Nothing special about this one, comrades — it’s just a Stoyak Revue from June 4, 2024. But sometimes, in the midst of all Trump’s fuckups, we’d do well to remember the horrors we were spared.
[pic note: level 249? Is that even possible? I get bored with those Bethesda games by about level 50, when I’m all but invincible and can one-shot pretty much every enemy. In fact I’m not sure I ever finished the main quest in Skyrim, and I think I might’ve done it in Fallout, but can’t really remember].
Biden to veto House GOP military funding bill over abortion, gay rights, and DEI provisions
Goodness me. My comment at the time was along the lines of “it’s nice to see the GOP can still do basic politics from time to time.” Because of course the Biden Administration would demand stuff like on-call aromatherapy for the troons in the ranks; the GOP could force Biden to veto the bill by not giving it to them, thus enabling them to paint him as anti-military (you’ll recall that Biden was still technically running for reelection at this point; the Great Debate was still three weeks in the future when this was written).
Now, of course, I wonder what the hell the GOP was playing at. It’s not like they were trying to help Trump. Of course, the Republican convention was also a month and a half into the future at that point, so maybe they were hoping the Party would pull the ol’ switcheroo. There were still two GOP primaries being held on June 4, 2024, but they were formalities — War Karen, the last challenger standing, had dropped out (and, in theory, endorsed Trump) in March. But Orange Man was in the midst of at least one trial, and the CIAthe FBI the lone gunman who alone of Earth’s 7 billion inhabitants has no Internet presence was scoping out the rooftops in Butler, PA, so there was still hope for the Party stalwarts. And of course Steiner’s attack was going to turn the tide…
One really can’t despise Vichy enough, you know. It’s good to be reminded of that. See, for instance, yesterday, when Murkowski (of course) broke ranks to submarine Trump’s goofily-named “SAVE Act” — the voter ID bill that shouldn’t even be a 100-0 issue, because in a halfway sane polity one would be laughed out of the room for bringing up a “voter integrity” bill. The idea that there wouldn’t be some stringent ID requirements to vote would never cross anyone’s mind. And yet… here we are. And of course Trump’s putative Party — the one The Media assures us he rules like an autocrat — just can’t get it done. By one vote. Again. Always.
But still:
“Similar to last year, H.R. 8580 includes numerous, partisan policy provisions with devastating consequences, including harming access to reproductive healthcare, threatening the health and safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex Americans, endangering marriage equality, hindering critical climate change initiatives, and preventing the administration from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion,” OMB wrote in a policy statement.
At least we were spared that, comrades. One wonders what kind of hilarious hash the Harris Force would make of Operation AIPAC Fury. I’m thinking it might go a little something like this:
So… total, crushing victory, I guess, because the Revolutionary Guard would see the Flamin’ 49th Mechanized Hairdresser Battalion coming, their vajazzled assholes glittering through the gaps in their certified organic, free-trade, shade-grown pleather chaps, Rainbow flags flying proudly from atop their armored Subaru Outbacks, and collapse dead with laughter.
On the other hand….
The U.S. Navy’s procurement of the Constellation-class frigates has faced significant issues due to rushed oversight, as highlighted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The $22 billion program awarded Fincantieri a contract in April 2020 before the ship design was complete, leading to potential cost increases and delays.
Yeah, that’s the MIC for you.
Pentagon officials have suggested a “national call to service.”
These reports come as the US military failed to meet recruitment targets in the Army, Navy and Air Force. Only the Marine Corps and the newly established Space Force managed to reach their goals.
Turns out that even with all those great bennies, there just aren’t enough fags and troons and other such deviants to fill the ranks; we need a Volkssturm.
Ashish Vazirani, the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, reported to the House Armed Services Committee that the respective services missed 2023 recruitment targets by a combined 41,000 personnel.
As I said at the time, and will say again, maybe the problem starts with the fact that you’ve got a 100% Real American like “Ashish Vazirani” heading up your recruiting drive.
As I didn’t say at the time, doesn’t “Ashish Vazirani” sound like the technical medical term for the place of insertion, for practitioners of the Baltic Vice? The Medical School at the University of Riga is the one place where docs are trained to treat prolapses of the Ashish Vazirani.
NATO plans quick mobilization of US forces through European ‘land corridors’ amid Russian threat.
I must say, there might be one upside to Operation AIPAC Fury. Trump has asked our Eurofag “Allies” to help with the Strait of Hormuz, and they’ve said no. Which, I mean, on the one hand, they’re finally displaying some kind of military sense. Having had their pitiful stocks of land-and-air Wunderwaffen destroyed in Ukraine, they’re not going to volunteer their navies’ tiny, flaccid dinghies for target practice in the Gulf.
But on the other hand…
Time to cut ’em loose, Donny.
The Proud Boys are making a comeback for Trump: ‘Bad things are going to happen’
Which is one of the oddities of the 2024 Erection for King. 20 million “missing” Biden votes shows that the local fraud machine was shut down. Zuckerborg and Juggalo Josh Shapiro, at least, called off the dogs. But given that the FBI that kid whose name has been completely scrubbed from History like a heretic pharaoh took a well-aimed shot at Orange Man before the Erection, it’s not like the G. called off its dogs…
I guess what I’m saying is, is it just barely possible that the Proud Boys aren’t a bunch of glowies? You’d think the Feebs would be false-flaggin’ for all they were worth in late 2024, but I don’t remember seeing anything.
(Of course, the easier explanation is that the Proud Boys’ false flags went off with the same smooth competence as everything else the Feeb does. They’re another group that needs a visit from the Bobs:
Aside from promising us that the perpetrator’s real motivations will never be known every time some towelhead in a “Property of Allah” hoodie opens fire while screaming “Aloha Snackbar,” I just can’t see what it is those jerkoffs actually do).
Well, I think that’s it for this morning, comrades. Thanks for reading.
If it’s reported, how do we decide it’s not just lies?
There’s no longer journalists going about gathering facts for themselves, they’re just stenographers for people with narratives who hand them what they want printed, and AI is getting too good (and not only that, iOs at least has integrated AI into pretty much all photo and video now).
Although this seemed to be more of a request for practical advice than an invitation to quasi-philosophical speculation, I yam what I yam, as Popeye* used to say, so that’s what you’re going to get.
*Hey, speaking of Popeye, who now knows that “Jeep” was once a cartoon character?
Here’s a “profile” view:
My question is this: Why hasn’t somebody Blutarskied That Shit? Slap a turban on it and call it “Jeet.” Not “Eugene the Jeep,” but, say, “Rajiv the Jeet.” It’s forever popping up where it’s not wanted, causing all kinds of problems…
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the “truth.” As Lionel Hutz explains, there’s “the truth,” and “the truth!”
But that’s clunky, so let’s say that for any statement of purported fact, there’s the “truth-value” and the “use-value” (not that that’s much better).
You all know my contention that near-infinite Information Velocity — such as we have now — becomes, in effect, near-zero Information Velocity. There’s too much stuff, moving too fast, and no real way to empirically verify most statements. The “truth-value” of the statement “Netanyahu is dead” is nearly zero. How could we possibly know?
If you strip the question of its context, it quickly becomes clear that the “truth-value” of statements like “Netanyahu is dead” has always been nearly zero — again, taking “truth-value” to mean something that we, personally, can verify. We don’t often think of “truth” in that way, but that’s because our usual sense of “truth” is — and I’m sorry for using this phrase, but nothing else fits — “socially constructed.”
A humorous example: In Good-bye to All That, Robert Graves has to place an ad in the London Times, proclaiming himself alive. And that’s actually the easiest problem he had to solve, once the Army reported him dead. He’d been severely wounded in action; obviously he survived, but at some point a clerk returned some of his mail with the stamp “died of wounds.” As he was currently in transit somewhere, with thousands of other casualties (from the High Wood attack at the Somme), there was no way to verify that he was, in fact, still alive. The Army stopped his pay; his family started organizing his funeral, and so on. Even with the primitive bureaucracy of 1916, he had a spot of bother proving that he was, in fact, alive.
Consider what would happen today, if by some horrible mischance you were officially reported dead. The “truth-value” of your existence is easy to verify… to yourself. But how would you go about doing it socially? The “use-value” of the fact of your own existence would be near zero. You’re still you, experientially… but officially, you no longer exist. You can’t get into your bank accounts, and so forth. Whatever Kafkaesque thing you can imagine about bureaucracy will probably happen to you….
In a world of slower Information Velocity, that probably wouldn’t happen. If Graves had been wounded in the Crimean War, say, a clerk might well have sent some of his mail back with “died of wounds” on it, but by the time it got back home, he’d have been visited in hospital by his family; they’d know full well he’s alive. And in a much smaller bureaucracy, he’d have far less difficulty restoring his pay and all that. It would be a humorous-in-retrospect inconvenience, not the real problem it was for Graves, or the Kafkaesque nightmare it would be here in The Current Year.
Indeed, you might well have to fall back on “use-value” to “reestablish” your own continuing existence. There might be substantial benefits for someone else to fraudulently report your death, e.g. life insurance money. There might even be substantial benefits to yourself to fake your own death (at least, if all those TV shows where that happens are to be believed). But there seems to be very little “use-value” in reporting yourself alive…
…or maybe not. Consider Martin Guerre. Indeed, consider what might happen to a Current Year Martin Guerre. The “real” one would have a hell of a time explaining that he, and not “Arnaud du Tihl,” is the guy whose Social Security number is this-and-that, who has such-and-such credit history, is the guy in “Martin’s” Facebook profile and Instagram feed and etc. If “Arnaud” had the proper paperwork, it might well be “Martin” who ends up getting executed for fraud, even though “Martin” isn’t “Martin,” he’s Martin, the real flesh-and-blood guy.
I guess it should be clear that I’m talking about personal vs. social identity, not existence per se, in this case. But I think the larger point stands. Even back in 1916, answering the question “Is Robert Graves alive?” involved some real difficulty. In the 16th century, answering the question “Is Martin Guerre alive?” was doubly difficult, because it quickly became “which of two claimants is the real one?” (whatever “real” means in these circumstances).
So there’s the personal side, and the bureaucratic side, and the social side to the question “Is So-and-So alive?” Obviously it matters a great deal to Robert Graves, personally, that he’s alive. Bureaucratically, though… they don’t much care. He was just one of approximately 420,000 British soldiers reported killed, wounded, or missing at the Somme. For the Army, it’s just a matter of taking his name off one ledger and writing it down in another. Even in 1916, the process was more or less automated. Indeed, from the bureaucrat’s standpoint, the fact that Graves is, in fact, alive is a real inconvenience — “methods of proving that a soldier is alive” isn’t really covered in the Policies and Procedures manual.
Socially, I suppose it’s interesting, for lack of a better term. One imagines that that’s how you find out who your friends really are — who was planning on coming to your funeral when they thought you were dead? Which members of your family immediately started putting in claims for your effects? Which of your so-called buddies immediately got drunk and put the moves on your girlfriend? And so on.
But even there, there’s some burden of proof, no? The Robert Graves who came home from the war was a very different guy than the Robert Graves who marched off to the war. Are we sure it’s the same guy? Is it really Robert Graves, not Arnaud du Tihl? It’s doubtless not as dramatic as that — the fact that Robert Graves is really different now is more easily explained by traumatic experience than by imposture– but I guess what I’m getting at is, even when we can empirically verify that Robert Graves is alive, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the “use-value” of “the truth.”
And the more information there is, and the faster it moves, the more acute the problems become. I don’t have an answer, but I want to spell out some propositions for discussion, because I think even attempting to discuss them will give us some insight on how to better navigate Clown World.
The “use-value,” for us, of Netanyahu’s existence is pretty much nil. It won’t meaningfully affect our lives either way. Even if Pickle Rick is right, and they’re putting out shitty AI fakes as “proof of life” because they’re desperately trying to prevent the Bagels from nuking Iran in retaliation, it still won’t really affect us. Even if we knew for sure that the Bagels were going to nuke Tehran next Wednesday, what practical use could we make of that information?
Which means that the “truth-value” of his existence means even less. You could even get all Baudrillard up in here if you wanted — for us, insofar as “Netanyahu” exists at all, he’s merely a Media construction; it makes no difference whether the actual man is alive, dead, or nonexistent; he could just as well be a hologram.
The only thing that has “use-value” for us, then, is the use to which his purported life, or death, is put by our enemies. Which might well be the only way to drill down to the “truth-value” of a statement like “Netanyahu is dead.” Our enemies appear increasingly desperate in their insistence that he’s alive. The “use-value” of the statement “Netanyahu is NOT dead” appears to be very high to them. Given that they are our enemies, does that not mean we should shade our evaluation of the “truth-value” of “Netanyahu is NOT dead” towards the negative? The greater the “use-value” of not-X appears to be to our enemies, the likelier the “truth-value” of X… right?
This is already long, for which I apologize, but maybe we can do a quick historical example. Consider the Salem Witch Trials. There have been a zillion studies of this, and you can trace the entire history of egghead woo-woo through interpretations of the Trials. Your earliest histories, of the Von Ranke school (because we’ve already brought up Robert Graves, heh heh), would concern themselves entirely with establishing what happened. Which is not easy. For instance, Deodat Lawson claims, in nearly-contemporary published sources, to have been there at crucial periods. But that can’t be corroborated by existing documents. Was he there? That would be one of the primary concerns of the Von Ranke school.
From the turn of the century, picking up steam in the 1920s and 30s, there were umpteen “psychological” studies. In the same period, and for similar cultural reasons, there were umpteen “social” (meaning Marxist) studies. Psychologism came back hard in the 1940s and 50s, thanks to the Kitties. By the 60s and 70s, Feminist interpretations were all the rage, and so on.
No matter which interpretive frame you pick, though, the edges are set by what I’m calling “truth-value” and “use-value.”
The easiest, simplest explanation would be: They fully believed in the truth-value of witchcraft, but they were wrong. Or, alternately, they fully believed in the use-value of witchcraft accusations, and they were right. And there’s some “truth,” in the specific von Ranke sense of “what is likeliest to have actually happened,” in both. But neither is sufficient on its own. For our purposes, though, the fact that both the truth-value and the use-value are so outré makes it potentially very relatable to our AI-generated Clown World.
Consider first “truth-value.” Witches absolutely do exist as a social role. It is undoubtedly true that
In Salem Village in February 1692, Betty Parris (age 9) and her cousin Abigail Williams (age 11), the daughter and the niece, respectively, of Reverend Samuel Parris, began to have fits…The girls screamed, threw things about the room, uttered strange sounds, crawled under furniture, and contorted themselves into peculiar positions
The records don’t show this, but let us stipulate that it is possible that the initially accused, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, were out there in the woods performing occult rituals. Let us further stipulate that IF they were, they undoubtedly believed in the “truth-value” of what they were doing — that is, that the rituals would have the intended real world effect.
But that’s the outer bound of our discussion of truth-value: The rituals don’t work. There are unquestionably “witches,” but “witchcraft” isn’t real. Any explanation we moot for why the Salem authorities did what they did has to take their beliefs and perceptions into account, but “Goody Osborne really did cause Ann Putnam Jr. to have fits,” via voodoo dolls or whatever, is categorically ruled out.
But note how violently that conflicts with the use-value of witchcraft beliefs. Wiki gives some ok context:
In 1668, in Against Modern Sadducism, English clergyman and philosopher Joseph Glanvill claimed that he could prove the existence of witches and ghosts of the supernatural realm. Glanvill wrote about the “denial of the bodily resurrection, and the [supernatural] spirits.”
In his treatise, Glanvill claimed that ingenious men should believe in witches and apparitions; if they doubted the reality of spirits, they not only denied demons but also the almighty God. Glanvill wanted to prove that the supernatural could not be denied; those who did deny apparitions were considered heretics, for it also disproved their beliefs in angels.
I left the Glanvill link in there if anyone wants to follow it, though I don’t think it’s important in this context. For us, only two things are important. The first is the argument itself, which by 1668 had been the established standard for both Protestants and Catholics for going on 300 years. Obviously it was Catholic-only before 1517, but the history of the “elaborated theory of witchcraft” is extensively documented (sadly, I can’t give you a link. The AI summary on my browser (Brave) works fine, and a search will give you links to various studies, but the first big Wiki link goes to this, which is NOT — a thousand times NOT — what “elaborated theory of witchcraft” means).
Briefly: by about 1400, the question of witchcraft was intimately connected with the concept of heresy. Can a witch do X? Or only appear to do X? Whichever way you answer it, the Devil is involved — either God permits demons to do X at the witch’s request, or God permits demons to allow witches to believe they’ve done X. The Devil’s part is nonnegotiable — “witches believe they can do X because they are insane” is not an allowable answer.*
*It ACK-shully is, of course, and the Inquisition did in fact let some obviously crazy people off, but stick with me here; the larger point is valid.
To deny that witchcraft has truth-value, then, would be to deny God’s power, as Glanvill says — which is heresy, just as much as witchcraft itself is heresy.
Moreover, heresy is a civil crime. It’s a serious threat to social order, as bad in its way as murder, rape, or theft (all capital crimes well into the Modern era). The formal legalities of heresy got a bit complicated in Protestant jurisdictions, but if you want to know how that whole “each man his own priest” thing worked out in practice away from the Church of Rome, ask Michael Servetus. Ask Roger Williams — the Puritans get a pass these days for “only” exiling him; if you’ve heard of him at all, you’re either from Rhode Island, or something something Anne Hutchinson, Feminist Icon. But back then, exile was pretty much a death sentence, and that’s certainly how the Massachusetts Bay Puritans intended it. Hell, ask George Burroughs, executed as a witch at Salem in 1692 — it wasn’t entirely due to him being a “crypto-Baptist,” but that surely didn’t help.
Everybody with me?
We categorically deny the truth-value of “witchcraft.” You simply can’t voodoo hex somebody. But back then, the “use-value” of witchcraft belief was absolute. Even those people Joseph Glanvill was railing against, who denied the efficacy of witchcraft, were very careful to state that their denials of witchcraft’s efficacy in no way implied disbelief in God’s power.
(It’s amazing how few people have actually read this shit, even the ones who talk at such enormous length about witchcraft… or, it would be amazing, if you didn’t know that most of them are Feminists. All of the controversial (= “engaged in the controversy”) literature about witchcraft — fucking ALL of it, every last volume — is also, in fact is mainly, a theological treatise. The infamous Malleus Maleficarumis, and I loved pointing obnoxious Goth Girls to it back when I taught Western Civ surveys — have fun with all that Aristotle stuff, hon. You came for the misogyny, but you stayed for the Scriptural citations. The most recent translator of the Malleus used to comment at Z Man’s, in fact — that has no relevance to my argument, but it’s fun).
Therefore our explanations of what happened at Salem are tightly bound. We can’t say “there were really hexes,” because physics doesn’t work that way. We also can’t say “It was all just petty revenge and status-jockeying bullshit,” because their society didn’t work that way.
In other words, our explanations of truth-value have to be congruent with their perceptions of use-value.
So: IS Bibi Netanyahu dead?
If we decide that the truth-value of his continued existence matters to us, we first have to examine the use-value of those beliefs to those making the claims. Further, we have to separate out the use-value of that knowledge (that Bibi is dead, or not dead) to us, vs. the use-value to them: If he’s dead, and they know he’s dead, what are they going to do with that information?
I got nothin’ this morning, so here’s some random stuff from various places.
(I did an image search for “random” and this came back on the first page. Someone out there is Blutarskying That Shit).
There’s some speculation that King Bagel is dead. Israel seems to be putting out really shitty AI videos as “proof of life.” Which is bizarre on so many levels. One hopes the Persians got him, and I want to feel kinda bad about hoping such a thing… but I don’t, because fuck that guy. It’s like Ace of Normies beating his chest about a supposed Iranian assassination plot against Trump (apparently this was in the courts a while back; it’s news to me): I’m supposed to feel bad about that? There’s a reason countries don’t send teams of assassins to take out rival heads of state; Trump and Bibi decided that reason no longer applies for them, so by modus tollens or whatever it no longer applies to them.
It also feeds in to another of the signature Clown World pathologies, Israel’s (and by extension AINO’s) insistence that the Wunderwaffen are 100% effective: no missiles get through; we never take any losses. Or, as one of you put it (please take a medal) re: Ukraine, our Insect Overlords are somehow convinced that we get to have a war with Russia, without Russia having a war with us.
It’s all of a piece, I think. It’s the Front Row Kids mentality. Generation Standardized Test, call it what you will. We possess the TORAH — The One Right Answer, H8rz — and from that, all else flows. There’s no need for a Plan B, because there’s no possibility of failure. There’s no need to think about what comes next; it’ll all work out perfectly if we just do This One Simple Trick. And it can’t possibly blow back on us, because it’s the Right Answer — not just correct, but righteous. And, finally, it’s the One answer — just like on a Standardized Test, whatever isn’t perfection is abject failure; it’s either A+ or F; there’s no middle ground, no nuance, no shade of gray.
Or maybe not. Zorost brings us — from Norway of all places – an explanation of why everything is so shitty. It’s the Enshittificator.
One wants to expand this to Nature as a whole. Are there perhaps entire races of people whom Nature has delegated as Humanity’s Enshittificators? You know, to keep us from getting complacent? Note that it could be good or bad, depending — without the civilizational drag of our Enshittificators, it’s quite possible that we would’ve turned Society over to Expert much earlier, much harder, and have nuked ourselves back into the Stone Age by now. The Enshittificators might actually be something like Humanity’s drogue chute.
Retired for Good submitted, then withdrew, a Friday Question about Tucker Carlson, to wit: What’s going on with him? RFG withdrew it because, in his words, “I really don’t give a shit,” and I don’t either… except, I guess, as an illustration of Current Year pathology.
I’m totally unqualified to opine on this. I don’t think I’ve seen more than an hour of Tucker Carlson, total, in my entire life, spread out over umpteen twenty-second YouTube clips. I’ve seen a lot written about him, but from obviously biased sources. Still, this is the Internet — not knowing what the hell you’re talking about is a feature, not a bug. So:
Based on what I’ve read (mostly Ace of Normies, so you know all the inbuilt biases upfront), he seems to have gotten hooked on what Z Man called “the narcotic of minor celebrity.” And it is, I think, minor celebrity — most people don’t watch TV news; of those, more watch Fox than any other, but it’s still not that many in absolute numbers, and they’re pretty much all geriatrics. And that was at the peak of his fame. Now he’s a podcaster, so his “comparables” are… who? Joe Rogan? Again, a minor celebrity in the grand scheme of things, and I doubt Tucker Carlson is in even that tier yet.
So, from the narcotic of minor celebrity flows The Jew Thing. Whether or not he really caught it, or is just acting like he has for fun and profit (Ace of Normies frequently asserts that Carlson takes big checks from Qatar), is an open question. It’s also an open question as to whether or not he ACK-shully has it, given how even the mildest criticism of Israel is met with the full bell, book, and candle denunciation of “antisemitism.” Ace of Normies makes it sound like he’s routinely ranting about ZOG flouridating our drinking water, but I don’t know. Certainly he seems to be no big fan of Operation AIPAC Fury… but who is?
You no doubt recall that even I — a guy with 300 readers — got a drive-by accusation of “antisemitism” the other day. Operation AIPAC Fury has really sent lots of people around the bend… and I take that as a good thing, all-in. Trends often get way more obnoxious as they’re obviously running out of steam. Since this used to be a music blog (and “music appreciation” is a kind of Quality Learing), consider Warrant:
I know, I know… you can be forgiven for not realizing there’s a band, or even a song, in that video (her name is Bobbie Brown, go nuts*). But if you can bring yourself to watch it dispassionately, in the spirit of academic inquiry — and if you’re like me, you might need to watch it many, many times to get in the proper headspace — you’ll see that that’s not just hair metal, it’s close to the Platonic ideal of hair metal. “Cherry Pie,” song and album, are in fact widely credited with “ruining” hair metal, but in fact they were hair metal’s apex: Everything right, and everything wrong, with the form is there, pure and uncut.
The trend was already dead; the last twitch of the corpse was pretty spectacular though.
*Wiki informs us that “They [Brown and Warrant singer Jani Lane] had a daughter, Taylar Jayne Lane, in 1992.” Which means she’s 34 now… assuming she’s still alive, and can you imagine? She’s either a flaming pile of wreckage, or the most based woman in the universe. I really hope she’s ok… but that’s not the way I’d bet.
I’m starting to think we’re seeing the last, desperate gasp of Holocaustianity. Exhibit A is, of course, Ace of Normies himself, who is now throwing “Nazi” around like the very worst Libs of BlueSky. Carlson might authentically have caught The Jew Thing, or he might be a savvy operator, Warrant-style, trying to squeeze the last shekel out of a dying trend.
And can we spare a thought for the Gulf States? Sheik Yerbouti has been able to paper over the very serious problems with his regime for a long, long time by blaming everything on the Great and Little Satans. What happens when the Great Satan stops giving a shit about the Little Satan? I guess we must credit Bibi (whether he’s alive or dead) for seeing the writing on the wall. I’m pretty sure Joe Dirt is going to have a much more, ahhh, nuanced relationship with Our Greatest Ally, should he win in 2028, and should Governor Hairgel (or whoever) be Fortified for Democracy ™, he, she, or xzhey might just go ahead and give Tehran The Bomb, and cut out the middleman. The Coalition of the Fringes will survive without the Bagels; it won’t survive without the Muzzies.
Pickle Rick brings us a fascinating look at the many early variants of the Stars and Stripes. He also notes that there were other variants, with three colored stripes — red, white, blue — as seen here:
I think any one of those would be a great jack for the Naked Base Commando, AINO chapter. They’re recognizably American flags, but completely dissociated from the fake-and-gay of The Current Year.
In a way, it’s kinda too bad about the nudity thing. I’ve got this vision of club jackets and patches, the way motorcycle gangs do. You could put one of those flags on the back. And their vests have spots for club titles (e.g. “Senior Ideas Editor,” “Period Dignity Officer,” and so forth) and all manner of flair. In fact, it might be one of the requirements for admission: You have to go through the archives and find some really obscure Kitty unit logo for your own personal patch — you know they call us that anyway, and whenever there’s a slow news week they always manage to find some completely harmless group waving a “Nazi” symbol around (you might recall the debate stage at some state GOP event, Florida I think, which they swore up and down looked exactly like the rune for some SS division, if you cocked it 45 degrees and squinted real hard).
Alas, I don’t think club vests are within the letter of the Regulations… but should we put it to a vote? Joshua Blahyi is still very much alive, but he seems to have repudiated his Butt Naked days, so we can’t ask him directly; I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves. (And, really, it seems clear that General Butt Naked is an idea, not an individual man, much like the Dread Pirate Roberts).
Finally, we might as well see how Karen is handling Operation AIPAC Fury. Two pieces seem to be of note. The first:
A new draft? Unlikely. But Trump still wants the emergency powers
Leavitt’s comments about a possible draft hint at something far more plausible: expanded presidential powers
I’m sure the content is just many, many, many paragraphs of “Orange Man Bad!!!” But I’m not going to find out, because I’m already having real trouble typing around this huge, throbbing erection. Oh please — oh please oh please oh please — try to reinstate the draft. That would be awesome on so many levels.
Do you get it now, White people? They hate you and want you dead. Because you know good and goddamn well Mohammed and Jugdish ain’t gonna go. And that’s before you consider the girls — if there is such a thing as the Fake and Gay Singularity, in which Clown World disappears up its own vajazzled anus and prolapses into another universe, it will arrive when Nancy Mace opens her cockholster about how women can’t be drafted because reasons. If anything will usher in the desperately-needed lamppost redecoration project, it’s a draft for Operation AIPAC Fury.
The second is a comparison of Donald Trump to Kaiser Wilhelm II, and y’all, I just don’t have the strength. But if you do, it might well break comedy as we know it, so I’ve provided the link. Go nuts.
I think that’s all I can manage today, Kameraden. I hope everyone had a good weekend, and as always, thanks for reading.
Every work camp’s crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed man.
TWS asks:
Does the addition of ads aimed at the parents of white kids (usually boys) joining the military mean we’re going to war? Worse, I don’t see any ‘Heather has two mommies’ ads.
I too have noticed a serious uptick in these… which is odd on several levels. First, the only time I see TV is in the gym, which is full of old people, which means it’s either tuned to old people stuff, or ESPN (which probably counts as old people stuff these days). Who’s watching TV at 10 in the morning? Shouldn’t the prime recruitment demo be in class?
They still seem to be of the form “join the Army, be a Green Beret” or “join the Navy, be a SEAL.” Which does not bode well for the necessary abandonment of Special Forces Politics. But they do seem to heavily emphasize Whiteness. And, shockingly, maleness — very few girlbosses.
I’m not sure I’d attribute that to active war prep, though. I’d say it’s in line with Pistol Pete’s at least quasi-Seriousness. If the American military is to return to something approaching effectiveness, the Flamin’ 45th Mechanized Hairdresser Battalion gotta go. Shifting the recruitment emphasis to the one militarily effective group in AINO just makes sense.
Nehushtan asks:
Forty years ago most people were watching the same three channels, watching the same handful of movies, listening to the same Top 40 music. Nowadays there’s a proliferation of niches and increasingly little common culture.
So how is it that there seems to be room for only one topic at a time in “the news”? If “they” can get us to focus on only one news topic why can’t they do the same for movies, TV, and music?
I think that’s all coming from the producers’ end (you’ll have to make your own jokes about what comes out of producers’ ends, I’m running on fumes this morning). The proliferation of The Media is a response to what Turchin calls “overproduced Elites” and I call “the Mandarinate” (because we have to remember how Turchin uses “Elite” — they’re actually useless, but they have all the paper qualifications of Elites, and so feel the deserve to live like Elites, which is where the problems start).
Media “jobs” are, for the most part, make-work for Mandarins. They don’t actually pay much, most of them, which is why “the Economy” can seemingly absorb so many of them…. which is another reason why I prefer the term “Mandarin” to “Elite.” Most of us probably have a far higher net worth than anyone short of senior management in the big Media conglomerates, even if our lifestyles are far less ostentatious than theirs.
Something Jordan Belfort (the “Wolf of Wall Street”) said always stuck with me. Obviously Stratton Oakmont made most of its money via fraud… but their brokers had to actually sell the stock, and they were really, really good at it. Belfort created this insanely competitive display culture. He said that he had dozens of guys “making a phone number” each month (he might’ve coined that phrase for all I know), but they were still living hand-to-mouth — they had a bunch of credit cards, and they were all maxed; a Stratton broker might have real trouble finding change for the tollway, even though he’s driving a Lamborghini.
For non-Americans, a “phone number” has seven digits.
That’s how he kept his guys going. They needed to make a phone number, every month, just to sustain their extravagant display items. Actual life got ignored. Watch this fascinating clip from the 2000 movie Boiler Room, based heavily on Stratton Oakmont (and quite fun, if you’ve ever been even on the periphery of the financial world*):
The mansion is full of empty rooms. There are unpacked boxes everywhere. Everybody’s sitting on the floor. And he’s lived there for eight months.
*It suffered at the time from the then-obvious comparisons to Wall Street (which they’re watching in that scene; very meta) and Glengarry Glen Ross, but in retrospect — when enough time has passed that we can judge it on its own merits — it’s pretty good.
I can’t confirm, but I’d bet Stratton Oakmont money that most of “The Media” lives like that, though usually at doll-house scale. Just for giggles, I asked the AI thingie on my browser (Brave), what’s Aman-duh Marcotte’s net worth?
Approximately $1.2 million, came back the answer… but check this:
Her annual income is estimated at around $200,000, combining a senior writer salary at Salon ($110k–$130k), book sales, and other media appearances. She lives in Austin, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York, and owns a home in Austin, along with investments in index funds and a collection of vintage comic books.
Whaddaya think the nut is on a home in Austin? How about the nut on a pied-à-terre in Brooklyn? Zillow (an American real estate site) says the average home price in Austin is $512,937; Austin proper has a population of just under 1 million; I bet Greater Austin doubles that — I’m pretty sure she’s not living in an average home in Austin, ya dig?
I wonder if $200K per year covers all that. I wonder if it comes close. Even if it does — even if she’s not in hock up to her eyeballs, credit cards maxed to the max — I doubt it’s by much. I probably have way more in the bank than she does; I’d bet Stratton Oakmont money that I actually have more in my wallet right now — I can lay hands on more actual cash, far more easily, than she can.
The point, comrades, is that these people pay an enormous premium to live in certain zip codes. They pay an enormous premium to do — to have, to display — all sorts of things. I’d bet that the vast, vast majority of their income goes to stuff that we — normal people — would call “disposable income” stuff. You know, those once-in-a-while things like vacations and ball games and whatnot.
I think, in short, that there’s an entire ecosystem devoted to this. All those niche “Media” products are really just barely, barely self-sustaining loops. They’re niche products that can only get made because there are so many people willing to pay a serious premium to claim that they “work” in The Media, broadly defined. I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that the show (or whatever) gets made for the sole purpose of paying the people who work there; it’s only possible to make it because the people who work there are, in a very real sense, themselves paying to make it.
All of which is different from “the news.” Back when there were only three networks, there was only so much bloat those networks could absorb. Back in college, I knew a guy who was trying to break into “the news.” My school had a “Media Production” major (I forget what they called it, but that’s what they meant), which was uncommon at that time, and could only exist because the school was located in a giant metro. What immediately became clear to this guy’s friends — and, eventually, to him — was that even if he caught on to the lowest rung of the Media ladder, someone would basically have to die before he could move up.
And that’s not just “the talent,” the on-camera goobers. There are only so many “sound engineer” or “video board operator” jobs to go around. And if the sound engineer at WSUX, the one radio station in Toad Lick, Arkansas, kicks the bucket, you and every other “Media Production” guy in America will be competing for that job. Hope you like both kinds of music, Country and Western.
But that was before the Internet.
Still, “the news” has all that infrastructure, so they can set the agenda. Indeed The Media is far more consolidated now than it was back then. Toad Lick, Arkansas, actually had a radio station back then — someone in Toad Lick owned it; it played the kind of programs Toad Lickers wanted to hear. These days, of course, WSUX is owned by Clear Channel, it’s all streaming out of New York or whatever, if there’s a physical transmitter at all in Toad Suck it’s completely automated. Same way with “affiliate” TV stations, newspapers (all Gannett) and so on. They can do the “one story at at time” thing because whatever’s left of the infrastructure, they control.
All those little niche players are just working to pay their bills, literally.
Such is my guess, anyway.
JamesEMP brings us a link of note, about how the AI revolution ain’t all bad. You can save lots on your Medical bills with ChatGPT.
Personally, I don’t see the problem here. Competing fairly in an arena of physical ability is obviously a relic of the patriarchy. Women should be allowed to compete against each other using all the tools at a woman’s disposal, including subterfuge and lying. If you can get a male official to believe your lies, you win.
Yeah I’m not seeing it either. In fact I wonder why there are “judges” in the first place. This is, obviously, a women’s space. Shouldn’t they all get together and collaborate on the answer? Who won? Wellll, it’s whoever they feel won. Or deserved to win. Not that Basic Becky, that’s for sure. Sure, she might’ve technically pinned her opponent, but she’s the loser, because that bitch knows what she did.
With Queers for Palestine, feminists for Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran and similar, inconsistency and enmity is the point.
I’ll see if I can excerpt the central thesis, apologies that it’s raggedy:
For this is the politics of the Friend/Enemy distinction. One of the foundational beliefs of left-progressive politics is that social dynamics are dominated by conflict….
Moreover, this is eschatological politics: politics oriented to a final, socially-transformative goal that trumps all other considerations. Both the moralised status games and the politics are directed against people and social structures within their own societies. The issue is not what folk outside such societies do, it is what the implications are within their own societies.
Anyone who is an enemy of such social structures, such people—literally anyone—is a political Friend. This is how the politics of the Friend/Enemy distinction works.
Or, as we like to say around here: Whatever is, is wrong. As we also like to say, if they could see the skull-fuckingly obvious consequences of their positions, they wouldn’t be Leftists.
But the linked article is a good explanation of something that doesn’t get emphasized enough in Our Thing: They’re the same, because they entail each other.
Whatever is, is wrong. And that’s why they can’t see the skull-fuckingly obvious. X is; therefore, X is wrong. What will replace X? Y…
…at which point, Y is, and therefore, Y is wrong. They don’t have to think about what comes after X. They already know the only salient thing about it, to wit: It is wrong. Therefore it doesn’t bear thinking about, so they don’t think about it. It never even crosses their minds.
Urbando writes:
One of the bad side affects of winter turning to spring is resetting the stupid clocks, which always throws off the ol’ Circadian rhythms and makes some daily things (like dinner time) feel off kilter. Daylight savings time is certainly a classic Enlightenment/Modernity phenomenon. Verily, we can control the sun its own self!
I came up with this question after clicking on your link to “flourit”.
Is Latin a more precise or “meaningful” language than English? Academia leans heavily upon Latin terms, as does law and medicine. Since Latin ceased to be the lingua franca almost two thousand years ago and is considered a dead language, why has it persisted in these fields? Also, what was the rationale for the Roman Catholic clergy to continue conducting services in a language that their congregation could not understand (aside from key phrases?)? Alternatively, is Latin just an affectation of the VCBs of all times?
I am not a VCB, nor do I play one on TV. Personally, I appreciate it that you invariably provide a link to any Latin phrases (which I always click on). For that matter, I click on all of your links – history, medical, baseball, whatever – it’s part of the lateral drift on the interwebs thing, which seldom fails to enlighten or edify.
I don’t think Latin is more precise. Of course, I’m not a Latinist, so I’m open to argument on this point. Some of them are, of course, just “accidents of survival” — the first medical textbooks were written in Latin, someone like Vesalius has already named the parts; why reinvent the wheel? It’d be more inconvenient to de-Latinize them.
When they’re not accidents of survival, I think that Latin terms — or terms in any foreign language, or neologisms or professional jargon — serve to “set the cognitive frame,” I guess. For instance, up above I mentioned Peter Turchin’s “overproduced Elites.” Many people (myself obviously included) don’t like the term “elite,” even though it makes perfect sense in context, because it means something quite different in the usual, workaday context. Had he called them “electi” or whatever (the AI thingie says “Often used to refer to “the chosen ones,” aligning with the etymological root eligere“), it would be clear that he’s using the word in a very specific way.
It’s why I use “Mandarins” to refer to those same people. It’s not more “precise,” in the sense of “more accurate,” because there’s really nothing close to a Chinese-style Mandarinate in AINO, even now. If I were talking to a bunch of Chinese, or discussing AINO with a group of China scholars, I’d have to use a different term, to avoid confusion. It’s just differentenough to indicate that I’m discussing a new thing, something outside the usual sense of “Elite.”
Plus — and this is just for me, personally — foreign words just sound cool, and/or funny, and so can be deployed for rhetorical effect. Kafka’s novel The Trial, for instance, was written in German; its title is Der Prozess. Which just sounds awesome and menacing. It sounds like that SJW specialty, litigation where “the process is the punishment.” You know, “bake the cake, bigot!” That kind of thing. That was a lawsuit, but it was also very much Der Prozess.
Which sounds dramatic, but a brief skim of the article gives us this:
“What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence,” said one Democrat. “A lot of times that’s coming from economically very secure white people.”
As we know, the Left always goes to the gun eventually. But we also know that they’re a bunch of pussies. Note that “economically very secure white people” are demanding that other people go out and get shot. They just want to fund some riots, a la St. Floyd; they don’t want to do it themselves.
I’m starting to hope that Karen Good and the Pretti Hate Machine did us some good. Those were “economically very secure white people,” by any value of “secure” that makes sense. They actually went out there and did it themselves… and got ventilated. And, obviously, were shocked by the outcome: “Why did you have real bullets?”, shrieked Lezbollah.
This is not to say these “people” aren’t extremely dangerous. They are; the problem of the 20 that does 100 will have to have a…”permanent resolution,” let’s say, sooner than later (hey, maybe Latin: solutio ultima). They absolutely hate you, and want you dead. But it’s maybe not quite as bad as the article makes out…. yet.
Pickle Rick asks:
So I seem to have noticed a distinct lack of Lee Greenwood flag pimping in this latest Special Forces Politics game. Is anyone else noticing the same? This propaganda seems to be very reactive in that this is not Dropping Bombs for Freedom- they are all but openly admitting its just punitive, and nothing more.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the same, and frankly I’m shocked… and almost hopeful. My go-to for the Normie zeitgeist, as it were, is Outkick, which I describe as “ESPN for Grillers” (an Alanis-level irony. Just as “the Liberal Joe Rogan” used to be Joe Rogan, his own self, until the Left forced him to not be that, so “ESPN for Grillers” used to be ESPN. I know lots of people who used to watch ESPN religiously, and would’ve been perfectly happy to do so forever, had ESPN not decided to be so fucking obnoxious that they had to switch. ESPN is now “the sports network for people who hate sports,” whoever might watch such a thing).
Outkick can’t go a day without some flag-sucking, usually of the Special Operators What Operate Specially variety, and even they seem to be keeping it more or less in their pants about Operation Furious Dildo. This is their “culture” section — click at your peril; seriously; you’ve been warned — and you have to scroll down a good ways to get to something like this:
Most of their stuff that I’ve seen isn’t even standalone “articles;” it’s selfies from various hot “Iranian” girls who were doubtless born in America and have never set foot East of Manhattan.
I can only think of two likely explanations for this: Either HGG is right, and ZOG is losing so badly, so obviously, that not even the flag pimps can spin it; or even the Grillers are finally starting to get tired of this shit. Not, alas, to the point of abandoning Our Greatest Ally — sadly, you’ll see Chronic Negro Fatigue* come out in the open before you see Chronic Bagel Fatigue — but maybe weary acceptance…
*Where do we stand on my suggestion to rename this condition “negromyalgia”? Did we ever vote? If not, why not? Also, my suggestion that we treat cholesterol problems among Basketball-Americans with a high-fiber diet product called “Dindu Muffins.” I thought that was fucking brilliant, and awarded myself several medals, but it seems not to have caught on.
I think it was Retired for Good who brought up the concept of “Air Policing,” which was an absolutely real, totally bugfuck insane thing they tried to do in the Raj (here’s a .pdf overview from the US Air Force). This, apparently, is that, and maybe we’re coming to a weary acceptance of it…?
Finally, Quotulatiousness brings us another link of note from the Great White North:
This being Canada, I’m surprised they didn’t burn it– and him– at the stake in a big public bonfire. Although to be fair — this being Canada — what on earth would cause him to admit it? I myself have a small collection of, shall we say, historical artifacts of problematic provenance. Most of mine have to do with Commies, not Kitties, and so aren’t quite as problematic, but still, I’m not just going to walk around town wearing an Order of Lenin; you need to be a bit selective about who you show that shit to.
I personally would love to own a signed copy of Mein Cough (it’s a medical textbook), just for the historical value, but I’m sure as hell not going to show it off to anyone I’m not 100% sure can handle it… and in Canada, that’s, what, four or five people, tops?
I think that covers it for this weekend, comrades. Have a great one, and as always, thanks for reading.
It touches on a lot of our perennial themes. The author is right, of course. And it’s all of a piece, somehow:
This current administration, if nothing else, is a perfect distillation of the values that we as a society have espoused for the last thirty years. All the years of “branding,” “marketing,” “positioning,” “networking,” all of the fake shit that you see on LinkedIn… What can I say, it has consequences.
In a weird way, the present state of American politics really is no different than the guy driving the beat up windowless van, who advertises his plumbing company with the slogan: “I will always be there for you. I will always be at your side. I will never falter.”
Big scale or small, the words are just as meaningless.
Preceded by a bit about the difference between “lying” and “bullshitting,” which is a distinction we used to understand. Yeah, Trump’s a bullshitter. Everybody over the age of about 40 knows what that means. We’ve all known a bullshitter in our time. And we all know how to handle a bullshitter, because that’s the thing: bullshitters are annoying, sure, but they actually get stuff done.
Everybody used to know how it goes. You’ve got a meeting with Donny, and you have to gird your loins for all the backslapping and gladhanding and… well, all the bullshit. It’s exhausting. Just because the Left always compares Trump to Hitler, that was something Mustache Guy’s inner circle used to say about him: Just being in his presence was exhausting. Not because he was always screaming and raving; in fact it was usually the opposite. He just talks and talks and talks; he’s overbearing, but not in-your-face. He just wears you down with his constant stream of bullshit.
You want a comic example? This is a bullshitter:
He just never. fucking. stops. Ever.
But he gets it done. The only reason he’s in a position to ruin Bushwood is that he’s rich — so rich that he’s about to buy Bushwood, and he earned every penny. That’s Trump. He’s the bullshitter’s bullshitter, but he gets it done.
As opposed to a liar, who never delivers. A bullshitter will tell you that whatever he’s about to do is going to be super, the best, yuuuuge, you won’t believe your eyes… and then does it. Maybe it isn’t super, yuuuge, the best, but it’s there; it’s done.
As noted, this used to be understood. And you can tell, because of all the mud the Left has slung at Trump, they never took one obvious line of attack. They mentioned in passing that some of his business ventures failed. But look at something like the Trump Taj Majal. It’s now the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, and there’s a reason for that: the Trump Taj Mahal failed, spectacularly, almost immediately. See also: the USFL:
In August 1984, the USFL voted to move from a spring to a fall schedule in 1986 to compete directly with the NFL. This was done at the urging of New Jersey Generals majority owner Donald Trump and a handful of other owners as a way to force a merger between the leagues. As part of this strategy, the USFL filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League in 1986, and a jury ruled that the NFL had violated anti-monopoly laws. However, in a victory in name only, the USFL was awarded a judgment of just $1, which under antitrust laws, was tripled to $3.[2] This court decision effectively ended the USFL’s existence. The league never played its planned 1986 season, and by the time it folded, it had lost over $163 million (equivalent to $390 million in 2024 dollars).
Hell, the guy even “wrote” a book called The Art of the Deal, and unlike every single person on the Left, I’ve actually cracked the cover, and… well, first, isn’t that bizarre? Let’s say you’re dealing with Hitler, the real one. Would you not at least give Mein Kampf a skim? But they didn’t, which should tell you something.
The point is, if you assigned me the job of attacking Donald Trump, that’s how I’d do it. I’d aim to scare the shit out of seniors, who are the largest and most reliable voting bloc: Would you trust this man with your Medicare? He’s a gambler, a loose cannon, pick your metaphor, and he admits it — openly, gleefully. Everything he does makes a huge splash. Some of it works out, and some of it doesn’t, but either way it’s spectacular. Is that a gamble you’re willing to bet your Social Security on?
And so on down the line. You could do that for the signature issue of just about any voting bloc you like. Hillary / Joe Biden may be stupid, and venal, and corrupt beyond words, but at least you know what you’re getting…
But the Left didn’t do that. And I think I know why: Succeed or fail, Trump unquestionably did stuff. Him, personally. He put his own, personal ass on the line. Sometimes he got it handed back to him on a platter — he failed, but it was he who failed. But even in failure, he has “agency,” to use one of the academic Left’s favorite buzzwords. The Trump Taj Majal failed, spectacularly, but it was the Trump Taj Mahal. You can’t blame it on “structural” blah blah blah, and it’s failure was not a “social construction.”
Which sheds some light, I think, on this part of the article:
The job interview process is a perfect example of this.
Everybody understands that most job postings inflate the necessary educational and skill requirements.
Everybody also understands that most individual candidates similarly inflate their skills.
Interestingly, both parties are implicitly aware of what the other is doing. Even more interestingly, both parties are aware that the other person is aware of their awareness.
And yet, neither can really acknowledge it, and so you’re left with a WWE style Kayfabe.
Now, in a less insane society, both parties would mutually agree to cut the shit. Companies would acknowledge that they wouldn’t need all of these overinflated credentials if they just invested a little bit more on training their employees, and candidates could actually be honest about their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their motivations for working in the first place.
In reality the opposite occurs. The bullshittery ratchets up.
Consider this from the “personal agency” perspective. It’s a foregone conclusion that somebody is going to get hired — the job is not going unfilled. In the whole universe of potential outcomes, the one you can confidently eliminate is “the HR lady goes back to the CEO and says ‘sorry, we just couldn’t find anybody.'” That job will get filled, because it’s the HR lady’s job to fill it.
The problem should be obvious right there. Her job — her one responsibility, her overriding priority — is not “fill the job with the best candidate.” It’s “fill the job,” full stop. Her incentive is not “improve the company’s bottom line by hiring the best candidate.” No, quite the opposite. Her one incentive is entirely negative: “Don’t hire such a bad candidate that the CEO can blame you for the candidate’s failure.”
How does one avoid such an outcome? How does one avoid getting called on the carpet, to explain to the CEO why you picked such a lousy candidate?
Easy: You produce an absurdly detailed 463 bullet point checklist for the job’s “qualifications.” If the candidate says he fulfills all of them… well, there it is. He’s got the proper documentation for each and every bullet point; what’s a poor HR lady to do?
The personal agency, in other words, is shifted entirely to the applicant. Hesaid he had all the qualifications, and indeed he did have them, according to all the Official Paperwork he submitted. All I, the HR lady, could do is compare the paperwork submitted to the 463 bullet point checklist, count up the number of matches, and pick the set of paperwork that most closely matched.
Thus,
And now, basically every domain of life becomes a sort of Kayfabe. With friends, family, romantic partners, and just about every other form of relationship. Online interactions, offline interactions, it all just becomes one gigantic facade.
Let’s call this “Persona Maintenance,” and it’s a “natural” consequence of Organizational Behavior.
Chester Barnard recognized that individuals behave differently when acting in their organizational role than when acting separately from the organization. Organizational behavior researchers study the behavior of individuals primarily in their organizational roles. One of the main goals of organizational behavior research is “to revitalize organizational theory and develop a better conceptualization of organizational life”
I left the link in there, because the Barnard entry is fascinating. I didn’t know any of that stuff, but now I’d like to propose that at some point, we should do an in-depth study of The Functions of the Executive; I bet we’d learn a LOT — please note the 1938 publication date.
For present purposes, though, let’s take “organizational role” and what I’m calling “persona” as two aspects of the same phenomenon. As we’ve all noted, the very first thing that happens in any organization that sees itself as such is: the members stop focusing on the organization’s putative goal, and start focusing on maintaining (or, ideally, expanding) their own role within the organization.
If Joe and Steve are business partners, it’ll probably happen that Steve ends up handling the hiring — he’s just better at it. If Steve ends up hiring a guy who doesn’t work out, both partners know who’s responsible, and they can talk it out. In other words, Steve’s role is “partner,” and part of the “partner” role is that you trust the judgment of the other partner, which includes accepting the inevitability of mistakes.
But once the “HR” function is formalized, as we all know, the relationship changes. You’re not supposed to mess up; that bit about “the inevitability of mistakes” drops out, because we didn’t hire you to make mistakes, HR lady, we hired you to get it right. Not that Partner Steve wants to make mistakes; we just accept that it happens. But we do not accept that from HR Lady, because HR Lady’s role is “getting the hiring right.”
In short, what ends up happening is that the HR Lady is, in effect, always re-applying for her own job. Of course all her hiring decisions should be evaluated “holistically,” and of course the Policies and Procedures Manual says they’re evaluated holistically, but in reality that never happens. The CEO doesn’t look at it and say “You know, Karen in HR gets it right about 60% of the time, that’s ok, it’d cost more to take a flyer on hiring somebody else, who probably would achieve about the same success rate, so let’s keep her.” All the CEO sees is the number: 60 is not 100. It’s nowhere close to 100. Why isn’t it 100?
So she does everything in her power to make it 100. There is a checklist, and every hire she made said they meet all 463 bullet points, so her success rate is 100%. As for the actual work they were hired for, actually getting done? Who cares!
Same way in any other interaction in Clown World. Since we’re using Heartiste’s 463 bullet point checklist, and since the original article brought up “romantic partners,” certainly dating works that way, or appears to work that way — I’m out of that game, and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but I’ve seen how Basic College Girls do. Guys end up constantly “reapplying” for the position. You have to have all 463 bullet points, and you have to maintain all 463 bullet points, constantly, in all your online profiles. Your life becomes your job, and your job is “Persona Maintenance.” You must maintain congruence with all 463 bullet points, all the time, whether that’s in relationships or at work.
What does all that have to do with weightlifting?
Wellll, there’s no such thing as “persona” in the gym. You can’t inflate your credentials. You can’t rejigger the incentives, shade the reports, fudge the numbers. There’s only one congruence that matters: You can either lift the weight, or you cannot lift the weight. The success is your success; the failure is your failure. You, and you alone, are accountable.
The entirety of Clown World militates against that kind of responsibility. Just as the Left never took what seems to be an obvious line of attack against Trump, because they can’t even admit to themselves the possibility of personal accountability, they can’t have you discovering the baseline fact that you can either lift the weight or you can’t. There is no theory, no Word Magic, no Very Clever argument you can make, that will get the bar off your chest. You can’t dank meme it up there. No matter how many retweets and upvotes you get, it will not move.
Founding Questions 
