turned out to be rooted in anything more than superstition and a desire to abuse the population.

The reason that most people went along with these measures initially was that the official word about the virus was that it was Black Death. It is easy to forget, but the regime circulated images of bodies in the streets over in Wuhan. They used similar images when the virus hit Italy. Then they used images from horror movies claiming they were from overrun hospitals. They sold the virus as a potential extinction event, so even the most cynical prepared for the worst.

Corona has become the very definition of the big lie. The warnings about the virus were “lies so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” One should take a minute to appreciate the amazing bit of irony in all of this. Hitler is credited with coining the term to describe the people he saw as his natural enemy. Today, the people relying on the big lie to sustain themselves are making themselves mad looking for Hitler.

Putting all of that aside, we may be arriving at a point where those previous big lies start to shrink down in size and look reasonable. The number of people testing positive for the corona virus, despite being fully vaccinated, is becoming an issue. In the UK, they are reporting that between 40% and 60% of patients hospitalized with corona have been fully vaccinated. There is some confusion about the number as they originally reported the higher figure, but then the media made them change it.

We are seeing something similar happening in Israel. They have been one of the most aggressive countries on the vaccination front. They started early and were the most effective at getting people into the program. As a result, they are one of the most vaccinated countries in the world. They are currently reporting that over 60% of their severe cases are people who have been fully vaccinated. Moderna executives may want to hire food testers and people to start their cars.

In the United States, it is unlikely that these sorts of numbers will be reported as the government and media are simply too dishonest. We do have other ways of seeing if the pattern is the same here. Sports teams, for example, are the most vaccinated populations and they are seeing people come down with corona, despite having been fully vaccinated. They are young and strong, so the cases are mild. Nancy Pelosi’s staff just reported corona infections, despite being fully vaxxed.

Largely ignored by the media thus far is the fact that the vaccine makers think booster shots in the fall may be required. It is hard to know if this is just another lie to keep the money flowing or it is an admission that the vaccine is not as advertised. It could also be a way to sell another panic in the fall, when the normal flu returns. We have reached the point where the only thing we can trust is that whatever we are being told is a lie, but the motivation for the lie is a mystery.

There are a few things going on here. One is that the fanatical testing that should never have been put into place is turning up many false positives. This sort of testing is supposed to err on the side of the false positive. It is not supposed to be used on the population as a whole. It is supposed to be used when there is a serious medical condition that requires treatment. A vaccinated ball player with a runny nose should not be tested for the corona virus or anything else.

The bigger issue, however, is that the vaccines are not as claimed. Past experience with vaccines for corona viruses has shown that these approaches were not highly effective, and they were short lived. Even natural immunity fades with time, but with these vaccines it seems to fade quickly. That is fine if you want to create artificial herd immunity to eliminate the virus from a herd of cattle, but it is not so useful for human population in large diverse societies not fully vaccinated.

What may be happening is the vaccines are highly effective in the short term, but the immunity fades during the first year. This may be the reason for the booster shot stuff that will arrive in the fall. It could also be that the vaccine is narrowly effective for the initial variant, but not for subsequent variants. Given the lack of testing before the roll out, we can only guess. There is also the possibility that the vaccine is a trillion dollar boondoggle that has very little utility at all.

When public trust collapses, the truth no longer has meaning. What carries the day is the most compelling narrative. This should have been the lesson of Hitler, who came to power because he provided the most compelling narrative. Repeated and unnecessary lying by the managerial class regarding Covid means that the facts are quickly losing their value. Instead, it will be the best narrative that carries the day. No amount of censoring will prevent that from happening.

It is fairly clear that we are well past the public health concern with Covid. The treatments for those with severe cases are now highly effective. Most of the population has natural immunity. The variants appear to be less severe than the first wave of the virus, which is not uncommon in pandemics. In other words, we are at the point where we can live with Covid, just as we live with the flu. The question now is whether we can live with the people who have spent two years lying about it.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Final Boss

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One of the underappreciated qualities of liberal democracy is its ability to grow and develop its own opposition. In the Cold War this was not obvious as communism in the form of the Soviet Empire filled the role. Domestically, the inner party had the outer party as a fixed partner. Democrats controlled domestic policy, with some mild opposition from the Republicans. On the other hand, the Republicans controlled foreign policy with some mild dissent from the Democrats.

This partnership collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed. A year after the voters overwhelmingly approved the appointment of former C.I.A. man George H. W. Bush as the successor to Ronald Reagan, the logic of having spooks run the country no longer made much sense. The system quickly pivoted to Saddam Hussein as a temporary fill in for the evil empire, but he was a poor replacement. In the next election the Cold War generation was replaced with the Woodstock generation.

The Clinton years were really just an interregnum. The system needed to learn how to create new enemies. We got the beginnings of the great Islamic enemy and an effort to recreate the holocaust in the Balkans. It was not until the son of the former C.I.A. man that we got the threat of international Islam as the new enemy. Fear of men on flying carpets carried the system into the Obama years. Toward the end of his second term, the search for a new enemy had started.

In this respect, the Trump election can be seen as a natural development. The system needed a bogey man and Trump was prepared to play the role. His appeal to the masses of Dirt People properly frightened the Cloud People and his reckless use of language made him easy to isolate and demonize. The new enemy of the regime would be white supremacist insurrectionists. That is the reason the regime compares January 6th to September 11th. It is their new origin story.

That is one way to look at what has been happening over the last 30 years. It is the quest for authenticity. This vast sprawling managerial state needs a reason to exist, so these manufactured crises provide it. Through the Cold War, the Berlin Wall was both a physical and temporal starting point for the regime. It is why presidents would go to the Brandenburg Gate and give speeches. The great twilight struggle against communism was the reason the regime existed and why it persisted.

The crusade against the Mohammedans was the first full attempt to recreate that old magic and provide the regime with legitimacy and authority. It is why 9/11 became a solemn holiday celebrated by both sides of the regime. Even though the left-liberals opposed the right-liberals in the prosecution of the crusade, they completely accepted the origin of it and the centrality of it. Note that the last anniversary of 9/11 came and went without much ceremony. It no longer matters.

On the other hand, we will now have two new holidays for this new crusade being used to authenticate the regime. Juneteenth will now be the new Independence Day and January 6th will be the Passover. The former is in commemoration of when the good news reached the last of the magic people. The latter is when the tides of history protected the faithful from the raging mobs of systemic racism. Perhaps this will be published as the Gospel of Saint Jaffa, a new holy book.

This new enemy the system has created for itself is more natural and compelling for the regime, so it will be more durable that the crusade against Islam. That drama raised questions about certain subjects that no one is allowed to discuss. It also had religious overtones, which invited in Christians. The only thing that makes the regime more uncomfortable than Christians openly talking about their religion is a collection of white guys noticing they are the only ones without an identity group.

The other compelling aspect of the new war on white people is that it has a historical and anthropological appeal to the regime. One side has been defined by its opposition to bad whites since Charles I. The other side has been similarly defined since Emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem. The new enemy of the regime both inspires and unites the regime in a new end times struggle to make manifest the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.

What this suggests, of course, is that this jihad against white people we see raging everywhere is not going to go away quickly. All events will be warped to fit into the new world view of the struggle. Foreign adversaries will be cast as agents of white supremacy or enablers of white insurrectionists. Regime members who need to be purged will be painted as collaborators at their show trials. January 6th will be their Yom Kippur and every June 16th their Purim.

Whether or not this can work is a question no one dares ask. History has not been kind to regimes that are defined by their war with their own people. A multiracial regime at war with half the people on racial grounds is inherently unstable, as it creates both the means and the motivation to destroy the regime. If one half of the country is defined by its opposition to the regime and the other half is too dysfunctional and inept to defend the regime, the outcome is not hard to imagine.

History gives us a story arch for various forms of social organization. The old palace systems of the Bronze Age do not scale up. Empires all succumbed to internal contradictions and imbalance. Aristocratic systems eventually run out of able elites to maintain the system. Communism finally runs out of seed corn. It could be that the final phase of liberal democracy is a final war against itself. Born in sin and animated by a search for salvation, it sacrifices itself as its final act.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar 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 to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.