Brother And Son

Posted on January 19, 2023 by thezman

One of the tricks the Clintons popularized for getting around rules and protocols was the sudden collapse in enforcement of the rules and protocols. Instead of violating one specific rule that was hindering them, they would violate all the rules. This way they could blame the system or just unintended errors. This made it hard to see the specific rule they were violating, which made it hard to see the caper. They hid their crimes in an avalanche of sloppiness.

This seems to be what the Bidens were up to when Joe was Vice President. His brother and son wanted to trade access for cash, a common political crime. Influence peddling is probably the second oldest crime. If you can get some important guy to do something or entertain doing something, that has tremendous value, so you sell that ability to people who want to influence the important guy. This is pretty much how all legislation is devised and passed into law in Washington.

This is also how politicians monetize their position. Maybe the wife gets a job at a high powered lobbying firm. Maybe the family members get jobs at companies that just happen to support the politician. Sometimes, as with Nancy Pelosi, the spouse gets to partner with someone with lots of insider access to make incredibly shrewd business deals using that insider information. Of course, the spouse, as we saw with Pelosi, is the conduit for some of the insider information.

For congressmen and senators, this is all perfectly legal. For the Vice President, it is completely illegal. Joe Biden could slip his brother some information about pending legislation or regulation, but he could not trade on the really good stuff. That is the international stuff involving high level access to the President. The Vice President is not allowed to auction off classified information either. He has access to information that is priceless to foreign players, but it is not for sale.

This is where Hunter comes into the picture. This is also where the Clintons came into the picture as well. You see, when Hillary was running the State department, her pervert husband was traveling the world giving speeches. Those audiences were pouring billions into the Clinton foundation in the form of speaking fees. Team Biden, no doubt, looked at this and thought they could do the same. Get Hunter and Jim Biden out there working the international market for cash payments.

The problem for the Bidens was two-fold. One they did not have a foundation to launder money through, so they had to produce some new conduit. The other is Hunter was a crackhead and Jim has no useful skills other than being Joe’s brother. If they start getting hired to do speeches, people will notice. It is beginning to look like the plan was to have these two idiots get big contracts and consulting gigs with foreign players, in exchange for something more than access.

This is why Joe Biden was sprinkling secret documents all over the place. You see, his son and brother had access to the family homes and offices. If Joe were to carelessly leave secret documents at these places, totally by accident because he is getting old and forgetful, Hunter and Jim could accidentally stumble upon them. Maybe they would see something in those files that they could use in their dealings with the foreign players like China and Ukraine.

Breitbart has a story documenting when Hunter lived in the family home and when those documents were in the family home. Of course, Hunter claimed at the time to be paying rent of fifty thousand a month. Now, he was on drugs at the time and spending his days doing those drugs with prostitutes, so maybe his claim about spending that much for rent was just what you get from a druggie. After all, he left his laptops containing intimate details of his life with a repair shop.

The Washington Free Beacon digs further using Hunter’s laptop to establish the timeline of Hunter living at the house and working for the Chinese. The angle that the conservative media is pursuing is that Biden’s reckless handling of secret material was far worse than what they are accusing Trump of doing. Trump kept his secrets in a big vault guarded by the secret service, not a crack addict. That is the stick they are supposed to fetch, so they do not look at the other angle.

The real angle here is the brother. No one is looking into Jim Biden, who has been a business partner with his brother for fifty years. This ProPublica article on Jim and Joe’s long and complicated business relationship details how the two of them have worked in tandem through Biden’s career. Unlike Hunter, Jim does not have a crack problem or a taste for hookers and naked selfies. He operates a complex web of financial companies and financial transitions.

If you wanted to launder money, there is no better way to do it than through a series of interlocking financial companies that move money around daily. Maybe Jim hears or sees something when visiting his brother and maybe he mentions that to an overseas client who maybe plops a few million into one of Jim’s deals. A little here and little there and before long a man who spent his life working for the government is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Funny world.

That is the old Clinton trick. If Biden were handing his brother’s intel, that would turn up on the radar of the spooks eventually. If Joe is just sloppy and lots of people have access to that intel, then that means the leak could be anyone. If the sloppiness ever came out, then the conservative media would have Hunter to chase around, rather than Jim who is not as fun to profile. It sounds overly clever, but politics selects for people who are good at cooking up schemes like this.

Just as we will never know the extend of the Clinton crimes, we will never get the real story on the Biden corruption. Whoever is getting this story into the media has real power and motivations they will never reveal publicly. Maybe the whole thing is a setup and it has nothing to do with corruption. Maybe the corruption was so egregious that even the spooks were offended by it and they are exacting some revenge. Either way, the place to look here is the bother, not the son.

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The Farce Of Europe

Posted on January 18, 2023 by thezman

Big events reveal things that may have been in plain sight for a while, but they remained hidden for cultural or political reasons. The mortgage crisis of 2008 is a good example of something that was hidden in plain sight. The sub-prime corruption should have been obvious, but few people saw it. When the system started to lock up, everyone suddenly noticed the massive corruption. The signs were there for a long time, but it was the fear of collapse that forced everyone to face it.

We are seeing an example of this with the war in Ukraine. Europe has been a land run by ridiculous people for a long time, but it was concealed by tradition and the Global American Empire pretending that European “leaders” are serious people. The war has revealed that Europe is a farce. It is not a collection of countries operating in concert for the common good. It is a collection of territories of the Global American Empire run by provincial clodhoppers with no real power.

Baiting the Russians into war served no European interests. It is obviously bad for the people of Europe. There is nothing to be gained for them by this war. It is wrecking the economy and reducing the standard of living. It is not good for European business, which now finds itself uncompetitive due to the costs of war. Germany is now on a short path to de-industrialization. Given that the German economy is the heart of the European economy, this will harm all of Europe.

The war is proving disastrous for the political class as well. Unlike the United States, there is no big sprawling military industrial complex in these countries. They have some boutique industries, but nothing like the American arms industry. That means there are not great profits to be had, which can be used to bribe the political class. Instead, the stockpiles of Europe are being stripped by NATO to supply Ukraine, while EU politicians pretend to be leading the effort.

If the European political class existed as anything more than a carnival act, they would have told Washington to pound sand and made a deal with the Russians long before this war in Ukraine could get started. In fairness, Angel Merkel pretended to be doing that in 2014, but that was just a con run by Washington. She has since admitted that she was lying to the Russians to buy time for Washington to arm and train the Ukrainian military for a war with the Russians.

Merkel was the most important “leader’ in Europe and she was nothing more than a toady for the Global American Empire. That right there speaks to the impotence of the European political class. This is why the Kremlin does not bother to take the calls of European “leaders” anymore. What is the point? A state governor in America has more sovereign authority that a European leader. If Ron DeSantis called Putin, Putin would take the call because DeSantis has real power.

The fact is “Europe” is just an economic zone heading for the abyss because the plans of Washington require it. American politicians are happy to get those checks from the oil and gas industry, which is getting fat selling LNG to Europe. The American war machine is happy to use Ukraine as a testing ground. If the Europeans have to reduce their lifestyle, well, that is tough luck for them. The people in charge have bigger issues than the welfare of the territory called Europe.

The fact is, Europe is dead and it has been dead for a long time. None of the EU states is a sovereign country. The national governments do not control their currency, which is a prerequisite for sovereignty. Their budgets must be approved by Brussels, which sets most regulatory policy for the bloc. These “countries” no longer control their borders in any meaningful way. The EU controls the flow of people by the farcical rules set up to deal with refugees from the global south.

A country that does not control its money, its laws or its borders is not a country, so it has no need for serious national leaders. This is why the political class of Europe has become increasingly comical over the last decades. It is the same reason that American mayors, especially in small cities, tend to be eccentric. A mayor has limited powers and mostly performs symbolic acts. That is the definition of a European leader. They have no real power, but they need to perform for the public.

It is not just the continent. Britain has become a floating carny act as well. Does anyone know the name of the current Prime Minister? Would anyone be shocked if the White House did not know his name? Why would they? That role has been reduced to an administrative post. The proof of that is Washington is planning to send Boris Johnson to Ukraine to deliver the latest instructions. Maybe they think Boris is still in charge or, most likely, they know who is really in charge.

The sad fact is the Global American Empire spent the last half century turning Europe into a giant outdoor theme park. It draws in tourists to gaze at its long lost glory and it soaks up American cultural items. Walk through a mall in Europe and you hear hip-hop music and see NBA jersey on display. The European culture that tourists want to see is locked up in museums, while the real European culture is as vulgar and degenerate as the rest of the Global American Empire.

In this excellent post by Gilbert Doctorow, he explains how this proxy war with the West is redefining Russia as a nation. Wars often define countries. The two industrial wars of the 20th century changed America from a republic to a global empire. Wars can also destroy countries. This is what happened with Europe. Those two wars plus the Cold War drained the vitality from Europe, reducing it to an economic zone, a dependency of the Global American Empire. That is obvious now.

The hope for Europe is that this reality is made so clear by Washington’s war on Russia that the farce can no longer be maintained. Perhaps some elements of the European political class grow tired of the humiliations they must endure and seek to regain their nations from the clutches of Washington. Perhaps the cost of war loosens the grip of Washington on the empire. Otherwise, that grip will squeeze what little life remains in Europe and the lights go out forever.

The New Anti-Science Right

Posted on January 17, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about Ukraine, a post about Biden and the Sunday podcast. Since there is interest in it, I will be doing a weekly post on the happenings in Ukraine. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Way back in the heyday of conservatism, a common charge leveled at them from the Left was that they were anti-intellectual. Generally, this meant that conservatives did not appreciate free verse or post-modern art. You see, the Left read books and appreciated the arts while the Right read the Bible and fired off their boom-sticks. It was not so much an argument against the intelligence of the Right, but rather a class argument against the uncouth people entering politics.

After the Cold War, it was no longer possible for the Left to use a class argument against the Right, when their champion was the Snopes clan. There was simply no way to present the Clintons as sophisticated and erudite. Compounding it was the obvious fact that their politics looked like daytime television. These were crude, uncouth people who brought with them a collection of vulgar carny freaks. By comparison, the talk radio guys looked sophisticated and measured.

That was not the end of the anti-intellectual claim. It transformed into a claim that the Right was full of anti-science believers. You see, the Left was now armed with the latest ideas from the social sciences, while the Right was armed with superstitious nonsense from their sky god. Never mind that the social sciences are closer to astrology than actual science. They had studies and the word of men with impressive sounding titles to show how much they bleeping loved science.

Since the end of the Cold War, this has been incredibly effective magic. Just look at how the conservatives curled up in a ball when the Left started waving around their studies about the Covid pandemic. Most of them did not hold up to scrutiny, but the conservatives were unwilling to scrutinize them. Instead, they were happy to embrace policies that they allegedly opposed as a matter of principle. They accepted the grotesque violations of civil liberties because science!

Science, of course, is about debate, when you stop and think about it. Theories are proposed to explain some observed phenomenon. Those theories are tested and challenged in a formalized process. Simply put, science is about broadening the debate about the natural world within an agreed upon process. The exact opposite of science is telling people to shut up because science. This is exactly what happened with Covid and the conservatives were happy to agree.

What appears to be happening is that the Left’s claims against what they call their opposition are being embraced by their opposition. Just as many conservatives in the 1980’s relished their populist, working clash aesthetic, the new conservatives forming up seem to be embracing a rejection of science. They are going to stand on antiquarian ideas from the long lost past and reject the human sciences. This is what you see in this book review by Sohrab Ahmari.

The book and the review are a long form version of the old internet meme about Democrats being the real racists. You see, race never existed until it was invented by bad people to do bad things. Before those bad people, no one had ever noticed the vast differences in people. Then those bad people came along and coined the word “race” and then created “race science” to divide people along entirely arbitrary lines, that while easily measurable, are a figment of our imagination.

Now, Sohrab Ahmari is not working math puzzles in his free time. He is a discount Dinesh D’Souza. An exotic guy who orbits around conservative politics, looking for a place to land. D’Souza got his big break when he stabbed the great Sam Francis in the back on behalf of the Washington Post. Ahmari got his break when he noticed people making fun of David French on Twitter then penned a column based on what he read called Against David French-ism.

Sohrab Ahmari is at the center of the new Right so even though he is no one’s idea of a deep thinker, he represents the new opposition being created within the managerial elite to be the Left’s new foil. He is not an exception. Look at the Yoram Hazony project and you see an even stronger opposition to science. In the tenth item, he writes, “No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test.”

The fact that no one says such a thing makes his opposition to it rather weird, but that is not the point. Anyone who has taken in Hazony’s live shows will have seen how he acts when the human sciences are mentioned. In his first show he said something along the lines that the “race scientists” are incredibly good at marshalling the facts to support their arguments, so it is best to avoid debating them. In other words, this is not a pose for him, but a cornerstone of his worldview.

In fairness, some of this hostility to the human sciences is due to fear of mean words from the Left. If you are going to be the useful idiot to the people atop the prevailing orthodoxy, you have to make clear you are no threat to their worldview. Controlling the morality of race has been a highly effective weapon for the ruling class and they are not going to let that weapon drop, even in the face of reality. They are certainly not going to trade it away just to create a new useful idiot.

That said, there is a genuine contempt for the human science on the Right, both the new Right and the old Right. Part of it is due to the fact that once you accept biological reality, whole areas of debate are closed down. Worse yet, important areas of social life are reduced to the tough choices. A big part of democratic politics is reality avoidance, so reducing policy options to coldblooded trade-offs is no fun. Universal human equality is much more fun than biological reality.

A bigger issue here may simply be intelligence. For a long time, the smart fraction was selected into areas like philosophy and theology. Once theology was dropped from ruling class interest, the smart fraction was recruited into things like the amusingly named political science and then political economy. The rise of actual science began to change the selection pressure. For a few generations now, the smart fraction has been selected into STEM and even finance.

The result has been a dumbing down of political philosophy. A dunce like David French can pass himself off as a deep thinker, as long as he keeps up with the latest fads and picks the right enemies. No one else around him is going to notice that he moves his lips when he reads. In such a world, the increasingly complex world of the human science can easily look like black magic. Declaiming against “race science” is not just an in-group signal but a defense mechanism.

A Monster In A Toga

Posted on January 16, 2023 by thezman

If you were to ask people to name history’s greatest monster, most would pick their team’s favorite bogeyman from the last century. Recency bias is a real thing and as a culture we remained trapped in the last century, so most people would name Stalin or Mao or Hitler as history’s greatest monster. Some might offer up Genghis Khan or Torquemada as a more thoughtful option. No one, of course, would offer up Aristotle as history’s greatest monster, even though he is a good choice.

This may sound crazy, but there is a good argument in favor of Aristotle being the single most malevolent influence on humanity. As far as we know, he did not slaughter masses of people, but he did train one of history’s great slayers. According to our histories, he was tasked by Philip of Macedonia with the job of educating his son, Alexander, who would go on to conquer the world. It is possible that Alexander committed patricide, which is an extremely monstrous thing.

In fairness, you cannot blame the teacher for the sins of the student, unless the student is putting into practice the theory imparted by the teacher. We have nothing allegedly written by Aristotle which recommends conquering the world and subjugating the people in foreign lands. On the other hand, Western universalist claims begin with Aristotle, so maybe Alexander’s desire to impose his will on the world was the natural consequence of Aristotle’s teaching.

We can debate Aristotle’s role in Alexander’s crimes against humanity, but we do know that Aristotle got some important things wrong. For example, he dismissed the ideas of Democritus, who proposed that everything we see is composed of atoms that are the basic building blocks of matter. Democritus also argued that humans “evolved” from an earlier primitive state. Necessity is what drove large groups of humans into societies which offered protection from nature.

In other words, Democritus was an incredibly brilliant thinker, way ahead of his time, but Aristotle dismissed him out of hand. In fairness, Aristotle was a student of Plato, who hated Democritus. Allegedly, Plato hated Democritus so much that he wanted all of his books burned, which may be why none survived. It is possible that Aristotle was just an obsequious rumpswab who aped the feelings of Plato. Regardless, much was lost to us because of Aristotle’s dismissal of Democritus.

Aristotle’s scientific ignorance does not stop there. The Western world spent a thousand years believing the sun revolved around the earth, due entirely to Aristotle’s geocentric model of the universe. It was not as if everyone in his time believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Philolaus argued for heliocentrism. Aristarchus of Samos argued that the earth rotated around the sun, but Aristotle’s stature condemned the West to a thousand years of geocentric ignorance.

Now, one can dispute the damage done by the scientific ignorance spread by Aristotle and his followers. After all, how many people died because we had no idea why some things are heavier than others? Sure, thousands were probably killed for questioning geocentricism, but they were heretics and their astronomical apostacy was just one of many crimes they committed against the Church. You really cannot get a big number of bodies to blame on Aristotle from these errors.

What about medicine? For a thousand years Western medicine was closer to witchcraft because of the belief in the four humors. This is the claim that the body is composed of blood (warm and moist), phlegm (cold and moist), yellow bile (warm and dry), and black bile (cold and dry). These also correspond to the seasons. Illness was due to an imbalance of these humors, so medicine was concerned with rebalancing the humors, rather than producing an actual cure for what ailed the patient.

How many millions died due to this lunacy? The Aristotle defenders will claim that he did not invent this crackpot idea. It was Hippocrates. The counter here is that Hippocrates is the father of medicine because of Aristotle who promoted his ideas. Imagine if instead of this humor business, Aristotle had not dismissed Democritus and proposed that illness is due to small entities in the body. We may have deduced germ theory many centuries earlier. Millions would have been saved!

Again, we have no evidence that Aristotle killed anyone and we have no evidence that he was in favor of genocide. The perpetuation of his crackpot ideas about science and medicine was not his fault. After all, he did not force those monks and scribes to perpetuate his ignorance. It probably seems unfair to hang millions of dead on Aristotle, just because his nutty ideas about science and medicine came to dominate the Western world for a thousand years.

On the other hand, ideas have consequences. If you manage to convince the world of some bad idea, you do bear some responsibility for its application. Marx did not advocate the murder of millions, but he did lay the intellectual framework for those who would murder millions in his name. If we are going to blame Marx for the crimes of the Marxists, the same applies to the consequences of Aristotelianism. That puts Aristotle in the same club as Marx.

The thing is the influence of Marx has largely dissipated. There are some cranks kicking around calling themselves Marxist, but at this point no serious person believes in the surplus value of labor or historical materialism. On the other hand, lots of bad actors still rely on Aristotle. For example, the followers of Harry Jaffa are still causing trouble and Jaffa was a big fan of Aristotle. Here is an old essay of his arguing for one of his crackpot theories. He mentions Aristotle fourteen times.

How much damage has been done to America by the followers of Jaffa and his deranged ideas about the Framers? His universalist gobbledygook about the Declaration and the perfection of the founding has made opposition to lethal ideas like immigration and multiculturalism nearly unlawful. Even the mildest resistance to the ongoing invasion is treated as a crime, because after all, all men are created equal so the only reason to oppose open borders is racism and bigotry.

It is fun to imagine a monster like Harry Jaffa stepping in front of a bus before he had a chance to inject his venom into the neck of America but imagine if he was not able to sacralize his crackpottery with references to Aristotle. Not only would Jaffa have been denied an authority, so would Straus. Imagine a world free of this dangerous cult that has unleashed so much mayhem on American society. Take away Aristotle and a lot of modern horrors go away as well.

It is wrong to blame the son for the crimes of the father, so it is probably wrong to blame the father for the crimes of the son. The point here is that establishing any man as a moral or even an intellectual authority leads to trouble. When that man is beyond question, the trouble easily becomes horror. The establishment of Aristotle as the father of moral philosophy sent the West careening down a path toward the crisis we see unfolding today, a crisis from which it may not recover.

A Ukraine Primer

Posted on January 13, 2023 by thezman

Now that we are starting to get some clarity on how the military situation in Ukraine is going to play out this year, it is a good time to contextualize the war, which means understanding the politics of it. The only way to understand this war is to understand the people responsible for it and the people responsible for this war and the many other wars since 1990 are the neoconservatives.

It is a bit ironic that this bizarre cult may meet its end in the place where their ancestors got their start. Most of the neocons from the middle of the last century were from parents who emigrated from places like Galicia, which is currently part of Ukraine, but was part of the Russian empire a century ago. That part of the world has produced far more than its share of troublemakers.

Stefan Bandera was from Galicia. He is the inspirational leader of current Ukrainian nationalists, like the Azov battalion, which have been fighting Russian militias in the Donbas since the coup in 2014. Interestingly, many prominent Bolsheviks were from this part of the world as well. Of course, many of the most important neocons came from that part of the world as well.

It would be nice if 2023 brought some attention to this bizarre cult of fanatics responsible for this Ukraine disaster, but these people are better at avoiding sunlight than they are at starting monstrous wars. People like Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland should be brought center stage and explained to the public. They are responsible for death and carnage that would make a certain Austrian blush.

The show this week is a primer on these people and their machinations over the last thirty years with regards to Russia. It looks like this long bloody history will come to a head this year, which means the official narrative will collapse. It also means the nationalist narratives will fall apart as well. The Ukraine war is about imperialism, but not the sort of imperialism they imagine.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

Neoconservatives
Kaganites – Post-Cold War Neocons
Russophobia
Ukraine War
It Is Complicated

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Chaos And Control

Posted on January 12, 2023 by thezman

The closest thing we have to a universal principle of human society is that all elites are primarily concerned with maintaining their status as elites. No matter how the society is organized and for what purpose, the number one priority of a social elite is maintaining themselves as the elite. In fact, it is reasonable to say that the point of society, from the perspective of elites, is to maintain the elite. Any benefit to the people is either to maintain the standing of the elite or a happy accident.

It is tempting to think that the best way for an elite to maintain itself is to make sure the people over whom it rules is happy. A good king keeps his people in peace and prosperity, so the people are happy to have him as king. The trouble is, there is always someone who thinks they can do a better job than the king. Good times or bad times, these people will look for their opportunity. Of course, in good times, a new elite can form up outside the system and potentially rival the existing elite.

It turns out that good times bring dangers to an elite. In fact, good times are more of a problem than bad times, because in bad times the elite can use the emergency as a way to rally the people. Roosevelt used the Great Depression to rally the people around a set of alien ideas called the New Deal. His massive expansion of the state was totally at odds with American tradition, but times were tough and the people trusted him, so they went along with his radical ideas.

Emergencies are a great way to bind the people to their current elites. Unless the elite proves to be unable to unwilling to face the emergency, the people will give their existing rulers the benefit of the doubt. Throughout the Cold War, Americans were willing to tolerate all sorts of trouble, because the threat of nuclear war made the idea of challenging the elites seem risky. There was plenty of cultural turmoil, much of it from the top, but the great American middle never wavered.

That gets to the other way elites maintain power. By pitting one group against another, the people are too busy with that to question authority. In fact, self-interest leads them to appeal to the exiting authority to resolve the conflict. If crime suddenly becomes a problem in your town, those complaints about the cops suddenly go away as long as the cops do something about the crime. By keeping the masses busy with various small issues, elites can defend against the formation of rival elites.

This explains the turmoil of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The race revolts, youth rebellion and cultural revolution were not grassroots phenomenon. All of these things were the product of the exiting elites. Look into the background of the radical leaders of that period and most of them came from elite backgrounds. Once their radical days were done, they went into positions within elite institutions. Even those who committed serious crimes were welcomed back home.

The second half of the 20th century was a game of good cop – bad cop on the American people by the ruling elite that emerged after the war. The bad cops created cultural mayhem that “freaked out the squares” while the good cops appealed to the people’s patriotism and decency to fight the Cold War. One hand created division while the other hand created unity. Often these two forces were pitted against one another to the benefit of the ruling class.

During the Cold War, this system served the elites very well. The threat of nuclear war forced the agents of control to contain the agents of chaos. At the same time, the agents of chaos understood they had limits. The two sides of the ruling class were not always in balance, but they always returned to balance. The chaos of civil rights gave way to the control of racial peace. The cultural chaos of the 1960’s and 1970’s gave way to the control of the 1980’s.

Ever since the end of the Cold war, this system has been in crisis. Without the threat of nuclear annihilation, the agents of chaos have no limits. At the same time, the agents of control no longer have to worry as much about the façade of democracy. The crusades against the Muslims brought some stability to the problem, but the Muslims were never a serious threat like the Soviets. For the last two decades the agents of chaos and control have been running wild.

This explains the ridiculous things we see today. On the one hand, the security state is wantonly violating civil rights in order to maintain control. The extent of the crimes committed by the FBI is unknown, but what is known is shocking. On the other hand, the super-rich finance crackpot schemes to unleash crime waves and pervert the law to torment the people. Throwing open the jails and appointing pro-crime prosecutors is the definition of societal madness.

The standard explanation from conservatives for what we are seeing is that the people behind this stuff want money or power. The trouble is the people behind this stuff already have money and power. In fact, they have more money and power than any ruling elite in human history. Western elites, especially the American elites, make the aristocracy of 18th century France look poor and impotent. Clearly, the motivation behind this behavior is not money or power.

What we may be seeing is the organic death of a ruling elite. The 20th century selected for a certain type of person in the American ruling class. One type was the agent of chaos and the other type was the agent of control. There was no selection pressure in favor of prudence or moral scruples. The great crises of the 20th century provided something like an electric fence around the elite. Over time, these conditions produced an elite incapable of self-limit.

Like the panda bear, our elite has evolved down a dead end. They thrash around looking for some great crisis to serve the same role as the Cold War, but that was a unique period in human history. It cannot be replicated. Meanwhile, the agents of chaos and control explore the outer limits of their sociopathy. Unencumbered by the fear of destruction, they keep pushing the limits, while simultaneously creating the conditions for their own demise.

War Lessons

Posted on January 11, 2023 by thezman

Most likely, the first war in human history was one group of guys rushing at another group of guys, swinging fists and anything they could use as a club. It did not take long before a man decided that it was a good idea to use his hunting weapons to ward off these attacks or compliment these attacks. After all, if a gang of men with spears could take down a large animal, the same tactics would work on humans. From there the arms race was on among the human species.

The club was probably the first weapon of war. The spear would be the first tool converted for use in war. The shield was the first tool of war created specifically for use in combat against other men. Unlike the club, the shield was not just lying around waiting for a man to use it in a fight. Unlike the spear, the shield was not something used for hunting. The shield was a practical response to men using their spears to poke at you in a fight. It was the dawn of the arms industry.

We have no way of knowing if any of that is true. The first men were not big on writing stuff down so we are left to speculate. Maybe the crazies are right and people are naturally peaceful until a weapon is introduced. Some guy brought his spear to the clan meeting and this caused the clans to break out into warfare. Perhaps humans were vegetarians, eating what they could find until one guy picked up a stick and then immediately decided to start beating people with it.

Putting that aside, the history of war has been one side finding new ways to get around opposing defenses, while the other side finds new ways to block or reduce the weapons the other side is using. We are seeing this in Ukraine as the Russians work through the puzzle that is the Ukrainian defense network. For close to a decade the United States worked with Ukraine on their tactics, defenses and training. The Ukrainians were as ready as they could be for this war.

One of the first problems the Russians faced was the well designed Ukrainian air defense system. This was a carry over from the Soviet days. During the Cold War, the Russians planned to defend themselves against superior American airplanes, so they designed advanced air defense systems. These things are always hotly debated, but the consensus is that the Russians are the best in the world at building surface-to-air missile systems for defending against planes and missiles.

Of course, this was the same problem presented to NATO. The Russians have even better air defense systems than the Ukrainians. They can take out the best aircraft from great distances. This is why the Pentagon was adamantly against imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine. Losing billion dollar aircraft on a daily basis is a good way to lose popular support for a proxy war. It is also why there was never any thought about training Ukrainian pilots on the F-35.

That is the first lesson of this war. Outside of asymmetric wars, like America attacking a weak country, manned combat aircraft is becoming obsolete. Surface-to-air missile systems are reaching the stage where they can defeat the best manned aircraft at pennies on the dollar. If you can take out a billion dollar plane with a million dollar missile, it is not going to take long before the other side stops using their billion dollar planes to attack you.

That is another lesson of the war. Wars between peers are about economics, not flashy displays of technological prowess. Each side must try to reduce the per unit cost of destroying the opponents assets and defending its own assets. Assuming equal number of assets at the start, the game becomes a contest of efficiency. The side that can run the war most cost effectively wins. We are seeing that in Ukraine as the frugal Russians grind down the extravagantly financed Ukrainians.

That brings up another lesson of this war. The vaunted American military industrial complex is being revealed to be a bigger fraud than suspected. Last summer, Alex Vershinin pointed out the problems in the Western military industrial capacity versus that of the Russians. He concluded that the West simply lacked the industrial capacity to wage this war. In December Brian Berletic did a similar post on this topic, which had been covered in the Washington Post and Financial Times.

The United States has spent roughly a trillion dollars per year on weapons but there is not enough stock to last a year in a real war. Even if there is a shift toward ramping up production, it will take years to match the Russians and Chinese. In some cases, the ability to make the stuff has been lost. Once the contract with the military was fulfilled, the men and facilities to make the stuff was repurposed. For those cases it means starting production from scratch.

It actually is worse than anyone is letting on. The Pentagon refuses to consider supplying Ukraine with Abrams tanks. One reason is it takes a year to train a crew to competently operate the thing. The main reason, however, is these tanks are extremely fragile outside of optimum environments. Their size and complexity require a massive supply chain to keep the things running. That is great for the contractors, but it is an enormous liability for an army at war.

Probably the biggest lesson thus far is that drones are changing the battlefield in ways no one anticipated. Faced with massive defense works, the Russians were reduced to using their artillery advantage to pound the Ukrainians. Cheap drone technology has allowed them to efficiently target enemy positions and selectively hunt for opposing machines using inexpensive weapons. The cheap drone is not only a new weapon on the battlefield it is a force multiplier.

Of course, the biggest lesson is that fighting in your backyard is much easier than fighting across the sea. The Russians have short tight supply lines because Ukraine is right on her border. The Ukrainians, reliant on American money and material, have supply lines stretched thin. Those donated tanks and artillery pieces have to be shipped to Poland to be repaired. Another lesson of this war is that supply chain is as important as the weapons and ammunition it supplies.

Whether anyone in the West is learning anything from this is hard to know, but most likely the corruption is so thick that none of this is making sense to them. Making billion dollar jet fighters is much more fun and profitable than producing cheap drone technology or building better field artillery. If these lessons will be learned at all it will be in a colossal failure in the Pacific. That seems to be where the military industrial complex is determined to meet its fate.

The Survival Problem

Posted on January 10, 2023 by thezman

For generations, there has been a debate outside of progressive circles about the self-awareness of the people in progressives politics. Conservatives have held onto the belief that the people spouting progressive claims know that what they are saying is nonsense, but they see advantage in supporting the current fads. This recent Paul Gottfried post is a good example. He thinks the FBI is simply making an alliance of convenience with the crazies.

Outside of conservative circles, there are those who think the people telling us their pronouns really do think their genitals are imaginary. It is not an act in order to gain some advantage, but a genuine belief. They may not entirely understand what it is they claim to belief, but they believe it, nonetheless. The woman claiming her small child is another sex may be motivated by a desire for attention, but her determination to mutilate her child is driven by belief.

We have a bit of a test case in the Brazil unrest. The crazies have hated Bolsonaro since he first turned up on the scene. At first, they hated him because he opposed the left-wing Lula da Silva. Now they hate him because he was nice to Trump, which made him Hitler Junior. Now they are comparing the recent riots to the patriotic protests following the 2020 election. They seem to think this is proof that both Trump and Bolsonaro are enemies of our democracy!

The thing is, Lula is clearly worse for the American regime than Bolsonaro. A few minutes looking at his career makes that clear. When he was in office, he was not very friendly toward America, preferring to align with China and Russia. He now promises to push ahead with BRICS, which has become a vehicle for Russia and China to counter the Global American Empire. Brazil and Russia are about to ink an important trade deal now that Lula is officially in office.

From the perspective of the American regime, Lula is a problem. Brazil is a big and important country in the Western hemisphere. They have a great deal of influence over the rest of South America. Having them move from the American camp to the Russian camp should be viewed as a catastrophe. It opens the door for both Russia and China to forge tries with other countries in America’s backyard. Despite this, the media is cheering the ascent of Lula over Bolsonaro.

Another good test case is the Russia collusion story. To normal people, the claims from the Clinton people were obvious nonsense. Strip away the heated rhetoric and what they were saying is that the Russians used some form of mind control to cause people to vote for Trump. If that were true, the Russians would have used this ability to convince the media that Trump was a great guy. The whole thing was ridiculous, but the media acted as if they believed every bit of it.

This exchange between Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald is telling. Greenwald links to a study that claims the Russians do not have a mind control device. To his credit, Greenwald has made this point for years. Taibbi, on the other hand, chimes in with the claim that the media simply got it wrong. This suggests there was a reason to think that the Russians had the mind control device. In other words, Taibbi thinks it is reasonable to think such a device exists.

Of course, the ongoing lunacy in Western media about the war in Ukraine offers a great look into this topic. Every day we see stories in Western media about how the Ukrainians are winning the war. Then there are the stories about how Russia is ready to collapse at any minute. Are the people writing these tall tales liars? Do they really believe what they are writing? Are they just vessels being filled by lairs or true believers in the content creation system?

Here is a story quoting former General Ben Hodges, who claims the Ukrainians will conquer Crimea by this summer. Then they quote someone named Matthew Schmidt, who is the director of international affairs at the University of New Haven. He claims that Hodges is a bit optimistic, but with the right strategy, the Ukrainians could maybe be in Moscow by Christmas. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but his claims are so absurd that one has to wonder if he is taking drugs.

Now, one can dismiss the guy working at a fifth tier state college as nothing more than an attention seeker. The former general is another matter. Ben Hodges was the commanding general of the U.S. Army Europe. He not only should understand the realities of war, but also be informed about what is happening. For example, he would have to know that the Ukrainian army is about to collapse in northern Donbas after a long and foolish defense of the city of Bakhmut.

If the former general lying? Does he believe what he is saying? Has he simply gone insane or taken up drug use? How about the people creating the content? Can any of them use the internet and check to see if any of these claims are true? A few minutes on-line would show them that Sevastopol is a major Russian naval base. Without a navy, Ukraine has no chance to take that port, thus making it impossible to conquer Crimea or even make an assault on it.

Like the conspiracy theories about Trump or the Russians and their mind control devices, the Ukraine war content in the media is easily disproved nonsense, but none of it is ever questioned by the media. Is this because they know it is all lies, but it serves the interests of their masters or do they believe it? Why is there no one in these media organizations asking basic questions? The unanimity in the media strongly suggests they are a hive of true believers.

This may sound academic, but it is an important question. If these people are simply craven liars, then they are open to reason. If on the other hand, they are true believers, then they are beyond reason. The former can be set straight and convinced that their interests lie in the truth. The latter can never be convinced to accept reality. A society run by true believers can only be reformed by first removing the believers. That is not a facts and reason problem. That is a survival problem.

Andrew Tate

Posted on January 9, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about Ukraine, a post about Covid and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Andrew Tate is a former professional kickboxer who transformed himself into an internet personality by mixing ghetto culture with manosphere memes. He offered courses to young males in the art of being a pickup artist. He gained widespread attention after his banning from social media platforms. He is currently in a Romanian prison awaiting trial for a number of sex crimes. Despite his predicament, he remains boastful about his abilities and what lies ahead for him.

Tate’s penchant for display items and cartoonish misogyny have not only made him famous, but it has also put the spotlight on the internet manosphere. Tate is viewed as the extreme expression of a lifestyle that is free of all cultural coercion. It is not that the pickup artist lives solely to sate his appetites. It is that he rejects all of the conventions of society with regards to how a man should live. By conventions, they always mean the highly feminized rules and the modern West.

It is more than a bit ironic that the people who have been gnawing away at conventional sex roles in order to liberate women are now up in arms over men doing the same thing, but for the purpose of liberating men. It also speaks to the feminization of Western societies that the people seeking liberation from cultural norms are young males hoping to prey on women raised on feminism. Women were liberated so that liberated males can treat them like prostitutes.

To further add to the irony, much of the modern left-wing liberation movement is about freeing nonwhites from cultural coercion. You see, according to woke theory, nonwhites can never truly be free until they eradicate white power structures. These are defined as the norms of Western society. Of course, one of those norms used to be how males should behave toward females. It looks like the woke would like to keep some of the old white power structure they claim to oppose.

That gets to the heart of the matter. Andrew Tate is not a man. He is a caricature of what it means to be a man. He is what second wave feminist called a chauvinist, a male who defines himself by minimizing women. Back in the heyday of second wave feminism, such men existed mostly in the agitated imaginations of recently divorced women, but now thanks to the miracle of the internet, they are legion. Feminism literally created what it claimed to oppose.

The reason these internet personalities specializing in the art of exploiting women have grown in number is they appeal to the young male’s natural rebelliousness. Those old white power structures used to have systems for young males to “sow their wild oats” and then settle into the normal routine of being a responsible man. Those have been wrecked by feminism. It turns out that there is little point in being a responsible man when the women are not good at being women.

In fairness, feminism would never have gone anywhere if ruling class males had done their duty and maintained the old ways. The bourgeois society that arose in the 20th century, especially in America, brought bourgeois degeneracy with it. Over the course of the 20th century, America and then the West has come to be defined by the coffee house radical seeking new ways to stand out from tradition and custom. Feminism and the pickup artist are two manifestations of this process.

Interestingly, both Andrew Tate and his woke feminist critics are right. From his perspective, the hedonistic lifestyle built around the exploitation of liberated women is completely rational. If modern society has no rewards for playing the traditional male role, if in fact it punishes those who play that role, then logic says the male should reject that role and seek profit where he can find it. Biologically that means getting as much high status stuff and as many females as possible.

The woke feminists are also correct in pointing out that males living outside the feminist cultural norms are a direct threat to their existence. Modern bourgeois society depends upon males playing the traditional roles in key areas, while the ruling class free rides off of their efforts. It is a parasitic relationship that can only work if the males among the Dirt People play along with it. The lifestyle of Andrew Tate threatens the balance between the host and the parasite.

Of course, no society can survive if the males are like Andrew Tate and the females are like his woke feminist critics. To be a man is to be trusted by other men to keep safe that which is important to men. Andrew Tate cannot be trusted around your women or your belongings, so he is not a man. In a crisis, the first thing that happens is the men in charge kill the guys like Andrew Tate. It is addition by subtraction. Not having to worry about him leaves time for important matters.

Similarly, the woke feminists will disappear in a crisis. In fact, all forms of feminism will disappear as soon as things get serious again. For starters, the men in charge will have no patience for it. Like Andrew Tate, some nag complaining about the unfairness of biology is an unnecessary distraction. The responsible females will quickly move in to put a muzzle on these women. When the crisis comes, look for mobs of middle-aged mothers reviving the ducking stool.

In the end, Andrew Tate and his woke feminist antagonists are both products of the carny morality that springs from bourgeois society. Free to indulge in their worst instincts, a bourgeois ruling class will do their worst and then seek to normalize it among the people over whom the rule. Like the people who live the life of excess, a society ruled this way ends in physical and mental despair. Like the man of excess, a society of excess eventually needs an intervention.

Random News Items

Posted on January 6, 2023 by thezman

I had to record the show on Wednesday evening as I had things to do on Thursday, so I was left to guess about the Kevin McCarthy drama. My guess from the start was that this would go on for as long the sides had breath in their lungs, because it has nothing to do with issues and everything to do with personality. Those opposed to McCarthy simply detest the man for who he is and that is not changing.

What is remarkable about this is how willing the rest of the party is to tell their voters how much they detest them. By supporting this bozo, they are giving the finger to their voters in the most obvious way. The angry one-eyed dwarf calling the holdouts “terrorists” is why people are sick of the Republican Party. The party of John McCain is the main reason for the present crisis.

This has been an unexpected boost to our side to start the year. The goofballs in conservative media have taken this opportunity to remind everyone that they are just as loathsome as the party they support. Here we have some of the Fox News actors calling the hold outs insurrectionists. Then they had Anthony Weiner’s best bud attack Lauren Boebert in a live interview. Hilarious.

The best part about this is the party has an easy way out of this jam. They could dump McCarthy and find someone that is not hated, but instead they are rallying around the establishment flag. Even better is that whatever deal they eventually cut with the holdouts will be immediately broken. The party of finks will figure out a way to fink on themselves in the finkiest way possible.