The Haunting

Posted on March 7, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up. I was not sure about this one, but sometimes you just have to go where the original thought takes you. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door and it is all about the big story.

General Hastings Ismay famously said that the point of NATO was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Since the 1950’s this has been the commonly accepted view of the alliance. After the war this made perfect sense as the Western nations faced off with the Soviets. There was also the well-understood fear of German nationalism. Britain and America had just gone through a terrible war in order to defeat the Nazis.

This sentiment carried on through the Cold War, even though it should have become obvious that German nationalism was no longer a real fear. The generation that fought the Cold War, however, was haunted by the past. NATO was just one example of an institution that evolved around the fear of nationalism in general, but that special nationalism in particular. The added threat of communism, which was often described in the same terms as fascism, only added to the fear.

This fear was obvious after the collapse the Soviet Union. The reunification of Germany was the central concern, as Europe reorganized. Margaret Thatcher was opposed to German reunification on the grounds that she was still not sure the Germans had been cured of their desire to conquer the world. The Russians, of course, had other reasons, in addition to her ancient fear of German nationalism. The post-Cold War period would also be haunted by those old fears.

This specter continues to haunt the minds of American foreign policy elites, who have transferred old fears of German nationalism onto Russia. NATO probably should have been dissolved or replaced after the Cold War. As a practical matter, it existed to check the Warsaw Pact, which no longer exists. Russia was flat on her back after the collapse of communism and the rest of Europe was rushing to embrace liberal democracy and American consumerist economics.

Most important, it was obvious to anyone engaged with reality that Germany was long past nationalism, especially that special form of nationalism. In fact, fascism in general existed only in the fevered minds of oddballs out on the fringes and the professional antifascist on the Left. As a political force, political fascism was less relevant than monarchism in Europe. The only role left for NATO was to keep America engaged in Europe, which could be done economically.

Of course, those old fears have proven to be far more important than observable reality among American elites. Since the 1990’s it has been a relentless drive to expand NATO to the edge of the Russian frontier. First it was the old members of the Warsaw Pact then it was Balkan nations. Then it was the scheme to add the former Soviet republic of Georgia, a nation thousands of miles from the Atlantic. Then, of course, it was the scheme to add Ukraine to NATO.

It is assumed that the sole reason to keep adding nations to NATO is to contain the Russians, but that old fear of German nationalism is still there. Germany is now the dominant economy of Europe and the leader of the European Union. It is the German relationship with both Russia and Ukraine that is at the heart of the current crisis that had led to war in Europe. Germany has been developing stronger ties to Russia, especially economic ties, and Washington hates it.

This is why Washington has refused to even consider peaceful solutions to the crisis in Ukraine over the last ten years. Those disputed eastern provinces have been racked by a civil war for close to a decade. Estimates vary, but the consensus is that twenty thousand people have died there since 2014. The Ukrainian government has been supplying those militias with weapons, which come from the United States through the Ukrainian military or various NGO’s.

Obviously, one driver in all of this is corruption. War is good for the war business, so the usual suspects have been happy to provoke all sides in this conflict. Zelensky has been for sale since day one, so he has been easy to manipulate. The greater issue has been the number of important Americans on the payroll of the Ukrainians. Hunter Biden is just one example. Many others have been taking bribes from Ukrainian interests seeking to profit from the turmoil.

None of this would be possible, however, if Washington were not haunted by the shadow of long gone figures. The old joke was that the foreign policy establishment wakes up most nights to the sound of hoofbeats. While certainly true in many cases, it is also true that they live in the shadow of antifascism, which has become something of a cult among the American ruling class. Who they are now is defined by the fear of and opposition to that long gone political movement.

This strikes the practical minded as implausible, but people are not willing to sacrifice for practical things. That should be obvious now. The Russians are risking economic isolation in order to restore their pride and sense of identity. This war will cost them economically, but it will all be worth it to feel that ancient pride again. The Ukrainian soldiers who know they are fighting a hopeless battle, will fight to the end because there are things more important than stuff.

The crisis in Europe that promises to plunge the world into depression, revolt and possibly nuclear war is not about stuff. It is about that old specter that should have been consigned to the history books long ago. It is the apparition of fascism that has driven Western elites to the brink of madness. Their desire to free themselves of this haunting is driving them to try and reorganize the world in opposition to it. Instead, they are driving the world to organize against the madness of the West.

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

A Sickly Return

Posted on March 4, 2022 by thezman

One of the things I forgot about travel is that I always pick up a bit of the plague whenever I spend time in airports. Back when I was traveling on a regular basis, my immune system was used to it, so it was a day or two of a very mild cold the week after I got back from a trip. Having been off the road for two years, my white blood cells are out of practice or perhaps my memory cells have forgotten. Regardless, I picked up a nice case of Ebola on the trip to Florida.

I rarely get colds or the flu. I think the last time I got the flu was in the 1990’s, but the best I can say is it was a long time ago. Colds are a different thing. Like everyone I get those from time to time, but for me it is always very mild. Mostly just some sneezing and the sniffles for a couple of days. Like the flu, the last time I got a serious cold that had me struggling was so long ago I cannot recall the date. I remember Bush was the president, so a little less than twenty years ago.

That said, I did have the man’s version of Covid back when this started. That was not particularly impressive, as plagues go. It was pretty much like having a bad cold with a fever for roughly a week. Three days of getting sick, three days of being sick then three days of getting over being sick. This softer, girly version is much milder, but it seems to stick around for longer. The worst part is it has messed with my sleep. I am more tired right now than legitimately sick.

That is why I did a one-take show this week. I had something more elaborate planned, but I am running low on energy. It is also why the show is a bit rambling. I started to lose the plot in the second half of the show. It was also a chance to clear up some questions about the two big topics of the week and clear out the items in the mailbox. I have a two hour show I have been plotting, so maybe that will next week, assuming the plague lifts and I am fit for recording again.

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

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

This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00: Opening
03:00: AFPAC
25:00: Ukraine
55:00: Closing

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

The Bug Men

Posted on March 3, 2022 by thezman

Imagine one day you wake up to see that some people, but not all, just the beautiful people, are now wearing flowerpots on their heads. You first see it on the television while making coffee. Then you see people with the flowerpot things while on your commute into the office. They are not wearing actual flowerpots, but hats that look like a pot holding a shrubbery. Not only are they wearing these ridiculous hats, but they are also acting like it is perfectly normal.

This is the world most Americans woke up to last week when news broke that the Russian army had crossed into Ukraine. Suddenly, as if they had received orders from the hive queen, all of the beautiful people were Ukrainian nationalists. They were all saying “keev” as if they had developed some new mental disease. They were sporting Ukrainian flag lapel pins. At the Biden state of the union show they were dressed in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

This is not just a partisan marketing campaign either. The mouth breathers of conservatism are right there with their masters on the Left waving the yellow and blue of their new homeland. The same people who were wearing the angry face about being called a Putin shill a few years ago are now calling anyone skeptical of this new fad a tool of the evil Vladimir Putin. The same people who tell us nations no longer matter now sound like white nationalists in their support of Ukraine.

It is easy to dismiss this as the sort of superficial sincerity that we have come to expect from the beautiful people. A big part of the gulf between the Cloud People and the Dirt People is the Cloud People lack normal human emotions. Instead, it is these programmed responses to programmed questions. You get more authenticity from an ATM machine than from Jen Psaki. While this Ukraine fetish is part of the programming, it reveals something else about them.

These are people who lack all meaning in life. The reason they all swarmed to the Ukraine stuff is that it allowed them to experience what they imagine is normal human emotion and community spirit. Their conjured image of the brave Ukrainians taking up arms against the aggressor reflects their own lack of purpose. Many Americans have been reduced to the bug-man existence of consuming product but the Cloud People are the pinnacle of the bug-man lifestyle.

This is why they are so fond of using analogies drawn from comic book movies and children’s books. You will notice that the people comparing Putin to Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies are childless. They did not pick up the reference from watching the shows with their kids. They are the primary consumers of this material. This fantasy material has become folklore for people who lack the cultural structure that provides an adult frame of reference to understand the world.

Dissidents are fond of pointing out how the modern age consumes the normal social capital, converting it into cash to fuel the consumer economy. This process has slowly obliterated the natural community of America. The result is endless miles of generic housing developments named after whatever it is that was destroyed in order to build these crimes against nature. We are slowly being converted into pod people who experience the world via the internet.

The thing is this process is complete among the Cloud people. They are cutoff from the rest of us, living in a fantasy world that operates by its own rules. It is why they think it makes sense to lecture working class people about white privilege while Mexican drug gangs flood working class neighborhoods with narcotics. It is why Joe Biden’s programmers think Ukraine is more important than food prices. In their world, what matters is what gives them meaning.

That is the thing though. Their lives have no meaning because they are living the fully atomized and transactional life. These are people who will slit each other’s throat for a better spot on a cable channel. They have no loyalty, no code, no sense of decency because they are just particles in a system that exists for its own purposes. It is why the image of Ukrainians taking up arms is so enthralling to them. Our bug-man rulers long for even the hint of such a life.

This is why they hate the Dirt People so much. Despite it all, normal people still try to form and maintain community. They may not be able to articulate it, but they sense that having beers with a neighbor as they watch the kids play in the backyard matters more than anything they consume on-line. The Cloud People hate the Dirt People because for the Dirt People, Harry Potter will always be entertainment for their kids, not a guidebook for understanding the world.

Also note the solipsism in all of the Ukraine love. The people wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag have only the most superficial understanding of the people and history of the region. It is why they embraced the most superficial and meaningless part of Ukrainian identity, the flag. It is a cheap decoration that lets them feel like they are a part of something. They are standing with Ukraine with the same sincerity they do everything else in their hollow and pointless lives.

You also note that they frame the Ukraine issue as brave innocents defending themselves from the dark forces. This comes from people who deliberately lock themselves inside razor wire fences guarded by armed troops. Their emotional isolation from normal human experience now manifests as a physical isolation from the people they supposedly rule. For the Cloud People, Ukraine is a metaphor for how they see themselves in relation to the Dirt People.

The Devil finds work for idle hands and that is what we see with our rulers. Much of what ails the West these days is the result of a ruling class without much purpose as a ruling class and without much meaning as people. The crisis in Ukraine is the fault of people who use children’s books to provide meaning to their lives. We not only have an excess of elites, but we also have a shortage of reasons for them to exist. It is why they are now decorated with Ukrainian flags. They have nothing else.

The Worst Case

Posted on March 2, 2022 by thezman

It is assumed that the worst case scenario for the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is the direct or even indirect involvement of NATO in Ukraine. If NATO forces came into direct conflict with Russian forces, the result would be total war and total war could easily and quickly lead to nuclear war. This is a remote possibility as NATO has been adamant about not getting militarily involved. The West is content to use the economic weapons at its disposal that it assumes the Russians have anticipated.

While there is nothing worse than nuclear war, the fact that it is the least likely outcome means it is not the worst probable outcome. The fact is, the Cold War was a good lesson in the use and non-use of these weapons. Nuclear weapons are last resort defensive tools. A nation will use them as a last gasp at survival. This is why Israel stole the technology from America in the last century. It is why North Korea is developing the ability to deliver a nuke to North America.

If nuclear holocaust is off the table and a wider scale war in Europe is off the table, then that leaves the softer, less predictable outcomes. We are already seeing big ripples in the financial markets as people try to figure out the downstream consequences of the economic sanctions on Russia. Despite what the media may claim, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are not hermit kingdoms. They have a lot of economic links to the rest of the world and are a vital part of the global supply chain.

For example, one bottleneck in the chip supply chain is in Ukraine. The world has just started to turn the tide on the chip shortage, but now a vital bottleneck has been closed due to the war. Optimistic predictions said the chip shortage would be over by the end of 2022, but now that date is pushed well into the future. Everyone in the dreaded private sector knows the mischief caused by the chip shortage. That mischief is now going to play out for a much longer period than expected.

That last part is where to focus. Economics is about expectations. People will stock up on something, for example, if they anticipate a shortage or price hike. On the other hand, people will take risks in good times, risks like starting a business, buying a new home or hiring new staff. A massive amount of risk has been dumped into the global economy as a result of this war and the response from the West. For the first time in a long time everyone has a reason to not take any risks.

On the more tangible side, energy prices are spiking at a time when we have spiraling food prices globally. The last time this happened there was civil unrest throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The so-called Arab Spring was marketed as a quest for freedom but it was a revolt over food and fuel shortages. It is good to remember that the same people who sold those results as a positive are the ones responsible for the mess in Ukraine and responsible for managing the fallout.

Ten years ago, the Arab Spring was watched in America during a time of historically low inflation and interest rates. The population was fairly content. Today, America has double-digit inflation and is now about to get an energy cost spike. The population is also at each other’s throats because the people in charge are sure one half of the population are evil insurrectionists. A global depression is not going to help sooth the social tensions that exist in Western nations.

Wide-scale supply chain and financial disruptions is probably the rosy scenario end of this conflict in Ukraine. Shippers are already hesitating to take on Russian products, even those products are not sanctioned. It is conceivable that deliveries of vital natural resources like fertilizer, food and energy from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine will be delayed for the next several months. These countries ship a lot of food to the global south, so it is a profoundly serious problem.

If that is not enough to consider, think about the last time waves of men flooded into Europe from the south. That was largely driven by economics. Given the socio-economic mood in Europe right now, how well will they handle a million men marching into the heart of Europe from the Middle East and Africa? Who will be blamed this time for the demographic calamity that would follow? Far-right candidate Eric Zemmour could end up sounding like a moderate.

The global order that the West, led by the United States, has evolved over the last several decades assumed certain things. For example, populism was assumed to be impossible in a system that efficiently delivered quality consumer goods. It assumed that price shocks were a thing of the past. Similarly, inflation was assumed to be controlled by the judicious control of the money supply. It assumed the free flow of goods, capital and information.

The system struggled to contend with the populist revolts of the last decade. Two years of mismanagement of the Covid crisis have brought populism back to the fore and called into question key economic axioms. We have labor shortages all over the place, despite rising wages, but we also have spiraling inflation. This is at a time of historically low interest rates. Prior to the war, this combination was assumed to be impossible and now it will only get worse as a result of the crisis.

When the axioms of a system begin to crumble, people quickly begin to doubt the system that rests on those axioms. Confidence in the socio-political order was already falling as a result of demographics and mismanagement. The banging of war drums by the geriatrics ruling Washington is not going to change this. In fact, it is clear that the public blames those geriatrics for the Ukrainian mess. We are entering uncharted territory with regards to public confidence in the system.

It very well may be that the worst case scenario is upon us with regards to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. A fragile system that was already wobbling due to demographics and mismanagement is now about to receive a series of economic body blows. Europe may be getting a new wave of demographic reality. The worst case scenario may be a revolution in public consciousness about the socio-economic order. The elites may be blowing their world up the old fashioned way.

Russia – Ukraine

Posted on March 1, 2022 by thezman

One of the interesting sidelights to the crisis in Ukraine is the hyper-reaction of the American media. It has been a blend of foaming at the mouth jingoism, unhinged hysteria and absolute nonsense. Since the rest of the English-speaking world follows the lead of the American media, the world has been flooded with what probably sounds like a tidal wave of craziness. The start of actual fighting in Ukraine has made the situation worse in the information space.

As is so often the case, the one place you must avoid if you want to know what is happening in Europe right now is the American media. They have fallen for at least one Sam Hyde gag. They have been caught using old pictures from different events and screenshots from movies. They seem to be willing to believe the most outlandish nonsense about both sides. Of course, the Ukrainians are the Spartans at Thermopylae and the Russians are bloodthirsty Nazis.

What we know so far is that there has been some contact between Ukrainian forces and Russian forces. We also know the Russians are now staged in-country, outside various cities and strategically important spots. We also know that the Ukrainians have been willing to talk, after initially refusing peace talks. The first round happened a couple of days ago and another round is scheduled this week. We also have not seen much in the way of reliable footage indicating heavy combat.

Taken as a whole, with the understanding that lots of pieces of the puzzle are missing, the most likely situation right now is not much is happening. The Russians swept in but stopped short of going into major cites. They have most certainly occupied the disputed provinces in the east and have liquidated the Ukrainian irregulars. Otherwise, the lack of images is the result of two armies in a stand-off as the political and psychological war rages around them.

For their part, the Ukrainians have no reason to engage the Russian army directly, as they would eventually lose. It may take a few weeks, but the outcome is certain and the price to the civilian population would be high. They have the backing of the West to a point and the longer their army is in the field and functioning, they have a chance to cut a deal with the Russians. For Zelensky, his army and his cities are chips he will play over the next weeks to make a deal for himself.

Interestingly, the Russians may have a similar calculus. As long as their army is camped outside Kiev, they have options they did not have last week. For example, they can settle the question of the eastern provinces now. The facts on the ground matter and those two provinces no longer belong to Ukraine. They can also force NATO to discuss their security concerns in a serious way. The longer their army is in the field the more willing the West is to cut a deal with them.

That is where the Ukrainian and Russian similarities end. Zelensky agreed to talks because he knows the other option is he becomes a CNN anchor. If the press reports were true and the heroic Ukrainian army was fighting the Reds to a standstill, his position would be simple. Russia leaves or else. He is at the table to buy time and avoid being run out of his own country. He is looking for a face-saving deal that leaves him in power and in good standing with the West.

The Russians want what they have plus two more things. They have the provinces and they are not going back to Ukrainians control. What they want from the peace talks is agreement from Zelensky on this fact. That becomes an endorsement of the deal and thus strips the West of claims to the contrary. They also want an end to discussions about Ukraine joining NATO or the EU. If this comes from the Western puppet government, it basically comes from Washington.

A wildcard in all of this is time. It is assumed the Russians wanted to quickly knock out the Ukrainians, but that appears to be false. They want a deal with this Ukrainian government, not one they install. That means they came into this with a much longer timeline than has been suggested. How long they are willing or able to keep their army in the field is unknown, but it is probably months, maybe longer. All we know is we do not know their timeline for ending this.

For now, the Ukrainians have all the time in the world. The West is waving around their flag on social media and promising support. They know this is mostly public relations and that eventually, the West will move into other issues. For now, they have no reason to cut a deal with the Russians. They have every reason to stall for time and hope some miracle happens that causes the Russians to change their position. Like the Russians, they have months, maybe longer to wait.

Another wildcard in all of this is economics. Ukraine and Russia ship a lot of food and energy to the MENA countries. The reason that region was convulsed by revolts ten years ago was food and fuel prices spiked. In a world already suffering double-digit retail inflation and supply chain problems, another factor driving up prices for essentials could create massive headaches for everyone. It is not as if the Western countries are in peace and harmony right now either.

That brings in the other wildcard. Another wave of migrants from the south could easily swamp Europe this spring. What keeps the waves of migrants from flooding Europe are countries like Syria and Turkey. The former is a Russian client state and the later has a lot of axes to grind with the Europeans. Turkey has been in economic crisis for months, so opening up the migrant valve could be a useful way to lower the temperature domestically, especially if there are food shortages.

What all of this means is this conflict could stagger on for a long time before the parties decided they have to settle things. It also means the geniuses in Washington who instigated this did not anticipate any of what is happening. That will surely cause problems in trying to reach a deal. They have backed themselves into a corner and cannot sign off on any deal right now. That will drag out whatever negotiations are happening between Ukraine and Russia.

AFPAC III

Posted on February 28, 2022 by thezman

Note: The normal Taki post is up. This week it is not tied into the Monday post here, but rather to a special post over at American Greatness. I read and reviewed Paul Gottfried’s latest book, Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade. If you can drop a positive comment over there, that would be good. Fair warning, the comment section there is a full SD below what you get here. I also have some notes about my trip here.

Conferences are an American past time. We have conferences for serious things like business issues and community topics. We also have conferences for less serious issues like politics, social issues, academics, books and hobbies. The conference industry is big business in America. There are people who make their living organizing the details of conferences. Every decent sized venue has people dedicated to managing and directing conferences.

You can rank these things by their production values. The more important the event the better the production values. The well supported operations can hire good people and a first-class facility for the conference. At the other end, the conference is put on by volunteers who have a passion for the topic. They rent a ballroom at one of the hotels near the airport and hope to get enough attendees to cover the cost. In the end it is just people with the same hobby in a room having hotel food.

AFPAC III was near the top-end of the conference spectrum. It was not at the level of CPAC or global corporate events, but it was just below. There was well over one thousand people in attendance. The facility could hold a few hundred more, but beyond that this event will be moving into the big-boy size facilities. To give some perspective, if you were in the back of the room, you needed the giant video screens to follow the speeches as you could not see the speaker.

That is the other thing you see at the higher end of these things. There was a stage with the podium, in the middle and two massive video screens. The room is setup with a first-rate sound system that lets the people in the back hear the speech, without the people in the front going deaf. The video screens had the graphics and video shorts you see at these things to keep people excited between speeches. Again, it was not at the CPAC level, but they can feel the breath of AFPAC on their neck.

Therein the lies the second observation about AFPAC that is important. There is something happening here. CPAC gets all the beautiful people in their finest to tell one another everything if going to be okay. AFPAC draws the Dirt People in their finest, who know everything is not going to be okay. CPAC only lacks the smell of fresh cut flowers to feel like a well attended funeral for a rich man. AFPAC has the smell of revolution in the air and the energy that comes with it.

The energy is the third thing worth noting. On a personal note, I have been to a lot of conferences for all sorts of things. I have never felt like I was in the middle of an electrical storm until AFPAC. Most of that is due to the youth of the audience, but even the geezers were ready to spit on their hands and hoist the black flag. Rock concerts are not this fired up. If you are showing a bit of gray in the beard and want to feel good about the future, attend AFPAC IV.

The show itself was much better than you normally get at these things. The speakers know they are standing in front of a young crowd hungry for red meat. A Catholic priest opened the show with a prayer, then Nick gave the crowd a short talk, which was the signal to strap in and enjoy the ride. Marjorie Taylor Green spoke first. She is a fountain of political bumper sticker quotes. That is politics today. Then it was a run of famous live streamers with a few other politicians mixed in.

The speaker list and its arrangement are where you see the growing pains for AFPAC as it was a bit too much red meat. Pols are always going to be a fountain of applause lines as that is their business. Live streamers are not the sort of people used to organizing a speech around a topic or set of themes. As a result, they fall back on the zingers and conversational style they do on their show. The effect is something like a motivational seminar rather than a political conference.

In future events, they would be wise to bound this with two professional speakers who know how to deliver a speech that people remember the next day. The big boys will have a speaker open with a speech that gets the audience thinking, then a series of speakers to pump up the crowd. The next to last speaker is the closed parenthesis to the first speaker. The star, in this case Nick Fuentes, comes out to close the show with a speech that binds the energy with the message.

The same can be said for the security, which was done by lots of young men volunteering for the job. Like the speeches, they had tons of energy, but not the structure people come to expect at an event this size. They got the job done by being wildly overzealous, not terribly efficient. In the future, a professional team to manage the young men would be wise. It is not that they did not get the job done. It is that they missed a chance to impress with it.

The final criticism is that it went too late. The event started with a cocktail hour where the special guests mingled with about two hundred attendees. Inevitably, these go on too long, which was the case here. Then it took too long to get a thousand people seated, so the first speech started at 8:00 PM. Of course, in a room pulsing with energy, the speeches went on longer than scheduled. By the time Fuentes closed the show it was pushing 1:00 AM and the crowd was running low on energy.

Again, this is the bucket of great problems to have if you are the organizers. It is easy to remedy going forward and offers something new in the future. They should probably have a VIP dinner on Friday night for three hundred people. They meet the guests and get a dinner speech from Nick. The next day is a full day event with breaks to let people rest up, socialize and all that stuff. It should build up to the evening portion that gets everyone pumped up to conquer the world.

Of course, that is only possible if the numbers grow and that does not seem like a problem, given what has happened thus far. AFPAC I was a small affair held in the third-rate motel in Northern Virginia. Maybe 150 people were in attendance. To go from that to ten times the crowd at a major facility is special. That is the right word for what is happening with this youth movement. It is not without some challenges and it will hit some bumps along the way, but something special is happening.

That is the question that I had as I packed up for home. I chatted with many young people and I have some knowledge of the people organizing it. I have followed Nick’s career since I met him four years ago. Right now, this is just a thing that is happening, but no one can define. That has its benefits, but it comes with risk. At some point soon it has to be more than just a lot of young guys looking for something that welcomes them as young men in a world hostile to young men.

In the near future, this thing will need a superstructure of ideas to hold it together once the blows start coming from the establishment. The blows will not be name calling from the simpleton army of the SPLC. One day soon, senior Republicans will be told by their handlers to denounce this movement and its leaders. It has to have the strength to withstand that sort of assault and answer back. That comes from having a superstructure of ideas and objectives.

That has always been the problem with populist politics in America. It has the numbers and the energy, but it always lacks a positive message. People will sacrifice for only so long in opposition. Eventually, they cut deals in their mind to accommodate that which they oppose in order to get on with their life. On the other hand, people will sacrifice their lives for a dream, a dream for their children. Populism tends to live in mere opposition, so it tends to fade.

That is the unique opportunity of AFPAC and the movement it represents. Nick Fuentes comes in for a lot of criticism, but he is smart and committed. He is not the same man he was when I met him. He possesses a self-awareness you rarely see in anyone that gets famous in politics. It is extra-rare in outsider politics. Being the big fish in the small pond tends to make people feel like gods. They wake up every morning wondering who has been talking about them since they went to bed.

Fuentes, in contrast, is thinking much bigger than being the big fish in a small pond and he knows he is a big fish in a small pond. He also knows he will not be allowed in the big pond, so he is committed to building a bigger pond. If Pat Buchanan and the paleos had possessed this degree of self-awareness and realism, we might not be in the situation where we have to hope the youth will solve the problems left to them by their parents and grandparents.

A sign that these guys have the right stuff to build a genuine opposition is something Fuentes did in his speech. He gave a moving tribute to Jared Taylor that was heartfelt and sincere. Fuentes is loyal and you could see that in his tribute to Taylor. This is a young man with a code. He sticks by those who stick by him. That is not always good in politics, but that is the problem with our politics. No one in it has code. We are ruled by sociopaths, not men with a code. We need more men with code.

View From The Road

Posted on February 25, 2022 by thezman

Note: No show today as I am traveling this week. I will be posting travel logs behind the green door for those interested. Here is the first installment. I also have a lengthy book review ready to go and once that is posted, I’ll update this with a link.

One of the funny things you experience when traveling to another English-speaking country is their version of your news. I first experienced this in Dublin half a dozen years ago when I popped on the BBC in the hotel. When I travel, I never turn on the television, as the room is just a place to sleep and shower. It was pouring rain so I decided to check out Irish television for the first time. I was greeted by two actors confidently spewing out laughable nonsense about the news.

One guy was talking about Trump as if he had grown up with the man and knew him like a family member. The trouble was, the things he was saying were so absurd that it felt like satire of a crazy MSNBC talking head, but it was serious. The person on the other side of this was an over-the-top version of the pompous news anchor. He was an English version of Ron Burgundy from the movie Anchorman. I was sitting there cackling like Kamala Harris while watching it.

I clicked around the many versions of the BBC and then found Sky News. I had never consumed this product, but my understanding was that it was the Fox News Channel for the rest of the English-speaking world. In reality, it was just another version of the BBC, without the same level of smugness. They had a different actor pretending to know the mind of Donald Trump, telling the audience for this stuff what they needed to hear to get through the trauma of the election.

After I recovered from the hysterical fits of laughter, I realized I was watching the modern version of the freak show. The difference is the freak show never tried to normalize the freaks. The modern freak show seeks to normalize the weirdness in order to open the mind of the viewer to the messaging. Then I realized that like all Americans, I had grown up in the same freak show, with different freaks. In other words, American mass media was worse than I noticed.

This week I have been busy with a million things and I am on the road in Orlando, so I have not been following the news very much. I caught some bits about the war in Europe, but I have not had time to look at the inevitable commentary or watch the chattering skulls on television. What I know about what is happening comes from what I know about the history of the area, prior analysis and the many e-mails I have been getting from readers in Eastern Europe.

At the airport, they had CNN on and it was all war news, but I saw no one watching is so I followed the mob and ignored it too. I’ve been in a lot of airports during tranquil times and turbulent times and the airport crowd is always a good gauge of whether something is resonating with people. In the 2016 election cycle, people stopped to watch Trump news at the airport. Even people busy living their lives knew it was a big deal so they stopped and watched the man.

Putting the news out of my head meant I missed all the talk and analysis until I arrived in Orlando Thursday evening. The Uber driver asked me about it, but it turned out his reason had nothing to do with the news. He is just a huge Putin fans so this is like seeing his favorite sports team in the championship. He wanted to talk about it because it makes him feel good to talk about it. That said, his analysis would turn out to be the most sensible I’d hear that day.

After checking into the hotel, I decide to see what the news was saying about the great Slavic invasion of Europe. War is good television and the pioneer in modern war television was CNN. They are down on their luck these days and this is the sort of thing to boost their ratings, so I hit CNN first. Memories of the freak show from Dublin rushed into my mind as one lunatic after another came on to make sure they said “Keev” several times, rather than “kee-ev” like a normal person.

Luckily, MSNBC seemed to be in a commercial loop, so I broke free and went over to Fox News, which has fallen into an alternative reality. In this new reality, it is the year 2000 and the chicken hawks are at their zenith. Instead of Saddam Hussein as the next Hitler, it is Putin. They are all saying “Keev” now too. The amusing thing is that when these simpletons say it, they stumble, because they have not had enough time to practice saying this weird new word in front of the mirror.

Like the goofy English pundits on the BBC claiming to know the mind of Trump, the current pundits all claim to know the mind of Vladimir Putin. Of course, they tell us that he is the evil monster they need to justify the warmongering. You see, if Americans do not accept ten-dollar gasoline and breadlines, Putin will march all the way to Paris, just like you know who, in what always feels like yesterday for these people. You must sacrifice for their principles.

It really is a freak show. The one exception is Tucker Carlson, which is the great irony in all of this. The people trying to understand what is happening and maintaining healthy skepticism and objectivity are cast as mindless puppets of evil. The people suddenly saying “Keev” like they have contracted a new form of Tourette’s are the deep thinking, worldly servants of all that is holy. This is not propaganda. It is an alternative reality used to impose mass psychosis.

What is amazing about the Fox News coverage is it all sounds like the stuff you see on CNN and MSNBC. It is just various ways of repeating whatever the White House is saying, but with a hint of Biden criticism. They try to compare him to Neville Chamberlain when the opportunity arises. In other words, they are following the lead of the ratings losers, instead of the most popular man in the mass media. It just shows the real face behind those masks they wear.

One final observation about Fox News. Sean Hannity was never a guy working math problems in his free time, but he seems to have gotten dumber. He always looks like he is going to snap and fly into a Chris Farley-like tantrum. His show is angry stupid man interviews stupid people pretending to be smart. You have to wonder about the audience for such content. You can excuse people for wanting to see the Siamese twins or wolf-boy, but what is the excuse for watching Hannity?

There are many theories of the mass media. They usually revolve around the Orwellian propaganda angle. When you can look at it from the proper distance, you get the sense that maybe the real point is to fill the air with the sounds of weirdos and lunatics, so the sober voices cannot be heard. A guy like Tucker lives like a serious lecturer employed by the traveling circus. Even if you like his content, it is hard to appreciate it over the sound of freaks and carnies.

It is not entirely spontaneous, of course. You see that with the vapid repetition of the word “Keev” from these airheads. There are people behind the curtain injecting phrases and opinions into the system for the freaks to repeat. On the other hand, it is a system that operates by the logic of people who think the purpose of life is to win the catchphrase contest each day. The mass media is the freak show populated with credentialed members of the managerial elite.

The End Of Empire

Posted on February 24, 2022 by thezman

At the end of the Cold War, the American empire was at the height of its global influence and power. The verdict of history was that it had the best economy, the best military and the best political culture. Thirty years on and no one looks at the American economic model with envy. China is viewed as having the best economy. While the military has amazing weaponry, its culture is looked upon as increasingly bizarre. Of course, the political culture has become coarse and unstable.

The sharp decline in the competence of the Global American Empire is where the decline is most evident. The place to start is the blunders in the Bush years, where they miscalculated at every step in the crusade against Islam. One can argue about whether they should have anticipated the 9/11 attacks, but the response was poorly conceived and poorly executed. Like a sports team that takes a far weaker opponent lightly, the empire survived the encounter with Islam. It did not win.

The Obama years brought new failures. The administration started with the goal of resetting relations with Russia, which had been soured by the behavior of the Bush administration in the Russo-Georgian war. They sent Hillary Clinton to cackle with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Obama administration ended with Hillary Clinton’s election team manufacturing a smear campaign and conspiracy theory around the now famous Russian collusion hoax.

The Trump years were mostly filled with noise, but the fact that Trump was president at all suggested the competence of the empire was cratering. The system left to the current ruling class was supposed to prevent both Clinton and Trump. Worse yet, when the system failed and Trump was selected, the people in charge engaged in a four year tantrum rather than making the best of it. For his part, Trump spent his four years giving the Israel lobby a blank check.

The Biden regime has ushered in a new era of bungling. The exit from Afghanistan was never going to be smooth, but it had to be done. This was known in the Trump years but the system refused to cooperate with Trump. A competent system would have let the hated orange man own the ugly exit. Instead, they left it to Biden and then proceeded to find ways to blunder no one thought possible. The sight of Afghan herdsman sitting in abandoned Blackhawk helicopters was a poignant symbol.

Now we have the Ukraine debacle, which threatens global stability. This crisis is a long time coming so it is not all the fault of the Biden administration. The Empire has been trying to encircle and destabilize Russia since the Bush years. The overthrow of the Ukrainian government by the Obama people and the installation of a puppet government was just one step in a long process. Biden does own the attempted coup in Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Ukraine is a complicated place with a tragic history. That history has mostly been defined by great armies marching through its territory. Modern Ukraine is the product of the communists committing genocide, then the Nazis committing genocide then the communist returning to impose three generations of communism. Since the end of the Cold War, Ukraine has been defined by corruption and a massive brain-drain as its people head for the rest of Europe.

Ukraine is the counter to the old De Maistre aphorism about government. He said that every country has the government it deserves. This has always been interpreted in the West to mean bad government is the fault of the people. This is not how De Maistre meant it, but even if he did, Ukraine shows the idiocy of that sentiment. No people deserve the governance Ukraine has received over the last century. It is proof that government is a ruling class tool of control.

It is the corruption that has come to define American policy with regards to both Russia and Ukraine recently. Senior members of the political elite have had family members put on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarch. The most famous of which is the drug-addled son of President Biden, who was put on the board of Burisma Holdings, the energy conglomerate owned by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Ukraine has been buying a lot of influence in Washington this way.

Now we have the Russian military moving into Ukraine on the pretext of protecting both the large Russian population in Ukraine and the two breakaway republics in the east of Ukraine. This could have been avoided if the Global American Empire had recognized the reality of the situation. They could have hashed out a deal with Putin on the issues at the heart of the crisis. Instead, we got months of bizarre hysteria that only served to undermine peaceful solutions.

The fate of Ukraine is not particularly important. What matters in this crisis is the display of staggering incompetence by the empire. They managed to turn what should have been a minor diplomatic matter on the fringe of Europe into a global crisis. The result is soaring energy prices in a time when the global economy is still staggering from two years of incompetent Covid polices. We have double digit inflation now. Just wait until massive spikes in energy prices hit the system.

The incompetence does not end here. We are now seeing a parade of experts from the imperial chattering class compare Ukraine to the Sudetenland, Putin to Hitler and Biden to Neville Chamberlain. Some are just yesterday men looking for one last grift before they exit the stage. Most are people locked into a blinkered mindset bounded by their ignorance and self-regard. To people with any knowledge of the issue, they sound like idiots because they clearly do not know what they do not know.

Much of this public relations campaign is aimed at shifting the focus from the failure of American foreign policy. The Russia hawks blaming Biden is a way of shifting the blame from the permanent foreign policy establishment. That too is another example of the incompetence of the system. Instead of learning from their error, they are shifting the blame to a convenient target, so they can continue in error. Thirty years of failure since the end of the Cold War has taught them nothing.

Put side the armchair diplomacy and what we are seeing is the world slowly adjusting to the reality of the Global American Empire. It is the sick man of world politics and the world knows it. Putin easily outmaneuvered the empire on this issue. The Europeans made sure to not make any enemies on the Russian side. The empire is left with talking tough from a distance. This is what the end of empire looks like. The question now is just how quickly it reaches its inevitable conclusion.

The Anti-State

Posted on February 23, 2022 by thezman

Since the Greeks, educated men have pondered how it is man came to live in societies governed by political institutions. By the time societies reached the point where they could have men sitting around thinking about this stuff, rather than farming and fighting, the answers had been lost to time. The state, in one form or another, has been a thing that exists since the “memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” For just as long, men have been debating the form of government.

A core assumption, for as long as anyone has known, is that government has a practical purpose for society. For example, it is the job of every form of government to defend society from external and internal threats. The government adjudicates disputes between members of society. It is the state that deals with the rulers of other societies on the matters that concern them. Since private government has been the norm, the state defends the interests of the king or ruling elite.

These are obvious things that everyone accepts, but there has always been another purpose to the state. The welfare of the people has always been one of the duties of whoever is in charge. Again, private government has been the norm, so the king or the aristocracy is supposed to look out for the people. For most of human history this has meant economic interests. A good ruler gets powerful because his policies allow his people to grow rich through trade and commerce.

A new wrinkle was added in the 19th century with the growth of liberalism. The state was not just about practical things, like war and trade, but also had a duty to protect and promote freedom and opportunity. The state needed to be organized around the principle of liberty and equality. This meant that the law was neutral in that everyone was equal before the law. It also meant that the people were free to do as they pleased as long as it did not cause direct harm to others or the state.

That is a big leap when you stop and think about it. The role of the state has evolved from the private interest of the rulers and the economic interests of the people to cultural and spiritual interests. A government dedicated to preserving the liberty of the citizens is different than a government dedicated to protecting the interests and privileges of the rulers. The state is now in the business of securing the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the people.

Various forms of socialism take this a step further. Instead of the government getting out of the way of the people and making sure no one interferes with their pursuit of happiness, the government needs to make sure no one is being exploited and that everyone can achieve their potential. This requires the state to take an active role in shaping the lives of the people. The state is now charged with making sure you are able to maximize your potential.

This very brief summary of government is useful in thinking about what is currently happening throughout the West. Until now, government existed for a positive purpose, to accomplish some goal or promote a set of ideas. Communism may be irrational, but it had a rational, positive purpose. Communism promised a world where everyone is equal and free of exploitation. Liberal democracy was supposed to deliver a world free of coercion and limits on your liberty.

The West is now reorganizing away from these sorts of positive purposes to an entirely negative purpose. Antifascism is becoming the organizing ethos of the ruling elite and that naturally means the government. By fascism, they mean a collection of ideas and concepts they think are integral to fascism. Things like racial discrimination or opposition to men wearing dresses. The point of the state is to eliminate all of these precursors to fascism from human society.

What we are seeing is the evolution of the first anti-state. Instead of being organized around a set of aspirations linked to the nature, culture and history of the people, the state is organized around exterminating ideas and concepts associated with the nature, culture and history of Western people. In order to eliminate these things from humanity, the state must use every tool at its disposal. It also means leveling existing society in order to rebuild the antifascist state from scratch.

This is why something like structural racism now takes up so much space in the discourse of the ruling elite. They look around at the inequality of man and conclude it must be systemic. Then they look at history and see that Western societies were created by Western people. They conclude that society was created to benefit Western people, so they must exist to the detriment of non-Western people. The solution is to tear down the system in order to eliminate structural racism.

It is tempting to think that communist societies were similarly organized around opposition to a concept, but that is not true. Communism promised something at the end of the struggle against capitalism. Since there was no practical path to that promised land, fighting the imaginary enemies of the revolution was a way to deal with the resulting disconfirmation. Blaming the wreckers for why the promised bounty of communism had not materialized was a coping mechanism.

The antifascist state, in contrast, is not making any promises about what comes after the struggle against the basket of “isms” they oppose. Justin Trudeau is not talking about the glorious future. He is seizing power in order to wage war against the concepts he and his coreligionists believe are lurking around every corner. That peaceful protest by the citizens was seen as Kristallnacht. Screaming “never again”, the forces of the antifascist state have swung into action.

Since the purpose of the antifascist state is to oppose fascism, it is vitally important that fascism exists. That is another main task of this new model. There is a lot of time invested in proving that the threat to “our democracy” is real. This is not done to convince the public to support their actions. This is done to maintain their own commitment to the cause. A main task of antifascism is manufacturing fascists as proof that it is a real thing that must be opposed.

The result is one side of antifascism justifies any means necessary to fight fascism, while the other side conjures a never ending supply of fascists. Unlike the terror that was unleashed by the Jacobins or the Bolsheviks, the terror of the antifascist state is not a defect of ideology. The growing terror is a feature of the system. Since fascism can never be defeated, the war against it is permanent. The price of antifascism is the permanent terror campaign against incorrect thoughts.

Antifascism is irrational and immoral, but it does solve a serious problem for the managerial elites in the West. Strip away the political theory and managerialism is essentially management by committee. This is horribly inefficient and we see the results all over society. Roads are crumbling, schools are a mess, public services are increasingly sclerotic and inept. The system is failing to deliver the basic services people expect from their political and social systems.

This new civic religion of the ruling elite is providing both a purpose and a justification for defending itself against the complaints of the people. All dissent is quickly labeled racist, fascist, white supremacist, etc. Not only does this justify the abuses were are seeing, but it also justifies the unresponsiveness of the elites. They no longer have to dignify the complaints of the people, because those complaints are white supremacy and therefore illegitimate.

In the end, government is a set of compromises to solve the immediate problems that come with large-scale human organization. A god-king is not the ideal form of rule, but it solves the problems that need to be solved. Popular government brings its own unique problems, but it solves the problems of inherited rule. Communism failed primarily because it could not solve the problems it promised to solve. Those compromises that came with it became intolerable.

The antifascist state is a solution to a problem that does not exist. Instead, it is a luxury good for a swollen managerial elite disconnected from reality. Unlike communism, it is not promising a new tomorrow. Instead, it promises endless struggle. There is a limit to how long any society can struggle, even against a real enemy. At some point the West will exhaust itself in the struggle against this imaginary enemy. The question is how much damage will it do on the way out?

Apartheid States

Posted on February 22, 2022 by thezman

For as long as anyone has been alive, whatever we have defined as the Left in America has always come with a healthy dose of hypocrisy. They have one set of rules for themselves and their allies and an entirely different set of rules, often the opposite set of rules, for their opponents. The cry of hypocrisy from their opponents are met with accusation about bad faith or dishonestly. The Left in America, since the middle of the last century, has been defined by partisanship.

This is another aspect of the crisis in Canada that tells us something about what is happening in the managerial elite. The Right has been largely silent on what is happening and the outlandish hypocrisy on display. Look through the few posts in Conservative Inc. about the crisis over the last month and you do not see their favorite catch phrase at all. The main takeaway is that the so-called conservatives are mostly on the side of the government in this matter.

This is not just an American phenomenon. In Canada, the people who supposedly speak for the conservative voters have been struggling to produce a reason to oppose Trudeau’s power grab. You get the impression they are ashamed to be lumped in with those dirty truckers. The is true all over the English-speaking world. The Brits, who should take a special interest in Canada, have been giving the crisis a good leaving alone, while focusing on Ukraine.

What we see happening in Canada is the normalization of the double standard that has always been a feature of left-wing politics. On multiple occasions Trudeau has said that certain types of protests are permitted. The grounds for determining this is who is protesting whom. BLM protesting, for example, is always acceptable, because they exist to fight the white power structure. An Antifa riot over the behavior of the police is acceptable, as long as they wear their masks.

What we just witnessed in Canada is more than the implementation of this stated policy but the formalization of it. The point of making this a permanent emergency, which is what they are doing, is to make permanent this new double standard for political participation in Canada. A Sikh truck driver honking his horn to protest vaccine mandates is not allowed because white supremacy. A Sikh truck driver plowing through a group of white kids, because white supremacy, is okay.

Of course, this is not some out of left field manifestation in Canada, but a continuation of a process that started in 2016. The people protesting Trump were allowed to assault people and damage property. The thousands of rioters who set fires and smashed windows during his inauguration were never charged. Douglas Mackey, the man behind the Twitter character Ricky Vaughn, is awaiting trial for the crime of making fun of the anti-Trump people online.

The model for what Trudeau is doing is January 6th. Left-wing rioters disrupted the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings for a week. Nothing happened to any of them, but hundreds of Trump supporters face long prison terms for the crime of disrupting official proceedings, despite no official proceedings at the time. Trudeau is simply following the lead of Washington. The fawning praise from the media as he seizes control of Canadian society is confirming his understanding of the new rules.

Apartheid came to mean racial discrimination, but in reality, it was an authoritarian political culture that created a hierarchy of citizenship. In the case of Africa, it was the white founding population that sat at the top. It was not particularly different from the caste system on the Indian subcontinent. Instead of culture defining the layers, the African system was based on definitions of race. What is shaping up in the West is an apartheid system based on perceived political beliefs.

In the case of Canada, Trudeau and the rest of the political class are committed to the post-Marxist ideology that has evolved in the elite. That is at the top of the new political order and those who worship at that alter have full privileges. At the bottom are those who hold what are defined as the most dangerous ideas, things like nativism, patriotism and nationalism. Those people will have the least privileges. As Macron made clear during Covid, these people are not even people.

Again, notice that the limited commentary in the conservative space is not using the old lines about hypocrisy. The reason for this is the so-called conservatives do not see hypocrisy in these actions, because they fully approve of the new order. They agree with their friends on the Left that those old liberal values are part of the basket of ideas associated with who Hillary Clinton labeled deplorables. Their quibbles are with small issues like the implementation and the optics.

January 6th and now the trucker protests are stops in this great transformation of society by the unitary hive mind of the managerial elite. Derek Chauvin goes to jail for life for the death of George Floyd. Kim Potter gets two years in jail for shooting an unarmed man in a traffic stop. Mohamed Noor got four years for executing a white woman trying to flag down the police. Everything is now defined by this new hierarchy as conceived by the hive mind.

There is no one inside the hive mind to object to this transformation, because that risks being ejected from the protection of the collective. The random cruelty of the system against its perceived opponents is as much about defending itself from internal dissent as it is from external threat. If the police are laughing about trampling old people with their horses, they are not going to question the order to drag a party member from his home in the middle of the night.

This is the new world order. At the top is this uniformity of opinion rooted in two assumed truths about the world. One is the people at the top have a duty to root out the enemies of the system. The other is the enemies of the system lie in the populations over whom the system rules. Like the old apartheid system, it is a system organized around a permanent threat. In such a system internal dissent can never be tolerated as it threatens to weaken the defenses.

This is why the conservatives are so muted. It is also why the far-left in Canada voted to support the power grab, despite their alleged opposition to such things. The far-left instinctively knows how partisanship operates. There is no equivocation on their part, because they understand the game. The conservatives will need to purge a few of their members to finally get themselves in the good graces of their colleagues. In the end, they will support the new apartheid system.

The Z Blog

Sports, Culture and Other Stuff