Public-Private Tyranny

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In the 1980’s, the term public-private partnership gained popularity, as reformers tried to remedy the problems of spiraling public debt and dwindling public investment in infrastructure. Governments were too strapped to do things like build roads and schools, so they would alter the tax and regulatory system to encourage private enterprise to provide the necessary financing and expertise. A simple example is a city condemning a slum and then giving it to a private developer to build new housing.

There is a formal definition of the concept. “A public-private partnership involves a private entity financing, constructing, or managing a project in return for a stream of payments directly from government or indirectly from users over the life of the project or some other specified period of time.” The laying down of cable and then fiber to provide broadband access is a great example of such an arrangement. The cable company was granted a monopoly and they built out the infrastructure and charged subscriptions.

In theory, it sounds like a winning formula. Government has no incentive to be efficient, as government has no competition. Inevitably, this means government projects become slush funds for the connected and dumping grounds for the otherwise unemployable. The contractors bidding on government work or providing a service on behalf of government have an incentive to keep costs low. Given that future contracts will depend on performance of current contracts, they have an incentive to hit the performance goals.

It’s not without its obvious problems. Efforts to reform public education through public-private partnerships are the obvious example. The primary reason schools fail is they have poor students. The second most common reason is they have poor teachers. No amount of private provision can address the former and public sector unions will never permit reforming the latter. It is why people move to good neighborhoods and send their kids to private schools. It’s a private solution to a private problem.

Of course, public-private partnerships are an effort to address a symptom of a problem, but not the source of the problem. Democratic government has no incentive to increase the capital of society, because office holders are just hired hands. For office holders, government is like a rental car. The renter does not wash the rental car and get the oil changed before returning it. Similarly, the office holder has no reason to improve the part of government he controls, before handing it over to the next guy.

The key to personal success in public life is quickly turning public goods into money and benefits that can be used to buy votes. It’s why state and municipal politicians are fond of increasing public sector benefits. They get the votes and support for their campaigns, while some unknown person downstream gets the cost. In a democracy, government becomes a liquor warehouse during an urban riot. Everyone, even the honest, has an incentive to rush in and carry off as much as they can as quickly as they can.

This is obvious, but there are other problems. Humans in all endeavors seek to prevent competition either through cooperation or domination. Constitutions and courts are intended to keep the competition for public offices open and reasonably fair. To the office holder, this is naturally viewed as a defect that needs to be remedied. That’s where the public-private partnership comes into the mix. Private firms can do things office holders are prevented from doing.

This is what we see with the efforts by the Democrats to rig the last presidential election and then set Trump up for removal. Team Obama could not simply have the FBI arrest him and Team Clinton could not provide electronic surveillance. They formed a public-private partnership, along with Glenn Simpson to get around both problems. The private entities would manufacture evidence that the public entity would use to get warrants, which would result in information they would give to Clinton and later the FISA court.

One of the worst kept secrets in Washington right now is that elements inside the Obama administration conspired with the Clinton campaign to rig the last election. It’s becoming increasingly clear they also conspired with foreign agents. The Mueller probe is just an elaborate ruse to shield this truth from the public to preserve the reputation of the institutions and keep people out of prison. It is the thing everyone knows, because it is manifestly obvious. What no one knows is what to do about it.

Then we have the ongoing efforts to shut down political dissent. The law prohibits politicians from having critics arrested or from shuttering their publications. The law does not prevent private platforms from controlling content, thus we get the match made in heaven, from the perspective of the internet giants and the ruling class. The private firms get their monopolies protected by the state, while the office holders get their critics silenced by the internet giants.

It’s not just the first amendment. Gun grabbers have failed for years to rally public support for gun grabbing. In fact, their efforts to push through gun bans and confiscation have resulted in booming gun sales and support for gun liberalization. To address this defect in government, public officials are now reaching out to their partners in the private sector to bankrupt the gun industry and the NRA. It will not be long before owning a firearm could result in you losing your insurance or bank account.

The funny thing that is happening to our constitutional order is that the political class seems to understand the defects inherent in the system but is choosing to make it worse by enlisting private interests to magnify the defects. They are accelerationists. America is just one giant bust out, where global companies, with the help of our government, are systematically looting the country, while undermining the legitimacy of our system of governance. The public-private partnership has quickly become a public-private tyranny.

Old Men Who Fear Change

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One of the first things I learned about conservatism, way back in the before times, was that William F. Buckley made conservatism respectable. In the 1980’s, Buckley became a rock star, riding the wave of enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan. Like a lot of young men in that age, I was caught up in it. Being a conservative was suddenly cool and everyone credited Buckley for making it so. It was hard to argue with the claim. Bill Buckley was a charming, intelligent and sophisticated guy. Who would not want to be like Bill?

The part that no one seemed to notice back then, at least not the people involved in the conservative movement, was that the whole point of the thing was to make the people in it respectable, as judged by their alleged opponents. Pretty much the only thing they really cared about was being seen as respectable. It’s why guys like George Will were not fans of Ronald Reagan initially. They worried that his earthy sense of humor and popularity with normal people would not go over well with their friends on the Left.

A big part of being respectable, at least in modern politics, is drawing the line between yourself and those who are not respectable. In the 1980’s no one thought much about all the people that had been read out of the conservative movement for guys like Bill Buckley to be respectable. That was the thing though, by the 1980’s, conservatism was nothing but drawing lines between the respectable and the unacceptable, to be in good standing with the Left.

That all came to mind when I read this post by the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty. It is the typical flip-flopping equivocation that is a Jonah Goldberg column. If there are two sides to an issue, he will find a way take four sides. Reading one of his columns is like watching a fish flop around on the deck. The basic point of the column is that he fears conservatives have not been vigilant enough in policing that line between themselves and the people the Left finds offensive. Thus, the Alex Jones fiasco.

His follow up column is a call to war for his fellow conservatives. Well, it’s more like a long love letter to Bill Kristol and the other paranoids of the neoconservative cult. He provides a long bit of mythology about Buckley and his fights with the anti-Semites. The reader is obviously supposed to make the connection between those long dead bogeymen from the 1950’s and the bogeymen currently haunting conservatism. In Goldberg’s telling, his generation of conservatives are facing the same challenge as Buckley did 70 years ago.

The amusing part is how Goldberg keeps trying to connect himself to guys like James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers. Maybe being the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty is going to his head. It is just another example of the intellectual hollowness of Buckley conservatism. Chambers was a man of great courage and integrity. Burnham was a brilliant thinker whose ideas are still relevant today. Jonah Goldberg is a feckless airhead. He would have been laughed out of the room by these men.

That aside, there’s a weird cargo cult vibe to all this. The so-called conservatives don’t even bother to think about the arguments coming from the right. They don’t even pretend to know about them. There was not a single mention of the alt-right in National Review until Hillary Clinton mentioned it. Instead, they carry on as if it is 1955 and they are fighting a heroic battle against the John Birch Society. Goldberg’s post has the feel of a man hoping he can make it all go away just by performing all the old rituals.

It really is weird reading this stuff, given where we are now. These guys could be excused for living in the past when the GOP was right there with them. Five years ago, they had no reason to listen to their critics. Times were good and the living was easy. Now, after their audience has abandoned them and Trump is in the White House, their stubborn adherence to a defunct set of arguments is weird. The National Review crowd should be writing their columns while wearing leisure suits.

The thing is, there are two types of conservatives. There are those who seek only to maintain the status quo, regardless the current laws, morals and behavior norms. Then there are the those who believe there is transcendent moral order that corresponds to the natural order. The Buckleyites were always of the first type. The reason they opposed the Left was they feared losing their place at the table. It’s the same reason they oppose the emerging national populists. They’re old men who fear change.

Peisistratos

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In the late 7th and early 6th century BC, ancient Athens fell into crisis. As is often the case with the classical period, historians disagree about the causes. One issue upon which everyone agrees is that economics played a part. The wealthy families had become an oligarchy, owning most of the land. Debt-bondage was common. The collateral for loans in that age was the person. This meant that if the Athenian tenant farmers did not pay his rents, he and his children could be seized as slaves.

The way it worked is the farmer would borrow to finance the operations of the farm. If the farm did not produce enough to pay the debt, he would fall into debt bondage. In theory, he literally worked off his debt, so it was a temporary status. There was a special status in the law for someone in bondage for a debt, versus the normal type of slave. The reality was that debt bondage was becoming a permanent state for a large fraction of the population. The result was increasing social strife between the classes.

Rivalry between the leading families was also a problem. As is always the case when there is social unrest, some factions tried to take advantage of it and gain power for themselves at the expense of their rivals. in 632 BC, an Athenian nobleman named Cylon made an unsuccessful attempt to seize power. Many Greek city-states had seen opportunistic noblemen take power on behalf of sectional interests. Factions sought to gain control of the state, to gain an edge over rivals.

There were also regional rivalries that exacerbated the personal and economic turmoil of the age. The rural population had different interests than the urban population. Traders had different interests than farmers. Since most Athenians lived in rural settlements, and debt bondage was an increasing problem, Attika was increasingly resembling Sparta, where a small elite ruled over a large population of helots. This exacerbated the personal and economic rivalries convulsing Athens at the time.

Regardless of the causes, Athens was at a crisis point and fear of a tyrant rising to impose order, led the Athenians to turn to the wisest man in Athens. That man was Solon, a statesman, lawmaker and poet. He was of noble birth, but he was sometimes described as a self-made man, suggesting his family was of modest means. In 595 BC Solon had led the Athenian forces against the Megarians, resulting in a heroic victory. Allegedly, it was the power of his poetry that inspired the Athenians to carry the day.

By the time the Athenians turned to Solon, he was rich, a famous poet and a famous military leader. Solon was awarded temporary autocratic powers by Athenian citizens on the grounds that he had the wisdom to sort out their differences in a peaceful and equitable manner. His task was to find a way to resolve the factional rivalries. The result was a series of economic, legal and moral reforms that are remembered to this day as the Reforms of Solon. Once instituted, Solon gave up his position and left Athens.

The Athenians agreed to abide by these reforms for a period of ten years, but within a few years the old problems and rivalries were back. In addition to the old problems, the defects in the reforms created new problems. Some officials refused to perform their duties as described, while other posts were left vacant. The reforms worked if Solon was around to lend his name to them. Once Solon was gone, the result was worse than before the reforms. As a result, the people blamed Solon for the breakdown of order.

Eventually one of Solon’s relatives, Peisistratus, ended the factionalism by force, becoming tyrant and confirming what everyone feared would happen prior to Solon’s reforms. Solon was still alive, and he mocked the Athenians for allowing Peisistratus to seize power, by standing outside his home, wearing his uniform. Despite being driven into exile twice, Peisistratus was eventually able to impose order on Athens and he ruled as tyrant until his death. His sons succeeded him and ruled until 510 BC.

Solon gets positive treatment from history for having tried to preserve Athenian democracy and for having some success at curbing the power of the aristocrats. Aristotle credited Peisistratus with laying the foundation for the eventual rise of Athens. He changed the economy to be based on trade and he reformed agriculture, away from grains to olives. He did this by offering loans to farmers so they could make the transition. He also built a water system capable of sustaining a large population.

The lesson here is that reform is rarely successful, unless it is imposed by force. The reason is the status quo will always be preferable to those in power. Any reform through mutual consent must involve trade-offs that do nothing to alter the fundamental power arrangements. That was the defect of Solon’s reforms. While they temporarily alleviated the results of the power arrangements in Athenian society, they never attempted to alter them. The result of Solon’s reforms was nothing more than a pause in the factionalism.

This is something to keep in mind in the current age. The problems we see are not caused by errors in voting or mistakes in public policy. There is an underlying systemic problem that cannot be voted away. At the end of the Industrial Revolution, similar problems existed, but the political class was strong enough to impose reforms on the industrial barons and alter the power relationships in American society. That was possible because politics was a power center with the monopoly on violence.

Today, the political class is composed entirely of hired men, speaking on behalf of the interests that back their political careers. In fact, most are just actors, hired because they fit the right profile and look good on television. They have no power. This is the problem Trump is confronting as he tries to push through reforms. It’s not that Congress opposes these reforms. It’s that their paymasters oppose the reforms. He’s dealing with flunkies and errand boys. We don’t need a Solon right now. We need a Peisistratus.

Modest Proposals

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The paleo-conservative thinker, Sam Francis, introduced the term “anarcho-tyranny” into the dissident vocabulary. He defined it as “we refuse to control real criminals (that’s the anarchy), so we control the innocent (that’s the tyranny).” For example, the streets are littered with speed cameras, red-light cameras and other surveillance equipment to tax motorists. On the other hand, if your car is stolen, the cops cannot be bothered to look for it and you must hope the insurance company is generous.

Francis focused on crime, but we see it everywhere. Because it has crept up slowly on us, the chaos of our age just feels normal, but so does the shrinking freedom of the surveillance state. A way to see this is to think about the small, relatively easy to impose rules our government could do now, that would make life better. Yet, these modest proposals are never mentioned, much less debated. In fact, the very idea of the state imposing quality of life measures is outrageous.

For example, the scourge of mobile phones is obvious to everyone. We have people walking into traffic while texting. Every summer, there are stories of people coming to harm as they try to take a selfie. Even if those are rare exceptions, driving has become a stressful adventure, because of drivers talking and texting. Spend time around the imperial capital and you come to hate the cell phone. This is an easily remedied problem that the government could address tomorrow.

For example, the Feds could tell mobile phone makers that their devices must shut off when they detect movement. Cars with media centers have this feature, so drivers are not fiddling with the thing while driving. If mobile phones were so equipped, the number of drivers smashing into one another over texting would drop to zero. Idiots and teenagers would hate this, but so what? There’s never a need for a human to talk or text while driving. If you need to talk, pull over and have your conversation.

The assault on privacy by tech companies could be also addressed. Your picture, your name, your financial information, all the stuff that defines you is yours. It should be treated like any other property. Google is not allowed to build a surveillance point on your front lawn. Why are they allowed to spy on you and sell your information to the highest bidder? A law that requires written permission to possess and distribute private information would put an end to the abuse of privacy.

In case you think this is impossible, keep in mind it used to exist. Credit bureaus used to need permission to release your credit history. One of the things you signed in the loan process was a form giving the lender the right to pull your credit report and call on your references. The same is true of employers. The application process included you giving them permission to call former employers. Simply restoring a basic of civil society – property rights – would solve many problems.

To get a sense of just how far we have gone down the road to serfdom, ask a normie friend about such a proposal. Ask them if the government should require Facebook to get your written permission to use your data. The right leaning normie will recoil in horror at the state doing anything. The left leaning normie will most likely give you a blank look, as they are unable to process the concept of privacy. The very idea of you owning you is now alien to most Americans.

On the other hand, the idea of transparency among the ruling class has become an artifact of a bygone age. Around the imperial capital are thousands of not-for-profit operations that are financed by rich people. You can look up some basic information about them, but you can rarely find out who pays the bills. Take, for example, The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. This group harasses white people and is run by a white-hating woman named Kristen Clarke. Who pays for this?

Politics is now a clash between these types of groups financed by shadowy characters that none of us see. Instead, we see trained actors as spokesman for these front groups that essentially operate as money laundering operations. Because the billionaire class is unable to hire politicians directly, they funnel their bribes through non-profits. Cliff Asness gets to pay Jonah Goldberg to be his mouthpiece and he gets a tax break. He’s not just a member of the over-class. He’s a philanthropist!

Cliff Asness may be a civic minded patriot, but the only reason we can know his name is he chooses to let us know it. He could just as easily have made the gift anonymously or under some other name. Unless you are into dissident politics, you would never know that every utterance of Jonah Goldberg is paid for by some billionaire with interests that may or may not be your interests. Every nickel that comes into a not-for-profit should be public information, so we can know who is paying the paid actors.

The point is, there are probably a hundred small things that could be done today to significantly improve life in America, for the citizens of America. The increasing shrillness of public debate is closely linked to the lawlessness of modern life. There’s a reason the state is incapable of even small reform. It goes back to what Sam Francis observed with crime. The class-consciousness of the managerial class is the same phenomenon that we see with public bureaucracy.

August Grab Bag

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I’ve been very busy with the day job this week, so putting together a thematic show was not in the cards. Those take a little more time and  thought. The last part is the important part, as I actually have to think about what I’m going to say, rather than just wing it. There’s also the the miscellaneous stuff I want to gas on about, that does not fit a general theme. I think once a month I’ll do a show that is just a grab bag of miscellaneous items that strike my fancy. That provides a little head room, as far as my schedule.

I’ve also been in a foul mood this week. The endless gaslighting by the media has its effects, even when you know it is happening. It’s harder for me to think when I’m full of rage, so a week to blow off a little steam is useful. Given that traffic is way up here of late, I suspect I’m not alone in feeling the rage. Something is happening. A post here got 300 comments the other day. That never happens. J’Onquarious tells me his traffic is way up too. Maybe it’s those Russian trolls I keep hearing so much about.

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. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below. I’m now on Spotify, so the millennials can tune in when not sobbing over white privilege and toxic masculinity.

This Week’s Show

Contents

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

Spotify

Google Play Link

iHeart Radio

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

The Russian Stain

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During the Cold War, popular culture portrayed the Soviets in two ways, often at the same time. There was the ruthless ideologue, efficiently going about his business as an implacable enemy of freedom. The other type of Soviet character was the morally conflicted guy, whose honor compelled him to serve his country, but he also understood that communism was immoral. As far as villains go, both types of Soviet were given a lot of respect, because Hollywood is sympathetic to Bolshevism.

Today, Hollywood rarely uses Russians as bad guys, but our political class sees them as the epicenter of evil in the modern world. Steve Sailer noted the other day that the pundit class has rewritten recent history to fit this narrative. The neocons are celebrating the tenth anniversary of something that never really happened, at least not in the way they currently tell it. Here is neocon puppet Mikheil Saakashvili, and Robert Kagan and Condoleezza Rice repeating the same whopper.

The funny thing about this myth-making is that it is unnecessary. The number of people in the political class who could locate South Ossetia is tiny. Most normal Americans would be puzzled to learn that there is a country named after the peach state. As a public relations item, this ten year old non-event is useless. There’s also the fact that the actual events are easily accessible on-line. It looms large for the neocons, though, so they can’t stop thinking about it.

The neocons love mucking about in that part of the world. Some would say their interests go back to the pale of settlement days. That is the sort of thing that can get your in trouble. Still, there’s pretty good evidence that the American foreign policy establishment has been meddling in the region since the Soviet Empire. The Boston Marathon bomber was probably recruited by US intelligence at some point. His uncle seems to know a lot of people in the CIA.

The thing that no one has yet to explain is why has the American ruling elite become fixated on Russia. Even if the reason for the neocon obsession is ancient hatreds, why is the America left nuts about the Russians? It could simply be convenience, but there are better villains in the world for them to hate, at least in practical terms. China, for example, makes for a much better villain. Iran or Saudi Arabia work much better with the left’s current deep dive into matriarchy.

Even if you want to believe that the left has been infected by the ancient hatred that animates the neocons, the tenor of the left’s hatred is different. The neocons see Russia as a problem to be controlled so it does not revert back to its imperial habits. The left now sees Russia as Old Scratch. Russia is not a problem to be managed and more than the devil can be managed. The very existence of Russia is seen as an affront to the neo-liberal world order.

This visceral hatred has some similarities to the orogressive loathing of the imperial governments of Europe prior to the Great War. Wilson despised the old order, which is why he was so aggressively vengeful toward the Austrians and Germans. American progressives seem to have developed the same view of Russia, and to a lesser degree the Visegrad counties. Their resistance to the neo-liberal order is viewed as an ideological challenge and that can never be tolerated.

The difference is that a century ago, Wilsonian democracy was ascendant, while the monarchical order was in decline. America and American leaders were the new kids on the world stage, pushing aside the old guard. Today, the neo-liberal order is in a defensive crouch. Meanwhile, Russia and Eastern Europe are pretty much just normal countries do pretty well. Perhaps part of the hatred for Russia is the need to find something to blame for the current troubles in the West.

Of course, it is a reminder of the absolute intolerance of secular religions. When people assign the natural order to divine forces, they can be indifferent to alternative forms of worship, as a part of the great mystery of life. When the natural order is a man made creation and the moral code is created and maintained by man, any deviation must be viewed as a challenge to the creator’s legitimacy. The stubborn existence of European countries practicing the old ways is an insult to the neo-liberal creators.

There also may be the issue of reach. Russia is poor and relatively weak compared to the West, but it remains out of reach. It’s ability to thrive outside the new world order suggests the new world order cannot include the whole world. Central to the liberal impulse, going back to Wilson, is totalitarianism. Russia is like a stain that they cannot get out of the fabric of global society. Putin is a new Tsar, the return of that same stubborn problem they cannot resolve.

The Great Awakening

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Ron Unz has put out a handful of long columns under the American Pravda category on his personal website. These are posts where he digs into the official narrative on a subject and relates his experience with discovering the truth. They are packed with lots of well researched bits about the topic, often from obscure sources that have been erased from the official narrative. To his credit, he digs into the credibility of his source material, which is always useful.

They are a bit too long, but that may be a matter of taste. There is something about reading from a screen that makes long articles less pleasant. People have investigated this and found that shorter is better than longer on-line. It’s one reason the long form essay is going away. Most people consume their content on-line, so they prefer short pithy articles. There’s also the fact that most of this stuff is read at work, where you steal a few minutes to read something before lunch or on a break.

Anyway, this entry on post-war Europe was interesting. The post-liberation reprisals in France and Belgium get some mention in the official narrative, but almost exclusively with regards to women who slept with German soldiers. The gang-like warfare between communists and their enemies is never mentioned. Of course, there is never any mention of what happened to German soldiers in prisoner of war camps. War is an ugly business, and ideological war is the ugliest.

Regarding the ideological aspects of it, the blind hatred of the Germans by the American elite is never discussed. That’s why no one learns about the Morgenthau Plan in their history classes. It is another example of how ideological enemies cannot see the humanity in one another. The rage-fueled progressives were no different than their opponents in the war. They came to see the other side as the pure expression of evil and wanted them exterminated. The Morgenthau Plan was about genocide.

The most interesting part of theses posts is that they fit into the “red pill” experience you hear from many who journey to this side of the divide. Not everyone makes the journey, as they were always here, but did not know there was a “here.” Many do have a moment when the light went on and they either began to question their view of the world or simply changed their mind about some important item. Often, it is a book or article that is the triggering event.

Of course, none of his posts would be possible without modern technology. When the only store of knowledge was controlled by the people running the official narrative, there was no way to red pill anyone or be red pilled yourself. Unless you found a stash of old books, you had to accept the official narrative. Whatever happens in these troubled times, the fact that the society that produced the technological revolution could be consumed by it suggests nature in the long run, is self-correcting.

The article on post-war Europe, brings up something that often gets forgotten. It is not enough to undermine the moral legitimacy of the prevailing orthodoxy. That phony narrative sold to us is not just propaganda in support of the current order. It gives Americans a reason to feel patriotic. It makes us proud of who we are as currently defined by the people in charge. Learning that it is a lie is like learning that you were adopted. It leaves a hole, and something must fill it.

While undermining the moral authority of the people in charge is a big part of our project, we also must work on a replacement. It’s not enough to get people wise to the hypocrisy of the New York Times, for example, with regards to race. The Sarah Jeong fiasco does red pill a lot of people, but that only matters if they have something else to embrace. In the movie from which the term “red pill” originates, the characters had an alternative vision of their future.

This is the lesson of the Great War. The collapse of the monarchical system left a giant void in Europe. That system had been discredited, but there was no replacement for the people to embrace. Liberal democracy had yet to evolve the secular morality to justify it, so into the void flowed Marxism and Fascism. The twentieth century was the fight between liberal democracy, fascism and communism, with the result being the neo-liberal order we have today.

The posts on antisemitism will be of some interest. Ron is Jewish, so he comes to the subject from a different angle than the anti-Semites, but he is refreshingly frank about the material. It’s good reminder that Jews are not the monolith JQ people need to believe. There are a lot of alt-Jews out there. It’s not a majority or even close to one, but it is a substantial minority. Their fight within the Jewish community over Jewish identity is a mirror of what is happening within the Occident.

It’s a good reminder that even if you embrace the fact that human diversity requires separation, it does not mean hostility. In fact, diversity requires cooperation for peaceful separation to work. Even though one group may have different interests and a radically different sense of identity than another, they can still cooperate with one another where their interests align. For the JQ people who think they have taken the ultimate red-pill, this understanding about cooperation and diversity is the ultimate red-pill.

I’m fond of pointing out that much of what defines the modern age is that everyone forgot the timeless lessons of the human condition and now we must rediscover them. This great awakening we see on our side of the great divide is, in many respects, a rediscovery of the past. So much has been hidden from view to prop up the current regime, it’s shocking to most people. Like that kid who learns his parents had lied to him and he was adopted, what matters next is what we do with this new knowledge.

 

Waiting For The Spark

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At lunch recently, I overheard two young women talking about the coming revolution, which I assumed was a joke, so I eavesdropped for a little while bit turned out that they were talking about revolution. The bossy looking one was going on about something Trump did, and how it was going to be the thing that “woke people up about what is really happening.” My guess is the part I missed had something to do with Russians or maybe the Manafort Trial. The Left is obsessed with that now.

Since the election, the Left has been dreaming up scenarios in which the results of the election are overturned. For a long time, they were sure Trump would be impeached, but that seems to have faded. Last year my left-wing office manager was deep into the impeachment scenarios. Now the talk is of revolution, which probably fits better with their conception of themselves as the heroic resistance. They imagine Trump as a strong man, against whom they must resist until the system cracks.

Most of us think of revolution in the sense of people flooding into the streets to protest the government. Either the government makes an error, causing the mob to turn violent or radicals use unrest to foment a full-on revolt. The two models in the Western mind are the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Given the make-up of the anti-Trump forces, it’s hard to imagine either scenario. The “resistance” is mostly girls and non-whites prone to committing violence against one another.

There is another model of revolution, that may be what our current rulers have in mind for us and that is the Cultural Revolution unleashed by Mao Zedong. This was a revolution from above, where the revolutionary elite enlisted the masses at the bottom to purge the middle of bourgeois traitors. Mao purged the party of rivals and then used subsequent protests to advance a lurch into radicalism. The complaints about party leaders were an excuse to start a cultural revolution.

The most famous aspect of it was the Red Guards. This was a student movement aimed at unleashing “a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and constitutes a deeper and more extensive stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country.” Sinophiles hate the comparison, but this sounds a lot like our billionaire class financing the various radical groups and social justice warriors we see rampaging through the culture today.

Another point of comparison is the war on the “Four Olds” which were old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. This was both a war on the past, as well as a war on the culture itself. For example, the Red Guards pulled the remains of a Ming dynasty emperor out of his tomb, denounced him and then burned the remains. They went around renaming streets and toppling statues.  Today’s radicals do the same thing and preach against racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism.

No historical comparison is perfect. Again, Sinophiles really hate the comparison, but people are conservative about what they think they know best. There’s also the fact that Chinese culture is remarkably strong, and it was largely able to resist the ten-year campaign to obliterate it. American culture appears to be brittle and falling apart under the weight of a fifty-year planned invasion. The Chinese did not fill up their lands with hostile foreigners, armed with a ballot by the ruling class.

On the other hand, there are limits to everything. As the outrages from the Left stack up, the average white person in American grows angrier. Talk to anyone sympathetic to this line of thinking and they will tell you they have grown far less tolerant of their remaining liberal friends. I know I’ve lost touch with quite a few former friends, because I will not tolerate their nonsense. I have friends who just a few years ago thought Ben Shapiro was edgy and now think I am too soft.

The question is what it would take to move people from yelling at their televisions over the latest liberal outrage to marching in the streets. Sometimes, the smallest spark sets the biggest fire. The reaction to Alex Jones getting purged from the internet has been surprising, given that he is not a serious person. People, who never heard of him until yesterday, are angry over his banishment. My guess is the percentage of people thinking fondly of Pinochet is at an all-time high right now.

As far as the spark, a move against Trump is good bet. The glue that keeps things from flying apart right now is middle-class white people, who still have faith in the political system. These are the middle American radicals Sam Francis wrote about 30 years ago during the Reagan moment. They will tolerate just about anything, if they think they can fight the other side within the system. An effort to remove Trump or even silence his advocates, could be a spark that gets these people into the streets.

Extra-political efforts to ban guns are another possible spark. The coordinated efforts to cut off gun makers from the financial system is dangerous. Gun owners follow this stuff and there are a lot of them. The pink pussy hat people think they have numbers because billionaires will bus fifty thousand of them into DC. The NRA could get a million people in the streets if there is ever a real threat to gun rights. A big part of gun culture is the idea of the patriot bravely taking up arms to resist tyranny.

It is tempting to think this will all blow over. I just don’t see how it will ever be possible to make peace with the Left. They hate us and will use any means necessary. The lack of code is the critical part. How does one make peace with someone that will never abide by the rules? Whether this results in revolution, counter revolution or civil war is hard to know, but the number of people thinking the gap cannot be bridged is growing every day, so we wait for the Cossack’s wink.

Ghosts and Goblins

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Thirty years ago, everyone knew what it meant to be a liberal. They wanted to tax the rich and spend the proceeds on the poor. They wanted to regulate business so they could not exploit their workers or harm the environment. That meant favoring unions in the law. On foreign policy, liberals were the doves when it came to dealing with the Soviets. Of course, everyone knew what being a liberal meant when it came to social issues. The point being liberalism was a well-defined list of policy positions and opinions.

Today, what it means to be a liberal is a complete mystery, even to the people who proudly say they are on the Left. The Netroots Nation was this weekend, so all the grandees of Progressivism were in New Orleans to pitch their ideas. Look at the agenda. Other than the promises to oppose Trump, most of it focused on building traffic for their websites. “Digital Security For Organizers Of Color” sounds amusing, but mostly because it has that familiar paranoia that has come to define the modern Left.

If you bother to watch any of the speeches, the tone is what you would expect from people facing the end times. One after another it was a rallying call for the fight against some monster, real or imagined. At least the ranting about Trump includes a real person, even if the bill of indictment is insane. When you think about it, the Russian collusion business is just an updated version of “cavorting with the devil.” Their argument is that Trump made a deal with the evil one, who magically altered the outcome of the 2016 election.

That’s what liberalism is these days. It is a weird collection of superstitions about various ghosts and goblins like racism and white privilege. Racism no longer means prejudice against another race or even antagonism toward another race. Racism is the evil spirit that is somehow responsible for unequal outcomes. White privilege is just another name for the same mysterious force. It’s how millionaire black athletes can be victims of racism because the white middle class fans stop watching them over the anthem protests.

Another aspect of this is the extreme paranoia. Listen to the Left these days and you get the impression America is now the movie The Purge. The faithful spend every night in their bunker homes. Here is a story from Breitbart about Bill Maher claiming that the United States is turning into Iraq. He does not mean the post-war Iraq. He means the Saddam version where his Al-Bu Nasir tribe ruled over the nation. In Maher’s version, Trump, the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch rule over Maher’s oppressed majority.

Now, Maher is a cynical provocateur and opportunist. He was a hack comic for a long time until he figured out how to stoke the fears and fantasies of liberal fanatics. It is debatable as to how much he believes any of the stuff he says. In this case, he is clearly trying to appeal to his audience, by naming three hobgoblins of the Left. The fact that Charles Koch despises Trump and Murdoch was a Hillary supporter makes his theory as nutty as the Russian hacking nonsense, but his audience is not rational.

This vision of themselves as the put upon minority is integral to Progressive identity politics. Not only do the constituencies needs to believe they are victims, the Judeo-Puritan project is rooted in a bunker mentality. Their sense of the world is of a righteous people holed up in a New England town, as the imperial forces encircle them, while they pray the oil holds out until the golem arrives to free them. It is a dog’s breakfast of both spiritual and mythological strains that make up modern Progressivism.

Again, Maher does this because he knows his audience is stupid and this stuff works on them, but it speaks to something about the modern Left. Conventional conservatives like the go on about how the Left has no ideas now. That is true in the nuts-and-bolts public policy sense. The Left is no longer a political force. It’s made the turn and is on its way to becoming the Cult of the Supreme Being. Unlike Robespierre’s invention, this version is esoteric, mysterious and oriental. There is no defined supernatural, just a sense of it.

It’s also very feminine. The hysterical shrieking about the hobgoblins that haunt the Left is reminiscent of the old Blondie cartoons, where the woman would stand on a chair shrieking about a mouse in the kitchen. In a more sophisticated age, the readers knew that the woman’s performance was just that, a performance. It was an acting out and reinforcement of traditional sex roles. Today, when the Progressive climbs onto her chair and shrieks, there is no mouse and no man to rush in and comfort her. It’s a lonely act.

This collapse of Progressivism into a feminine mystery cult is why conventional conservatism has collapsed. Conservatism was never a genuine alternative. Their role was as a foil to the Left. That worked if Progressives had a policy agenda, but that is no longer the case. Listen to the leading figures of the Left and their policy proposals range from comically ridiculous to vaguely aspirational. Again, you see the feminization. The Bernie Bros are now Bernie gals like Ocasio-Cortez and Sarah Smith.

What this says about what comes next is hard to know. Spiritual movements are a part of the human condition. Anthropologists think belief is one of the earliest modern human traits, co-evolving with language. As Christianity fades in the West, something must replace it. Maybe we are seeing the birth of the next great religion. Alternatively, the ranting and raving against nature could be the death howls of a culture that has reached its terminal point. The end is a people huddled in darkness, afraid of the goblins outside.

They Hate You

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The Sarah Jeong story has probably been the best thing to happen to our side since Trump came down that escalator. The challenge of this age is in convincing typical white people that it is not socialism they should fear. It is extermination. There are still people waddling around talking about socialism. Mention race to them and they start hyperventilating about their constitutional principles. What the Sarah Jeong story does it make it impossible to avoid the elephant in the room.

It’s not that this Asian airhead hates white people. Blacks have been out in public talking about how much they hate white people since the Civil Rights era. White people have been trained to accept this, by assuming it is meaningless. Blacks are powerless, so their hatreds are no threat. Then you have the subversives like Ben Shapiro telling them that black hatred of whites is bad for blacks because it keeps them from showing up at CPAC every year to take selfies with adoring white people.

Asians are supposed to be different. They are the model minority. White people just assume that Asians are on their side. They work hard, avoid crime and social dysfunction. They come here looking for a chance, give their kids nice names like Sarah and send them off to good colleges. You’ll note that you never hear anyone suggest we should end immigration from Asia. In the blossoming race war, Asians are never in the discussion, because white people assume they are good people.

Suddenly one of the model minorities has revealed that she hates white people and even more disturbingly, the people known for eating dogs apparently think white people smell like dogs. It adds a whole new element to what the coalition of non-whites has in mind for us once they get total control. More important, this white hating Asian migrant is defended by so-called conservatives. Ben Shapiro wore his tiny little fingers raw tweeting out defenses of the Times decision to back Jeong.

The initial response from white people was to celebrate progressive values by howling about the racism. When that went nowhere, they moved onto howling about the hypocrisy. When the response from the left was to laugh in their face, white people were forced to face reality. The other side are not socialists. They are a coalition of non-whites and some traitors, who are held together by a hatred of white people and the fantasy of a non-white world. They hate white people. That’s it.

White people will try hard to rationalize it and force themselves back into the comfortable role of doormat to the left, but the scales will fall from the eyes of many whites. Many may have already come to terms with this reality, but it is the behavior of people like Ben Shapiro that is the eye-opener. The guy who recently said racists should be hounded out of their jobs, is now defending Jeong and the New York Times, either from a position of solidarity or out of craven opportunism.

Another aspect of this is that it undercuts the argument made by conventional conservatives about their vaunted principles. The other side has no rules, and they have no intention of limiting themselves with rules. All the breast-beating about racism was a lie and it always was a lie. Since the left controls the moral framework, they have just taken the first step toward normalizing tribalism. Jared Taylor is now Ben Shapiro’s moral superior.

This story also offers a chance to point out to white people that there is no bargaining with these people. A bargain requires a degree of good faith on both sides and some way to hold both sides to the deal. The Left thinks it has a moral duty to do whatever is necessary to destroy the rest of us, so they are not just allowed to break the rules and lie about it. They are morally obligated to use any means necessary to win, which is why they named one of the activist groups By Any Means Necessary.

Now, white people have been finding ways to roll over and play dead for a long time, so this event will not suddenly turn them into identitarians. Whites have a habit of internalizing each Progressive outrage. It’s important to remind the normie white person in your life that the other side never quits, they can never be shamed into giving up on their goals. They lost over 30 votes on homosexual marriage but kept at it until they won one and then got the courts to enshrine homosexual marriage as a founding principle.

If you think the defense of Sarah Jeong by subversives like Ben Shapiro is an end point, you are mistaken. Now that they have established that it is okay to hire virulent antiwhites, the next step will be the firing of whites because the antiwhites find them upsetting. In other words, the presence of whites will be grounds to claim the workplace is hostile to non-whites, so the whites must be fired. How long before Justice Roberts claims the Founders always wanted whites to be non-citizens?