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…
Category: Politics
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
Back to the Hall of Mirrors
A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Facebook about how, if the Mueller probe didn’t produce an indictment to validate the long-standing belief among the #Resistance that Trump was a puppet of Putin, the whole thing would prove a disaster for said #Resistance. A friend of mine commented that even if Trump were…
Rise of the Russian Bots
Russian bots are so devious!!! Not only did they hack the Clinton campaign emails, and – by means of their cutout, “Wikileaks” – expose us to ugly, deceptive, truth. Now they’re making memes that expose our impolitic hidden desires! This, after all, is the heart of the #Russiagate narrative that has been established in fact….
The Red Menace
Terrifying Enemies and Opiates of the Masses To start, consider the link between anxiety and addiction. In short: an addiction is a means of controlling anxiety. The addict reaches for the needle, of whatever sort, in response to awareness of powerlessness relative to some internal or external circumstance. The alteration of awareness holds out the…
Fever Dreams
In seeing people jump on Trump for his stupid comment about America maybe someday trying a president for life, I was moved to wonder how many of them would have gladly given Obama that title, if they could. Even closer to reality is the habit, well-established among the elite and roundly defended among the people,…
Principles Are Dead
Watching the PBS News Hour I can’t help but think that propaganda has become so normal in our society as to be virtually ubiquitous. It’s in the very air we breath… and not as a trace element, either. The atmosphere is, to look at it from the other way around, Authoritarian. Of course, one of…
The Heart of Jordan Peterson’s Critique
Politics and Psychology Meet in the Canadian Doctor’s Diagnosis of the Madness Sweeping Universities in the West The video above is a part of the precursor discussion to what I have found to be the most interesting interview of or with Jordan Peterson yet undertaken. I found this interview uniquely interesting because the interlocutor attempted…
Thoughts on the #Memo
I read the Memo, and you can, too. Here are my thoughts: It mainly asserts that the Steele dossier was material in the attainment of four FISA warrants, but the court was not told where the information came from (ie, opposition research) or that at the time it was used the FBI and DOJ considered…
An Integrated President
“…even a campaign seeking to shatter glass ceilings can play host to old-fashioned harassment. On campaigns, if complaints arise, they do so in an environment where the candidate’s public perception is an inherent priority.” Sharing this BuzzFeed report partly as a follow-up to my post last week asserting that had Hillary become president, the #MeToo…
Why We Can Thank Trump for #MeToo
Had Hillary won, the movement wouldn’t be happening. The Lord moves in mysterious ways; or, as historian Gordon S. Wood might put it, history is ruled by irony. So it is that the most powerful and fast-acting revolution in women’s liberation in some decades has not only come about under the administration of Groper-in-Chief Donald…
The Bitter Pill #9: The Phantom Menace
Dismantling the Fascist Takeover of Eugene If you’re a resident of Eugene, you might not have noticed that your home town was a “hotbed of emboldened white nationalism”, “overcome” by neo-nazis summoned into being by the shocking election of Donald Trump. Don’t let the thousands of people who showed up in support of the second…
Addicted to Hill
Once again, CNN has shown me the light. This time, they helped me to realize that I’m addicted to Hillary Clinton. I credit CNN, though it wasn’t one of their usual luminaries this time, but a guest commentator: Professor Isaac Bailey, James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College and interim member of…
New Year’s Message
I’ve been struck this morning by apparently earnest statements online about surviving 2017, as if it were an entity with a particular quality that those of us still living have escaped. In the Age of Trump, this poetic conceit takes on a great deal more solidity for many. In part, I just want to scream,…
The Academic Meaning of White Genocide
You might have wondered how in the world a professor at an American university can even sarcastically tweet “All I want for Christmas is white genocide” and still keep his job. It boggles the mind, till you realize that “white genocide” has a special meaning within academia. Within this context, “white” does not indicate a…
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
Lots of people blame the Russians, misogyny, James Comey, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein. Apparently, this is all God’s fault. There’s one particularly interesting part in this generally horrifying video. One part that’s interesting in an unusual way. Most of it’s interesting in a “holy fuck but American evangelicals are crazy” way. At one point,…
Prophets of DOOM!!!
The Bitter Pill #7 Kelly Kenoyer’s list of some of the “myriad reasons” for impeaching Trump does a good job of demonstrating how lacking the EW’s case for impeachment is in the sort of substance that might serve as common ground across ideological lines. “Our Institutions Won’t Save Us,” as Baynard Woods’ article in the…
There’s One Privilege I Won’t Give Back
Until people understand that Evil is not eradicable – not simply because it’s so bad, but because it’s a necessary part of existence – no form of mass justice will ever avoid being consumed by its unacknowledged, projected, shadow. Irony rules history, because all values exist necessarily in tension with their opposites. Denial won’t help….
The Problem with ‘White Male Fragility’
What follows is a comment I wrote to a Facebook thread but did not post. This particular thread involved a number of mothers of white boys defending their use of the term “white male fragility” to another mother who objected to the way the term implicitly undermined the legitimacy of any white male’s sensitivity. Labeling…
My Version of Feminism
In my version of Feminism – and no offense, but I’m using my privilege to declare my own – I value the Feminine most highly. I honor Women’s Work. I’m also fine with anyone doing whatever they will. My version of Feminism isn’t a proscription for everyone, or anyone, else. It’s a personal statement of…
Perhaps This is the Only Freedom Possible
Bleak Poetry Corner #1 Free to roam the endless digital highways in search of some momentary amusement or radical cause Free to watch the stars shine and feed our faces with our faces. The frontier is long gone The buffalo herds but a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory You might…