One of the more important Z-man posts

The New Iron Curtain

I'll be editing so I'm not just copy-pasting the entire thing, but this is something that everyone in America needs to realize. The courts are not your friend. They are not your last resort. They are not going to give you a fair trial. They have been weaponized—illegally, sure, but who's going to tell the courts that they're acting illegally when they're the ones who determine who's guilty or liable or not?—against normal Americans and time-honored American customs. The American government, from top to bottom, has become an abusive spouse; defined by their abuse of the American people. Sadly, too many of the American people are in denial about the fact that they play the role of a battered spouse with Stockholm Syndrome in this metaphor. Although, of course, that's often the role that the battered spouse plays; making excuses. "He only hits me because he loves me."

Anyway, on to the Z-man's post, or at least portions of it:

Since about the time he took over the primetime slot for Fox News, people have been predicting that Fox would fire Tucker Carlson. The regime toadies said he would be fired due to his reckless heresy. He talked about taboo topics and questioned official dogma, which can never be allowed. The so-called conservatives repeated the same lines, as is their habit. Normal people, of course, know that anyone speaking truth to power is not going to last long in the modern media.

It turns out that Tucker was not fired for anything he said in particular, but most likely as a result of the lawsuit Fox settled with Dominion Voting Systems. It is possible that as part of the settlement, Fox agreed to get rid of people hated by the regime. The first to go was Dan Bongino, who was sacked before the ink was dry. Carlson got the axe Monday morning, which suggests it took them a while to find evidence to fire him with cause, thus voiding his contract.

On the other hand, the lawsuit could simply have frightened or embarrassed the plutocrats who own Fox News. They are regime members, after all, which means they care first and foremost about regime opinion. Tucker has no doubt been a problem in this regard for a long time. This embarrassing lawsuit, punishment by the regime for Fox not falling in line, may have frightened the Murdoch clan. Firing Tucker is a way to win back support of their social class.

The most likely explanation is that Fox either agreed to clean house as part of the settlement or they got the message being sent by these lawsuits. Fox getting sued over election stuff is ridiculous, but the full might of the regime was brought to bear so that it was clearly impossible for Fox to get a fair trial. The judge ruled against them at every turn, so Fox had no choice but to settle. There is another case out there as well, so they have to play ball or face bankruptcy.

This may seem farfetched but consider that the New York Times was sued by Sarah Palin for defamation and won, despite their own emails admitting that they defamed Palin and did so knowingly. Granted, the judge in the case told the jury to rule in favor of the Times, but it is a good example of how the courts treat the media. It is incredibly hard to sue the media, even when they willingly lie about you. Yet somehow the court went the opposite way in this Fox News case.

What is happening right in front of our eyes is the weaponization of the court system by the regime to suppress dissent. They cannot shut down a cable channel or throw their hosts in prison, but they can lawfare into bankruptcy any organization that violates the ideology of the regime. In other words, they told Rupert Murdoch that he can run his operation as he sees fit, but they will sue him into the poorhouse if he steps out of line or fails to get rid of people who violate regime dogma.

This is merely the highest profile example of this new control mechanism. The Alex Jones case is another example. Jones was tagged with a billion in damages for saying nutty things about the school shooting in Connecticut. Like the Fox News case, the particulars were just an excuse to force Jones into a morality play in which he was the villain, and the jury was instructed to condemn him. He never stood a chance at trial because the trial was rigged from the start.

New York did the same trick to the National Rifle Association. They used the court system to batter them into bankruptcy. This is made easier by a court system filled with judges who think this is a great idea. Even if a judge is uncomfortable with these Stalinist tactics, they understand power. If they want to stay on the bench or move up the ranks, they have to do what the regime demands. If the regime can take down Fox News, they can take down a judge.

Lawfare is not a new thing. Shakedown operations like the alphabet soup gang have been using lawfare for decades. They would jurisdiction shop for a court that would hear their novel legal theory. Then they would judge shop for one of their co-ideologues and before long a heretic is in an unwinnable court case. The most recent example of this sort of grift is the Charlottesville civil cases. The whole stinking affair was an affront to civil society and the rule of law.

What is happening now is that these small-time rackets have been institutionalized into a tool of the regime. Since they can use the court to take away all of your money for any reason they like, they can suppress the speech they dislike by threatening to impoverish anyone that entertains unapproved speech. Since the law is the last resort for the weak seeking protection from the powerful, the regime has effectively closed off the last civil route to challenging regime policies and programs.

In effect an iron curtain is descending across American society. On one side are the regime leaders and their toadies. They get to indulge in the material benefits of the shrinking American pie. On the other side are the common people struggling to come to terms with what these people have done to their country. For now, the real power of that iron curtain is that the people on the losing side refuse to believe it is there and instead keep operating under the old rules.

Awake to a sense of your awful situation

Normal people have been stubbornly unable and unwilling to face reality, because it's ugly and they'd rather believe a prettier delusion than face facts. That's not sustainable in the long run, but it can go a long way before running face first into the brick wall of reality. The Z-man knocks one out of the park again. He's sometimes hit or miss, and his lack of a spiritual dimension limits his ability to talk about our situation as much as he should, but in spite of that, he's pretty astute, and more to the point, he's able to synthesize and eloquently detail what's going on. I'll edit the post here and there, mostly for length, and add some editor commentary a bit.

Paul Gottfried has a post up on the topic of elite whites incessantly condemning white people for alleged crimes against nonwhites. A feature of the current crisis is a rich white person, usually a woman, wagging a bony finger at white people for the alleged crimes of their ancestors. Of course, these white people always live in the whitest areas and rarely interact with nonwhites. This always brings the charge of hypocrisy from the sorts of people who think this matters.

The question that white civic nationalists ask themselves when confronted by this strange behavior is whether the antiwhite scolds believe it. The practical brains of the people attracted to civic nationalism cannot accept anything but a practical answer to the question of motivation. The antiwhite scolds must see some profit in this behavior so they are cynically exploiting it. They do not actually believe what they are saying, which explains how they live.

Gottfried offers up an alternative to this thesis. These antiwhite scolds are acting from some form of self-loathing. Eric Hoffer made this observation seventy years ago in his book The True Believer. People who join causes tend to do so because they have a desire for self-abnegation. This is driven by a hatred of their natural identity and a desire to swap it for some other identity. The group identity then becomes their own, which is why they so viciously defend the group.

I'm going to excise an example given about Hitler both because it's not nuanced enough to be real, and referring to Hitler in any capacity tends to be too emotional to be useful. Let's just... not.

How is it that someone like Elizabeth Warren can wag her bony finger at us about our white privilege, while she enjoys a lifestyle free of diversity? How is it that Sandy Cortez presents herself as the woke warrioress while married to a guy who looks like he should be leading the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade? Ilhan Omar divorced her brother so she could shack up with a guy who looks white to Jared Taylor.

All of the antiwhite stuff comes from people who are as white as a Klan rally or clearly infatuated with whiteness. The model of the universe held by the typical white American cannot explain this bizarre phenomenon. This is why they tend to start chanting the word “hypocrisy” even though the target is immune to the charge. That there is a clue as to what is going on with these people. For the antiwhite scolds, there is nothing hypocritical about what they are doing. It makes perfect sense.

"Conservatives" love to quote the probably apocryphal quote about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, while being completely blind to their own doing so with regards to their responses to liberal outrages, liberal attacks, and liberal insanity. The fact is, that that's exactly the reaction that liberals want to see. It is self-affirming to have weak, bowtie wearing nebbish "conservatives" who think Ben Shapiro is a sharp wit calling them hypocrites.

The place to start here is understanding what they mean by white. It is not skin tone or even ethnic heritage, but rather a state of mind. Elizabeth Warren feels no shame or remorse about defrauding at least one university about her heritage, because as far as she is concerned, her lived experience says she is an Indian. She is not white because she has lived as a nonwhite, therefore society has treated her as a nonwhite, so her lived experience is as a nonwhite.

Even for those who cannot do this mental jujitsu, the mere fact that they accept that whiteness is a social condition is enough for them to see themselves as nonwhite, even though they are ghostly white. It is hard for normal people to accept this, but people with a need to believe in something have an amazing capacity to believe in the most creative and egregious nonsense. Anti-whiteness fills a need for these people, so they find a way to passionately believe in it.

That gets to a much more complicated part of this. What is the void that needs to be filled and is being filled by anti-whiteness? That is answered by asking, why is it that a mediocre lawyer is a senior senator? Why is it that a former barmaid is now the most famous Democrat in the House? What justifies the exalted position of the people who populate the managerial class? It is not smarts or achievement, so how is it that we are ruled by a collection of mediocrities?

That is where these secular fads come into the picture. Elizabeth Warren feels justified in her scolding because she fervently believes all the things the beautiful people believe, which places her on the side of angels. The anti-whiteness is not the point. It is the embrace of it and the thorough understanding of the language it employs that demonstrates the piety of the person espousing it. They could just as easily hate broccoli as they do whiteness. It is the hate that matters.

This is the final stop on the managerial train. A system that seemingly selects people at random and places them into positions of authority and status results in people in these positions looking for a justification for their good luck. Since they cannot accept random chance as the answer, they latch onto every passing fad that promises to justify their position with regards to the rest of us. Who they are is not us, which is proved by their enthusiasm for hatred of us.

This is the other thing that conservatives simply do not wish to believe, in spite of the fact that it is right in front of our noses and has been for all of my five decades of experience. Our enemies, and I use that word deliberately, have created their entire identity around hatred of normal, white people and their culture and their religion and their freedoms, etc. That's the main thing that defines them. They're not going to abandon it because you came up with a tricky logical argument about why their proposals don't work. Don't work for what? Their goals are completely alien and different than what you think that they are. They don't care.

This is why their reaction to one of their social experiments murdering children at a Christian school was so vulgar. That need to not be us required them to no share in the general horror of the event. It is why the NYTimes found the first opportunity they could to side with the killer. It is why they are now rallying around an imaginary narrative about a brewing backlash. Who they are is not us, so anything that amplifies that is embraced, which is why anti-whiteness is so popular with them.

This is why there is no reasoning with these people. You cannot bargain with them or appeal to their humanity. Who they are literally depends on them hating us. Like the people on the top floors of the office building, making fun of the rank and file, our ruler’s sense of identity is now tied to hating the people over whom they rule. For them, their life literally depends on hating normal white people. As we saw yesterday, for the rest of us, our lives now depend on hating them back.

And that's where the Z-man's lack of spirituality leads him, in literally the last sentence, to the wrong conclusion. We don't need to hate them. In fact, it's spiritually poisonous to do so. But we also need to properly recognize who and what they are and what they represent. The Nephites didn't hate the Lamanites, except when the Nephites were in the depths of apostasy themselves. But that didn't stop them from reluctantly killing thousands upon thousands of them when their own lives and freedoms depended on doing so. You can't make a good decision about things if you're in denial about reality. We were warned. Repeatedly. The Book of Mormon talks about it quite a bit. And this part was for everyone, from the New Testament:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

That's not just some abstract warning about somebody else somewhere else. It applies to people you know. It applies to your government, who treats the American people with all the classic hallmarks of a dangerously abusive and manipulative spouse. It may even apply to your friends and family. It may even apply to you.

Corruption and the J6 Hoax

A slightly edited Z-man post or two.

A classic example of a cultural shift was Watergate. The sorts of shenanigans done by the Nixon people during the 1972 election were considered normal and then all of a sudden they were declared beyond the pale. Prior to that time, the FBI was prohibited from getting directly involved in politics. Then all of a sudden, they were plotting with the Washington Post to overthrow the president. Those unwritten rules of political conduct suddenly changed and Nixon was removed.

Another example from politics comes from the 1990’s. Current affairs programming followed a set of unwritten rules. It was supposed to be a calm exchange of views, hosted by a moderator who pretended to be objective. The Clintons showed up in Washington and this changed. All of a sudden Clinton people were flinging their pooh at the moderator and anyone else on stage. It did not take long before this became the new normal and now all shows are pooh flinging contests.

This week, Tucker Carlson is doing shows on the hidden surveillance tapes from the Capitol on January 6th. These tapes had been hidden from public view by the Democrats until the Republicans took control of the House. Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker, let the production team of the Tucker Carlson Show review the 40,000 hours of footage and this week they are reporting on it. They also have permission to show clips of that hidden footage in their reporting.

So far, nothing earth shattering has been revealed. The guy who showed up wearing animal skins, the QAnon Shaman, is seen being given a guided tour by the police, who seem to be having a blast leading the guy around the building. The QAnon Shaman is now in prison, doing four years for allegedly leading a violent insurrection. He was not allowed to have access to this footage in his defense, because in America the accused are no longer entitled to defend themselves in court.

This is where you see one of those cultural shifts. Most people reading this remember when such a thing would be a massive scandal. The judge and the prosecutors would have been reviled as fascists for denying this man a right to a defense. Of course, the media would have been demanding the footage from the beginning. Instead, they are up in arms over Tucker having access to the material. They fear he may create a “dangerous narrative” using these tapes.

The media was always biased. We used to be more mature about this and accept that politics is about friends and enemies. In the colonial times, everyone knew the bias of the newspapers and thought nothing of it. Then all of a sudden there was a culture shift and we were supposed to pretend the media was neutral. They were the fourth estate, speaking truth to power. We have just experienced another culture shift. The media is totally corrupt, using power to obscure the truth.

Another example of the culture shift is in the tapes. Tucker showed a scene from the J6 show trial in Congress. One of the politicians showed a clip of Senator Josh Hawley running from the building like a little girl. It turns out that the video was heavily edited by the Democrats. Hawley was with a group of other pols being herded out by the police and he was the last guy to leave. In other words, the Congress doctored a video and presented it under oath to the public as fact.

Everyone has always accepted that politicians lie. The reason they lie is to get elected, avoid scandal, or avoid responsibility. In other words, self-interest. This is the nature of all human activity and everyone accepted it. Doctoring video and presenting it as fact in order to promote a crazy narrative is something different. In a prior age, the people involved would be facing criminal charges. After all, they charged Roger Clemens for lying to Congress not so long ago.

More importantly, they doctored video to make a sitting Senator look like a sissy and then used the hearing to broadcast it to the world. It appears they worked with the media to promote this lie. Ten years ago, this was so beyond the pale that no one would have considered it. Now all of a sudden, the culture controlling the House and Senate has changed and this is now the new normal. How long before they move onto assassinating one another?

None of this is startling for people on this side of the divide, but it underscores an important point about the current crisis. The corruption at the top is so deep and so pervasive that the time for reform has now passed. How can the system reform itself when the people running it are so thoroughly corrupt? How could a genuine reformer work with people who are so corrupt? How can you fix the rules when the culture has evolved to reject the very idea of rules?

In the fullness of time, future historians will look at the 1980’s as a time for choosing, when the political class struggled to redefine itself. They could have gone down the road of reform and prepared for the word after the Cold War. Instead they signed on with the Clintons and the road to perdition. That has led to the flowering of a culture of corruption at the top of the political order. That is why J6 terrified them. They have known this long before that protest.

And

The looming presidential primary season is about to be a good test case for the claim that the system is inward looking. That is, what we get in the national media with regards to politics is for internal consumption by the political bubble. They are not trying to sway public opinion, but rather signal things to one another. Like fireflies at dusk, the various nodes of the system use the media to blink to one another. Those outside just happen to see it but are not the intended audience.

This post in Breitbart covering CPAC is an interesting example. Mike Pompeo is running for president, so he shows up to give a speech. In his speech, he promises to throw old people off the Social Security and Medicare system. The reason he wants to do this is he says these systems cost too much. You see, with all the baby boomers retiring, the costs are starting to rise quickly. Therefore, the logical solution is to start throwing old people off the programs. Problem solved!

To a normal person, this sounds as sensible as coming out in favor of slapping children or killing puppies. There is no constituency in favor of cutting Social Security or Medicare funding or even limiting access. Further, old people are the biggest voting block in the Republican Party. Look around at CPAC and you see more gray hair than gray hoodies. He would have been better off giving the speech in Klingon. A reasonable person may think Mike Pompeo is insane.

He is not insane. He is simply a man who has lived his entire adult life inside the system, so he has no idea how normal people sound. He is used to chatting with friends in the system about the need to reduce spending on Americans in order to spend much more on Ukrainians or illegal aliens. For him, this is perfectly normal. He would probably be shocked to learn that there is no constituency for this. After all, everyone he knows thinks something must be done.

Now, Mike Pompeo is a ridiculous person by the standards of normal people, but he is typical of the political class. He is what passes for serious in that world. You see it in the media that serves the people in the system. Real Clear Politics gives him a big thumbs up for being courageous in his call to throw old people into the streets. Time Magazine says he is just the man the Republican Party needs. They are signaling to the system that this is what is good and proper.

If our mass media cared at all about the hoi polloi, the headline in the Washington Post would be, “Jobless Rando Shows Up At CPAC, Rants About Old People.” The New York Times would ask, “Why did CPAC let this weirdo speak?” No serious person, not even the people in the system, thinks Mike Pompeo should be president. No one thinks he has chance to register in the polls. That is not the point. The point is to participate in a debate among the political class.

Speaking of jobless randos, Nikki Haley also showed up at the event to give a speech in favor of killing white people and sending their stuff to Ukraine. She was not quite that explicit, but like Pompeo, she is deeply concerned about people on the other side of the world, but not so much about people in America. Even though she must know this is a losing hand with the voters, she knows it is a winning hand in Washington. Like Pompeo, her campaign is about internal politics.

Of course, CPAC itself is part of the same system. It bills itself as the convention for conservative activists, but in reality it is mostly a tradeshow for the grifters and confidence men who populate the conservative ecosystem. They decorated the event with yokels from flyover country in order to give the impression that they have genuine support among the hoi polloi. In reality the point has always been to promote internal dialogue and signal to the rest of the political system.

The curious thing about all of this, and it jumps out at you with CPAC, is that Trump did the system a huge favor in 2016. CPAC would have gone bust by now without the Trump victory and populist surge. Even with Trump running in 2024, CPAC struggled for an audience this year. The speakers talked to more empty chairs than people, judging from some of the pics people have posted. Without Trump, they are left with zombies like Mike Pompeo to sell tickets.

The same can be said for the entire system. Imagine how insulated and cutoff they would be at this point if Trump never came down the escalator. The Republicans would have selected a goofball like Jeb Bush. Maybe he beats Hillary, maybe not, but the result would have been the same. Large swaths of voters would be wondering what in the hell is going on, but with no way to tell the system. Without Trump, national politics would be even more bizarre than it is now.

That said, the persistence of this internal monologue that is presented to us as democratic politics says nothing really changed. The internal monologue has been more shouty and angry since 2015, but it remains an internal monologue. Once the door is shut on Trump and his voters this election, the internal monologue will return to sounding like an opioid laced talk show on National Public Radio. The people inside it will drift off into the dream world of their own making.

It may already be happening. Chris “Thanks Dad” Sununnu went on the far-left chat show Meet the Press to announce that Trump will not be the nominee. Maybe he was telling tales out of school, but most likely he is stating the general consensus within Washington with regards to the primaries. It brings to mind what Talleyrand famously said about the Bourbons after they were restored to power, “They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing”.

What the Republican primary is going to be this time is an argument between the party establishment and the rest of Washington. The former will be insisting that all the Trump stuff is over and it is time to get back to looting the white middle class, while the later keeps pointing to Trump saying, “He’s still here.” Put another way, the voters are now a guest that refuses to leave the party. The political class is debating how best to make them leave and go home.

Unreality

A portion of the Z-man's post from today about our elites.

What is going on here is that the people inside the bubble created a glorious story for themselves regarding Russia. The story said that if they could bait the Russians into war, they just had to sit back and wait for Russia to collapse. This version of reality created by the cult was a reboot of the Bolshevik Revolution. This time, war would crack the Russian regime and the heroes would ride into Moscow to finally exact their revenge on their ancient enemy.

That has not happened. In fact, it is the American Empire that is now cracking under the strain of this war of attrition. Western economies are struggling. There is growing unrest in the public about the political class. Meanwhile, the Russians have organized themselves for the long haul. The story Western elites told each other about this war are falling a part, but rather than face reality they fill their minds with more versions of the big lie from the biggest of big liars.

This form of elite escapism is not unique to Ukraine policy. This is the defining feature of our ruling class. When asked about how all of these magical electric cars will be charged, people like Pete Buttigieg just reply with some hand waving or maybe say they will supply more sockets. He has no idea and he has no reason to care, because his world is the world of fantasy.  The people running energy policy are just as divorced from reality as the people running foreign policy.

It is not confined to the elites. This is how the managerial class maintains its sense of identity and cohesion. The answer to the primary question of life, who are we?, is supplied by the many narratives that define the managerial class. Whether it is pronouns, support for deviant sexual practices, saying “keev” all of a sudden or any number of affectations, the point is to signal membership in the club. For these people, the answer to the big question is one of the approved narratives.

This is why the neocons have managed to dominate foreign policy. They are expert at creating complex narrative structures that provide simple moral choices for the audience, moral choices that favor their preferred outcomes. In a society that lives by words, rather than deeds, being good with words counts for a lot. Robert Kagan tells one side stories about monsters and heroes, while his wife tells the other side similar stories, always with the same monsters and heroes.

In the fullness of time, Francis Fukuyama’s seminal essay, The End of History, will be seen as the point at which Western elites became untethered from reality. For them, history was always a nightmare from which they could not awake. All of a sudden, the nightmare was over because history was over. What was ahead was whatever their imaginations could conjure. They could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as they had a mind.

Much of what constitutes democratic politics in the West is the people debating with one another about the precise time their rulers wake from their dream. Surely they will see the folly of making war with Russia. Maybe this event will do it. Surely they will see the lunacy of banning fossil fuels. Maybe now they will see it. So far, nothing has worked, suggesting nothing will work. Elite escapism is now too much a part of what defines the elite, so their can be no awakening from their dream.

On top of that is the hostility the elites feel towards the Dirt People, the non-elites. Part of this is the seedy illicit affair that our government is having with foreigners, especially Third World people, right under the noses of the American people and in our very homes. Looking at the insane demands of our elites and their various hangers-on among normal people who wish to signal their allegiance to the elites, I'm reminded of Paul's warning to Timothy:

1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Goals

I use blogs as a kind of journal, although thematically. My main blog is for—mostly—discussion of my science fiction and fantasy hobbies. I have another one for hiking, and one for my Street Fighter-like video games, and a few others as well, although for ease of use, my main blog ends up getting bleed from all of the other topics, and every other blog is somewhat content impoverished as a result. This blog is, in theory, for the discussion of political, social and religious opinions and polemics and navel-gazing, or whatever. It's actually got the potential to be a much better blog than it is, but because I tend to only complain about social and political problems, it's probably neither very positive, nor very useful, and updated much too infrequently to be of use to anyone at all, even me. And I blog for me; I tend to not mind that others can see my journal in the form of a blog, and I write in such a way that if someone were to stumble across it and identify me, I wouldn't have anything to be overly embarrassed about on it other than the amateurishness of the writing. That said, there's an opportunity to transform this blog into more of a real spiritual journal, rather than complaints about problems in our world. Which brings up our goals for the new year.

I sometimes shy away from New Years' resolutions, because I think that if a goal is a good one to set, then there is never a better time than the present, rather than waiting for a milestone like the new year. In our case, the new year actually was a good time to set goals, because it marks a period of change in our household. My youngest two sons still have their permanent addresses here, but with one at college out west and the other on a mission in California for another year, we only had my 24 year old daughter at home. She just got married less than a week ago, and after we finish cleaning up the mess that our house has become due to her living here, my sons being in town (not the missionary one), extended family hanging around, and tons of wedding stuff to figure out what to do with, we have embarked on a new chapter in our life as new nearly empty nesters, coincidentally at the beginning of a new year.

My wife has already expressed an interest in two goals; one forcing a more positive and less complainy attitude; while we excise the bad habit of complaining, we'll need to probably convert complaints into looking for silver linings. As the bad habit recedes, we'll hopefully just have much more positive things to see and say in general.

She's also expressed an interest in scheduling monthly temple visits, which has been difficult these last few months due to a variety of factors, including our hectic wedding preparations, as well as monthly double dates with some other empty nester friends of ours.

I've wanted to reaffirm some goals that we've set in the past, and don't not do, but which we're not as consistent and faithful as I'd like us to be: morning and evening couple prayers, and every day scripture slash Come Follow Me reading. I'd also like to continue making sure that my most days Book of Mormon reading converts into every day Book of Mormon reading.

And finally, since my daughter married a non-member, we've got a lot of concerns about her spirituality on an ongoing basis, not to mention his. I'm not quite sure what the goal is there, but we want to make sure we continue to see her at church every Sunday and maybe do scripture study with them every Sunday evening.

There can always be more, but I prefer not to run faster than we have strength, as the saying goes. Let's work on these and then see what else develops as potential throughout the year. 

Labels

My politics has a problem; there's no untainted label for it. I sometimes call myself "a paleocon who's been kicked too many times and now has evolved into a looking for a real solution to the problems that a paleocon identifies." The Z-man just posted a Friday show, which I'm listening to now, although I'll probably quit early, where he's talking about labels. He's possessive (and admits to such) about the term dissident right. Labels like the Alt Right were ruined by clowns like Richard Spencer, who made it easy for Establishment liars to paint the movement as one of extremists, weirdos and haters. And sadly, there are too many people who should know better who still listen to these Establishment liars.

Most of the other labels have this same problem; as soon as you come up with a label, liars and grifters either paint the label as something that it's not, or people who crave attention more than any political solutions attach themselves to the label in an effort to get their own fifteen minutes of fame.

For this reason, I tend to avoid being a joiner, or calling myself by any label. My politics haven't really changed, other than that I'm more often and more strongly recognizing that without implementing any solution to the problems that I see, we're in for a world of hurt. Since there is no political will to implement any meaningful solution, maybe I should just call myself the early I Told You So label.

In any case, when Vox Day attempted to define the Alt Right, before it got coopted by malign weirdos and clowns, he wrote a manifesto of sorts. I agree with him on pretty much all of these points, and I copied a slightly modified version of it myself here a number of years ago. I'll do so now, without the totally ruined alt right label being attached to it; regardless of label, this is what I believe politically, socially and culturally, and it's still valid.

1) I am of the political right in both the American and the European sense of the term. Socialists are not any kind of Right, because they're of the Left. Progressives are not any kind, for the same reason. Liberals are not on the Right. Communists, Marxists, cultural Marxists, and neocons are not on the Right. National Socialists are not any kind of right. By definition, no ideology that accepts the premise of the Left—as all of those listed do, to some degree or other—can be on the Right.

2) My philosophy is an alternative to the mainstream conservative movement in the USA that is nominally encapsulated by Russel Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles and the intellectual tradition of William Buckley, but in reality has devolved towards progressivism. It is also an alternative to libertarianism.

3) My philosophy is not a defensive attitude and rejects the concept of noble and principled defeat. It is a forward-thinking philosophy of restoring what has been lost.  I believe in victory through persistence and remaining in harmony with science, reality, cultural tradition, and the lessons of history.

4) Having a philosophy rooted in Western Civilization, I desire to preserve it and support its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the northern European nations (and their diaspora, including in to the south of Europe and to America and other nations on other continents), and the Graeco-Roman legacy.

5) I am openly and avowedly patriotic and believe patriotism, regardless of your nation, to be a virtue. I support all nations and the right of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and migration.

6) I am anti-globalist. I oppose all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist objectives.*

7) I am anti-equalitarian. I reject the idea of equality, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.**

8) I believe in the scientific method. I am skeptical and tentative in accepting the current scientific consensus without review as the scientific industry has proven itself to be untrustworthy and promoting conclusions that are observably out of synch with the data that they gathered to reach them. Even for conclusions that I do accept, I understand that a) these conclusions are liable to future revision, b) that the "science industry" is susceptible to corruption, and c) that the so-called scientific consensus is not based on the scientific method, but democracy, and is therefore intrinsically unscientific.

9) I believe that the hierarchy of decision making employed by humans is identity > culture > politics. The number one portion of our identity should be as children of God, and as members of his Church, but it is not the only thing that defines our identity, and the culture and civilization that we belong to is an important part of that as well.

10) I am opposed to the rule or domination of any ethnic group by another, particularly in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples. I am opposed to any non-native ethnic group obtaining excessive influence in any society through nepotism, tribalism, or any other means.

11) I accept the truth that diversity + proximity = war.

12) I doesn't care what you think of my philosophy. I remain unmoved by emotional appeals or ad hominem attacks or labels. You want to change my mind on one of these details, you better bring your A-game with black and white empirical data, and it better be convincing.***

13) I reject the philosophy of international free trade and the free movement of peoples that free trade requires. The benefits of intranational free trade is not evidence for the benefits of international free trade.†

14) I believe we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children. If we understand the negative impact of invasive species in the animal kingdom, we should accept the negative impact of invasive populations amongst humanity. Everyone has their own homeland. If you have a problem in yours, fix it, don't invade someone else's. The end result of invasion is the elimination of diversity in the human population, which I do not believe to be in concert with God's will; he has created diversity, in all its beauty, because he values our uniqueness. ‡

15) I do not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, or people. Every race, nation, and people has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers.

16) I strongly value peace among the various nations of the world and oppose wars to impose the values of one nation upon another as well as efforts to exterminate individual nations through war, genocide, immigration, or genetic assimilation. The only very rare exception is when God himself judges that a people has become too evil and needs to be smitten, as has happened a relatively few times in the historical record, including to the peoples of the Americans upon the arrival of the English and other Europeans.††

17) A new one that I would add, is that I am skeptical of claims made by authority, as they have proven to be wrong due to incompetence, inefficiency and outright dishonesty too consistently to be trusted. Verify all claims. Upon doing this, you will find that it's not just the news that's fake, but also much of our historical and scientific narratives. 

* Globalism is part of the heresy of Universalism, which is indistinguishable from Trotskyism and is rooted, ultimately, in the same hubris as Babel.  One does not reach God through anything on Earth other than the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  This does not mean that we disavow organizations that are global in scope (for example, the Church)—merely that we do disavow the notion of a One World government or the erosion of national sovereignty, or the imposition of a system of government on any people that is not of their own choice of any kind other than that headed by Christ himself.

** The Parable of the Talents; Matthew 25: "14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.  15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.  16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.  17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.  18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.  19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.  20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.  21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.  22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.  23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.  24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:  25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.  26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:  27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.  28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.  29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.  30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

We are not created equal.  Again; context.  In the Declaration of Independence, it clearly means that we are equal under the law, and in today's world, even that is obviously no longer true.  In any other respect, we are not equal.  We do, however, have equal claim on the rewards of the Lord if we live righteously and make the most of what we are given.  You'll note that the servant who turned two talents into four got exactly the same reward—word for word—as he who started with five, and turned it into ten.  But in no wise are we to suppose that they were equal, because we are, after all, capable of doing math, and we all know that four is not equal to five much less ten.

*** What did God tell Joseph Smith after the 116 pages were lost?  D&C 3: "7 For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words—  8 Yet you should have been faithful; and he would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and he would have been with you in every time of trouble."  Many other examples.  We are not to fear Man, we are to fear only God.

† This is a little bit wonkish, and goes against the grain for the Science of Economics, which is largely libertarian in most respects (when the language of economics isn't being coopted by Marxists, that is.)  But it is, actually, economically and empirically sound—you'll just need to read a bit deeper than most to get the arguments for it.  Steve Keen's Debunking Economics is a good place to start, but you'll probably also need to read beyond that.

‡ Although this sounds like a straightforward and oddly placed phrase, there's actually a long history behind it.  One can readily see, if one cares to pull ones head out of the sand and look, that every people in the world except white people are encouraged to do their thing, whereas we are constantly told that we are the ills of all the world, and that it will be better when we are either bred out or killed off (preferably both—I suspect a lot of men around the world wouldn't mind access to our women without our men being around to get in the way.  Take a look at "Great" Britain, Germany, or Sweden, and the child grooming pedophilia scandals involving migrants, the rape and sexual assault scandals, etc.)  This particular phrase was actually authored by a white supremacist, but that doesn't mean that it isn't correct.  It's worth noting that the rest of that particular manifesto was not carried forward into the 16 Points, precisely because it is wrong.

†† Applies to points 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 and 16 at least.  But especially 11. Don't go looking around for things to be offended by so you can dismiss that list. You will find it at that site, I guarantee. However, the data is what it is whether you like the location that hosts it or not.  https://heartiste.org/diversity-proximity-war-the-reference-list/

Free speech... but not for Americans

From the Z-man. I saw through Dennis Prager's act years ago when he had another gaffe and said that Israel was a better place to live than America (although he, of course, lives in America, because how else do you pull a con on Americans if you're not here?)

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=28791

Michael Kinsley famously said that a political gaffe is “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” The important part of that quip is that the truth is obvious but everyone pretends otherwise. The word for it is mokita, which means things we know are true but agree to never discuss. It is not really an agreement, but more of a convention that is enforced from the top down. Every once in a while, someone with power screws up and speak the truth.

That is what you see with this recent Dennis Prager column. He declared that anyone questioning the current facts about the holocaust is evil. He specifically singled out Nick Fuentes, who has been in the news because of the Kanye West business. The two of them have been making the rounds, with West saying uncharitable things about Jewish people and saying nice things about Hitler. Fuentes has been mostly a bit player in the show, as West is the headliner of Ye24.

Why Prager singled out Fuentes would be a good question to pose to him. Kanye West is the guy praising Hitler. Milo Yiannopoulos was instrumental in kicking off this traveling carnival, but Prager did not mention him. Another player in this drama is a hip-hop performer named Sneako. They recently added the weird internet gadfly Ali Alexander to the performance. Fuentes is the only white Christian in the crew and not the main player, yet Prager focuses on him.

Putting aside that bit of mask dropping, Prager has made himself rich selling creedalism to the salt of the earth white people who make up his audience. This is the claim that anyone can be an American as long as they embrace American principles. If you accept the basics of the American creed, then you are as American as a guy whose family came over on the Mayflower. America is an idea, or a collection of ideas, rather than a physical place for a specific people.

Lots of white people are flattered by this, but most people also notice that the people peddling this idea tend to take Saturday off. It is not a coincidence that this new definition of American has no benefit to white Christians but is a huge bonus to mercurial people from outside the European Christian tradition. Prager is one of the leading advocates “America is a set of ideas’ and most people understand why, even if they politely ignore the elephant in the room.

One of those creedal ideas is freedom of expression. In fact, it is one of the most cherished principles of American morality. The right to speak one’s mind without fear of retribution is the cornerstone of the republic. Not only do you get to say what you like, but others get to hear you without fear of retribution. Free speech is established in the first amendment to the Constitution because you cannot petition the government for the redress of grievances if you need permission to speak.

Until the last decade or so, “I may disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it!” was a common refrain from leftists. Most right-wing people knew that what lefty really wanted was the right to send porn to your kids, but the civic principle was worth the risk and the lecture. You cannot have self-government and a civil society without the free exchange of ideas. More speech, even stupid or obnoxious speech, is better than less speech.

It was not just sloganeering. In 1978, the ACLU defended a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through a Jewish neighborhood. There was no question that the intent of the neo-Nazi group was to be offensive. They picked the neighborhood for their march because it was full of Jews. The ACLU successfully argued that even though the Nazis picked the neighborhood because it was full of Jews, they still had a right to speak their mind in public and the public had a right to hear them.

Foundational to American morality is that you are free to speak your mind not because you have the right to speak, but because others have the right to hear you. Shouting people down is explicitly un-American. You let the person be heard and then you can be heard in response. This is the exact opposite of what Dennis Prager is doing with regards to people like Nick Fuentes. He wants Nick Fuentes to be silenced, so you cannot hear what he has to say for himself.

Prager is careful to not call for the arrest and execution of Nick Fuentes, but it is clear that he would not be offended by it. After all, Prager declares that questioning the holocaust is the epitome of evil. Those who do this, according to Prager, will spend eternity in Hell. Given his cult’s ambiguity about the existence of Heaven and Hell, this is a curious claim. It means that he wants you to believe that holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes are outside of your Christian mercy.

That is what makes the Prager column a massive gaffe. He is essentially saying, “That civic nationalism stuff applies to you people, but my people have other priorities and so we get to operate by separate rules.” By elevating his Jewish identity over everything else, he contradicts the entire civic nationalist argument. Again, this was obvious to many people, but it largely went unsaid. By demanding everyone submit to the myths and legends of his people, Prager is saying it out loud.

The column itself is a remarkable example of Kinsley’s quip. The truth is, in a majority-minority society like America, what matters is your tribe. This is the truth that the people in charge are not supposed to say. They get to be in charge as long as the biggest tribe does not decide to tribe up. The minoritism that rules modern America only works if white people buy into the creedalism stuff. Dennis Prager just told his fans that creedalism is nonsense. It is tribe that matters most.

If that's the truest form of evil, it's kinda funny that the most detailed and convincing Holocaust denial that I've ever seen comes from a libertarian Southern California Jewish guy... who gets little pushback from other Jews, curiously. Probably because he IS Jewish. If a white Christian guy said the same thing, he'd be literally destroyed, as he himself alludes to somewhat in this lengthy yet absolutely worth reading every word column.

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/

From his conclusion:

[A]s an outsider exploring this contentious topic I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so.

Despite this situation, the powerful media focus in support of the Holocaust over the last few decades has elevated it to a central position in Western culture. I wouldn’t be surprised if it currently occupies a larger place in the minds of most ordinary folk than does the Second World War that encompassed it, and therefore possesses greater apparent reality.

However, some forms of shared beliefs may be a mile wide but an inch deep, and the casual assumptions of individuals who have never actually investigated a given subject may rapidly change. Also, the popular strength of doctrines that have long been maintained in place by severe social and economic sanctions, often backed by criminal penalties, may possibly be much weaker than anyone realizes.

Until thirty years ago, Communist rule over the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies seemed absolutely permanent and unshakeable, but the roots of that belief had totally rotted away, leaving behind nothing more than a hollow facade. Then one day, a gust of wind came along, and the entire gigantic structure collapsed. I wouldn’t be surprised if our current Holocaust narrative eventually suffers that same fate, perhaps with unfortunate consequences for those too closely associated with having maintained it.

I used to find it curious that Daniel (and others) prophesied that every nation on earth would stand against the Jewish people at the last days, thus facilitating the whole Mount of Olives splitting miracle. I used to think that this was not meant to be taken literally, because why would, for example, the Americans have any conflict with Israel? Oh, how little I knew back then.

Isaiah 11:13 clearly implies that until the last days, Ephraim will envy Judah and Judah will vex Ephraim. What I once thought was impossible now seems inevitable. And its also worth pointing out that Prager's column doesn't come from a position of strength, as it first appears. It's defensive and over-the-top because I think that there's a sense at the top that the zeitgeist is changing. As Princess Leia said, the more the evil empire tightens its grip, the more things start to slip through its fingers. The gust of wind that Ron Unz is talking about seems to be (relatively) imminently due any minute now.

And, ironically,  much of that is enabled by the Jewish people of America's insistence that America needs to be stolen from Americans and given to every greedy, entitled, demanding Third World barbarian who comes along with a rough word against white people. Turns out that they're pretty immune to the ridiculous notion of white guilt. Which should hardly be surprising.

UPDATE: Wow, and sometimes, especially when among their own people, they don't even try. This fascinating article in The Times of Israel says that unless you think Jews are better than everyone else, then you're anti-semitic.

I can't imagine a better way of demonstrating that anti-semitism is a hoax. Although individual variation, of course, occurs, it's really amazing to see a people who's entire culture and sense of identity is defined by toxic narcissism. I've said for a long time that modern Judaism has evolved into becoming less of a religion and more of a tribal supremacist cult. More evidence for that claim.