Corporate Rebels

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Note: The regular Monday post is up at Taki. This week it is a language lesson in how to communicate in your new country. There is the Sunday Thoughts podcast up behind the green door, for those who enjoy the sound of my voice. This week I spent a lot of time making sport of General Milley.

It has been observed that people who claim to be free thinkers are always people trapped in the narrowest lanes of dogma. They somehow confuse their love of conformity for rebelliousness. On the other hand, people who do question the prevailing orthodoxies tend not to think about it very much. Instead, they follow their nose on the alternative path, even if it violates a taboo. This is why genuine free thinkers tend to be victims of the revolutions they initially support.

In the current age, this contrast is especially stark. The people claiming to be the wild and crazy guys of politics are not only conventional, but they also tend to be wedded to the oldest ideas. They also enjoy full support from an increasingly authoritarian regime, while claiming to oppose authoritarianism. A good example is someone like Tim Pool, who is a perfect example of how the regime creates its own opposition. He thinks he is a rebel while broadcasting from regime platforms.

The Right is festooned with housebroken rebels. This is a legacy of Bill Buckley, who defined the opposition to the Left within the bounds of the acceptable. It was the Left, of course, that decided what was acceptable. Over the last 70 years, every great purge was led by the Buckley crowd. The Birchers, paleocons, populists, immigration patriots and so on were denounced and purged by Conservatives, after the Left decided they were no longer allowed in polite company.

In the current age, the contrast between the swelling hordes of people outside the bounds of the acceptable and the so-called conservatives is glaring. It was not always so, which would explain why so-called conservatives carried on as if they were rebels trying to topple the system. In the 1990’s, for example, Conservative Inc. could plausibly argue that the paleo remnant turning up at Ross Perot rallies or Ron Paul events were just a noisy minority, not the real alternative to the Left.

A similar dynamic seems to be at play on the Left. The internet is full of people claiming to be the real Left. They tend to rally around people like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez as the rebels against the system. Unlike those conventional thinkers in the mainstream media, the democratic socialist are the real rebels. They are the ones challenging the established order. The fact that democratic socialism is the plaything of a billionaire currency speculator never seems to matter.

This false consciousness is understandable among the street gangs and rioters recruited to cause mayhem. Most of the people were see smashing windows and bellowing about Nazis are just day labor hired for the task. The typical “black bloc” is populated with drug addicts, homeless people, and random losers. They are organized by the children of managerial class types, building their resume. Nothing opens doors in the managerial class like a turn as a street radical.

The real puzzle comes with the branded radicals. In this case, “branded” should be read as corporate branded. The Young Turks, for example, imagine themselves to be rebels fighting corporate media and corporate politics. They take their name from the Young Turk Revolution that toppled the Ottoman Empire’s monarchy. Cenk Uygur, one of the creators, describes himself as a young insurgent. He and the others are leading a revolution from the Left against the system.

The fact that his channel is the creation of the system, operates on the platforms of the system and is funded by the people who benefit the most from the system seems to be lost on him and his audience. What makes the whole thing even more amusing is that Cenk Uygur is a middle-aged man. The only thing that would make their enterprise more ridiculous is if the “Young Turks” were a collection of octogenarians working from the human resource department of Goldman Sachs.

If you want to see just how much American politics has been corporatized and homogenized since the end of the Cold War, look at the Left. The typical left-wing person in America will defend to the death the right of Apple or Amazon to exploit their workers in order to make a profit. The far-left of American political discourse now arrives at the debate dressed like race car drivers. They are the house slaves of the American political plantation, but think they are John Brown.

One reason for the political discourse being dominated by deluded corporate flunkies is it pays extremely well. Cenk Uygur would be spending his days in traffic court if not for his willingness to play this role in corporates politics. Instead of struggling to pay the mortgage, he gets to live in a mansion. This is where Bill Buckley was a pioneer back in the before times. He made selling out into a highly lucrative career by making it look like a principled stand against his paymasters.

That explains the cynical, but what about the truly deluded? The internet is full of people volunteering to carry the torch for corporate conservatism or corporate progressivism, while thinking themselves as free thinking rebels. These people volunteer to be sheep while thinking they are wolves. The people showing up at this summer’s Trump rallies are not doing it for money. The losers calling them fascists on Twitter are convinced they are fighting the racist system.

The simple answer is that the supply of people who are not terribly bright, but sure they are on top of things is quite large. Even if 20% of the population falls into this category, the system has an army of noisy simpletons it can control. That is more than enough to drown out the real opposition. It also creates social proof. People unhappy with the system can find a corporately controlled mob to join. The fact that it is safe inside the Cenk Uygur and Tim Pool tents adds to the appeal.

There is another reason. This quote from John Derbyshire’s We Are Doomed is useful in this context. “The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list.”

That is what these sorts of politics satisfy. The fans of Cenk Uygur or Tim Pool get to feel like they are on the winning team. They are also told that the tides of history or the immutable facts of the universe are on their side. The exaggerated size of the audience offers the social proof and the pseudo fellowship of on-line communities. Most important, they get to hate on the bad guys. That is the real draw of this sort of corporate sponsored politics. You get to safely hate your enemies.

What never intrudes is reality. When Tim Pool says “I am not afraid of being challenged or wrong” he means that in the context of corporate sponsored politics. He is perfectly willing to sit down with the folks sponsored by Amazon or Apple to talk about the latest pronouncements from Team Walmart. What will never happen is any of these people sitting down with someone who genuinely questions the premise of corporate sponsored politics or the system that makes it possible.

In a way, the corporate sponsored rebel is the commercialization of the old tactics used by state security agencies. The FBI does not have to run COINTELPRO, because YouTube and Twitter do it for them. Instead of agents from the state secretly supporting the accommodationist wing of the opposition, corporate America hires them, gives them a big platform and the freedom to operate on-line. The rest fall in line because they just assume the marketplace has spoken.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

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Dissident Economics

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I have been a reading a biography of Nikolai Bukharin, probably the second most important Bolshevik theorists after Lenin. You cannot read about old commies without also reading about their ideology. These guys were consumed with politics and the disputes about politics. All of their relationships were through politics, usually along ideological lines. In fact, they never seemed to have genuine friendships, just ideological allies in the many ideological disputes at the time.

The Bolsheviks were a lot like the intensely on-line people of today. The people who make Twitter what it is are 100% committed to both their politics and the life of politics they experience on-line. It is why every minor disagreement becomes a great drama that always ends in tears. Bukharin and Lenin would have big fights over what turned out to be trivial difference in language. Of course, all of the old commies were fond of denouncing one another as deviationists.

Another thing that shines through when reading about the old communists is they had a Calvinist’s faith in their own destiny. The inevitable end of capitalism was as certain to them that the sun would rising in the morning and setting in the evening. Their only concern was in mapping out how it would eventually meet its end. They made some very prudent observations about what they called capitalism. In fact, they gave us the word capitalism as a label for what they observed at the time.

The weird thing about their observations of capitalism is that you get the sense that their good observations were accidents. They were so obsessed with proving the inevitability of communism, they looked past their bets observations about the present. Often, they would focus on the nutty claims about the present, rather than the insightful one, because the nutty claim fit their narrative. The French Revolution reads like a new madness gripping humanity. Communism has the same feel.

The funny thing is though, all political theorists on the Left, I would place libertarians on the Left as well, had this assumption about their politics. Once they arrived at some sort of theoretical framework to explain the world, they started to assume that events would naturally arrive at some determined end point. The superiority of markets would inevitably triumph over central planning. The moral superiority of communism would inevitably lead to revolution and the end of capitalism.

Of course, this determinism is prominent with our rulers. They are always reminding us that they are on the right side of history. That is their get out of jail free card, which allows them to dismiss critics. The communists were like this. The logic errors in Marx were dismissed as technical issues that would work themselves out as capitalism reached its denouement and socialism rose up as the inevitable replacement. It was the source of their fanaticism, this certainty about what was coming next.

Interestingly, this fixation on the inevitable future led them to do no thinking about the details of that future. This is something we see today. On the one hand, their sense of historical inevitability drove them to smash the present, but it prevented them from thinking about the details of that inevitable future. We see this today with the latest spasms of the cultural revolution. They are sure that white people will not be in the glorious future, but how that will work is never considered.

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.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: Marxism
  • 17:00: Austrians
  • 32:00: Marketism
  • 47:00: Dissident Economics
  • 57:00: Closing (Be Like Me)

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/I4MbT0GY3F4

The Hothouse

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The sales pitch for the American political system is that it is a robust debate between two distinct political parties. The Republicans and Democrats are coalitions of interests opposed to one another. The groups that make up each party are held together by a shared ideological outlook. The Republicans are the conservative party, and the Democrats are the liberal party. The political process adjudicates the disputes between the parties over public policy and the result is a compromise.

In reality, America is a one party system. It has been since Gettysburg. The differences between the two parties are miniscule. This is why public policy never changes when the party in charge changes. The mild reforms of the Reagan years were followed by a consensus that remains in place to this day. There is some tinkering around the edges to keep up appearances, but otherwise the results of each election have no impact on public policy or the priorities of government.

As for those two ideologies, they are just two faces of a single ruling class ideology that is something like a religion now. There is left-liberalism and there is right-liberalism held together by a common moral framework. Like the old Bolsheviks, the left side of the American ideology is maximalist and radical. It wants to usher in the promises of the revolution right now. The right side is more cautious, preferring an evolutionary approach to ushering in the promised utopia.

Unlike the old communists, the American ideology has always existed in a popular political system, so it is built to sell itself to the public. The main role of the right-liberals is to protect the left-liberals from themselves. They function as barrier between the tenets of the one true faith and any questioning of the faith. The left side is the heart of the beast, driving the agenda and pushing society along from one fad to the next, always chasing the avatar of egalitarian paradise.

This arrangement has worked amazingly well. Perhaps too well. It has been over a century since there has been a threat to the system. Anarchists and communists at the start of the last century started to get some traction, but they were never really a threat to the basic arrangements. Otherwise, it has been smooth sailing for the uniparty system for generations. The left-liberals are free to dream up new social innovations without being disturbed and the right stands quietly at guard.

The trouble is the party is looking like a freak show inside a hot house. For example, the Air Force now has drag shows to boost morale. To normal people, this is completely nuts (pun intended), but to the people in charge it is perfectly normal. In fact, they think it is bizarre that anyone would question it. They are not entirely wrong, as the people who arranged it will never be pressed on it. The politicians all agree that drag queens are who we are now, and the press echoes the sentiment.

Where the ruling orthodoxy finds itself is in a place where there is never a need to explain themselves and defend their positions. The right-liberals never challenge the left-liberals on orthodoxy. Both sides just put on shows where they pretend to disagree, but then kick back together after the show to laugh about it. The right-liberals have insulated themselves from defending their position. They tell themselves that they are simply too good to discuss these things with their critics.

The folks at the Daily Wire are supposed to be the smart kids of conservatism, but they spend their days making sure the hothouse is airtight. Ben Shapiro’s one venture outside the tightly controlled environment of his life ended in disaster. Ever since that public relations debacle his people have made sure that no one can utter a discouraging word in his presence. In fact, that whole scene has become a closed shop, never interacting with anyone outside their hive.

It is not just the pundits who have become hot house flowers. Look at what happens to the military leaders when they go before Congress. This guy went before Congress and told one whopper after another. To outsiders, he looks like a complete fool, but inside that room he is just par for the course. Anyone reading this could have wrecked him with a few simple questions, but no one in the room has the intelligence or the temperament to question anything.

This is the motivation behind the mass censorship and de-platforming. The people inside the political system are incapable of defending or even discussing their positions and they live in fear of having to do it. It is not so much that the critics have great arguments or have superior debating skills. That is a silly conceit. It is simply that the people outside the system, the dissidents, are comfortable defending their positions and discussing them in public. They can take a punch.

This underlying sense of weakness is probably what lies behind the persecution of the January protestors. January 6th, from the perspective of the ruling class, was an emperor has no clothes moment. The torture and torment of the protestors is as much about reassuring themselves that they are tough and in charge as it is about sending a message to the Dirt People. The ruling class revealed themselves to be cowards and now they are lashing out in a fit of petty spite.

All ruling elites have an abundance of sissies and ridiculous people. They are the entertainment and decoration for the serious men who run things. Those serious men are made serious by regular contact with reality. Remove that contact and those serious men become as silly and ridiculous as their retainers. That is where the empire finds itself now, ruled by fops and popinjays living in a hothouse. They live in fear of someone opening the door and letting in reality.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

sa***@mi*********************.com











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The Gatekeeper Is Broken

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A popular concept in right wing politics is the gatekeeper or sometimes called the controlled opposition. This is the person or group that appears to be in opposition to the Left, but is an insulation layer between the Left and genuine critics. The function of the gatekeeper is to prevent people from abandoning the political morality of the Left, while at the same time making sure to lose every fight with the Left. They channel opposition into positions that can never succeed.

Ben Shapiro is the most obvious example. His primary role is to funnel all opposition into a dead end. His answer to the tech monopolies, for example, is to tell people to build their own new internet. After all, only a communist would demand the government prevent private actors from trampling your rights. Of course, he always tone policing the language of the people he claims to represent. The point is also to cleanse the language of rhetoric that could be effective against the Left.

What gets little discussion is just how this happens. There is an assumption that the people playing the role of gatekeeper know what they are doing. This is that bourgeois objectivism that is the bane of right-wing politics. It is the assumption that all political actors are motivated by self-interest. They are keenly aware of those interests and their actions reflect it. Therefore, people on the Right assume the gatekeepers are acting with purpose and are probably in league with the Left.

A good example of this is the CRT business. Parents around the country suddenly learned that the schools are teaching their kids that white people are born evil and their only way to salvation is to hate their ancestors. The gatekeepers immediately leapt into action to lecture them that saying CRT is antiwhite is wrong. Suddenly, the purpose of conservatism is to prevent anyone from noticing that the cultural revolution is explicitly and overtly antiwhite. It almost seems coordinated.

There is a familiar pattern to how the system has responded to opposition to the antiwhite pogroms launched by the party. The defunct social media platform Parler was not about creating an alternative to Twitter, so much as creating a regime-acceptable alternative to the genuinely open platform Gab. When that failed, the usual suspects were ready with another version called Retalk. Many of the people promoting this effort were anti-Trump cranks now trying to lure his audience.

An underappreciated aspect of the gatekeeper production system is just how quickly it spits out hollow clones of legitimate opposition. Once Nick Fuentes started getting national attention, the clone machine started making copies. Here is a fake America First clone produced soon after the election. Fuentes has been promoting the term “America First” for a while. He sells branded products and his supporters wave big flags at rallies with that slogan, so the system just cloned it.

The system also appears to be trying to clone Fuentes himself and his imitators among the young generation. Here is a group called American Moment, formed by four young gay men to be an acceptable version of the groypers. The system men were out flogging it as if it were coordinated. Here is National Review promoting it. Here is American Mind, promoting itself by promoting the fake groypers. As if by magic a group of nobodies was suddenly a topic of conversation.

In the effort to co-opt Fuentes and his youth movement, we see a pattern emerge in how gatekeepers are created. First, we get the fake version of the genuine alternative mentioned in conservative media. Then what quickly follows is a halfhearted negation of the fake version of the alternative. This pseudo-dialectic is supposed to draw in those unhappy with the system. They have to pick a side in this fake debate. The point is to exclude the genuine opposition from the process.

The sandwich technique is a staple of liberal democratic politics. Since few arguments in favor of the status quo can withstand scrutiny, they create a set of false choices to contain all discussion. In economics the choice is “free enterprise” versus “communism” with regards to corporate corruption of society. In other issues, like the race debate, one choice is an absurdly immoral position and defeatism. You either buckle under or you are a Nazi, and you deserve the assault from the Left.

Of course, the main project of so-called conservatives is to figure out a way to create a fake Trump in order to sideline the populist and nationalist opposition to the corporatist uniparty monopoly. Trump did not get anything done in office, but the system still fears him, because of the bad thoughts he arouses in the people. Trump running in 2024 would both reveal the ridiculousness of conservatism (again) and generate the sorts of conversations that the regime considers dangerous.

The first version of fake Trump is J.D. Vance. He is a more successful version of the character Keven Williams has played at National Review. That is, a guy from flyover country who abandoned the people and culture that produced him in order to confirm the biases of the managerial elite. He provides them with authenticity, by displaying a sympathy for and a knowledge of the Dirt People, the great dispossessed, but he confirms the Cloud People patronizing view of them.

You will notice that the system defends itself with rhetoric. Democracy is all about winning arguments, not establishing, or accepting truth. It is why democracy produces so many sophists. It is also why Twitter is so popular with regime lackeys. People with the natural instinct to defend their masters and a gift for doing so in a few sentences can become heroes on the platform. A system built on clever rhetoric and logical fallacies is naturally good at defending itself with the same tools.

This natural defense does have its limits. A decade ago, the Tea Party movement was easily coopted by corporate flunkies. This time it is struggling to do the same thing with the populism Trump rode to office and the growing dissident movement. The fake groypers, for example, cannot draw flies. Their YouTube shows should have crickets as the background noise. This is despite the hype and protection. Fuentes and his merry band draw tens of thousands to obscure platforms.

It could very well be that this natural defense mechanism only works if the system itself is viewed as fundamentally legitimate. Once people begin to think the system is rigged or inherently corrupt, the defense mechanisms not only fail, but they also become proof of the corruption. National Review outsourced their management to Bangalore recently because the site no longer has an audience. In other words, the failure of gatekeeping is a sign of systemic failure.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

sa***@mi*********************.com











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Alternative Ruminations

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Note: There is a new movie review behind the green door. This week the movie is Fargo, the great 1990’s crime comedy. For those on SubscribeStar it is here and for those on Buy Me A Beer it is in your e-mail and here as well.

Alternative history is one of those things that should be more popular in Hollywood, as it opens the door for creativity. “What if the South won the Civil War” would let the filmmaker run wild with all sorts of claims about the past, for example. For the same reason, it should be more popular with people in general. It makes for a good start to a campfire story. “Imagine if our enemies from the past had won and we were forced to live in a world of their creation…” is a good scary story.

For whatever reason, alternative history is not very popular. Revisionist history, on the other hand is popular. In fact, revisionism, outside of one subject, is the norm in the history departments of the West. The only thing historians do is question the official narrative of various historical events. The new narrative usually tries to explain the past according to the new morality. Fitting the past into the great story justifying the moral claims of the people in charge is the point of history.

This is why any attempt to question the official narrative of the Second World War is strictly prohibited. The entire ruling class structure is built upon the myths and legends fabricated in the aftermath of the war. The moral center of the American empire is the assertion that the morality of the empire is universal. More important, it is the logical endpoint of the great historical dialectic. It is the fulfillment of the opening lines to the Declaration of Independence, words made flesh.

This has created a massive blind spot in our ruling class. By condemning old enemies, especially the fascists, to the pit of the demons, they don’t have to think much about those systems and how they could have evolved. How would fascism have evolved if the British cut a deal with the Germans over Poland? If not for Churchill’s blood lust for war, a deal could have been made to avert war in the West. How would that have changed the course of fascism in both Germany and Italy?

One possible outcome is it would have quickly evolved into something very similar to what we see in America. The rapid rebuild of the German economy by the fascists bound the state and corporate interests in a way that is familiar to us today. Organized labor was suppressed, in favor of the state speaking for labor. This is not much different from the present model in America. Using Jews and Slavs as cheap labor is not all that different from what American business does with guest workers.

It is generally assumed that the economic model of fascism could never last, as it was really just a form of war socialism. First it was the war on the devastating consequences of the Great War. Then it was the build up to reassert power in Europe. Once war broke out, the economies of fascist states were organized around war. This type of economics is assumed to burn bright but not last. If left alone, the inequities would lead to social unrest and demands for reform.

This was the experience of the Bolsheviks, in a different context. The revolution and then the civil war forced the party to requisition everything they could touch and put it toward the war effort. Once the civil war was over, it became clear that the system could not last. People would not continue to sacrifice their labor for the party when the party was no longer under direct threat. How long would the German people have tolerated the iron rule of the party without the threat of war?

The present gives us some clue. For some time now America has lived under the iron grip of the uniparty. The last agent of change produced by the political system was Reagan and that was half a century ago. The reforms of Reagan were popular, but never challenged the ruling class. Since then, the system has produced one clone after another, with the exception of Trump. He was quickly neutralized and then ejected from the system like a dangerous foreign object from the body.

The party has also kept the country on a war footing. The Cold War shaped the American empire and the ruling class. They need war to exist, so when the Cold War ended, the search for new enemies commenced. First, we got the crusades against the Muslims, which got started with Bush I. Now it is a tossup between China and Russia as to who will be the new devil. The uniparty needs war socialism and war socialism needs an enemy to justify its excesses.

This is why some believe the fascists would have had no choice but to start a war in Europe, even if the British had not been so willing. This type of political system needs to be on war footing. The permanent revolution of communist systems is an effort to institutionalize the creation of enemies around which the system can rally. The current war on white people is very similar. It is an effort to create a permanent enemy of the party that can never be defeated, but must always be opposed.

Of course, the American empire has been at war for close to a century, but unlike the fascists or communists, it persists. The reason is it has not picked the wrong enemies around which to organize the war. It could have been dumb luck. The Soviets came to believe they had to tread lightly around the Americans. The Kennedy administration’s desire to blow up the world over Cuba was a key lesson. The American ruling class was composed of fanatics, not sober minded realists.

Taken together, it suggests that there really was no alternative timeline in which war was averted and the fascists tried to figure out how to make it work. The Americans were on the prowl for an enemy. The fascists systems needed an enemy to justify their control of society. Stalin’s revolution from above required an enemy around which to organize and he was running out of internal enemies to kill. The great contest between various forms of war socialism was inevitable.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

sa***@mi*********************.com











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Against Nature

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Note: The weekly Taki post is up. I will now be remembered as the first dissident to denounce Charles Murray. Someone has to be the first. There is also a new Sunday Thoughts podcast up behind the green door for those interested.

Liberal democracy is both an ideology and a form of government. In the former case it is generally defined as a democracy constrained by the principles of liberalism, which are individual rights, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market-based economy. The underlying assumption of liberal democracy is that all members have a stake in society and therefore have a right and a duty to participate in the political life of the society.

As a practical matter, this means elections between multiple distinct political parties able to participate equally in elections. It means power is diffused through multiple branches of government by assigning distinct powers to each branch. Most important, it means the rule of law in everyday life. That law is bound by a set of principles, usually codified in a written constitution, that spell out the limits of government. It also defines private property, equal protection before the law and civil liberties.

This is the very general definition of western political systems. Children in the West are taught this in school. These things are repeated by politicians in various ways and echoed by the mass media. Whenever there is a need to a bad buy on the world stage, western leaders, which usually means American leaders, point at the accused, and claim he is violating the principles of liberal democracy. Putin, for example, is the arch-villain because Russia is not a liberal democracy.

Because the West assumes that liberal democracy is the best political system ever created, no one bothers to ask what sort of people is necessary for a liberal democracy to function as expected. This was the lesson of communism. It required things of people that are not present in sufficient quantities to make communism work as communist ideology promised. Even after murdering millions that did not fit in, the Soviet system never accomplished what the creators promised.

Similarly, fascism made assumptions about the population. For a fascists society to function in the long term it required a people who were homogenous. A system built on the nation must be controlled by the nation. A diverse, heterogenous population cannot make a system based on ethnic solidarity work. That is supposed to be the lesson of the last century. Fascism could not work, because such a system excludes certain people from the political process, which is always wrong.

The short life of communist and fascist systems would seem to prove that point about matching the system to the people. What about liberal democracy? The relatively short run of this ideology suggests is requires massively diverse populations. Every western democracy quickly committed itself to overwhelming its native population with people from around the world. Even societies with no experience with immigration quickly embraced open borders and multiculturalism.

The trouble here is we actually know something about the internal dynamics of highly diverse societies. Empires since the bronze age have struggled with how to organize populations of people with little in common, beyond their ruler. This is always the challenge of maintaining an empire. More recently, the United States was founded with a highly diverse population. While the majority were of English stock, the cultural diversity was pronounced, predating settlement.

There are four ways to manage a diverse society. The most common solution is the use of hard segregation. This is the preferred method of empires. The various tribes are sequestered into their areas. The ruler makes sure that the tribes respect the boundaries of one another. Even ancient cities had separate quarters for separate peoples of the empire. In America, this was the common way northern parts of the country dealt with the black-white issue.

In the South, another form of segregation was used, a soft segregation that accepted the math of the racial problem. The black population was simply too large to sequester them in their own physical space. Instead, a soft-segregation based on separate logical spaces was developed. The races had separate spaces within the public space, that reinforced that the two groups were operating in different spheres. Southern segregation was a cultural phenomenon, rather than a physical one.

Both of these approaches were deemed in violation of liberal democracy in the last century, so both have been banned. The soft segregation of the South was eliminated by force and the hard discrimination of the North, while tolerated, is condemned as an artifact of the worst of times. The most highly segregated parts of the country are in the areas most obsessed with racial equality. These are also the areas that embrace the ideals of liberal democracy with the greatest enthusiasm.

This conflict has resulted in a new way to manage diversity. There is the loud and constant repetition of the ideals of liberal democracy, coupled with equally loud demands for racial, ethnic, and sexual equality. To reconcile the conflicts, we get a growing list of exceptions to liberalism and democracy in order to rectify the fact that diverse people have diverse life outcomes. Proportionality is now the operating synthesis of egalitarianism and liberal democracy.

Equality before the law, for example, must give way to racial policies that discriminate against whites, in order to get blacks caught up in some area. Often, past violations in the pre-liberal democratic age are used as justification. South Asians in America will get special privileges, because the British were not always nice to their subjects when India was her colony. Equality before the law has given way to a honeycomb of exceptions and carveouts to achieve a desired proportionality.

What we know thus far about this approach is it creates social conflict and slowly undermines the very basics of the liberal society. Put another way, what this effort to make liberal democracy work in a diverse population tells us is you can have one or the other, but not both. A liberal democracy can work if the population is fairly uniform, with a clear majority operating in its interest. Diversity, on the other hand, seems to only work with an authoritarian government or no government.

This is another lesson of history. The Balkans could work as a highly diverse society, just as the North of America worked as a multiracial society. It required hard segregation and a very firm hand to enforce it. On the other hand, early America made a multicultural and multiracial society work by leaving the people to sort out their own local arrangements with regards to diversity. People self-segregated and evolved rules to maintain the peace, based on their local conditions.

Neither approach fits into liberalism very well. The segregation required to keep the peace in a diverse society not only violates the basic rules of liberal democracy, but it also violates the morality of the liberal democrat. In other words, the required morality within liberal democratic system prevents the system from doing what is required to maintain order in a diverse population. The ideals of the system come into conflict with the natural realty of the human condition.

If liberal democracy demands maximum diversity of the population, but you cannot have liberal democracy with a diverse population, then we are back to the same problem posed by communism and fascism. Liberal democracy, at least as currently defined, requires a population incompatible with it and a ruling elite embracing a morality that prevents them from doing the basics required of a ruling class. As with other political ideologies of the last century, this one violates nature.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

sa***@mi*********************.com











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The Myth Of Democracy

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Happy Juneteenth everyone! Officially, this long tradition dating back to Monday is celebrated on Saturday, but the ruling regime has declared the preceding Friday as a day off for our hardworking civil servants. The rest of us, of course, will have to continue slaving away at the salt mines, but the people who really make this country work will get the day off to celebrate the people who built the country. Even as we toil, we should take a moment to think about both groups.

In a way, the ridiculousness of this new holiday fits perfectly with the absurdity of modern liberal democracy. The show this week is mostly about how the system is nothing like it is claimed. Instead of bringing the citizens into the decision making process, it systematically excludes the majority. This new holiday is a great example of how it works. Exactly no one wanted it. Few even heard of it. The people have many higher concerns, but they are ignored in favor of this novelty.

It is also good timing for Charles Murray’s new book. The thesis of the book is that the elites need to accept biological reality or face the wrath of the angry Saxon. This new holiday is a good example of what he means. Ruling class whites pandering to blacks creates friction between whites and blacks over trivial items. It encourages nonwhites to embrace tribal politics, which discourages whites from embracing the active indifference necessary to make a multiracial society work.

There are other things wrong with Murray’s argument. The great Roger Devlin has posted a comprehensive review on VDare. There will be other reviews from dissidents in the coming weeks. Ed Dutton may have summarized it best when he said that Murray is right, but he should have written this book in 1965 or even 1985. At this point, the die is cast and there is no escaping the thing he is warning against. The fact that Washington just created this absurd new holiday is proof of that.

Of course, the fact that both parties eagerly embraced this idiotic idea makes clear that the elites will never face reality on their own. History says they will have their awakening as the trap door swings open. The system we have today is unsustainable, for the simple reason the people at the top define themselves by their hatred of the people over whom the rule. Most of the pols who voted for this new holiday did so out of spite and the rests did so to curry favor with those spiteful mutants.

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.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@mi*********************.com











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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: The Theory Of Democracy
  • 12:00: Abortion
  • 22:00: Homosexual Marriage
  • 32:00: Immigration
  • 42:00: The Reality of Liberal Democracy
  • 57:00: Closing (Be Like Me)

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/sB7ICEPV9kc

Middlemen

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The American economy is a middleman economy, designed around the idea of there being a person or group of persons between the parties of a transaction. No matter how trivial the transaction, there is someone trying to get in on the deal. This middleman brings nothing to the transaction. He adds no value and only facilitates the deal because the rules have been set so that he is required. The middleman is the ever-present silent partner that is the point of the economic arrangements.

If you go back a century, selling a house involved three parties. The seller and buyer, of course, and the government. You had to register the transaction with the government so it was known who held the deed for the property. If there was a lien on the property, then the bank would be involved, but only on one side. Today there are dozens of people involved in the transaction. The government is promising to add dozens more in order to flood stable neighborhoods with magic.

Just about every transaction in the economy now has silent partners. This is why the economy is still a mess due to the Covid lockdowns. Shutting down supply chains was always a dumb idea, but getting them restarted means activating millions of middlemen who have to get paid for the system to work. In a completely financialized economy, nothing moves without money moving first. The money men are the ever-present middlemen in every deal, no matter how small.

The riddle for all human societies since the first settlements was what to do with the people who could not work or would not work. The old and the sick needed care, so they not only were not working, they took someone out of the workforce. This meant that those who did work had to produce extra. It also meant that those who were loafers had to be dealt with so they were not freeloading off the system. Of course, many of the loafers were called the rulers, so that was a problem.

The way out of this problem has been productivity. The farmer who could grow enough food for his family plus the king’s share was never enough. He had to grow enough to feed himself, plus the king and some extra for the king to sell. That way the king could field an army and have a nice castle. Every king wants a better castle, so the drive to produce more with less is a feature of human society. The great ideological wars since the Enlightenment have been about how best to do this.

The claim by communists and capitalists was that eventually, productivity would produce so much that scarcity would be solved. Human society, if planned the right way, would produce so much with so little that want would disappear. That could never happen, of course, but the West has reached the point where everyone has the basics if they want them. In America, poor people are obese because they spend all day eating and watching television in comfortable homes.

That does not mean the problem of economics has been solved. The old free loading problem is still there. Those millions of middlemen baked into the economy are still there, snatching away a little from every transaction. Not only are they skimming from every transaction, they no longer help facilitate the deal. Instead, they often just steal the entire value of the deal. America cannot build a road or bridge, mostly because the money is stolen before the first shovel hits the dirt.

In other words, all of those middlemen are now consuming the host. This army of people involved in every deal are no longer just a weird patina on the economy, but a very serious rot of the system. This is why hedge funds are buying up residential housing to create new renters. The very top of the rentier economy has run out of people from whom to skim, so they are forced to eat their own. The big skimmers are now going after the small skimmers down the ladder from them.

Running a skim is nothing new, but even the mafia understood that you can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once. The modern mafia, the managerial elite, entangled with the powerful, are moving from sheering to skinning. They have busted out everything, so now they are busting out the bust outs. The hedge funds robbing the real estate bandits is like a bank robber robbing drug dealers, in that it says the criminal ecosystem is out of balance.

The story that started with the problem of scarcity has arrived where it started. What is to be done with those who don’t produce? Every society needs an elite and they do not produce in the conventional sense. Their duty is to coordinate. What happens when you have too many people in the elite? Turning them into middlemen seemed like a solution, but now we have too many middlemen. So many in fact that they are now making it impossible for the productive to stay ahead of demand.

The old image of economics is of a group of men pulling a wagon. In the wagon are the unproductive, like rulers and bankers. The goal was to keep the people in the wagon to the barest minimum. The modern wagon is still relatively light, but now the men pulling the wagon are surrounded by an army of people impeding their progress, as they demand a fee for every step. Worse yet, the people in the wagon are creating people who take up positions between the men pulling the wagon.

That has been one lesson of Covid. The reason the economy did not collapse when millions were sent home from their jobs is that most of the people being sent home were not doing anything all that useful. Some were, for sure, but the empty offices went unnoted for a reason. Just as every snowstorm in Washington reveals that vast number of unessential workers, Covid revealed the vast number of middlemen. Many were unaware of their middleman status. They thought they were essential.

Of course, the bizarre fads vomited up by the Cloud People is another sign that we have too many people standing around looking for something to do. Idle hands to the Devil’s work and Old Scratch is spoiled for choice these days. We simply have too many middlemen with time on their hands. The system is overstocked with them, so they sit around dreaming up new ways to horn in on the life of the productive. Now the middlemen have middlemen and that cannot go on forever.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

sa***@mi*********************.com











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The Great Mistake

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Note: I was on the Restoring Order podcast last night. It was a lively conversation about events of the day. The audio on my end was not good for some reason. It was like I was making an old fashioned long distance call. Patrick has me connect with Skype, which is probably the reason for the poor sound.

The renewed interest in the origins of the Covid virus is a good reminder of several threads running through the modern political discourse. The most obvious being the reactionary nature of the establishment Left. Trump pinned the blame on China, so the establishment Left made it their mission to defend China. This fit in well with their corporate paymasters, who are happy to wash the feet of the Chinese government in exchange for access to Chinese consumers.

Of course, that leads into another subplot to the modern age. The willingness to submit everything to the marketplace, real and imagined. This is a root cause of the current crisis in America. Just because it is good for the economy in the short term to do business with China does not mean it is good to do business with China, but in the hyper-marketized world of today, no one questions it. Like everything else, right and wrong is left to the market to decide.

The hyper-market also leads to another issue. When all that matters is the highest bidder, then nothing matters. In the case of Covid, many of the people responsible are Americans, who are doing business with China in order to get around the ethics rules in the United States. You see, when morality is decided by the highest bidder, things like patriotism are just another commodity. Even Ben Shapiro’s version of patriotism is just another item to bought and sold.

The Chinese have figured out that they can buy all the technological vigor and creativeness from the West. They just invite researchers from the West to work in Chinese labs with the promise they can follow their curiosity, free of the ethical limitations placed on them in the West. Manufacturers took the same bargain, except the promise was they could pollute the environment and treat the workers like it was the 19th century. Apple led the way on this decades ago.

This was something the Soviets always tried to exploit. Their interpretation of Marxism told them that Western capitalists cared only for quick profit, so they could be easily bribed. The West would sell the Bolsheviks the rope they would use to hang the capitalists. It did not turn out that way as in the 20th century morality was still a thing that operated outside the marketplace. Even capitalists felt a loyalty to their people and their country. Most of them did, leastways.

That was then and this is now. China is like a kid in a toy shop these days, as everything in the West is for sale at discount prices. Everything must go and no offer will be refused. Need a member of Congress who sits on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence? Short on cash? No problem! How about someone to run cover for letting a deadly virus loose on the world? You are in luck, as they are in stock and priced to sell! Everything must go!

All of this disguises a much more serious problem. Anyone familiar with Chinese business practices knows that following the rules is not their thing. You see, China has always been a culture that is organize around power. The people with power threaten severe punishment for breaking their rules. Success is usually defined by navigating around the rules, while avoiding detection by the powerful. Violating the rules is not just a necessity. It is a way of life.

This is why China is the world’s most prolific patent thief. It is why they are the world’s primary exporter of counterfeit goods, as well as narcotics. Nothing about these practices strike the Chinese as wrong. In fact, they think it immoral to respect the abstract rules and conventions that form the basis of prohibitions on making knock-off consumer goods and illicit drugs. Western ethics, as far as the Chinese see it, are just more rules to work around for fun and profit.

When the product is women’s fashion, it is tolerable. When it is the rules governing serious biological agents, then it is a different matter. Now we can add the handling of nuclear technology to the mix. The one thing we can be sure about with this story is that the Chinese are lying about it. The second thing we can be sure of is they are paying American journalists to repeat the lies. The way to bet is this nuclear “accident” is a lot worse that being reported.

A culture that prizes rule-breaking above all else is not compatible with technology that requires strict adherence to a specific set of ethics. When those ethics are rooted in a long cultural tradition, the conflict is even more acute. If you think Covid was bad, imagine a Chinese version of Chernobyl. Instead of giving the world a case of the sniffles, she starts pumping out radioactive waste. A society that is willing to pollute its own air is not going to flinch about dumping nuclear waste.

China has always been a coercive society. The central authority has total power and there is no way to challenge it. The West has always been based on persuasion, but willing to stoop to inducement. When truth telling does not persuade, then propaganda is used to persuade. When that fails, then offering rewards or punishments is what works. These two types of societies are not just alien. They are incompatible with one another at every level.

It is becoming clear that welcoming China into the global “community” was a terrible blunder by the West. Assuming the American empire figures this out, it will take a generation to reset the relationship with China. If the next lab leak lives up to the Covid hype, then generations of obsequiousness will prove to have been a great mistake of the empire. If it is something worse, then we will know that the truly great mistake happened in the fall of 1969.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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

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

sa***@mi*********************.com











.

The Final Chapter

Posted on by

Note: I will be on the Restoring Order podcast tonight at 7PM Eastern time. The show will run for about 90 minutes. You can watch it here. I also have a new post up behind the green door. This a review of the political movie Duck Soup.

The 2020 drama The Courier is one of those films that is remarkable for what it does not do, rather than what it does do. It is a straight forward drama unburdened by Progressive politics. It sticks fairly close to the original story, without inserting magical people or performing a sex change on the principals. In fact, all but two of the characters are white males. The two females are supporting roles. In today’s climate, that is something close to a miracle.

The story itself is familiar to those who grew up in the Cold War, even if you are not familiar with this particular story. It is the story of Greville Wynne, a British salesman turned spy, who traveled in and out of the Soviet Union in the 1960’s for business, but he was also carrying top-secret information. We get the familiar cat and mouse stuff that is a staple of spy movies, along with the human drama that comes from a reluctant civilian caught up in the spy game.

It is a solidly told spy drama with competent acting and directing. What makes it remarkable is what it says about the current age. There are people alive today who recall the events portrayed in the movie. Most Americans alive today lived through some portion of the Cold War. Despite this, that era feels as familiar as the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece. The Cold War West, at least the English speaking portion, is not just a different time. It is a different world.

The weird thing about the Cold War is that as soon as it was over, there was no reminiscing about it or how it altered society. It was so quickly forgotten that young people could be forgiven for not knowing it existed. Young people in America know more about civil rights stuff and certain events in World War II than they do about what happened just a few decades ago. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union has been hurled down the memory hole.

It is an odd thing, given that the Cold War was the longest American war. It lasted roughly from March 5, 1946 to November 9, 1989. Most people date the start to the speech given by Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri during a tour of the United States. This is when he uttered the famous words “Iron Curtain” which became synonymous with the Soviet Union. The end, of course, is marked as the day the Berlin Wall came down.

For close to half a century, the United States was on a war footing. Rather than demobilize after the defeat of Japan and Germany, America retooled the entire nation to fight communism in general and the Soviets in particular. For two generations it was the superstructure of society. The economy, the culture and politics operated within the struggle against Russia. It is the American empire’s Peloponnesian War, except this time the democracies beat the Spartans.

One reason why this event was so quickly forgotten is that it appears to have been a necessary restraint on the worst elements in American democracy. Like a dog that got off the leash, there has been no turning back for those elements, suddenly freed from the restraints of the Cold War. The crusades against the Muslims were an attempt to put the crazies back on the rope, but it failed. Those crazies are now threatening to take over the whole country.

Every society has a portion that is mentally unstable. They are functional and can be put to good use, but they need structure. Religion has been the primary way to keep the unstable on the straight and narrow. With the decline of Christianity, mass movements in America have been the alternative. The various social reform movements in America, dating back to the 19th century were a way to give the unstable the structure they needed and put them to good use.

Of course, without a limiting principle, mass movements quickly turn into a disaster as the fanatics never know when to quit. They always look for some next step in their quest for salvation, The obvious example is how the temperance societies turned into outright bans on alcohol. Reducing public drunkenness was a worthy goal, but banning alcohol completely was lunacy in stilts. We are seeing this happen today with crazies rampaging through the streets, howling like lunatics.

That really is what the Cold War was for America. Without it, if the Cold War had never happened, America probably would have descended into anarchy and civil war by middle of the 20th century. The threat of thermonuclear annihilation forced the responsible to keep the unstable in their cages. It also gave these unstable people options into which they could express their fanaticism. The obsession with ancient grudges, for example, could be expressed as neoconservatism.

You could write the story of America as the story of fanaticism. The first waves of fanatics landed in what is now New England to build their paradise in the wilderness of the New World. They eventually conquered the rest of the continent in the name of one cause after another. Then they conquered the rest of the world, first in the name of democracy then to free the world of competing lunacy. With no more worlds to conquer, the fanatics are destroying themselves.

If you look around at the various tribes of lunatics in the pantheon of modern leftism, the quest for structure is clear. The Antifa goofballs are motivated by alienation and atomization. They are urban consumers with no purpose other than to consume. The females howling about male privilege are unmarried and childless, thus lacking the structure in which a woman can blossom. The Left is nothing but stray dogs looking for home, longing for the leash.

This is why the so-called conservatives wanted the war against the Muslims to be the new Cold War and why they rant about Russia today. As the late John McCain used to say, they want to be part of a cause bigger than themselves. A holy cause provides a reason to instill discipline. It may be what is behind the ruling class paranoia about imaginary white supremacy. It gives them a purpose and therefore a structure to their otherwise disorganized minds.

Like the Muslim panic, these new panics – and Covid can be viewed in this light as well – will fail due to a lack of reality. The Muslims were never a serious threat to anyone but themselves and maybe their neighbors. White supremacy is a figment of the fevered imaginations of liberal women who read too many bodice rippers. Even China is looking like a poor stand-in for the Devil. These are not real threats, so they can never be the organizing issue of a new American creed.

What may be happening is the end of one plot line in the American story. The fanatics who conquered the wilderness to build an empire are in the last chapter. The rest of the country is now tasked with how to wrap up this story line. Maybe it will be a new religion for the fanatics to join. Maybe it will be a reactionary response that relies on force to subdue the fanatics. Maybe it is a Hobbesian end for a people who suddenly realize they have no reason to be in the same country.

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