An Approved Alternative

Posted on May 24, 2021 by thezman

Note: The regular Taki post is up and the topic is our friends at the FBI. Behind the green door is the Sunday news podcast. There is also a review of the book Red Plenty, which is a very interesting book on Soviet central planning. There is also a post about the looming war between the barefaced and the Masketarians.

The great Sam Francis observed that the Buckleyites were doomed to failure, because they not only engaged the Left in practical politics, but they also embraced the rules the Left had imposed on practical politics. As Francis put it, conservatives had accepted the premise of the managerial class, which meant they would eventually be forced to defend it. If the premise of your ideological movement is the permanence of the managerial state, your existence literally depends on its existence.

That is why Buckley’s project was punctuated by rounds of purges, which often seemed designed to remain in good standing with the Left. In reality, the two sides of the political class, embraced the same set of premises, and the same moral framework. It is like a rivalry between two departments in a large corporation. Their differences are completely bounded by the overarching concerns of the corporation. Both sides know that the point of their rivalry is that the corporation always wins at the end.

The problem with the purging of bad-thinkers is two-fold. One is it boils off anything resembling diversity of thought. Instead of an ongoing debate among equals, it becomes an echo chamber. The other consequence, something that appears to be a feature of the managerial class, is smart people get purged. The result is a slow decline in cognitive capital. If you are curious and ask too many questions, inevitably you run into conflict with the system.

That is what you see with National Review. The last interesting guy on staff was Mark Steyn and he was run off years ago. John Derbyshire was hurled into the void half a dozen years ago. The only thing interesting about National Review these days is looking up the long list of people they fired. Otherwise, the site is now just a collection of dullards who repeat what they are told. Like conservatism itself, National Review has been consumed and fully masticated by the system.

This is why Trump was able to win in 2016, but lost in 2020, despite being more popular and facing a vegetable. In 2016 he was facing off against a brittle and pointless right-wing system that shattered when he struck it. The left-wing side was not prepared to take on the role of disciplining the right-wing side, so Trump was able to squeak through and win the election. The left-wing side was fully prepared to deal with Trump in 2020 and made sure there was no way he could win again.

The problem for the system is it still lacks an approved alternative. Despite its many flaws, Buckley-style conservatism was a valuable vessel into which was poured the political aspirations of white America. About 40% of white people called themselves conservative at the peak. Another 25% leaned that way on most issues, but maybe had some objections on other issues. This made the right side of the political system seem like a legitimate alternative to the left side of the system.

Something similar happened in the late-1960’s and early-70’s. The old-line Republican leadership, the Rockefeller Republicans, lost their legitimacy due to their impotence in the face of the culture war waged by the Left. The Goldwater campaign in 1964 was the first shot across the bow of the old guard. The ascent of Nixon masked the problem, but finally the conservatives rose up to supplant the old guard. The Reagan revolution was more about creating a new approved alternative to the Left.

Today there is no out-of-the-box movement ready to push the wreckage of conservatism over the side. The long run of Buckley-style conservatism anathematized anything that looked like a threat from the Right. It is easy to miss, but conservatism became extremely narrow and intolerant after the Cold War. Populism, nationalism, and traditionalism are all forbidden topics in modern politics. The result is alternative thinking is a scattered mess, often polluted with eccentrics.

One strange result of this loss of an approved alternative is the left-side of the political class is in a panic. Progressivism in America is now a fully negative identity that needs an enemy to survive. More important, that enemy needs to be compliant. Over the long Cold War, the left-side of the political class evolved to depend on that compliant right-side as its constraint and raison d’etre. This is why it is desperately flailing about trying to create a new version of the old familiar.

It is also why the Republican party is trying to get a make-over. They dumped the ridiculous Liz Cheney not because they disagreed with her opinions. In fact, most Republicans share her disgust for their voters. It is just that she is screwing up the plan to put Trumpian lipstick on the old pig of right-wing politics. The hope is if they decorate their language with Trump’s rhetoric, white voters will forget how much the party hates them and go back to reflexively voting for the GOP.

The trouble they are having is that white people increasingly distrust the system as a whole, not just the Republican leaders. The Trump wing now defines themselves in opposition to system. They still talk about voting in new people, but their plan is self-contradictory, even though they do not see it. Throwing more people into the “the swamp” just means the creatures in the swamp are well-fed. Another tainted election and that reality becomes clear even to the dimmest of them.

Then there is the dissident wing, much smaller, but growing. These are the people who have come to terms with demographic realty. While lacking a coherent moral philosophy, they have broken free of the prevailing moral framework. They can no longer accept a politics that features two sides of the same. No amount of political marketing is getting this group back in the fold. Not even a return of Trump will bring this group back to liberal democratic politics.

What the political class faces is a choice. They can try to adapt to this reality and become a ruling party like in South America. They win every election, but the opposition parties are allowed to exist as a pressure relief. The other option is to prop up the Republicans and conservatives as a Potemkin alternative, knowing that very few people think they are anything more than yes-men to the oligarchy. Those are the options for the next approved opposition.

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!

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Questions & Answers

Posted on May 21, 2021 by thezman

Summer is here in Lagos. We went from cold mornings and moderate afternoons a week ago to cool mornings and hot afternoons. Next week is the unofficial start of summer in the U.S. and the start of high killing season here in Lagos. There be lots of pent up homiciding, so we are expecting a banner year. In preparation I am taking next week off from the show and the Sunday show. Next week is one of the slowest traffic weeks for the site, so it is a good time for a break.

This week I wanted to clear out the mailbag, but I have been noticing a trend in the e-mail the last six weeks or so. That is people asking me about topics that I have not discussed anywhere. I have not done anything on the Israeli attack on Gaza or the Arizona audit, for example. Since many of these topics will never warrant a post or a segment in the show, it seemed like a good time to address them this week. I am killing two birds with one show, so to speak.

Getting back to the coming of summer, it is looking like an interesting culture war here in Lagos over the dropping of the masks. Last week, the Tubby Tyrant in charge of this dump dropped the mask edict. In theory, you are no longer required to wear a mask when going into stores or offices. We never wore masks at the office, but if you wanted to go in a store, you had to wear one. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

So far, no stores have dropped their mask mandate. In fact, the Covidians seem to be doubling up on their mask discipline. I saw a normal in the Wawa without a mask and a helpful Covidian tapped him on the shoulder to remind him it is store policy to wear a mask inside the store. She was just another customer. I was hoping he would reply with a right cross, as that is probably the only way these people learn, but he just ignored her and went about his business. She probably reported him.

I have had some fun with the Covidians I know by saying that mask wearing goes against the science. You can see that it really cuts deep. They have spent the last year telling us the CDC is the Oracle of Delphi. Now their most trusted oracle has turned on them and they have no way to handle it. That will not stop the lunacy. Instead of stars on their bellies, the Covidians will have masks on their faces. This could become a permanent feature of our society going forward.

It is not the worst thing. For a while now it has become clear that normals cannot live with the crazies much longer. Maybe their decision to mask up forever will lead to a natural self-segregation of the two species. The crazies will slowly stop dealing with normals and normals will be able to easily spot a crazy from a distance. A slow segregation of the two groups will emerge. it is wishful thinking, I know, but summer is upon us and it is the time to think positive thoughts.

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!

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This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00 Opening
04:00 The Young Guys
09:30 Israel
14:30 Bill Gates
19:00 Bitcoin
25:00 The Jab
33:00 Arizona
40:30 DeSantis
46:00 Shekeling
51:30 Music
53:00 Thank You

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/Drn7kbyCCq0

The New And Improved GOP

Posted on May 20, 2021 by thezman

If you have an idea for a new solution to an old problem, you have two ways to promote your new solution. One is you can try to convince people it is a novel solution that is not just a better version of old solutions. It is a compete departure from the old way of addressing the problem. The other option is to disguise the originality of your solution and pitch your new idea as an advance on the old idea. Your new solution is a new and improved way of solving this old problem.

For example, you have come up with a new home cleaning product. Instead of the normal kitchen cleaner that relies about chemicals, your new product relies on microorganisms that eat the typical kitchen grime. You could try to convince people that using an alien life form to keep the stove clean is better than the old way of getting rid of grease and grime. Alternatively, you could skip past the details and focus on the amazing ability of your new product to clean the stovetop.

One approach is about changing minds. In this case, you need to convince people that novel life forms are better than chemicals. The other approach is about positioning your product at largest point of agreement. In this case, most people hate cleaning their kitchen, so you focus on that as your rallying point. The choice comes down to how open minded people will be about the novel idea. If you think people are open to a new approach, then your novel idea is the better option.

It also depends upon your willingness to take risks. You could try and fail to change people’s minds about using invincible critters to clean the kitchen. They could be perfectly safe and better for the environment than the use of caustic chemicals, but people freak out over invisible critters. Your effort to change how people think about the use of microorganisms could fall on deaf ears. Even worse, they could think you are a crazy person promoting dangerous ideas.

This is always the dilemma of politics. The reason the parties sound like two metronomes is they think it is safer to focus on the established market. They eschew novelty because that runs the risk of catastrophic failure. Their donors could be offended, or some large segment of their voting base could oppose it. The downside of the tried and true is a modest election loss. The downside of embracing a novel set of ideas is turning the party into a fringe party of weirdos.

This framing is what the Republicans now face. Most would like to go back to being the bland shadow of the Democrats. That was easy and fun. It required little risk, as all they had to do is wear little American flag lapel pins and be mean to Democrats. Until the 2016 debacle, being a Republican was simple. You waited for the Democrats to step on a rake, and then you talked about it on Fox News. Come the election you told your voters that they had to vote for you or the Democrats would win.

The one thing the Republicans seem to have figured out is the old approach is not going to work, even if the evil orange menace has been purged from their city. Maybe it is the threat of Trump running in 2024 or their own internal polling, but they seem to have figured out that the old product is not going to sell. They need a new product to take to their voters if they hope to win future elections. This is the gist of this memo circulated by the House GOP leadership last month.

In addition to it being leaked to the public, friendly media was told to promote it to the typical Republican readers. Here is James Pinkerton promoting the working class stuff in the context of British politics. That one off-year election is supposed to be a proof of concept for the new working-class conservative. Here is Fox News “reporting” on the origins of the memo and the person behind it. The “minuscule minority” bit seems to be coded language for the neoconservatives.

Given the timing and the ouster of Liz Cheney, the market testing of the new idea to win elections must have gone well. This summer the Republicans will have their regular meetings and strategy sessions to figure out how to take their new message to the market for the 2022 misterms. At least for now, they think sounding like a kinder gentler Donald Trump is the ticket to success. Look for them to stump in shirt sleeves or maybe blue jeans and flannel shirts this fall.

It is tempting to think they are going for the novel approach as outlined at the beginning, over the tried and true approach. In reality, they are not veering far from their standard approach to politics, which is a pure economic play. That has always been the GOP approach to politics, when you strip away the gingerbread. “Vote for us and you have more money and more cheap stuff.” They are now tailoring that message for the humans their analysists have identified as working class.

The trouble with this approach is the Trump phenomenon was not powered by economic anxiety. Immigration, for example, was never about money but about culture and demographics. Lots of people hate the changes they see in their communities and they were attracted to the TV carny-barker because he mentioned it. The same is true about trade policy. What people see is Walmart and Amazon obliterating small business and they associate it with global trade policy.

The other problem is there is an “own the libs” vibe to it. The people running the Republican Party are just as divorced from the dreaded private sector as the robots running the Democratic Party. Is anyone going to mistake Ben Sasse for a working class guy? Kevin McCarthy? Lyndsey Graham? There is a good chance they look like John Kerry dressed up as a hunter in the 1996 election. These Republicans talking like Huey Long will underscore their otherness to the voters.

On the other hand, homo economicus has always been a homunculus for white middle-class voters to crap into in order to avoid the culture war. In this regard, the Republican message, like the libertarianism on which is rests, has always been a form of political escapism for white people. Reducing everything to money means avoiding the debate about culture items, like race and sex. Reframing Trumpism to be nothing more than an economic play fit the conditioning of the typical white voter.

On the other other hand, the thing that sociopathic grifters always know is there is one last squeeze of even the oldest lemon. This could wring out one more good election for a party that no longer has a reason to exist. Baby Boomers, hoping to buy enough time will flock to the message. The struggling economy and the reality of the Biden administration will suck the life from the Left. The GOP will get one last shot to sucker white people into thinking this time will be different.

Systemic Crisis

Posted on May 19, 2021 by thezman

All human systems, whether created by design or created by happenstance, start to evolve as soon as they are born. This is true of systems like a company or tools like process regulation systems. Like Frankenstein’s monster, they take on a life of their own and break loose from the creator. This usually happens quickly. As soon as something like an organization gets going, it starts changing. The people in it find defects to remedy, new things to add and so on. Evolution starts instantly.

That evolution has an impact on the people in the system or in the case tools, the users of those systems. The ability to look down the road, to see several moves ahead, seems to decline in human organizations as they evolve. Initially, the people running them are always looking ahead. That was the point of the organization. Over time, they either lose their ability to look ahead or they are replaced by people who are only interested in the short term, because that is where the rewards lie.

An example of this college athletics. Initially, student sports were just a natural result of young people and free time. Before long college teams were challenging one another to sports matches. Males like to compete, and groups of males like to compete for their tribe, so college teams playing one another was natural. The natural rivalries that existed between states added to the fun. College athletics in America is an example of a system springing up by happenstance over time.

Like all systems, college athletics began to evolve. The University of Oklahoma, for example, invested in their football program for state pride as a way to raise spirits during the Great Depression. Other colleges learned that being good at a popular sport got them attention. Notre Dame would be just another cow-college if not for the use of ringers to make their football program famous. What started as amateur fun turned into a marketing vehicle for colleges and universities.

Of course, the colleges and universities never imagined that college sports would be a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry one day. Television did not exist, at least to anything like today, so there was no way to see this outcome. By the middle of the last century, college athletics evolved into a popular American tradition that was mostly about school and state pride. The players got free tuition for playing the sport and the school got to promote their brand on the field.

Once it was a mature system though, the ability of the people running it to see down the road started to decline. The NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma is a good example. This was a case that began in 1979 over television rights. The schools wanted to strike deals for putting games in TV, while the NCAA wanted to retain the right to control those deals. The schools won the case and the flood gates of television money opened soon after, reaching the billions today.

Half a century ago, the people running college football had no idea what was going to happen once they started taking TV money. On the one hand, they could not see the proliferation of mass media culture that was coming. On the other hand, they were focused on the here and now. They did not think about how a new revenue stream would change how the system functioned. They did not think about how it would change their thinking. They just needed the cash.

This type of example is common in America. Last year the people in charge began to run around smashing things because of Covid and their own sore feelings. None of them gave a second thought to the consequences. When faced with millions out of work, they did not think about the long term impact of their remedy. They just started throwing invented money at people. We are now on a wild ride of unpredictable scarcity and inflation with no ability to look more than one move ahead.

Getting back to the college athletics example, short-term thinking within an organization takes on a life of its own. In the case of college athletics, these highly educated college presidents have a couple of generations of examples to draw from, but they are as trapped in the moment as their predecessors. They tinker with the rules to address one issue, only to create a chain reaction they never considered. This story about the advent of the transfer portal is a good example.

One reason that people in a system lose the ability and willingness to think a few moves ahead is the incentives evolve along with the system. The people in the system who show some skill at patching up immediate problems benefit. Those pointing out the potential costs down the road gets ignored. When it comes to tools like regulatory systems or software, change means immediate cost. Since human organizations tend to be intertwined with tool systems, both forces work in concert.

Take the college athletics problem. If a group of college presidents wanted to address the excesses of college athletics, they would face enormous institutional pushback over the immediate costs. Changing the regulations and subsystems that are in place to maintain things as they are would cost a lot of money. The reformers would also be in competition with demands to address immediate problems. The reformers get drowned out by the natural functioning of the system.

Reforming a system is like trying to reform evolution itself. The thousands of cumulative decisions that went into the present state cannot be turned on or off without addressing the other decisions. In time, all human systems evolve past the point where reform is possible without an existential threat. If the choice is death or reform, then the minimum reform can happen to avoid death. Even facing death, reform faces long odds, if death can be rationalized into a distant possibility.

The French Revolution is a good example here. The threat of death was both personal and abstract, but the aristocracy could not bear the thought of reform. It was not as if they did not know their system was teetering on collapse. Their best ministers had explained this reality in detail. It was simply the case where the inertia was too strong for the reformers. No one could look ahead and immanentize the eschaton, so the immediate always took precedent over the future.

This is something to keep in mind in the current crisis. Reform, if it is possible at all, will come only in the shadow of the gallows. If the political class begins to fear for their life, then maybe they begin to act to push that inevitability off into the future. Of course, 80-year old men tend not to be long-term planners. Still, if genuine fear grips the ruling classes, then maybe we see reform. That is not the way to bet. Like all systems, this one most likely is carried on by internal forces until it collapses.

Big Con

Posted on May 18, 2021 by thezman

Every once in a while, a post or series of posts comes along that captures why conservatism never amounted to much. This post in the ironically named American Conservative is a good example of the genre. The topic is how to deal with the privatization of authoritarian power, primarily in Silicon Valley. The argument put forward is that using the state to tame these rogue companies is morally wrong, so we have to find some new way to contend with these out-of-control tech firms.

The first thing you should notice is the style is exactly what we get whenever the topic of immigration in on the table. The obvious answer is dismissed. In the case of immigration, that means shutting down the border and cracking down on employers who use helot labor. The open borders crowd always says that is impossible or harmful in some way. Instead, they offer a collection of overly complex solutions that have no chance of succeeding but will keep the punditry busy.

In the case of Big Tech, we have laws on the books to put an end to this reign of terror, but enforcing those is socialism, according to the usual suspects. We cannot have that, even if it would work. Instead, let us have a twenty-year series of international commissions to study technical standards and pass a bunch of laws that no one reads, but have cool names like “Data Portability Act”. In other words, the people who cannot build a wall along the border are going to fix the internet.

Interestingly, the rodents from Conservative Inc. always use the same trick the Left is so fond of using, which is the false dichotomy. “We can shut ourselves off from the world or embrace globalism” is how they frame trade. “We can become a hermit nation or remain a nation of immigrants” is how they frame immigration. Now it is “We can choose central planning or preserve an open internet” with Big Tech. It is the same partisan game the Left plays, just tailored for a middle-class white audience.

The fact is, enforcing Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act as intended puts a halt to the most egregious violations of our rights. Twitter can choose to be a publisher or an open platform. If it is the former, they can censure their platform however they like, but they are accountable for the content. If they choose to be an open platform like Gab, then they get the protection of Section 230. There is no need to reinvent the internet to solve the biggest problem with Big Tech.

Similarly, the obvious collusion that goes on with these big firms could be crushed with the use of existing law. There are plenty of examples of the tech companies colluding with one another to ban people from their platforms. If we can give a cop 20-years on civil rights violations for shooting a fleeing suspect, we can give the harpies of Silicon Valley a few years for violating the civil rights of Alex Jones. One lawsuit is all that would be required to end that practice and restore some sanity.

Of course, the author of the AC piece is clearly trying to strike the libertarian position, which is a blend of hiding under the bed and shilling for global capital. This is what is wrong with the libertarian-conservative commentariat. They are not interested in advocating conservative interests. Instead, they are focused on making sure their corporate donors are free of government interference. If that means the rights of conservatives are trampled, well “whoopsie!”

The writer of the AC piece is someone calling himself Zach Graves. He is head of policy at the Lincoln Network. You always have to be suspicious of any group using the name Lincoln and this is no exception. As we saw with the Lincoln Project, these groups tend to attract the very worst people. In this case, this is a not-for-profit located in San Francisco, conveniently near Silicon Valley. A Loren Graves, presumably the same guy as the writer, is a paid staffer for the group.

Before signing on with the Lincoln Network, Mr. Graves was with something called R Street Institute, which is neoconservative front group. The founder of the Lincoln Network is a man calling himself Garrett Johnson. He popped out of college into a job on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then into a position as the founder of something called SendHub and now the founder of Lincoln Network. Nothing strange about this at all. There is no reason to suspect anything hanky.

This is the problem with conservatism in a nutshell. It has always been infested with pens for hire. This bit of corporate marketing posted at American Conservative is just a paid advertisement masquerading as commentary. To their credit, the site does acknowledged that they were paid to run it by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is a pro-business non-profit in Missouri. There is a good bet that they bankroll the R Street Institute to some degree, given their location.

This is the problem with subjecting everything to the marketplace. When the highest bidder gets to determine public morality, no one can ever question the morality of the highest bidder. Public opinion becomes another commodity to be traded, rather than a genuine exchange of ideas. The founder of The Lincoln Network would be happy to promote communism if that pays better than shilling for Big Tech. He is just face purchased on the market to make the brochure look good.

Similarly, the writers and “policy wonks” at these shops are just pens for hire, with a set of specialties. “Need generic libertarian babble about technology? No problem, we have Zach Graves. That is his specialty.” R Street puts him on the UPS truck and ships him off to a Silicon Valley non-profit. Like the economy as a whole, the marketplace of ideas has become a pirate’s cove. Everything is for sale and everything can be purchased, if the price is right. The consequences are for the suckers to bear.

This is what conservatism should oppose. One basic tenet of conservatism is that there is a transcendent moral truth. That means it is indifferent to the marketplace. it also means that truth itself is not up for bid. Once you concede this point, you are no longer on the Right, but just another kiosk in the bazaar if increasingly bizarre ideas. The way to end the pirate’s cove is to shut it down and hang the pirates. That’s the starting point for conservatism, if it is to be anything more than another grift.

The Weapon Of Language

Posted on May 17, 2021 by thezman

Note: There is a new post up at Taki. This week the topic is a written version of the podcast from last week, slimmed down for space reasons. There is a review of the 1960’s classic Easy Rider up behind the green door. It is also available to those who buy me a beer. Finally, Sunday Thoughts, a half hour podcast recapping the news of the week, is also up behind the green door. There is also a post up on American renaissance by from the weekend, for those who missed it.

In a world where the end always justifies the means, even when the end is not achieved, truth must always be a secondary consideration. In fact, the truth is often the enemy, as it serves the interests of your opponents. By attacking the truth of something, or even the concept of truth itself, you take away the legitimacy of the opposition to you and your schemes. When morality is determined by who wins, rather than by some objective standard, partisanship is the new morality.

This is the modern age. You see it in the language. The public space is full of people juggling neologisms that have a nice ring to them as a replacement for old words or labels. They sound better and the best people always love hearing new ways of saying old things. It makes them feel smart and sophisticated. The intellectual in a liberal democracy is primarily concerned with appearing to be unconventional and heterodox, so the new words and phrases quickly become popular.

George Orwell said political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, which is almost always the point of the new words and phrases that come to dominate the discourse. The people introducing them are not trying to clarify some point, but rather to obfuscate. The game is to undermine the truth of some concept in order to put something long settled up for debate. The new word changes the old meaning in a way that makes it less settled.

The popular phrase “social construct” is a good example. There is no such thing as a social construct as currently understood. Into the 20th century people would have laughed at the idea of it. There are customs and institutions, for sure, but those are things that evolved within a people over a period of trial and error. The reason a custom has been passed down may have been lost to time or turned into an amusing bit of mythology, but the custom came into being to address a problem.

The social construct, on the other hand, takes the custom or institution and recasts it as an invention, a thing that is true only because of a set of rules. Further, it smuggles in the idea that it was deliberately invented. Men, and it is always men, sat around dreaming up the new social conventions to serve their interests. This strips the custom of legitimacy by casting it as just a partisan interest. The people wishing to change it are just as legitimate as the people who invented it.

The new term for custom disconnects it from truth by shifting the thing from the domain of things that are true on their face to the domain of things that are true only because of a set of logical rules. Humans come in two sexes, male and female, is a thing that is true on its face. The term social construct shifts this from the world of fact to the world of logical rules by insisting gender, another new word, is determined by society. They now claim gender is assign at birth based on antiquated concepts of gender.

What the phrase social construct permits the partisan to do is to smuggle in the idea that something like sex was an invention of men, and it is always men, to serve the interest of the inventors. On the one hand, the roles assigned to those with a uterus served the interests of the patriarchy. Now we are told that those same men made gender binary in order to oppress the non-binary. The concept of the social construct turns objective reality into an intergenerational conspiracy theory.

One of the ways the political neologism smuggles in lies is that it creates a false dichotomy in the minds of the audience. In the case of sex and sex roles, things are either purely nature or purely nurture, with nurture always assigned the default position in the comparison. Sex roles, for example, are either a social construct or a universal fact of nature. Since few things are the latter, the former becomes the default position, as if by magic. Suddenly, the natural world is up for debate.

This happened with homosexual marriage. It was first detached from its natural meaning to be a social construct, rather than an ancient custom. Instead of being defined by the biological necessity of reproduction, it was just an invention to suppress women and manage property rights to the favor of males. Once that transformation occurred, opponents of homosexual marriage were forced make the affirmative argument for something that had been the default for eons.

The truth is, few things in human society are purely the result of nature. Even things like hair color or eye color in Europeans have a cultural angle. Over time, females with striking hair and eyes found better mating prospects. This naturally led to customs in which women tried to show off these features. The environmental conditions made diverse hair and eye color possible, but custom made it desirable, thus striking hair and eye color were selected for over time. Nature and nurture.

This is the deceit of new words and phrases cooked up by partisans. The point is to assault the truth, strip it of its legitimacy. The partisan is at home on the battle ground of “who? whom?” so they naturally seek to shape the ground to fit their need. It traps the bourgeois objectivist into the either/or trap. Once they accept the false dichotomy, they accept the weaker hand, and the results are inevitable. The Left wins every battle by first destroying the weapons the opponent can use against them.

This is why there is no reasoning with a partisan. That lefty aunt thinks what she thinks because she sees the world in binary terms. She greedily adopts the new language because it reaffirms her world view. The partisan sees the truth in the same way the vampire sees a mirror. It’s not the reflection that terrifies the vampire. It is the lack of one, a reminder of a truth of their existence. Facts and clear language have the same effect on the partisan, which is why they hiss at them.

Myths & Mysteries

Posted on May 14, 2021 by thezman

A topic I keep returning to is how the new fads sweeping our elites are like primitive rituals rather than old time ideology. The Marxists really thought their economic policies would result in plenty. On paper at least, their plans made some sense. The new stuff is all mystery and magic. If people chant certain things at certain times or places, then something magical will happen. There is no attempt to create a logic that connects the dots or explains the logic. They just believe.

That is what lies behind the critical race theory business. Read through it and you see there is no plan of action or set of standards to be met. There is no list of things that need to be done or not done. It is a blend of graduate school jargon and feminized encounter sessions. If everyone sits in the room and hears the gibberish from the lecturer, somehow the fog of racism will lift. Or maybe it will never lift, and the struggle will continue forever. No one knows or thinks about it.

Antiracism, like Nth-wave feminism, has become primal screams, bursts of uncontrolled emotion and mysterious rituals. It is what Jacques Derrida labeled hauntology, the persistence of elements from the past, as in the manner of a ghost. In the case of antiracism, it is the ghosts of slavery, colonialism, discrimination, the mean look from the white girl in fifth grade that haunt the minds of the present. Antiracism has become a battle with the past, that by definition can never end.

It is why none of it makes sense. Antiracism is a mystery cult. The insiders have learned the language and those who refuse to learn the language are the outsiders, the bad people stuck in the white supremacist mindset. That is the appeal of antiracism for the white people joining it. It is grace on the cheap. Learn some catchphrases, attend a seminar, and show some enthusiasm. The prize is you get a black person to bless you and bestow forgiveness. It is the prefect bourgeois religion.

Hauntology is a useful term here because Derrida coined it in response to Fukuyama’s these in the End of History. The old Left could never accept that Marxism was a dead end, so they have had to conjure a way to keep the faith alive. Something similar happened with race in America at the end of the Cold War. For all practical purposes, racism ended in the 1980’s. That left the anti-racist with nowhere to go, so they conjured the spirit of racism as a specter that now haunts the present.

Sweep away the jargon, however, and you are left with oogily-boogily. We have people running around claiming that an organization is haunted by white supremacy and the cure is a ritual to purge the evil spirits of racism. We have the equivalent of a witch hunt for white supremacist. Instead of cavorting with Old Scratch, they secretly commune with the spirit of bad uncle. The only thing missing is spectra evidence, but that will no doubt be presented in the future trials of heretics.

This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00: Opening
02:00: The Haunted Past
22:00: The Pale Shadow
37:00: The Legacy Of Slavery
47:00: Biological Denialism (Be Like Me)

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Meat Man Versus Weed Man

Posted on May 13, 2021 by thezman

Often, the natural confluence of events results in something so elegant or complex that people see the hand of design behind the result. Even though the odds of there being a secret conspiracy or master chess player behind the result are very low, that just seems better than the odds of chance getting the result. Most conspiracy theories rely on this sort of logic. The official explanations seem so unlikely that they must be part of some conspiracy to shield the truth from the public.

A good example of this is the last election. No sitting president has seen a double digit increase in his vote, but still lose. In fact, no one has been able to find an example like this in other elected offices. That’s how rare it is. This once in forever thing could be accepted in isolation, but it is just one of such things. There are so many unexplained anomalies that people are naturally skeptical. The invisible hand of design, even without hard proof, seems like the more likely explanation.

We may be seeing something similar happen with food. All of a sudden, we are being bombarded with agit-prop in favor of eating bugs and plant-based proteins, rather than eating beef and chicken. Beef seems to be the primary target, but that could simply be the result of the Left’s long war against cows. The Left believes cows are part of a secret conspiracy against Gaia to poison the atmosphere. The “cow fart” conspiracy is as real to them as the ongoing Russian conspiracy.

A few years ago, the fast food chain Burger King introduced something called an “impossible burger” which is made from grass clippings. The claim was that it tasted just like their regular burgers but was made from plants. Why they did this was never asked or explained. Up to that point, the number of people saying, “Man, I could really go for a burger made from grass clippings right now” was zero. In fact, the number remains stubbornly pegged at zero. No one wants this.

Now, billion dollar companies make dumb decisions. History is full of ideas cooked up in corporate offices that turn out to be laughably stupid. Maybe this grass burger idea is just another example, like new Coke. The thing is though, they did not invent the grass burger or the idea of it. There are two companies pushing this idea. Impossible Products and Beyond Meat are producing fake meat products. It was the former who approached Burger King with the plant burger idea.

Now, it is important to note here that these new fake meat products do not taste like meat as is claimed. They taste like what people who have never tasted meat think meat tastes like to humans. The fake beef has the mouth-feel of oatmeal. It is a weird sort of grainy slime when you eat it. It is not horrible and if you were starving you would probably eat it, but cannibalism would start to look appealing. Like the previous attempts to create fake meat, this new stuff is not very good.

The point is the companies pushing this do not have a better mousetrap. They are not even making that claim. In fact, they make it clear that their products are not better than what they seek to replace. In their public demonstrations they concede that it is, at best, a close facsimile. Instead, they claim their products are morally superior. You see, the burger made from grass clippings and dried leaves pleases Gaia. She will therefore reward the grass eaters and punish the meat eaters.

That is insane, but these products have the backing of the oligarchs. Both of these companies are supported financially by rich people. The troubled Bill Gates is behind the Impossible Burger scheme. He is the guy trying to blot out the sun because he thinks it is part of the cow conspiracy. Other oligarchs are rushing to get in on the fake meat racket as well. All of a sudden, the rich are sure real meat will go the way of the buggy whip and be replaced by bugs and grass clippings.

The question is, why? The fact is there is no market for fake meat. Dozens of efforts to create one, including the current fake burger idea, have flopped. The fact is the public is not going to voluntarily start eating bugs and grass clippings just because the climate loons say Gaia commands it. If the choice is between a real burger and the artificial alternative, people choose the real burger. In other words, there is no business opportunity here that the oligarchs are trying to exploit.

That is, unless the government plans to ban meat. Despite the organized media campaign by the regime to claim otherwise, the regime is plotting to ban meat. They will not do it outright, but instead regulate it out of existence. In the name of climate change, they will make the sale and production of meat products increasingly expensive. This is why the billionaires all see fake meat as an opportunity. It is also why recipe sites are now removing meat recipes from their websites.

In one respect, the highly coordinated media campaign to deny the Biden war on burgers is correct. There is no design behind this. What is driving it is the weird new religion taking hold of the American ruling elite. They really believe that Gaia is angry with us and will unleash her wrath unless we repent. Of course, they mean repent in that you will commit the act of contrition and they will get salvation. They also get to keep eating meat while you dine on spiders and dandelions.

The war on meat is not a conspiracy. It is an example of the Hoffer line about mass movements in America. They become a business, a racket, or a corporation. In this case, the Gaia worship sweeping the ruling class is becoming a business. These grass and twig burger companies are the first wave of companies hoping to capitalize on the artificially created market for fake food. They see the madness in the eyes of their peers and immediately think about how to profit from it.

Of course, all big business in America depends on government. These fake meat companies and the billionaire sponsor will lobby the state to create legislation favorable to them and harmful to their opponents. The political rackets will get a chance to skim some off this new business, as long as the play ball with fake meat. All of a sudden, real meat has to increase the bribes to counter fake meat. The war on meat is just another manifestation of the natural corruption in liberal democracy.

The Circus

Posted on May 12, 2021 by thezman

It is an iron law of the universe that the Left’s favorite right-winger is whoever currently has his hand on the knife firmly planted in the back of conservative voters. Nothing titillates the Left more than seeing one of their imagined enemies giving another imagined enemy the business. In the Trump years, they were spoiled for choice, as one “conservative” after another took their turn condemning the evil orange man. Now that Trump is gone, the party is turning their knives on one another.

This week the odious Liz Cheney is expected to be removed from her position as conference chair. She was put in that position because her father, the warmongering lunatic Dick Cheney, used his connections to get her in the House and then into the leadership of the conference. Like all ne’er-do-well children of successful politicians, Liz Cheney has a serious case of entitlement. Instead of going out with dignity, she embarrassed herself one last time with a tantrum on the House floor.

The lefty media, who universally condemned her father as some sort of Bond villain during the Bush years, is now firmly in the Liz Cheney camp. She is principled and dignified in her attack on her party and former leader. The fact that Cheney seems to delight in hating Republican voters makes her an ideal Republican, as far as the Washington media is concerned. They are still shaking over the memories of January 6 when angry bands of Dirt People were patrolling the city.

Liz Cheney, of course, is a hyper-credentialed clodhopper. Left to her own talents, she would be a schoolteacher or an office frau. She is a mediocrity born into opulence and then festooned with honors and titles that she did nothing to earn. Instead of becoming worldly through hard experience, she became even more narrow-minded and oblivious through her quick trip through the narrow word of politics. She never learned simple things like when to keep your mouth shut around the boss.

She is emblematic of what has gone terribly wrong with the Republican Party in particular and politics in general. Not far behind her on the way out the door is a collection of loafers and deadbeats planning their own big drama. A group of has-beens and never-will-be’s have alerted their friends at the New York Times that they are terribly vexed at their party. So terribly vexed, in fact, they will pack up their cubicles and march right out the front door of the party. Maybe even start a new party!

Politics is mostly about luck. Jimmy Carter is remembered as a terrible president, mostly because he inherited a bad hand. Reagan is a genius because he inherited a Fed chief with the skill and guts to fix the money supply. In the case of the GOP, they are catching a break as the remaining members of the neocon hive slither away in anger over their lost status. They cannot win elections with the neocons running the show, so maybe they can win elections without them.

For their part, the people running the GOP are not a collection of Machiavellian political geniuses either. They are as obtuse and dimwitted as the finks. The main difference is they have enough sense to pretend to like their voters. Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell hate their voters as much as anyone else in Washington. They just know that they cannot be public about it. They have no intention of doing anything for those voters, but they are happy to lie to them about it.

This may be all that is happening here. The party knows that Trump voters have no appetite for the old school republicanism. They may be stupid, but they are not that stupid, so sacrificing a dimwit like Cheney is just a distraction. This is the sort of cost-free effort that the party prefers. The fact that Cheney and these other idiots are excited to play the role makes it even easier. McCarthy gets to look like a hero, chasing the usual suspects out of the temple.

On the other hand, it could be another step in a realignment of the parties. It is quite obvious that the Democrats plan to be the antiwhite party. Even though it is currently helmed by white geezers, they see their future with the dusky hoards. That leaves the Republicans with only one choice. They have to be the white party. The people running the party hate this, but reality is not going to yield for them. The best they can hope for is a mask that makes the reality of their position less obvious.

On the other other hand, this could just be another chapter in the story of how an elite populated by dullards pulled the roof down on themselves. The turmoil in the GOP looks like bliss compared to what is going on with the other side. In six months of their rule, we have gas lines, spiraling inflation and a crime wave. The best they can muster is some giggles and “whoopsie” when asked about it. Their turn at clawing each other’s eyes out comes this summer, when the troubles cannot be ignored.

In the grand scheme of things, none of this really matters. The political system we have can work fine with a European population, but it will never work in a balkanized majority-minority population from around the globe. No one in either party has the courage or intelligence to speak to this reality, so the system will mostly like rattle itself to pieces over these sorts of issues. Like the band on the Titanic, the parties will keep doing what they do until they sink below the water line.

Trump, A Retrospective

Posted on May 11, 2021 by thezman

Evaluating most things in real time is a difficult process, because you do not have the benefit of seeing how things end. It is why hot-takes in the middle of a news event always sound stupid in retrospect. Those evaluations are more about the mood of the moment and the desire for attention than sensible analysis. It is only after the thing ends and the dust has settled that you can get a grip on what happened. This is the case with the Trump phenomenon, which ended months ago.

Now, we do not know if Trump will run again. He says he will start doing rallies this fall, but so far, no news on that front. For now, he has been commenting about old enemies and endorsing candidates who have said nice things about him. Elise Stefanik, for example, has gotten the Trump endorsement to replace Liz Cheney. The fact that Stefanik is one of the most liberal Republicans in the House and is nothing but a sock puppet for the establishment makes no difference.

That is a good jumping off point to think about why the Trump years never amounted to more than lots of noise. The Stefanik example is part of a pattern with Trump with regards to how he does politics. He tended to endorse candidates on whether they would win, rather than if they were on his side politically. He endorsed Mitt Romney, for example, who has been a life-long fink. He also endorsed the two Georgia senators, who were everything he allegedly opposed.

Trump’s politics were always an extension of Trump’s business approach, which was just an advanced form of personal brand management. He wanted the Trump brand to carry weight in politics in the same way it worked in real estate. For most of his life, the game was to promote the brand, while others found deals where the brand could be the difference between success and failure. The Trump brand would push the deal over the top and thus earn Trump a lion’s share of the profits.

This started way back in the 1980’s when Trump figured out that the way for him into the world of big-time real estate was to create a media image for himself as the big time deal maker. He was the real life Gordon Gecko, the character from the 1980’s hit movie Wall Street. This got him on television chat shows where he perfected the style that has become synonymous with Trump. The pop culture icon became the brand that would make Trump the real estate mogul.

From the late-80’s forward, the Trump business model was simple. He would swap some of his brand prestige for shares in a deal, like a casino. The people on the other end needed the brand to promote the project to investors and politicians, so they were willing to cut Trump in on the deal. Genuinely smart real estate people from the Trump organization would then swoop in a maximize the profit for Trump Inc. They got their money first and often at the expense of the resulting project.

The genius of this approach is every new casino or resort property with his name on it enhanced the brand, thus opening up new deals. Trump Inc. became a frog in a pond full of lily pads. They just hopped from one to the next. Unlike other real estate developers, they did not have to find new deals and cultivate the political relationships required to make the deal a possibility. Others did that and brought these opportunities to the Trump people, hoping to get the Trump endorsement.

This worked amazingly well in real estate, but not in politics. The Trump brand never counted for much in Washington, where the voters are looked upon as ants at the picnic, rather than a source of strength. Trump’s miracle win in 2016 meant nothing in a world where 95% of incumbents win reelection. Compounding it, the only deals that happen in Washington are the deals that benefit the insiders. The only thing Trump could swap his brand value for were deals his voters hated.

That was the story of his four years. One side of the uniparty was focused only on destroying the Trump brand. Trump never experienced that sort of conflict in the business world, so he was ill-equipped to counter it. The other side of the uniparty was willing to bring him deals so he could attach his name to them, but those deals did nothing for his brand or his voters. Throwing open the jails and giving the store away to rich people was the equivalent of a Trump casino in Tehran.

Where the Trump style failed the most was in the organization. In the 1980’s, Trump attracted a group of very savvy people into his organization. They were the ones who did the deal making and profit extraction from those deals. This allowed Trump to be the head of brand management. Trump’s people knew their job was to make sure the final deal boosted the Trump brand, because that meant more deals. Trump’s role was to use his brand to endorse the deal and take the credit.

It was a good system that was never replicated in Washington. His team was ignorant of how things were done in Washington. His son-in-law was actually working for interests outside the Trump administration. Official Washington was happy to send a stream of their people to fill posts and undermine Team Trump. His organization never had a chance to turn the Trump brand into anything, because they did not know how to do it, even if the brand had real value to official Washington.

That is why the Trump years were lots of promises, but no delivery. Team Trump would bring out the brand hoping someone would come forward with a deal. Either the deal on offer was garbage or there was no deal to be had. Trump’s DACA moves are a great example of the no deal. He was sure he could trade that for his wall. Instead, they ignored him entirely. Trump was begging them to do a deal on DACA and they just ignored him harder. The art of the deal had no market in DC.

The Trump phenomenon is a good example of why democratic reform is impossible in a liberal democratic system. The only way to reform the system is to understand its internal workings and have people willing to make the changes inside the system to create the desired reforms. The reformer has no choice but to engage the system through the rules of the system. There is no way to reform the system from the outside, as the outsider has no access to the system.

For generations now, the political system has been selecting for people who defend the interests of he system and the people in it. You cannot get a job at any level of politics unless you are useful to the people in the system. The entry points of the system, primaries, elections, staffing jobs, are all designed to filter out people who could be unhealthy for the system and select for those who will defend the system. Even if a reformer sneaks in, they are surrounded by antibodies of the system.

This is something the paleoconservative thinker Sam Francis recognized with the conservative movement a million years ago. As soon as they decided to engage in democratic politics, they would be forced to trade their conservative principles for access to the system. Otherwise, they would be shut off from the system. Over the years conservatism has traded everything away. They are now a shuffling husk that staggers long behind the Left living on scraps.

This is the inevitable crisis of liberal democracy. Those “liberal principles” that are supposed to constrain the excesses of democracy end up becoming obstacles to democratic reform. On the other hand, a genuine effort to reform the system from outside is framed as a threat to liberal principles. Trump immediately became Hitler, the great bogeyman of liberalism, solely on the grounds that he was a creature that existed outside the liberal democratic system.

That is the real lesson of the Trump years. There is no way to reform liberal democracy from the inside, as it has evolved to prevent reform. It is impossible to reform from the outside as liberal democracy is defined by opposition to outside pressure. That means the only reform possible is replacement, which requires a rejection of both liberalism and democracy as anything more than expedients. Real reform begins with the rejection of the system and its moral framework.

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