Victimhood is now the primary mantle of legitimate power. The Social Justice movement makes this explicit, as demonstrated by the constant need for apology from anyone not deemed a victim, as a means of obtaining some sort of indulgence for whatever power or position they happen to hold. The absence of victimhood implies illegitimacy. Competence…
The March to Fascism
Social movements built on virtuous victimhood are wide open to capture by the unscrupulous and the insane. Those on the Left recognize this in those on the Right, and vice-versa. This common recognition, though, fails to grasp that it’s happening on both sides, and only feeds the process by rendering each side as the virtuous…
You Are the People You’ve Been Waiting For, Just Not in a Good Way
Shortly after Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016, a smartly drawn comic started making the rounds on social media, purporting to explain philosopher Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance”. According to this, an ideologically tolerant society must, paradoxically, be intolerant of those who would end its tolerance of ideological difference. The example of those intolerants…
The Generous Miser
Scrooge’s greatness is hardly ever appreciated. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone appreciate Scrooge, ever. Of course we all appreciate him after he’s been scared straight, so to speak. I’m talking about appreciating him before that, when he’s bah humbugging things. I don’t mean appreciate him according to some generic standard which holds that everyone…
Revolution By Redefinition
It’s easy to laugh at the Q people, or to regard them with horror as a grave threat. Deplorables squared. Which is to say, the worst sort of people made exponentially worse by their adoption of a false revolutionary religion. Both Malcolm X and Confucius agree: the function of a revolution is to call things…
Dream Management
One core of my political philosophy is this: A sense that the game of politics is played by manipulating people to get trapped into their own projections, pitting them in a war with their own shadows. A war they are certain to lose, the harder they try. This strategy exploits a fundamental tendency of human…
Between Ally and Deplorable
The Elite/Woke Alliance #5 Wokism differs from Marxism in how it determines the difference between two closely related but functionally antagonistic classes: the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat. Both are comprised of members of the lower social order, economically speaking. The difference is that the former is informed by a class consciousness that renders them the…
Comprehensive Single Mindedness
Perhaps it is that single mindedness is best when it’s also capable of seeing things from both sides. What’s more: I’d say we live in a society where people most often achieve singlemindedness by rendering themselves incapable of understanding what the other side is even saying. It is as John Stuart Mill commented in ON…
Between Anarchy and Opportunism
The Elite/Woke Alliance #4 When I say ideologue, I don’t necessarily mean a person consciously attached to a particular ideology, but a person who distorts their experience of reality in order to perceive what accords with their conclusions. In this sense, most everyone is an ideologue. I’m thinking it’s a gradient, and there are steps…
Opportunism and the Revolutionary Vanguard
The Elite/Woke Alliance #3 The concept of The Revolutionary Vanguard is a secular version of the monotheistic conception of legitimacy as a function of Divine Intervention. Both are revolutionary notions, in that this legitimacy is not conferred or recognized by established systems of worldly authority. While the Prophet was rendered revolutionarily legitimate by the consciousness…
Cancel Culture and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
The Elite/Woke Alliance #2 A brief disclaimer to start: What I’m calling “Marxism” is Lenin’s version of Marxism. I haven’t read any of Marx directly, but only Lenin’s interpretation, which is obsessively polemical. That is: Lenin explains his version of Marxism as a withering critique of all those interpretations of Marx, Engels and Socialism more…
Wokism versus Socialism
The Elite/Woke Alliance #1 The fundamental premise of Wokism is that the social order as it is, is abusive to a collection of marginalized identity classes. Relative to this, patterns of social order (civility, politeness and the like) and legal systems (cops, courts and jails) are not neutral goods designed to profit all, but are…
Grifters and Suckers
I’m tempted to say the biggest problem with ideology is that they’re not true. Why this is is complicated. Perhaps a good rule of thumb is that the more force an ideology requires to enforce, the more likely it is to have departed profoundly from reality. I’m down to the last ten pages of Lenin’s…
Trump, Ted Wheeler, and the End of America
If perchance you were wondering why Ted Wheeler rolled out the standard 2016 litany of Trump’s sins in talking about violence in PDX in 2020, I think it served two purposes. The first was to exonerate Wheeler himself by reminding people that Trump’s failings of character are the ultimate source of all evil in America….
To Be or Not To Be on Social Media
Like you, I spend a fair amount of time wondering whether or not to participate in social media. Same old, same old. You will not be surprised to learn that Hamlet’s famous lines map perfectly: To be, or not to be on social media THAT is the question Whether tis nobler in the mind to…
Who Needs Math When You Have Ideology?
That some random person on Twitter is really bad at basic math isn’t at all surprising or significant. What’s shocking is that this obviously bad math was publicly embraced by two highly placed professionals, one with a nightly show on MSNBC, the other a member of the NY Times editorial board. Add to that all…
Hamlet, the Old Lady, and the Fly
I’m tempted to say that the tricky thing about changing your life is the feedback between our circumstances, our social situations, and our psychic states. This complexity is multiplied by the fact that we may do ourselves more harm than good. Physician induced disease is a real thing, on every level. We see it in…
Coming Out of the Closet, Speaking a Forbidden Tongue
The Fallen Language Tonight’s Question: Is Life a Play or a Game? Playing chess just now I got clear on why I like games, and the difference, symbolically speaking, of Mercury in Capricorn and Mercury in Aquarius, and of Capricorn and Aquarius more generally. It may be long past time, biographically speaking, or perhaps just…
God is Greatest
The death of any system of power comes by the delegitimization of the double standard by which it operates. This is the core meaning expressed by people in Iran in the during the final days of the Shah’s regime, when they called out of their windows in the darkness “Allahu Akbar”: God is greatest. Meaning,…
THE ART OF POLITICS AND THE END OF THE WORLD
The art of politics from the perspective of the consultant is the art of manipulating the psychological levers that people didn’t even know they had. It’s the art of the marketer, for whom values are just props in the manipulation of the unconscious mass psychology that organizes people into effective groups. The political consultant is…
Yang Against the Apocalyptic Imagination
I appreciate how Andrew Yang diffused the apocalyptic nightmare Bill Maher invokes during this interview, about Trump refusing to leave office, or if he does leave, complaining that the election of 2020 was rigged to remove him and taking to Twitter to call for armed rebellion. If it was me, I might just lose my…
Operation Gaslight Lives On
I’ve known it for years, but I continue to struggle to wrap my head around the fact that political power is exactly the enforcement of a double standard. Hypocrisy isn’t a bug, but a key feature. The hard part to quite accept is that some people know this. The dangerous and awful thing was that…
What, Then, is America Good For?
The Coming Dystopia and the Promise of Andrew Yang I’m just going to put this out there: I deserve a media company. I know, I know, we are living in an Age of Entitlement, with everyone arguing about who deserves what as a consequence of their general humanity or their specific identity. Plus, I have…
Why a Woman Can’t Beat Trump
Bernie Sander’s Heretical Critique There’s no way of getting inside that room with Bernie and Liz. Maybe the NSA has records of the conversation somewhere, but odds are they’re not going to spill the beans, if only because it would suggest a level of surveillance whose scandal would swamp the issue at hand. So, we’re…
Jangling the Mystic Chords of Memory
Just by the by: I think the most worrying trend in American politics is not Donald Trump but polarization. This polarization is destroying all possibility of a single standard for judging behavior. Everything is becoming a matter of who did or said a thing, not what was done or said. Such standards are the only…
Blue Pill Joe
You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more. That’s the opposite of what that old snake…
The Pied Piper of Civil War
I’ve just realized the Pied Piper strategy for each party. You might recall back in the run up to the 2016 election, during the primaries, that Hillary’s chief of staff John Podesta wrote an email suggesting that the Clinton campaign prop up the Trump campaign in the media, so as to hopefully push the Republican…
Redemption Song
Watching this morning I am left wondering why people have been raving about Elijah Cummings closing remarks. I am truly curious. In case you missed it, the keyword of the Democratic majority as regards Cohen is “redemption”, and these closing remarks were just a rambling improv on this consciously held theme, by someone well-versed in…
Tulsi or Bust
Tulsi Gabbard is by far the best candidate on the Democratic side. No doubt she’ll continue to be smeared as we get railroaded down into a Culture War on Steroids election in 2020. Best case scenario, as I see it, is Bernie stays out and throws his support behind Tulsi. This has nothing to do,…
Why the Left is No Longer Funny
Way back during the last Bush administration there was a short-lived political comedy show on FOX called The Half-Hour News Hour. It was an attempt to create a conservative answer to The Daily Show and Colbert, and was short-lived because not even FOX viewers could deny that it was abominable. At the time, I was…
The War Against Reality
I think ultimately what we are all at war with is reality. War, as General Smedley Butler famously wrote, has more or less always been a racket, but here in America, I think it became most fully so during Vietnam. By that I mean to say that it was during the Vietnam War that American…
The Serpent in the Democratic Garden
The New Democratic Mantra of “Thou Shalt Not Criticize a Democratic Candidate”is an instrument of establishment power. It isn’t about “unity”, regardless how many well-meaning people say it is. Or rather, it is the means of defining who is included in this unity and who is not. It is also a projection of the narrative…
Seth Rich Must Die
Operation Gaslight Triumphant Operation Gaslight has been successful in at least establishing the appearance of a dominant narrative, according to which the fundamental problem with the Democratic party in 2016 was not that they ran a sham of a primary, intent from long before it began on handing Clinton the nomination, and used that nomination…
Facebook Drives Me Crazy
Honestly, and not that you’ve asked, but Facebook drives me crazy. It did lead me to think that “moral omniscience and historical ignorance go hand in hand”, and I do love a pithy phrase. Still, it’s depressing to watch, and I’ve just about bitten my tongue clean off. It’s also fascinating, and hard to look…
The Antifascist Who Cried Wolf
Turning a parable on its head I remember nearly two years ago, when friends were sharing a video of Yale professor Timothy Snyder encouraging his students to take to the streets to save democracy. Snyder had shot to prominence by declaring, from his lofty perch of wisdom, that America had less than a year to…
It’s Always You
The Beloved is in the Blood. -some Sufi or other It may be that you have appeared to me in more dreams than any other person, aside from my dead father. It hadn’t happened in some years, and I thought that time was past, till it happened again this morning. This ‘you’ doesn’t always look…
Ashes to Ashes
Fleet, It’s convenient that you don’t check your email, as it allows me to write to you as if you were an imaginary friend, without having to go through the delusion involved in constructing an actually imaginary friend. I’ve decided to call my non-imaginary friend “Fleet”. I had been dreaming this morning of working in…
Maybe I’m Not Cynical Enough Yet
For what it’s worth, I don’t think we share the same estimation of ‘the problem’. I gather you see the problem as a lack of Democrats in power. I see the problem as a lack of reality within our culture. Further, I see the weakness of the Democratic party as a function of this. Maybe…
The Jack Ryan Psyop
Amazon, the CIA, and the dream of American Exceptionalism For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body…
In Search of an Honest Critique of Jordan Peterson
With the exception of Donald Trump, is there another person in the English-speaking world subject to more harsh critiques than Jordan Peterson? Not that I’m aware. Peterson’s meteoric rise to prominence has come with something close to an equal descent into infamy, which is as much a statement of the polarized nature of our times…
This is America(n Propaganda?)
A friend of mine has been championing the idea that there’s a difference between Art and Propaganda. We have differed over where to draw the line between the two, but I have been considering the idea of the distinction. The difference between Art and Propaganda is a subset, or a consequence, of the difference between…
The Zen of Marx
If you know how there’s this scene at the end of BLADE RUNNER, where the replicant Roy – in the moment of his programmed death – says to Deckard – the replicant built to kill him, whose life he has saved: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder…
The Pros and Cons of Resistance
“To successfully comprehend and deal with changes, it is best to know the times; to know the times, it is best to understand principles; to understand principles, it is best to be open and tranquil.” – Book of Balance and Harmony I find it helpful to consider the opposite case, of unsuccessfully comprehending and dealing…
The Root of Ideological Conflict in the Subject/Object Split
Ideological conflict is rooted in the fact that our existence depends upon the dynamic interaction of two apparently opposite truths. According to one truth we are matter; according to the other, mind. Ideologies are attempts to reduce this duality to a unity. According to the first truth (that we are matter), we are ruled by…
The Mind Reels
I’ve been mulling over what seem to me foundational issues for as long as I can remember, and it’s a funny thing, because all of this mulling has nothing whatsoever to do with how I get money to live. The nightowl moonlights. Thinking of it that way, I am struck by a way of understanding…
The Utopian Part of Utopianism
I am stuck now that that oft-quoted summary of Marxist utopianism – From each according to his gifts, to each according to his needs – (gendered language aside) contains within it the most utopian of all ideas. An idea so utopian as to be absent from lesser versions of that ultimate ideal. In fact, dystopias…
A Letter to the Young Dude
The topmost NINE, undivided, shows the king employing its subject in his punitive expeditions. Achieving admirable awareness, he breaks only the chiefs of the rebels. Where his prisoners were not their associates, he does not punish. There will be no error. Young Dude, The point that I’m trying to get across to you is that…
To Be or Not To Be: Hamlet and the Chakras
Muses open doors in unexpected places, without trying, or even being aware. My most recent muse, codename:FLORIDA, texted me the other night to suggest the problem I am having is that my third chakra isn’t opened. I think she’s right, and told her so; but beyond feeling a strange combination of uncomfortably exposed and grateful…
The GOD Problem
The problem with confronting ideological delusions is that for whatever these delusions get wrong, however maladaptive they are, they are performing a deeper function of keeping existential anxiety at bay. In short, all practical ends, all external problems, are secondary to the true purpose of ideology, which is psychological comfort. What’s worse, as all practical…
MUSE EFFECT #7: the Desert of the Real
What is the connection between the Sandworm and the Spice? This is what the Fremen know. Perhaps the Guild know it as well; but no other group of which we are aware. Of course we, as the readers, also know. But it is overwhelmingly likely that we don’t know what we know. We know it,…
The Talking Cure
Verily Self-explanation is a bid for immortality, or at least, perpetuation in the moment. We know ourselves to be limited, and incapable of self-perpetuation, at least relative to the cycles of generation. We live within the box of our own mortality, with the strange awareness – usually dim, or blindingly bright, but seen through layers…
Microdosing Venus
I’ve been largely off Facebook for a few weeks. A friend’s death – oddly enough, one of the friends who indirectly prompted me to get off – has drawn me back on. Fortunately, a wonky Internet connection has kept me from getting involved in another argument. People tend to become idiots when thinking big picture….
Museophilia as a Disorder
My most recent muse asked me to describe when it is that our relationship becomes a problem for me. She wanted to know what, to put it in my own terms, I am trying to avoid. I think the short answer is shame and frustration. I don’t want to get caught wanting a fix, and…
Thinking the Unthinkable
A couple weeks back I showed up at the usual watering hole, at the usual time, but the usual crowd wasn’t there. Or rather, the usual crowd was only partly there – and the part that was there was all male. Usually, the crowd is female dominant, not just in number, but in organization. It…
The Triumph of Poetic Truth
Listen Up Normies, Your World is Ending I’m still trying to understand the pussy hat. I’m familiar with Trump’s grab ’em by the pussy remark, and I understand that pussy might also refer to a cat. So, ok, a pink hat that vaguely suggests cat ears. But what the fuck does it mean to wear…
Contra Subjectiva
I’m back momentarily to rail against subjectivity as a doctrine. Yes, it’s useful, and necessary. It’s just not in and of itself sufficient. The idea that all truth is subjective, and therefore all equal, is what we used to call sophistry. Sophistry is the derivation of faulty conclusions from valid premises. It is characterized by…
Museophile
To paraphrase Rumi, who would be a lover cannot have but a single head. This, because loving well requires one to lose one’s head; and considering this, we might draw an analogy between the lover and the transmigratory soul. Whatever we do, we will lose our heads in the end. Or, as John Hiatt put…
The Age of Universal Deceit
I’ve been preparing, in my usual willy-nilly and summary fashion, for what will be the first High Horseman of the Apocalypse podcast, scheduled to be recorded early this afternoon. The topic of this first podcast, I’ve decided, will be The Age of Universal Deceit. This phrase entered into my lexicon at some point in the…
Progress, for Better and Worse
I was at a wine and poetry gathering the other night, where a young woman of Jewish descent offered a traditional sung blessing. She prefaced it by saying that the meaning of the Hebrew was to offer thanks to God for the wine, but that as she didn’t believe in any sort of external divinity,…
Fear of Flying
Dreamed last night that I was either in Wings with Paul McCartney, or else I was Paul McCartney during the Wings years. The music part of the dream is mostly lost to me now, and I have the sense that it wasn’t that long, anyway. My recollection gets more clear as we were headed off…