Alternative Authority

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Starting in the 1990’s the neocons started to talk about conservatism as a process, a means justifies the ends approach to politics. This was not a change in how conservatism defined itself but it was a change in how it sold itself. You were supposed to support conservatives in order to achieve certain ends, like rolling back abortion laws and curtailing the welfare state. By the Bush years, this means justifies the end claim was front and center in the pitch from neoconservatives.

The reason for this, of course, is millions of conservatives had voted for Bush and the Republicans thinking they would do what they promised. The GOP had both house of Congress and the White House. They expected conservative governance. Instead, they got Lyndon Johnson. They had to accept this result, you see, because conservatism is a process, not a set of end results. As long as conservatives were defending the process, people needed to shut up and be happy.

The main reason for this rhetorical sleight of hand was to trick rank and file conservatives into supporting a president that was the opposite of what conservatives expected from a conservative president. The neocons wanted to continue their bloody war against Islam and they needed a second term from Bush. In the 2000’s, they had started to infest the other side of the political class but the take over of the foreign policy establishment was not complete.

This was possible because of a flaw within conservatism. From the beginning, the Buckley people focused on defending the constitutional order. They were the guys talking about interpreting the Constitution as written. They were defending the system against both distortions and changes from the Left. They magnanimously accepted adverse results as long as the constitutional order was followed. This fetish for defending process is what the neocons exploited.

This points to a much larger problem with conservatism. They were never willing to appeal to authority to justify their claims. The closest they got was originalism in the law, which claimed the written constitution as authority. This has two problems. One was that the Left rejected this claim in favor of a living constitution. The other is the Left kept tinkering with document through judicial rulings which became precedents. The result of originalism was a defense of left-wing gains in court.

This is why conservatism is in collapse. In fact, it is fair to say that conservatism is dead as hardly anyone bothers with the term. The only people using the term are those still working the hustle on their aging donor class. Otherwise, the only people considered to be on the Right use the term is when criticizing the old conservative movement for not having conserved anything. It turns out that winning the process war meant nothing to those conservative constituencies.

The elephant in the room is authority. Fundamental to any human organization is a clear understanding as to who decides. Iran is an Islamic state with laws based in the sect of the ruling class. It is the religious elite that is the ultimate decider. The Russian people are the leaders of the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin is the leader of the Russian people, so he is the final authority in the Russian Federation. This is clear to everyone who lives within the Russian Federation.

In the case of Iran, authority for this arrangement, the thing that legitimizes it in the minds of the people, is the Koran and their religious traditions. The text of their holy book, the traditions of their people and the moral hierarchy is the authority for their political arrangements. In the Russian Federation, it is the long history of these people and their relationship to one another that forms the basis of authority. Its perseverance through communism is proof of this natural order.

This is where we see “common good conservatism” trying to fill the void left by the collapse of Buckley conservatism and the departure of neoconservatism. They want to move away from individual rights as the center piece of conservatism toward a vague sense of collective interests. Instead of focusing on what provides the individual with the least amount of government coercion, they want to focus on what provides the most amount of common good.

In simple terms, disputes over rights will be decided in favor of the interests of society as a whole, rather than abstract principles about individual liberty. If someone complains about prayer in school, the courts should ignore their complaint because prayer in school provides more social benefit than that one person’s desire to be free of the religious sentiments of the community. Homosexual marriage would be banned, because it harms marriage, which harms society.

This may sound good and feel like a step in the dissident direction, but it suffers from the same defect as Buckley conservatism. That is, there is little mention of who decides and upon what authority they make these decisions. Some talk about the Church providing authority and others mention the administrative state. Mostly this is just a way to avoid speaking directly to the issue of authority. It is just assumed that once people think in terms of the common good, everything falls into place.

This is the same error conservatives have always made. Their chanting of the phrase “ideas have consequences” was mostly about the belief that all they had to do was win the argument and the rest would take care of itself. History makes clear that force and determination can conquer the soundest logic. The Bolshevik program was nonsensical and dangerous, but they wanted it more so they carried the day and controlled Russia for three quarters of a century.

Human society is based around a series of questions. Who we are? What are the rules that define us? Who decides? What is the process for enforcing the rules? It is only the last question that conservatives bothered to answer, which left the other questions to whoever wanted to answer them. This is why conservatism failed and any alternative will fail if it refuses to address the questions that come before debating the process by which rules are enforced.

The great trick of liberal democracy is in convincing people it exists. The narrow elite that controls Western societies decides because they control the managerial class, which in turn controls the administrative state. Their authority rests on their will to power and the delusions of the people, who steadfastly insist they decide public policy through the ballot box. It is a devilish trick by a devilish people, but until an alternative questions this arrangement directly, it will persist.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Lying Liars

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Most of what we consider public life in modern societies is public reactions to things done by the powerful. The New York Times makes up a new hoax and the week is spent on the hoax. The usual suspects swear by the obvious lies and normal people spend days picking apart the lies. Occasionally, we get the reverse where some uncomfortable truth gets loose and the usual suspect go bananas trying to “debunk” it while normal people cling to it as blessed relief.

This is the news cycle in a nutshell. There is very little news. It has been at least a generation since the major news outlets in America have done reporting. Most of it is just stenography. The “journalist” copies what a government spokesbot has sent to them and dresses it up with some commentary. Then there are the narratives that are designed to give the public a way to repeat the official truth that sounds convincing to them and their acquaintances.

The source of this is the “new journalism” that emerged in the 1960’s. The late British reporter Chris Munnion chronicled this in his book Banana Sunday. He spent most of his life covering Africa for the Telegraph. In the 1960’s he noticed Americans showing up with pre-written narratives. They would seek out quotes and pictures to fill out the story they had prepared for the trip. Even if the facts contradicted the narrative, they stuck with the narrative because that was the new journalism.

Narrative journalism is just accepted these days. The “news” has always been a form of passive-aggressive political activism so its evolution into story telling on behalf of powerful interests seems natural. When you think of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal as propaganda arms of their respective clients in the managerial elite, it all makes sense. Instead of the Ministry of Truth we have the mainstream media “speaking truth to power.”

That last bit gets mocked by normal people on this side of the great divide because they have woken up to the reality of this age. As if often the case, however, there is a kernel of truth locked in this media fabrication. The people inside these disinformation operations genuinely fear the public. When they say “speak truth to power” they mean broadcast their truth to you in the hopes that you will buy it. Modern mass media is mostly a defensive weapon of the elites.

That is why it is worth thinking about what goes on inside these operations and what types of people work there. For example, here is a post in the Washington Examiner from someone calling himself Jaimie McIntyre. The Examiner bills itself as a conservative news outlet, but McIntyre is a far-left conspiracy theorist who has spent most of is career at operations like CNN and NPR. His post is a story comparing the suicidal holdouts in Mariupol to the Alamo.

Now, the “facts” in this tale are supplied by a group called the “Washington-based Institute for the Study of War” which sounds quite serious. When you look them up you find they have a web site and a staff listing. That staff listing is a who’s who of neoconservative warmongers. There is Kimberly Kagan of the infamous Kagan clan and Bill Kristol, the head loon at the Never Trump clan. These are the people responsible for the disaster unfolding in Ukraine.

Jaimie McIntyre is a crack reporter and he has access to the internet, so he surely knows the nature of his primary source. He makes no mention of it as that would have deflated the narrative. In other words, he is lying and he knows he is lying. Most likely the bulk of the narrative was supplied to him by the neocons. They have been pushing this theme since the start of the war. They think Americans will fall for the claim that the Ukrainians are innocent victims of the evil Putin.

In the Washington Post we have another version of the Alamo narrative. This one is authored by a someone named David Stern. The Post identifies him as a journalist based Ukraine. In reality he is most likely an operative of the American foreign policy establishment charged with peddling their narratives in Western media. Note that his copy does not mention that the holdouts are Azov fighters. The Post does not want anyone noticing those guys in the story.

If you scan the Washington Post, what you quickly see is that most of their Ukraine “reporting” relies on operatives from NGO’s and the intel community. They know that the information they are being fed is from partisan sources. That would be fine if they made that clear, but they go out of their way to conceal this truth. Their job is to sell the official lies and they take that job seriously. They are lying and they know they are lying but they keep lying because that is their job.

Of course, a real journalist would be curious about these sources that all seem to say the same things about current events. For example, a story on the “Institute for the Study of War” and who pays their bills would be interesting. It would provide the public with some understanding about who is trying to convince them that nuclear war is the price we must pay to defend Ukraine. Instead, they investigate a popular Twitter account called The Libs of TikTok.

That last bit is another good example of the mendacity of the media. This story was created by the Washington Post. They assigned credit for it to a vulgar dingbat calling herself Taylor Lorenz. This woman is so dumb she could count her boobs twice and get the wrong number both times. The real source was German intelligence who employs a former Twitter employee named Travis Brown. He works for the Protoype Fund, which is funded by the German government.

Again, like the Examiner piece using the “Institute for the Study of War”, the real story her is a foreign government attacking an American citizen. A real news organization would want to know who facilitated this. The Post surely knows that Taylor Lorenz is too stupid to work a phone so she did not call Travis Brown. Of course, that story will never happen because that idea would never cross the minds of the editors. Their job is to sell the official lies and they take that job seriously.

That is the main point of this exercise. At all levels of what is called journalism you will find people who lie with enthusiasm. The selection pressure is all in favor of people who enjoy lying to the public. They like the scheming and the deception. Like all sociopaths, they are shameless about it. Shame requires a soul. As Solzhenitsyn put it, “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Latest Thing

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Yesterday a federal judge struck down the CDC mandate requiring passengers to wear ceremonial face coverings on public transport. For the last two years airplane passengers have been required to wear masks at the airport and on the plane, unless they were eating or drinking. Of course, this has allowed the petty dictators to harass people while traveling. The mask-marms have been looking for reasons to fly just so they could harass people. Now that is over.

The CDC appears to have conceded the point and will not appeal. They tried to front run the news by announcing the mandate has ended. The media has made sure to put the name and picture of the judge on all of their attack channels probably hoping that one of their lunatics goes bonkers over it. The public reaction has been celebratory, based on what has been posted on-line. Normal people are sick of the ridiculous charade over Covid and just want to be done with it.

To the dismay of the Covidians, the public is ready to close the books on the whole thing and just forget about it. Most normal people are a bit angry at having gone along with this lunacy. There is certainly some shame involved. This is to be expected as everyone feels shame after having been taken for a fool and not having said anything against this stuff. That is why this will be memory-holed by the summer, so people can just move on.

It is a little hint as to why the sociopaths in the media keep getting away with these mass hoaxes that have become a feature of life. People wake up and see that everyone is now into the latest thing. Maybe that thing is outrage over a police shooting or maybe it is some new abstract concern. All of the right people are on their soapboxes and all of the best people are following along with them. It is only normal for people to want to do the right thing and support the latest thing.

Of course, the latest thing always turns out to be the latest fraud. Some go longer than others, depending upon the agenda. The crusade against Islam launched by Republicans and cheered by conservatives ran for a long time. It is not easy building out a police state so they needed that fraud to run for years. Covid was part of the color revolution launched against Trump and quickly became a convenient tool of control by the petty tyrants that terrorize daily life.

The facts are becoming clear at this point. The lockdowns had no impact on the course of the virus or its impact on the public. There was never any data to support the policies and now we know it caused more harm than good. Similarly, idiotic things like social distancing and mask wearing were useless. In the fullness of time, we will learn that the vaccine was a massive boondoggle. It was just a money transfer to Big Pharma and the health care rackets.

There is another angle here. The courts have struck down almost all of the Covid polices by now. The ceremonial mask wearing on planes was the last big item to be cancelled by the courts. All of these could have been knocked down by the courts when they were enacted, but it took two years for judges to remember that we have this thing called the law. It is a reminder that the courts are just another ruling class institution run by the maniacs of the new religion.

Notice that even dissidents struggle to remember the Bush years. That was a fraud on the public of epic proportions. Millions of people voted for it and supported it, but now they have stashed it in the shadows of their mind. The reason is none of us want to be reminded of our blunders. Failure, no matter how instructive, brings a sense of shame so we put our failures out of minds. Just as the Bush years have faded from our minds the Covid fiasco will soon fade too.

This is how these frauds keep working. It is the Gell-Man amnesia effect scaled up to the whole of society. This is the phenomenon where you read something in the media and see it is total nonsense. You know the subject of the article and you quickly see that the article is full of falsehoods and mistakes. You then go to the next article about which you know little and accept what is presented. You completely forget that the previous article was all nonsense.

This is what is happening in America. People see the latest thing trending on Twitter and start learning about it through the media. When they see the latest thing is a fraud, they get mad about it. Then they see the next thing trending and forget all about the fraud of the previous thing. The Covid fraud is now the previous thing while Ukraine is now the latest thing. People are accepting the latest thing from the same people they know sold them the previous thing.

This pattern works as long as the vast bulk of people are supplied with plenty of food, safety and entertainments. You may not be able to lift your arm due to a reaction to the vaccine your employer mandated, but you do not want to be that guy who goes against the grain. After all, you look around and see that everyone is enjoying the current thing. As long as everyone is excited for the next thing, why be that guy who mentioned what happened with the previous thing?

The lesson of Covid is that reason is of no use on the public. Abductive reasoning will always triumph over deductive and inductive reasoning. The only thing that can break this cycle of madness is when the latest thing is a bad thing that cannot be jawboned away by the media. At that point, their efforts to sell a new distraction turns around on them and becomes a liability. When the current thing is real suffering, people will remember all the previous things were lies.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

Willing Victims

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Note: The regular Taki post is up. The subject is related to the post here. There was no Sunday Thoughts due to Easter. There is a post about what is happening with the conduct of the war for those interested.

Word has begun to trickle out of Ukrainian and Russian channels on-line that the Zelensky government has ordered the remaining holdouts in the city of Mariupol to fight to the last man. Many have surrendered but there is a remnant that has refused to give into the reality of their position. On Sunday, the Russians gave them one last chance to walk away alive. The word from both sides of the information war is that the Zelensky government instructed them to die with honor.

The Russians have been slow to take the necessary steps to clear this part of the city of the remaining militants. One reason is pointless slaughter is not something any professional military enjoys. The other reason is they were hoping to minimize damage to the steel works. The slow progress of the war has been due to the Russian desire to minimize infrastructure damage. Given that the Russians will have to rebuild these territories after the war, this makes sense.

The other reason is that the remaining group of fighters is composed of elite Azov soldiers, including some high level leaders. It also has a group of foreign mercenaries trained by NATO. The Russians say they have detected seven European languages in the radio traffic. There is a strong possibility there are high ranking NATO advisors in this group. The Ukrainians have made several attempts to extract people from this site, so the Russians would like that prize if possible.

This is one of those glimpses into the heart of the issue. The Ukrainian government does not care at all about the Ukrainian people. These nationalists, like the civilian population, are just low value pieces on the board. The real issue is the long running proxy war against Russia. Zelensky is just a cat’s paw for the neocons in Washington who are running this war. They back him because he does what he is told and he does what he is told because he will retire an extraordinarily rich man.

Of course, the nationalist who rushed to back the Zelensky regime now find themselves supporting a craven lunatic. This is the trouble with living in the world of abstractions and theoretical concepts. You can easily find yourself on the same side as the people who want you dead. That is where many nationalists now find themselves. They are backing Ukraine against Russia, which means they are supporting the Global America Empire, which would like to exterminate them.

This is part of the greater lesson of Ukraine. A sense of identity that is built around old grievances or opposition to some externality usually leads to disaster. The obvious lesson is Irish nationalism during The Troubles. The IRA and Sinn Féin were defined entirely by their opposition to Britain. That has led Irish nationalists to let Ireland be consumed by the EU and globalism. The Irish are now free to important as many Africans as can make it to their island.

You see the difference between positive and negative identity in the reactions of Poland and Hungary. Polish identity is strongly linked to hatred of Russians. Hungarian identity is about the uniqueness of the Hungarian people. The Polish government is going overboard to support Ukraine against Russia, while the Hungarians have chosen to stay out of the fight. The result is Poland is being used as a flophouse and launching pad by NATO, paying the cost for all of it.

The deadliest example is in Ukraine itself. If the people calling themselves nationalists actually cared about the welfare of the Ukrainian people, their history, language and culture, they would not be acting this way. Their zeal for Russian blood is destroying the things they claim to defend. Tens of thousand of Ukrainian men will die and millions of Ukrainian people will be displaced because the so-called nationalist care more about their hatreds than the Ukrainian people.

The example they should have followed was the Finns. At the start of the Second World War the Finns found themselves invaded by the Soviets. The Finns staged a heroic defense of their homeland in the Winter War. Finnish leaders, however, actually cared about the survival of the Finnish people so they struck a deal with the Soviets that cost them land and some dignity. Finnish nationalists put their people before abstract concepts and arrived at the proper decision.

This is the fundamental problem with modern nationalism. It is nothing more than a bundle of hatreds and complaints tarted up with aspirational language that has no practical application. This is why nationalist parties in Europe do poorly. They are great on the high minded concepts and critiques against globalism, but they are short on a practical agenda that promotes a positive sense of identity. Note that Le Pen has been buoyed by her focus on bread and butter issues in France.

It is why nationalists movements have done so poorly in America. The critiques against global trade and open borders go back to the 1970’s when the paleo-conservatives started making them. The fact that Pat Buchanan was right about everything thirty years ago has made no difference. Cheap consumer goods, on-demand degeneracy and powerful pharmaceuticals are not much of a culture, but they beat the lack of a positive alternative vision of life.

Of course, the main reason for this is nationalism has been defined by the enemies of it and that definition has been accepted by the nationalists. The negative identity is defined by what the enemy opposes. Therefore, nationalism has been defined by the people who oppose it, which means it is a cartoon version of the real thing. Until nationalists start with a clean sheet of paper, put their enemies out of their head and sort out what they offer, they will remain the willing victims of their enemies.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Dissident and the Christian

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It is fair to say that this is the worst time for Christians and Christianity in the West since the Roman empire. In order to promote equality, liberal democracy has created protected classes of people who cannot be criticized. The other side of this are people who must me mocked and ridiculed. Christians were the first group placed in this category and remain the popular object of ridicule in the West. There is no prohibition against overt hatred of Christians in most Western countries.

We are not feeding Christian to lions in gladiatorial pits, but you can be sure some elements of the ruling class have thought about it. Back in the Obama years, much of the health care bill was designed to torment Christians. For example, forcing Catholic groups to pay for abortions and prophylactics. There was no public health reason for these provisions. They simply satisfied the demented and sadistic impulses of the people who put together the program.

In some Western countries, practicing your faith is close to illegal. Päivi Räsänen is a Finnish politician. She was charged with crimes against democracy for tweeting out a picture of a Bible and quoting it in public. She was eventually acquitted by the courts, but that was not the point. Persecution is about the process. This was true under communism and is even more true under liberal democracy. Hell is being in the control of ideological fanatics staffing a bureaucracy.

The fact is the managerial elites of the West are not irreligious. Ideology is just religion that replaces God with man. Our elites are fanatics for liberal democracy and they will murder anyone who questions it. Christianity has always been their primary target because the Christian’s first loyalty can never be to man or the institutions and ideologies he creates. Liberal democracy, of course, demands absolute obedience to the state and the people who run the state.

It is not just the secular elites that make war on the Christian. The big churches have been taken over by the ideologues. Anywhere you see a rainbow flag it is either a gay bathhouse, a public school or a Protestant church. The Pope cares more about climate change than the Catholic faith. Even the Baptists have seen their organizations taken over by far-left radicals. The great challenge for most Christians is in finding a church that is not run by a far-left lunatic.

Culture is to a great degree a trickle down affair. The hostility toward Christianity among the Cloud People has infected the Dirt People. Church attendance has been in decline for a few generations. Close to 30% of Americans have no religious identity. This means they have no experience with religion. About 40% of people who still identify as Christian no longer attend church. Overall, about 40% of Americans still belong to a church and attend services on a regular basis.

In Europe, Christianity is just about dead. Only 1.4 percent of the population of England attends Anglican services every Sunday. Fewer than one-in-ten Germans say they believe in God. For most Europeans, Christianity is as alien as Islam. They know nothing about it, other than what is taught in history class. Given the entrenched self-loathing that has been imposed by America, Christianity is part of the hated past where evil Europeans tried to enslave black bodies.

It is not all bad news for Christianity. The faithful are slowly realizing that for their faith to survive this age, it must live outside this age. Christians are reverting to what all persecuted minorities must do. They are learning to live in the shadows and think of themselves as the outsider. Traditional Catholics seek one another out and form up shadow communities. Bible study in America is becoming a private affair organized by small local communities of believers.

These defensive measures are what will form the basis of a revival. Anything that is open to everyone is valuable to no one. Christianity was at its most powerful when it was exclusive and required sacrifice from the believers. One of the main reasons for the decline of the Western churches is their success. Once it was easy to be a Christian, it stopped being a powerful force in society. Its return to a persecuted, underground movement is the only path to renewal.

This presents a challenge and an opportunity in dissident politics. Many people waving the dissident banner have yet to shed their liberal disdain for Christianity. Some have manufactured bizarre conspiracy theories about the Church. On the other hand, many sober minded dissidents have soured on their faith, due to the take over of the churches by liberal democratic fanatics. One reason many dissidents have soured on the world is they have seen what happened to their churches.

In America, this is compounded by the problem of evangelical politics. In the 1970’s, in reaction to the cultural revolution, evangelicals decided to engage directly with politics in order to get their guys in office. This was a disaster. Many of the evangelical activist groups became profitable grifts for the leaders. The pols who took advantage of the evangelical vote sold out those voters. They convinced believers that their faith required them to accept liberal degeneracy.

The debacle of Christian political activism cannot be overstated. The neocons were able to take over largely with the support of evangelicals. Even now, after the disaster of the Bush years, many of these groups still care more about Israel than the condition of their own people. When the typical dissident sees stuff like this, he wants to hoist the back flag and start slitting throats. It is a reminder of just how easily these people were turned into weapons against the West.

That said, there is a slow rapprochement between the secular dissidents and the growing number of dissident Christians. The former is coming to understand the defining role not just of belief but of structured rational belief. The latter is coming to terms with the reality of their situation. For the West to survive and resurrect itself after the horrors of liberal democracy, it will need a new set of core beliefs, based in the old ways shaped by the experience of the crisis.

This is where dissident Christians can contribute the most to the cause. The sin of despair is one of the worst, because it is deliberate. One deliberately decides that salvation is impossible. It is the state immediately before suicide. The only reason to be a dissident it to maintain hope that through the struggle, reason and decency can be restored in the West. Without hope, the dissident has no reason to exist, which is why despair must become a mortal sin for dissidents.

You see more and more dissidents and dissident Christians willing to circulate in the same platforms. Gab has become the social media exchange for both dissidents and dissident Christians. Nick Fuentes and his groypers blend dissident political critiques with overt Christian beliefs. For the first time in a long time church attendance has ticked up in America. These are grim times for the defenders of civilization, but we still have hope because that is what must carry us through.

Happy Easter.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Long Dark Winter

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The government released the latest inflation data and the results were the worst we have seen in forty years. The retail number came in at 8.4% and the wholesale number clocked in at 11.2%. Of course, the retail number excludes the things that people buy, like food, fuel and housing. These numbers also rely upon the new math rather than old math used the last time inflation was an issue. By the old inflation standard, retail inflation is over 15%.

The political class is poleaxed by these numbers as they have been assured that inflation at these levels was impossible. Modern economic theory says that inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. We now have top men in place to keep an eye out for this. They just need to manage the money supply to keep inflation under control. This assumption led the top men to assume inflation was transitory, the result of supply chain issues.

That should be the first red flag when looking at the economic data. Those top men that are supposed to have a handle on the money supply say they are as surprised as the rest of us that food has doubled in price. A month ago, they were talking about a series of exceedingly small rate hikes. Now they are talking about a series of substantial rate hikes to prevent inflation from going even higher. You get the sense that there is both panic and confusion among those top men.

One reason for this is the long period of historically low interest rates. What the Federal Reserve did forty years ago to tame inflation was remove money from the system by raising borrowing rates. The real creators of money are the banks, who create money through lending. By raising their cost of money creation, they create less money and the result is fewer dollars chasing goods. At its peak in 1980 the 10-year Treasury was going for 15% versus 2% currently.

In other words, getting rates back into the normal range means three or four times the current rates. The world is simply not prepared for such a thing. Think about what happens to the real estate market if rates simply double. Refinancing comes to an end and homes sales collapse. No one is trading out of their home with the 3% mortgage into a home with a 5% mortgage, at least not on purpose. This would be the new reality throughout the financial world.

The other problem with this approach is the massive government debt. The way government handles debt is not like normal people. They issue bonds, pay the holder interest, but never pay them off. Instead, they issue new bonds to pay off the old bonds and the cycle begins anew. Rolling debt like this works as long as the market for new debt looks like the market for old debt. If the Federal government has to start borrowing at two or three times the old rate, it is big trouble.

The other way the Federal reserve can tackle inflation is to sell its massive holdings of equities, treasuries and other assets. The latest balance sheet from the Fed says they are holding about $8 Trillion in assets. They can begin selling which removes cash from the system. Keep in mind that the value of the S&P 500 is about the same as the Fed balance sheet, so this is a powerful option. They added about a trillion in equities during Covid as a way to juice the markets.

Of course, this is not without consequences. If they liquidate that trillion in equities, they hoovered up during Covid, the market will go down. The tens of millions of retired people living on their investments will not be pleased. If they liquidate some of their $4 trillion in treasuries, those assets will lose value, which means the cost of borrowing by the government goes up. This is why monetizing the debt is like eating the seed corn during tough times.

Another problem for the Fed is the politicians have started a global economic war against the majority of the earth’s population. Exporting excess dollars to places like China, India and Russia is no longer possible. In fact, dollars are starting to come back to America in response to sanctions. When Washington declared war on the globe, the globe declared war on the dollar. At least in the short term, exporting extra dollars to the rest of the world is not a viable option.

This is why there is panic in Washington. Biden’s official approval rate is 40% and Congress has an approval rate of 20%. Now they are faced with grim choices that promise to be very unpopular. They can support a war on inflation that will result in a deep recession or they can let inflation rob the public. Worse yet, it is not all that clear the Fed can wage an effective war on inflation. Like a bug trapped in the spider’s web, they have nothing left but panic.

While the suffering of the political class brings joy to most everyone, this means normal people are going to suffer for an extended period. The gap between wholesale inflation and retail inflation says prices will keep rising. The war on the world will also put pressure on commodities like energy and fertilizer. That will put upward pressure on prices at all levels. Wages are not keeping pace, which means everyone is getting poorer by the minute.

When Joe Biden ran for office, he promised a long dark winter. Most people assumed he flubbed his lines, but it turns out he was telling the truth. The long dark winter of mismanagement and manufactured crisis now promises to extend into the summer and autumn. Worse yet, the people who created this mess are now tasked with solving it. It looks like the label for the Joe Biden regime will be the long dark winter of American decline.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Plague

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Over the last several years, America has experienced a new phenomenon in which people critical of official dogma suddenly endorse the dogma. An alternative form of this is where people who have made a career debunking claims that appear in the media suddenly become the most faithful consumers of media propaganda. It is as if a new virus has entered the system that causes the victim to switch sides or reveal themselves to be a double-agent all along.

The Trump phenomenon was the first example. When Trump famously came down the escalator to declare his candidacy, many assumed it was just a publicity stunt from a guy known for showmanship. Some went a bit far in criticizing it but Trump is one of those guys who can rub some people the wrong way. Once it was clear that he was a serious threat to be nominated, it also became clear that those harsh critics had contracted this new mind virus.

Granted, we did not know it was a mind virus. When Bill Kristol started waving around Hillary Clinton signs, it was just assumed he was bitter. In fact, that was the assumption about all of the neocons who were ranting about Trump. He had torpedoed their guy Jeb Bush so their attacks were just sour grapes. Jonah Goldberg was sure his old lady was going to land a job in the next Republican administration so Trump was a huge blow to his plans.

We now think that Trump triggered the forgotten Trotsky gene. All of those old neoconservatives and their progeny who had been posing as conservatives for fifty years have the Trotsky gene. Trump triggered it and as a result they instinctively returned to their natural state as hyper-violent leftists. At least it was assumed that Trump triggered it. Further evidence suggests that a virus of some sort was in the air that was the real cause of the neocon reaction.

Ironically, it was the presence of another virus that revealed the presence of this prior virus in the population. The Covid panic, which was fostered by the managerial state, triggered a reaction in some of the harshest critics of it. Instantly, people who had made careers in media criticism, usually around the issues related to the humans sciences, became totally trusting of the media. Everything in the press regarding Covid was treated as holy writ.

Strangely, this uncritical acceptance of media messaging was particularly hard on the old HBD community. These are the people who spend their days thinking about the biological diversity of humanity. As a result, they spent decades picking apart the blank slate claims in the media. Their message for generations has been that you cannot trust the media to talk honestly about biology. Then all of a sudden, they accepted all media claims about Covid without question .

It was not just the HBD people who were gripped by this madness over Covid, but they were the hardest hit by it. This is when the possibility of the cause being a virus started to make some sense. People whose psychological immune systems have been tuned to defeat a specific sort of media agitation were probably most vulnerable to a different form of media agitation. It is why they have never recovered from the infection, despite the revelations.

The war in Ukraine has brought a new outbreak of the virus. Many who chanted “fake news” during the Trump years are now festooned with Ukraine symbols and carrying on like the remaining Biden supporters. In fact, the most fanatical supporters of the regime are people who used to be Trump partisans. Sean Hannity, for example, is demanding nuclear war over Ukraine. He repeats whatever is in the mainstream media regarding Ukraine as if it is gospel.

Granted, the talks show circuit types are mostly carny folk who go where they think they can get an audience, but there are more sober minded examples. Victor David Hanson has been uncritically repeating media claims about the war. He seems to be fond of the narrative that says the Russians planned to sack Kiev, but the Ukrainians heroically defended their capital. He is lending his credibility to nonsense made up by children at the New York Times.

The war in the Ukraine is another clue that we are dealing with a virus that causes the victim to trust the mass media. Many of the people who got Covid all wrong at the start are now on the wrong side of the war in Ukraine. They either have staked out the wrong position or they are accepting media narratives. This madness transcends ideological orientation. The victims, once infected, lose the ability to critically judge what is being presented to them.

Further evidence of a virus, and that it may be deliberate, is the sudden chanting of the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” by the media. Maybe the virus has a different impact on sociopaths than it does on other people. Media people infected by the virus become paranoid, sure that a secret cabal is feeding them lies. Perhaps the virus causes a moment of clarity which then induces madness. This is a topic that needs further research.

The cause remains unknown, but the madness we have seen over the last half dozen years points to some common cause. Perhaps this is just a symptom of modernity or maybe this is what cultural collapse causes in people. A mind virus of some sort is always a possibility, given what we have witnessed. Regardless, a plague has spread across society causing the subversives to go public, the  skeptics to become trusting and the media to go insane.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

The Limits of Cynicism

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People who follow French politics are talking about the upcoming run-off between Macron and Le Pen as a possible replay of 1981. In that election, François Mitterrand scored a stunning upset of incumbent president, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, to become the first socialist to win since the Second World War. Mitterrand ushered in a new era of French politics that prevails to this day. It is a cynical, divide and conquer politics that serves a narrow elite at the expense of the nation.

Like Americans, the French have been facing the problem that elections seem to have no bearing on public policy. They vote in new people and new parties, but the polices never seem to change. Macron has not been much different from Hollande, who was not much different from Sarkozy. In fact, each French president since Mitterrand has followed a predictable internationalist course. As a result, France has been swamped by immigrants and looted by international finance.

It is a good reminder that elections in a democracy have consequences, but rarely in the way people expect. Mitterrand’s upset victory ushered in a new brand of politics that every ambitious French pol seeks to emulate. Something similar happened in the United States in the 1992 presidential election. Bill Clinton represented a new generation of political leadership. He ushered in a new form of politics that infected both parties and the political mechanism upon which they rely.

Like in France, American politics is deeply cynical now. Elections are viewed with disdain by the politicians. It is something they must endure so they can get on with what they view as the important parts of politics. The important part of politics is advancing an agenda that serves the narrow interests of the managerial elite. This is why elections have no bearing on public policy. The office holders may change and the parties may swap positions, but the elites never change.

That is the source of the growing hostility the political classes of the West have for the people they theoretically represent. Macron is a prime example. He is in trouble politically because he carries himself like a man who is doing the French people a favor by paying attention to them. Not long ago he said that you are not French if you do not follow his rules with regards to Covid. He joked about using the administrative state to torment those who question his policies.

There is that cynicism at the heart of politics in the modern West. No serious leader thinks such things, much less says them out loud, if he has any regard for the people he claims to lead. More important, no serious leader acts this way if he thinks the opinions of the voters matter. When the game is rigged, or at least seems that it is rigged, then it no longer makes much sense to pretend public opinion matters. This is the truth of the cynical politics of the modern West.

In America, this is most evident in the concept of messaging. In modern American political jargon, messaging is a form of crowd control. The crowd is the mass media, which takes its cues from the inner party. The e-mails go out, the spokesmen give pressers and this is what shapes the daily narrative in the press. This is then supposed to herd the public in the direction of the official policy. Good polls confirm to the political class that their messaging is working.

An example is from the chief messenger, Jen Psaki. Note that she struggles to read the catch phrase of the day. It turns out that saying “Putin price hike” out loud sounds rather silly and childish, even to someone without a soul. The expectation is the official media organs will use the phrase while reporting on the inflation numbers and the general narrative will be that the cause of inflation is Putin. The Democrats probably plan to campaign on the slogan “Putin price hike” this fall.

Think about the cynicism on display. Psaki knows what she is saying is a lie and everyone in the room knows it is a lie. Further, she knows that no one thinks what she is saying is anything but a lie. The stenographers in the press pool know that she knows that they know she is lying. When they work on the official narrative at their respective media organs, they will know they are participating in the lie. In other words, everyone knows everyone is lying but they keep lying.

This is only possible in a deeply cynical system populated with people motivated by malice toward the public. The people running the global economic war resent that they have to pretend to care about public opinion. They can barely contain their loathing for the people outside the castle walls. Shark-eyed dingbats like Jen Psaki exist because she is actually what passes for a friendly face in this system. Even she can barely conceal her contempt for the public she is addressing.

French political observers suspect this election is signaling the end of the cynical politics ushered in by François Mitterrand. Cynicism is an effective short term strategy in politics, but it eventually runs into the Lincoln limit. That is the old line about fooling all of the people all of the time that is attributed to Lincoln. It was also a popular advertising slogan in the 19th century. This is appropriate given that the cynical politics of this age is basically just a sales campaign organized by fraudsters.

In America, we may be seeing similar signals. The cynical politics of the Clinton machine gave as a degenerate (Clinton), a simpleton (Bush) and a vacuous airhead (Obama) as president, all with the claim that they were accomplished men. If not for Trump the fourth in that series would have been the wife of the degenerate. Now we are being sold a mumbling vegetable as the most popular man in history. Joe Biden may be the limit of the cynical post-Cold War politics.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

Germ Warfare

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Note: The Monday Taki post is up and it is related to the post today. There is the Sunday podcast up behind the green door. A reminder that there will be no show in Friday due to the holiday.

One of the most underdiscussed parts of the current crisis is the war being waged against the infectious disease known as neoconservatism. It started in 2015 when Trump launched his bid for president. Even though he was never able to articulate it, he was running as a rejection of Bush and by extension the neocons. It was his win in the South Carolina primary, after he had unloaded on George Bush, which sent the neocons into a panic and started the Republican civil war.

It has been an interesting civil war in that it was mostly the party against Trump but it has turned into an old versus new since he left office. He had some allies in the party, for sure, but most were too afraid to be open about it. Some, like Lindsey Graham, pretended to be his ally so they could hell subvert his presidency, especially on the foreign policy front. Graham was sent in from the usual suspects to keep Trump in line on those issues.

Even so, there has been a slow realignment going in within the party as well as within what is left of the conservative movement. On the later front, the neocons have completely shed their skin and joined the Left. Bill Kristol runs something called the Bulwark, which no one reads. His other efforts are aimed at undermining his former party through the Republican Accountability Project. They used to be Republicans Against Trump, but that was too obvious.

Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes were both fired from Fox News for a lack of interest by the viewers. Hayes ran The Weekly Standard into the ground and now he runs something called the Dispatch. His partner in that is Jonah Goldberg, who was also jettisoned from National Review. Of course, they brought on the soy-faced wojack David French, who has stop pretending to be a Christian and instead has embraced the religion of post-Marx identity politics.

The return of the neocons back to their ideological home on the Left has left a void in what is left of conservatism. For two generations they were a golem for neoconservatism, despite their pretensions. Without their animators, they have been left to stagger around without purpose. There is a long debate among establishment intellectuals about what can replace it or reform it. Most likely, it is just pushed over the side in favor of something new and organic.

The crisis in the system is showing up in the primaries. The donor class is pouring cash into the Wyoming congressional primary. The neocons are rallying their supporters among the plutocrats in an effort to undermine the party. The effort in Wyoming is based on getting registered Democrats to cross over and vote in the Republican primary on election day. In other words, Liz Cheney is just a cat’s paw for the Trotskyist murder cult that has decamped for the other party.

Probably the most interesting race thus far is in Ohio, where you have three flavors of populists running for the open Senate seat. There is an old boomer running as if it is 1985 but he is rich and has party support. There is Josh Mandel, who will quickly morph into Lindsey Graham if elected. Then there is J.D. Vance, who is trying to run as a post-Trump populist. It is a three-way race at the moment and it reflects the currents within the Republican Party.

Gibbons will probably win the primary mostly because old white people will never come to terms with current realty. Instead, they will cling to the civic nationalist fantasy of voting our way out of the problems of democracy. The fact that just as many are easily fooled by Mandel hammers home this point. Both are creatures of the legacy talk radio culture. Only the actuarial tables will fix this problem within the Republican electorate.

The fact that J.D. Vance is in the conversation says that some people are waking up to the reality they face as a people. Vance is not a charismatic politician and there are genuine concerns about his sincerity. He was a Trump-hater back in 2016 so people should be wary of his judgement. Then again, he is not unusual in that many people have gone through a similar conversion. Vance often sounds like a guy who suddenly realized he had been lied to his whole life.

None of this is to suggest that the Republican Party is about to become representative of the people who vote for it. That will never be allowed. The point of the party is to make sure the majority population has no representation in government. If that arrangement is threatened, then it is mail-in voting for every state. It is just increasingly difficult to keep the old grift going. The old Red Team versus Blue Team dynamic is collapsing.

We are at the start of a volatile period in politics. The great tide of discontent that will sweep the primaries this autumn will bring in all sorts of people. The war between the ruling class and the people will shift to Washington, where there will be more than a few Marjorie Taylor Greene types roaming the halls of Congress. The main result will be the final purge of the neocons from the Republican side. The process that began in the 1960’s is about to come full circle.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

Parallelism

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From time to time a debate breaks out in outsider politics between those who prefer meta politics and those who prefer activism. The former takes the view that it is ideas that drive history so getting the ideas right is the priority. The latter notes that we live in the real world not the world of ideas. Keeping the groomers out of the schools, for example, is what matters now. You are not going to talk them out of it so you have to get involved in order to solve the immediate problem

This is a debate that has haunted conservative politics and it was something that haunted radical politics until the 20th century. Conservatives never solved the problem and it eventually ruined them. The reason is they committed to participating in a political system that leaves no room for conservative ideas. Once you sign onto the long list of left-wing taboos and mob rule, there is nothing worth defending. Conservatives became the tax collectors of liberal democracy.

For dissidents this is a bigger challenge. There is no solution to the problems of liberal democracy at the ballot box. Most Americans have no representation in politics as both parties are committed to destroying normal life. This fall the Republicans will win the election and everything will get worse. Whatever promises they have made will be broken on day one. They will set about giving the oligarchs whatever they want while pretending they are doing their voters a favor.

Even knowing this, people want to do something. This is even more true for dissidents who are more political than normal people. The reason you end up on this side of the great divide is you have engaged with politics and learned from it. Walking away entirely seems like quitting to most people. On the other hand, participating just empowers the people who want you dead. This is the dilemma that ruined the conservative movement and haunts the dissident right.

This leaves only one option and that is building a counter culture. Channeling activism into building a parallel society bridges the gap between ideas and activism. In a way, this is what we see globally with the alliance of non-Western powers. China, Russia and India want to create a parallel system that can challenging America. The same thing has to happen domestically. It is a bigger challenge for obvious reasons, but parallelism is the only way forward short of revolution.

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

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

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

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

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Opening
  • Old Man Reminisces
  • Ideas Versus Actions
  • The Conservative Dilemma
  • Parallelism

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