Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: Infinity War review

A longtime Marvel fan is very unhappy with the new Marvel blockbuster. Warning, SEVERE spoilers after the fold. Do NOT read this if you do not want to know what happens in the movie. It will ruin it for you, to the extent that is actually possible.

Loved the Marvel Universe, loved Guardians of the Galaxy and the Avengers, some of the best Sci Fi made IMHO.  Didn’t really like the last Thor movie, thought they mocked and attempted to de empower him, but hey, allowed Thor to exercise his comedy chops, no harm.

Then came Infinity War.  And I realized the blogs I have been reading are right.  They HATE us.  There is no other explanation for this. 

You take the Marvel Universe, gather all the heroes together, let the Evil win and kill off half of the galaxy.  Half!  Including half of your hero characters.  Think about a guest director on an episode of any of the Star Trek TV shows; just kill off half of the universe and half of the crew.  Then hand it back to the regular team “ there!  Fixed it for you, all those pesky heroes are gone, no need to thank me”

I understand sacrificing key characters in support of the story and the narrative; Spock, Groot, Han.  I mourned but I didn’t whinge, in the story line it made sense.  But this movie made no sense and there is no recovering from this unless they do a loopy this-was-just-a-dream/time-warp-fooled-you deus ex machina crap.

We go to movies for enjoyment, for fun, for escape, and yes, for a little bit of hope.  I have that quote from Second Hand Lions on my wall

“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; that love, true love, never dies… No matter if they’re true or not, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”

Where was any of this in Infinity War?  Nothing our heroes did made a damn bit of difference.  And whenever they tried to do a noble sacrifice? Magical Bubbles appeared (and more than once). The Hulk?  For no reason every made clear in the previous cannon the Hulk is de empowered and made a figure of fun.  True love?  Let em watch each other die with no gain or reason other than Reasons!  Thor?  Beaten to a pulp and all his people killed including Loki, but Natasha (a human grrl) can beat them back to a standstill?  Iron Man and Dr. Strange?  Let’s have them at each other’s throats.  I am sorry, but it seemed very clear to me all that was happening was the folks at Disney et al were just trying to shit all over a beloved universe and its fans.  And oh guess what?  The Evil was doing it for Climate Change Reasons???  Kill half the galaxy to save the galaxy because humans are a pestilence?  Seriously?

This wasn’t just a bad movie, this was a deliberate attempt to attack and hurt the fans and their love for this  universe.  I get sacrifice and I get losing characters, I do.  But yah know, I don’t watch Macbeth because of the Everyone Dies routine.  When you take that cheap out way of attempting drama, you end up with no one left to carry the story.  Ah, they can just fill out with more a not a white male remakes and attempt to sell it to an new and different audience.  One that doesn’t love sci fi or superheroes, that will not be paying to watch.  But that appears to be the whole idea, isn’t it?  Take it over and destroy it.  If I stop watching these movies, they win.  If I keep watching these movies, they win.

Any hope for a Dread Ilk Movie project?

Actually, it sounds as if George Martin would have benefited heavily from such an approach. And yes, there very likely will be a movie project down the road. But first things first….

They conserve nothing

Conservatives conserve nothing. Not even something so fundamental as biological sex:

I doubt that many Americans would disagree that the country’s conversation about gay rights is far more mature and considered than it was two decades ago. Today, there exists broad understanding that homosexual people are unavoidable and common, present in all corners and demographics of American life. Through education, and especially exposure, homosexuality is no longer regarded as bizarre, threatening, or mysterious. Even if we remain unsure about what makes a minority of men and women gay, only the tiniest fringe still consider the orientation something worth trying to “fix.” When states attempt to ban homosexual “conversion therapy,” as California is trying to do at the moment, it feels like anachronistic performance. Disinterest in judging homosexuality is not an attitude government has coerced Americans into, it is the product of a free people’s informed knowledge.

If we concede that transgenderism is not going away, and is not something anyone intends to exert effort toward ending, then Americans, especially conservative ones, should reflect on our culture’s honest and fair attitude toward homosexuality and acknowledge that the most sensible path out of the present acrimony will probably require similar compromise. Some degree of cultural ceasefire and consensus seems the only path for both sides to maintain a degree of pride while avoiding a more radical, disruptive societal transformation….

Part one of the compromise will be borne by cultural conservatives and traditionalists. It asks for broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else. This does not mean having to morally endorse behavior many may believe runs contrary to God’s plan for a just and healthy society, but it does imply that acts like ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want, or belittling their personal struggle, are boorish and petty. It means acknowledging that arbitrary discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.

But part two of the compromise requires sacrifice on the part of progressives, who are currently overplaying their hand in an effort to strong-arm sweeping social change as a flex of their power. There must be a halt in the use of state authority to impose accommodation of transgenderism in a fashion far more totalitarian than is rationally  justified. Transgender people constitute a tiny minority of Americans who, in the vast majority of cases, are explicitly eager to opt into the broad two-gender social order our civilization is based around. Tolerance does not necessitate a purge of any and all public manifestations of the gender binary in the name of extreme exceptions to the rule.

Accepting transgenderism as an inescapable human phenomenon does not mean that there is nothing left to learn about it or that cautious or even skeptical attitudes toward purported manifestations of it are never legitimate.

If the social order requires compromise on such issues, then the social order is not worth preserving. The transformation of the cultural war into civil war is only a matter of time now. Sanity cannot compromise with madness.

Just homeschool already

Five more reasons to homeschool.

On April 23rd of this year, parents across America staged a “walkout” (taking their kids out of schools) to protest the sexually explicit and perverse instructions by Planned Parenthood that are being taught in their schools. PJ Media has previously reported exactly how the Planned Parenthood curriculum uses pornography to teach sexual deviancy.

Is this the kind of education you want for your kids in elementary school, middle school, or high school? If not, then maybe you should consider having a protest at your school. It might help. Or it might not. My hunch is that the educrats in charge of your public schools by and large will not care. The educrats in charge might remove a thing or two today, but they will bide their time  and eventually sneak in more destruction later — when parents are not looking.

(This article is not a cut against the many dedicated and courageous teachers who slug it out day after day in the public schools. They are missionaries, trying to be lights in a very tough environment. I am simply asking if parents should continue to keep their kids in environments that are increasingly harmful to their moral, physical, and academic wellbeing.)

Instead of just walking out of your traditional neighborhood public school for a day, why not pull out your kids permanently? Parents should consider the following list of disturbing trends and reconsider their child’s education in the public schools.

Then again, if at this point you still haven’t figured it out, perhaps you might as well leave the little cretins in the lobotomy factory. They’re obviously not going to be rocket scientists… or literate, for that matter.

Did the Littlest Chickenhawk leak Salem email?

The CNN report features leaked emails, including an excerpt of one from Boyce to Shapiro:

One of the emails CNNMoney obtained was sent by Boyce in June of 2016, responding to what he said was Shapiro’s request for guidance on the company’s position on Trump.

Boyce wrote that “Salem has not taken an official position,” but noted that the company’s chief executive officer, Edward Atsinger, had made the case that supporting Trump was necessary to beat Hillary Clinton.

“So for you I would say the same,” Boyce wrote to Shapiro. “While your show is wildly entertaining and your positions make so much sense I have to salute. I do worry about the long term implications of where this is all going.”

Boyce added, “For YOU I suggest that you become a trial lawyer. You suspect your client is guilty, but you are paid to get him off. The jurors will ultimately decide his fate.”

On the face of it, this doesn’t seem so extraordinarily out of line. A host asks advice from a seasoned talk radio executive (Boyce helped develop the careers of Sean Hannity and Mark Levin) in navigating the brave new world of conservative commentary in the Trump era. And, as a radio host, I’d grade Boyce’s advice as pretty damn good.

So why is it treated as some sort of “smoking gun” in the CNN report?

“Ben Shapiro leaked an email that he asked me to write,” Boyce says. “He wanted some guidance on how to handle Trump.  This was in June 2016 right after the nomination.  I gave him some pointers.  I had no idea he would save it and leak it to CNN of all people.”

Shapiro denies having anything to do with the CNN report or the leak of the internal Salem emails. “It is utterly untrue that I leaked this story to CNN,” Shapiro told me. “End of story.”

The CNN report does not specifically contend that Shapiro was let go for ideological purposes and in my many conversations with him, Ben has never made that claim. However, Boyce believes the article suggests that was the case.

“Ben ultimately asked out of his deal 6 months early and we granted it.  His agent said we were very ‘gracious,’” Boyce said. Adding, “So why is he now leaving the impression that he was fired for being a never-Trumper?”

Mailvox: the nations of Heaven

A longtime regular concurs with my post on identity and expands the indictment to include all the cuckservatives and Churchians who claim to be opposing the Left on various details while submitting to them on the whole.

You are spot on with your identity post.

What infuriates me isn’t the Left and SJWs trying to obliterate the past, but the cucks and Churchians who go along with it. The stupidist part of the whole thing is that they clearly see all of the old institutions have been destroyed, and most large Evangelical churches are now little more than personality cults surrounding popular pastors, BUT they utterly refuse to follow the logic back to institutions because of racism, identity politics, and their love of losing. I’m convinced they love to lose as it proves their piety and dedication.

The Alt-Right is inevitable because it is literally the only alternative going forward.

The worst of the Churchians are globalists who literally want to destroy nations in their vision of a multi-ethnic Christian ideal. When it’s clear from the Bible that God values nations and even mentions people from all nations in Revelations. Think about this: we will no longer be identified by being married in heaven, but WILL be by nation.

If you are treating your wife as if she is the Holy Mother of God and both your nation and your culture as if it they are things which do not merit your pride, then you are taking a very, very perverse approach to life.

Darkstream: identity is tradition

In last night’s Darkstream, I mentioned the way in which the people of Tongling, China, impressed Douglas Adams with the size and speed of their unprecedented, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to save the now-extinct baiji, the Yangtze River Dolphin.

From Last Chance to See:

A little upstream of Tongling, opposite the town of Datong, there is an elbow-shaped bend in the river. In the crook of the elbow lie two triangular islands, between which runs a channel of water. The channel is about one and a half kilometres long, five metres deep, and between forty and two hundred metres wide, and this channel will be the dolphins’ semi-nature reserve.

Fences of bamboo and metal are being constructed at either end of the channel, through which water from the main river flows continuously. A huge amount of remodelling and construction work is being done to make this possible. A large artificial hospital and holding pools are being built on one of the islands to hold injured or newly captured dolphins. A fish farm is being built on the other to feed them.

The scale of the project is enormous.

It is very, very expensive, the committee said, solemnly, and they can’t even be sure that it will work. But they have to try. The baiji, they explained, is very important to them and it is their duty to protect it.

Mark asked them how on earth they raised the money to do it. It had all been put into operation in an extraordinarily short time.

Yes, they said, we have had to work very, very fast.

They had raised money from many sources. A substantial amount came from the central government, and more again from local government. Then there were many donations from local people and businesses. They had also, they said a little hesitantly, gone into the business of public relations, and they would welcome our comments on this. Chinese knew little of such matters, but we, as Westerners, must surely be experts.

First, they said, they had persuaded the local brewery to use the baiji as their trademark. Had we tried Baiji Beer? It was of a good quality, now much respected in all of China. Then others had followed. The committee had entered into . . . Here there was a bit of a vocabulary problem, which necessitated a little discussion with the interpreter before the right phrase at last emerged.

They had entered into licensing agreements. Local businesses had put money into the project, in return for which they were licensed to use the baiji. symbol, which in turn made good publicity for the baiji dolphin.

So now there was not only Baiji Beer, there was also the Baiji Hotel, Baiji shoes, Baiji Cola, Baiji computerised weighing scales, Baiji toilet paper, Baiji phosphorus fertiliser, and Baiji Bentonite. Bentonite was a new one on me, and I asked them what it was.

They explained that Bentonite was a mining product used in the production of toothpaste, iron and steel casting, and also as an additive for pig food. Baiji Bentonite was a very successful product. Did we, as experts, think that this public relations was good?

We said it was absolutely astonishing, and congratulated them.

They were very gratified to know this, they said, from Western experts in such matters.

We felt more than a little abashed at these encomiums. It was very hard to imagine anywhere in the Western world that would be capable of responding with such prodigious speed, imagination and communal determination to such a problem. Although the committee told us that they hoped that, since Tongling had recently been declared an open city to visitors for the first time, the dolphins and the semi-nature reserve might bring tourists and tourist money to the area, it was very clear that this was not the primary impulse.

At the end they said, ‘The residents in the area gain some profit – that’s natural – but we have more profound plans, that is to protect the dolphin as a species, not to let it become extinct in our generation. Its protection is our duty. As we know that only two hundred pieces of this animal survive it may go extinct if we don’t take measures to prevent it, and if that happens we will feel guilty for our descendants and later generations.’

We left the room feeling, for the first time in China, uplifted. It seemed that, for all the stilted and awkward formality of the meeting, we had had our first and only real glimpse of the Chinese mind. They took it as their natural duty to protect this animal, both for its own sake and for that of the future world.

An excerpt from the transcript of the Darkstream.

The main reason that the Chinese commissioners gave for these huge efforts that they were putting forth to try to save this animal was because they felt that a failure to do so, a failure to preserve the animal, was going to shame them in both the eyes of their ancestors and their descendants. You know, they viewed themselves as being part of this great chain of family, this chain of tribe and nation that had a responsibility for the land and the animals in their area, and it really struck me because this is exactly what the Fake Opposition like Ben Shapiro, like Jordan Peterson, stand against. You know, when Jordan Peterson is telling you that you have no right to take pride in the accomplishments of your ancestors, what he’s also telling you is that you have no responsibility whatsoever to your children and your descendants.

You know I’ve said repeatedly that the philosophy Jordan Peterson is pushing is an evil one, and it is, and one aspect of that evil, one way that we know that it is wrong, is that he and Shapiro and all these other Fake Opposition members are saying “oh all that matters is the individual, all that matters is you, you should only pay attention to your own needs, your own standards, you’ve no right to take pride in your legacy, you have no responsibility to instill those traditions and values into your children.” After all, if you have no responsibility to carry on the work of your parents, if you have no right to take pride in the legacy and the achievement of your parents, then neither do your children have any right or responsibility to do so with regards to you! I mean this is a very obvious transitive principle of logic at work, and so I think that it’s so important to understand that when conservatives are coming out against identity politics, you need to understand that they are simultaneously coming out against family values, tribal values, and national values.

You know they don’t want to admit that they’re doing this, but that’s exactly what they’re doing, and it’s also connected to the advice of people like Ben Shapiro to go and chase the young. He’s saying, “well the Republicans need to change their policies, they need to embrace things like gay marriage and they need to embrace things like abortion and whatever else it is that the young are okay with,” but that’s profoundly stupid because the young have no experience. The young don’t understand why the traditions existed in the first place and they don’t understand why the traditions are necessary to provide the very society and culture that they enjoy today.

And of course because these people do not want to preserve the West, you know the people who think that, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and the Weinsteins and all these other fake opposition folks, you know, the Sam Harrises, whatever, they don’t want to preserve the West, they do not want to preserve Western civilization. They’re not Christian, they’re either neutral on Christianity or they’re anti-Christian, they don’t want to preserve the European nations – to the contrast they want to replace the European nations – and so the more that you understand this, the more you realize how evil these people are, how evil their objectives are.

Those who have accomplished something as individuals feel no need to be proud of their race.
– Jordan Peterson

Real cultural appropriation — that’s when someone is proud of his culture despite having done nothing to support it, extend it or transform it: a message to the far right.
– Jordan Peterson

You shouldn’t be “proud” of your culture: you should be honored by the privilege of partaking in it, and grateful for its existence, despite your inadequacy. That is not at all the same thing.
– Jordan Peterson

Q: What’s the goal of the radical right? A: Unearned identity with the glories of the past.
– Jordan Peterson

Now the right-wing identitarians have their panties in a knot about what I’ve said about the pathology of racial pride…. Demonstrating (as if it is necessary) that the mirror reflection of malevolence is also…. malevolence. 
– Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a filthy liar – an absolutely shameless liar – and what passes for his “wisdom” doesn’t even rise to the level of that demonstrated by atheist Chinese communists. Most of the men and women of accomplishment I have known are proud of their race, proud of their nation, proud of their state, and proud of their tribe. Indeed, they often appeal to that pride in order to inspire their children and grandchildren to behave in a manner that is worthy of their race, nation, state, and tribe.

A man has more than a right, he has a responsibility to be proud of his race just as he should be proud of his military unit, his alma mater, or his soccer club, even before he has managed to meaningfully contribute to it or not. Indeed, why would a member of any group be moved to support or extend or contribute to it if one did not feel a sense of pride in belonging to it? These are the petty words of a very small man who has never worn a uniform of any kind, who has never walked into a stadium with the eyes of thousands of spectators upon him, knowing full well that he was not there to represent himself, but rather, all of those whom the colors he was wearing represented.

What this man is teaching a generation of rootless young men is absolute anathema to the core values that were instilled in me by my grandfather, the bravest man I ever knew, a man hailed as “the Marine’s Marine” by the Commandant of the USMC himself.

If you still don’t believe that Jordan Peterson is a sick, evil, and dishonest individual pushing an evil philosophy on the unsuspecting and the unsophisticated, remember, this is a man who claimed that his cousin is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and dreamed about her being killed and cannibalized. Repeatedly.

President Rowboat

Kurt Schlichter points out that Christians are not obliged to give their enemies a free hand in ruling over them. Especially not in a democracy:

There are a lot of people frustrated that Christians back Trump and refuse to let his personal life be used as a wedge to pry off their support. They are mad that Christians are not playing their role as defined by their enemies. Christians are supposed to be scandalized and give up and lose. But they won’t.

Now, let’s understand this basic concept – Jesus was not some sort of whiny wimp who refused to confront the establishment and took comfort in his own righteousness while leaving others to do the heavy lifting. Jesus made people angry, because that’s what happens when you defy bad people. Being a Christian does not mean that you have to shrug and let the likes of Hillary Clinton be elected so she and her minions can fire up her anti-faith pogrom against those of us who dare worship God and not the elite she represents. Maybe you didn’t notice, but they do not accept the concept that we have any legitimate interests or rights. They hate us. And, if we are weak and stupid enough to allow them to take power, they will act on their bigotry and prejudices. Baking cakes is only the start.

Resistance is not merely an option. It is a duty. And resistance to evil – because the desire to suppress our faith is evil – is not somehow unchristian because it can be aesthetically displeasing. Fighting back is not always pretty. Jesus cleared the temple of moneychangers. He made a mess and got people angry. He didn’t sit on the sidelines and write ponderous articles lambasting the people tossing over the tables because “We’re better than that.”

Everyone seems to want to tell Christians that they are obligated to give in. There’s always some IPA-loving hipster who writes video game reviews when he’s not sobbing alone in the dark because no one loves him tweeting “Oh, that’s real Christian!” whenever a conservative fights back. I know that when I need theological clarification, I seek out the militant atheist who thinks Christ was a socialist and believes that the Golden Rule is that Christians are never allowed to never offend anyone.

The more evil the authorities, the more children of the Devil are in power, the more that the genuine Christian who is actually willing to follow the example of Jesus will increasingly tend to run afoul of them. Which is why, as imperfect an instrument as he may be, as imperfect an instrument as he is, Donald Trump is, as Schlichter points out, a rowboat sent by God to an America drowning in evil, both foreign and domestic.

Don’t ever change diapers

Just leave infants lying in their own excrement until they can articulate their consent to have their diapers changed:

Deanne Carson, a “sexuality educator” with Body Safe Australia appeared on the show to talk about establishing a “culture of consent” in the home.

Speaking during the segment on ABC news she said she works with children from birth on issues of consent. When asked to give an example of how parents could establish the culture in their home she said they could ask questions such as “I’m going to change your nappy now, is that okay?”

Deanne Carson said parents should create a culture of consent for their children
She continued: “Of course the baby is not going to respond ‘yes mum, that’s awesome. I’d love to have my nappy changed.’

“But if you leave a space, and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact, then you’re letting that child know that their response matters.”

Many viewers were left confused by this advice.

Twelve years ago, I showed that tolerance is not merely a vice, but is “the sin of Jeroboam” described in the Bible. Experts like this clearly demonstrate the desperate need for not merely revival, but holy inquisition.

St. Torquemada, pray for us!

Is Plan B in effect?

The Saker appears to have correctly predicted the recent increase in hostilities between Iran and Israel in one of his recent articles.

Risks with Israel’s plan “B”

Think of 2006. The Israelis had total air supremacy over Lebanon – the skies were simply uncontested. The Israelis also controlled the seas (at least until Hezbollah almost sank their Sa’ar 5-class corvette). The Israelis pounded Lebanon with everything they had, from bombs to artillery strikes, to missiles. They also engaged their very best forces, including their putatively ‘”invincible” “Golani Brigade”. And that for 33 days. And they achieved exactly *nothing*. They could not even control the town of Bint Jbeil right across the Israeli border. And now comes the best part: Hezbollah kept its most capable forces north of the Litany river so the small Hezbollah force (no more than 1000 man) was composed of local militias supported by a much smaller number of professional cadre. That a 30:1 advantage in manpower for the Israelis. But the “invincible Tsahal” got its collective butt kicked like few have ever been kicked in history. This is why, in the Arab world, this war is since known as the “Divine Victory”.

As for Hezbollah, it continued to rain down rockets on Israel and destroy indestructible Merkava tanks right up to the last day.

There are various reports discussing the reasons for the abject failure of the IDF (see here or here), but the simple reality is this: to win a war you need capable boots on the ground, especially against an adversary who has learned how to operate without air-cover or superior firepower. Should Israel manipulate the US into attacking Iran, the exact same thing will happen: CENTCOM will establish air superiority and have an overwhelming firepower advantage over the Iranians, but other than destroying a lot of infrastructure and murdering scores of civilians, this will achieve absolutely nothing. Furthermore, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is no Milosevic, he will not simply surrender in the hope that Uncle Sam will allow him to stay in power. The Iranians will fight, and fight, and continue to fight for weeks, and months and then possibly years. And, unlike the “Axis of Kindness” forces, the Iranians do have credible and capable “boots on the ground”, and not only in Iran, but also in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan. And they have the missiles to reach a very large number of US military facilities across the region. And they can also not only shut down the Strait of Hormuz (which the USN would eventually be able to re-open, but only at a cost of a huge military operation on the Iranian coast), they can also strike at Saudi Arabia proper and, of course, at Israel. In fact, the Iranians have both the manpower and know-how to declare “open season” on any and all US forces in the Middle-East, and there are plenty of them, mostly very poorly defended (that imperial sense of impunity “they would not dare”).

The Iran-Iraq war lasted for eight years (1980-1988). It cost the Iranians hundreds of thousands of lives (if not more). The Iraqis had the full support of the US, the Soviet Union, France and pretty much everybody else. As for the Iranian military, it had just suffered from a traumatic revolution. The official history (meaning Wikipedia) calls the outcome a “stalemate”. Considering the odds and the circumstances, I call it a magnificent Iranian victory and a total defeat for those who wanted to overthrow the Islamic Republic (something which decades of harsh sanctions also failed to achieve, by the way).

Is there any reason at all to believe that this time around, when Iran has had almost 40 years to prepare for a full-scale AngloZionist attack the Iranians will fight less fiercely or less competently? We could also look at the actual record of the US armed forces (see Paul Craig Roberts’ superb summary here) and ask: do you think that the US, lead by the likes of Trump, Bolton or Nikki Haley will have the staying power to fight the Iranians to exhaustion (since a land invasion of Iran is out of the question)? Or this: what will happen to the world economy if the entire Middle-East blows up into a major regional war?

Now comes the scary part: both the Israelis and the Neocons always, always, double-down. The notion of cutting their losses and stopping what is a self-evidently mistaken policy is simply beyond them. Their arrogance simply cannot survive even the appearance of having made a mistake (remember how both Dubya and Olmert declared that they had won against Hezbollah in 2006?). As soon as Trump and Netanyahu realize that they did something really fantastically stupid and as soon as they run out of their usual options (missile and airstrikes first, then terrorizing the civilian population) they will have a stark and simple choice: admit defeat or use nukes.

Which one do you think they will choose?

Now, I’m still not convinced that the God-Emperor is doing what most observers believe him to be doing. I have no doubt that the Saker is right about the fact that both the Israelis and the globalists want the US to go to war with Iran, but I am not at all convinced that Trump is actually giving them what they want. As always, my advice when confronted with unknowns and unknowables is to wait and see.

How do you do?

Fellow Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web. Today’s Meme of the Day from the Daily Meme Wars.

Reason interviews I.D.W. member Harvey Weinstein:

Weinstein: So, first, let me just say, “Intellectual Dark Web” is a term coined by my older brother, Eric Weinstein, and it’s a term that makes some people uncomfortable, including me a little bit, because the Dark Web itself is obviously a place where lots of stuff happens, some of which is perfectly horrifying….

 What Eric was saying in coining the term Intellectual Dark Web is really that this is an intellectually unpoliced space, that it is a space outside of what he calls the “gated institutional narrative,” which are the stories that we are supposed to believe. It is a very interesting conversation precisely because nobody involved in it believes in those rules. In fact, I think everybody associated with the Intellectual Dark Web is sort of constitutionally resistant to being told what questions they’re allowed to think about or what answers they might be allowed to advance. So, in any case, the idea of the Intellectual Dark Web is a space that is intellectually free, at a moment in which the mainstream intellectual space is increasingly constrained by things like what we were talking about before.

In terms of the association, there is a very clear focus amongst all of the folks who are associated with the Intellectual Dark Web about the free speech crisis or whatever the proper term for that would be if we were to re-figure it, right? There’s a reason for that, which is that we’re all people who would tend to be shut down by the mainstream that wish to maintain control over the narratives that are central to the way we govern ourselves and the way we interact. So it’s not surprising that, A) people in the Intellectual Dark Web would be prone to being de-platformed, and B) that we would be particularly sensitive to the danger of ruling certain opinions beyond the pale.

 As for the political complexion of it, it isn’t at all what people think, and this has been something that Heather and I have discovered in a very odd way. What happened to us at Evergreen felt and was almost literally like being kicked out of the political left. We had spent our entire lives [there], right? The left told us “You’re not welcome anymore.” In fact, you’re not even left—you’re right, or, you know, if it’s really pissed at you, you’re alt-right, or you’re a darling of the alt-right. These are the things that were said.

None of this was true, right? I’m still as far left as I was before. I’m skeptical that the left knows what to do, I’m very skeptical of what the left advances in terms of policy proposals, but in terms of my values, they haven’t changed at all. The interesting thing, though, is having been effectively evicted from the left, we ran into all sorts of other people who we thought might be a bit right of center, who it turned out were actually also left of center and had also been similarly evicted and then misportrayed. So there is a way in which everybody should think twice about why you expect the people are on the political spectrum where you think they are, because maybe they aren’t. In each case, you ought to just check whether or not you think that for a good reason or you just think that because you’ve heard that somebody’s over there.

The Intellectual Dark Web involves me, it involves Heather, it involves Eric. We’re all left of center. It involves Jordan Peterson—he’s a little bit right of center, but if you actually listen to him, there are certain topics on which he sounds downright conservative, and then there are other topics where he really doesn’t. He’s a little bit hard to peg.

Correction: Apparently that was left-wing Dark Web thought criminal Bret Weinstein, not left-wing Hollywood sex criminal Harvey Weinstein.