Bourgeois Fantasy

Posted on September 3, 2021 by thezman

False consciousness is term probably coined by Friedrich Engels to describe a scenario where a subordinate class embraces the ideology of the ruling class, even though the ideology guarantees their subordination. In the communist view of things, workers embraced the bourgeois values of capitalist society, even though it meant they remained at the bottom of the social hierarchy. It was an interesting bit of projection that has been a feature of radicalism since the beginning.

To be a radical in the conventional sense of Western politics starts with a heavy dose of self-deception. Radicals are rarely from the subordinate class. Almost always they are from the ruling elite. They are intellectuals raised in leisure, but convinced they are the authentic voice of the masses. The rare few from the masses have been elevated because they confirm the bourgeois radical’s need for affirmation. As a reward, the striver gets to live in the farmhouse with the pigs.

A glaring example of radical self-delusion is in this clip from the Jimmy Dore Show in which the host discusses the revolution with Chris Hedges. For those unfamiliar, Dore is a comic who has made himself rich doing left-wing comedy. Chris Hedges is an activist who caters to the NPR crowd. He used to write for the New York Times and got famous trafficking in conspiracy theories during the Bush years. He is the type who claimed Bush was a fascist and Iraq was the Sudetenland.

The clip is interesting because both men are convinced they are opposed to the system, when in fact they are products of the system. This is not an act. They truly think they are the avant garde trying to organize a revolt against the system. Further, both seem to think they are working class heroes, leading the proletariat in their struggle against the bourgeois oppressor class. There are times when they sound like a museum exhibit explaining the 1930’s union movements.

Jimmy Dore is a rich guy who lives in a two-million dollar home in California, while Hedges is a rich guy who lives in a mansion in Princeton New Jersey. That is one of the tonier neighborhoods in America. They owe everything that truly matters to them to the system they pretend to oppose. If there was a revolution, they are the on the first train cars heading to the gulags. The only thing more ridiculous than these two talking revolution is the fact that they seem to believe it.

An amusing sidebar here is that they both have put a lot of effort into retconning their life story to match their roles. Hedges claims to have grown up working class, but his family sent him to elite boarding schools. But hey, the Chaffee school is pretty much a juvenile detention center. Dore carries on like his father was Archie Bunker, but in reality, he was a cop who owned a construction business. The system they claim to oppose has been very good to the both of them.

Other than the entertainment value, the reason to pay attention to these sorts of people is they offer an insight into the people in charge. The typical person in mainstream politics suffers from the same sort of self-delusion. Few have ever done real work or known anyone who does real work. Their entire lives have been inside the world of make believe, where they struggle with other actors, pretending to care about the people outside the bubble.

Just as conservatism is a bone the system throws to middle-class white people to keep them busy; socialism is a bone tossed to upper-middle class white people to make them feel special. One of the remarkable features of the Bernie Bro phenomenon is that it is whiter than a Klan rally. Scroll through the clips of the Jimmy Dore show or the Young Turks and it is nothing but palefaces. In no way does this brand of radicalism look anything like the people they claim to represent.

The self-delusion is not a one-way street. There are cynical people in politics, for sure, but most really believe what they are saying. Elizabeth Warren holds court in her mansion telling the wealthy hens in her circle about how she is fighting for working families and the victims of Wall Street. They all congratulate themselves on being the conscience of the people. All of these people are high on their own fumes, which is what keeps them from facing reality.

The thing about the concept of false consciousness is that Engels was inadvertently signaling what would become a prominent feature of radicalism. It is not the subordinate classes that are the victims, but rather the radicals themselves. Whether it is civic nationalists and their utopian fantasies about the Constitution or the middle-class socialists and their utopian fantasies about economics, radicalism requires the participants to live in a state of smug self-delusion.

Perhaps it is the nature of all political systems to delude the beneficiaries, so they do not have to face the reality of their position. The king can know himself, but his court must believe they are acting in the name of honor. The crafty political operator can be as cynical as he likes, but his supporters must see him as a man of virtue, selflessly serving the republic. In liberal democracy, it is the narcotic of radicalism played out in the comfort of the gated mansion.

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The Quest For Meaning

Posted on September 2, 2021 by thezman

When you are living through an age, it is very difficult to see the currents with which the age will be identified. Few people living in the Jazz Age would have guessed they were living in the Jazz Age. In this age, society is whipsawed by one trend after another, so it seems impossible to know which one will be remembered. Maybe this is the geriatric age where aging Baby Boomers ruled the day. Perhaps the democratic age, where mob rule plunged the West into darkness and chaos.

One option may be the age of meaning. This is the time when people are always searching about for meaning and purpose in their lives. They turn the trivial into all-important moments, so they can pretend to be in a struggle. They invent victims of imaginary oppression so they can play the white knight. Every crisis, it turned into a crusade that quickly takes on the trappings of religion. Ours is an age where everyone is on a vision quest and they force the rest of us to play along.

For example, lost in all of the handwringing about Afghanistan is how some became emotionally attached to a place they ignored for two decades. Suddenly, getting our “allies” out was a holy mission. They spent all day on-line playing “digital Dunkirk” as if they were really doing something heroic. All of a sudden, the media was full of stories from people who claimed to working to get their friends out of the country. Of course, those friends were always heroic Afghans, not Americans.

This quest for meaning was not limited to LARP’ing on-line. Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero. They were not satisfied with making noises about it on the House floor. They had to be in the middle of the action. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma decided to play Rambo and went over to personally rescue people. These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play.

Of course, for close to two years we have been hit by a tsunami of this from women claiming they are in the “front lines” of Covid. Just look at the language. They imagine they are in real trenches fighting real monsters. When it started, every nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building. Many got swept up in their fantasies on-line for the same reason.

The main reason the Covid panic is not old news is the people swept up in the cause cannot let go of it. For many, this was the first time in their life they woke up in the morning with a sense of purpose. There are nefarious reasons behind the government response, but it is aided and abetted by the quest for meaning. There are many more people who want to believe the stories are true than those who are offended by the assault on their liberty by the state in response to the problem.

The best way to see this quest for meaning is in things that are not driven by a sense of crisis, but by history. Here is the ridiculous governor of Virginia inserting himself and his co-religionists into the history books. They get to feel like heroes for righting a past wrong, that was probably not wrong. The facts are not important. They need to be part of the long gone struggle. Since the line for the Emmett Till ride is way too long, they picked a different event to exercise their quest for meaning.

This is one reason events like the civil right movement are talked about as if they happened yesterday. Part of it is nostalgia, for sure, but a big part of it is a secondhand nostalgia by people who have no direct connection to the events. Instead, they seek to fill the need for meaning and purpose in their present lives with fantasies about having experienced emotionally important events of the shared past. This allows them to feel like they are part of the struggle from the safety of home.

Bourgeoise restlessness is not a new thing. This desire to do something important seems to be the result of leisure. Young men from good homes have gone off to seek adventure since there have been young men from good homes. We live in an age in which large swaths of the population are idle. Poverty is no longer a threat, as even the poor have more than they need. In one respect, the quest for meaning in a post-scarcity phenomenon driven by an excess of middle-class people.

Another driver though is the devastation wrought by liberal democracy. Social capital in the form of family and community has been used to fire the great engines of the technological state. The transactional replacements, on-line community, social media groups and mass media, are a poor substitute. Like emergency meal replacements, manufactured community can keep you going for a while, but it is a constant reminder of the loss of the real thing, as well as a poor substitute.

At the end of the Time Machine, the protagonists realizes that the future he witnessed was not the failure of man, but the result of his success. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” Once those challenges were conquered, there was no need for the sort of men who rush to the sound of danger. Over time those types faded away and were replaced with the type who easily lived a carefree life as food.

We are learning a similar lesson. Like all living things, humans are wired to do what is necessary to reach sexual maturity. What has always made man unique is the desire to live beyond that point. To look into the heavens for purpose and then manifest that purpose on earth for the benefit and admiration of our people. The dream may be small or grandiose, but it is the dream that gives meaning to life. We are not meant to live in adult daycare centers, marking our days consuming the latest products.

Perhaps the tech overlords will make the virtual quest for meaning good enough to keep the species going for a while longer. We will plug into the machine and have our dreams made true by an algorithm. Maybe we simply make ourselves insane in the increasingly chaotic quest for meaning. Whatever happens, there is a good chance that people look back at this age and know that we were spoiled for choice in the material realm but starved for choice in the spiritual realm.

Christian Zionism

Posted on September 1, 2021 by thezman

If you were to compile a list of the most influential people in history, you would probably start with the most influential ideas. The people responsible for inventing those ideas or popularizing them would be on the list of influential people. Presumably, without those people, the ideas would not have had the same level of impact. Marx would be on the list because he came up with Marxism. Without Marx, it is hard to imagine that branch of socialism developing as it has over 150 years.

Christian Zionism is an idea that does not get much attention, despite the fact it has cast a long shadow over Western history. It is fair to say that Zionism would not exist if not for the Christian Zionists. As much as people like to talk about the influence of Jews and Judaism on the West, it was Christians and a peculiar strain of Christianity that made Zionism possible. In fact, the modern state of Israel probably owes its existence to the hard work of Christian Zionist.

Christian Zionism has its roots in the Protestant Reformation. The revolts against the Church gave rise to a wholesale reassessment of Christian dogma. The distribution of the Bible in vernacular languages allowed radical Protestants to interpret the scriptures in ways contrary medieval Catholic tradition. Christian Zionism can be viewed as the result of the democratization of Christianity. When every man could read the Bible, ever man’s interpretation of Scripture was suddenly equal.

Restorationism was the Protestant idea that the Jews would eventually return to Israel as part of the flow of history. Here you see the early roots of this idea that history flows in one direction toward a predictable end. With regards to the Jews, their return to Israel was part of the end times. It did not take long before this evolved into a belief that helping the Jews return was an essential part of Christianity. Restoring Israel was the next logical step for this branch of Christianity.

Picking the first Christian Zionist or even the most influential one is difficult as the 19th century had many philosemitic Protestants. Of course, all of them were relying on Puritan interpretation of Scripture, so you can probably credit Oliver Cromwell with making it possible for Christian Zionism to flourish. The British empire then spread the idea around the world. Wherever English speaking people exist in large numbers, you have fanatical support for Israel to this day.

The guy who should probably get credit for the invention of Zionism is an Anglican clergyman named William Hechler. He was a rabid crusader against antisemitism and the sponsor of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. He called for the Jews to return to Palestine as a pre-condition for the return of Jesus, which made the unconditional support of Jews and Israel a core Christian belief. Overtime this has evolved into unquestioned devotion to Israel.

Theodor Herzl could also get credit for Christian Zionism. After all, it takes two to make a relationship and Herzl was the first Jewish Zionist. If not for large swaths of the Jewish diaspora embracing the ideas of the Christian Zionist, it is hard to imagine the movement lasting into the 20th century. Even today, secular Jews despise Evangelical Christians, in part, because of their support for Zionism. There are other reasons, but the unbridled support of Israel and the restoration is one element.

Even so, the creation of the Jewish state in the middle of the last century was the product of Christian Zionism. Its existence has nurtured and supported Christian Zionism, especially in America. In fact, much of the spiritual fervor that would flow into Christian identity politics is channeled into Zionism. In the cultural climate of the West, this is one of the few safe ways for white people to cheer for their own side. You can probably argue that Zionism relies on a form of white identity politics.

Christian Zionism and Zionism would not exist without the strange form of empire first invented by the British then perfected by Americans. The British were the first ocean empire. The Greeks dominated the Mediterranean, of course, but that is not the same as dominating oceans. At the minimum, the British Empire was the first modern ocean empire. Today, America controls the world because she controls the seas, which means she controls the flow of goods globally.

It is hard to argue against Zionism as the most influential idea of the 20th century and now the 21st century. The creation of Israel by the British in 1948 has focused the attention of the West on the Middle East ever since. The long Cold War was entangled with Zionism which gave birth to neoconservatism. The last thirty years has kept the American empire obsessed with the fate of Israel. It is not unreasonable to say that American foreign policy is controlled by the Israelis.

Step back and you can argue that Christian Zionism is the result of two main forces unleashed in the West. One is the democratization of Christianity. It is impossible to imagine Zionism flourishing within the Catholic Church. The other is egalitarianism, the very Protestant idea of equality. Without hierarchy, theology was turned over to the entrepreneur, always looking for a novel way to sell Scripture. That is how you get ideas like Restorationism or Mormonism.

Returning to where we started, if one was looking to compile a list of great historical figures, you would have to include William Hechler on that list. Even though his name is unfamiliar to the modern ear, his influence is immense. If not for his tireless promotion of Theodor Herzl, it is possible that Zionism was never born. Imagine what the world would be like if Israel remained a concept, rather than a physical reality. The last century would not be possible.

Lawless

Posted on August 31, 2021 by thezman

There are two ways to look at the rules. There is the spirit of the rules, the intentions of the rule makers, what they were trying to achieve. Then there is a narrow interpretation of the rules as written without any thought as to what it was the ruler makers were trying to create. The former option assumes the ability to discern the intent of the rule makers from resources often unrelated to the rules. The latter assumes the ruler makers were without error when they created the rules.

This should be how legal disputes are framed. One side argues intent, and the other side argues the letter. The reason is both sides acknowledge the primacy of the law, but disagree as the its meaning. Their dispute can and often does result in a compromise where the letter of the law side agrees to a change in the wording in order to clarify the meaning, such that both sides can agree on the implementation. The dispute is a form of improvement on the law and its consequences.

That should be the nature of the law in a civil modern society. Instead, the law in modern America is a battle where one side conjures imaginary constructs in which the rule makers could have created law and the other side rigidly defends the last set of imaginary constructs that were miraculously embedded into the law. One side argues for a living constitution, an imaginary framework that is always spawning new legal models, while the federalist side defends the law as written.

An example of the imaginary construct is this ruling by the Ninth Circuit which ruled 7-4 against George Young, a man who was twice denied an open carry permit. The court found that Hawaiian law predates and supersedes the Second Amendment. “Hawai‘i law began limiting public carriage of dangerous weapons, including firearms, more than 150 years ago — nearly fifty years before it became a U.S. territory and more than a century before it became a state”.

In the opinion, they rely upon a philosophical claim that the present is the result of the long march of history. The pro-gun side only goes back to the 18th century and the writing of the constitution. This new theory goes back to medieval English law to argue that the default position has always been a strict regulation of weapons. They also acknowledge that they could go back even further, presumably to dawn of writing, to prove that history moves toward an unarmed society.

To the untrained mind, this sounds like a weird new form of animism, in which the intent of history is discerned by a specialized examination of the historical record. In this view, the law itself becomes meaningless. What matters is the esoteric debates among a specialized class of clerics. They compete with one another to conjure novel theories of history to determine public policy. The assumption is always that some animating force lies behind the movement of history.

More important, the people writing the law cease to matter. In the case of the Second Amendment, we know the intent of those who wrote it. Despite the crackpot claims about it applying only to militias, we know what the Founders meant. They wanted a society comprised on armed men willing to defend society from tyrants. Jefferson imagined a society that had regular rebellions in which tyrants were hanged as a way to keep the tree of liberty properly manured.

The intent in this mystical legal theory does not matter, as the people writing the laws are just flotsam on the tides of history. The Founders may have thought they were on the right side of history, but history clearly shows they were not, so history demands their intent be ignored. They fought the tides of history, with their crazy ideas about liberty, but they and their creations must be swept aside as the mighty river of humanity flows towards its inevitable destination.

Another example of this mystical view of history is the claim that the Second Amendment is the result of racism. You see, the concept of racism may not have existed in the 18th century, but it is a thread running through history. It is the invisible hand that guides the white race. Because everything white people have done can be motivated by this dark spirit force of racism, nothing white people have created can have authority, including their intent when writing laws.

In practice, this shamanistic legal theory is the overturning of law itself. If the letter and spirit of the law are products of history and history can only be understood by the shamans of the faith, then there is no law. The Soviet Union had a constitution that looks like something the modern democrats demand. In reality, everything in that document was interpreted by party theorists. The text was meaningless and so was the political theory behind it, because they existed to serve party goals.

Ironically, history tells us where this must end. The clever use of language by people bred to argue esoteric points of moral philosophy does not alter reality. The law in America is now a tyranny of the invisible hand of history, as interpreted by a shadowy class of clerics that never step into direct sunlight. The law is a conspiracy against the people, as corrupt as every other Western institution. Like politics or economics, the law is a tool. The hand that wields that tool is what matters.

At some point, the hand behind the present madness will become clear.

Burying The Truth

Posted on August 30, 2021 by thezman

Note: The weekly post is up at Taki. This week is a cranky rant about wanting to be left alone in a world full of busybodies. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, along with some other things.

Inside the microwave oven there is a microwave generator, which takes electricity and converts it into high-powered radio waves. The magnetron blasts these waves into the food compartment. The microwaves bounce back and forth off the reflective metal walls of the box, just like light bounces off a mirror. As these waves travel through the food item, they make the molecules inside it vibrate more quickly, which generates heat and that is what causes the food to get hot.

It is not only a brilliant way to quickly heat food in the home, but it is also a good way to think about what is happening inside modern America. Instead of a magnetron generating microwaves, we have the mass media which generates lies, fabrications, and propaganda. These waves of false information bounce around within society causing people to act. Since these waves of data are at odds with reality, this causes friction within society and the people inside get increasingly agitated.

As an example, consider this story in the sporting press about mascots. The claim is that a survey was conducted and the Notre Dame mascot, an exaggerated leprechaun, is the fourth most offensive mascot in college sports. The top three most offensive mascots were from Florida State, San Diego State and Hawaii. According to the story, these mascots are offensive to Native Americans. The survey was conducted by a company calling itself Quality Logo Products.

For starters, the whole thing is based on the lie that it is possible to be offended by a team mascot. This is a lie created in the last half century. For ten thousand years of human history, no one thought to be offended by such things. In fact, no one looked for a reason to be offended. Personal offense required intent. The person causing the offense was either trying to insult someone or was reckless in their opinions so as to cause an offense to social norms.

Putting that aside, what are the odds that this company, which sells marketing materials, actually conducted such a survey? What are the odds that anyone knows the name of the San Diego State mascot? Most American sports fans would know the Notre Dame mascot, as their football team is nationally famous. Few people probably know there is a college called San Diego State. The same can be said of Hawaii. In other words, the survey is completely fake.

The way these things work is the company probably thought this was a good way to get attention for their services. If you beam some lies into the college sports oven, you will get some of the fans agitated. In this case, the mass media is the mirror reflecting this stream of nonsense back to the intended target. Other media picked up the original “story” and beamed that back onto the target. In this way, a deliberate lie is turned into another social irritant, agitating the public.

Joseph de Maistre said, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” This is the modern age, accept that most opinion is false, and it is produced on an industrial scale. The people are assaulted by a constant stream of lies and falsehoods that comes from all directions. Even the escapism of sports entertainment is weaponized against them.

Some people sense that they are in a sea of contemptuous disregard for truth and unplug as best they can from the system. They don’t consume television and avoid what passes for mass culture. The person who does this chooses to live outside of society, however, so it brings its own challenges. Still, everyone has experienced the peace of going on holiday and unplugging from the system. It is like being unchained from a lunatic for a few days.

Another aspect of this is that the modern age selects for the sort of person who enjoys trafficking in lies and the madness it creates. This is a feature of political systems that claim to express the general will of the people. Communist societies bombard the people with propaganda to break their spirit. By forcing the people to nod along with the lies, they force the people to be party to the lie. As Theodore Dalrymple once said, “A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

In liberal democratic societies, this is not a part of the design, but a byproduct of the conflict central to democracy. That conflict is the assertion that all opinion is equal and must have equal weight. Equality is itself a nonsensical term as no two things on this plane of existence are truly equal. When it comes to humans, it is like comparing snowflakes, as everyone is slightly different. In order to maintain the fiction of equality, liberal democracy must paper over reality with lies.

What starts as a polite fiction soon becomes an obsession for the true believer, who becomes obsessed with covering the truth of nature. This creates the demand for people who enjoy lying. At first, the best liars rise in status, as they serve the interests of the system and the people atop it. This inverts the natural moral code of the people, rewarding the falsehood at the expense of daily reality. Quickly, democracy turns into a madhouse of lies and heated reaction to those lies.

Equality is the great crime against civilization. The evidence of this crime is reality, which like the corpse from a homicide, is impossible to hide forever. No matter how hard the perpetrators try to weigh it down with lies, it keeps turning up. This fact drives the egalitarian mad as he becomes obsessed with hiding this truth. His madness becomes the madness of the people over whom he rules, but the reality of the human condition will not stay hidden. It is an immutable truth of life.

The Mailbag

Posted on August 27, 2021 by thezman

One of the questions I did not get to in the show was one about why Afghanistan is so attractive to empires. The British, Soviets and now the Americans have come to a bad end trying to tame the Afghans. Ho back further and you have the Persians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Mongols and so on. The story of Afghanistan is the story of conquest and the survival of that conquest. Each conqueror leaving something behind, but never really changing the area all that much.

In the before times, the main reason to conquer the area was its location between Central and South Asia. The Silk Road that connected Asia with the Middle east and Europe runs through Afghanistan. It is a strategic bottleneck that made Afghanistan so important to the pre-modern world. It also is rich in things that people have tended to desire like lapis lazuli in the olden times. Today it has valuable deposits of rare earth metals and things like lithium, used in modern production.

Of course, for the British, Soviets and American, it is the location near the Middle East that is the attraction. For over a century know, controlling the Arabian Sea has been critical to controlling the flow of oil. Afghanistan offers a nice launching pad to exert influence on the region. The Americans imagined it becoming a modern outpost of the empire to counter the ambitions of Iran. Instead, it was just another example of how empires inevitable overextend and bankrupt themselves.

I suspect another reason the place appeals to Westerners so much is that it operates outside of civilization. The Afghans are not Asian, and they are not European, even despite the history of invasion. The genes of the conquerors have been absorbed in varying degrees, but the population remains unique. The core of Afghan DNA dates to the founding population somewhere in the Neolithic. In other words, the Afghans stubbornly remain unconquered, despite it all.

For people who root their theology in the belief that man in the state of nature is naturally cooperative, the uncivilized world of Central Asia is like catnip. if you think you can remake the world in your image, what better place to start than a place that remains outside the grip of modernity? While many supported the Afghan adventure for mundane reasons like greed and influence, many supported the project because they thought they could prove the key points of their faith.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

Opening
Voting
Young People
Covidians
Trump
Clarification
Out Of Africa
Headphones
Nick Fuentes
Million Dollars
Debating
Thank You

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Peak Israel, Peak Empire

Posted on August 26, 2021 by thezman

There is an old expression about the Bolshevik revolution that says it was made by Jewish brains, Latvian bayonets, and Russian stupidity. There is a lot of truth to it, as the ethnic makeup of the revolution was not very Russian. One way to look at the revolution is as a revolt of subject people against their old masters. This was made possible by the cupidity and stupidity of the Russian elites. A very similar thing is happening in the American empire, just at a slower pace.

This formulation can also apply to the Middle East. For a long time now, the history of the region has been shaped by a combination of Israeli strategy, Saudi Arabian oil, and American force. It is reasonable to say that America would have no presence in the region if not for Israel. The creation of the Jewish state in 1948 set the region on fire, drawing in the Americans and Russian. Oil and gas, of course, is what made the region vital in the long battle between the two empires.

Since the Cold War ended, the primary reason for US involvement has been Israeli intrigue and Saudi oil production. The first crusade in Iraq was about protecting the oil and gas interests. The second crusade was about changing the balance of power in the region to meet Israel security needs. The crusade in Afghanistan was mostly about containing Iran, despite the rhetoric. Look at a map and it is easy to see that it would be a useful launching pad for air strikes against the Iranians.

The collapse of Afghanistan is getting a lot attention, but it is part of a larger collapse of the regional order. Israel, for example, has undergone a political revolution of sorts with the end of the Netanyahu regime. The new prime minister is the product of the neo-liberal order, rather than the fight for independence. He got rich selling software in America and his parents were left-wing fanatics from San Francisco. He is a man of the global managerial class rather than the local elite.

On the Saudi side of things, the walls continue to close in as their stranglehold on the oil and gas market collapses. New technology has opened up vast reserves in North America, so the need for Saudi oil has declined. Iran’s Caspian Sea natural gas deposit will put her on even footing with the Saudis. That leg of the triumvirate driving regional politics is no longer the gatekeeper of the world’s energy supply. Soon, they will be just another gas station selling a commodity on the world market.

Taken together, the old combination of Israeli strategy, Saudi Arabian oil and American force is about to unravel. America still has troops staged in Syria and Iraq, but the writing is on the wall there too. It also means Israel as the primary mover and shaker in the region is coming to an end. Without American firepower and the Saudi control of energy politics, Israeli is just another country in the region. Throw in the Russian-Iranian partnership and the Middle East is going to look very different.

This is one reason the neoconservatives have been trying to restart the Cold War with the Russians. Given the their involvement in the Middle East, a new contest with them would draw America back into the region. It was also why Israel talked Trump into dumping the Iran deal. Normalization of relations between Europe and Iran makes war with Iran impossible. If that is not an option, then there is little point in America maintaining a military presence in the region.

What we may be seeing is peak Israel. For generations, Israel has occupied the center of American politics. During the Cold War, the three “I’s” of politics were Israel, Indiana, and Ireland. After the Cold War it was Israel, India, and Investment Banking. It is fair to say that what passes for conservatism in America is just low-tax Zionism. The collapse of American involvement in the region means there is little reason to make Israel the focal point of American politics.

This is no small thing. The Republicans are celebrating the bad fortune of Biden and the Democrats over Afghanistan, but this is very bad for them. During the Cold War, the left-side of the American ruling elite was allowed a free hand in domestic affairs and the right-side ran foreign affairs. The end of the Soviet empire left the right-side without a reason to exist, so we got the crusades against Islam for the last 30 years. Suddenly, the only reason to vote Republican has gone away.

It is not all roses for the left-side either. Without the distraction of endless war, the focus will be on domestic issues. All of those people who were titillated by the prospect of “glassing” various countries can now focus their energy on the people trying to turn their sons into girls. America has been at war with someone for close to a century now and this has allowed the Left to remake the country. It also allowed them to underwrite their schemes with the proceeds of empire.

For seventy years, Israel has played an enormous role in the politics of the American empire, but that seems to be coming to an end. It may be that Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem was the top of Israeli influence. The fading of the American empire, particularly in the Middle East, means the influence of Israel on the world must fade with it. It also means the Israelis will have to seek new partners in their endless game of neighborhood politics. America is no longer useful.

The Year Of No Emperor

Posted on August 25, 2021 by thezman

In the year 69 AD, four emperors ruled the Roman Empire in succession after the death of emperor Nero. After being declared an enemy of the state, Nero fled Rome, but then committed suicide. This ended the Julio-Claudian line and created a power vacuum that was first filled by Servius Galba. He was soon killed by the Praetorian Guard and then the Senate appointed Marcus Salvius Otho, who quickly committed suicide. Then came Vitellius and finally Vespasian, who founded the Flavian dynasty.

Despite the chaos, this would be looked upon as a transition period. This was the second dynasty in the Principate period that set the table for the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, which was arguably the empire’s greatest period. This was the phase commonly known as the “Five Good Emperors”. It is a good example of how present chaos can often be seen as the end of something, but in reality, it is the beginning of a new phase in the life of society or an empire in the case of Rome.

This is worth considering in the present moment. There is no doubt that Joe Biden cannot survive his term in office. Prior to his installation, no one thought he would run for a second term, but the hope was he could offer a quiet period so the political class could settle on someone to take the job. Joe Biden was supposed to be the resting period after the terror of Trump. Instead, the Biden rule is turning out to be far more chaotic, largely due to his failing mental health.

There are four ways to remove a sitting president. One is impeachment, which is off the table for obvious reasons. The Democrats will never do it and the Republicans, if they regained the House and Senate, are too stupid and corrupt to do it. That leaves resignation, the 25th Amendment and assassination. All three of these options are interlaced, in that the threat of the third option by the security services would force one of the first two options. The second option could force the first.

The problem with removing Biden is that the replacement is probably worse than an old man with dementia. Kamala Harris was selected because Silicon Valley executives bribed the Biden people. She represents their interests and she had the backing of key Clinton people. The trouble is she has thus far refused to grow into the job and remains a noisy moron who has little imperial support. The job of president is as the pitchman for the party, and she is too obnoxious to sell anything.

Even though the ruling elite despise the people over whom they rule, especially the white population, they are trapped in the logic of their own rhetoric. Like the emperors during the Principate, they must keep up appearances. Those early Roman emperors made a show of maintaining the Senate and the republic structures, even though they exercised exclusive power. In the American empire, the ruling elite has to maintain the polite fiction of participatory democracy.

What this means is that the removal of Biden will require a plan to quickly remove Harris and replace her with someone acceptable. Harris had zero support as a candidate in her own party. The regime media will paint her as the fulfillment of the prophecies, but the public would quickly turn on her. Installing someone who has no constituency in the ruling class, much less the public at large, makes a mockery of their claims to democracy, so Harris can be nothing more than a placeholder.

The 25th Amendment creates a process in which the legislative branch negotiates with itself on a compromise candidate to solve the crisis of an incapacitated or deranged president. There is a 21-day window for the legislature to evaluate the president’s fitness to serve. In reality, this is a negotiation window. In theory, they could force on Harris a VP that would be a co-president. The assumption being that if she got out of line, she would be removed and replaced like Biden.

All of this underscores the fact that the current regime running the American empire has the same problem Rome had with Nero. The Claudian’s had run out of competent options for emperor. Once Nero was removed, there was no option that was acceptable to the natural constituencies of the empire. This is the problem the current regime faces in Washington with Biden. Remove him from office and the scenarios look more like chaos than a solution. No one is literally better than Harris.

This may be where the American empire charts a new course. We may be headed to a period of no emperor. Biden will remain in office, doing less and less until he is reduced to a concept, rather than a real person. He will be the virtual president. Meanwhile, the two sides of the uniparty will push forward their plans to reorganize the empire to fit their image of themselves. The formerly $3.5T “Build Back Better” plan, which is now $5T, just moved along in the House, meaning it will pass this year.

This means the other side of the uniparty, the Republicans, will be allowed to “win” the midterms next fall. They will get to manage the implementation of a massive spending bill that is not actually written. That’s right. This massive reorganization plan for the empire is not written down anywhere. It is just a framework to be filled in after it passes and is signed into law. The 2024 “election” will be over how best to finish the work of reorganizing the empire with a new emperor.

Whether or not this year of no emperor will be looked at in the same way as the Year of Four Emperors, which transitioned into the Flavian and Antonine dynasties, is unknown, just as it was unknown in 69 AD. This age could be analogous to Year of the Six Emperors, which occurred during the Crisis of the Third Century. This year of no emperor could be the beginning of the end or just the end of the beginning. Whatever comes next, however, will be nothing like the present or past.

The Death Of Citizenism

Posted on August 24, 2021 by thezman

Note On Comments: Many have complained about the number of comments that end up in moderation. There is not much I can do about it, but one way to avoid this trap is to avoid certain language like profanity. The spam filter gets triggered by the colorful use of euphemisms. Links to images and movies is another trigger. They tend to go right to the trash bin without hitting moderation.

For at least two decades there has been a debate on the Right, broadly defined, about how to define America and the citizen. On one side are the intellectual descendants of Harry Jaffa, who argued America is just an idea, so a citizen is someone who agrees with that idea. On the other side are the people who take the view of the Founders who held the traditional view of nationhood. America is the product of a people who secured the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.

A middle ground was staked out twenty years ago by Steve Sailer. He came up with an idea he called “citizenism” which says “Americans should be biased in favor of the welfare of our current fellow citizens over that of the six billion foreigners.” Therefore, “our leaders have a duty to current citizens and their descendants over the interests of prospective citizens and their descendants”. This is a definition that allows for the appreciation of racial differences between the current citizens.

Sailer’s definition is reactive, more than objective. He was trying at the time to put space between himself and other race realists. He wanted to talk honestly and openly about racial differences without being lumped in with people like Jared Taylor, who he considered to be a white nationalist. Sailer and Jared Taylor had an exchange back in 2005 on this topic as well as Taylor’s book The Color of Crime. Here are some bits of this debate here, here and here.

Fifteen years on, we can look at the three sides of this dispute with the benefit of hindsight and see who was closer to the truth. The “nation of ideas” side is looking rather shabby, as the West lurches into despotism in an effort to keep the wildly diverse population from destroying itself. The suspension of civil liberties, constant surveillance and state sanctioned domestic terrorism suggest that the idea at the heart of this new definition of the nation is authoritarianism.

Further, the “nation of ideas” concept was always a Marxist notion. Instead of society being the product of economic relations, the nation of ideas people define society as cultural relations. This is right out of the cultural Marxist handbook. The main difference is the Left thinks that culture is the product of institutions while the Right thinks it is the product of magic. While both sides are wrong about the source of culture, the Left was smart enough to seize the institutions.

The traditionalists who claim a nation is the product of a people, held together by a shared history and kinship have not been proven correct, but their claims against a nation of ideas is supported by present reality. Time will tell if the West devolves into tribal camps that judge their relations with other groups purely through the lens of tribal self-interest, but that is the current direction. At the minimum, the Jared Taylor camp was right about identity politics and what is means for white people.

As far as citizenism, it may be the biggest loser. In his exchange with Jared Taylor, Steve Sailer wrote, “And yet, this manner of thinking, this dismissal of objective reality in favor of assessing whose side the speaker is on, is probably as popular today in America as it was in Berlin and Moscow in Orwell’s day.” Sailer was comparing Orwell’s description of Nazism with Taylor’s brand of white nationalism. In other words, these views contrast with objective reality.

It is turns out that the citizenism can only work if everyone involved steadfastly and fanatically rejects objective reality. For example, they must refuse to consider that what leaders will do is not always in line with what you think they ought to do. Further, the “best interests of the current citizens” is a normative statement, whose definition is based on the perspective of the speaker. The universalist concept of best interest at the heart of citizenism is as real as the unicorn.

To some degree, this form of bourgeoise objectivism has always functioned as a form of escapism where the objectivist gets to be both right and taboo. In this case, he gets to speak candidly about the human condition from the perspective of biology but avoid being sanctioned by the people who must deny this reality. In other words, it assumes there is an exception to morality, where you can avoid official sanction over impure thoughts if you can prove those thoughts to be correct.

This is a world that denies the reality of the prevailing orthodoxy, thus denying objective reality with regards to human relations. Every society has its moral framework that is rooted in its sense of identity. This is largely controlled by the ruling class, which is a feature of every society, regardless of politics. The morality of the people in charge of the West requires us to deny biology and they make no exceptions. That is a reality one must accept before engaging in any analysis of politics.

In the end, Steve Sailer’s approach was rooted in a misunderstanding of what lies behind things like open borders. It was not a desire for mundane things like a desire to save the world or a demand for cheap labor. At the heart of the neoliberal project is the assertion that humans are infinitely adaptable to their culture. This is the unequivocal denial of biological reality. This is why citizenism was doomed from the start. It offered a compromise that could never be tolerated, much less accepted.

In the end, the nation of ideas side was probably more realistic than their critics on the biological reality side. They accepted the premise of cultural Marxism, which is that control of the institutions is what matters in current politics. They simply lacked the intelligence and courage to put their ideas into practice. As a result, the West is headed into the darkness of radicalism. If the West is to survive, Western man must accept biological reality and the reality of those who oppose him.

Great Debate

Posted on August 23, 2021 by thezman

Note: We have a cornucopia of new content this week. The Taki post is about our new moral imperative to love strangers over our friends and family. Then there is the Sunday podcast up behind the green door. There is a bonus post up this morning on the cult sci-fi move The Matrix. This has gone out to Buy Me A Beer patrons as well.

Almost twenty years ago, John Derbyshire reviewed Kevin MacDonald’s book Culture of Critique for American Conservative. It has one of the best headlines ever written for a right-wing publication. The review itself was not favorable to MacDonald’s theory on Jewish evolutionary strategy, so it has been condemned by anti-Semites, which is a shame because it offers an important insight. For some, the “Jew thing” is a debilitating neurosis that cripples the victim’s ability to reason.

An example of this was on display Saturday night when Jared Taylor debated E. Michael Jones on the question of race. Specifically, the topic was “is race real and does it matter?” Taylor was on the side of race realism and Jones was supposed to be on the side of race denialism. It did not quite work out that way as Jones quickly shifted the conversation away from race to his own theories about the Jews. E. Michael Jones has a very serious case of the Jew thing.

The format was for each man to give a 20-minute opening presentation and then they would take turns responding to one another. Taylor was in the affirmative, so he went first and put on a near perfect presentation explaining the biological reality of race and the societal implications of racial differences. Even for those very familiar with the human sciences, it was an entertaining and informative presentation. It is the sort of thing you can send around to people curious the topic.

Jones opened up with a strange story about daylight savings time in Indiana in order to establish what he calls categories of the mind. These are definitions we invent that have no relation to physical reality. It appears he was trying to reformulate the logical positivists tripartite classification of knowledge. There are things that are tautologically true, things that are true because of an agreed upon set of logical rules and then things that are cognitively meaningless.

Jones reformulates it to be things that are categories of the mind and things he thinks ought to be important. For example, race, regardless of the biological realty behind it, is a category of the mind. It matters only because we think about it, like daylight savings time or the time of day. Catholic dogma, on the other hand, matters whether we think of it or not, so we ought to think about it. Of course, anything that Jones does not like is declared a category of the mind and he dismisses it.

There is an argument that much of what gets put into the category of race is contextual, a result of history and culture. This is the basis of biological denialism on the Left, where they claim differences in the races and sexes are cultural artifacts. The problem with this is that it conflates two related, but cognitively different things. Biological race, in this case, is different from social concepts of race. By conflating the two, biology is made to disappear in the fog of social criticism regarding race.

This was the game Jones was playing. He made a lot of noise about how race is used to harm white societies, so he agued race must be ignored. Here he commits a second logical fallacy. Even if discussions of race are engineered to harm white interests, it does not logically follow that white people should deny the reality of race. This is where the Jew thing begins to pop. Jones asserts that Jews invented the concept of race to harm white people, so the Jew thing requires him to oppose race.

After the opening statements, the second hour was mostly Jones ranting and raving about Jews, even dropping some epithets along the way. Whenever the moderator would return the conversation to the topic, Jones would go off on a rant about how the Jews were the great enemy and we must pretend race is not real in order to defend the white race from Jews. Along the way he conceded everything Taylor said about the reality of race, but Jones kept insisting it should not matter.

In all the noise and distraction what became clear is that Jones knows very little about race or race realism. He also made bizarre claims about the subject. For example, he claimed race was introduced in America by Jews. He also claimed the ancients had no concept of race. This is left-wing nonsense that has no basis in fact. His comments about intelligence revealed he knows nothing about the topic. His claims were the sorts of things that work on stupid people who share his beliefs.

This is the tragedy of the Jew thing. Once the victim is afflicted with it, they can think of nothing other than the subject of their obsession. The debate was supposed to be about race, but Jones kept trying to make it about Jews. Not just about Jews in the racial context either. Like a dog returning to his vomit, Jones kept returning to his pet theory that Judaism is a conspiracy against the world. Not Jews, as according Jones race is not real, but Judaism, which is like a magic spell that he fights alone.

Of course, Jones has his fans. That is the other side of the Jew thing. People with it will overlook anything in those who supply them with content. His mad hatter act is lost on his fans, who only hear the J-word when he speaks. You get the sense that those with the Jew thing will become physically ill if they are not constantly hearing anti-Semitic material, so they need it constantly pipped into their brains. As a result a bellowing crackpot like Jones gets their full attention.

There are people who have reasoned critiques of Jews in Western societies. There are lots of Jews who have addressed the issue. It is a legitimate question, but one gets the sense that the mission of E. Michael Jones is to make it impossible to have a reasoned discussion on the topic. After all, who would want to be lumped in with a mad man who screams at the Passover display at the local grocery store? Jones manages to give bigotry a bad name, which is quite accomplishment.

All of that said, Jones has a point that he may not understand or simply not care to discuss and that is the reality of race is insufficient on its own. If being right about the facts of life mattered, this world would not exist. The radicals would have been routed a long time ago. Public discourse in all human society is about morality. Who are we and what defines us is what matters. Repeating the facts of biology can only matter if they have an impact on the morality of the people.

This has always been the failing of the Right. They have always assumed that once they proved their case, the other side would have no choice but to throw down their weapons and embrace them as brothers. This is not reality. Unless one can connect biological reality with morality, they exist in two separate domains. The race realists have yet to attempt this connection. This should be where the militant Christians step into the breech, but people like Jones make that difficult.

Finally, Jones made a big issue of Taylor’s unwillingness to address the question of Jews within the context of race realism. This is a fair point, but Jones then asserted it was because Taylor is part of the global Jewish conspiracy. This is where you cannot help but wonder if Jones does this to avoid defending his position. It is a distraction to deflect attention from his faulty logic to something else. This could have been an interesting gambit, but the Jew thing got the better of him.

The fact is, race realism makes a lot of sense when comparing Africans with all other human groups. Africans are the great outlier in the human family. It starts to break down when you compare other groups. East Asian are different from Europeans, but they bring none of the social pathology of Africans. What is the argument against mixing Asians with Europeans? What about West Asians and Europeans? This is a valid line off attack on the race realist position.

In the end, the debate is worth watching, if only for Taylor’s opening. It is a pity that Jones is not a more honest and balanced person, as it would be interesting to see someone approach this topic from traditional Christian ethics. If we are ever going to make the leap from facts to values, this is a debate that needs to be had. Otherwise, biological reality will remain ignored, even as we careen into the abyss. Maybe this debate will inspire someone to ponder the subject.

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