Founding Questions – The Internet's #1 Site for Quality Learing

Point #4

Or, another lesson from the Kitties.

I guess I might as well own it, since I’m still not down with Operation AIPAC Fury. Note: I’m probably going to resort to more euphemisms and in-jokes than normal in posts like this, because I have some German readers, and I know they have some retarded laws over there about this kind of thing; I don’t want them getting jammed up by the Gestapo.

Virtually nobody talks about the 25-point platform anymore, but some of it is worth examining. In American historiography, at least, it’s dismissed as a campaign stunt, more or less — Mustache Guy had no intention of abiding by it, or anything; he just put it out because they had to put out something in order to run in elections. But one could easily argue that what Mustache Guy did after the Machtergreifung was close to Lenin’s “war communism,” the New Economic Policy. The Kitties in power were “nepmen,” and had the war gone the other way, they would’ve been weeded out…

Be that as it may, I really enjoy the preamble to Party Program:

_{The Program… is designed to be of limited duration. The leaders have no intention, once the aims announced in it have been achieved, of establishing fresh ones, merely in order to increase, artificially, the discontent of the masses and so ensure the continued existence of the Party.}

Gosh, that’s refreshing! One wishes our own “leadership” would say something like that.

_{Only a member of the nation [Volksgenosse] may be a citizen of the State. Only someone of German blood, whatever their creed, may be a member of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.}

That’s Point #4, and of course it’s virtually the only point ever discussed when it comes to Kitty politics. And the discussion is the usual tiresome stuff — anti-Bagelism, blah blah blah. But let us ask ourselves, in all seriousness: What is “the nation”?

Let’s frame it as an Information Velocity problem. And since we’re already using clunky tags (ironically, for clarity), let’s further speak of “administrative units.” It doesn’t make sense, for most of human history, to speak of “nations.” For one, we simply lack information on how so many “administrative units” actually functioned. The Roman Empire was pretty tightly governed by Ancient standards, but as to how the actual administration functioned out in the provinces, we just don’t know much. How granular, for lack of a better term, was the governor’s control over his administrative unit?

For two, and much more importantly, we generally don’t know much about how they regarded themselves culturally. Those “Romanized” “Gauls,” let’s say — did they think of themselves primarily as Romans, or Gauls? And note that even “Gaul” is a catchall term for lots of different tribes, who might or might not have spoken mutually intelligible languages, had overlapping customs, and so on. Caesar triumphed in his “Gallic” wars, in no small part, because he was able to play the various tribes against each other.

Further, how would even the most “Romanized” Gaul relate to a Briton, or a Dacian? Given that Romanian is a direct descendant of Latin, maybe they shared a common Romanitas. Or maybe they found themselves lost at sea — one of the secrets to the Roman Empire’s success was serving as a referee in these kinds of situations; two mutually unintelligible tribesmen could peacefully interact via Imperial institutions. Again, it’s hard to know (bearing in mind I’m not Expert).

But it’s also kinda irrelevant for our purposes. Indeed it approaches a category error. The “Roman Empire” considered as a collection of administrative units is a very different thing from “the Roman Empire” considered as a historical actor.

As a historical actor, the Roman Empire didn’t need to concern itself with political theory. It had three main concerns:

Guaranteeing internal stability
Projecting military power
Generating revenue

and its systems worked well enough for that. Its administration lacked granular detail, but so what? Given their Information Velocity, those three were the best it could possibly do, and it did them pretty well. Again, given Information Velocity, the imperial center’s interventions on the periphery were necessarily pretty crude — it could debase the coinage, and it could send a legion or two in there to handle malcontents, but that’s about it.

Since it’s Lent, consider Pontius Pilate‘s situation. His area of responsibility was pretty small, and relatively unimportant. It was also highly urbanized, with efficient communications — if you want to maintain order with minimal effort, a desert is your friend. He doesn’t appear to have had much in the way of Roman military power to back him up — there was at least one legion in Syria, but Pilate was subordinate to the Syrian governor — but he had the cooperation (however grudging) of a client king with a decent security force. So long as he didn’t actively fuck up and provoke a full-scale rebellion, the imperial center didn’t much care what he did…

…and even if they did care, they couldn’t do much about it, other than fire him. They could (and did) stomp the Jews militarily when full-scale rebellion broke out, but until then, their available “policy” interventions amounted to “sack Pilate and appoint some other guy.”

Roman Judea, then, was an “administrative unit.” How “Roman” was it? Not very, apparently. Pilate appears to have made some ham-handed efforts to make it more so, and the pushback he got influenced how he handled the Jesus situation. But his main job was to fulfill the three desiderata listed above, and he did it; again, his handling of the Jesus situation makes a lot of sense in that context. What else could he realistically have done, that wouldn’t have provoked a rebellion?

But Judea proper — considered as the homeland of the Jews — is a nation. A polity, let’s say.

_{A polity is a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of political, institutionalized, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. It is the unit or entity of a political community or body politic.}

And therein lies the problem. They had a collective cultural identity that they could express, and a collective political identity that they couldn’t. They couldn’t appeal to the political center at Rome, because that would involve acknowledging their subordination to it. But they weren’t militarily strong enough to resist it. So their only two options were 1) make peace with it, or 2) go full retard. Which they did in the 60s AD, and we all know what happened after that.

From 71 to 1948, then, the Jews were a nation without a country. Wherever they went, Diaspora Jews formed a separate polity within whatever administrative unit they resided.

The administrative units in which they resided mostly had the opposite problem. Fast forward 1200 years, to Edward II’s expulsion of the Jews from England. He first expelled them from Gascony, which of course is in France, but that’s the point: “England” was a pretty malleable concept in 1290; it meant something like “whatever places acknowledged personal fealty to Edward, combined with his actual ability to enforce his will.” Just as we don’t really know how, say, the residents of Gallia Aquitania thought of themselves — were they Romans, or Gauls, or what? — it’s an open question how the “English” saw themselves, when they bothered to think about it at all. For most of them, Edward, like Caesar, was just some guy whose face is on the coins… but of course they didn’t have too many coins.

As an administrative unit, then, “England” was pretty weak. Edward’s available interventions in “England” were probably fewer, and less powerful, than Caesar’s were in Judea. Indeed the Edict of Expulsion probably represents the maximum administrative power of the English monarchy at that time:

_{On 18 July, the Edict of Expulsion was issued…. writs were sent to sheriffs saying all Jews were to leave by All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1290, and outlining their duties in the matter… Wardens at the Cinque Ports were told to make arrangements for the Jews’ safe passage and cheap fares for the poor, while safe conduct was arranged for dignitaries…There were limits on the property Jews could take with them. Although a few favoured persons were allowed to sell their homes before they left, the vast majority had to forfeit any outstanding debts, homes and immobile property, including synagogues and cemeteries.}

And, crucially:

_{The Jewish population in England at the time of the expulsion was relatively small, perhaps as few as 2,000 people.}

Earlier, the article notes that

_{Jews were arrested during the coin clipping crisis of the late 1270s, when over 300 Jews—over 10% of England’s Jewish population—were sentenced to death for interfering with the currency.}

So: less than 3000 people, tops, all conveniently located in urban centers. That’s the maximum administrative power the King of England could deploy.

We’re a long way from the Kitties, I realize, but this is (I believe) necessary background. In 1290, it made little sense to speak of England as a “nation” or a “polity.” The various regions of England proper (we’re excluding Wales and Ireland) all spoke “English,” but the various dialects might not have been mutually intelligible — consider William Caxton’s famous “eggs” anecdote. Edward II himself probably didn’t speak English; he certainly didn’t speak it for preference; no documents from him in English survive.

“Where Edward II’s writ ran” — that was England, administratively, at the time of the Edict of Expulsion. Where was it culturally? Hard to say, but it verges on “nowhere,” as far as we can tell. Most people were likely to think of themselves as “Kentish” or “Yorkshiremen” or whatever, not “English” — it would take the Hundred Years’ War to change that (indeed, Henry IV was the first “native” English speaker in the royal family; Henry V first used English for official purposes (that’s where the phrase “the King’s English” comes from)).

The Wars of the Roses really amplified the process whereby “administration” and “national identity” came together. By what right did (take your pick) Henry VI, Edward IV, Henry VI again, Edward IV again, Edward V, Richard III, or Henry VII really rule?

Whatever it was, by Henry VIII’s time it made sense to speak of England as a nation — a polity, a union of identity and administration. Henry VIII had a cultural policy, and thanks to our old friend Information Velocity, he could intervene granularly in his realm. He could call upon a sense of Englishness to staff his wars in France, in a way that all previous Henries simply couldn’t.

England wasn’t monocultural, not by a long shot, but it was monoethnic. Indeed, in a similar way that the Roman Empire’s administration served as a referee for competing groups of “Romans,” so England’s cultural differences could be adjudicated by a common appeal to Englishness.

Again, the key is Information Velocity. In 1290, England’s Jews thought of themselves as Jews. They had the fastest I.V. that the Middle Ages were capable of — they were a very small, very distinctive minority, highly concentrated in very small areas within very small areas. It was easy for the Jews of London and the Jews of York to think of themselves as Jews, where the “English” of London and York might well think of themselves as “Londoners” and “Yorkshiremen.” (It’s the same reason, incidentally, that English kings still spoke French for preference — the aristocracy was a tiny minority, highly concentrated, and linked with the fastest possible I.V. to other aristocrats on the Continent).

Fast-forward to Henry VIII’s day, when information moves exponentially faster, and while the customs of Yorkshire and the customs of London certainly differ, everyone was aware of a common Englishness.

Fast-forward another hundred years, and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) establishes the principle of the nation-state, which is another way of saying “the unity of identity and administration.” They wouldn’t put it like this for various cultural reasons, but in effect, the King of France rules by right of being French. His administration is the administration of French-ness, for the benefit of the French.

Again, we’re pretty far from the Kitties, but I hope by now everyone can see where this is going. Germany was very late to the political game; the Kaiserreich was only established in 1871, and Wiki’s entry on “the German Reich” is useful:

_{The Reich became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty entirely from a continuing unitary German Volk (“national people”), with that authority and sovereignty being exercised at any one time over a unitary German “state territory” with variable boundaries and extent. Although commonly translated as “German Empire”, the word Reich here better translates as “realm” or territorial “reach”, in that the term does not in itself have monarchical connotations.}

You see the problem, I trust. Who are the Volk, exactly? And I don’t just mean Jews. Bismarck spent endless energy fighting the Catholic Church; he wanted to subordinate education (and everything else) to first the Prussian, then the German, state. What about Austrians? They’re not Germans, at least according to them — they fought a war about it in 1866; Austria was the “Austro-” part of the “Austro-Hungarian Empire;” Mustache Guy himself experienced endless grief for having been born in Austria, not Germany. But against them, a whole bunch of Germans who are Germans, fanatically so, but under the political administration of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and so on.

It’s tough. In short, and greatly oversimplifying for clarity, Germany by 1900 was about as monocultural as Biz Markie could make it — and his propaganda technique was good; he won the Kulturkampf, hands down — but far, far from monoethnic. Lots of Germans lived outside of the Reich’s political borders; lots of people inside the Reich’s political borders weren’t German, not really, and again I’m not just talking about Bagels. There’s a reason that Very Fancy Kitties like Himmler went all-in on their neopagan shit, and it’s not (just) because they thought Christianity was stealth Judaism — Himmler was raised Catholic, ardently so; his Volkisch loyalties were therefore suspect.

That’s what the Kitties were trying to do with point #4 of their program. Let’s review:

_{Only a member of the nation [Volksgenosse] may be a citizen of the State. Only someone of German blood, whatever their creed, may be a member of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.}

You can read that as antisemitism, and of course it is, but it’s not just that. It’s not even primarily that. Point #4 is almost entirely aspirational. They’re trying to nail down just what, exactly, the Volksgenosse actually IS. It’s not Jewish, that’s for sure, but what else is it?

The main target here isn’t Judaism, it’s Bolshevism. International Socialism. An ideology that avowedly seeks to destroy national cultures. The Kitties don’t want to refight the Kulturkampf, which is why they say “whatever their creed.” But they want to be sure that “Germanness” means something more than just culture — after all, so many ornaments of German culture were Jews by blood.

In short, to put it in the parlance of our times, they were arguing against a form of “proposition nation” bullshit.

Anyone can be a Communist, because Communism explicitly promises to do away with national, ethnic, and religious differences (which is precisely its appeal to so many Jews). Marx’s promised utopia is the ultimate proposition “nation” — the whole world united under one banner, in which the government of people is replaced by the mere administration of things (which, again, explains so much of Marxism’s appeal to Jews, no? When you’re forever waking in a cold sweat, straining to hear Cossack hoofbeats in the night, the mere administration of things sounds like heaven).

Not everyone can be a German. But: What IS a German? Clearly there are enormous differences between Austrian “Germans,” Czech “Germans,” Romanian “Germans,” and so on — if those aren’t, in fact, oxymorons. They’re Germans by “blood,” but obviously it has to mean much more than that. There’s a reason for the Volksdeutsche, right?

That’s what the Kitties are trying to clarify with Point #4, and that’s what we are going to have to clarify going forward, comrades. What IS an American? It’s obviously not blood, and it sure as hell isn’t some “proposition nation” bullshit, but what IS it?

How to Be a Real Man

Haven’t you always wondered? Good news, everyone — Karen: The Website’s gonna tell us.

First up, Aman-duh! One of two from her today.

_{For Gen Z Republican men, sex is solitary}

Fortunately, I have a corrective, from Dr. Shirley Manson, PhD:

So… that’s them told. Still, since we’re here, we might as well at least consider the subhead:

_{Young conservatives’ anger at women is taking a nihilistic turn}

Ah. Now I see where I went wrong. Sex is not the enemy, but Gen Z women are. I… get that.

(Also, should Red Caesar Scenario ever release their magnum opus, a two-disc “concept album” about the Baltic Vice, two of the tracks pretty much have to be “Sex Is Solitary” and “Nihilistic Turn.” It’ll be the Sgt. Pepper of whatever genre RCS belongs to).

_{James Fishback is almost certainly not going to win the GOP nomination for governor of Florida this year, but he’s become an object of media fascination all the same.}

See, this is one of the reasons I read Karen: The Website. This has been a standard Media trick since forever: whenever they detect Noticing, they find the most bizarre, offensive dude ever to have Noticed it, then anoint him the leader — the “Fuhrer,” if you will — of a totally imaginary “movement” of people who have Noticed that thing.

Here’s the Wiki entry on James Fishback. He’s a nobody, quite literally — one of those spastic goofballs anyone who has ever seen even the fringes of politics or the entertainment business will easily recognize. He’s obviously a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but The Media is clearly gearing up to make him the face of the franchise — there are currently 94 (!!) “footnotes” in lonnnnng article about a guy who was born in 1995 (in the United States, one must be at least 35 to run for Federal office).

In other words, comrades, Salon — being so very, very dumb — is giving us a sneak preview of all the attacks they’re going to roll out against whoever the GOP ends up running for Florida governor, once DeSantis is term-limited out.

_{In part it’s because Fishback holds such bigoted views that he makes the frontrunner, Rep. Byron Donalds, look moderate by comparison, even though the congressman said Black families were more stable under Jim Crow.}

See what I mean?

Also, this gets back to the “factual correctness” thing we discussed yesterday. Black families were more stable under Jim Crow; there is no possible dispute; that’s about as firmly established as anything in the “social sciences” can possibly be. Indeed, it was the impeccably Liberal Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan who proved it, all the way back in 1965. What’s the black illegitimacy rate now, 80%? The browser AI thingie sez that the CDC sez it was 69.4% as of 2018; anyone want to bet that it has gone down since then?

(Maybe it has. Here’s an NBC article from 2010 saying it was 72% back then. In 2013, The Atlantic commissioned “Tennessee” (as Z Man always called him) Coates to write a thumbsucker about the Moynihan Report; he said it was 70%. Anyway, I’m going to put a few crisp stacks of Crispus Attucks down on the claim that, whatever the 2026 rate is, and whichever way the trend lines are pointing, it’s still a lot. In 1940, with Jim Crow going strong, it was 19%).

Also, Rep. Byron Donalds is black. See what I mean about this “factual correctness” stuff? Donalds is absolutely right about the black family. He’s also, himself, black. But they’re still going to call him a racist, because of course they are. In a democracy, “factual correctness” is absolutely irrelevant to politics… just like Mustache Guy said, all those years ago.

_{Fishback peddles antisemitic conspiracy theories and hurls racist taunts at Donalds.}

She means Byron Donalds, of course, but given that this is Karen: The Website in general, and Aman-duh in particular, I was hoping that “Donalds” meant “Trump” and “Duck,” together at last, for some only-makes-sense-to-Karen reason.

_{But what is really drawing attention to the 31-year-old Fishback is how he, while running far behind with older Republican voters, generates real enthusiasm with young conservatives. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times described the packed audience at a Fishback event as “very young,” writing, “several attendees told me they were in high school.” Vanity Fair’s Dan Adler wrote that the long-shot candidate “has captured the most extreme attitudinal aspects of the Gen Z online right.” Fishback is polling at 32% with GOP voters aged 18-32, and his campaign events are larger and growing.}

Again, considered as intel, this is gold. They admit right up front that he’s a no-hoper, and that he’s getting less than a third of the votes in what they claim is his strongest demographic, but he’s got both the New York Times and Vanity Fair writing about him. (And not just any hack from the NYT, Michelle Goldberg, their top-of-the-line hatchet man). I hope the RNC is paying attention; every single Republican candidate nationwide is going to be getting “linked” to Fishback, asked endless questions about him, prompted to issue ritual denunciations of him, and so on.

_{While he is drawing huge crowds, his audience is mostly young men and boys. A key to Fishback’s appeal merits only a fleeting mention in most profiles: his proposal to pass a 50% “sin tax” on OnlyFans creators.}

Well… it’s a start. As you know, comrades, when it comes to OnlyFans and the like, “SAM I Am” is my motto — SAM being short for Strafbattalion auf Madagaskar. Nothing would do your typical e-thot more good than a hitch clearing mines with a stick (hell, you can search the FQ archives — I can’t find it with my weak google-fu, but Damo actually gave us a guest post on the proper techniques for clearing mines and other IEDs; we might be sending them to Madagascar, but they won’t be going unprepared). But a “sin tax”? Ok. Gotta start somewhere.

_{“We want to stop them from doing it,” he told Sneako, a Donald Trump-worshipping podcaster who is popular in the far-right manosphere. Fishback called these creators, who often make adult material, “hoes,” arguing they should instead choose to be a “a nurse, a teacher, a stay-at-home mom.”}

_{“Say what you want about Saudi Arabia,” he added. “There are no women hoeing out on the internet in Saudi Arabia.”}

Sneako?

Eh, whatever, let’s not forget that “Stalin” and even “Plato” were nicknames (the latter meaning something like “widebody;” his real name was Aristocles). Take wisdom where you find it, I guess is what I’m saying, and these dudes are absolutely right: No digital hoes in Saudi Arabia. It’s not Saudi girls filming themselves getting the ol’ Cleveland Steamer on the deck of some oil sheik’s yacht.

That Aman-duh et al consider this to be some kind of argument for Feminism tells you all you need to know about where their heads are, don’t it?

_{It seems peculiar to fixate on one platform known for hosting spicy material, at least for those outside of the far-right manosphere that cultivates an audience of teenage boys and young men. But in the chauvinist world of the online right, OnlyFans and solitary sex in front of a phone or computer are major obsessions.}

Being the logical sort — you know, a man — one wants to know why people for whom “solitary sex in front of a phone or computer are major obsessions” would want to tax or even ban a major transmission vector. One expects more pud-pounding, not less.

^{“Gooning” — slang for excessive masturbation — has colonized the discourse of Gen Z Republican men, and it’s a subculture so consumed by misogynist anger that their conception of sexuality has become onanistic.}

So young guys are stroking the weasel more than ever, to the point where they’ve developed an entire subculture around it. Their entire “conception of sexuality has become onanistic.” Which means, by modus tollens or whatever, that they are NOT approaching women for sex (or anything else). That — sitting alone in one’s room, not interacting with girls — is, according to Aman-duh, “misogynist.”

Uhhh…. okay. It makes as much sense as “letting an oil sheik take a dump on you” as an example of female empowerment, I guess.

_{In November, Harper’s published a fascinating deep dive into gooning written by Daniel Kolitz, who immersed himself in the world of young men preoccupied with masturbation to the point of treating it like a vocation.}

I left the link in there for any intrepid soul who dares; I myself simply don’t have the sand.

_{Kolitz ignored how gooning overlaps heavily with the MAGA movement and manosphere content that reduces heterosexuality to a battle between men and women for domination. The straight male world of gooning is deeply tied into subcultures like incels, the “red pill” and other male supremacist communities.}

Ooooookay then. I guess we can stop now, having reached the point where every K:TW article becomes just another incantation. But first, let us note the Alanis-engorging irony of Aman-duh complaining about “content that reduces heterosexuality to a battle between men and women for domination.” You probably don’t know this, comrades — having had the good sense to avoid Grievance Studies in your own college days, or the even better sense to have avoided college altogether — but that’s top-of-the-syllabus stuff in Gender Studies 101.

Gender Studies starts from the premise that all heterosexual relations — indeed, all human relations — boil down to domination and submission. They actually said that back in the 1990s, when their propaganda technique was less sophisticated: “all PIV is rape,” where “PIV” is short for “Penis In Vagina” (even back then, they were making sure not to offend the butt bandits). But it’s been there since Engels, who declared that the family itself rests on capitalist exploitation, because of the woman’s “unpaid” labor. Then Michel Foucault got ahold of it in the 1970s, and if you’re not familiar with his “thought,” imagine Nietzsche, if the Manly Mustache Man were a flaming French homo who liked to take it rough, and was a lot dumber.

Put them together, and…. yeah. All PIV is rape, because all human relations are power relations. It’s stupid and sordid and comically wrong, but that’s Gender Studies for you.

Aman-duh has a degree in Gender Studies.

But hey, whatever, that’s just… I don’t even know what, except something something “fashion,” like we talked about yesterday. If one applied the lessons of Gender Studies to the “real world” (you can’t know how much typing that with a straight face cost me, comrades), yeah, sure, of course “MAGA” does that, because everyone does that: According to y’all, as we’ve seen, that’s Intro 101 stuff, the kind of thing you get on the first day of the first class. There’s simply no alternative, so what are you complaining about?

But here, it seems, we have reached the naming of parts. See also “incel” and “red pill,” both of which simply mean “bad.” The point is, these guys are bad, and she’ll write whatever she thinks best conveys her outrage!!!, no matter what violence it does to her priors. She could’ve written “Donald Trump” or “George W. Bush” or just posted this

and done no more violence to her syntax. It’s just ooga-booga.

To us in the Real World, of course, “incel” is short for “involuntary celibate,” and it defeats her whole argument (whatever it is), but those are just details. The point is, gooning is BAD (no argument there), and this Fishback guy is BAD (despite being a goofy vanity candidate), and Byron Donalds is BAD (which they can’t bring themselves to say… yet), and so on.

Which kinda stinks, you know? I was hoping to hear Aman-duh’s definition of sex that isn’t solitary. For the lulz, if nothing else.

But there’s hope, comrades. Maybe this one will tell us:

_{How Iran emasculated JD Vance}

_{The vice president’s alignment with Trump risks harming the persona he’s built with manosphere voters ahead of 2028}

Did you know that Joe Dirt was building his persona with “manosphere voters”? Did you know that “manosphere voters” are a thing?

As with so, so much at Karen: The Website, I wish that were true. In their world, Trump is throwing people into camps, Christians run everything, and America is still a White nation. Men dominate the workplace, and corporations are all rock-ribbed conservative. Living in their world would be bliss. Alas….

_{During a March 16 press availability in the Oval Office, Vance insisted that, unlike the decades of “dumb presidents” before him, Donald Trump is a “smart” one.}

See what I mean about that “fashion” stuff? “Smart” is a fashion word.

It’s easy to see that clothing fashions, which we might as well tag as “fads” to avoid rhetorical confusion, are silly and meaningless. As I said the other day, there’s no “correct” way to wear jeans. Tight-rolled jeans are no more or less silly than chaperons

or poulaines

or mi-parti

just to name three of my favorite wacky medieval clothing trends. (In case you’re wondering, “mi-parti” refers to the vertical division of (usually brutally clashing) colors, not the scalloped edges of the cloak; I forget what that’s called).

But there are fad concepts, too. “Cool” being the most obvious (because the most remunerative) these days, but “smart” works like that too. Donald Trump has made, and lost, and re-made, millions in real estate development; he’s clearly a smart guy, if you take “smart” to mean “applied brainpower.” But that’s not what it means, of course. Not the way they use it. Instead, it just means “good.” It’s just another synonym for “good,” the way “incel” is just another synonym for “bad.”

In short, assuming that the fad terms they use in any way map over to the world of lived experience is a category error.

Vance, being a normal guy, was trying to use a normal word in the real-world way. The predictable idiots acted predictably, and that’s what we’re going to have to grasp, comrades, going forward: They control The Media — they control The Culture, full stop — so we’re going to have to temporarily use their words, their way. It’s a long-term subversion project — we’re going to have to do to them what they did to us, 100+ years ago, when they first started injecting their Leninist (quite literally) argot into common vocabulary.

_{Yes, Vance was celebrating the intelligence of a same man who suggested injecting bleach into human lungs to kill the Covid-19 virus and who bragged that he “aced” a cognitive test with sample questions like “what is this animal?” while pointing to a picture of a horse.}

See what I mean? None of that is true. None of that is within a few light-years of true. But it doesn’t matter, because “true,” like “smart,” is another one of the Fashion Words. They just say these things in order to be “cool,” the way they used to wear tight-rolled jeans in order to be “cool.” We can either waste our time pointing out that tight-rolled jeans look stupid, and get nowhere; or we can make millions selling tight-rolled jeans to dumbfucks with more money than sense. There’s no Option C, because either we prevail through one of the two aforesaid methods, or the people who hate us and want us dead follow through on that.

Which one do you think is likelier to work?

_{Plenty of political commentators have noted that, by defending Trump’s war with Iran, Vance looks like a grasping phony, which could hurt his presidential ambitions in 2028.}

Oh, I dunno, it’s working out ok for Gavin Newsom.

_{Clips like this underscore that he is weak and, frankly, emasculated — eager to debase himself on camera for crumbs of approval from a president whose political and physical strength both seem to be rapidly waning.}

In case you were wondering if “Gender Studies” might have some value despite itself, the way Marxism does, there you go: It does not. I guess I’m a slow learner, but it still amazes me, after all these years, how women like Aman-duh — who are frankly obsessed with men and can’t stop thinking about them — haven’t managed to learn the first thing about them, even as they’re past menopause.

Men value loyalty. It’s as simple as that. Now, a woman in that situation… yeah, that’d be abasement. But it’d be tactical — she’s just waiting for a more opportune moment to drive the knife in, and every other woman who saw it would recognize it. But even assuming, arguendo, that Trump’s big Middle East adventure is a lost cause, and both he and Joe Dirt know it, well… loyalty is loyalty. There’s value, even heroism, to loyalty in a lost cause.

An example: Recently, Sir Ian Kershaw (“Working Towards the Fuhrer”) wrote a book called The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45, in which he attempts to answer the question “Why did they keep fighting down to the very end, when the war was so clearly lost?” Nearly 50% of Germany’s losses were taken in the last 10 months of the war — that is to say, well past the point when there was no possible hope of victory, or even “peace with honor.” It’s a good book, and in case you’re wondering what the hell happened to the Germans — how they became the Eurofags’ Eurofags — this will tell you; “beaten into total submission” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

But it’s a weird book, in the sense of “missing the forest for the trees.” And in missing the forest, it illustrates something we’ve talked about here, one of the big structural problems with Historiography. A while back I mentioned Peter Heather’s Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300, as a great example of how the canons of scholarship force you away from the obvious, simply because archives don’t work like that. Historians deal in “naturalistic” explanations; we can’t do it any other way. So we say that Christianity spread through the administrative structures of the Roman Empire. We can’t say “it spread because it’s true, or they believed it to be true,” even though that is the explanation, at least for a lot of them. It has to be… but we can’t prove it with the tools we have. So we are reduced to naturalism.

Same way with Kershaw’s book. He makes nods to this, but he can’t just write Bruderschaft und Kameradschaft and leave it at that, although those are motivations that all men recognize. He has to write about “continued Party loyalty” and “oppressive State control” and “(entirely justified) fear of the Soviets.” The fighting troops were fighting for each other, simple as that. Men know it, which is why The End is a weird read for a man.

But women don’t get it.

And that’s important, comrades, because women vote. Women are the second most reliable voting bloc, behind the old, and AWFLs are the only hardcore constituency the Left has left. So, expect endless replays of JD “abasing” himself.

_{This is bad news for Vance, who has built his political brand by trying to appeal to the wannabe alpha-male crowd of the “manosphere,” a loose conglomerate of both secular and Christian right content creators whose bro poses and sexist politics helped propel Trump into the White House in 2024.}

Did you know that, comrades?

And hey, since this has taken a somewhat “structuralist” turn, here’s a retail example of that Peter Heather / Ian Kershaw thing we just talked about. There’s a very simple, very obvious, 100% true-to-facts explanation for why Trump won in 2024: Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate, thrown into an impossible position.

Again, the obvious parallel is Hubert Humphrey in 1968. After RFK was killed, he was the only viable standard-bearer… and yet, he was Vice President to the guy who declined renomination because he knew he couldn’t win. A politically talented outsider, given lots of time and full Party support, might’ve pulled it off, and the Dems thought RFK was that, but events took a turn, and Humphrey got dropped into a situation where someone far more politically skilled would’ve failed.

Harris was screwed from jump street (assuming, as Historians we must, for the aforesaid structural reasons, that she wouldn’t be Fortified for Democracy). The most talented politician in the world couldn’t climb out of that hole. And to top it all off, she was a terrible candidate, but you don’t even have to get into that; you can just say “she was dealt an impossible hand” and leave it at that.

But they can’t do that, ideologically, so they’re forced to conjure up these mythical blocs of voters like “manosphere bros.” She could’ve just as easily said “Trump won because unicorns” or “elves” or “Russian hacking,” it’s all the same thing.

_{Even before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate, Vance was betting his political fortunes on a backlash to feminism that exalts caveman sexism and comical macho posturing. His infamous diatribes about “childless cat ladies” were issued mostly on these male-centric podcasts, where talk about guns, mixed martial arts fighting and putting women back in the kitchen is the order of the day.}

Again, absolutely none of that is true; she could’ve just said “unicorns.” But as I argued yesterday, the truth — conformity to conditions prevailing in the real world — simply doesn’t matter when it comes to politics. Women believe that shit, and women vote.

Look, Karen: The Website has done us the enormous favor of putting Aman-duh on camera.

I urge all of you to watch as much of that as you can stand. That’s what we’re up against.

We watch that, and our left hands immediately, instinctively shield our nads, while our right hands reach for our Brownings. But women — so, so, so many women — see something different. They see solidarity, comrades. Sisterhood. Or so I suppose, I truly don’t know, but the point is, it doesn’t matter. Understanding what, exactly, women see there isn’t going to do a damn bit of good, practically speaking. And if you think facts are going to work — truth, Reality-congruence, whatever — I urge you to watch it with the sound off. Just look at that face.

You think The Truth is gonna work on that? That armor is too strong for blasters, and her vote counts just as much as yours.

The Truth absolutely does not matter. Watch her until you get it. She exists, and she is the most reliable voting bloc in the country. She can’t be bargained with, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not stop, ever. We can either talk ourselves straight into the gulag trying to convince her of The Truth… or we can flip it. We can find a way to use that truculent stupidity to our advantage.

Gosh, that’s depressing. Maybe this will lighten the mood:

_{I watched “Inside the Manosphere” with my son}

That’s our gal Andi Zeisler, the store brand version of Morticia we’ve seen a few times before. Last we checked… oh gosh, look at that, she was fantasizing about boning Frankenstein’s monster and detailing her many adventures in therapy. This ought to be good.

_{As a mother, I’ve tried to be as diligent as possible about keeping up with my kid’s viewing habits; as someone who writes about gender, media, and pop culture, I’m already too familiar with the online spaces where mostly, but not exclusively white men have gathered over the years to commiserate with and convince one another that nobody gets a rawer deal than men, and to blame their loneliness and disconnection on women.}

Guilty as charged, I guess, although “disconnection” is stretching it a bit. After all, I’m connected to a whole bunch of medals…

_{But it’s also not clear how familiar Theroux is with the tangle of misogynists, chauvinists, trolls, pick-up artists, grievance peddlers, religious fundamentalists, incels, rape apologists, Gamergaters, looksmaxxers, snake-oil salesmen and Men Going Their Own Way that populate the manosphere. And without knowing what he wants to know about them, “Inside the Manosphere” unfolds without a real sense of purpose.}

So… he’s basically in your boat, then? Because we’re back to the naming of parts. What is a “looksmaxxer,” and how does it differ from a “rape apologist,” whatever that is? I have no idea, Andi, and neither do you. You’re just chanting the Fashion Words again.

(Just for giggles, I looked it up, and “looksmaxxing” has its own Wiki entry:

_{Looksmaxxing is the process of maximizing one’s own physical attractiveness… Currently, the term refers to a specified view of male beauty, and is not frequently a term used by women in a non-satirical context.}

I left the link in there, for anyone intrepid enough to explore what Wiki thinks “physical attractiveness” is. I myself simply don’t have the stones.

Which… I guess… I mean… there it is, right? There are worse hobbies than “working out and dressing well,” aren’t there? Though of course Wiki claims (“without evidence,” as The Media loves to say) that such practices are “harmful.” But hey, let’s give it to them, and stipulate that “looksmaxxing” is exactly as bad as they say it is. What logical connection is there between that and, for example, “religious fundamentalists”? Because I’ve read a lot of Karen prose on the “intersection,” as it were, of religious fundamentalism and sexuality, and it seems to me that — according to y’all, anyway — religious fundamentalism is a pretty good deal for schlubby-looking dudes with no Game; it’s the only way they might get laid.

See what I mean with this stuff?)

_{The unifying emblem of the manosphere is the red pill, the choice to see the real truth that’s been hidden from men by feminists and various progressive social movements that have robbed men of the power, deference and freedom to be masculine that is their birthright.}

Again, I left the link in there, for anyone brave enough to see what Karen: The Website thinks “the red pill” is.

_{“Inside the Manosphere” hints that while the red pill has has staying power, it’s lost some gravitas; among Theroux’s interviewees, it’s more compulsory buzzword than secret handshake. If an earlier version of the manosphere was assembled from the grievances of men who felt neither understood nor valued, the updated one is about being visible as a peddler of enviable masculinity.}

So… they’re Instagram Influencers, basically. When girls do that, of course, it’s Empowering. Also Stunning and Brave.

_{You barely have to look at the documentary’s vibrant stars — among them a sculpted, square-jawed Brit named Harrison Sullivan (who goes by the handle HSTikkyTokky); his protegé, a fellow Brit named Ed Matthews with Aryan, boy-band good looks; and Justin Waller, a tight-suited entrepreneur who looks like a mashup of John Cena and Channing Tatum minus the charm and self-awareness, to see how the manosphere has changed. In the sh*tposting, resentfully tribal manosphere of yesteryear, all three would have been considered interloping Chads flaunting their bone structure and ability to pull women. Their manosphere is located in the attention economy, always on and always hyped. And its denizens aren’t philosophers or bomb-throwers. They’re salesmen.}

I’m starting to feel that I’m wasting your time, comrades, for which I apologize. I was hoping to get some of Karen’s profound mindthoughts on what masculinity is; this is more like “menopausal hipster discovers Instagram.”

_{These guys, he goes on, can do what they do because their followers (in Sullivan’s case, a few hundred thousand on each of a variety of platforms including YouTube, TikTok and Kick) understand them as alphas, but they generally aren’t alpha enough to not worry about whether they look sufficiently alpha}

Again, I’m starting to think I’m wasting our time here. What is an “alpha,” Andi? I really want to know what you think it is.

(One can only hope they interviewed HGG somewhere in this documentary).

_{This isn’t the case with another of Theroux’s subjects, Myron Gaines, a 36-year-old Sudanese American blogger and podcaster whose media empire, Fresh & Fit, sounds more like a chain of cold-pressed juice bars.}

One wonders how “Sudanese-American” fits in with all those other Fashion Words. Aren’t these guys — you know, religious fundamentalists, incels, rape apologists, Gamergaters, and so on — supposed to be White Supremacists?

Alas,

_{but my kid explains that this isn’t the flex it might have been 4 or 5 years ago. “This guy has no credibility in the manosphere, or whatever it’s called,” he says. “He’s known to be a loser.”}

Never mind that our authorette just told us she doesn’t allow her kids to watch this stuff; somehow he knows who does, and does not, have “credibility” in the “manosphere.”

_{“He’s one of those people who thinks he’s so much smarter than he actually is,” my son says.}

I’m just going to leave that there.

_{The manosphere Theroux presents is a performance of capitalism, its main players the human embodiment of fragile-masculinity marketing that’s been successful as much because consumers are in on the joke as because they aren’t — an echo chamber of Dude Wipes, brogurt and Liquid Death. His interviewees keep women around, but are primarily concerned with how they look to other men. The performance they are selling to the young men who buy their subscription packages is high-roller cosplay: sharp suits, expensive watches, granular breakdowns of gym routines and supplement cocktails.}

Ok, again: menopausal hipster discovers Social Media. Or, you know, Advertising, as it has existed since at least the early 20th century. Charles Atlas was doing this kind of thing in the 1930s:

_{It’s an update of early-2000s pickup-artist culture, which popularized terminology like negging and peacocking, and made clear that gamification of the process was the point: PUAs wanted women to know that they were being psychologically manipulated and be unable to resist anyway. The current manosphere barely puts any effort into peacocking for women because they aren’t selling to them.}

As with seemingly everything at Karen: The Website, it’s an utterly pointless existential crisis. If they’re only selling protein shakes to each other, and don’t interact with girls on principle, then why the fuck do you care?

_{Watching “Inside the Manosphere” is a reminder that the lives of teens like mine are divided sharply by the before and the after of COVID. Because the influencers in Theroux’s film are so social, so constantly bragging about and big-upping themselves, I’m momentarily confused when my kid locates its origin in pandemic-era lockdowns. “People were just alone on their phones for too long, and weren’t talking enough to, like, a variety of people. It created little bubbles. I truly think if people weren’t sat inside their houses for a year with nothing but the internet and their minds to entertain themselves, none of this would have happened.”}

The kid has a point. That he’s also described K:TW’s entire business model is so ironic, Alanis just passed out from blood loss, but still.

_{But he’s referring to something that’s different, if almost as chilling: The suspicion that on a mental and interpersonal level, a lot of young people just never fully left lockdown.}

This is me right now, re: Alanis

_{He’s happy to point out some of the influencers’ glaring contradictions — for instance, how many of them claim to be disgusted by women with OnlyFans accounts, even as they are a sizable part of their profit structures.}

Wait, what?

_{Theroux makes no effort to contextualize his subjects’ beliefs as more intense flavor of the misogyny and gender imperatives that have always been existed in the normative transition between childhood and adulthood.}

Add this one to the Salon Tense Field Guide, I guess. She has already informed us that these guys are losers, and indeed anyone would be tempted to ask, as I did above, why we should care. That’s because her preceding prose has been, by Salon standards, clear and straightforward. But she’s gotta work some rage-bait in there somewhere, and so she’s going to start making shit up. You can tell, because of the sudden, contextless lurch into Academese.

_{It’s easy to see why the manosphere is so concerning, but I also worry that taking it at face value — assuming that every boy who watches the streams of Sneako and HSTikkyTokky wants to emulate them — doesn’t give boys very much credit. I’m rattled by the fact that my son is at least passingly familiar with the influencers profiled in “Inside the Manosphere,” but I can also see what he means when he says they’re entertainment, not instructional videos. “It’s one of the biggest stereotypes there is: the big buff dude is a misogynist,” my son explains. “Whether they’re serious or they’re doing it as a bit or a full act, it’s funny no matter what.”}

See what I mean? She pulled out the Academese — gender imperatives in the normative transition and suchlike — in order to write “It’s easy to see why the manosphere is so concerning.” Dropping enough polysyllabic buzzwords makes it so. It’s a weird form of argument by assertion — argument by jargon.

And then, weirdly, she switches back to giving us a whole bunch more reasons why nobody should care:

_{He [the son] also can’t think of anyone he knows who takes manosphere content seriously (“not even my stupidest friends”), and wonders out loud whether its rhetoric might be bigger threat to demoralized 20 and 30-something men than to impressionable youngsters.}

And…well… there it is. That’s pretty much the end of it. I was hoping for some Real Man lessons, but I was disappointed.

Still, I hope you had a bit of fun, homies. Thanks as always for reading.

A Lesson From the Kitties

Ace of Normies informs us, and the entire Media agrees, that anyone who isn’t 1000% on board with Operation AIPAC Fury is a Nazi. A literal Nazi, a word he throws about these days with such relish, you wonder if you haven’t accidentally clicked over to BlueSky. You subscribe to the tenets of National Socialism, dude: there’s no other possible reason.

Which doesn’t bother me, of course. Getting called a Nazi (or “racist,” which amounts to the same thing) has been the standard punishment for the sin of Noticing since forever. But it gave me an idea for a column or three. Since this site is dedicated to Quality Learing, and we’re gonna get called Nazis anyway, we might as well ask ourselves what the appeal of the Kitties ACK-shully was, and explore some of the techniques they used to gain power.

Being an Historian, I want to lead with a long bit about context. You can’t really get it without a decent background in the peculiar situation of the Weimar years, which depend on the context of the early 20th century, which requires some background in the late 19th century…

…as I say, I want to do that, by inclination and by training, but a) I’m not really qualified, but more importantly b) it’s not necessary at this juncture. “Nazing the forest for the trees,” heh heh, is hardly unique to the History Biz, but it’s endemic there; we must strive diligently to overcome it; so let’s keep this superficial, shall we?

Fortunately we have a glittering example of superficiality to hand — brought to us in the comments this weekend by Ben the Layabout, specifically because of its amusing vapidity. It’s titled

_{The Liberal’s Insufferable Superiority Complex}

and subheaded (it’s a word)

_{They truly believe they have a monopoly on intelligence and morality.}

Which… I mean… yeah. Ok. Sure. But on the other hand… well, it’s like this: A “volume shooter” such as myself always worries about repeating himself. Everyone has their perennial topics, that a less charitable reader might call “hobbyhorses.” You know, like (in my case) baseball — “oh look, he’s doing it again.” Or even more in-depth, intellectual topics. I know what I know, and even though I usually strive diligently to learn more, one organizes new experience through the familiar. The worry is: once you’ve said the basics of what you have to say on a given topic, how do you know when you’ve passed the point of diminishing returns?

On the insufferable superiority complex of liberals, then…. uhhh, yeah. We’ve all been saying that since the Dawn of the Enlightenment. It was insufferable in Rousseau, who for all his faults was a talented man. It was insufferable in David Hume, unquestionably a brilliant man. It was insufferable in Robespierre, who’d have you executed for not acknowledging his monopoly on intelligence and morality, and so on and so on, right down to the present hour. What can another trip to the well possibly add?

But on the other hand, in this particular case, the very rote-ness of the “argument” contains something valuable, a perspective I’d never considered.

_{One of the many obnoxious characteristics of present-day liberal elitists that makes them so detestable is their deep superiority complex, their Sophomania, their delusional belief that they are intellectually—as well as morally—superior to everyone else, particularly conservatives whom they see as Neanderthals. They truly believe they have a monopoly on intelligence and morality.}

What an interesting neologism: Sophomania. From the etymology, one takes it to mean “an unhealthy preoccupation with wisdom.” And yet, is anything less characteristic of Leftists?*

*a term I prefer to “Liberals,” for reasons longtime readers know, but isn’t germane here; if you’re newer, and want to know, just ask, and we’ll discuss it in the comments.

Indeed, the rest of the article goes on to detail all the wisdom Leftists don’t have, and of course we could continue adding examples until we all collapse from exhaustion. As the meme has it, that’s pretty much what Leftism is these days: Them pretending not to understand things, thus making discussion impossible.

What our author really objects to is the “insufferable” part. You know, the smugness:

There’s someone you could turn over to Torquemada, challenging him to do his worst, and he still couldn’t wring a basic definition of, say, “woman” out of her. Thumbscrews, the rack, hot irons… all useless. The armor of her self-regard is too strong for blasters.

And then they turn around and say stuff like this:

_{At PBS, its principal counsel was recorded stating, “Americans are so fucking dumb. You know, most people are dumb. It’s good to live in a place [like Washington, D.C.] where people are educated and know stuff. Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or cities where everybody’s just stupid?”}

Which precedes a long catalog of similar statements, and follows a discussion of how Leftists used to praise the rural uneducated as the salt of the earth.

Sophomania?

Look, I’m not knocking the guy for coining a neologism. Lord knows I’ve tried it a few times myself. But there’s a difference, I think, and that’s what got me thinking about this stuff in a new way. Is he trying to coin a neologism to better express a concept that doesn’t really have a handle yet, or is he trying to create a “dank meme” or whatever it is the cool kids say these days?

In fact — this is my new insight — I think that’s why I’ve always been a Noticer. Or maybe it was the first thing I Noticed, if we maintain (as many do) that the capacity to Notice is largely congenital. Either way: when I was a kid, Liberalism (as it then was), was “cool.” Fashionable.

They claimed, of course, that they were just being smart, educated, deep thinkers, whatever. That they were unbound by convention, letting their scintillating minds roam free, following the evidence wherever it led, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. That they lived their lives in accordance with the dictates of sweet reason, and the only people who didn’t were either dumb or timorous, which amounted to the same thing — those people, those conservatives, hid in the comforts of their conventions, too scared or stupid to peek outside.

But it was just a pose, a laughably obvious one. Having been in a locker room a few times, I’d heard lots of stories like that. They were about sex, of course, not politics or philosophy, but they all sounded suspiciously similar:

Of course, in mocking these things one must be careful not to fall victim to the same fallacy; the Teenage Cynic is just as bad, in his way (and of course for the same reason) as the Teenage Leftist. But still, even when I myself was a slave to fashion, I couldn’t help noticing that this was pretty much just another fad. Like tight rolled jeans, which the AI thingie informs me are also known as “French rolled” or “pegged” jeans:

Somehow it looks even dumber as part of an entire late-80s ensemble (imagine that!), and for my French readers, you guys know I love you (no homo), but this is the problem with being a fashion-forward culture: Sometimes you get blamed for some godawful stupidity. That’s not a French fad, that’s a 100% American fad, but you’re getting blamed for it, and I ask you to accept my apologies on behalf of the USA’s sane fraction.

I realize we’ve wandered a long way from the Kitties, so let’s reel it back in.

Even among the sober-minded, discussions of the tenets of National Socialism tend to center on whether or not they were right. You know, correct. True to facts. If you take the Bagels out of it — which they themselves were certainly capable of, and frequently did; the word “Jew” appears exactly twice in the 1920 Party platform, and even the “Holocaust Encyclopedia” (the source of the link) can only find “veiled antisemitism” and “indirect references” in some of the others– we want to know how close to contemporary reality their observations were; how compatible were their demands; how feasible their policy prescriptions.

It’s a mistake, comrades.

The first and most important lesson of the Kitties is that they made their worldview cool. Fashionable, the way Teenage Leftism and tight-rolled jeans were fashionable when I was a kid. Because that dipstick at PBS is right, you know: Most people are dumb, functionally at least. For the vast majority of people, it’s like Derb said:

_{The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list.}

To translate this into practical social and political action, we need to get over our preoccupation with being right. Correct. True-to-facts. It simply doesn’t matter, comrades, for practical purposes. It’s nice, no doubt, because we — unlike they — suffer from cognitive dissonance. Plus we’re decent people (one of Himmler’s favorite phrases); so much of politics seems shady and sordid to us…

…but that’s why we lose. We ask ourselves “Is that not Juggalisme? Are we ACK-shully any better than them, if we do that?”

That’s the wrong question, comrades. We have to think of it in terms of fads. It’s Marketing. Are tight-rolled jeans stupid? Now, sure. At the time, no. But the whole “question” is a category error — there’s no “correct” way to wear jeans. There is only fashion.

That’s the level at which most people operate, comrades, whether it’s “wearing jeans” or “voting.” You can get people to build entire lifestyles around fad-chasing: Witness the entire postwar history of AINO, more or less. How many nations have we invaded? How many hundreds of thousands have we killed? How many millions of tons of bombs have we dropped? How many trillions, quadrillions, umpteen bazillions of dollars have we spent, all for what amounts to fashion?

It’s going to happen, one way or the other. People will chase fads. They will dedicate their lives to it. It’s just a question of getting them to chase our fads.

A “Greatest Generation” Self-Portrait [guest post by Nehushtan]

Betty MacDonald (1907 – 1958), best-selling author of the 1940s and 1950s, is not much talked about today, though all her books are still in print. Some of us with kids, or who were kids ourselves, might remember her “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” series, about a kindly, eccentric old woman who “cures” minor behavioral problems in neighborhood children using a combination of magic and insightful psychology.[1]

MacDonald’s fictionalized, autobiographical “The Egg and I” spawned at least nine Hollywood comedies centered on the characters of Ma and Pa Kettle, who were based on neighbors of hers on the Olympic Peninsula (and who were heavily sanitized from their portrayal in the book).

Three other fictionalized, autobiographical works followed, roughly in chronological order: “The Plague and I”, “Anybody Can Do Anything”, and “Onions in the Stew”. These are often described as “comic”, but (especially the first two) it’s the kind of humor that’s derived from making the best of a bad situation.

She was born Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard, in Colorado. Her father was a nobody from nowhere who worked his way into being a Harvard-educated mining engineer who seems to have been pretty prosperous. Her early childhood was spent in Butte, Montana; they moved around a lot, later to Seattle where she graduated high school and attended University of Washington. Her father’s mother, Gammy, lived with them and seems to have largely inspired the eccentricities of Mrs Piggle-Wiggle (but without the charm, serenity, and patience of Mrs Piggle-Wiggle). Her mother’s parents from the East seem to have considered them little better than savages and thought Seattle was amusingly provincial, but she describes her mother as a warm-hearted, omnicompetent, natural pioneer who could make a happy home anywhere under any conditions. Her father died young and they seem to have been okay for a while. At the age of 20, in 1927, she married a much older Marine veteran of WWI who (according to her) shortly quit his insurance job and they moved out to the Olympic Peninsula to raise chickens.

“The Egg and I” recounts her fictionalized experiences on the chicken farm. Her marriage was not a happy one, and the farm, like most in the area, had no running water or electricity. The amount of work required for simple daily tasks like cooking and washing was far outside anything she was used to, quite aside from the work required for the chickens and the weather[2]. There was little to break the monotony of hard work; she read what little she could get her hands on, and kept her sanity by writing letters home, and bore two daughters. On the strength of these letters her family encouraged her to write a book (which she did in 1945, long after she had divorced and married again). She left her husband in 1931 and took herself and her daughters to her mother’s home in Seattle.

“Anybody Can Do Anything” and “The Plague and I” cover her life between her divorce in 1931 and second marriage in 1942. She describes her mother’s house as a big happy family with lots of friends staying over and highly precarious finances, and according to “Anybody Can Do Anything” she spent most of this time as the stooge of her elder sister Mary, who somehow through her various connections found them a series of respectable and honest paid positions despite their lack of qualifications and the Great Depression. Sometime in the 1930s Betty developed tuberculosis, and in 1937 she entered a sanatorium for nine months, which she described in “The Plague and I”.

Medicine in that day could do very little for tuberculosis. The treatment was essentially extended bed rest and cold air. The insufferable and condescending paternalism of the doctors is hard to imagine these days but she doesn’t describe it as anything unusual. The nurses who looked after them ran a considerable risk of coming down with tuberculosis themselves and more than one of those who cared for Betty later died in the same sanatorium. Some of the friends she made there lived and one also became an author.

In 1942 she married Donald MacDonald, who was doing defense work for Boeing, and moved across the bay from Seattle to Vashon Island, which was then rural and agricultural but is now more of a bedroom community[3]. “Onions In The Stew” covers this period of her life, which seems to have been happy and prosperous.

The general tone of the books is humor and cheerfulness in the face of adversity, little tolerance for whining or anxiety about the future, sharing both good and bad fortune with family and friends, making the most of whatever good comes along, working hard as the need requires it, and working to live rather than living to work.

What might pique the interest of Naked Base Commandos?

The vanished world, especially people who largely worked with their hands on their own land. Almost everyone in “The Egg and I” is a farmer, fisherman, or logger. The Kettles are farmers but hilariously inept: on one occasion, Pa Kettle’s water tower collapses because he has a habit of pulling boards off it whenever he has a project. The prosperous and skillful farmers are portrayed as somewhat supercilious. Betty likes to visit the Kettles–“they were never dull and they were always there”–and of course they never made her feel bad about her lack of skill at being a farm wife. But her husband could not stand Pa Kettle because he was lazy, dirty, incompetent, a moocher, and always trying to get free work out of people.

Highly selective race realism. From a middle-class family with literary tastes she could hardly be anything but a CivNat, and she generally presents the non-white characters in a positive light. Her closest friend in the sanatorium was Japanese (“Kimi Sanbo”, in real life the author Monica Sone) and one of her other friends, “Evalee Morris”, was black. Kimi is a fully fleshed-out character, smart, fatalistic, sardonic and occasionally waspish, but Evalee is sort of an idealized angelic sufferer who cheerfully puts up with casual racism from some of the low-class patients in the sanatorium. Exempt from MacDonald’s CivNattery are Coast Salish. Her disgust with them and their lifestyle is apparent literally from the third page of “The Egg and I”. Most of her neighbors on the Peninsula were either descendants of Coast Salish, intermarried with Coast Salish, or were Coast Salish themselves. Her first husband liked them just fine, perhaps a little too well some of the young women. He had a few Coast Salish friends which he’d hunt or fish with who Betty utterly detested and on one occasion when her husband was not home, feared they would rape her. She is appalled by their alcoholism, their treatment of their women and children, and horrified by their birth defects, and contrasts them unfavorably with the idealized recollection she has of Blackfeet Indians from her childhood in Montana.

Firsthand experiences of the Great Depression. She portrays her family as often broke, sometimes with the utilities shut off, but not in danger of going hungry as long as everybody hustles and shares what they have when they have something. Being a working woman and divorced, some percentage of employers figure she’s fair game (despite not being particularly attractive), and she treats that as just one more thing you have to deal with without whining. When the Federal government started taking over the economy she landed a job at the National Recovery Administration, which led to a series of government jobs, as well as her contracting tuberculosis from one of the other government employees. Government jobs then were apparently much as they are now, except maybe with less TB.

I’ll paste a short excerpt from each of the books in the comments.

[1] Really these are quite good and I’ve shared them with my own children. Don’t bother with the new ones written after 1957. The satirical names given to the parents and children are almost worth it in themselves.

[2] Anyone who thinks Seattle is too rainy is not prepared for the Peninsula, which generally has between two and four times as much rainfall as Seattle.

[3] 3-4 bedroom houses currently between $700K and $800K.

Friday Mail Sack

Let’s do this thing. As always, thanks to everyone who sent in questions — you truly strive diligently to increase quality outputs.

Since no less a Conservative than Ace of Normies has proclaimed that anything less than 1000% enthusiasm for Operation AIPAC Furry makes one a literal Nazi, I guess I have no choice.

Hey, speaking of, Ben the Layabout has an update on Whatzisface Kent resigning from the G.:

_{Here’s a piece from Consortium giving [no doubt slanted] details about the recent Kent resignation. My initial hot take was correct, that Kent had explicitly “named the Jew” as part of his reason for resigning. Although my earlier comments were about the awe that the MSM had reported as much.}

_{This might not be worthy of a whole daily discussion. You’re the historian here. Obviously there have been a lot of resignations over the years. But rarely, in my ken are those in anger and especially those that name the Tribe’s influence. We could further speculate if Trump is really being manipulated by the ZOG, or is Kent’s angry departure merely more 5D chess and Trump is letting others name the Jew?}

As a counterpoint, via Ace of Normies,

_{Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent is now at the center of a reported federal investigation, with multiple sources indicating the FBI is probing whether he leaked classified information—an inquiry that, notably, appears to have been underway before his abrupt resignation earlier this week.}

_{According to Semafor’s Shelby Talcott, who cited four sources familiar with the matter, the investigation predates Kent’s departure from his post and focuses on whether sensitive intelligence was disclosed to individuals not authorized to receive it. Talcott initially reported that three sources confirmed the probe, later adding a fourth.}

Either way this is interesting. If the “investigation” doesn’t precede Kent’s withdrawal, then maybe Trump is finally learning to play hardball? The Left routinely does this, of course — criticize them in any way, and they will drop the house on you. Also the Senate, nyuck nyuck nyuck. How much of the FBI’s “counterterrorism” budget during the Biden years was dedicated to framing Trump?

(Knowing that now, is it any surprise that he won? The Feeb could fuck up a wet dream. They’re the Jim Cramer of law enforcement).

What’s more interesting, from our point of view, is the possibility that this Kent guy thinks “naming the Jew” is a viable grift.

Perhaps he’s serious: he resigned out of principle. I immediately discount this, simply because one does not reach a high post — or, indeed, any post — in the Inner Party by having scruples. There is absolutely no way this turd is just now learning that The Israel Lobby is a weeeeeee bit influential in Washington. This is AINO: the minute you put your first toe on the first rung of the Cursus Dishonorum, some AIPAC clown shows up at your office door with a huge bag of shekels. If you have a problem with that, you begin an exciting new career in food service or whatever.

So I assume he’s ducking out to get ahead of some allegations. But the fact that he thinks “naming the Jew” will buy him some cover… that’s interesting, no? Ten years ago, when the Ace of Normies crowd was still the political fringe, having them call you a Nazi was game over. I thought that Charlottesville shit ruined Our Thing for at least a political generation. But here we are, with at least one troubled high-level guy acting as if it’ll keep him in the green.

That’s a tremendous change. At Ludicrous Speed.

TWS asks:

_{Have you read any of Larry Corriea’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior saga? It’s sword and planet set on a India inspired alien planet. How close does he get to India? I’m trying to get a read on his research.}

I haven’t. Fantasy isn’t really my thing. Y’all might not know that, considering how many comments I’ve passed on the genre over the years, but what I know about it comes down to “whatever was in my local library from about 1984-1990.” Those were my prime baseballin’ years, and for various boring structural reasons I usually had to wait an hour or two after practice to get picked up, so I basically read everything on the shelves. I’m surprisingly well-informed about the works of Sidney Sheldon, too, because I’m serious: It was a tiny branch library; I pretty much read all of it, and he was the Nicholas Sparks of his day — you were gonna find him, Clive Cussler, and Tom Clancy, and once you’ve gone through Clancy and Cussler a few times…

(Also I thought it would help me to understand girls. (I read at least one book by Judith Krantz and Danielle Steele for the same reason). It did not, in fact, help me to understand girls).

Correia’s stuff is recent, so I haven’t read it, although I’ve heard it’s entertaining if you like his style. I’ve given one or two of his books a go, and I can see why people like them… but they’re just not my thing. (That was my opinion of Clive Cussler, too, for what it’s worth). I did buy one, though, because certain people are due respect.

India has an amazingly rich mythology, so you’re spoiled for choice if you want to dive in. I’ll own to knowing very little of it. It feels like a lifetime study just to scratch the surface. Imagine coming completely tabula rasa to Christianity: First you have to read the Bible, all of it… and then you realize that one could fill a large library, probably many large libraries, just with commentaries on each individual book of the Bible. Imagine going down the street like that: The Library of Commentaries on Genesis. The Library of Commentaries on Exodus. It’s daunting, to say the least. And not only that, each library has another library full of commentaries on the commentaries…

Can the NBCs help a brother out here? I can’t answer TWS’s question, but I’m sure some of y’all can.

Overgrown Hobbit asks:

_{Dear Mr. Severian:}

_{Yes or no?}

It surely does feel that way, doesn’t it?

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism is a tremendously enlightening book; I urge everyone to study it closely. It’ll make you really uncomfortable, seeing how many of these techniques are routinely deployed against you by the G., advertising, social media. So I’m not trying to take anything away from Lifton when I say that the basics of “dark psychology” have been known for centuries.

To return to an example I’ve used before, there was a big difference between English witchcraft trials, and the trials on the Continent (and, significantly, in America, though I haven’t seen this remarked on): In England, “judicial torture” was prohibited by law. This is one of those principles most frequently honored in the breach, of course, but a fellow like Matthew Hopkins didn’t need the rack; sleep deprivation worked just fine, the way it did during the Cultural Revolution. The cell of Little Ease arguably dates back to the 13th century; its use is well-recorded by the 16th. Lifton’s Chinese brainwashers, then, weren’t doing anything fundamentally different from what Hopkins did, and the results were just as spectacular.

(For the record, I’ve just solved one of the “Major Problems in Witchcraft Studies.” Feminists have spilled barrels of ink about blah blah patriarchy, trying to answer the question of why accused witches would confess to such bizarre charges. Why didn’t they recant at the stake, knowing they’d be burned anyway? Well, there you go: By that point, they really believed it, the same way the “brainwashing” victims in the bamboo gulag really believed it, or Cardinal Mindszenty really believed it, or some of the Great Terror victims believed it, or Comrade Rubashov really believed it, or Winston Smith really did love Big Brother. This shit works; always has. The real mystery is why persyns who have convinced themselves that “gender is just a social construction” can’t grok that).

That stuff has been known since at least the Middle Ages. Heinrich Kramer and Lavrentiy Beria could profitably compare notes. What’s new, though — or so I assert — is the behavioral impact of total caloric surplus, combined with the “Little Ease” techniques.

We well know what caloric deficit does, mentally. Kramer, Hopkins, Beria, etc. all knew it very well; they were freelance investigators, but the Minnesota Starvation Studies formalized it:

_{Among the conclusions from the study was the confirmation that prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis… Indeed, most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression.}

_{The rehabilitation phase proved to be psychologically the hardest phase for most of the men with extreme effects including self-mutilation… Sexual interest was drastically reduced, and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation. The participants reported a decline in concentration, comprehension and judgment capabilities, although the standardized tests administered showed no actual signs of diminished capacity.}

Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar. The poor bastard who self-mutilated cut off several fingers with an axe, but couldn’t tell investigators just why he’d done it. Swap in “got a bunch of weird face piercings” for those missing fingers, and tell me you’re not reading a word-for-word description of Massively Online behavior. That’s semi-starvation, note — not caloric absence, just severe caloric restriction. Is it not possible — based on observation, extremely likely — that forced caloric oversupply might do the same thing?

In severe caloric restriction, your body flips out, because it can’t “cycle up.” It can’t figure out how best to allocate the extremely limited “repair” resources to all the things that are going wrong. I hypothesize that in constant caloric overload, your body can’t “cycle down.” It doesn’t know what to do with all the excess energy. It has no place to store it. It starts putting fat in places where fat shouldn’t be, and that fat starts leaking out (into arteries, for instance). The constant inflammation that seems to be the source of so many “disease” syndromes, I think, stems from that — your body is trying to store that excess energy somewhere, anywhere, but can’t.

Your sleep goes to shit, just like it does in semi-starvation. Throw in the “Little Ease” stuff — in the case of the Postmodern world, constantly blinking lights, beeping phones, and so on — and is it any wonder that these people end up in an extremely suggestible state, a la Lifton’s brainwashing victims, or Hopkins’s witches?

But, again, all this is contingent upon the “Mouse Utopia” experiment doing what I say it did (investigating permanent caloric oversupply), and not what Calhoun, the actual experimenter, said it did (investigating permanent overpopulation).

And hey, since we’ve already solved major historiographical and psychiatric problems this morning, Based 5.0 brings us the definitive answer to the question “Can AI produce true Art?”:

If you think AI film can’t be art then explain this. pic.twitter.com/vG5VUMGJjd
— Charles Curran (@charliebcurran) March 19, 2026

QED.

Bwana Simba had a post yesterday that covers a whole bunch of the stuff we’ve been talking about:

_{I have a question for the masses: what exactly is going on with Bibi? I just saw clips of the press conference where he (his ai, whatever) says Genghis Khan is bigger than Jesus which is hilarious from even a purely atheistic standpoint, Genghis’ empire ended after his death. This is both an insult to Christians but also technically an insult to Israel’s neighbors (because of the pain and suffering Genghis Khan caused out there in the East he is still hated in many different countries).}

_{But if that is the real Mccoy… Why did the bagels trot out those incredibly bad AI videos earlier? What is the point of all this? Test AI to see how far they can go? To fuck with us, just because they can? Bibi fled earlier due to the bombings and just came back? He really is dead and they are using ever more sophisticated AI and edited videos to fool people?… But why? I do like Pickle Rick’s theory as it makes the most sense.}

_{And what is going on with the war in Iran? Iran clearly struck some military targets with their missiles, but how bad was it? Probably not to HGG’s hope of killing the GAE in one fell swoop, but they really did strike military bases much to Ace of Normies frothing hatred. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. But where exactly? I also take it the GAE has given up on Ukraine since it can only focus on one target at a time.}

_{And what is up with Trump? A bunch of his latest tweets have been clear meltdowns. Clearly he was on team zion all along… But why now? There is so many theories out there being tossed at the wall like darts (like him secretly having converted to hardcore bagelism a long time ago).}

_{For those who scoff at everyone pretending Bibi the AI is real, keep in mind the history of Wheels, the fire side president of WW2. Every single reporter, politician and even reported enemy of America pretended that guy could stand and walk tall. Modern politics is all about theater and optics, and has been for quite some time. Keep in mind also the sheer mind numbing amount of propaganda that was produced since Clinton. Remember the lightbringer, and drooling Joe Biden? Not to say that Bibi is definitely dead and replaced with AI but there is precedence for such a mass scam. I just don’t know why they would all do it.}

I’m really starting to think that Trump 2.0 is the Joe Biden of the Right.

That’s how I’d sum up The Biden Years: It’s when the Left strapped on the Spaceman Spliff helmet and declared “Today, we go for the gusto.” They fucking went for it, for any and all possible values of “it.” Nothing was off the table. No matter how insane you thought the zaniest Leftist could possibly be, they were going to top it. So much of the noise they made in those years amounted to howls of joy, at finally being free of the last vestige of a pretense of sanity.

Well… that’s where we are with the “Right.” Orange Man is going for the gusto. Ace of Normies is going for the gusto. The American “Right” is going for the gusto — per Ace of Normies, this

CNN:

“MAGA GOP view of Trump, approve is 100%. If you are a member of MAGA in the GOP, you approve of Donald John Trump. 0% say that they disapprove… he’s the 1972 Miami Dolphins.” pic.twitter.com/ELYv9d5OPM
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 18, 2026

and this

Among Republicans do you agree with Trump or Carlson and Kelly on foreign policy views

🔴 Trump: 84%
🟡 Carlson/Kelly: 6%

J.L. Partners poll | 3/17-18 | 1,018 LV pic.twitter.com/NZBWlm9MjV
— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) March 19, 2026

In the Biden Years, Karen: The Website (for rhetorical convenience) was the canary in the coalmine for the Left: They’d come right out and say all the stupid, batshit insane things the Left really believes, and then Biden would prove them correct (and try to top it). As it turns out, Ted Cruz and Zioclops Dan Crenshaw and the rest of the “Christian Zionist” nutbars were the Salon.com of the Right — they were just saying all the stupid, batshit insane things the Right really believes, and now Zion Don is proving them correct (and trying to top it)…

…and at this point, let us pause for a moment to savor the Alanis-engorging irony of Bibi Netanyahu being the one honest man in this whole mess, despite maybe being a hologram. It’s “use it or lose it” time for ZOG. Bibi can read a news story, and he can read a census report. He knows exactly how well the AINO Wunderwaffen are doing in Ukraine, and he knows — doubtless far better than we do, given how many Israeli spies infest the government — how many browns there are in America, and how many there will be five years from now. He needs to get the Big Dog in the fight while there’s still some fight left in him.

And hey, since this is it, might as well go for the gusto there, too. Might as well let the Goyim know what he really thinks of them and their stupid religion. Why not? If they’re dumb enough to destroy their own economy, and skate right up to / over the line of WWIII on his behalf –and that’s a done fucking deal — might as well really rub it in, no? Give the home folks a good chuckle.

And this is all to the good, comrades, in the long run. This all needs to happen.

There is no possibility of sanity, or anything within light years of sanity, returning to international relations until there is Regime Change in Tubman DF, and of course I don’t mean a slightly different set of Uniparty goofs winning the next election. AINO vs. Iran is the tyranny of tiny differences. Why do they hate us? Why do “we” hate them? Simple: We’re almost exactly alike. Two sets of incredibly bellicose religious fanatics, determined to export their Revolution worldwide.

And again, can we give it up, however grudgingly, for AI Bibi at this point? When America goes back to being just another country among many, Israel, too, goes back to being just another country among many… a tiny, isolated, vulnerable country among many. One with a long and sordid history of playing fuck-fuck games with everyone in the region. Some people are gonna want revenge. Some people are gonna do some things, as the most representative statesman of our age put it. He’s truing to put the day of reckoning off as long as possible.

Cato asks:

_{My Friday question would be to ask for your thoughts on the quality of Iranian trolling.}

_{The obvious one about giving free passage to any ship that brings the US Navy as a escort was pretty good.}

_{I would paste in the Iranian Lego video, but YouTube won’t let me see it in any form without signing in to “verify my age” … anything mentioning Epstein is heavily quarantined these days in US social media.}

I haven’t really seen much. I’m not on Social Media, the better to preserve what remains of my sanity. What you quoted was pretty funny; I’d give them a A+ for that. I can’t really gauge what impact “something something Epstein” would have, because I have no idea what, if anything, the GenPop thinks about that stuff.

This is the problem with bone-deep cynicism, comrades (one of them, anyway): It makes it really hard to get into the headspace of anyone who isn’t a bone-deep cynic. I don’t really care what Epstein was up to, because a) I already assume our “leaders” are such degenerates, the Marquis de Sade would vomit hearing the half of it; and b) no matter what they provably, indisputably did, exactly nothing is going to happen to them, so who gives a shit?

There’s really only one answer when it comes to a “leadership” that corrupt and degenerate. Since he’s one guy whose name I haven’t seen in connection with Epstein, what would you say is an appropriate punishment for Anthony Fauci? That fucker has been doing his very best Josef Mengele impersonation since the 19 goddamn 80s. The Germans are still hauling into court, and sentencing, 100 year old men who maybe might’ve walked past a litterbox as very young teenagers in the closing months of a lost war. If “justice” requires that, then what does justice require for a man who really does have the blood of thousands on his hands?

Nothing has happened to him. Nothing will happen to him. In fact, let me put a few benjamins down on the prop bet “President Hairgel will rename the main CDC building ‘the Anthony Fauci Center for Excellence,’ because the Left can’t let anything go.” So who gives a fuck what So-and-So got up to on “Epstein Island”?

But apparently the GenPop do care. At least some of them, at some point, if it’s the most recent shiny in their social media feeds. I just can’t grok it, so I can’t say.

Cutter asks:

_{Have you ever seen a war film that didn’t make war look cool at least in a few scenes? I know it’s a broad question.}

No. In fact I heard tell of some snooty French art film director, impeccably Leftist of course, asked why he’d never made an antiwar film, replying that it’s impossible to make war look unexciting on the screen. That sounds apocryphal, but I want to believe it’s true.

By that metric, the best antiwar war film ever made was Jarhead, which of course doesn’t actually have a war in it. I’d love to know what the USMC contingent among the NBCs think about that movie. I liked it, and the book is brilliant.

BadThinker asks:

_{As a historian, how much is this stereotype [toffs getting handsy with the servants] a real thing? Clearly Mr. Pepys was all up in this servants, but just how common was this behavior? Close quarters and all that, men being men and women being women, it certainly seems like something that’d be very common.}

I really don’t know. “Extremely common” is the impression I get — that getting felt up, if no worse, by Young Master was pretty much understood to be part of the job. But that impression comes from umpteen academic generations’ worth of Feminist scholarship, so the problems are obvious.

My guess — and it is just a guess — is that it was fairly common knowledge that Young Master would try his best to carry on like Bill Clinton, but you could avoid it with some basic savvy. Of course, as the Feminists will never admit, there were some very serious advantages that might accrue from letting Young Master do his Bill Clinton routine, so I imagine it was still pretty common.

HR Farmer asks:

_{What’s the downside of pushing this [the Epstein stuff]? If the capital-T Truth accidentally escaped Beltway containment and then meaningful things happened based on that, what are the real, lasting negatives that might go with the positives?}

To which Nehushtan replied:

_{I’d say #1 has already happened, a breach of the expectation that grand juries operate in secret. The whole point of the grand jury is decide if there is enough evidence to prosecute, and their job is to look at all kinds of things that may mean nothing, and there’s no defense role to protect the accused. It’s bad enough that they have indicted so many ham sandwiches.}

_{Look at what happened to Kavanaugh, hundreds of people crawling out of the woodwork to accuse him of shit that could not possibly have happened, and they did it just because a) they didn’t want another Republican appointee to the Supreme Court, and b) another (probably totally fake) accusation had been made public so they could pile on. Now he had a way not to be exposed to that, if he wanted to say he didn’t want to be considered for the Supreme Court. But grand juries don’t give you a choice, it’s up to the prosecutor.}

I concur. I’d add that to one of my perennial themes, that unenforced laws are far, far, far worse for Society than bad laws.

My stock example is Prohibition, which was a wonderful foretaste of the Current Year Gynocracy (note that Prohibition is the 18th Amendment — the ladies couldn’t even vote yet, and they managed to use The United States Constitution to nag). I’ll repeat that: They amended the Constitution of the United States over some petty lifestyle bullshit. They put the Federal Government on the hook for policing a social issue.

If you want to slap an exact date on the point where the Constitution became a dead letter, there you go. Prohibition was, is, and always shall be completely unenforceable as a legal matter. If you want people to stop drinking, you’ve got to get them to want to stop drinking; the most tyrannous police state in the world can’t stop it at the point of sale. Ask anyone who has ever done time in the Gulf, how easy it is to get booze, despite draconian restrictions, a huge security apparatus, and a tiny fraction of America’s population and landmass.

No matter what’s in the Epstein Files, the only thing we know for sure is that no one will face meaningful consequences, so what’s the point? I pose that question to Karen: The Website all the time. They take it as read that Trump has obviously, provably committed various crimes. They constantly cite the civil judgement against him in favor of E. Jean Carroll, the New York real estate thing, etc. And yeah, there are lines written down in law books about those. But… nothing happened. Nothing will happen. In fact, I keep asking “Just what do you think is going to happen? OK, he did it. Even I will ‘admit’ that he did it, for the sake of argument. And therefore… what? He’s going to resign? JD Vance is going to stage a coup, because he stands ‘convicted’ of groping E. Jean Carroll?”

It’s just Underpants Gnome shit. Step one: Something something Epstein Files. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Uhhhhh….. utopia?

All the constant Epstein nattering does, is remind people that absolutely nothing is going to happen. Nobody’s going to jail. Peter Mandelson lost his “job.” Boo hoo, he’s still wired in at the very top level of the Apparat — he’ll get another “job” with an NGO or something, at twice the pay, doing half the “work.” He’s still a life peer; let me put another stack of benjamins down on the prop bet “He ends up back in the Cabinet here in a few years, because the Left can’t let anything go.”

Given all that, it’s far better to just shut up — that way, we can still kinda sorta maintain the barest facade of a fiction that The Government has some interest in enforcing its own laws; that we don’t live under pure anarcho-tyranny.

I think that covers it for today. Thanks for reading, as always, and have a good weekend.

overgrownhobbit on Point #4March 26, 2026
American have their States, or did. Many still do: Old Texan*: Son, you don't go asking a man if he's…
KGB on Point #4March 26, 2026
How, then, can one leave out McKinley? It was he who launched the first wars of colonial acquisition. My God,…
Nehushtan on Point #4March 26, 2026
Novo Nordisk has made enough money to buy a small country Even worse. "Market cap" ≠ "made money." Fucking hell.
Nehushtan on Point #4March 26, 2026
The company’s market value briefly exceeded $500 billion, making it worth more than Denmark’s entire GDP. It's a small thing but…
Gespenst on Point #4March 26, 2026
TR conditioned and prepared the country for Wilson and FDR. Roosevelt the First deserves a lot more blame for national…