Year: 2023

The Inflation is Real

Karl Denninger observes that the government’s CPI numbers simply do not reflect the reality at the grocery store:

When I go to the grocery store the register tape — and my Quicken — says I’m spending a lot more money there. Not a couple of percent over the last 12 months, an obscene increase. Shelf prices are one thing, but actual paid prices are truth — and those involve discounts, coupons, BOGOs and similar. I, like most people, buy pretty much the same things to eat. Spending over the last 12 months is in fact up more than 30%, not 2%.

Car insurance is claimed to be up about 20% — and it is. That’s real, and everyone with a car has had to pay it. But the government also claims that health insurance has been down in price by roughly 30%. That’s nonsense, and we all know it, but there it is.

There are some who think the answer is “higher wages!” But its not; you can’t keep up any more than you can with a “roaring” stock market.

The simple reality is that you cannot have Congress emit eight percent, more or less, of the economy in newly emitted credit and not have prices go up by about 8% unless there is somewhere that absorbs it which you do not have to cover. For roughly two decades there was — the increase in global trade, most of which is settled in dollars, buffers that by temporarily capturing the money while goods are in transit.

Note however that a permanent change in trade doesn’t result in this remaining captured; it is the change in level of global trade that does that, and only while the change is taking place. We’ve offshored basically everything we can offshore at this point and thus the available increase has dwindled to essentially zero.

The problem is that during that 20 year period of time we “trained” Congress (and both political parties) that they can run 30% deficits and not have it show up as 8% inflation on a permanent basis. That’s flat-out false.

This in turn means that either we’re going to absorb about 8% inflation (no matter what the government claims), spending must come down by about 30% at the federal level and that is only to stabilize prices, not return them lower, or taxes must go up by about 40% which of course is another expense in the household and reduces disposable income. The latter is politically impossible.

How does this resolve?

Revolution and civil war cometh, if Peter Turchin’s cliodynamics are to be believed. A perfect storm is approaching for the United States, as all four structural drivers of societal instability are not only present, but appear to be at, or at least near, record historical levels.

Focus on what is important, focus on what is going to last. It’s not an accident that Castalia has shifted from ephemeral ebooks to leather books that are capable of lasting for centuries and have been assembling machinery for everything from sewing machines to leather bindings.

It’s going to be difficult. But our community is not only going to survive, it is going to thrive. Because unlike most, we have been repeatedly tested by adversity, and we are hard enough for the hard times.

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Go Ahead, Make Your List

Michael Rapaport clearly doesn’t understand that the rest of the world increasingly doesn’t want money or investment or anything else from him and his friends when he threatens everyone who will not publicly support the idea that “self-defense” gives Israel a right to commit ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

A lot of conversations about my Jewish friends about the silence, the disappointment, the disappearing acts, the Doug Henning, the David Blaine shit, just disappear – poof! – in the air. A lot of people have disappeared. I’m telling you right now, we are making a list, we are checking it twice. And we already know who’s been naughty or nice. See that pun? Do you see that pun? I’m talking about the Jewish people. But I’m also talking Christmas carols.

We will not forget. We’re not suckers. So when you come around asking for this, that, and the third, come around asking for money, investments, and all that stuff, I promise you, I promise you, it’s being discussed. We’re paying attention to who’s being anti-Jewish, anti-semitic, anti-Israel… or not saying anything at all. I promise you.

I’m an enigma. A lot of Jewish people seem nice, we seem like suckers, we seem like you could kind of convince us… Trust me. Don’t come around in six months, eight months, two years. We’re remembering. We’re paying attention.

It’s always educational to observe when the mask slips. And I expect that a lot of other people are remembering, paying attention, and making lists too. A lot.

It might be helpful to recall that historically, those who have prospered most during an age of low polarization are very seldom those who do well during the subsequent age of discord. In fact, as per Peter Turchin, the ages of discord are usually dominated by disaffected and disenfranchised elites with the mass weight of the unjustly immiserated common people behind them, to the detriment of the previous elite that held a disproportionate amount of a society’s wealth and influence prior to its self-delegitimization.

We are presently in what Turchin calls a precrisis period. The historical patterns are observably playing out again. Which is something that the more perspicacious members of Mr. Rapaport’s list-making elite are finally beginning to recognize to their observable dismay:

Israel appears to have heavily banked on being able to use its various social control technologies—which mostly consists of its various NGOs and global ‘anti-hate groups’ like the ADL—to dictate the narrative around this genocide.

But they failed miserably.

Israel did not appear to have a good bead on the pulse of the global awakening. They were sclerotically stuck just a few years behind the times, still thinking this was the late 2010s with the peak of Big Tech’s sprawling domination of our minds, and the omnipotent Leftist Narrative seizure.

Times have changed, things are unwinding, Israel is losing control.

Now, I think it’s too soon to express any opinion at all on Israel’s military actions in Gaza, much less to describe it as a genocide. On the basis of the limited information available, the IDF’s tactics actually appear to be somewhat on the cautious and ineffective side, especially when compared with the successful Russian tactics used at Mariupol, Bahkmut and now Avdiivka. But there are no shortage of elements within both Israel and the diaspora that are openly calling for either ethnic cleansing or genocide – do recall these are not synonyms, but two different, albeit tangentially-related concepts – and therefore rhetorical fair game for the pro-Palestinian side.

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Mailvox: Why GRRM Can’t Finish ASOIAF

A highly literate reader named JC emails a detailed analysis of George RR Martin’s difficulty in finishing A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, and reaches precisely the same conclusion that I have assumed all along, which is that Martin is too devoted to intellectual subversion to accept the true and obvious heroic end to his fantasy saga, which is to say, the triumphant marriage of ice and fire.

To put it rather more concisely: one can no more write an English-style novel and not end it with a wedding than one can write a Japanese-style novel and not end it with a suicide.

I don’t think it’s so much that Martin won’t finish the saga as that he can’t. And principally for one reason (though I imagine there’s a host of ancillary reasons): Jon Snow & Danaerys Targaryan themselves. He didn’t anticipate when he set out to write his story, I suspect, to write one genuinely heroic character, let alone two.

It’s clear that Tyrion, and the Lannister family in general, are his favoured characters, and it’s the Lannisters who set the tone of the series. I think this is so for both internal-structural reasons and for personal reasons. Martin just prefers them and sympathises most with their worldview. Structurally, I believe the Lannisters are the vehicle through which Martin has tried to accomplish his main artistic goal in writing A Song of Ice and Fire: to subvert the Fantasy genre, with its roots in the heroic and the mythical, by introducing an element of cynicism and realist historiography, a literary Real Politik.

To do this he had to build a typical Fantasy setting with mythological elements, in order to deconstruct them from within. What he didn’t anticipate, I suspect, is that the ‘machinery’ of his writing would churn out two more or less heroic characters, there among all the cynics, warlords, cowards, bureaucrats, hypocrites, mercenaries, careerists et al. with which his universe abounds: Jon and Dany — who do fit the classical standards of heroism, despite Martin’s critique of their characters, as their motivations ultimately transcend the merely self-interested, and they are brave in the pursuit. Martin is, at bottom, a good storyteller with a keen sense of character, so it’s very likely he trusted his intuitions in writing these characters and plotting out their stories, without fully realising the overall structural implications for his saga.

Now I think he’s reached a bind in his grand narrative. There are two irresolvably conflicting impulses acting within him as a writer — and it’s this irresolvability that has given him an incurable writer’s block, sapping him of all motivation to conclude his epic: the first impulse is the conscious wish to accomplish his artistic aim of deconstructing the heroic and mythical foundations of Fantasy; and the second impulse is the novelist’s natural need not to betray his own characters, to provide a coherent resolution to their ‘character arc’. The problem is that, unwittingly, Jon and Dany have turned out to be genuine heroes in their own right, and Martin can’t figure out how to give their stories a fittingly heroic ending without succumbing to classical Fantasy standards, the very standards he set out to subvert in the first place. Jon and Dany narratologically deserve an heroic ending, but can Martin bring himself to do justice to their heroism, or even to spoil it with one last act of cynicism?

It’s clear that the ‘Ice’ and ‘Fire’ in A Song of Ice and Fire are Jon and Dany respectively, and that it’s ultimately their tale. I can only imagine that Martin did this unconsciously, and that it’s made him nauseous now that he’s discovered it. What we see in the TV Show — Jon and Dany having a romantic affair and it being discovered to be incestuous — I think is Martin’s intention, and I think this development shows his good writer’s instinct. It’s what comes after (the final season of the TV Show) where everything falls apart, and I think Martin knows it. He knows the notes he provided to the show directors are sloppy, inconsistent, and unfulfilling. I can only imagine that when he now sits to write the final chapters in his story, he feels a debilitating anxiety over the problem the existence of Jon and Dany, and the challenge their unforeseen heroism, transcending the pettiness of their surroundings, has caused for him, leaving out all that enthusiasm he once had for the narrative and its setting, when he was writing the opening volumes.

Continue reading “Mailvox: Why GRRM Can’t Finish ASOIAF”

Pizzagate Was Always Real

Another elite media debunker is arrested for molesting children:

A mainstream journalist and close friend of John Podesta, who bragged about ‘debunking’ Pizzagate, has been arrested on a sickening slew of child rape charges. Slade Sohmer, editor-in-chief at The Recount and friend of former Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, was arrested last month for raping multiple toddlers and babies.

For those who missed the most the most explosive pedophilia exposé to-date, The People’s Voice broke the news back in 2016 that there was evidence of pedophile “code words” used in emails from John Podesta released by WikiLeaks. Numerous emails from the Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign incongruously referred to food items such as pasta, cheese pizza, and ice cream in ways the FBI warned are used as code-words by pedophiles.

Since then, despite the mainstream media attempting to downplay the story as a “conspiracy theory”, numerous mainstream journalists and figures connected to elite pedophiles have been arrested for the very crime they attempted to “debunk.”

At this point, any public claim that Pizzagate has been “debunked” should suffice to serve as prima facie cause to be arrested and have one’s digital devices searched. And in other news, another elite member of the (((corpocracy))) was just jettisoned from his position after his little sister publicly accused him of sexually abusing her from the age of four.

OpenAI, the company behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT, fired its CEO and founder, Sam Altman, on Friday. His stunning departure sent shockwaves through the budding AI industry.

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Meanwhile, on Taiwan

The two anti-independence parties are formally joining forces:

Taiwan’s opposition parties have agreed to run a joint campaign in January’s election, raising the chances that a more China-friendly government takes power in Taipei. The Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party announced plans to run a united campaign following a meeting Wednesday that centered around how to decide which of their two nominees would head the campaign as the presidential candidate…

“A successful opposition alliance — no matter who is running as president — means it’s likely cross-strait tensions will improve as the opposition has more than a 50% chance of beating the DPP’s Lai according to local polls,” according to Wang Yeh-lih, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.

Lai has benefited so far from a divided opposition to lead most opinion polls. He had a 33% support rating, according to the latest survey by broadcaster TVBS, with Ko in second at 24% and Hou with 22%. Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou had the backing of 8% of respondents. An alliance between the KMT and the TPP could leave Gou out in the cold after the independent presidential contender also floated the idea of teaming up with Ko.

Which means that after the 2024 election, the Chinese will likely be negotiating with a relatively friendly government. If Gou ends up in a position of power, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that may indicate that a sudden reunification announcement is in the cards.

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A Respite of Rapes

CDAN reports that George RR Martin is not going to finish A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE.

This permanent A list author has told a few close friends that he never intends on finishing a long awaited book series.

It’s no surprise at this point. All authors, sooner or later, lose their literary fastball, usually around the age of 70 or so. Martin is 75, he is in poor health, he has more money than he can reasonably spend in his lifetime, and he has no children, so he has literally nothing to gain from finishing a story that has already been concluded, however unsatisfactorily, in the television format.

He knows that the fans don’t like his intended end to the saga, so what’s the purpose of devoting several of his last remaining years to torturing himself in order to finish a story that he knows the fans will not find satisfying?

As a reader, I completely sympathize with the firestorm of fury that will likely greet the realization that the saga has already been effectively concluded. But as an author, I can’t honestly say that Martin’s rumored decision is not the right one. Martin knows that his latter books in the series don’t live up to the first two, and I have no doubt he’s well aware that what he’s written since will be widely criticized as sub-par. Better not to publish than publish that which can only detract from his respectable literary legacy.

However, fans of the series need not worry overmuch. There is no way his publisher is walking away from a gold mine that is so easily mined, so I expect that after his death, the publisher will convince whoever ends up with the rights to permit the hiring of a writer to finish the series ala Brandon Sanderson and The Wheel of Time. Ironically, as a proven epic fantasy author, I would probably be one of the top three candidates to do it except for a) my persona non grata status in the SF/F publishing world and b) I have my own epic fantasy saga to bring to a close.

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A Gatekeeper in Action

Tim Pool does NOT want to let his guest talk about the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty or its potential implications for the current US Navy presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

GUEST: I’m concerned with having American aircraft carriers over there, like what I keep being told about the USS Liberty, that’s something with the Israeli government-

TIM POOL: You should, you should be careful about that one!

SIDEKICK: Allegedly, the Israeli Air Force, jet fighter aircraft, I mean, they did end up paying out the American government.

GUEST: So I’m concerned, like false flag operation, like a missile comes out of Gaza and hits one of our aircraft carriers, but it was actually an Israeli missile. I don’t want, we should get out of there, it doesn’t-

TIM POOL: Let me stop you there. It doesn’t matter where the missile comes from. If a missile comes out of the Middle East in any capacity and hits a US target, everyone will claim it was exactly what they want it
to be, exactly. The US military will say Iran did it, the pro-Palestinians will say Israel did it, the pro-Israel will say Hamas did it.

GUEST: Yeah, if it comes out of a foreign country other than Israel, then it’ll be hard to deny.

TIM POOL: It doesn’t matter where it comes from! The US will say Iran did it.

GUEST: Right, well, if it comes out of Tel Aviv it’s going to be hard to sell that.

TIM POOL: But prove it came out of Tel Aviv! How do you know? You read the news! You are going to get American intelligence agencies going to news organizations, saying “tell them it came out of Iran”!

GUEST: I don’t think the Americans want their carrier to be hit as a false flag. Maybe the USS Liberty thing was an accident.

SIDEKICK: That’s the controversy over it. The Israeli government claims it was an accident, but some survivors say that they don’t think it was an accident, so was it a false flag? That’s why people talk about it.

GUEST: Did America get involved in the 1967 war after that?

SIDEKICK: No, because it ended up it ended up being really short but-

TIM POOL: We are, we’re going to go to super chats so if you haven’t already would you kindly smash that Like button, and subscribe to this channel.

I’m not saying Tim Pool is wrong, although I think there is zero chance that any Israeli missiles will be launched at any American ships; the fact that the US media still avoids the subject of the USS Liberty like vampires avoiding holy water tends to indicate that the Israelis don’t have any desire to risk repeating that sort of debacle, not when the US Navy is perfectly capable of sinking its own ships without any help from friend, foe, or greatest ally. And, depending upon the captain, possibly without even intentionally trying to do so.

Also, there are no shortage of influential neocons in the US government and media who want war with Iran far worse than the Israelis do. They are both less attached to reality and more distanced from the potential consequences. Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld once said, in an ironic turn of phrase, that US neocons are willing to fight to the very last Israeli.

What is most interesting about the interview, however, is the way in which Pool tells the guest to “be careful” after he brings up the incident, and then immediately attempts to change the subject, twice. It would be very interesting to ask Mr. Pool why he believes one has to “be careful” about a minor military engagement that took place 56 years ago and is such a matter of public record that it has its own Wikipedia page.

This is what media gatekeeping looks like in action. It’s the avoidance of certain topics and the steering of the public discourse away from those topics when they are, for some reason, accidentally brought up.

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Thursday Arktoons

FAIRY DOOR Episode 55: Mists of Memory

FRANKENSTEIN – THE RETURN Episode 13: Terror Under Trance

THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL Episode 17: The Roof of Hell

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: ADVENTURE Episode 101: The Brigand

三更战 Episode 10: 亡已呼召

BEN GARRISON Episode 122: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

STONETOSS Episode 242: Malpractice

ALICE IN WONDERLAND Episode 4: The White Rabbit

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 315: Beside Himself