Hate Springs Eternal

Posted on May 5, 2022 by thezman

When it rains the worms come out and for the political class the steady rain is promising to become a deluge. The latest bit of bad news in the forecast is the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court regarding Roe. There have been a lot of hot takes on the implications of the ruling but lost in the media churn is the fact that this is another sign that things are getting ugly in Washington. A civilized political class run by sober-minded adults would never have allowed this to happen.

The fact is, Washington is in chaos. The Biden administration is a balkanized mess with Joe Biden as an embarrassing figurehead. His handlers are running out of patience or ability to keep him from having “senior moments” in public. In announcing some new justification for seizing Russian property, Biden slipped into confusion and struggled to say words that may or may not have been in the script. He looked like a man who should be at an assisted living facility, not the White House.

These events are becoming common, which underscores the fact that he is not actually in charge of his administration. It is a balkanized cabal that lacks coordination with the other parts and is disconnected from the party. The old neocons are running the war in Ukraine, while packs of deranged social justice warriors push through nutty ideas like the ministry of disinformation. There is no one sheepherding economic policy, which has been abandoned in the face of record inflation.

This is why Biden’s popularity is about as low as it can go. Amazingly, there is always about 30% of respondents who will say they support the president. Bush bottomed out around this number and now Biden is doing the same. It means his party is in desperate shape for the midterms. The first midterm is never good for the party of the president, as buyer’s remorse sets in at this stage. Trump was a mess, but he presided over peace and prosperity, two things lost under Biden.

Then there is the brewing disaster in Europe. The happy talk coming from the foreign policy camp is just a way to keep the politicians from asking too many questions, but everyone senses a looming disaster. The hope was this would be a great distraction from the economic mess, but that has not worked. Now the economic cost of the war is starting to bite. America is looking at a summer of record fuel and food prices and you cannot hide five dollar gas with a Ukraine lapel pin.

The recent elections tell the story. J. D. Vance staked out a non-interventionist position on Ukraine, basically telling voters he does not care about it. No one wants to admit it, but this may be what pushed him over the top. Both parties have attacked this position, but it is looking like the winning hand with voters. For Democrats, who now own the war in Ukraine, this could turn out to be Vietnam all over again. They are the party championing a very unpopular war.

This is probably why Bernie Sanders is telling people he plans to run in 2024, despite Biden people saying Biden 2024 is not a punchline. A disaster in November and more Joe Biden senior moments in public means the lid blows off the whole thing. Everyone will be talking about what comes after Joe Biden. In politics, it pays to be the first at the scene of the disaster, so Sanders is making sure his name is going to be in stories discussing the demise of Joe Biden.

This also reflects the growing anger of the fringe crazies at their party. In the Trump years, the Democrats weaponized these people against the country. The riots, murders and mayhem were part of the color revolution. The crazies and the more legitimate fringe players in mainstream politics took this to mean that they would get a seat at the table, but that was never happening. Not even the hardest thumping Trump haters want these lunatics in their political camp.

That is why Elizabeth Warren was doing the angry chicken dance outside the Supreme Court when the draft opinion was leaked. Her choreographers did not have enough time to train her for the show, so she was left to wing it and the result was a comical reminder that the 19th amendment was a mistake. Warren is a craven simpleton, but she does reflect the growing frustration of the fringe-left in Washington. They are getting nothing and they are incredibly angry about it.

They think abortion can be their vehicle back to the main stage, but in reality, abortion does not matter all that much to people. Abortion was always a middle-class white woman issue. “The woman’s right to choose” was the cover for promoting eugenic policies in the black community. Now that middle-class white women are past childbearing age, it no longer has emotional appeal. Nonwhites, of course, have been hip to the reality of abortion for a long time.

Taken together, with the looming elections, it reflects a political class that no longer has a reason to exist. It is a collection of geezers trying to relive their salad days, along with hand-picked acolytes selected for their lack of intelligence. The old baby boomer politics, like the old baby boomers in charge, is breaking down. That is the crisis we are seeing in Washington. The old framework is no longer salient and no one has a clue as to what should replace it or even if it can be replaced.

This is also why politics has descended into information war. In business, when you do not have a new product or a new version of the existing product, you roll out a new marketing campaign instead. This is what has happened with politics. They have nothing to offer, so they rollout one media campaign after another. We are bombarded with an endless series of alleged crises so that we do not notice that the people in charge have no reason to be in charge.

There are, of course, long term trends that promise to make these short term problems look like a golden age. People do not live in the long term, so the next six months will be what occupies the minds of people. Given the condition of the political leaders and the mood of the country, they may want to think about putting those razor wire barriers back up and declaring martial law in the city. Just about every constituency has a reason to storm the city and demand a redress of grievances.

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The Violence of Democracy

Posted on May 4, 2022 by thezman

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For generations in the West, it has been asserted that democracies do not go to war with one another. The claim is based on the extremely limited experience with democratic processes in the 20th century. The nations with democratic elements, as defined by the victors, did not go to war with one another. Britain (democratic) did not go to war with France(democratic) despite being a long time rival. Instead, Britain joined France against the anti-democratic states of the Axis powers.

This claim was a gratuitous assertion for the purpose of selling democracy as the cure for national conflict. In the same way that globalism is pitched as solution to war, democracy is pitched as the antidote to human conflict. It is at the heart of the claim the spread of liberal democracy in the post-Cold War world must inevitably remove war from the policy choices of nations. If liberal democracies do not go to war with one another, then a world of liberal democracies is free of war.

When you think about these claims from the post-Cold War period of American triumphalism, they are just repackaged claims from the past. Thomas Freidman’s argument in The Lexus and the Olive Tree is a post-modern retelling of the arguments in The Great Illusion. Fukuyama’s argument in The End of History is another iteration of the claims that have been made since Adam Smith. Human conflict can be tamed with rules and commerce.

It is an curious belief at the heart of liberal democracy when you stop and consider the mechanics of it. Trade between countries is just shorthand for the trade between individuals in one country with those in another country. Disputes between individuals in commerce are the norm. It is a game of each side trying to take advantage of the other and no one likes being beat this way. Scaled up and it means disputes between countries trading with one another are inevitable.

This is where the myopia and insularity of the managerial class, a creation of the haute bourgeoise, comes into play. This layer of middle managers and middle men are convinced they solve any dispute with the right credentials and a large enough committee budget. The managerial system is a self-licking ice cream cone, a self-referential process that prevents the participants from looking too closely at the mechanics of liberal democracy.

Democracy, of course, is a magical form of mob rule in which all of us are smarter than any of us. It just assumes that if the dumbest people are allowed to have input on the decisions, then somehow those decisions improve. In every other aspect of life, the goal is to keep the stupid people out of the decision tree, but with democracy the goal is to not only recruit them, but to elevate them. If prudence says to avoid war, then allowing the imprudent to rule means war is more likely.

The war-like nature of democracy is easy to see. Athens was the first great democracy and it was incapable of being a good neighbor. The greatness of Athens was the product of the wars with Persia. The golden age of Athens was between 480 – 404 BC and the Greco-Persian wars were from 499 BC to 449 BC. The Peloponnesian War lasted from 431 BC to 404 BC. In other words, the primary feature of democratic Athens was not cultural production by endless war.

America is arguably the first liberal democratic state. Like Athens, it was founded in war and like Athens has been at war throughout its life. A few years after the founding there was the War of 1812, then the Civil War. That ushered in an unusual few decades of peace, but then it was back to war with Spain, then most of Europe. The bodies were not even cold from the Second World War and the great liberal democracies were declaring war on Soviet Russia.

It is the post-Cold War period where you see the violence of democracy. The end of the long struggle with communism should have resulted in a great transitioning from the war economy to a peace economy. Instead, what followed was a generation of war against the Muslims. Now we have a new cold war, possibly even a hot war, with Russia over things no one bothers to explain. The reason for that is no one cares. Liberal democracy needs war. That is the reason for the war.

Once again, we see that the economic claims contained in the arguments about liberal democracy and peace do not hold up. Russia is an important part of the global supply chain for things like energy, food and raw materials. The liberal democracies are willing to starve their people to make war on the Russians. The same dynamic is shaping up with China, which is the manufacturer of many Western goods. Liberal democracy is unconstrained by economic concerns when it comes to war.

It is tempting to pin the violence of liberal democracy on the people at the top of the Global American Empire. There is some truth to it, but we have other examples of how the democratic ethos leads to violence. The French Revolution was the first flowering of the democratic ideal. It quickly descended into a bloodbath then Napoleon, a man determined in to conquer the world, in the name of the people of France. The birth of democracy in Europe was a very bloody one.

Communism is usually placed outside of democracy, but this is a gratuitous assertion by proponents of liberal democracy. Communism is probably the most democratic philosophy, as it is the most egalitarian. Once you assume universal equality, you inevitably assume universal participation in society. Of course, universal equality solves the moral questions, so there is not only no need for politics, but there is no need for the limits of politics. One hundred million people died to prove it.

The point of all this is that real world testing of the theories of democracy and liberal democracy make clear that it is a horribly violent pathology. Just as the real communism has never been tried, the real democracy has never existed, because the claims of democracy and now liberal democracy are incompatible with humanity. Rather than unleashing human potential, liberal democracy makes war on human nature and what follows is endless conflict to distract from this reality.

Perhaps the world war that is brewing between the West and the world is the final act in a play that started with the Enlightenment. In one final convulsion the monstrous ideas that were born in the “age of reason” will finally be defeated. Liberal democracy will be shown to be no better of an implementation of these ideas than communism or fascism was in the last century. One last effort to immanentize the eschaton will violently remove this lunacy from the mind of Western man.

Expansionist Ideology

Posted on May 3, 2022 by thezman

It is generally agreed that fascism was expansionist, primarily because of the events leading to the Second World War. The one real world experiment with fascism led the main fascists states to conquer their neighbors. It is a small sample size so there are people who argue that fascism is not necessarily expansionist. Franco’s Spain had no territorial ambitions. The same was true of Salazar’s Portugal. The counter there is that these two examples are products of their unique history.

Communism, in contrast, was expansionist and explicitly so. Marxist theory assumed that communism would transcend national borders and national identity. The Bolsheviks expanded on this assumption to argue that the advanced industrial states would move to communism first, then help the backward states to industrial and socialize, by exporting revolution to those states. While communism did not advocate conventional wars of conquest, it advocated ideological wars of conquest.

In these debates, there are three main defining issues. One is the ideological nature of the political system. Both fascism and communism were ideological, in that both revolve around a set of beliefs or philosophies. Communism was the better defined of the two, owing to the deeper intellectual tradition. It also had a theory of history that provided something like a divine purpose. The national character of fascism also limited its ideological scope compared to communism.

That brings up the second defining issue. The reason fascism was less expansionist than communism is universalism. Fascism was rooted in national identity, which by definition limits its exportability. Some countries would simply lack the national character for fascism. Communism, in contrast, was universal. It assumed that all people were naturally egalitarian and possessed the same potential. Further, communists argued that inequality between peoples was due to capitalism.

The third defining issue is the revolutionary character of the systems. Fascism was revolutionary only in so far it was a revolt against modernity. In this regard, it was more revanchist than revolutionary. Fascists wanted to restore a lost past in order to gain a lost future. Communism sought a direct break from the past in order to move into the next phase of history. The revolutionary impulse of fascism was limited while revolution was a defining feature of communism.

Using these three scales, it is easy to see why communism was unabashedly expansionist and fascism was debatably so. In fact, communism cannot exist without some new ground to conquer, while fascism is at least capable of operating within national boundaries as a good neighbor. Every communist country has been a nuisance to its neighbors, while we have examples of fascist countries like Spain and Portugal that managed to behave themselves.

When it comes to liberal democracy, there is not much debate about the expansionist impulses of the system. It is assumed that since this system eschews state violence, it eschews conquest in the conventional sense. There is also the claim that democracies do not go to war with one another or launch wars in lieu of negotiated settlement, so it is not expansionist by nature. Liberal democracies are dragged into conflict by illiberal systems that only understand force.

Yet, when we look at liberal democracy in practice, using the three scales to measure the expansionism of other ideologies, liberal democracy looks every bit as expansionist as 20th century communism. The United States, the epicenter of liberal democracy, has been at war for over a century. In fact, the reason for the past tense when speaking of fascism and communism is the United States conquered these two systems in the name of liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy is the most ideological political system ever conceived. It shares the same intellectual traditions as communism, but has become much more narrow over the course of time. Unlike communism, which assumed economic justice would solve the moral questions, thus ending the need for politics, liberal democracy assumes it has solved the moral questions. Liberal democracy is a set of cultural truths about which it tolerates no debate or dissent.

Of course, this assumes a degree of universalism that the communists would have found challenging. Fascists, of course, found the egalitarian claims of liberalism to be absurd and dangerous. Fascism was as much a revolt against liberalism as communism, because of the egalitarian nature of both systems. Liberal democracy combines egalitarianism and the blank slate to make claims about the human condition that no political system has ever entertained.

This is what makes liberal democracy the most revolutionary system of the three ideologies to compete in the last century. Absolute egalitarianism and the blank slate makes mankind limitless. It turns the vanguard into gods who can shape humanity to fit the needs of the ideology. Fascism was a revolt against modernity. Communism was a revolt against the past. Liberal democracy is a revolt against nature, specifically the natural limits of the human animal.

In the three measures of fascism and communism that defined their expansionism, liberal democracy exceeds them. This explains why liberal democracy, after having defeated fascism, quickly declared war on communism. Once communism was defeated, it declared war on the world. Fukuyama’s claim that liberal democracy was the final answer to the great ideological debates of the Enlightenment was not an observation, but a warning.

We see this in Ukraine. National interest should have led all parties to the negotiating table to sort out the problems in Ukraine. In fact, the conditions that led to war should not exist, but the expansionist impulse of liberal democracy created many of the conditions that led to war. It is the stated desire of the liberal democracies to conquer Russia that is keeping the war going. Russia, having shed revolutionary communism, is now at war with revolutionary liberal democracy.

The brewing war with China over Taiwan is another example of the expansionist impulse of liberal democracy. The Taiwan issue could be negotiated, but Washington likes to use Taiwan as a provocation. The radar system that it has installed in Taiwan is part of the explicit nuclear threat against China. The war with Russia is now being used as justification for further provocations. Washington has said that Beijing is next when it comes to regime change.

The very fact that the phrase “regime change” exists at all is a good example of the expansionist nature of liberal democracy. The fascists never expressed any interest in how other countries did politics. The communists were all about exporting revolution to other countries in order to alter their political orientation. We see the same thing with liberal democracy. It first exports the cultural goods of liberal democracy and then begins the color revolution process to effect regime change.

It is a big topic that deserves a deeper analysis, but on the surface it is quite clear that liberal democracy is the most revolutionary, expansionist and intolerant ideology to emerge from the 20th century. The limited expansionism of fascism triggered a war in Europe then world war. The explicit expansionism of communism plunged the world into a forty year cold war. The hyper-violent, revolutionary expansionism of liberal democracy now promises something far worse.

The Art Of The Deal

Posted on May 2, 2022 by thezman

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In the business world, all negotiations start with a central question. Is there a deal to be made that both sides will accept? There is no point in negotiating if one or both sides is not willing to strike a deal. Salesmen are trained to think about this question whenever they engage with a prospective client. Unless they can show that a sale is possible, they should not waste their time. In order for negotiations to make sense, both sides have to want to make a deal and think a deal is possible.

Related to the primary questions are the questions about the shape of the deal, as in what will both sides accept and what will they never accept. Negotiations are often about both sides coming to accept that they will have to take less than what they initially wanted in the deal in order to get the deal done. The two questions that loom over negotiations are “what would we like?” and “what will we accept?” The latter becomes the starting point of an agreement.

War is a form of negotiation. In almost all cases, the attacking side would prefer a negotiated settlement, but they determined that the other side was not prepared to do what was required to make a deal possible. One or both sides is unrealistic about what they can get and what they will accept. The war resets the negotiations. If one side wins convincingly, then they can dictate the terms of the final deal. The important thing about wars is they always end in a settlement.

This is the great puzzle in Ukraine. The war will end eventually. If the West is right and Ukraine is clearing the Russians from the field, then the Russians will have to accept the terms of the Ukrainian victors and their NATO backers. If the maps are right and Russia is slowly destroying the Ukrainian army, then the Ukrainians will have to accept the terms offered by Russia. More important, Ukraine’s Western backers will have to strike a deal with the Russians to close the books on the war.

Of course, the third option is some sort of stalemate in which both sides can either claim victory or deny being defeated. This seems to be the hope on the Ukrainian side, as they have broken off negotiations. Presumably, the West has promised unlimited arms shipments if the Ukrainians keep fighting. The logic is the Russians have plenty of weapons, but a finite number of troops, while Ukraine has unlimited troops but has a finite number of weapons, until now.

This is what makes the whole thing baffling. Before the conflict, the Russians demanded a return to the Minsk agreements. This was a set of protocols to bring peace to the Donbas, which had been in a civil war since 2014. Kiev had signed this deal in 2015 with the support of France and Germany, which brokered the deal. Kiev and Moscow would demilitarize the two sides, peacekeepers would be sent in and the two provinces would have elections and some degree of autonomy.

Compared to war, that looked like a great deal for Kiev, but for reasons that have not been explained, Kiev rejected the offer. Once the Russian army crossed into the Donbas, the Russians made a new proposal. Autonomy for the Donbas, recognition of Russia’s claims in the Crimea and the neutrality of Ukraine. That last part was in response to efforts by Washington to bring the Ukraine into NATO. Oddly, Kiev accepted this but rejected the other demands from Russia.

Here we are in the third month of the war and it is clear that the Russian deal, if an offer is coming, will be much different. The Kherson region in the south is preparing to join the two regions in the Donbas in demanding separation from Ukraine. There are rumors that Odessa is in negotiations with Russia to do the same. In the northeast, the Kharkiv region is rumored to be breaking away. This may simply be the result of the Russian occupation and elimination of Azov in the area.

Barring a radical change to the facts on the ground, the deal Ukraine can now get from any negotiations with Russia is much worse than two months ago. Rumors of Polish troops on the border with Ukraine, where many people speak Polish and identify as Polish, suggests the deal could get a lot worse in a hurry. This raises a rather important question. Why is Kiev and its Western backers, unwilling to make a deal? What deal do they think will materialize in a month or a year?

One possibility is Washington thinks Ukraine is winning and just needs time, which goes back to that belief she has unlimited manpower. Given the facts on the ground, this seems unlikely, but war makes people crazy. The leaders on both sides of the Great War staggered on sure they were about to break the other side. War often warps the ability of the planners to properly interpret reality. They stick to the plan despite the obvious failures of the plan. The Somme is a good example.

What this says is the only deal the West will accept is the total surrender of Russia, which conforms what the Russians have said from the beginning. Their reason for going into Ukraine was that Washington was planning to use Ukraine as a launching pad for war against Russia, both culturally and economically. What the Russians are now seeing is that there can never be a deal with the West. She will have to guarantee her own economic and territorial security.

What this means is that there is no walking back to some early point when a deal could have been struck between the sides. The West now demands unconditional surrender, which means they cannot relent on the sanctions. At some point that means cutting off all imports from Russia. The limited sanctions have sent prices soaring, which means Western leaders are committed to a massive reduction in the quality of life of the West in order to win this war with Russia.

The irony here is that the people who plotted this war, the neocons who control American foreign policy, appear to have made the same blunder Athens made in the Peloponnesian war. The irony is that the neocons are obsessed with that war, seeing themselves on the side of Athens. In that war, Athens recklessly attacked Sicily and was defeated at the battle of Syracuse. This eventually led to the over all defeat of Athens by the Spartans and the end of the Athenian empire.

A forgotten lesson of the Peloponnesian war is that Athens had many chances to make a deal with Sparta but could not stop provoking the Spartans. If the Athenians had viewed the conflict as a negotiation and set realistic conditions in order to strike a deal, she would have avoided disaster. Instead, she just assumed victory was inevitable, so no negotiation was required. In the end, Athens would prevail and the terms would be whatever suited Athens.

This seems to be the position of Washington and Brussels. Various leaders keep popping up demanding the unconditional surrender of Russia. They are making clear that they will fight forever. Given the deal they could have gotten from Russia just a few months ago, this new deal sounds dreadful, which suggests they are not the brilliant tacticians they imagine themselves to be. In the fullness of time, the Minsk agreements may look like the best deal that was ever possible in Ukraine.

The Ethnostate

Posted on April 29, 2022 by thezman

A point I like to make about libertarianism is that while there can never be a libertarian society, libertarianism can be useful as a critical tool. In the last century it was useful in analyzing and confronting socialist economic policy. The “science” of the marketplace was good at dispelling the morality of left-wing claims. The market economy provided more people with more goods and services at fair prices than the models that claimed to defend the interests of the masses.

The ethnostate is similar to libertarianism in that there is no way to go from current social arrangements to an ethnostate. Even in places that have an ethnocracy, like Israel, going the next step is impossible. Even the most clannish societies have some outsiders in their midst. Even so, the model is useful when confronting the claims of diversity and multiculturalism. The ethnostate model exposes the contradictions and false claims at the center of post-Marx culturalism.

Ethnocracy, on the other hand, is possible. Israel is the obvious example of a country arranged so that the dominant ethnic group remains in power. Syria is another example of an ethnocracy, one ruled by a minority. You can probably classify post-Civil War America as an ethnocracy, ruled by the Yankee elite. The image of the WASP aristocrat is drawn from this reality. A good show might be an examination of American history through the lens of ethnocracy.

These examples are useful in understanding what is happening in the West and in thinking about alternative political models. Majority populations in the West used to unabashedly work to promote the interests of the majority, but then the poles reversed and majoritarianism became taboo. The concept of the ethnostate is useful in understanding why this happened. There is something about Europeans that make us open to division and internal conflict.

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Whither The Interregnum

Posted on April 28, 2022 by thezman

A topic that John Derbyshire and Peter Brimelow have discussed over the years is the cultural interregnum that existed in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. This was a topic raised in their talks at the inaugural VDare conference in Berkeley Springs. For a little more than a decade, starting toward the end of the Cold War and running through the Clinton years, certain taboo topics could be discussed in public. You could also take the rational position on these topics without being killed.

For example, Peter Brimelow published his book in immigration titled, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster. The book was an expansion of an exceptionally long essay he published in National Review. His essay criticizing immigration policy and warning about the cultural damage being done by it took up the majority of the space for that issue. National Review published an anti-immigration special edition and felt no need to grovel about it.

Around the same time, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published the The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Not only did they publish the book, but lots of people bought, read and discussed it. Those alive during this period probably recall that it was a popular topic of conversation. Murray was actually allowed on television to frankly discuss the findings. Again, mainstream conservatives did not ritually denounce the book.

These are two examples of where now taboo subjects were acceptable. During this interregnum, a wide range of topics and people were allowed to operate. Jared Taylor, the founder and leader of American Renaissance, was allowed on television to talk about his views. His conference was shown on C-SPAN. Here is an old clip of Sam Francis speaking at the conference. Notice the lack of fainting and hysterical demands for violence against the people in the clip.

Today it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to live in a country where people could openly debate the topics of the day. One of the only benefits of the communications revolution is that we now have easy access to archival video from the time before the crazies took over the public square. We know there was once a place where adults could speak freely about difficult topics. The past is a counter to the claims of the present and operates as a hope for the future.

That is the context in which Brimelow and Derbyshire usually discuss this. The 1990’s was a peak time for them and the older dissidents. It was not just the peak years of their personals careers, but a peak for honest inquiry. The end of the Cold War and the apparent transition back to normalcy was a hopeful time. Instead of everything organized around a twilight struggle against communism, the focus of public life could return to the practical and productive.

There are two questions at the heart of this. Why did this period of relative tolerance occur and is it possible to return to such a state? For two decades now the lights have been going out in America and the West. The former Soviet Union offers more political freedom, because they have clear rules. The public square in the West is now controlled by a feckless, emotionally unstable mob that flits from panic to panic, destroying whatever happens to be in its way.

The answer to the first question is rooted in the past. What appears to have been an interregnum was actually a continuation of the Cold War consensus. Maintaining a broad public debate was an essential part of opposing communism. The West was where people could question the state. The Soviet Union did not permit public debate or questioning the state. This consensus carried forward after the end of the Cold War but shifted to more relevant topics.

Note that the closing of the American mind started with the 2000 election. During the Clinton years both sides of the consensus had to search around for a reason to exist now that the communists were gone. One side settled on post-Marx culturalism and the other embraced neoconservatism. For the former side, white people and heritage America would be the enemy around which the ruling class would organize, while the other side wanted Islam to be the new enemy.

You will note that the neoconservatives have produced a new enemy now that post-Marx culturalism seems to be burning out. The Russia-China axis will be the new forever enemy around which America must be organized. The other side seems to be open to this new arrangement, perhaps sensing that their war on white people is becoming dangerous for themselves. On the other hand, nostalgia plays an enormous role in ruling class thinking.

The second question is more difficult to know. The Judeo-Puritan ruling class that still prevails is a product of the 20th century. Unlike in Russia, where the old Cold War ruling class was eventually replaced by a modern one, America and the West remains saddled with a ruling elite built for a prior age. The American ruling class is sure that it can only exist if America is organized around some great struggle. It is why for thirty years they have lurched from one crusade to the next.

On the other hand, reality eventually does prevail. America is now suffering a shortage of qualified people for high skilled jobs. It turns out that airplane pilots and engineers are not floating across the Rio Grande. It also turns out that the cost of racial vengeance is not only borne by the bad whites. Managerial class whites are now experiencing the consequences of their reckless misbehavior. This is no way to organize a society for a new cold war with old foes.

In the end though, the answer to the larger question that looms over all of this is that for America to become a normal society, it must acquire a normal elite. Again, Russia provides a useful example. The old communist elites were able to transition into a new system of rule by oligarch. The 1990’s was also an interregnum of sorts for America’s old Cold War foe. The end of that period brought about a return to normalcy with the rise of a new elite reflective of the new Russia.

This did not happen in America. The cost of winning the Cold War was the belief among the ruling class that they had no need to change. They were on the right side of history so the only rational answer was to push down on the accelerator. For thirty years America has been rocketing toward the glorious future with a generation at the wheel, high on Cold War success and cultural narcissism. Unlike Russia, America’s elite has never had to confront their limitations.

In the long run, the last twenty years may be seen as the slow painful death of the Cold War ruling elite’s legitimacy. This dark age in America and the West will be understood as the slow death of an old power structure. These spasms of illiberal authoritarianism are the death throes of an old system. From the rubble of elite legitimacy will rise a new elite and new cultural framework to support them. There will be a new elite for a new America and a new West.

The Dead Space

Posted on April 27, 2022 by thezman

In the 18th century, Right and Left as political designations were limited to just one place and revolved around the old order. We get these terms from the French Revolution, where the defenders of the crown sat to the right of the president in the National Constitutive Assembly, while the opponents were on the left. There is also the tradition in the West of the honored guest being seated to the right of the host, who is usually the head of the family.

Into the 19th century this right-left arrangement evolved as the politics of the West evolved, often reflecting the nature of the people. The French Right lost its aristocratic flavor while the German Right embraced it. In Britain, the aristocracy was in decline politically, but the Right was the defender of empire and the order that was required to maintain the empire. In America, there was never an order to defend, so this dichotomy did not arrive until much later.

The point is that the definition of Right and Left has evolved. Since the middle of the last century, the Right has been assigned the job of defending the status quo, while the Left has been assigned the role of embracing change. One of the weird results of this arrangement is that both sides have been drained of ideology. The Right just opposes the Left if it pays well. The Left embraces one deranged fad after another, just so they have a way to organize a street mob.

An example of the irrationality of the two sides is this weird story about the far-left governor of Colorado criticizing the moderate governor of Florida. The far-left guy is calling the middle-of-the-road guy a socialist because he signed off on a bill that stripped special privileges for a multinational corporation. In reality, the far-left guy is signaling his support for child rape, but he cannot be that explicit, so he used a term he thinks would sting the guy he considers right-wing.

Right there we see the bankruptcy of language. Ideologically, government taking a neutral stance on business is the opposite of socialism. On the other hand, it is explicitly not right-wing, as the Right has always viewed economics as a means to an end, not an object of worship. The Right wants stability, so the disruptions of capitalism need to be minimized by the state. The moves by DeSantis are right-wing in that he is defending the family and their absolute right to protect their children.

Of course, there is no in left-wing ideology that says child molesters must have easy access to children. The Jacobins were not pro-pederasty. The Marxists were quite prudish about sex in general. The American Left had its sexual liberation phase, but that was always limited to feminism. The truth is, Progressives have always lived like white nationalist with Victorian sensibilities. The only thing left-wing about defending the groomers is that it is anti-establishment.

The fact is, America, and maybe the West in general, has entered a post-ideological phase in which there is no logic behind the old labels. What passes for radicalism is nothing more than bourgeois neuroticism. There remains a vague sense of a promised land after the struggle, but that is just a carryover from the past. They never bother to describe what comes after the revolution. No one even bothers to ask them to explain the point of their agitations. There is no point.

The other side is just as lost. It is trite to say it now, but conservatives have conserved nothing and they have no desire to conserve anything. Of course, the reason they have no desire to conserve anything is there is nothing left to conserve. It goes beyond the practical, however, as you see in the National Review post. The point of politics is to shape public morality. Politics is about deciding right and wrong. If your politics leads you to abandon that debate, then you have no reason to exist.

Politics in America have become unmoored from reason. The Left is simply in favor of chaos for the sake of chaos. Post-Marx culturalism promised a new era for mankind if they seized control of the centers of cultural production. Instead, they got what the old Marxists feared came after capitalism. That is a society devoid of morality and dominated by transactionalism. The end of the cult-Marx rainbow is sterile materialism and pointless consumerism.

In such an age there is no place for a defense of order, so there is no reason for the old-style conservatism to exist. Why would any sane person want to defend this order against the violence of the Left? This is the age of post-Marx culturalism, so if they are unhappy with their creation, let them destroy it. Maybe what comes next is the chance to build anew. In other words, the alternative to the modern Left is not conservatism but culture jamming and accelerationism.

Where we find ourselves is beyond the maps of the known world. Like the first ships that went over the horizon, the old rules and lessons of Western politics are not much of a guide in navigating the present. Like the basics of sailing, the basics of politics remain the same, but the purpose is what demands the reimagination of the effort. To continue the analogy, we have not reached the new world, but we can no longer make out the old world either. We are in the great political dead space.

The Virtual Theater Returns

Posted on April 26, 2022 by thezman

Note: I have decided to join the grifter community, please like and subscribe. In order to do that I am now offering merchandise! I have teamed up with a bunch of libertarians to start selling some branded items. I am starting small but will be adding new things to keep the grift going. Suggestions for pithy slogans are encouraged. The deal is you buy something, I get a few bucks and they get a few bucks profit. No one gets rich selling shirts, but every little bit helps. Please shop here.

One of the great truths of American politics is that for the last few generations one side has been motivated by dreams of destroying their enemies, while the other side dreams of befriending the enemy. The people we call the Left in America are the former case and this is their primary definition. Their ideology changes, but the one constant is their desire to clear the field of their enemies. The other side is the Right, which exists to find some sort of accommodation with their friends on the Left.

This impulse to seek a compromise is why American politics has followed a familiar pattern since the Civil War. The Left proposes some novelty and the Right resists, always trying to reason with them. In the end they always cave. As Robert Lewis Dabney observed a century ago, “it (conservatism) demurs to each aggression of the progressive party and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation.”

In the main, this is a good way to describe the political dynamic, but this relationship has had a strange effect on people. The selection pressure for both camps has molded generations of Americans. On the Left, of course, the pressure had been in favor of a feminine histrionics. On the Right, the pressure has been in favor of those who are sure there is some right answer to every trouble. They just need the right guy to say the right words so the kingdom of heaven will open.

We are seeing this with the Twitter story. In the early days of the internet, there was little moderation as no one wanted it. Early adopters liked that it was a place where they could experience heterodox opinion. This openness drove technological innovation and helped make the internet a part of civic life. This is why the Left felt it needed to take control of it. They saw the internet as another institution that they must control in their war on normal society.

As the harpies gained control of Twitter, the so-called conservatives demurred to each new aggression, making angry noises while acquiescing. They supported free speech but demanded the end of anonymity. They supported free speech, but not hate speech, whatever that means. Every “defense” of principle included an important concession to the other side, in the hope of finding a middle ground. Conservative principles are always just a retreat from those principles.

Now we have Elon Musk buying Twitter. Musk has claimed to be a free speech absolutist who is buying the company to open it up again. He has closed on the company and will take it private. It is unclear as to what he intends to do with it in terms of censorship, but he clearly wants his fans to think he will throw open the doors of the platform so it can be what it was ten years ago. Time will tell if he is willing to do what is required to make that happen, but that is the dream.

Here we see those conservative attributes that have been carefully evolved over the last century or so. The first of which is the savior complex. Conservative people have been sure that what they need is a great man who not only has the ability to make conservative arguments, but the courage to do so. The same enthusiasm that put Trump in the White House is what will flood Twitter with new signups. Elon Musk is here to save us from the Twitter mobs.

Another attribute, the most destructive, in fact, is the conservative desire to mix it up with the Left. The reason Twitter exists is otherwise normal people are compelled to interact with people who hate them and want them dead. To be a conservative is to lie awake at night dreaming of left-wing approval. The right argument from the right guy will cause lefty to throw down his arms and embrace you as a brother. Twitter exists so conservatives can beg the Left for forgiveness.

This is obviously true, but conservatives cannot accept it. Gab has been up and running since 2016 and it offers what conservatives claim they want in a platform. Even better, it is free from the deranged lunatics that have ruined other platforms. Conservatives dismiss it because they say it is an echo chamber, by which they mean it lacks the people they claim to hate. They avoid alternatives to Twitter because they want to beg lefty for forgiveness and those platforms do not provide it.

The other conservative quality on display with the Twitter story is the desire to win the approval of the mobs. The same lack of self-worth that drives the conservative to beg lefty for attention is there in their love of the mob. Conservatives are sure if they can get a clear shot on stage, the crowd will reward them with flowers and applause. In a prior age, they would crawl on their belly to be on left-wing television or land a speaking gig at a university. Now they just want to be on Twitter.

Back in the old days, conservatives would argue that they had to be on far-left television shows in order to reach an audience. Today they claim they have to be on far-left internet platforms in order to reach an audience. In Dabney’s time, northern conservatives said they needed to speak with progressive newspapers in order to reach the broader audience. In reality, what the conservative wants is the approval of the Left and there is no limit in how far he will degrade himself to get it.

Twitter is American politics at is most basic. Since Gettysburg, politics in American has been a theater show. The Left hustles everyone inside the theater and puts on a show about a victim or a villain. Sometimes they combine the two. The crowd is told about the plight of some victim group and is supposed to sympathize. Maybe they are warned about some villain, which is always the same villain. Old Scratch takes many forms and the producers of American theater use all of them.

At some point conservatives are brought onto the stage. They shuffle out in their comfort fit slacks and polo shirts. Their job is to dismiss the warnings about the villain or tell the victim to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” The crowd is supposed to boo and hiss, but that does not always happen. Often the villain is so ridiculous that the crowd just laughs about it. Other times the victim is too creepy and weird for the crowd to muster anything other than contempt.

Often, the Left brings out their secret weapon, the Hitler costume. The spotlight focuses on the right of the stage and there it is. Then the Left asks if anyone in the crowd will play that role. Sure enough, an idiot runs up, puts on the costume and does the Hitler act. The crowd then starts throwing cabbages and tomatoes at Richard Spencer as he prances around on stage. The conservatives freak out, run behind lefty looking for safety and the curtain falls. The show is over.

This was Twitter from its inception through the 2020 election. The problem is the producers went bonkers and burned down the theater. In that meeting with the board of directors, everyone realized they needed to rebuild the theater. Despite some moaning from the blue checks, the truth is they want the conservatives back in the theater as much as they want to perform for them. The privatization of Twitter is going to be the rebuilding of the virtual stage of political theater.

Time will tell with regards to Musk and Twitter. He will quickly learn that he must obey the rules of Apple and Google with regards to speech. Maybe he has had some sort of conversion and he will go to war over it. Most likely he will compromise in order to get their approval. This will titivate the conservatives, who will see in his capitulation the stamp of approval for their capitulation. Twitter will go from a woke site to a woke site full of conservatives begging the woke for acceptance.

Opposite Rule Revisited

Posted on April 25, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: The Monday Taki post is up. The topic is somewhat related to the post today, but using the war as a jumping off point. Because I was traveling over the weekend, no Sunday Thoughts behind the green door, but I have a write up of the VDare event posted there instead. Later this week I will have a longer post on the event at the castle and the issues discussed there.

Note #2: If you are a law student or know a law student, there is a competition around the legal difficulties of the J6 victims. It is an essay contest. If you are interested, here is their website. The principles behind it are listed on the site. Scroll down.

The Opposite Rule of Liberalism states that whatever the Left is saying about its political opponents, assume the opposite and you will get close to the truth. This should not be confused with contradiction. If the Left says “X”, it does not follow that the literal opposite of “X” is the truth. All this rule tells us is that what the Left is saying is not the truth and that the truth is going to be completely different from what they are saying, often the complete opposite.

The classic example of this is ten years ago when the Tea Party was a thing. This purely grassroots movement in reaction to the radicalism of the Obama administration was called “AstroTurf” by the Left. The Left claimed their activism was organic while the Right was manufacturing activism. The Tea Party was a creation of the Republican Party and their corporate masters. The reality was the opposite. Left-wing activism was controlled by the party and financed by corporate America.

The opposite rule can also work as a warning. In fact, this is the best application of the rule as it helps prepare for left-wing shenanigans. The way this works is that once you hear warnings from left-wing people about some threat, you can assume they are planning it or they are actively engaged in it. The last bit is the way to bet when the Left is overly excited about the claim. In other words, they have a habit of accusing their opponents of crimes the are committing.

A good example of this is when the neocons were organizing the police state during the Bush years. The Bush people said these new weapons of the state would only be used against Muslims. Most of them were probably sincere about this. Neocons hate Arabs more than they hate Europeans. The Left said these tools would be used against normal Americans. Of course, as soon as the Left gained power they started using these tools to spy on Americans.

This behavior of the Left, where they accuse their enemies of what they are plotting or doing, is used by conservatives as proof of the Left’s cynicism. For conservatives, hypocrisy is the most powerful abracadabra word. Despite all the evidence, they are sure that uttering this word will destroy their enemies. When the Left accuses their enemies of something they are doing, the conservatives scream about hypocrisy, believing is does something magical for them.

This never has the desired effect because being accused of hypocrisy only works if you care about factual accuracy. For conservatives, being factual correct is important, so they would rather lose than be accused of contradiction. This is mostly why they lose every fight. They like losing while being right. For the Left, advancing their goals is what matters, so they can live with contradiction. For them, facts are just another tool that can be used as a weapon against the opposition.

It also helps that left-wing politics attracts a specific type. Eric Hoffer observed that people often join mass movements out of self-loathing. They wish to swap their hated sense of self with the identity of the group, which they view positively. This is almost always true with left-wing politics. The people in it are looking for a form of salvation, where they are saved from thinking about their hated sense of self. Instead, they get to focus on an enemy they can enthusiastically hate.

Of course, hating an enemy that has the qualities you hate about yourself is pretty much the ideal enemy for this sort of person. Their self-loathing is transformed into a virtue while they express their hatred for qualities they fear they possess. Collectively, this transforms the Left into a mob driven by what looks like moral indignation and a desire to purge the world of corruption. This is what makes a relatively small number of people into a powerful force in American society.

This shameless ability to project onto others the sins of the Left has been the primary reason the Left has denominated American politics. They claim the moral high ground, accuse anyone that resists of doing something bad and then they do that bad thing to the people they are accusing. After all, they have created the justification for the bad thing they are doing. Conservatives spent the last half century trying to prove they are not the villains while the Left marched from triumph to triumph.

The opposite rule has been so effective, in fact, that there is no longer an effective opposition to the Left in America. Conservatism has collapsed and the political divide in America is the Cloud People, who populate and control the managerial class, and the Dirt People, who suffer under the rule of the managerial class. The Cloud People now accuse the Dirt People are various things, like the insurrection business, which is used to justify heavy handed tactics against the Dirt People.

This self-referential indignation that grows from self-loathing has become a religion for the managerial class. In fact, it has helped them become class aware. It is why they find bizarre things to impose on society. They are in support of child molesters in the schools, for example, because it gives them people to hate. Those normal parents showing up to fight against groomers and bigots in the schools provide the needed foil for the Left. Their religion demands a devil.

This bizarre religion that animates the ruling class is effective at walling them off from society and preserving their position. It is why any questioning of official policy is labeled one of the abracadabra phases that mean “outsider.” Ask about food bills doubling and you are spreading misinformation. Question the war in Ukraine and you are a Putin shill. Notice that crime is rising at rates not seen since the 1970’s and you are a violent white supremacist.

This is where that opposite rule becomes so effective. The need to accuse an outsider of the worst crimes the Left can imagine becomes a justification for committing those crimes against the alleged enemy. It is how America so quickly moved from defending the liberal order and individual rights to celebrating corporate censorship and the persecution of political prisoners. The bad guys get worse, so the means to defeat them must get worse as well. This is the terror escalator.

This is a parasitic and corrosive ruling ethos. The sharp decline in the quality of life for most Americans over the last generation is one result. The collapse in social trust is another consequence. Like the desperate person eating the seed corn, what we call liberal democracy is consuming the social capital of society in order to fuel the hate-machine that props up the managerial class. At some point, maybe soon, they run out of things to burn and the system becomes unstable.

Avoiding Error

Posted on April 22, 2022 by thezman

Note: If you are a law student or know a law student, there is a competition around the legal difficulties of the J6 victims. It is an essay contest. If you are interested, here is their website. The principles behind are listed on the site. Scroll down.

A week ago, Elon Musk tweeted out an offer to buy Twitter and my initial reaction was that it was a publicity stunt. I chastised a few people on Gab for thinking that this offer by Musk was serious. I was wrong. A few days later the formal filing was made public and it was clear he was making a bid for the company. This week he filed the paperwork indicating he has secured the capital to make good on the offer.

Now, why was I wrong? One reason is I have a bias against rich people so I naturally think the worst of them. I have often used Musk as an example of what is wrong with state capitalism. Most of his business is dependent on favors from the political class or direct subsidies from government. His electric car business would have died long ago without massive subsidies from government.

Another reason I got this Musk business wrong is I violated an important rule of navigation in the modern age. I formed a hot take. The first batch of news and commentary is always wrong, so the hot take based on that stuff is almost always going to be wrong in important ways. The right answer with regards to Musk’s initial tweets about buying Twitter was to wait and see.

This was not the only bit of wrongness on my mind this week. The debate about Ukraine is a good example of getting things wrong. Certain groups of people who are dissident adjacent staked out a bad position on Ukraine. They will have to climb back off that limb at some point and hope everyone forgets about it. This happens a lot on this side of the great divide for some reason.

That is the show this week. How to avoid these errors. We are all floating in a sea of electronic media, so it is easy to be manipulated by that media. It is also easy to react the wrong way to the barrage of information. Central to being a dissident is standing outside the barrage of lies and live in the truth. Therefore, avoiding error by de-conditioning our minds is a primary project of dissident politics.