http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-man-who-fights-death/
Bob Ettinger went on ice last weekend, in the firm belief that he will defeat Death and rise again.
Lots of folks are under the mistaken impression that the life extension/actuarial escape velocity/filibuster death long enough for the 1st two to work crowd only has friends among the libertarians.
Quite simply, this isn't true. I, along with anyone else who takes seriously the faith of Christianity, worship the One who defeated Death. The call for Christians has ALWAYS been to imitate Christ insofar as we are able and to beg the grace from God to do so more faithfully. And, taken as a whole, relative to the remainder of humanity, the Body of Christ has historically stepped up to the plate.
Look in your city. If you're in the West, I'll bet at least half of your hospitals have Christian roots. What is establishing a hospital to heal the sick and comfort the afflicted but an attempt to imitate this aspect of our Lord? Christians have worked for centuries on efforts that have had the effect of raising our average lifespans and which now are poised to perhaps, if the center can indeed hold, approach closer and closer to actuarial escape velocity. Yes, we believe your body belongs ultimately to God.
But we don't believe that God is in any hurry whatsoever to reclaim it, nor that He lacks the means to do so in a time and manner of His choosing.
We believe that Life is at bottom a gift from God, not to be dispensed parsimoniously but rather abundantly.
Some of us, myself included, also believe that per the account of Genesis, that humans in fact had a significantly higher lifespan in the past and therefore believe that significant life extension is possible. My gut tells me that the telomere-based self-destruction of cells and age-based reduction of our damage control and self-repair capacity is primarily a defense against cancer. If I look at the particular language in Scripture about His spirit no longer contending with man, I get this impression. We can not correct the Fall, but we can, and are called to, correct some of the effects of it.
Most of the deathism that is so commonplace is I think really more of a Stockholm syndrome-style rationalisation of the horror of Sin, Death, and Aging. Because we presently can't do much about the aging process that leads to death, we feel compelled to tell ourselves that it isn't so bad, that it defines us as humans, and other such platitudes. Ask yourself what we'd likely say about a weapon that aged those hit by it by, say, 10 years. We'd call it a horror---far worse than bullets, and we'd almost certainly call for it to be banned. That, not our idle words, displays the true feelings of our hearts.
Mr Ettinger, you have no enemy in this Reactionary. I truly hope that one way or the other, you do rise again. And I wager that if you do, you'll find MY coreligionists standing ready to ease your afflictions and recover from the trauma of your reanimation. Such is true because we love life, not death---the mouthings of a few denominational elites aside.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Another cause for encouragement, brought to us indirectly by SBPDL
http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2011/07/45-power-ballads.html
There's one thing that should encourage we of the Reaction about the present age.
Its music generally sucks.
Now it is no exceptional thing in the US for the older generation to believe that the younger generation's music sucks. What is exceptional is this:
The younger generation generally AGREES with me. I've been somewhat taken aback with how much teens and tweens and younger kids these days are fond of classic rock. Hell, I've heard teenage girls singing Pat Benatar songs in venues like playgrounds.
If one looks at the lyrics of these songs, a lot of them are intensely reactionary by today's standards. Hell, Bon Jovi has songs that are more meaningfully Christian than the tripe they like to play on Christian music stations. Even Metallica gets in on the act with a retelling of the Plagues and Passover story (Creeping Death) and a powerful expression of paleoconservative foreign policy sentiment (Don't Tread on Me).
So take heart Reactionaries, or, if you prefer, rock on.
There's one thing that should encourage we of the Reaction about the present age.
Its music generally sucks.
Now it is no exceptional thing in the US for the older generation to believe that the younger generation's music sucks. What is exceptional is this:
The younger generation generally AGREES with me. I've been somewhat taken aback with how much teens and tweens and younger kids these days are fond of classic rock. Hell, I've heard teenage girls singing Pat Benatar songs in venues like playgrounds.
If one looks at the lyrics of these songs, a lot of them are intensely reactionary by today's standards. Hell, Bon Jovi has songs that are more meaningfully Christian than the tripe they like to play on Christian music stations. Even Metallica gets in on the act with a retelling of the Plagues and Passover story (Creeping Death) and a powerful expression of paleoconservative foreign policy sentiment (Don't Tread on Me).
So take heart Reactionaries, or, if you prefer, rock on.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Norway and the Wages of Despair
There's probably no need to belabour the Whats or Whos of the recent attack in Norway. All of that can be gleaned from any of the many blog entries and news stories of the past few days. Suffice it to say that a Norwegian man with a concern for the demographic hegemony of he and his over Norway and for his extended group over Europe as a whole decided to strike at his enemies, and published a manifesto regarding the same weighing in a little north of 1500 pages. Is it just me, or are such manifestos getting longer?
There's a lot of professed incomprehension regarding his choice of targets. My estimation is that his choice is the classic one of those who despair of their chances of victory when they view their conflict as existential. Consider:
One of the things that draws the most burning hatred is that the left power elite, and the SWPL class in general absolutely LOVES to inflict the costs of its decisions on the rest of us, while insulating their own, not very numerous 'boutique children' from the consequences. The abject hypocrisy infuriates, and what is more, the ineffectiveness of the accusation of said hypocrisy compounds that fury beyond measure. This is because accusations of hypocrisy are generally only an effective weapon if you control the cultural battlespace, which we must assuredly do not. Perhaps as the stranglehold on the media continues to decline, we may see a state of mere adverse cultural battlespace superiority as opposed to being on the wrong end of cultural battlespace supremacy. If you doubt this, ask yourself this---what fraction of the population is aware of the fact that Hoover was, if anything, an even bigger Keynesian spendthrift than FDR, despite the fact that it is there in black and white in the government's own published statistics?
It isn't hard at all to despair under such circumstances, and despair frequently yields poor strategic decisions. I'm not going to pretend that I think that the existing order is going to capitulate without bloodshed. I'm not even going to claim that I believe that the use of violence to effect social or political change is wrong. Like the libertarian, I always recognize 'the gun in the room', but unlike said libertarian, I'm more concerned with who it is pointed at than the fact that it exists in the first place. In fact many of my suggestions are designed with the intent to raise the escalation temperature with an eye towards generating a conflict that is winnable.
Like many---hopefully most---of my fellow reactionaries, I am a parent. There is pretty much nothing in the temporal sphere that is more important to me than my children. The children in question were mostly teenagers and those in their early 20s, but that is mostly only a propaganda point---a parent's love for their children isn't conditioned on the child's age. Our Norwegian attacker understood this, as indeed he understands a great many things. My gut tells me his objective was to hurt the elite by striking that which is most dear to them. When you must fight, but despair tells you you can not win, there is little left but the desire to inflict pain in return. These are the wages of despair, and they are deadly both to the actor and the one acted upon both in body and in spirit.
Who created the despair? Frankly, mostly the power structure in Norway and Europe and its analogs in the US, especially with their incessant presentation of the Islamicization of Europe and the loss of the demographic hegemony of the native populations as inevitable. To compound its culpability, it also paints any opposition as being evil, racist, and illegitimate. Congratulations, you have conjured the monster you seek. Malcolm X would say that the chickens have come home to roost. Furthermore, it has imposed what amounts to containment on political parties seeking to advance the will of the supermajority of the people. I can scarcely conceive a more effective pressure cooker. Does this exonerate the man for his attack, or for surrendering to despair? Probably not, but we'll look to the judgment of history as to how this all works itself out, and reserve final Judgment to the One who owns it.
Do you wish to see more bloodletting? If so, do nothing but stay the course if you're the Powers that Be. Continue to raise the temperature of your foul brew and enjoy the increasing spawn of horrors that emanate from it. If you'd see even more blood spilled, double down on your efforts to thwart the population's desire to maintain its demographic hegemony. Yes, I know the attacker in question says it is about religion and culture, but let's be real. And, yes, I know it IS possible to win via doubling down, but frankly, I don't think you've got the stomach for it. If you did, one man with a rifle and assorted other implements of destruction wouldn't have exacted quite such a bitter toll from you. Your counterparts from the 60's may well have had the stomach, but you no longer do. Don't take that as an insult, because it is not, any more than saying the last leader of the USSR lacked Stalin's stomach for such things would be.
Instead you should capitulate on the issue as soon as possible. Frankly, if you do that you can probably even keep a lot of your status and prestige. Population replacement honestly doesn't fit with most of the other stuff you profess to be in favor of anyway---it sure as hell isn't good for the environment, or for organized labor, or even for public support for a social safety net. People, especially Westerners, will put up with a lot of crap indefinitely if they don't feel themselves existentially threatened.
There's a lot of professed incomprehension regarding his choice of targets. My estimation is that his choice is the classic one of those who despair of their chances of victory when they view their conflict as existential. Consider:
One of the things that draws the most burning hatred is that the left power elite, and the SWPL class in general absolutely LOVES to inflict the costs of its decisions on the rest of us, while insulating their own, not very numerous 'boutique children' from the consequences. The abject hypocrisy infuriates, and what is more, the ineffectiveness of the accusation of said hypocrisy compounds that fury beyond measure. This is because accusations of hypocrisy are generally only an effective weapon if you control the cultural battlespace, which we must assuredly do not. Perhaps as the stranglehold on the media continues to decline, we may see a state of mere adverse cultural battlespace superiority as opposed to being on the wrong end of cultural battlespace supremacy. If you doubt this, ask yourself this---what fraction of the population is aware of the fact that Hoover was, if anything, an even bigger Keynesian spendthrift than FDR, despite the fact that it is there in black and white in the government's own published statistics?
It isn't hard at all to despair under such circumstances, and despair frequently yields poor strategic decisions. I'm not going to pretend that I think that the existing order is going to capitulate without bloodshed. I'm not even going to claim that I believe that the use of violence to effect social or political change is wrong. Like the libertarian, I always recognize 'the gun in the room', but unlike said libertarian, I'm more concerned with who it is pointed at than the fact that it exists in the first place. In fact many of my suggestions are designed with the intent to raise the escalation temperature with an eye towards generating a conflict that is winnable.
Like many---hopefully most---of my fellow reactionaries, I am a parent. There is pretty much nothing in the temporal sphere that is more important to me than my children. The children in question were mostly teenagers and those in their early 20s, but that is mostly only a propaganda point---a parent's love for their children isn't conditioned on the child's age. Our Norwegian attacker understood this, as indeed he understands a great many things. My gut tells me his objective was to hurt the elite by striking that which is most dear to them. When you must fight, but despair tells you you can not win, there is little left but the desire to inflict pain in return. These are the wages of despair, and they are deadly both to the actor and the one acted upon both in body and in spirit.
Who created the despair? Frankly, mostly the power structure in Norway and Europe and its analogs in the US, especially with their incessant presentation of the Islamicization of Europe and the loss of the demographic hegemony of the native populations as inevitable. To compound its culpability, it also paints any opposition as being evil, racist, and illegitimate. Congratulations, you have conjured the monster you seek. Malcolm X would say that the chickens have come home to roost. Furthermore, it has imposed what amounts to containment on political parties seeking to advance the will of the supermajority of the people. I can scarcely conceive a more effective pressure cooker. Does this exonerate the man for his attack, or for surrendering to despair? Probably not, but we'll look to the judgment of history as to how this all works itself out, and reserve final Judgment to the One who owns it.
Do you wish to see more bloodletting? If so, do nothing but stay the course if you're the Powers that Be. Continue to raise the temperature of your foul brew and enjoy the increasing spawn of horrors that emanate from it. If you'd see even more blood spilled, double down on your efforts to thwart the population's desire to maintain its demographic hegemony. Yes, I know the attacker in question says it is about religion and culture, but let's be real. And, yes, I know it IS possible to win via doubling down, but frankly, I don't think you've got the stomach for it. If you did, one man with a rifle and assorted other implements of destruction wouldn't have exacted quite such a bitter toll from you. Your counterparts from the 60's may well have had the stomach, but you no longer do. Don't take that as an insult, because it is not, any more than saying the last leader of the USSR lacked Stalin's stomach for such things would be.
Instead you should capitulate on the issue as soon as possible. Frankly, if you do that you can probably even keep a lot of your status and prestige. Population replacement honestly doesn't fit with most of the other stuff you profess to be in favor of anyway---it sure as hell isn't good for the environment, or for organized labor, or even for public support for a social safety net. People, especially Westerners, will put up with a lot of crap indefinitely if they don't feel themselves existentially threatened.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Scourge of Moral Universalism
One of the most pernicious things in our public debates and power struggles over status is how we constantly try to drag and link cosmic moral principles into them when we clearly don't really believe them. We do this because it is a massive force multiplier in such contests, even when everyone involved with knows it is bullshit.
Take, for instance, Disney's political theft of more years of copyright from the commons. Everyone actually knows, in their gut, that it is all about extending their monopoly on Mickey Mouse et al, but was it framed like that? Absolutely not, some pap about protecting the poor pauper heirs of wonderful authors or honoring their legacy as great artists was served up instead. At the aesthetic level, I find this vile and offensive. But there's far more than mere aesthetics at stake here. We've conditioned entire generations of people to be averse to advocating something simply because it is in their interest openly. This has the effect of training people to be mendacious, and, what is worse, to be reluctant to call others on such because of their own complicity. We harshly criticize the partisan of naked self or group interest (at least when he's white), but in fact his position is rarely anything fundamentally different from the other partisans, he has simply not clothed his own self interest in some public-spirited sounding rhetoric or appeals to cosmic justice. In short, we loathe his honesty.
Imagine how disdainful we, as a society, would be of a homeowner's group that opposed a wind farm located near them because it was going to reduce their property values, and made such an argument openly. This is why we see so much of a smokescreen thrown up, with arguments raised which if followed to their logical conclusion, would oppose wind farms anywhere, but curiously their exponents are only arguing against them in their own back yard.
Were we able to negotiate without the scourge of universalism applied to either back, we might actually be able to, in many cases, achieve something satisfactory to both parties. If you would have war, call what you work for Justice. We could also help loosen the bonds of the tyranny of the glib, in this case, those most adept in sophistry connecting their particular cause to some universal siege engine.
Take, for instance, Disney's political theft of more years of copyright from the commons. Everyone actually knows, in their gut, that it is all about extending their monopoly on Mickey Mouse et al, but was it framed like that? Absolutely not, some pap about protecting the poor pauper heirs of wonderful authors or honoring their legacy as great artists was served up instead. At the aesthetic level, I find this vile and offensive. But there's far more than mere aesthetics at stake here. We've conditioned entire generations of people to be averse to advocating something simply because it is in their interest openly. This has the effect of training people to be mendacious, and, what is worse, to be reluctant to call others on such because of their own complicity. We harshly criticize the partisan of naked self or group interest (at least when he's white), but in fact his position is rarely anything fundamentally different from the other partisans, he has simply not clothed his own self interest in some public-spirited sounding rhetoric or appeals to cosmic justice. In short, we loathe his honesty.
Imagine how disdainful we, as a society, would be of a homeowner's group that opposed a wind farm located near them because it was going to reduce their property values, and made such an argument openly. This is why we see so much of a smokescreen thrown up, with arguments raised which if followed to their logical conclusion, would oppose wind farms anywhere, but curiously their exponents are only arguing against them in their own back yard.
Were we able to negotiate without the scourge of universalism applied to either back, we might actually be able to, in many cases, achieve something satisfactory to both parties. If you would have war, call what you work for Justice. We could also help loosen the bonds of the tyranny of the glib, in this case, those most adept in sophistry connecting their particular cause to some universal siege engine.
Monday, July 18, 2011
More weaponized memes of doom, pointed at white people of course
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/07/guardian-beckhams-have-too-many.html
So the Guardian is criticizing the Beckhams (the famous Soccer player and Spice Girl who are actually married and apparently fairly functional) for having their 4th child on the grounds of 'selfishly' contributing to overpopulation. Notice that they're not criticizing far more fecund immigrants. Notice that they're not calling for a halt to immigration into the UK. No, instead they hurl their excrement only at white people, and white people who don't expect the taxpayer to fund their get at that.
While I'm a fan of neither soccer nor the Spice Girls, I have to register my support for the fine efforts of the Beckhams to help insure that the natives of the British Isles maintain their demographic hegemony. Maybe they'll go for a 5th or a 6th bundle of joy.
Some have asked what they can do to help in the grand crusade to maintain demographic hegemony. Here's something you can do if you're a fairly neurotypical woman with very young children. Dress them up as cute as you can and take them outside in strollers or shopping carts in places heavy with your particular demographic. Fresh-faced, happy babies and toddlers heavily push the buttons of neurotypical women towards wanting some of their own, or, in the case of women of grandmotherly age, towards encouraging her own daughters to give her some cute grandkids. Even in very liberal venues, like the Whole Foods, you'll find almost no neurotypical women can resist a cute little one. My little ones are far mightier warriors of Reaction than I.
So the Guardian is criticizing the Beckhams (the famous Soccer player and Spice Girl who are actually married and apparently fairly functional) for having their 4th child on the grounds of 'selfishly' contributing to overpopulation. Notice that they're not criticizing far more fecund immigrants. Notice that they're not calling for a halt to immigration into the UK. No, instead they hurl their excrement only at white people, and white people who don't expect the taxpayer to fund their get at that.
While I'm a fan of neither soccer nor the Spice Girls, I have to register my support for the fine efforts of the Beckhams to help insure that the natives of the British Isles maintain their demographic hegemony. Maybe they'll go for a 5th or a 6th bundle of joy.
Some have asked what they can do to help in the grand crusade to maintain demographic hegemony. Here's something you can do if you're a fairly neurotypical woman with very young children. Dress them up as cute as you can and take them outside in strollers or shopping carts in places heavy with your particular demographic. Fresh-faced, happy babies and toddlers heavily push the buttons of neurotypical women towards wanting some of their own, or, in the case of women of grandmotherly age, towards encouraging her own daughters to give her some cute grandkids. Even in very liberal venues, like the Whole Foods, you'll find almost no neurotypical women can resist a cute little one. My little ones are far mightier warriors of Reaction than I.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
More encouraging developments regarding the degradation of the prestige and status of the Judiciary
http://news.yahoo.com/colo-woman-accused-groping-tsa-agent-ariz-215702921.html
Essentially a 61 year old woman decided to give a TSA agent a taste of her own medicine, and was charged with sexual assault.
The really interesting thing is the comments. They're overwhelmingly hostile to the TSA and especially to anyone who defends them or expresses sympathy for the agent. And check this out
188users liked this comment 12users disliked this comment
This would be a jury I would be proud and pleased to serve on:
"Your Honor, we the jury find that since the TSA can cop a feel,
so can the public. Not guilty"
185users liked this comment 12users disliked this comment
about time. i hope the jury just laughs there butts off as they let jher go with a big thank you.
Just on the first page you've got 2 people expressing Level 6 Anti-Judiciary sentiment openly and margins of 180something to 12 agreeing with them. This isn't a reactionary blog but yahoo news and an AP feed at that. Clearly the campaign to delegitimize the Judiciary continues apace. Onward the Reaction!
Essentially a 61 year old woman decided to give a TSA agent a taste of her own medicine, and was charged with sexual assault.
The really interesting thing is the comments. They're overwhelmingly hostile to the TSA and especially to anyone who defends them or expresses sympathy for the agent. And check this out
188users liked this comment 12users disliked this comment
This would be a jury I would be proud and pleased to serve on:
"Your Honor, we the jury find that since the TSA can cop a feel,
so can the public. Not guilty"
185users liked this comment 12users disliked this comment
about time. i hope the jury just laughs there butts off as they let jher go with a big thank you.
Just on the first page you've got 2 people expressing Level 6 Anti-Judiciary sentiment openly and margins of 180something to 12 agreeing with them. This isn't a reactionary blog but yahoo news and an AP feed at that. Clearly the campaign to delegitimize the Judiciary continues apace. Onward the Reaction!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The upside of economic decline
Perhaps I gave the impression of dissatisfaction that no decent solution will be reached regarding the debt limit on my last post. I should clear that up. You see, reactionaries, being about as far from power as they can possibly be, are what we'll call 'long volatility'. That is, if things go seriously sidewise, it tends to favor us relative to the status quo. Truly counter-revolutionary ideas and programs are rarely adopted in good economic times, instead, they return, like the gods of the copybook headings, when things fall apart and the center can not hold.
The long game for the reactionary is one I've already described---have more children than the adversary, protect them from subversion, and subvert those of your adversaries. The medium term game is to gradually push the limits of discourse in our direction and to destroy, undermine and subvert the hostile organs of the culture. But there's another game also. Thing thing about this game is that you rarely if ever will get to play it by appointment, so you can't exactly PLAN to win this way. This game is being prepared to take decisive action to improve the position of your faction if things go seriously nonlinear. Will they? I don't know, but there are plenty of candidates for truly disruptive events in our near and mid-term future. My current optimistic view of this decade is as a higher-tech rerun of the 1970s. This sort of thing is why Napoleon is said to have generally asked of prospective officers---Is he lucky? By this he meant that fortune tends to deal a very mixed hand and some surprising, and to the hyper-rational, even crazy events that the prepared can capitalize on.
The long game for the reactionary is one I've already described---have more children than the adversary, protect them from subversion, and subvert those of your adversaries. The medium term game is to gradually push the limits of discourse in our direction and to destroy, undermine and subvert the hostile organs of the culture. But there's another game also. Thing thing about this game is that you rarely if ever will get to play it by appointment, so you can't exactly PLAN to win this way. This game is being prepared to take decisive action to improve the position of your faction if things go seriously nonlinear. Will they? I don't know, but there are plenty of candidates for truly disruptive events in our near and mid-term future. My current optimistic view of this decade is as a higher-tech rerun of the 1970s. This sort of thing is why Napoleon is said to have generally asked of prospective officers---Is he lucky? By this he meant that fortune tends to deal a very mixed hand and some surprising, and to the hyper-rational, even crazy events that the prepared can capitalize on.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Why I don't expect any sort of a satisfactory resolution to the US's deficit problem
There are 3 big areas of spending in the US, Medicare, Social Security, and Defense. These are the giant consumers in the budget (or expenses anyway, since of late we haven't bothered to pass any budgets). There's a 4th item that is fairly large (interest on the debt), but it's even less negotiable (downwards anyway) than the other 3---in fact it could become ruinous if interest rates rise to more historically normal levels.
The fundamental issue is that nobody has a real political incentive to fix the problem. Yeah, the Republicans might like to peel a little money off things like the Department of Education, NPR, or Planned Parenthood, but that's not where the real money is. If we actually wanted to solve the deficit/debt problem we'd have to significantly cut these big three. Now, who wants to do that? The Republicans know that they'll be blamed in the media for whatever happens, so they won't. The Democrats don't want to cut them either,because they know they'll be massacred in the polls if they do. The recipe is one for kicking the can down the road, and I think that's what we'll see after lots of posturing and blustering.
The fundamental issue is that nobody has a real political incentive to fix the problem. Yeah, the Republicans might like to peel a little money off things like the Department of Education, NPR, or Planned Parenthood, but that's not where the real money is. If we actually wanted to solve the deficit/debt problem we'd have to significantly cut these big three. Now, who wants to do that? The Republicans know that they'll be blamed in the media for whatever happens, so they won't. The Democrats don't want to cut them either,because they know they'll be massacred in the polls if they do. The recipe is one for kicking the can down the road, and I think that's what we'll see after lots of posturing and blustering.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Another Judge Caught in the Dread Grasp of Reaction
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2011/07/spare-and-spoil-not-in-us.html
As I mentioned in my earlier post about the campaign to delegitimize the Judiciary and thereby sack that massive edifice of the Moldbuggian Cathedral, most of the work has to be done by the opposition in the form of 'own-goals'. That's a terribly frustrating way to have to operate, not even having too much capacity to even toss banana peels for the minions of the Cathedral to slip upon. But look here, less than a few days from our last discussion, another such creature of the Cathedral has done Yeoman service for us. Were he a covert agent of Reaction he could not have worked better for us. Catch the magnificent condescension (quoted from AE's post)
"You don't spank children today," Judge Jose Longoria told Rosina Gonzales.
...
"In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel," Judge Longoria of 214th District Court told Gonzales. "You don't spank children. You understand?"
Damn if I wanted to be inflammatory I could scarcely have written this better myself. Anyone want to bet that lots of folks moved upwards on the judicial delegitimization scale? Spanking is pretty popular in the US, even among fairly highly liberal groups (AE breaks down the GSS findings on the topic in his most excellent post). Sometimes I think that God may be granting me the famous prayer to make my enemies ridiculous.
As I mentioned in my earlier post about the campaign to delegitimize the Judiciary and thereby sack that massive edifice of the Moldbuggian Cathedral, most of the work has to be done by the opposition in the form of 'own-goals'. That's a terribly frustrating way to have to operate, not even having too much capacity to even toss banana peels for the minions of the Cathedral to slip upon. But look here, less than a few days from our last discussion, another such creature of the Cathedral has done Yeoman service for us. Were he a covert agent of Reaction he could not have worked better for us. Catch the magnificent condescension (quoted from AE's post)
"You don't spank children today," Judge Jose Longoria told Rosina Gonzales.
...
"In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel," Judge Longoria of 214th District Court told Gonzales. "You don't spank children. You understand?"
Damn if I wanted to be inflammatory I could scarcely have written this better myself. Anyone want to bet that lots of folks moved upwards on the judicial delegitimization scale? Spanking is pretty popular in the US, even among fairly highly liberal groups (AE breaks down the GSS findings on the topic in his most excellent post). Sometimes I think that God may be granting me the famous prayer to make my enemies ridiculous.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Democracy: What is it Good For?
As a reactionary, I've got no particular love of democracy, particularly of the unlimited suffrage model. However, I can't reasonably say: Absolutely Nothing.
Democracy actually is good at something.
Under many conditions in a nation that has undergone an industrial revolution and the attending revolution in military technology leading to the feasibility of mass conscripted armies, it has one thing going for it.
A vote is usually adequately predicts the outcome if a revolution were held on the subject. Hence the losing side does not have the reasonable expectation that they can do better through resort to arms. This doesn't mean they won't resort to arms, because after all, the will is at least as important as raw power in warfare, but it makes it much less likely, making the system more stable.
However, what happens when you extend the franchise such that military power becomes out of balance with effective political power (in this I'm not speaking of raw votes in an election, but rather the ability for a group to have its way or promote its interests)? It should be pretty clear that military power density in the US is considerably out of alignment with political power density---clearly the political power of the US resides not with rural white males. This takes from democracy its only real virtue and promises interesting times ahead, in the Chinese accursed sense.
Democracy actually is good at something.
Under many conditions in a nation that has undergone an industrial revolution and the attending revolution in military technology leading to the feasibility of mass conscripted armies, it has one thing going for it.
A vote is usually adequately predicts the outcome if a revolution were held on the subject. Hence the losing side does not have the reasonable expectation that they can do better through resort to arms. This doesn't mean they won't resort to arms, because after all, the will is at least as important as raw power in warfare, but it makes it much less likely, making the system more stable.
However, what happens when you extend the franchise such that military power becomes out of balance with effective political power (in this I'm not speaking of raw votes in an election, but rather the ability for a group to have its way or promote its interests)? It should be pretty clear that military power density in the US is considerably out of alignment with political power density---clearly the political power of the US resides not with rural white males. This takes from democracy its only real virtue and promises interesting times ahead, in the Chinese accursed sense.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Two Federal Circuit Judges Play into the Hands of Reaction
http://blode0322.blogspot.com/2011/07/guy-cole-and-martha-daughtrey-hate.html
By way of Pluralism and Clarity, we have the story of two Federal circuit court judges playing into the hands of reaction by ruling, in a purely Orwellian fashion, that the 14th Amendment rather than forbidding discrimination before the law, requires it, thus overturning an anti-discrimination law passed by the voters in Michigan in 2006.
How, might you ask, does this play into the dread grasp of Reaction?
By enraging those sections of the conservative and moderate population that are paying attention. See, for reaction to prevail, one needs to destroy, weaken, and/or subvert the fundamental centers of power in our society. The Judiciary is one of the big ones in my model, and one of the biggest edifices in Moldbug's Cathedral model as well. For my brand of reaction to prevail, the population needs to go through these steps. Most of them require my adversaries to score lots of 'own-goals'. Fortunately, they frequently do that.
1. The population most become convinced that the Judiciary is not like them.
2. The population must further believe that the Judiciary is their enemy.
3. The population must believe that the Judiciary has breached the rules of engagement substantially enough that it is no longer legitimate and possesses only brute force.
4. The population must believe that it is 'cricket' or 'kosher' to use naked political aggression against the Judiciary
5. The population must be willing to remove Judges by any legal means under the formula--what is an impeachable offense---whatever the requisite majority or supermajority SAYS is an impeachable offense. This is the reciprocal of Judges deciding that a law or constitutional provision or administrative ruling means what they say it is by their respective required majority, plain meaning of the text be damned.
6. The population must be willing to employ 'Fight Club' style Jury Nullification as a means of raising the escalation temperature with the establishment. Such jury nullification occurs by setting the acceptable probability of convicting an innocent person at a level beyond the resolution of one's senses. If you have a 1 in 10^15 probability of perceiving the entire court trial incorrectly, as in some sort of extended delusion, and you set your probability of acceptable condemnation of a person who is not guilty to, say, 1 in 10^18, you'll never convict anyone---anyone, that is who the Who...Whom rule applies to. Frankly I wager that most court trials scarcely pass even the 1 in 10^6 level in practice.
7. I won't talk about 7 here, in keeping with the 'Fight Club' convention. Suffice it to say that when around 10% or so of the population hits stage 6, I don't think that the Judiciary as an institution can survive.
Every ruling like this helps advance the population along this spectrum. Almost everyone is at stage 1, and an awful lot of people are at at least stage 3. Iowa recently shows that majorities in certain areas for stage 4 are available (I wrote on this earlier as the Iowa Solution) when they are sufficiently antagonized. Stage 5 and 6 are on the near horizon. Some of us are already there.
By way of Pluralism and Clarity, we have the story of two Federal circuit court judges playing into the hands of reaction by ruling, in a purely Orwellian fashion, that the 14th Amendment rather than forbidding discrimination before the law, requires it, thus overturning an anti-discrimination law passed by the voters in Michigan in 2006.
How, might you ask, does this play into the dread grasp of Reaction?
By enraging those sections of the conservative and moderate population that are paying attention. See, for reaction to prevail, one needs to destroy, weaken, and/or subvert the fundamental centers of power in our society. The Judiciary is one of the big ones in my model, and one of the biggest edifices in Moldbug's Cathedral model as well. For my brand of reaction to prevail, the population needs to go through these steps. Most of them require my adversaries to score lots of 'own-goals'. Fortunately, they frequently do that.
1. The population most become convinced that the Judiciary is not like them.
2. The population must further believe that the Judiciary is their enemy.
3. The population must believe that the Judiciary has breached the rules of engagement substantially enough that it is no longer legitimate and possesses only brute force.
4. The population must believe that it is 'cricket' or 'kosher' to use naked political aggression against the Judiciary
5. The population must be willing to remove Judges by any legal means under the formula--what is an impeachable offense---whatever the requisite majority or supermajority SAYS is an impeachable offense. This is the reciprocal of Judges deciding that a law or constitutional provision or administrative ruling means what they say it is by their respective required majority, plain meaning of the text be damned.
6. The population must be willing to employ 'Fight Club' style Jury Nullification as a means of raising the escalation temperature with the establishment. Such jury nullification occurs by setting the acceptable probability of convicting an innocent person at a level beyond the resolution of one's senses. If you have a 1 in 10^15 probability of perceiving the entire court trial incorrectly, as in some sort of extended delusion, and you set your probability of acceptable condemnation of a person who is not guilty to, say, 1 in 10^18, you'll never convict anyone---anyone, that is who the Who...Whom rule applies to. Frankly I wager that most court trials scarcely pass even the 1 in 10^6 level in practice.
7. I won't talk about 7 here, in keeping with the 'Fight Club' convention. Suffice it to say that when around 10% or so of the population hits stage 6, I don't think that the Judiciary as an institution can survive.
Every ruling like this helps advance the population along this spectrum. Almost everyone is at stage 1, and an awful lot of people are at at least stage 3. Iowa recently shows that majorities in certain areas for stage 4 are available (I wrote on this earlier as the Iowa Solution) when they are sufficiently antagonized. Stage 5 and 6 are on the near horizon. Some of us are already there.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Al Gore and the Weaponized Memes of Doom
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/21/al-gore-branches-out-into-population-control-theory
Imagine a weapon so powerful that it didn't merely destroy your opponents and cause the lamentations of their children, but rather prevented them, and said children from ever being born. Such a weapon would dwarf the impact of actual Weapons of Mass Destruction, which are generally only used in a deterrent role anyway. One might call it a weapon of mass contraception, and such weapons are used, to horrific effect, nearly every day.
Not content with merely pushing Global Warming memes, Al Gore has taken the next step and is now unleashing population control memes. In keeping with his MO, Al Gore himself has four acknowledged children. Remember though comrades in reaction, the accusation of hypocrisy is only a devastating weapon if you control the media battlespace, which we most assuredly do not.
Now, in fairness, his position does have some kernels of truth in it. Pollution, environmental impact, and the like do in fact tend to scale with population, often times in a superlinear fashion. Were his argument expanded to its logical conclusion, we'd expect Al Gore to be strongly opposed to moving people from low income countries into the US. Notice his deafening silence on that score.
The key observation on the particular highly weaponized meme he's putting forward is this:
Who is it pointed at?
I recall different incarnations of such memes being pushed all throughout my childhood and teenage years, especially in a lot of the fiction and movies in the 1970s. The Total Fertility Rates of most groups in the US have fallen significantly since then. Coupled with mass immigration, this has served to significantly reduce the demographic hegemony of me and mine. Therefore I must conclude that said memes are pointed in at least my general direction.
To do a bit of the reduction to the absurd, let's postulate that when the global population crosses 10 billion, Satan will come down to rule the world and precipitate the 'End Times' that televangelists and would-be prophets love to fulminate regarding. Now, is a group or individual attempting to persuade your group to limit its fertility your enemy?
I'd argue yes, they are your enemy, because if your group limits its fertility, that will simply be made up for by other groups who will differentially displace your group. It is like an experiment in artificial selection against those who are easily guilt-tripped through universalist memes. Every group will logically want OTHER groups to limit THEIR fertility---kind of like how most people want others to use public transit so the traffic jams they're in won't delay them as much. Even a universally coercive system a la China's policy won't be applied universally, but rather to favor the politically connected...and guess what...that's most assuredly not us. Were we politically connected we'd pretty much always win when we had the clear majority of the population behind us, and occasionally win otherwise. Call that a functional definition of whether a group is 'connected'---it wins at least proportionate to its demographic weight.
So my exhortation to reactionaries. Scorn the meme whenever it is deployed anywhere near you and yours, and be fruitful and multiply.
Imagine a weapon so powerful that it didn't merely destroy your opponents and cause the lamentations of their children, but rather prevented them, and said children from ever being born. Such a weapon would dwarf the impact of actual Weapons of Mass Destruction, which are generally only used in a deterrent role anyway. One might call it a weapon of mass contraception, and such weapons are used, to horrific effect, nearly every day.
Not content with merely pushing Global Warming memes, Al Gore has taken the next step and is now unleashing population control memes. In keeping with his MO, Al Gore himself has four acknowledged children. Remember though comrades in reaction, the accusation of hypocrisy is only a devastating weapon if you control the media battlespace, which we most assuredly do not.
Now, in fairness, his position does have some kernels of truth in it. Pollution, environmental impact, and the like do in fact tend to scale with population, often times in a superlinear fashion. Were his argument expanded to its logical conclusion, we'd expect Al Gore to be strongly opposed to moving people from low income countries into the US. Notice his deafening silence on that score.
The key observation on the particular highly weaponized meme he's putting forward is this:
Who is it pointed at?
I recall different incarnations of such memes being pushed all throughout my childhood and teenage years, especially in a lot of the fiction and movies in the 1970s. The Total Fertility Rates of most groups in the US have fallen significantly since then. Coupled with mass immigration, this has served to significantly reduce the demographic hegemony of me and mine. Therefore I must conclude that said memes are pointed in at least my general direction.
To do a bit of the reduction to the absurd, let's postulate that when the global population crosses 10 billion, Satan will come down to rule the world and precipitate the 'End Times' that televangelists and would-be prophets love to fulminate regarding. Now, is a group or individual attempting to persuade your group to limit its fertility your enemy?
I'd argue yes, they are your enemy, because if your group limits its fertility, that will simply be made up for by other groups who will differentially displace your group. It is like an experiment in artificial selection against those who are easily guilt-tripped through universalist memes. Every group will logically want OTHER groups to limit THEIR fertility---kind of like how most people want others to use public transit so the traffic jams they're in won't delay them as much. Even a universally coercive system a la China's policy won't be applied universally, but rather to favor the politically connected...and guess what...that's most assuredly not us. Were we politically connected we'd pretty much always win when we had the clear majority of the population behind us, and occasionally win otherwise. Call that a functional definition of whether a group is 'connected'---it wins at least proportionate to its demographic weight.
So my exhortation to reactionaries. Scorn the meme whenever it is deployed anywhere near you and yours, and be fruitful and multiply.
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