Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Muslims Kill Liberals pt 6

Today, New York City was culturally enriched by the religion of pieces. I'm sure this isn't news to anyone here, nor is there a need to make the case that NYC is a hotbed of liberal disorder (only 18% of New Yorkers voted for their hometown hero). What is most interesting about the event is, as usual, it's a dose of reality that makes the left look dumb. There has been something very striking in the last year with timing. World events almost seem to conspire to work against the left. This blog noted it first last year, that every other time Obama opened his mouth events quickly transpired to contradict him. We see that continue against the left in general. I can't quite tell if there if there is something "spooky" going on here, or if it's just that, because reality nearly always contradicts the left, these coincidental timings are just bound to happen.

In this case, liberals in Virginia, terrified of losing the governor's seat, ran an ad intended to terrorize the population. It depicted minority children in the streets being run down by a truck of Confederate-flag-waving whites with a bumper sticker for the Republican candidate. It must be the most racist, fear-mongering thing ever aired on TV, and certainly a lower brow campaign ad than even the most cynical of us on the right could have imagined. Can you imagine if we ran an ad depicting a truck of Allahu Ackbar chanting Muslims running down innocent white children? We'd probably be thrown in jail for hate crimes. No matter, since reality is running those ads for us much more convincingly than we could ever manage.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

There Are No Rules, Only Excuses

AnonCon's post on the wiping of voter fraud evidence in Georgia makes a point that we really should be hammering away on in the realm of personal preparedness: there are no rules. Everything you've been taught about society is invalid. We could write a book building the case (and maybe we should), but I think most people reading here will understand. Let's just highlight a few examples, knowing this is just a scratch on the surface.

In AnonCon's post, officials decided it would be preferable to risk a misdemeanor charge for destruction of evidence and loss of a lawsuit than to provide evidence of electronic voter fraud. After all, it's just tax dollars, and the chances of a significant criminal prosecution are minor. It's the obvious choice.

The leaked DNC emails revealed a host of election violations. No government action has occurred. (What exactly does the FEC do?) From Comey, we learned that federal espionage statutes are unenforceable, but only for powerful Democrats. Under President Obama, the IRS harassed Tea Party entities specifically. They didn't have special rules against the Tea Party, only special enforcement. The NFL strictly enforces uniform & conduct rules when players want to memorialize 9/11, or fallen police officers, but suddenly ignores them when players protest the national anthem. In Europe, hate laws imprison right wingers who say something unkind about immigrants. They never are invoked when immigrants say terrible things about the natives.

Imagine a racist town that wants to chase out blacks. They pass a law against jaywalking, but only arrest blacks for jaywalking, while other races jaywalk freely. The town doesn't have a rule against jaywalking; it has an excuse to terrorize blacks. Rules become not tools for standardization of behavior, but legal excuses for those in power to do whatever they want to do. Trump's team makes a fruitless meeting with a Russian lawyer and it's treason, treason, treason! Clinton receives cash from Russia in return for quid pro quo favors and it's whatever. Which is why we need to be real concerned about this special counsel. They're looking for any rule they can find to justify legal action against political opponents. No one really gives a damn about the actual rule.

This is something to keep in mind for your own well-being. Germanic societies are, relative to other societies, lawful and orderly.* We stay in our lanes. We instinctively form lines. We grew up with the understanding that if you followed the legal and cultural conventions you could live a pleasant life. Those conventions are dead. A large chunk of the society rejects everything about our Anglo heritage, and massive immigration has brought in a sea of foreign cultures and genes. The assumption that things will run today as they did in the Germanic society we were raised to believe in is the road to ruin. It no longer matters what the rules are as much as the interests of whoever is enforcing the rules. People will colloquially assert we are transforming into a 3rd world country. Indeed, we are becoming less like Bavaria and more like Brazil, but more accurately we should say we are transforming from an orderly society to a disorderly society. In a disorderly society there are only two scenarios, which aren't mutually exclusive. Chaos, like Brazil, or government tyranny, which is the only way to keep the trains running on time.

The advised approach to our life in neo-America is to relocate to whatever Germanic enclaves still exist and to treat all government institutions with the same skepticism and caution you would if in Moscow or Harare. The only protection is to ensure the powerful are disincentivized from bothering you. Strength is your salvation. Our ultimate goal is to restore the orderly society but, in the mean time, we must operate in our world as it is.

* Japan is the only notable example that comes to mind as even more orderly. Perhaps some Buddhist societies would also qualify.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Wall Street Befuddled Over NFL

At long last, I am able to give financial advice in the form of a Jeff Foxworthy joke, thanks to CNBC coverage of the NFL's falling ratings.


The advice:
If your stock broker is befuddled over falling NFL ratings, you might need a new stock broker.
Of course, we know what happened. The NFL became a platform for anti-American protests. Highly patriotic football fans became highly disgusted. It's such simple cause and effect we can't fathom how anyone, especially city bigwigs who specialize in understanding market forces, could miss it. And yet they assert that the ratings falls were caused by concussions, or the internet, or competing programming. It's eyes wide shut with them. They refuse to acknowledge the social forces at play.

Many people have analyzed this, but it's worth walking through again, for anyone who might have missed it.

Blacks and whites in America are nearly two different nations. We still have plenty of common. Indeed, we don't see many white moving back to Europe (much as Hillary supporters promised they would) and we certainly don't see blacks moving back to Africa. Still, the differences exceed the variation of what could be termed a nation.  A nation is defined by shared genetics, culture, language, and values. White is the default culture in America, and blacks intentionally separate themselves from it. They speak differently, they act differently, they walk differently, they have different interests. They social signal through different brands and products. Think of how often you see a vehicle and you know it's black-owned before you are able to view the driver. We do it without even thinking about it. A lot of the black counter culture is natural (people are largely ruled by their genetic programming) and a lot of it is intentional. Blacks want their own identity. The alt-right approves of this kind of behavior. It is the source of true diversity, and it complies with our values of national self-determinism and organic societies.

Much of what separates the alt-right from nearly everyone else is the realization that genes matter. It may sound trivial, but the notion is absolute heresy in the mainstream prog cult, where each individual is a "blank slate" whose outcomes are steered only by social forces. And thus, if outcomes are disparate, there must be societal oppression! Anyone present on American soil is by definition a full-fledged member of the American nation. (The "Magic Dirt" theory.) Differences in language, culture, psychologies, and values can be approximately ignored. Much of the friction between the alt-right and the rest, and the reason they call us so many mean names, is that we like to point out inconvenient observations that challenge the one-nation belief.

The observations come from everywhere. People of all races tend to live amongst themselves. They tend to prefer schools and neighborhoods where they are the majority. Social media studies have underscored just how self-segregated we are. White people have mostly white friends. Black people have mostly black friends.

The one place in all of America where we can pretend we're all one nation is on the football field. Think of all the Hollywood movies where the desegregated students are able to unite on the gridiron. Well, there's truth to that! It's a group identity, with shared values and goals, and a shared culture, that tends to replace other identities, at least temporarily. [This is also true in the military, where there is vast racial diversity yet a surprising lack of racial tension. In my unit we cracked racist jokes all the time. That's something you can only do when there is so little racial tension you don't have to worry about everyone getting offended.] In football, we could pretend we were all, at the end of the day, one nation, with shared values. No wonder the games adopted quasi-religious rituals, like the pre-game national anthem. No wonder some people become so emotionally attached to the league. It's a bubble where they feel the warm glow of tribal identity and unity.

It has been increasingly hard to suspend reality to maintain the illusion. The league is highly corporate and the players barely represent America anymore. It is dominated by blacks (who only comprise about a tenth of the general population) and they hardly give effort to portraying American ideals and have amassed an impressive cumulative rap sheet. Everyone looks the other way. In college they frequently engage in campus sexual assaults. Everyone looks the other way. Their transgressions are ignored because they, well for one they bring in big money, but even more importantly they are members of the priestly caste, and thus normal rules don't apply. They are protected by the one-nation bubble.

When players protest the anthem, they take a big stick and pop their protective bubble. A lot of people don't understand why the reaction to the protest has been so strong. But they fail to comprehend the social dynamic happening here. Players protesting is a HUGE deal in the context of the NFL's role as national church service, and incredibly stupid for players who have been granted ridiculous amounts of money, status, and liberty for providing an hour of entertainment sixteen weeks a year. Black protests are a way of reminding whitey that we aren't, actually, one nation, that blacks have great grievances with white America, and they don't really want to be associated with us. The grievances are fictional, but the sentiment is real.

Kneeling during the national prayer is like a priest refusing communion to the bulk of his congregation for their sins. Priests don't ever do that because they are in the business of keeping the pews full. The NFL is learning that the hard way.

The popped bubble can't be restored, not to where it was anyway. I could never go see Citizen Twain again and see the Mark Twain illusion, rather than just Val Kilmer being pompous. A lot of fans can never watch the NFL again and believe the one-nation illusion. The ratings drops are not temporary, even if the NFL handles it masterfully from here out. (Which they won't, because they're infected with liberalism.) If your investor can't comprehend this, then they are blind to the social forces that can affect your portfolio. They can run the numbers but they can't see the bigger picture. It's the big picture that's important! That's how you avoid the black swan events, like the dot com crash of the late nineties or the housing bubble crash of the late two thousand aughts. If your broker doesn't understand why morphing into a left-wing political entity will destroy an otherwise productive enterprise, find another broker! Make that your litmus test. Otherwise you put your financial well-being in the hands of an ignoramus. (And you give your money to a lefty. Ew!)

Finally, a little schadenfreude to round this post out. ESPN has been, if anything, worse than the NFL in being hijacked by liberalism. But effect follows cause like the tides follow the moon. The three most satisfying things to see in sports: a long 3-point shot, a hail-mary touchdown pass, and progs being tackled blindside by reality:

ESPN bracing for another round of widespread layoffs

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

The End of Cable

The American Conservative recently published a piece called The End of Football, where they predict football will play an increasingly minor role in the coming decades, much as the circus was once the "biggest show on Earth" and is now something of a novelty. Parents are already withholding their boys from football because of the long-term effects of head injuries, participation is on the decline, and the NFL being used as platform for anti-American left-wing protest is just the icing on the cake.

The author reminds us that having the anthem before every sporting event is somewhat creepy to begin with. I've never seen the need for it. Before we throw this ball around, let's offer some prayers to the state. The problem is that the flag & anthem are symbols of the state and the nation. It's not really possible to protest them as an anti-state action without inadvertently disrespecting the nation. But there are ways to go about it. For instance, I do not fly an American flag on my house. Instead, I opt to fly a Missouri state flag. This isn't the same as burning the flag or making other public displays of disrespect to the American flag.

At any rate, the author is probably right. Football is a great sport, it's sad to see it ruined by lefties, but it's been ruined. The players no longer represent America. They haven't for a while, but now they're making damn sure we can't ignore the fact. And the industry panders to women these days too. It's no longer a guy's space, and it no longer feels all-American. We'll move on to something else. I doubt the league can ever recover.

The slow death of football will have some secondary effects. Most notably will be its effect on cable viewership. I haven't paid for cable in over a decade, and I've had numerous conversations with people in that time, in person and online. There are many people who want to quit cable, but can't quite do it. They don't trust the news, they can get movies and shows online; the one thing holding them back is live sports. There is no substitute for have sporting events beamed live into your TV, so they keep the cable package. In many ways, sports are keeping the cable cabal alive. As the leagues continue to disgust normal Americans they are removing the last remaining excuse to keep footing that cable bill (which sends money to CNN and all the other liberal outlets).

The average American spends over 4 hours a day watching television. That's insane. Not only does that distract people from engaging in productive and rewarding activities, it is also the primary channel for mass brainwashing. So as much as I enjoy watching a football game, the league can go down in flames for all I care. I hope they burn an American flag and punch a nun at the next game.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Infanticide is a Sometimes Murder

A while back a man living in my neck of the woods was charged with murdering his estranged lover who happened to be pregnant with, I believe, someone else's baby. The whole affair was both trashy and tragic. I normally don't pay much attention to these things, but I did happen to note that the man was charged with two murders: one for the woman and one for the unborn child. While I'd be perfectly fine if they just hung him up in the town square and be done with it, the whole thing does raise some interesting legal questions.

The accused was charged with infanticide by the state of Missouri. If Missouri wants to view the killing of a fetus as murder I can understand that. While laws are universal, we take extra care to try to protect those most in need of protection. Hitting a man is bad, hitting a woman is worse, and hitting a child is worst. What life is more helpless than an unborn baby? It's perfectly natural that we would impose a harsher penalty for killing a pregnant woman. It's hard to imagine a society that didn't seek to protect pregnant women. There would hardly be a point to it.

And yet, the Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the fetus is not a human life with legal rights, but an extension of the woman's body, of which the woman has sovereign authority. By extension of the ruling (and it's a crap ruling) the fetus should never be considered a human life with legal rights. Thus Missouri's decision to charge double murders is unConstitutional. We don't count other body parts as individual murders. He wasn't charged with murdering her pancreas or her liver, so why should the fetal body part be any different?

The legal incongruence remains because no one is really going to challenge this in court. Conservatives won't challenge it because their opposition to abortion is primarily one of fetal human rights, so they won't do anything to further reduce them. And liberals won't challenge them because they would never reduce the punishment for any attack on a woman. The fetus is a shield to offer increased legal protection to women. This is naturally infuriating to us, because they are willing to grant and revoke fetal legal rights as it becomes personally convenient. Infuriating, but not surprising, as the left operates without principle. Supposedly their core principle is to make life fair and equal for everyone, but in practice their core principles are treason and sabotage. This can be seen clearly in their victim hierarchy. Fetuses rank lower than women. And women rank lower than Muslims. If their ethos really was to protect the most vulnerable, the hierarchy is inverted. So it can't be true. However, if the principle was to protect whoever was subverting society, then the hierarchy makes sense. Women get protected because they are seen as victims fighting oppressive patriarchy. Muslims get even more protection because they are seen as fighting oppressive western civilization. Fetuses don't fight anyone so they don't get any protections.

While letting liberals have what they want feels unnatural, I would advise that our current situation is the best we can practically hope for regarding fetal rights. The thing to keep in mind is that most of the people having abortions are liberals. Sure they should be practicing safe sex and all of that, but they don't. And they won't. Let's not pretend they will. Abortion is the one thing in this country putting positive Darwinian pressure on the gene pool. Some people draw a moral line against abortion they cannot cross, but for the rest of us there is a pragmatic stance.

While I'm highly disgusted at women who get routine abortions in lieu of responsible behavior, I like having it there as an option. It's easy to be an anti-abortion zealot until your sweet little fifteen-year-old gets knocked up by some loser. Yes, good parenting should help prevent that, but kids are dumb and make mistakes. In our current situation, your unborn child has legal protections from predation, you can help bail little Susie out if she makes a potentially disastrous mistake, and liberal reproduction is reduced by about a million per year. It might be a dirty deal, but it's the best deal we're going to get.

Prog Story Hour

George Takai shared this wonderful little video on facebook, where it has over a million views. Nothing could be more natural than a group of lefty millennials "pretending" to be children, or more logically consistent than a bunch of r-selected permakids complaining that they must expend resources on things like shelter and transportation rather than toys and candy. It's hard to know for sure if the video wasn't actually intended to mock liberals. (Remember, The Left Can No Longer Be Satirized). Everything is there. Meager income. Nonstop complaining. Inability to control emotions. Substance abuse to soothe those emotions. Living with parents into adulthood. Grad school (presumably in fairy tale studies or similar.) A general inability to feel gratitude or to enjoy life.

The left can't meme. These kinds of videos literally and intentionally portray themselves as petulant children. And, most damaging of all, they serve to remind us all that their women are really unattractive. Hopefully they keep running with it.

Monday, October 23, 2017

W is for 'Worst of Both Worlds'

Recently George W Bush miraculously recovered from 8 years of muteness to issue a rebuke of Donald Trump. While he didn't single Trump out by name, the implication was clear, and the language was the same monotone screed we're accustomed to hearing from liberals: in so many words, that Trump represents an ideology of hate. This is fine, because it prompts us to return a long-forgotten exercise we used to enjoy: criticizing George W Bush. Let's look at why his legacy is the worst of both worlds.

This blog has never said anything nice about George W Bush. Any nostalgia we might have for him stems solely from the fact that he was succeeded by Barrack Obama's nearly open hatred for America. Bush didn't hate America. Not openly, at least. The major problem with Bush is that whatever love he has for America seems to be a love for American empire, rather than the American nation. We've made the case many times here that empire destroys nations. Thus we are not much more affectionate towards Bush's inadvertent destruction of America than Obama's intentional reign of regret. Looking back, I don't recall anything of benefit that came out of Bush's tenure in office. (Perhaps I'm forgetting something; it's been a while.) Let's just consider four of the most significant outcomes of the Bush administration.

Bush championed and signed the No Child Left Behind Act. It's the kind of legislation we'd expect to have been passed by Democrats because it transfered more control of education to the federal branch. We might concede that, outside of the troubling political ramifications of such legislation, at least there would be some upside. We can all understand the problem at hand, which is that many bright American minds might be inhibited from reaching their full potential because they had the misfortune of being born in an area with bad schools. We understand that in our history the greatest minds have had the greatest impacts, and we don't want to risk losing the benefits of our resident geniuses to circumstance.

The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act was to implement standardized testing so that no school system could fall far behind the pact. We all know the actual results. Bad schools have only gotten worse, and the rest have been hindered by the legislation. Nearly every teacher I know has complained about the "teach to the test" mentality that now permeates even the lowest grade levels. Non-tested areas of education like the arts, music, industrial arts, etc, have lost emphasis (and funding) so that schools can focus on improving their federally mandated scores in math, science, and reading comprehension. Ironically, it is the non-college-bound students hurt the most by the changes. The bad schools still suck, and the better schools suck the life out of the students. Bush's education legacy is a dark cloud with no silver lining. It is liberal policy that delivers the opposite of the intended benefit. It is the worst of both worlds.

Most notable from Bush's legacy is his foreign policy. Bush oversaw a resurgence of American imperialism and formalized the policy of pre-emptive warfare. While it is our opinion that empires tend to destroy the host nation, we've made the case that there is some benefit to American empire. For instance, the principle of the network effect (mentioned in Global reserve currency: army of the modern empire) would suggest that some country is likely to arise as global financial hegemon, and we'd rather it be us than China. Perhaps we could argue that ultimately invading countries like Iraq was worthwhile to protect the petrodollar. But as we know, Bush's adventures have proven to be boondoggles. Both Iraq and Afghanistan would fall to rebels tomorrow if not for sustained American military aid. Iraq opened the door for ISIS, a far more evil force than Saddam ever was. While the petrodollar is safe for now, the region is much more unstable than it was before, and the risk of future catastrophe is higher than it was 20 years ago before Bush took office. Again we have the worst of both worlds. In this case an imperialistic foreign policy that is not very efficient at sustaining the American empire.

Domestically, the most significant aspects of the Bush legacy are surveillance-state actions introduced by the Patriot Act. Again, the worst of both worlds. Not only does the legislation not address the true problem at hand - a clash of civilizations where European-held lands are being invaded by nearly everyone else, especially hostile Muslims - but its effect was to erode the civil liberties that are the bedrock of American society. The pattern is clear. Everything Bush did to solve any problem only made that problem worse, and introduced new problems that were even worse yet.

The final legacy of the Bush administration that jumps to mind is his love for privatization of government services. We're familiar with the logic, which many conservatives support. Because the free market is more efficient than government, we should offload as much government activity as possible to the free market. But there is a very big problem with that. They weren't shifting activities from the public to private sphere. They were keeping them within the government sphere, just farming out the implementation. The corporations that acquire the contracts will do what corporations always do: maximize profit. And they'll do so by cutting quality and generally ripping off the government at every opportunity. Keeping corporations within a government bubble is the worst of both worlds. We get corporate greed uncoupled from the normal market forces that work to keep that greed in check.

George W Bush is now out there talking like a liberal. He might as well, since he's done just as much to destroy this country as they have. This is the magic of Trump. He flushes out all of our enemies into plain view.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

You Should Have Never Trusted Hollywood

I did something tonight I almost never do, which was to give some of my money to Hollywood. Val Kilmer came to town to screen his independent production of Citizen Twain, a somewhat modern take of Mark Twain on the big stage. I was slightly hesitant at paying a Hollywood actor any money, particularly Kilmer who has a reputation as a real asshole, yet I couldn't resist seeing an acclaimed rendition of Mark Twain. It was somewhat modern in the sense that it was meant to be something like Mark Twain's ghost giving the performance, a handy vehicle for the actor to incorporate current culture into the bit. This is a fine idea in itself. Twain himself was certainly commenting on contemporary events, and if Kilmer had staunchly confined himself to the 19th century he would have had no chance of connecting to the audience in the way Twain was able to do.

The show started strangely. My understanding was Kilmer would come out, talk about the production some, and then we would view the screening. He came out in his street clothes and talked in very peculiar and snorty voice. Some people laughed a bit here and there, but I couldn't tell what he was saying. I assumed he was talking in his Twain voice, but that turned out not to be the case. Perhaps Kilmer has contracted throat cancer and a respiratory infection simultaneously. All apologies if he is in fact ill, but I couldn't help thinking he sounded a lot like one of those old guys with an oxygen tank and a trach talk box.

The film itself was entertaining. He portrayed a somewhat intoxicated Twain speaking in a theater to a live audience, just as Twain had done. He made it quite clear that the show was filmed in Pasadena in 2013. The show was, I presume, modeled on an actual Twain show, such as his speaking events which brought him into prominence in San Francisco. The monologue included many of Twain's more famous quips, as well as some references to modern culture, the idea being that it's what Twain might say if his ghost was indeed giving a modern performance. There is risk to such an approach. The audience must believe that the actor has done sufficient research into the character to understand his personality and what he might say today. The payoff is that the audience gets a true appreciation for the subject's persona; the downside is that the audience might not believe the portrayal is very authentic.

I ended up walking out early, perhaps forty minutes into the show, after Kilmer's character made three references to modern politics. First, he took routine swipes at Dick Cheney. (Remember, this was actually filed in 2013. We can surely guess who the target would be today.) I'm no fan of Cheney. This blog has never said a nice word about him. Still, it's dodgy territory to dive into when depicting a historical figure.

Second, he made a weepy depiction of American Indians, even going so far as to express regret that America was ever "discovered." Now I stand to be corrected here, as I'm not as well-read on Twain as I should be, but I know of nothing he offered that was very sympathetic to the "noble savage" viewpoint of American Indians. In fact, he wrote expressly in contradiction of such a viewpoint, and his most famous native character, Injun' Joe, sure didn't wax poetic. Whatever his thoughts on the Native American race, we can be quite certain he would have never uttered anything suggesting regret that America had ever existed. It would be beyond scandalous to say such a thing in his era. To have him say things like that destroys the belief that the actor is portraying a historical character. It's okay to make social satire - Mark Twain couldn't be portrayed without it - but the character can't be allowed to say things he would have never actually uttered in life.

Finally, Kilmer managed to work in some comment complaining about Republicans running the world. Not only did this finally cross into the territory of undeniable partisanship, but it is ridiculous as it was uttered in 2013 when Republicans had no power in American government. What actors really do is to create an illusion. No, we don't believe that Mark Twain's ghost is really on stage, but we can imagine that it is a valid depiction of what it would be like. It has some authenticity. When the bubble of illusion is popped, the actor has failed at his task. After three forays into modern politics, Kilmer's bubble was popped. I no longer felt I was witnessing Twain; I was just watching Kilmer. Everything became less funny. It felt like a ruse. In fact, the cynical part of me (is there any other part?) started viewing the whole thing as elaborate propaganda. Just a tool for Kilmer to inflict his personal politics onto the audience, but hidden behind the mask of the highly respected literary hero.

One nagging thought that was sitting in the back of my head during the show was that the accent seemed off. I happen to have been born and raised in the same area as Samuel Clemens, albeit a hundred or so years later. Kilmer's character carried a very southern drawl. In that area, today at least, there is a definitely a twang, and oftentimes creative license with grammatical construction, but a southern drawl it is not. Chicagoans oftentimes mistake us for southerners, but then to us they all sound like Wiscahnsin. You'd expect that Kilmer would have done extensive research into the accent, but it comes out sounding like what a city slicker would think the accent sounds like, rather than how it really is. There is some benefit of the doubt to give. Clemens was a book man, so we suppose his spoken grammar was proper. He was also a riverman and might have picked up some drawl in his travels down to Mississippi and Louisiana. Still, we expect his midwest roots to ring through. A more interesting depiction of the region & era was given by Daniel Day-Lewis in his portrayal of Lincoln. Once you discount the odd voice (Lincoln was noted as having a surprisingly high-pitched voice) the accent makes sense. On the other hand, Kilmer's Mark Twain just sounds like an inebriated Colonel Sanders. I was able to give him the benefit of the doubt when I was enjoying the Twain illusion. But after Kilmer's political bias popped the bubble, it became much more obvious that his accent just sucked.

These Hollywood actors destroy their ability to do their only job because of their need to politicize and virtue signal. Val Kilmer came into a conservative part of Mark Twain's home state and tried to portray him as an America-hating modern liberal. They are incapable of acting professionally. Giving them any of your money is always a mistake.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Narrow Government

Something we get entirely too accustomed to is the pervasiveness with which the government peers into our lives to satisfy its taxation policy. I think of the government as a mafia goon, lurking in the shadows, looking for any racket he can find.

"Did you get a pay raise? I'm gonna need a cut of that."

"Did you sell something? I'm gonna need my share."

"Did you improve your property? That's gonna cost you in taxes."

"Did you invest in something? Let me know if you come out ahead so I can dip into that."

Under the wide-ranging tax policies of our various levels of government, there are vanishingly few activities we can engage in which the government does not have some sort of oversight. Because of the taxation policy, you have to let the government know if engage in perfectly innocuous behavior, like lending a friend money. Because of the tax policy, a New Yorker can end up dead in a police van for the sin of selling cigarettes on the street.

The reason government intrusion is so pervasive is that they do everything they can to spread themselves thin. If the government took all its dues at once on tax day, the country would revolt overnight. Instead, they take it here and there. A small chunk out of each paycheck. A bit every time you make a transaction. A hidden excise every time you purchase fuel. And on and on. The cumulative effective tax rate in some areas now exceeds fifty percent. If government agents knocked on doors every April 15 demanding people write a check for the majority of what they'd earned that year, I suspect even our most liberal friends would be tempted to engage in armed anti-government standoffs. Instead, the people get bled by a thousand cuts, with no firm target to direct their angst.

As we debate the various tax strategies available to us, we should keep in mind the following principle, which is invariably true: the government will become intrusive, even tyrannical, within the domains it is given license. By reaction, we should seek to limit not the depth of government, but its width. The government will inevitably grow deep roots wherever it is planted, and we will be frustrated in our attempts to prevent it. Instead, we should look to narrow the scope of government; to limit the tyranny to some more manageable area.

This blog promotes a tax policy that extends from Energy-Backed Currency. The tax policy implied by this monetary system would be that, at the federal level at least, all revenues would derive from energy taxation. This is by no means a perfect form of government. The market disturbances would be enormous. Gasoline and electricity would increase several times over in cost. This would have a great impact on the economy. (Much of the effect desired, from the Collapse of Complex Societies viewpoint.) People would be heavily incentivized to substitute heavily-taxed energy sources for other forms. While the government would certainly be very deep in regards to energy (what could be deeper than nationalizing the energy sector?) it would be motivated to go wide as well. (And if we get metaphysical, everything that happens is some sort of energy transaction.)

Firewood would become a much more prominent energy source. How would that be managed? If left untaxed, tax dodgers would deforest the country within a winter. Clearly it would have to be taxed to prevent dangerous market distortions. Is the government going to inspect every campsite and cabin to make sure no one is avoiding the tax bill for free wood they found on the ground? The same argument would be made for transportation, such as horse-drawn buggies. How do we tax horses? The government would also have cause to regulate off-grid energy sources like photoelectric arrays. Hell, they'd go so far as to tax high-efficiency south-facing windows if we let them since those windows heat the home on cold winter days.

It sounds bleak. Even after limiting the government solely to the energy sector, they've still managed to encroach onto our lands and into our homes. Despite this, we've still succeeded in drastically reducing the scope of government in regards to taxation. The government no longer needs to know what we buy, where we invest our money, who employs us, and who we give money to. Those things would be outside the scope of energy-based taxation. While we'd still have raging taxation battles (should the government tax campfires?) those battles would be limited to a more narrow domain.

In the power struggle between government and the people, the people have the best advantage when the war front is narrow. Wide fronts favor the government as they spread out popular resistance. It was the intention of the Framers that all advantage be given to the people over the government. Thus, a wide-scoped government defies the American ethos and should be whittled back to something more manageable.

Monday, October 9, 2017

New York Times Nearly has Moment of Clarity, Catches Self

A recent article in the New York Times begins with
Do you remember what monstrous, contemptible or demonstrably false thing Donald Trump said one year ago? Six months ago? O.K., last week? Probably not.
Taken in isolation, these sentences are a wonderful confession. Do you recall specifically any monstrous, contemptible, or demonstrably false thing Trump has uttered? No? Why not? We understand why that would be so: because Trump's mainstream persona is a fictional character propagated by the corporate media. Sure he blunders, talks off the cuff, rebukes his enemies to the point of pettiness, and engages in Twitter frenzies, but he's not really said anything monstrous or contemptible. Doesn't it seem dangerous for the New York Times to be reminding readers of the vacuousness of its own propaganda? It's a risky move. Fortunately the author is very smart, like all journalists, and immediately catches himself and steers towards the proper narrative of Trump hatred.
The effect of this presidency-by-horrors is to induce amnesia in the public, as if we’d all been given a memory-loss drug.
The reason people can't remember Trump's Hitleresque diatribe is not because it is imaginary, but because Trump is so extraordinarily evil he has actually caused mass amnesia among the voting left! It just makes too much sense.

The author, being principled and not at all a mindless political hack, follows up in the next paragraph with his strongest evidence to support his claim, that Trump has said many "monstrous, contemptible, and demonstrable false things."
To recap: A year ago, Trump lied repeatedly in his first debate with Hillary Clinton, and was reminded that he had called women pigs, slobs and dogs. Six months go, he settled for $25 million two lawsuits and a fraud case regarding his phony university, a huckster scheme that duped people out of their personal savings. And last week, he unleashed an attack on the free-speech rights of athletes, using a profanity that could not be repeated on the news without a warning to children.
This is the hard evidence. That Trump doesn't hold the highly sexist viewpoint that women are, by virtue of their magical lady parts, above rebuke. That he settled a politically motivated lawsuit that was threatening to derail his nascent political career. And that he, the President of the United States of America, criticized public figures for openly disrespecting the traditional symbols of the United States of America. The horror.

The article goes on like that, I imagine. I didn't finish reading it and neither should you. Well, not unless you want to learn how to be a properly devout practitioner of the leftist religion. In that case, the article is quite instructive. Some commentators on the right, such as ZMan, have noticed that in the modern era observing things has become something of a moral crime. For instance, it's not acceptable to notice that black people commit way more crime than everyone else. We aren't supposed to notice, and certainly aren't allowed to comment, aspects of reality that contravene the narrative. (Perhaps this is generally true of religions.)

The author has nearly made a disastrous blunder. He's noticed something. He's noticed that, off hand, he can't really think of anything awful Trump has said. He's worried that his observation is akin to thought crime, and is terrified that other people might be noticing the same thing, so he engages in proper rationalism to bury the apparent contradiction. It also makes for a wonderful vehicle to rehash the narrative and to give their acolytes their necessary serving of Trump hate on a slow hate day.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Central Government Requires Strong Borders

In yesterday's post, Gun Control Requires a Weak Military and Strong Borders, we made the case that gun control requires strong borders. It's in no way a novel thought. (Although I don't hear anyone talking about the other part: that the ethos of the 2nd Amendment demands either a weak military or a strongly armed citizenry.) We can't have gun control without strong borders. Likewise, we can't have drug enforcement without strong borders. We can't have an immigration policy without strong borders. There's a general principle here, laid out by Heartiste in his post Age of Chaos. He quotes a commenter from Steve Sailor's blog,
One of the main functions of a central government is to control the country’s borders. That is why there is a central government. This used to be more military based, with occasional actual wars, but today it is about who comes across the border, who gets to stay, in other words migration policies.

In the last few decades this core function performed by central governments has been gradually abandoned. So when parts of these larger states – like Catalonia in Spain – look at their capitals they don’t see much value. With unguarded and open borders, large centralised states make no sense.

This is one reason for the rapid increase in separatism. There are of course many others, cultural, economic, linguistic, etc… But I believe opening borders also creates a vacuum in the centre of the current states. Almost nothing they do makes sense with open borders and mass migration. How can there be educational or health policies with open access from outside? Or a normal labor market leading to a normal economy? Or cultural policies? Mass migration with effectively unprotected borders make all central state functions pointless. One reaction is an increased desire to separate by constituent parts of the state. This is what the Brussels (and Washington) ruling elites don’t get. They have been so obsessed with not allowing a ‘power vacuum’ internationally, that they stopped caring about not creating a de facto governing vacuums inside the countries they are supposed to be governing.

Disintegration is one consequence of not having effective external boundaries. The global mandarins have been dreaming about a seamless, integrated, one-world with no borders global super-state (or a smaller European one), but they lost sight of how that changes the dynamic inside their existing countries. We are heading towards a period of more nationalism, more separatism, more disintegration that is really just re-integrating in a different way what has been stupidly abandoned by the global utopians. It will be messy. I wish both Catalans and Spaniards good luck – but if Madrid wants to stop the separatism, they should do their job and control the external borders.
The principle is that you can't have central government at all without strong borders. And the great irony is this hits liberals harder than conservatives, as they are generally the big-government affecionados. Pick the liberal agenda, and it's failures can be described in terms of weak borders. Healthcare/welfare: unaffordable when one fourth of all Mexicans are in the US trying to get on the dole. Gun control: laid out in yesterday's post. Heavy handed policing: essential when cops are fighting well-funded narco-terrorists on American streets. Gay rights: most threatened by the type of immigrants who would shoot up a gay night club. This is just as true for state and local governments as it is for the federal government. Witness the success of California's extra gun control, or in Massachusetts's attempt at statewide healthcare.

At this point the federal government doesn't really do much other than operate a military and try to bribe votes by redistributing wealth just the right way. That is not a recipe for long-term success. A government that no longer protects its borders is like when a popular company is bought up by a corporate holder, who cuts costs to profit off the name brand. Eventually the name brand is ruined, but no matter; the corporation made its profit. The same is true of government that is taken over by globalist influences. The government no longer offers the quality service it once did. It can go for some time in that manner, living off its fatty reserves, but eventually people wisen up.

Life is a continuous series of forces and counterforces; trends and countertrends. Ebb follows flow. We on the dissident right are horrified at the collapse of national borders by liberal central governments, and yet that collapse will be what does those same governments in. To quote Sun Tzu, as we frequently do here: Stand by the river long enough and the bodies of your enemies will float by.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Gun Control Requires a Weak Military and Strong Borders

Recently this video came up in my facebook feed. It's a spoof of a man committing a modern-day workplace mass shooting armed with weaponry from the era in which our 2nd Amendment was ratified. In the time it takes him to rearm his muzzleloader, the office has cleared out.

It brings up a very good point. Weapons aren't the same as they were back then. A disgruntled maniac in a hotel balcony could not have killed 50 revelers in 1789. A single man's capacity to kill many of his neighbors has greatly increased. Many argue that we must reduce the firepower available to the citizenry to avoid mass shootings.

However, to do so in a linear, reactionary fashion risks subverting the entire purpose of the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately people get too hung up on the literal wording of our Bill of Rights and lose sight of the intended meaning. The 2nd Amendment could be worded something like the people shall be permitted sufficient arms to overthrow their government if necessary. Not perfect, but at least it tells the pedantic shall not be infringed sticklers to take a hike, as well as those who pretend the law is about recreational use. It probably should include something about reasonable self defense as well, but the 2nd Amendment was written as guidance for the balance of physical force between the government and the governed. The 1st Amendment was to prevent a government monopoly on propaganda, the 2nd Amendment was to prevent a government monopoly on firepower. There should never exist the condition where a significant majority of the people wish to overthrow their government but are cowed by the fear of massacre. (Which is always the case in a tyranny.)

It seems to most of us that we've long passed the point at which the 2nd Amendment provided a fair balance of firepower. The government is allowed to have bombers, attack helicopters, and tanks. Not only are we not allowed those weapons platforms, but we are not allowed the countering weapons either, such as SAMs and RPGs. A face-off between the American people and the American government would be extremely one-sided. Look at how our military mows through Muslim armies & militias (when allowed to engage freely). Even the most dirt-poor Jihadis are better armed than us, the AK-47 being a far more powerful rifle than anything we're allowed. One could make the argument that, since we don't stand a chance rebelling against the federal government anyway, there's no point in allowing semi-automatic rifles that are often turned against innocent crowds by madmen.

However, a recent event does provide evidence that these firearms do indeed empower the people against an overreaching government. In the Bundy ranch incident, a large number of armed civilians stood off against armed government officers. The government officers wisely determined their best outcome was a Pyrrhic victory, and stood down. The Bundies and some of the others, probably a bit arrogant from their victory, went on to stage another showdown in Oregon which was thwarted by authorities. The cause being defended was much stronger in Oregon (Nevada being quite dubious in my opinion), but they failed nevertheless. The difference was all about turnout. Nevada showed that a significant number of armed citizens can exert power over a government armed with tanks and nukes.

Whatever the current balance, the principle remains largely intact. The stronger the firepower of the government, the stronger the firepower of the people must be. It's pretty apparent. If the government has machine guns we can't beat them with rocks. (But woe the government armed with only scissors.) For the ethos of the 2nd Amendment to hold (and who is going to argue that the people should be powerless against their government?) requires something of an arms race to maintain a balance of power. The obvious solution, if one wishes to reduce civilian firepower, is to also reduce government firepower. Thus the balance is maintained.

The counterweight to this is that the military-intelligence complex isn't just used to maintain domestic control, but still serves it's primary role of preventing and deterring foreign invasion. We can't realistically reduce our military to an army of scissors when the Russians still have nukes pointed at us, and when the Mexicans would probably love to reclaim the US Southwest if they thought they could get away with it. So we must maintain a military strong enough to deter foreign aggression, knowing that one cost is a more heavily armed citizenry required to maintain an internal balance of power. The problem with this should be obvious to anyone. The United States does not keep a military strong enough to defend from foreign aggression, but one strong enough to enforce US global hegemony. We can see right away that the 2nd Amendment and global empire are incompatible. This puts conservatives in a bind. Which do they cherish more? The Constitution, or American empire?

Hopefully the answer is obvious, and liberals won't mind the answer either. A more lightly armed populace and a greatly reduced military are just what they're hoping for. But they won't like the other side of it.

Today they're saying we need to have a national conversation about gun control. No, we don't, actually. We could, but it would be entirely academic. A while back this blog proposed Group-Based Gun Control, which could also be thought of as distributed gun control or patronage gun control. I think it's a great idea, but it doesn't matter, because it fails for the same reason as all gun control measures. Until our government can reliably keep illegal drugs out of the country, or even illegal people for that matter (let alone having them in the tens of millions), the notion that they could properly enforce any gun control is ludicrous. It's cliche, but when our government outlaws guns, only outlaws will have guns. Even the recent shooting which they're rallying around featured illegal weapons. The Bataclan massacre killed even more in a country with strict gun control. We could cite examples endlessly. If the left really wants gun control, they have to allow strong national borders, and probably enforcement of state borders as well. Conservatives won't go for internal border checks because it limits freedoms. Liberals won't want it because it limits social justice, and they like to import voters through porous borders. So it'll never happen, so we won't have gun control. They should give up, not because gun control is a bad idea, but because they aren't willing to pay the price for it.

As for me, I'm willing to have gun control, so long as the balance of power against the government is maintained and there is the option of reasonable self defense. Bring our boys home, lock down the borders, and let's solve this problem of maniacs with machine guns. Everything else is just theatrics.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Liberals Kill Conservatives

There is an ongoing series of posts on this blog called Muslim Kill Liberals. These posts highlight examples of Muslims killing individuals who are known to be vocally pro-refugee, or when they attack populations with a high degree of those beliefs. There is certainly some amount of shadenfreude within those posts.

It seems we may soon require another similar series for liberals killing conservatives. The recent mass shooting in Las Vegas likely fits the bill; before that we had a crazed lefty shooting up GOP congressmen; and before that we had a rash of BLM-inspired shootings against cops and whites.

The lefties are, naturally, screaming foul about our gun-control problem, and to some extent I will agree with them. I think we can all agree we don't want crazy people in possession of high power weapons, even if we can't agree on how to go about that. But what we really have is a liberal-control problem. We've been watching it unfold, the hysterical, hyper-partisan propaganda. We've said it will ignite a civil war, and now we're having politically motivated massacres on the streets. If we don't get the liberal hysteria in check one way or another, we will be partly to blame for what follows, just as the pro-refugee terror victims are partly at fault for their own demise.

It's always seemed to me that the rabidly pro 2nd Amendment crowd would be less excited for their cause if ethnic gangs starts citing those rights for themselves. I don't really understand the point the open-carry activists are trying to make (I think they generally just want attention), but you can be sure their advocacy for open-carry would lose steam if every Jamal and Jorge walked around with a piece strapped to his side, citing his constitutional license to do so.

In fact, if your political agenda included disarming the US citizenry for the purposes of introducing oppressive governance, your best way to get popular support for that would be to see that lots of white conservatives were being shot by liberals and minorities. The liberals are preaching violence against whites because it serves their long-term objectives. If whites conservatives decide to allow themselves to be disarmed for their own protection, they will only ensure their victimization into the future.