I’m beginning to understand why Pol Pot exterminated the professional class.
Unity 2020: Why the Lesser Evil? 2
If I had to identify any way in which my views have shifted over the years, it would probably be that I have largely moved away from the idea of a far-left/far-right “third position” type of tactical framework toward more of a revolutionary centrist one. The far-right and far-left are not alternatives to the duopoly as much as mere caricatures or parodies of the duopoly. The far-right and far-left typically either have totalitarian ambitions of their own or merely get absorbed in lesser evilism. I also underestimated the entrenchment of culture war politics and overestimated the commitment of radicals to actually overthrowing the system. Though I think recent events have certainly confirmed my long-held view that the urban lumpenproletariat is the vanguard class of a modern revolution.
Unity2020 – Ballot access: Can you see it? Reply
The main problem I see with Bret’s idea, aside from the technical issues and sectarian conflict, is that the elected officials are merely managers and the electoral system is merely a front for the oligarchy. Unity 2020 is not entirely dissimilar to the “pan-secessionist meta-party” idea I’ve written about in the past but the PSMP would only be an afterthought once a dual power system has already been developed, which would require not only large scale organization but also much higher levels of political education than what currently exists by a huge margin. Nor would the PSMP be a means of taking state power but merely the political propaganda arm of a movement to abolish the state, which can only be achieved through dislodging the oligarchy.
Do Libertarians Have Any Idea What’s Going On? 3
I would actually agree with Pakman’s critique of the Koch-model of libertarianism and suggest that political decentralization must necessarily be accompanied by economic decentralization. But where this commentary goes wrong is with its failure to recognize the role of national governments in creating the transnational corporate and financial entities that he is criticizing. Social democrats like Pakman are folks who want to treat lung cancer with cigarettes. It’s the same way the Bircher-types will denounce the UN as a part of a plot for “one-world government” while being completely oblivious to the role of the US in creating and maintain the global order.
The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories: Why Do People Believe Them? 2
Many conspiracy theories are obviously wacked. But the main problem with many critics of conspiracy theories is that they simply assume that the values and ideological framework of centrist liberalism or social democracy are “true” in the manner of revealed religion as opposed to being just another set of preferences or institutional arrangements.
Psychcentral
Conspiracy theories are as old as time but it’s only in more recent years that psychologists have begun to unravel the belief that some people have in them. According to researcher Goertzel (1994), conspiracy theories are explanations that refer to hidden groups working in secret to achieve sinister objectives.
BLM’s Hitlerian Heart Reply
My main criticism of the Left is its failure to recognize the centuries-long history of leftist genocides, massacres, purges, repression, and authoritarianism. Most leftists treat this as a side issue at best, even they acknowledge the issue at all. Too many holocaust-deniers on the Left.
By David Cole
Taki’s Mag
“Why is Hitler remembered as the worst villain ever, when other dictators racked up higher body counts?” Man, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that question, I’d have 6 million bucks (though that number might decrease during a later recount). It’s a decent enough question, though. Stalin killed way more than Hitler, as did Mao. Yet it’s Hitler who’s most remembered as the “worst of the worst.” Why?
The textbook Simon Wiesenthal Center answer is “Oy, the gess chembers! Shtalin didn’t use gess chembers.” In other words, Hitler’s scarier because he “modernized” and “industrialized” mass killing. Booga-booga!
The textbook far-right answer is that we Jews, who run things and all, vengefully elevate Hitler to super-devil status because he picked on us. So we damn him and his memory for all eternity.
There’s truth to both answers. Regarding gas chambers, yes, the human mind is more likely to be captivated by an assembly-line sci-fi murder contraption than by a gulag where people die of starvation, exposure, and bullets. “Official” Holocaust historiography tends to play up the elements that excite the imagination.
Though Most LGBTQs Vote Democratic, New Poll Shows 45% of Queer Men Backing Trump 1
This is nothing new. Exit polls in the 2004 election showed that 25% of self-identified gays voted for George W. Bush. The idea that every minority individual is a liberal or a leftist is absurd.
By Daniel Villarreal
Newsweek
A recent survey of 1,200 queer men in the United States found that 45 percent planned on voting for Republican President Donald Trump. Comparatively, 51 percent said they would vote for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The poll’s results fall very close to recent national polling showing 50 percent of voters supporting Biden and 43 percent supporting Trump.
The poll, conducted by the queer men’s social app Hornet, actually asked 10,000 of its users worldwide about their preferred presidential candidate. But while 66 percent of worldwide users supported Biden and 34 percent supported Trump, the percentages among U.S. men were much closer.
Justice Department deems New York City, Portland and Seattle ‘anarchist jurisdictions’ Reply
If only it were true, Fat Billy.
By Allan Smith
NBC News
The Justice Department released a list of cities Monday that it has deemed “anarchist jurisdictions” under President Donald Trump’s instructions this month to review federal funding for local governments in places where violence or vandalism has occurred during protests.
That memo directed Attorney General William Barr, in consultation with Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, to identify jurisdictions “that have permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract these criminal activities (anarchist jurisdictions).”
Too Much Centralization Is Turning Everything into a Political Crisis 1
By Porter Burkett
Mises Institute
Is American politics reaching a breaking point? A recent study by researchers from Brown and Stanford Universities certainly paints a grim picture of the state of the national discourse. The study attempts to measure “affective polarization,” defined as the extent to which citizens feel more negatively toward other political parties than their own, in nine developed countries, including the United States. The study authors concluded that affective polarization has risen much faster and more drastically in the United States than in any of the other countries they studied (figure 1). They then speculated on possible explanations of increasing polarization, suggesting that changing party composition, increasing racial division, and 24-hour partisan cable news are convincing possible causes. Notably, the research was completed before the coronavirus pandemic or the police killing of George Floyd, two events that have only deepened political division.
A ‘patriotic’ bipartisan presidential ticket determined by a coin flip demands to be taken seriously Reply
As milquetoast as Bret Weinstein’s politics are, his Unity 2020 idea is probably the best one out there at present, as far as anything that is relatively mainstream. Obviously, the ruling class parties are corrupt and incompetent. The minor opposition parties like the Libertarians and Greens are ideological sects with limited appeal to most people, and the “far-right” and “far-left” are overrun with odious extremists (the Freikorps/Falangist wannabes vs the Red Guard wannabes/left-Khomeinists).
By Anthony L. Fisher
Business Insider
- The “intellectual dark web” star Bret Weinstein sees certain disaster for the US if Trump or Biden wins in 2020.
- Weinstein launched “Unity 2020” — a “patriotic” bipartisan ticket with the president and vice president determined by coin flip — in the hopes of uniting the country.
- Unity 2020 has chosen Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw for its ticket. But both have already endorsed their respective parties’ nominees.
- Weinstein wants the Libertarian and Green parties to give Unity 2020 their ballot access as a demonstration of their patriotism.
- The Libertarian Party’s executive director told Business Insider that Unity 2020 “feels like snake oil” sold by “people who should know better.”
- “Instead of as spoilers, [third parties] would be understood as heroes,” Weinstein told Business Insider.
A wargame designer defines our four possible civil wars. 2
By Mike Selinker
Medium
I’m a wargame designer. I co-developed the first reboot of Axis & Allies and its D-Day edition, made a mythological Risk game called Risk Godstorm, and burned down both the Roman Empire in Gloria Mundi and medieval France in Veritas. I write about game theory learned from simulating war outcomes. Like many people, I’m stuck on this as the likely outcome of our situation:
We’re facing a civil war.
Up until yesterday, I wasn’t thinking a civil war was probable. But then Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. With her likely went the last chance the 2020 election will end peacefully. She told her granddaughter:
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
It seems unlikely that wish will be heeded, though with everything this year you never know. Republicans now have a three-and-a-half-month window to install an unbreakable 6–3 majority on the Supreme Court. If they do, abortion rights, voting rights, and gay rights—actually, just all civil rights in general—are doomed.
But it’s worse than that, because we expect this election to be contested. If they have that majority before then, it doesn’t matter who wins the election, because a 6–3 court will kit-bash some reason to hand Trump a second term. So the Democrats are threatening that filling Ginsburg’s seat means they will create two to four more seats right after they win the Senate, if that happens. They might add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, or even change the rule of apportionment. They might, as my friend Cyndi calls it, “act Ruthlessly.” This is the stuff that wars are made of.
We find ourselves in a country where both sides can’t imagine their loss would be legitimate. If Biden loses, his supporters will blame GOP trickery and voter disenfranchisement. If Trump loses, his supporters will blame voter fraud and riots. It doesn’t matter that the first one of those is real and the second isn’t. We are heading toward a reckoning.
GOP Will Play Dems For Suckers On SCOTUS Forever Reply
The ongoing leftward shift of US culture combined with an increasingly solid Republican control of the courts should make for an interesting political future.
How The Elites RIGGED Supreme Court Politics To Cover Their Corporate Scam Reply
Saager nails it in this. Fortunately, I am neither a “cultural conservative” nor a “cultural progressive” so I don’t need to care about all this Supreme Court stuff.
INSANE First Day Voting Lines As Polls Show Voters Hardening Reply
This is funny. Brainwashed idiots taking the state’s coronation ceremony seriously.
Crisis Triggered By RBG Death Reveals DEEP POLITICAL ROT At Heart Of US System 1
The system keeps falling apart.
Trump Threatens To Issue Executive Order Preventing Biden From Being Elected President Reply
By Tommy Beer
Forbes
In a wide-ranging speech at a campaign rally Saturday night, President Donald Trump ramped up attacks against his opponent, Joe Biden, calling Biden the “dumbest of all candidates,” and went so far as to declare, “maybe I’ll sign an executive order that you cannot have him as your president.”
The Plastic Hypocrites of the American Left Reply
By Troy Southgate
None of us should be surprised to see the plastic hypocrites of the American Left mourn the recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Whilst this female equivalent of Judge Roughneck is being celebrated for having implemented a series of laws designed to provide the misleading impression that we are living in the midst of an unprecedented social revolution, few of her admirers seem to care that this formidable old battle-axe was nonetheless enforcing the laws of the most brutal regime on the planet.
Marxism: Its Historic Role and Intellectual Legacy Reply
By Keith Preston
An Overview of Marxist Theory
During the middle part of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined a comprehensive theory concerning how human societies evolve over time, and the factors that shape the character of particular societies. According to Marxist theory, human history is the history of the rise and fall of different kinds of economic systems, and it is the economic relationships that human beings enter into that determine every other aspect of their society at any particular time. A new economic system emerges when an older system has exceeded its historical purpose. New economic systems (“modes of production”) develop within the context of the system they eventually replace. Feudalism developed out of primitive societies, and capitalism developed out of feudalism. Marx and Engels believed that communism would develop out of the conditions created by capitalism.
The emergence of each new economic system, or mode of production, comes about as a result of conflict. The conditions of the older economic system give rise to the newer one, and the two systems eventually come into conflict with one another with the rising economic forces supplanting the declining ones. However, this conflict is not something that human beings deliberately choose to engage in. Instead, human consciousness and thought is shaped by the material conditions human beings find themselves in. The ideas that dominate the intellectual life of a particular period in history are determined by the existing set of economic relationships, and the dominant mode of production. Marx and Engels believed that culture is an outgrowth of the material forces that shape the economy.
Anarchisme de Droite (“Anarchism of the Right”) Reply
Translated from the French Wikipedia:
Right-wing anarchism is a philosophical and political sensibility, deeply anti-liberal, characterized by a refusal to join a society or a system based on parliamentary democracy, the power of money, received ideas in matters of social order, and more generally any form of authority claiming to them.
This way of thinking, however, retains ideals and values considered politically, morally, and ideologically right-wing. Otherwise, the term anarchism is used.
However, there are several anarchisms, and it is extremely difficult to classify a person claiming to be anarchist as a right-wing or left-wing anarchist. The actors associated with this article should be taken with all the necessary reserve.
Foundations of Right-Wing Anarchism
At the basis of right-wing anarchism, we find first of all a rather violent criticism of the power of a minority of intellectuals. This criticism paradoxically relates both to the ineffectiveness of this power and to its dangers. Intellectuals, subject to the dominant ideology of democracies, are supposed to reinforce the intellectual conformism which is inherent in this type of government (Marcel Aymé has devoted a book to Intellectual Comfort and Louis Pauwels has made a lot of talk about him by speaking of mental AIDS ). These intellectuals then become the main architects of these democracies, because parliamentary democracies base their authority on the expression of a majority which can be influenced, and which must be influenced to keep the population “whole” in their cage. This is where, according to right-wing anarchists, lies the foundation of political power and, by extension, of political tyranny. According to them, intellectuals are not a force of resistance against political power; at best they would have no impact on him, at worst they would strengthen him and receive their reward from the ruling classes.
A Radical Alternative to Whiteness Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
Is it just me or do white people kind of suck lately? I mean more than usual. That’s not racist, I use to be one. I sort of still am, I guess. More on that later. It kind of seems like white folk have fallen into two equally obnoxious sub-species. There’s the White Alpha Douche, bitching like a 13 year old emo kid that he’s the real victim because everybody else is playing the fucking victim card and that’s his card. Then there’s the equally tiresome Squishy White Apology Addict, who’s just terribly terribly sorry about all the savagery his ancestors have dished out to minorities, but now he looks to the Noble Savages and Magical Negroes to show him how to walk and talk and censor people like me for not stepping in line. He’s probably banning me again from Facebook as we speak for self-identifying as a tranny and patting himself on the back for being part of the solution.
Both of these unbearable archetypes are offensively one dimensional and, lets face it, downright racist in their shallow world view. The first one blames all the world’s woes on people of color, and the second relies completely on this same coalition of minorities to save him from his ancestral evil ways. Black folks have enough trouble getting home from the grocery store without getting shot full of ketamine and chucked in the back of a police cruiser without having to choose between smacking us or holding our hand. Why can’t we just get our shit together? Well, believe it or not, it’s not all our fault. Not exactly anyway.
12 Ridiculous Government Regulations That Are Almost Too Bizarre To Believe Reply
By Martin Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Even with all of the massive economic problems that the United States is facing, if the government would just get off our backs most of us would do okay. In America today, it is rapidly getting to the point where it is nearly impossible to start or to operate a small business.
The federal government, the state governments and local governments are cramming thousands upon thousands of new ridiculous regulations down our throats each year. It would take a full team of lawyers just to even try to stay informed about all of these new regulations.
Small business in the United States is literally being suffocated by red tape. We like to think that we live in “the land of the free”, but the truth is that our lives and our businesses are actually tightly constrained by millions of rules and regulations. Today there is a “license” for just about every business activity. In fact, in some areas of the country today you need a “degree” and multiple “licenses” before you can even submit an application for permission to start certain businesses. And if you want to actually hire some people for your business, the paperwork nightmare gets far worse. It is a wonder that anyone in America is still willing to start a business from scratch and hire employees. The truth is that the business environment in the United States is now so incredibly toxic that millions of Americans have simply given up and don’t even try to work within the system anymore.
Today, the U.S. government has an “alphabet agency” for just about everything. The nanny state feels like it has to watch, track and tightly control virtually everything that we do. The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies. In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600. Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long. That is just one example of how bad things have gotten.
But it is not just the federal government that is ramming thousands of ridiculous regulations down our throats. The truth is that in many cases state and local governments are far worse. We have become a nation that is run and dominated by bureaucrats. Yes, there always must be rules in a society, but we have gotten to the point where there are so many millions of rules that the game has become unplayable.
The following are 12 examples of ridiculous regulations that are almost too bizarre to believe….
Right Vs Left Libertarianism | NonCompete & Brenton Vs David Friedman & Michael Huemer 5
I tend to agree with this assessment from the “Sovereign Counties” site.
Anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms. The system presumes a state enforcing exclusive entitlement to productive means. Competing security agencies, enforcing these entitlements and only these entitlements, constitute a state.
Anarcho-communism as usually described is not stateless either.
County sovereignty, or free association through local autonomy, does not claim to be strictly stateless, but it is closer to anarcho-communism than anarcho-capitalism. Inalienable self-ownership assumes a state enforcing the right. County boundaries and non-aggression between counties also assume a state, but the powers of this state can be distributed among the counties.
County sovereignty permits as much or as little capitalism as free people want. Anarcho-capitalism coercively stacks the deck in favor of capitalists with hereditary title in perpetuity. The capitalists are vassals of a state, and their state invariably expands their privilege through rent-seeking.
I don’t have any problem with people calling themselves “anarcho-capitalist” but political decentralization automatically implies economic decentralization. Bye, bye central banking, currency monopolies, patents/intellectual property/copyrights, land monopolies, corporate personhood, corporate welfare, “public-private partnerships,” limited liability laws, subsidies, government contracts, loans, guarantees, bailouts, purchases of goods, price controls, regulatory privilege, grants of monopolies, protectionist tariffs and trade policies, bankruptcy laws, military intervention to gain access to international markets and protect foreign investments, regulating or prohibiting organized labor activity, eminent domain, discriminatory taxation, ignoring corporate crimes and countless other forms of state-imposed favors and privileges. Even on the local level, many of these kinds of features exist which have the collective effect of centralization control over wealth, property, and resources.
