One Big FTX

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Regimeology is not just the art of interpreting the official pronouncements from the managerial elite, but it is also for interpreting their actions. Nothing they say can ever be accepted at face value, so nothing they do is on the level either. It is all signaling back and forth to communicate between nodes of the collective. If the regime happens to do something useful for the people, it is a happy accident. Most of what they do is about the internal dynamics of the regime.

The Sam Bankman-Fried story is a good example. At this point everyone understands that this is not a corporate financial scandal. There is little chance that the sophisticated people involved with this guy and his partners were unaware of the nature of his business. The entertainment people hired to shill for the company had no idea, as hey are stupid people, but the sharps putting important people in touch with this weird looking goblin of a man were not fooled.

The one thing we know is it was a money laundering operation to move cash into the pockets of politicians and connected people in the regime. To no one’s surprise, there is a Ukraine angle here. Apparently, Ukraine was taking money handed over by Washington and putting some of it into crypto accounts on the FTX exchange, allegedly to pay their own people. The absurdity of that claim is obvious. Most likely it was quietly shifted to other accounts and ended up in other pockets.

They say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but there is nothing that says you cannot teach a new dog old tricks. The heart of the issue is one of the oldest tricks in democratic politics. The politician makes a deal with a favored vendor, who then hires friends and relatives of the politician. Some portion of their salary ends up as expensive gifts to the politician. Alternatively, the vendor rewards the politicians with gobs of campaign cash.

In this case, that old political grift was updated to the digital age. Ukraine put funds into the FTX exchange, which Sam Bankman-Fried then used to buy friends in Washington, making sure those friends were friends of Ukraine. Those friends then made sure Ukraine was getting as much cash as possible. Given that so much was happening in crypto, no one was going to try and follow the money. As long as FTX stayed solvent, his scam could go on forever. Whoopsie!

Of course, we will never know where the money went as the regime sent in one of their best fixers to handle the liquidation of FTX. John J. Ray III is no doubt a competent and honest man, but he is being paid one thousand dollars an hour to clean up the mess, so he is not going to be biting the hand that feeds him. You read that right. He is billing one thousand dollars per hour for his services. The one guy who is assured of getting rich off FTX will be the man liquidating its remaining assets.

They can scrub the books and make sure the content creators in the media tell the right story, but that still leaves the main players. The “polycule” that was running this scam is too colorful to ignore. If these people looked like a Chuck Schumer family photo, they could possibly get a pass, but this group is simply too absurd. The two principles, Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, the woman who looks like a turtle, are household names now, so the regime has to deal with them.

That is where regimeology comes into play. The Clinton crime family sent Jamie Gorelick into work with Turtle Girl. Gorelick, for those too young or depressed to remember the 1990’s, was the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, which she ran into bankruptcy, while creating the mortgage crisis. She walked away from the disaster with close to $30 million. Now she is the lawyer for Turtle Girl, who did to FTX what Gorelick did to the mortgage industry.

The reason they sent in Gorelick is to make sure their interests are protected, which probably means they helped her get a deal with the Feds. She keeps her mouth shut about the family business and she avoids a long prison sentence. That helps the Feds shape the charges against Bankman-Fried in such a way that leaves the Clinton family business out of the courtroom. Maybe it helps Mr. Bankman-Fried recall specific shenanigans with enemies of the family.

The fact that they let him out on bond, rather than send him to Epstein’s old holding cell, suggests he is playing ball. Most likely he had to agree to not do anymore media events until his case is resolved. The one thing everyone in the regime can agree upon is they do not want this guy running his mouth in public. On the other hand, if he suddenly commits suicide or decides to get his fifth Covid booster, then we can assume the regime did not want to roll the dice with him.

Of course, like all of the Ukraine grifting, we will never get an honest accounting of what happened with this caper. The only thing we can know is the regime is getting reckless, because they simply do not care enough to be careful. Now that we are fortified for democracy, they can do as they please. As long as the economy keeps chugging along and there is no major crisis, they can steal as much as they can carry. America is one big FTX now. What could go wrong?

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

An Orgy Of Self-Satisfaction

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Note: This being the time of year when people feel generous, you may be thinking about sending a few bucks to a worthy cause. If you are an HBD fan or a supporter of academic integrity, you should consider kicking in a few bucks to the Bryan Pesta fundraiser that you can learn more about here.

A common theme on this side of the great divide is the growing perception gap between the people in the regime that rules over the Global American Empire and the people who are trapped inside that empire. The relationship between the ruled and their rulers is becoming two black boxes. The people see their rulers perform, but why they are doing what they are doing makes little sense. The rulers look over the walls and see nothing but monsters lying in wait for them.

This growing disconnect was on display in the Imperial Capital, when the dictator of Ukraine arrived to a hero’s welcome. Dictator is not a word the regime members use, even though it is the correct title. Zelensky rules with an iron fist, throwing critics into dungeons and terrorizing the people into submission. The excuse is the war, but democratic countries still hold elections in times of crisis. Tyrants suspend the rule of law when it suits their interests.

For most Americans, Ukraine is a weird place far away that has no bearing on their lives, because it should have no bearing on their lives. Most Americans feel for the common people whose lives are ruined by the war. Most American would prefer it if their government did something to end the conflict. In fact, it is safe to say that Americans wish their government were the global peacemaker. That would be something that could genuinely unite a very divided country.

Otherwise, the typical American has no interest in this war. If provided the facts, they would be appalled at the actions of their government. The Ukrainians took delivery of High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) from American and immediately used them to target residential areas of the Donbas. War is always an ugly business and brother wars are the worst in this regard. Even so, the typical American would want nothing to do with the deliberate targeting of civilians.

The fact is, the typical American, regardless of political affiliation, would wholeheartedly agree with John Quincy Adams when he said “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Anyone living in the world of normal Americans knows this. Despite this, the regime put on a prime time show in which the dictator of Ukraine, dressed like an extra from bad war movie, gave a weird speech to Congress. In that speech he demanded more money from the average American and gave the strong impression that he thinks the average American is not pulling his weight in terms of sacrificing for a country he cannot locate on a map.

What made the spectacle grotesque was the fawning over this belligerent midget by the regime leaders. It was a vulgar display of the disconnect that now exists between the regime and the people. Mitch McConnell came out and said that his number one priority, to the exclusion of all else, is shoveling untold billions into the rat hole that is the war in Ukraine. Imagine being a guy struggling to pay his rent in Kentucky having to listen to that lecture.

What makes the whole thing revolting to the average person is that everyone knows much of the money is being stolen. Even though the FBI has been working long hours to suppress the facts of the Hunter Biden laptop, the typical American knows the Biden family is as crooked as a ram’s horn. They know all of these people are corrupt, yet they have to watch these people celebrate their alleged moral purity over shoveling more cash into the Ukraine money laundering machine.

In other words, the growing gap between the regime and the people is not simply a gap in understanding or a gap in priorities. It is a moral gap. Every day the people inside the regime imagine themselves on higher moral ground than the day before, while the people looking on see their leaders sinking into a swamp of moral depravity. It is not just that there is a gap, but that the gap is rapidly widening. Each new outrage by the freaks of the regime lowers their standing with the people.

Few commentators have noticed the parallel between Washington’s support for Ukraine and the support for Vietnam sixty years ago. It is a good comparison because the cause is the same. The people running Vietnam policy were every bit as deluded about their intelligence as the people running Ukraine policy. In fact, Victoria Nuland and the rest of the Kagan cult are setting new standards for Dunning-Kruger. Mx. Nuland is an unfathomably stupid woman.

The important parallel is deeper than just shared stupidity. Vietnam undermined the trust people had in their rulers to the point where serious people became concerned that the country was headed for a breakup. That was in a relatively homogenous and prosperous country. Today’s America is an irreconcilable collection of fractious and deracinated people with no reason to hang together other than convenience and fear of an increasingly hostile ruling class.

If the economic chickens come home to roost in 2023 as the economic experts tell us, this erosion of trust and respect for the regime will quickly become a crisis. People may look back at this shameful orgy of self-satisfaction, at the expense of the people, as a tipping point in the relationship between the regime and the people. Watching that show, it would take a heart of stone not to hate these people. It was the point when even the most faithful civic nationalist began to hate.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Gracchi Principle

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Note: This is the time of year to be generous to those in need, so if you are looking for a place to give, here is an option. Most certainly know the story, but for those who do not, here is the background.

A feature of a ruling elite in decline is that they no longer respect the rules they have in place to govern their own behavior. Every society has a ruling class and within that ruling class there is competition. Despite what the natural rights proponents argue, there is a natural desire for hierarchy. Some people want to be at the top, while others aim a bit lower. Humans will compete for positions on the status tree in every form of human organization.

That is why ruling elites need rules. These rules are about governing the natural competition that will exist inside the ruling class. These rules also govern how one can enter the ruling class and how one can be expelled. As is true of all human organizations, the first question every ruling class must answer is “who are we?” and the answer to that question is a set of rules that define who is in, how you get in and how you remain in the ruling class.

In a healthy ruling class, as with any healthy human organization, the rules are more of a state of mind than a written set of laws. The early Roman republic had rules and those rules were the spirit that animated the republic. Brutus did not have to be told the rules, with regards to his sons actions in the Tarquinian conspiracy. He stood and watched stoically as his sons were executed for their crimes against the republic, thus making Brutus the ever lasting symbol of republican virtue.

Over time of course, human nature takes over and people begin to nibble away at the spirit of those rules, which inevitably results in some sort of formal codification of the rules, if for nothing else than to make it easier to handle disputes. The spirit of the law gives way to the letter of the law and the enforcement of the rules by the people benefitting from the present interpretation of the rules. It is that last bit that leads to the final phase of every ruling elite.

When the rules are first written down, everyone agrees on the meaning of the text, but over time that comes into dispute. On the one hand, people at the lower end of the status tree seek advantage in any ambiguity. If they can get everyone to agree on some new meaning of a word or phrase, they can maybe arbitrage that ambiguity to their advantage and move up the status tree. On the other hand, the people at the top want to stay at the top, so they soon engage in the same practice.

The fact is, once the ruling elite begins to question their own rules, the ruling elite is dead in spirit, because there is no turning back from this phase. The reason is they no longer have a shared spirit of the rules. The written rules were an effort to recapture that spirit by throwing a net of words over the hole, but that inevitably leads to people looking for holes in the net. Outsiders use the holes to sneak into the elite and insiders use the holes to oust competitors from the elite.

We have a real world example of this happening. The House has dumped Donald Trump’s tax returns into the public. This is probably their final act of spite against Trump, as the Republicans take over next month. Spite is the correct word here. The reason for doing it is they hope something in it will embarrass Trump. This is a remarkable thing in that these people have obsessed over Trump for going on a decade and they have yet to learn that you cannot embarrass Donald Trump.

Putting that aside, it has been a rule in America since the 16th Amendment was passed that a citizen’s relationship with the federal state with regards to his taxes is a private matter, unless a dispute arises about taxes owed. At that point, the matter goes into a court where the necessary evidence is presented. The IRS does not distribute personal tax data and the individual is under no obligation to publish his tax data. In fact, anyone publishing someone’s tax data is breaking the law.

This issue of privacy with regards to tax data is mostly a ruling class privilege, but like all elite privileges, it has been turned into a moral principle. You see, the rich people gaming the tax system do not have to make this public because it is a sacred principle of America that your taxes remain private. Whether this is a good idea is debatable, but for over a century, everyone in power agreed it was a good idea. So much so they ran Nixon off for merely questioning it.

Now, the people releasing Trump’s tax data are not worried about this happening to them if Trump wins the White House in 2024. First of all, the key states have been fortified for democracy, so everyone knows the 2024 result. What they should be concerned with is someone in the system now using this new loophole to leverage their way up the ladder. Normalizing the release of private tax data is a high price to pay for exacting revenge against Trump.

That is the danger of exceptions. They have knock on effects that are not always easy to assess, but they also do something else. Normalizing this sort of gainsaying erodes trust in the rules. If every comma in the law is now up for interpretation, what is the point of having rules? History tells us that the answer to that question is a man on a horse choosing to cross a river. In other words, the rules based society collapses and something or someone replaces it.

In the fullness of time, the historians will look at the Trump business as an example of the steady decline of the American empire. Trump may be cast as the Gracchi brothers, not for what he did but for what he came to represent. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus normalized the use of violence by the elite in defense of power. The grotesque abuse of power by the regime to counter the populist surge represented by Trump has yet to go that far, but there is still time until the next “election.”

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Case Against Trump

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Note: Is the man in your life a lifeless lump on the couch? Is the little lady acting more like an old lady? Need to add some spice to your life? Then head over to Minter & Richter for a jar or two of their hot sauce.

The January 6 committee has finally wrapped up its work with a series of criminal referrals for Donald Trump. Exactly no one is surprised by this result, as this was obviously the point of the charade from the start. The only people surprised by the ending are the cranks and crazies that still bang on about Trump. The one interesting thing about this is that it highlights the defining feature of the people who compose the core of the anti-Trump cult.

There are two big questions with this latest development. The first is whether the Department of Justice will go ahead and indict Trump. Merrick Garland has been under intense pressure from the crazies to throw Trump in jail, but he has so far found a way to avoid deciding. He just appointed one of their favorite goofballs to operate as a special prosecutor. It was a delaying tactic, much in the way that the appointment of John Durham was a way to run out the clock.

Garland is a bloodthirsty fanatic like the rest of his cult, but he understands the danger of bearing his fangs in public. If he makes it too obvious that his cult no longer has any respect for the people or institutions of the country, there could be trouble. These people believe deeply in the power of narrative, so the narrative builders are busy inventing new stories to provide the content creators in the media. These things take time, so the final call is probably months away.

The other big question is whether this is good for us. There are a few schools of thought on the whole throw Trump in jail business. The conventional school is that even though everyone knows this is Stalinist nonsense, it is another blow to his brand, which is dying from a thousand cuts right now. The cumulative effect of these assaults is slowly marginalizing Trump. At some point, Trump will have to agree to go out with a whimper and thus leave his supporters without a leader.

That seems to be the thinking of the anti-Trump cultists. They think they are the white hats with the support of the public. The counter is that Trump is once again blessed with the best enemies. Just when people get tired of his act, his opponents remind the world that Trump stirs the passions of the most loathsome, vulgar people at the center of the current crisis. No man has been blessed with the volume of free media as Trump and this is just more free attention.

There are other scenarios for how this plays out. Garland could formerly charge Trump and then the Republicans mount a “totally spontaneous and authentic” campaign to remove him from primary ballots. In the same way they engineered Congressman Steve King’s exit from politics, they would run the same scam on Trump. By coordinating with the other party, they would pretend they are simply protecting the party from this obviously bad man.

From a dissident perspective, this would be manna from heaven. No one would be fooled by this and it would bolster the case for boycotting the party. The only thing keeping many people engaged with Republican politics is the hope that the highly corrupt leadership could one day be replaced. Trump is their symbol of hope, so his engineered removal by party leaders would be the final straw. Millions of Trump voters would suddenly start thinking about boycotting the system.

Even if the Republican party sits this out, Trump getting hauled away in chains is good news for dissidents. Given what has been revealed about the FBI’s involvement in censuring speech on-line and the DOJ running a domestic spying operation on Congress, it is hard to not see the bananas in this republic. Biden having his political rival thrown in prison on manufactured charges would instantly vaporize support for the system as a whole.

George Washington famously said that the last act of any government is to loot the treasury, but he turns out to have been wrong. In pre-ideological societies, this was probably a fair observation. Like the rest of the Founders, Washington was deeply influenced by the English Civil War. He had ancestors who fought on the side of the king, so it was more than just historical. In the age before ideology, money was what eventually broke the legitimacy of government.

In the ideological age, the final acts of the government are about snuffing out the last flames of love the people have for the cause. The Soviets eventually made even the most loyal communists cynical. Mao had to murder a lot of people, but eventually the ChiComs lost faith in communism. Of course, the final acts of revolutionary France were to bring the Jacobins to meet Madame Guillotine. As with marriage, when the love for the cause fades, the relationship soon dies.

That is the way to look at this Trump business and all the other stuff that has been revealed over the last decade. The loathsome degenerates parading across the political stage rely on public faith in the system. Every outrage undermines that faith until a tipping point is reached. Maybe it is Trump being thrown in a dungeon or maybe it is something else, but the tipping point is always closer than we think. Godspeed anti-Trumpers, Godspeed.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Democratic Wars

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Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about the JFK assassination, a review of the movie Rebel Without A Cause and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack. Note also that Michael Anton penned a foam-flecked rant about my post on the myth of natural rights. I will respond in time.

Note #2: If you are looking for a book to read, you may want to buy the book A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story. It is a first person account of the events by a couple of good guys who deserve your support. It is a great Christmas gift.

It used to be said that democracies do not go war with one another, even though democracies are often in the center of wars. This has always been the argument for promoting democracy. In theory, if all the world is organized into democracies of one type or another, there can be no war. Another take on this is the claim that countries that have a McDonalds will not go to war with one another. People who embrace liberal democracy have no reason to fight one another.

Of course, democracy is a loaded term that can mean just about anything. Ireland is a democracy where they put Christians in prison for violating the speech laws. Syria treats its Christian population better than most democracies, but it is not a democracy, so the biggest democracy in the world, the United States, feels entitled to bomb its cities and demand regime change. Norway is threatening to jail a woman for reading a dictionary, which is becoming the norm in democracies.

Strictly speaking, there are no democracies in the world. The so-called democracies have some form of representative government. Issues are not put before the voters or even discussed with the voters. As the late Robert Dahl explained, the so-called democracies are actually polyarchies. Power is invested in multiple people, who are charged with implementing what they perceive as the general will. This is done through a set procedures and institutions.

Dahl further argues that this form of government is the creation of the United States and to a lesser degree France. During the twentieth century, this form of government was imposed on Western Europe and parts of Asia, after having been conquered by the United States in the Second World War. After the Cold War, the collective West then imposed this on the former eastern bloc countries. Therefore, Western democracies are a collection of polyarchies.

This helps explain why the Western democracies are so aggressive. It has been roughly thirty years since the end of the Cold War and in that time the Western democracies have been waging war on the world. The term “regime change” is a term everyone in the world understands, because it is always attached to a war of aggression by Western democracies, usually led by the United States. The current war against Russia by the West is all about regime change in Moscow.

The reason the world’s great champion of democracy has been waging war on the world for the last three decades is that the United States has always been an aggressive warrior country. Since the founding, America has been either at war with some other people, at war with itself or creating the conditions for the next war in the name of spreading democracy. It is fair to say that the reason America exists, as a practical matter, is to make war on the world.

The United States is a country created in war. Integral to the founding was the war for independence, which is central to the American identity. Of course, as soon as America was independent, it refused to repay the French for their help in the war, the result being the Quasi-War with France. Right after that it was the Barbary Wars against Muslim pirates and then the War of 1812. American barely existed for a generation before it was declaring war on the world.

The 19th century was one war after another. In addition to the three wars above, there was the First Seminole War, the Texas Revolution, the Second Seminole War, the Aroostook War, the Mexican–American War, the Third Seminole War, the Second Opium War, the Pig War, the First and Second Cortina Wars, the American Civil War, the Second Samoan Civil War, the Spanish–American War, the Philippine–American War, the Moro Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion.

All of those wars took place against the backdrop of the endless war on the Indians, as America conquered the continent. If you accept the argument from most conservatives that the real founding of the country was the Civil War, the so-called second founding theory, then it is reasonable to say that the point of American democracy is to make war on the world in order to impose American democracy. This explains the 20th century, which was nothing but endless war.

This brings us to the present. The United States is leading the Western democracies in a war against Russia and its allies. Washington openly talks about regime change in Moscow and Beijing. It has not mentioned regime change in New Delhi, but you can be sure that is on tap, as the Indians move closer to Russia. None of these countries want war with America, but they do not want to be fortified with democracy at the point of gun, so they are fighting a war for survival.

America is a country of roughly three hundred million people in a world that is around nine billion people, give or take. That is three percent of the global population, but responsible for at least half the war mongering in the world. If we add in the population of Europe, then we get to roughly 13% of the global population. It is reasonable to wonder if the rest of the world is going to continue to tolerate this 13% of the population being responsible for over half of the wars in the world.

Putting that aside, the violent nature of American democracy raises an important question about cause and effect. Is it the moral spring of democracy that causes America to wage war on the world? This need to impose her values on the world naturally leads to war. On the other hand, is it the natural fanaticism of the people that leads to the embrace of both the secular religion of democracy and the impulse to impose its values on the world?

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Year End Finale

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It is that time of year again when I go into my winter hibernation. For the next two weeks the show will be on hiatus for Christmas and New Year’s. There will be regular written content here and behind the green door, but it is time to give the old pipes a rest and prepare for the new season of the show. This is the time of year when I plot new ideas and changes to the format.

For the last show of the season, I decided to keep it light and do some newsy stuff, but one thing I missed is the latest Twitter drama. I must admit that even though I am not on Twitter, I am enjoying this more than I should. For example, I see that Keith Olbermann was suspended by Musk for being an all around horrible person. The new horrible person rule in the terms of service is going to be great.

It also appears that Musk has banned doxing and mobbing. Antifa accounts will no longer be allowed to post personal data about normal people. They will also be banned if they try to get a mob together to attack a normal person. This is pretty much the entirety of their activity on Twitter. They are either doxing people or they are spying on people, hoping to get them attacked in public.

The best part of this is that Musk banned some activists from the mainstream sites like the Washington Post and CNN. All of the fruitcakes who use the word “journalist” like it means “cleric” are up in arms. “Just imagine if this had happened to a Fox News reporter” they gasp. The fact that the old regime did this routinely has been forgotten, because fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism.

Where this leads is hard to know. The crazies will never abandon the site, but Musk seems to be determined to apply some basic rules evenly. The Yoel Roth/child porn stuff seems to have rattled Musk. The day he fired that perv was when things started changing quickly as far as moderation. History says the sexual degeneracy stuff is always the bridge too far in these matters.

What is happening with Twitter is a good reminder that one person with power is better than a million people with no power. The reason to win over the masses is so that people with real power decide to join the cause. That can only happen when the masses appear to hold the moral high ground. Musk was moved to act because people he liked were getting the shaft from Twitter.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Trump The Hoarder (Link) (Link)
  • Kevin McCarthy (Link)
  • Sam Bankman-Fried (Link)
  • Twitter (Link)
  • Kanye & The Jews (Link) (Link)
  • Alternative Reality (Link)
  • The Electoral College (Link)

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

The Canary Is Dead

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Note: This is the time of year to be generous to those in need, so if you are looking for a place to give, here is an option. Most certainly know the story, but for those who do not here is the background.

If you live near a public tennis court, you may have noticed that there are not that many people playing tennis these days. Many courts have simply been abandoned to nature, due to a lack of interest. Depending upon where you live, you may see people playing pickleball, which has nothing to do with pickles. It is a game that is something like ping pong, except the players are on the table. They use paddles and a plastic ball, taking turns hitting the ball back and forth over a net.

According to the wiki page, the game was invented as a way to give kids something to do when they were bored. Over time it caught on around the neighborhood and soon it was becoming a thing. Recently the sport has caught on in a big way with tournaments and leagues around the country. It is very popular with Baby Boomers, because they can play the game while stationary. They just bat the ball back and forth to get some exercise and socialize with friends.

This is a bit ironic. Fifty years ago, tennis went from being a rich person sport, like polo and golf, to something of a national craze. In the 1970’s big tennis matches were must see television and the stars of the game were household names. Baby Boomers were young and fit, so they could play tennis. Then father time made tennis much less enjoyable and tennis went into decline. Fifty years later the Boomers are back on the court but playing pickleball instead.

It is hard to overstate the warping effect the Boomer generation has had on the American culture. The tennis to pickleball phenomenon is one example, but all of sports has been changed by the Boomers. Through most of the twentieth century, sports attendance was light, but then the Boomers got into sports and suddenly going to games was a thing. Hundreds of billions have been spent over the last half century creating sports arenas for the Boomers.

Of course, standing outside for three hours is tiring on the old back and knees, so sports attendance is in decline. College football, which is a quintessential Baby Boomer pastime is seeing a collapse in attendance. All of sudden the people who make a trip once a year to catch a game at their alma mater are finding a reason to watch the game from the comfort of the recliner. They can stay in touch with their old classmates on Facebook, so why make the trip to the game?

The decline in attendance is a serious threat to the college model because the infrastructure for this industry relies on donations from alumni. The rich donor wants his friends to see his name on the sports building. He wants his friends to party with him in the luxury suite. If all his friends are at the Villages watching the game on television, what is the point of writing the check? This is why those sagging attendance numbers have colleges in a panic.

Golf is another sport feeling the Boomer decline. This is the sport for the white suburban middle manager. Three decades ago, there were a lot of these people and they filled up golf course around the country. Demographics and the actuarial tables are thinning the ranks and so the number of golfers declines every year. Those little brown guys swimming over the Rio Grande may be natural conservatives, but they will not be taking up the game of golf any time soon.

This decline in participation will mean a decline in interest. Twenty years ago, the big names in sports talk radio were known throughout the culture, because tens of millions of people listened to these guys while at work. The core demographic for these shows was white men between the ages of 25 and 55. That demo is now in steep decline and the listenership is following them. Here is a list the top sports talkers and you probably recognize none of them.

What all this points to is a looming winter for sports entertainment. Some sports like the NFL have been gaming the cable system to tax the public for their product, but that model is facing the same demographic collapse. The grandparents still have a cable subscription, but their kids most likely cut the cord and their grandkids will never have a cable subscription. That assumes the grandkids even exist, which is highly unlikely according to the census.

The decline of the Baby Boomer generation was always going to bring a decline to the leisure industry, but the demographic decline promises a depression. Many will wonder why they should care, but the sports entertainment industry is driven by the same economic principles as the rest of the economy. Those billion dollar stadiums and multibillion dollar franchises are leveraged to the max. It all assumes a growing audience of middle class white people.

You can probably do this same exercise with other parts of the economy. How will the legal rackets maintain themselves when the law schools are forced to drop the LSAT requirement in the name of equity? A courtroom like this is amusing, but it is no way to keep the ambulance chasers in business. Even if the standards do not collapse, the legal profession is about to experience a great die off. Soon, simple cases will take years because of the lack of bodies.

It is easy to overstate things, but the country is about to undergo a demographic revolution, and this is before the Great Replacement discussion. All of the things that relied upon a massive number of suburban white people are going to find they lack the people to maintain the old model. The number of suburban whites as customers is in decline and the number to do the work is in decline. Sports entrainment is the canary in the coal mine and the canary is dead.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Murder Itself Phase

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Note: Let’s face it, you stink. The way to stop stinking is to take a bath and for that you need soap. Havamal Soapworks is where you can find it. It also makes a nice Christmas gift, especially for those smelly people in your life.

A year ago, when the Russians began to assemble forces along the Russia – Ukraine border, Western planners were sure that whatever the Russians were planning could only last a few months. They simply lacked the resources to put an army in the field, especially against a heavily defended opponent, for a long time. The Western response to the Russian advance into Ukraine was predicated on this. By now, the war should have been over due to a Russian withdrawal.

This short time frame thinking is clear in the economic sanctions that were levied against Russia when the war started. It did not require an advanced degree in economics to see that these sanctions would hurt the West. Cutting off a critical vendor has to have a negative impact. Western countries basically went to war with their most important supplier of energy. They were willing to do this because the war would be short and Russia would surrender to the West.

On its face this always looked like a crazy decision, but it was based on two assumptions that have turned out to be even nuttier. The first assumption was that Russia was nothing but a giant gas station run by drunken peasants. Western economic sanctions would send the country into economic turmoil and those drunken peasants would quickly revolt against their stupid rulers. Back in the spring, predictions like this were placed all over Western media.

The second assumption was that China and India would eagerly jump aboard the sanctions train. This has turned out to be the biggest error. China and India have not only refused to join the sanctions regime, but they have also moved closer to Russia and are now integral partners in the anti-Western bloc. More critically, OPEC+ has also moved closer to both Russia and China. Saudi Arabia recently signed critical deals with China, despite Western pressure to the contrary.

These horrible blunders by Western planners have resulted in a long brutal war on the doorstep of Europe. The Russians have slowly reconfigured their systems for a long war, both economic and military. On the battlefield, they are relentlessly pounding Ukrainian positions while minimizing their casualties. The battle for Bakhmut, for example, is being called a meat grinder. The Ukrainians are losing a thousand men a day defending this one place in the Donbas.

No one in the West cares at all about the lives of Ukrainians, but they have to care about the growing economic cost to the West. In parts of Europe, energy costs are five times higher now than before the war. An economic system based on cheap energy is not going to hold for long when the energy costs start to rise. Europe is just at the beginning of this energy crisis, with 2023 promising even bigger price hikes. How much longer before this spills into the political arena?

People who have seen the battle space in this war have described it as something like the trench warfare of the Great War. The Ukrainian army is dug into massive fortifications, surrounded by trench systems. In places like Bakhmut, two thousand artillery shells a day will fall on the defenders. The defenders fire back, but their artillery lacks the range of Russian systems. Even so, much of the fighting is the sort of artillery duels that were common in the Great War.

There is another parallel between the two wars. There is no path forward for a negotiated end to the fighting. In the Great War, both sides were locked into a mode of thought that prevented the necessary compromises. For both sides, the war became an end in itself. Something similar seems to have gripped the West, which has categorically ruled out a negotiated settlement. Repeatedly, Western leaders have declared there can only be one result – total victory.

As if to make sure the Russians also forgo all hope of a negotiated settlement, the West sent former German chancellor Angela Merkel out to tell the world that her prior dealings with Russia were a trick to buy the Ukrainians time. Until that interview, Merkel was one of a few Western leaders Russia thought she could trust. Now they must assume that they can trust nothing from the West. Therefore, Russia can never expect to get a deal from the West at the bargaining table.

All of this leads to another important comparison between this global conflict and the Great War a century ago. A century ago, the British Empire was effectively destroyed by the totally unnecessary war in Europe. Something similar may be waiting for the Global American Empire in this war. Instead of surrounding Russia with enemies, the war will end with the West being surrounded by a league of regional powers committed to defending themselves from color revolutions.

The question that must follow is can the economic and political model of the Global American Empire survive when it is confined to a minority of the world? The West is a little more than a tenth of the global population. How will the GAE function if the EU is in economic ruins? Can the petrodollar survive if the largest energy producers are comfortable dealing in alternative currencies? These are questions that get to the core logic of the American empire.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the same thing that happened to the British Empire at the start of the last century. The Global American Empire is not dying because it has run its course, but because it is run by stupid people who keep making critical errors in vitally important areas of imperial business. Adams famously said of democracy that it “wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Perhaps this is true of democratic empires and America is now in the murder itself phase.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Custodial Musings

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Note: Is the man in your life a lifeless lump on the couch? Is the little lady acting more like an old lady? Need to add some spice to your life? Then head over to Minter & Richter for a jar or two of their hot sauce.

Wawa is a local convenience store chain in the Mid-Atlantic. The typical store is a big gas station near a major road, along with a store selling the sorts of things working people would pickup during the day. Their big draw is a sandwich shop that makes a decent cold cut at a very good price. It is not gourmet eating, but it is far above what you would get from a fast food joint. Of course, being a convenience store, they have the quick items you would expect.

Another take on this is a chain calling itself Royal Farms. They have copied the model used by Wawa and many other chains. They used to be strictly a convenience store chain, but they have been building big gas stations. Many are something like a small truck stop, providing services to the big scary truck people. Like Wawa, they have a sandwich shop, but their hook is fried chicken. They claim to have the best take away fried chicken on the planet.

One interesting difference between the two chains in the Greater Lagos area is that Wawa hires mostly white people, while Royal Farms hires black people. Wawa will hire the occasional nonwhite, but the stores are 90% white. Royal Farm is 100% black at their stores. This turns up in the customer base too. Go into a Wawa at lunch time and it is all white working people. Go to Royal Farm and it is lots of black people, along with some Hispanics and white working-class people.

The one thing both chains have in common is a labor problem. Royal Farm is the most amusing in this regard. It is entirely possible to order a turkey sub and be handed a roll with just the condiments and then be told they are out of turkey. Alternatively, it is possible to order something but you get nothing or someone got tired of waiting and simply took your food when you were not looking. Of course, this all assumes the ordering kiosk is working, which is not always the case.

Like many take out chains, Royal Farms was an early adopter of the self-service kiosk in order to solve the quality control problem. Quality control in this case means the staff, who struggle to do the basics. Mother Nature does not always get it right and the defects end up working at Royal Farms. This problem has turned up all over the retail space, but Royal Farms seems to get the worst of the worst. There is a World Star Hip-Hip vibe to their hiring decisions.

No one is immune to the retail staffing problems and as a result these two competing chains have been in a technology war. The self-service kiosk for ordering was the first logical step to reduce errors in food orders. Both aggressively push their app and the use of delivery services. Both now have self-checkout kiosks that blow away the ones you see at the big retail chains like Home Depot. The goal, of course, is to reduce the staffing to the barest minimum.

What this points to is something that people have been warning about for decades and that is the great robot take over of the workplace. Go into one of these chains and you can easily imagine a time when you order your sandwich from the screen and a robot assembles it, wraps it up and delivers it to a pickup area. You pay for your items at a self-checkout kiosk using your bank app. The only interaction with a human is the guards who make sure you paid your bill.

This is not limited to retail. The mass layoffs at Twitter confirm what many people have suspected for a long time. There are lots of people sitting in office cubicles who have no real purpose. Maybe they are there to tick boxes. Maybe they perform some function mandated by the government, which could be automated. Maybe the marketplace has stopped functioning, allowing for massive overstaffing. That clearly has been the case at the giant tech firms like Twitter.

The people who have been warning about the automation revolution have always asked the question, what happens to the displaced workers? The teddy bear conservatives cling to is the great invisible hand of the marketplace. Sure, the robots will replace the people, but the magic of creative destruction will save the day. Look around the retail space and that is clearly not happening. It will certainly not be the case for the tens of thousands of people fired from Big Tech.

Even if the magic beans of capitalism are not the answer, it does not follow that there will be a neo-Luddite revolt against the machines. Again, you get a glimpse of the future in these retail chains. Go into a Wawa and people are happy to interact with a robot to get their food and checkout. Everything about that experience, in fact, everything about their lives has been reduced to a transaction. As long as people can get their extra large drink and snacks, they will not complain.

That is the lesson of Covid. Those fired Twitter people were in make work jobs and they knew they we in make work jobs. Here are some examples from conservative media that have been making the rounds. The reason these people liked working at home so much is they were not doing anything at work. Covid allowed them to pretend that goofing off at home was real work. The reason firms are struggling to get people back to work is many of their workers have no real purpose.

How big of a leap is it to slash the pointless people from the workforce and then give them busy work at home? Some parts of the country spent close to two years experimenting with this idea. It was like the old gag around Washington whenever there was a big snowstorm. Nonessential workers were told to stay home, which meant everyone working for the government. Something similar happened during Covid and we learned that most people were not essential.

Of course, Covid came with rules to make sure the suddenly idle were not going outside and getting into trouble. Short of a revolution, we will never know why the rulers all got on the lock down bandwagon, but one likely answer is they feared millions of idle people milling around looking for something to do. Making sure they stayed in their huts, plugged into the internet was a primary goal. The robot revolution will no doubt come with something similar to pacify the masses.

Stand around in a place like Wawa and it is not hard to see where this is all heading and then wonder if it can work. We are about to tip into a world with lots of useless people, kept busy by a custodial state. They will be given credits to buy the things they want and kept busy through various means. Some will be assigned busy work, while others will simply be amused into a catatonic state. Still others will be used to police their fellow inmates in the custodial state.

From the perspective of the managerial class, this seems like a great challenge that will give purpose to their lives, even though many will be assigned to busy work. Can a people live like this is another question. Note that during Covid there was not the predicted baby boom. It turns out that lots of idle people at home did not let nature take its course after all. Maybe such an unnatural way of living does not put one in the mood to bring new life into such a world.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Welcome To The New Rome

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Note #1: I have multiple goodies up behind the green door this week. The schedule going forward will be two written pieces a week and one podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Note #2: If you are looking for a book to read, you may want to buy the book A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story. It is a first person account of the events by a couple of good guys who deserve your support. it would be a great Christmas gift.

Imagine you agree to play a game with someone and the first rule of the game is that your opponent sets the rules of the game and he can change the rules whenever he likes for any reason he likes. That would mean that no matter your mastery of the rules, you must always lose the game because your opponent will simply change the rules whenever necessary. You would spend all of your time learning rules that keep changing to put you at a disadvantage.

Similarly, imagine that you decide to build a house on another man’s property, without getting a fixed agreement on your use rights. Since the landowner could at any time tell you to remove your house or even deny you access to it, the focus of your life must be making sure that you are in good standing with the landowner. While technically the house is yours, in reality he sets the rules for how you use it. Like the game example above, your life is about complying with changing rules.

This is the situation for professional Christians. They have agreed to allow their opponents to set the rules of the moral framework. Like the guy building a house on another man’s land, they have built their church on progressive land. The professional Christian must always get permission to use his church. Or like the game example, he must spend his time making sure the tenets of his faith comport with the changing morality of the prevailing the moral framework.

You see it in this rather bizarre post at First Things. There are two main assertions made in the post. One is that racism, and the mythological concept of white supremacy, are the worst things possible. The other point is that it is the duty of Christians to purge those accused of these sins from the ranks of the political Right. To make this point, he piles on a guy named Thomas Achord, a headmaster of a private classical Christian academy, who was accused of blasphemy by the Left.

A feature of professional Christianity is to not only abandon a fellow Christian attacked by the enemies of the faith, but to also rush to the front of the line of bigots taking turns kicking the accused. Here is the execrable Rod Dreher taking some self-righteous shots at Thomas Achord. Like David French, Rod Dreher never misses an opportunity to promote his own virtue. He is who Emerson had in mind when he said, “The more he spoke of his virtue, the faster we counted the spoons.”

Note that Christian mercy never comes up when the Left starts howling for the blood of a Christian accused of violating the progressive faith. Professional Christians are like a pack of wild dogs. As soon as they sense a member of the pack is weak, they pounce on the poor fellow, tearing him to pieces. One cannot help but wonder if this behavior is solely to please the Left. Many of them, like Dreher and French, seem to take pleasure in these sadistic rituals.

Of course, the reason that professional Christians rush out these condemnations whenever one of their own has violated progressive dogma is to let the people holding the other end of the leash know they are a good boy. For professional Christians, what matters is remaining in good standing with the Left. These ritualized condemnations are a public act of piety – progressive piety. It is an affirmation that Christian piety must always rest on the moral foundations of the Left.

Another example of this sort vulgarity is this self-published video from Anglican priest in Nova Scotia Canada. If not for the collar, one would be forgiven for thinking Father Ed Trevors is a weirdo from the grievance studies department. In the description of this tantrum, he makes sure to post his pronouns. One thing missing from his public act of piety is a reference to Scripture. Like all Anglican priests, he is probably unfamiliar with the foundation text of his church.

Putting aside the vulgarity of these displays, the premise of the argument in that First Things article is anything but a Christian argument. Jesus Christ had plenty of chances to state his opinions about racism and white supremacy. He had nothing to say on the matter. His disciples wrote and spoke about the full range of the human dilemma but never bothered to mention anything about racism. Scripture is silent on the issue of race and the moral claims around it.

The reason for this is that these are entirely novel concepts conjured in the last century for purely political reasons. Even those on the winning side of the American Civil War lacked the racism concept. Lincoln famously said, “there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality.” He repeated these claims throughout the Civil War to audiences on his side.

Now, there are people who will cherry pick lines from Scripture claiming that Jesus was very much opposed to racism. Never mind that the concept did not exist in the age of Jesus and his language lacked words for the concept. Even if one can make these leaps of logic, the reason for doing so is to make Christian morality match progressive morality, in order to please the people controlling public morality. Those who bothered to read their Bible should be thinking of Matthew 6:24 right now.

In fairness, the professional Christian can argue that Christians must live in this world and that means navigating around secular moral claims. That is clearly not what we are seeing with these people. Instead, their Christianity is just part of the sales pitch they use to convince Christian people to embrace secular morality. Once you accept this new class of sins as far worse than those in your theology, you have subordinated your theology to those creating the new class of sins.

Arguably the most challenging thing is this age is to be a Christian. Your enemies control the commanding heights of Western society. Your friends are always looking for a way to profit from their alleged defense of you. It is a good reminder that all moral frameworks must stand alone. In the case of Christianity, it means the logic of the faith must stand outside of and often opposed to the prevailing orthodoxy. Christianity now finds itself where it started. Welcome to the new Rome.

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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.