Blair White outs fake conservatives

Blair White is more considerably more legitimate than the fake conservative celebrities of LA:

Another big reason why I’ve been so turned off from doing political commentary is the other people that people see as my peers, people that I’ve worked with other commentators –  kind of want to be careful with what I even say here – but I moved to LA almost a year ago and one thing about LA is there’s a lot of work here so a lot of other political commentators, other people who you guys know, I’m not talking about obscure people, here a lot of them either live in LA or they’re constantly in and out for work filming something doing whatever they do. So I’ve met almost all of them, people, have either been on their show or on a show with them, or I went to a dinner with them, an event with them, or I became close with some of them that I’ve met that have told me,  either directly or in a roundabout way,  and it’s very clear that they don’t believe everything that they say that they believe when they’re on camera. A lot of them just don’t believe. they’re just actors,  they’re actors, I don’t know how else to put it.

Had one person who I went on their show and I was in the greenroom, which is like the makeup room before you go on camera, the host of this show comes in, and it’s like hey Blair you know small talk, hey Blair I wanted you on for a while, so glad you’re here, nice to meet you, let’s take a picture. They pull me aside and say I just want you to know Blair, I don’t feel any negative way towards you or trans people. I know we talked about trans people a lot on the show, but that’s just because it’s kind of what the fans want, it’s just kind of where we’re at right now. And I was taken aback because I felt like that’s really fraudulent, that you would feel the need to go on air and say something negative about trans people or transgender and some or whatever but it’s not really how you feel. He also said he has like a trans cousin or something like that and that he feels bad that they’re the butt of every joke on his show or whatever, but almost every person I met after him was almost always consistently like that. You start learning things like, oh almost all of them hire people to tweet and Facebook posts and Instagram on their behalf, tweeting out opinions on their behalf , which I feel like is unethical because if people were following you because they believe you’re some intellectual and they trust your opinion and they’re gonna shape their opinions a lot of times on an issue based on your opinion and it’s not even actually your opinion! It’s something you paid someone to assume as your opinion and you’re so much of a rigid, like, a binary thinker, that it’s easy just to pay someone to tweet out the standard response and this is what it’s like.

I don’t respect that. I don’t really know what it is about me in particular that makes people feel comfortable to sort of reveal to me that they don’t believe all the things that they say they believe on camera. And I’m not talking about small things either, you guys, I’m talking about like huge principal positions. I’m talking about like the kind of stuff that a lot of you guys follow these people for they don’t even actually believe. It’s just crazy. Months ago I was gearing up to do a tour which never happened because the tour company completely screwed me over, but regardless, I had started promoting it and someone who’s very prominent in the social political commentary sphere hit me up, and you know, what this person told me, they told me to plant fake protesters outside of your event. Not only that, they said make fake signs because you’re probably gonna get protesters but you want to amp the numbers. This person instructed me, or my team and myself to make signs saying things that were super, super ridiculous to put outside and bulk up the numbers of people who may protest. And it made me sick because clearly this person has done that and this is someone who, although hated by many, is also loved by many, and many who let him believe that all those people were real.

It’s just such I just I know too much about these people, but a lot of these people were on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum just a couple years ago publicly, before the money started flowing on the other side.

If the media is promoting someone on the nominal Right, you can be all but certain that they are bought-and-paid-for Fake Right. Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Rubin. They are fake, fake, fake, fake, fake. All of the cucks are Fake Right.

It astonishes me that 10 years after William F. Buckley’s death, conservatives are still falling head-over-heels for the gatekeepers the Left creates for them.

Mailvox: a review of The Consuming Fire

A very successful SF writer sends his review of John Scalzi’s The Consuming Fire, the second in his The Interdependency series, in case anyone happens to be curious about it.

Review: The true tragedy of The Consuming Fire is this: if this book, and The Collapsing Empire, had been written as one volume, it would have solved many of the problems besetting the first volume and made the combined volume far more satisfactory.  As it is, although The Consuming Fire is vastly superior to its predecessor, it lacks the satisfaction one may glean from a well-written Peter Hamilton, Brandon Sanderson or Iain M. Banks.  It’s also far too expensive for what one gets out of it.

The Interdependency – a network of star systems held together by the Flow, a series of hyper-dimensional rivers running through the higher dimensions – has finally discovered, thanks to the efforts of Cardenia Wu-Patrick, Marce Claremont and Kiva Lagos, that the Flow is collapsing and the Interdependency, as they know it, is doomed.  With only one planet within the system capable of supporting life without massive support from off-world, and that in enemy hands, the stage is set for a brutal civil war …

… Except it isn’t.  The book effectively separates into two halves.  One side covers Cardenia Wu-Patrick’s desperate attempts to convince the Interdependency that the Flow is indeed collapsing (something that should have been made easier by the complete collapse of one Flow stream) and facing a conspiracy that should have been able to overthrow her with ease, but shows such striking incompetence that their entire plan falls apart far too quickly.  The other side follows Marce as he (aided by the researcher who, accidentally, started the Bad Guys plotting) discovers that the Flow’s steady collapse may be opening up new streams, including to a system that was cut off hundreds of years ago.  (No, not long-lost Earth.)  They take a starship to the system, where they find a handful of survivors – and proof, perhaps, that the shift in the Flow may not be entirely natural.  The Interdependency’s sins – or those of its founders – may have come back to haunt it.  And then, with the discovery of a handful of new streams and the plotters defeated, the stage is set for a brutal civil war …

(Didn’t I just say that?  Really?)

Unlike The Collapsing Empire, this volume does manage to get across both the scale of the disaster facing the Interdependency – with brief asides touching on the effects on the wider universe as the collapse picks up speed – and the problems facing people who attempt to convince the bureaucracy and established interests that the sky is falling, although one expects that this particular version of ‘the sky is falling’ hasn’t been heard that often within the Interdependency.  If Scalzi was hoping to draw a link between the collapsing Flow and climate change, he failed.  The cold fact is that the people who insist that the climate is changing – and that human intervention is forcing the change – have been screaming ‘the sky is falling’ for so long that everyone else has simply stopped listening.  Here, one would expect the novelty alone to ensure that the claims got a fair hearing, although Scalzi is probably right to suggest that not everyone would want to believe.

The Marce plot works better, I think, although much of it is predictable and fails badly when the two plots interact.  It allows the reader to see both the fate in store for the Interdependency and, also, to pick up a flicker of hope (although Scalzi teases us with hints, rather than direct answers).  It’s clever of Scalzi to have Marce interact with the ‘enemy’ physicist, although it says nothing about the competence of the Independency’s security forces that they didn’t pick her up long ago.  (Or the bad guys, in not having her quietly hidden away somewhere or simply eliminated.)  It’s amusing to see that the lack of peer review bit both sides hard.  The bad guys weren’t the only ones to miss a few important details.  Kudos to Scalzi for making a point many would have missed.

However, the plot following Cardenia Wu-Patrick and Kiva Lagos is considerably weaker, owing to a combination of incompetence on both sides.  The bad guys appear certain to win – they pull off a spectacular prison break – until sheer chance, not remotely foreshadowed, blows their plans out of the water.  Scalzi does this very poorly, it must be noted.  The conspiracy is doomed because of the growing crisis, sure enough, but the interests of the competing parties are so different that the conspiracy is probably doomed anyway.  It requires the plotters to either give up most of their interests or start planning to stab their fellows in the back.  Arguably, this is what happens.  The bad guys run rampant until they are challenged, at which point they fold with astonishing speed.

The sexual politics are also quite irritating.  It’s amusing to have Cardenia Wu-Patrick worrying about inviting someone to bed when she can have him (or her) exiled or executed for saying no.  Scalzi neatly encapsulates the dilemma facing those who want to exonerate Bill Clinton for his conduct in office.  Kiva Lagos, who is the person who really needs those thoughts (as she’s as guilty as Slick Willy), doesn’t have them.  Cardenia Wu-Patrick acts, at times, like a lovelorn schoolgirl mooning over Marce (and worrying if he fancies the other physicist); Kiva Lagos is as sexually aggressive as ever, taking an important call while being serviced – that is the exact word used – by an enemy lawyer.  Thankfully, we see less of her in this story than the previous one – another moment when combining the two books would have been considerably more effective.  Truthfully, I wouldn’t object to having all the major power players in the book be women if they weren’t so strikingly incompetent. 

It cannot be denied, however, that Scalzi dropped the ball in a number of places.  There are no scenes set on End, leaving that plot thread dangling for the moment.  To be fair, End is immaterial to the overall plot until the Independency finds a way to get back in touch with the lost world, but it’s still irritating.  Scalzi also has some of his characters veering backwards and forwards with terrifying speed, missing obvious opportunities to push their agendas because of the demands of the plot.  And most of his characters are basically snarky.  It’s sometimes hard to tell them apart.

Scalzi also takes a number of shots at organised religion, making it clear – right from the start of this book – that the Interdependency’s religion is based on a lie.  This is no steady corruption of a number of prophets, or a man who worked miracles, but a lie that was used to bind the Interdependency together.  There are shades of the fake religions of Foundation here too.  The main characters have no qualms about cynically manipulating the beliefs of their people to achieve their goals.  If you happen to be religious, you may find this offensive; if you are not, you may let it slip by.  Scalzi tries to add a hint of ambiguity with a character who may – or may not – have had a religious experience, but it’s hard to take it seriously.  It’s a neat piece of background, but one that ultimately fails.  Which is a shame, because there are concepts here – in the hands of a different writer – that might have been worth exploring.  What do you do if your fake religion suddenly has to deal with a very real prophet?  Or someone that cannot be branded a fake without calling your entire religion into question?

Overall, if Scalzi had combined these two books into one, I would have given them a much higher rating.  A combined volume would have avoided the problems plaguing the separate books – and probably had better editing – and settled a handful of issues before moving on to the third volume.  As it is, both books are ultimately unsatisfactory.  Scalzi appears determined to wring as much money as he can from the series, despite the limitations of the plot, but neither of his volumes have the sheer meat of Game of Thrones and its early successors.  It took me less than an hour to read it.  There are some improvements, yet the glacial plot movement and sheer incompetence of the plotters and counter-plotters is a major downer.  So too is the crudity of some of the characters.  In short, the book is too expensive for what it gives us.

Rating: Two out of five.

On the record

It’s important to put the pollsters on the record. Democrats are doubling down on the Blue Wave:

A political analyst updated his outlook for the House just days before midterm elections, giving the Democrats an even greater edge over Republicans hoping to maintain power. Dave Wasserman, who is House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, tweeted Wednesday that their forecast was being updated, predicting that Democrats gain 30-40 seats, up from 25-35 seats. Wasserman added that this prediction could change before the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

The forecast suggests a so-called “blue wave” is more becoming more likely. Democrats need to flip 23 seats to take control of the lower chamber. In the Senate, which the GOP also controls, 24 Democrats and two independents who caucus with Democrats, are up for re-election. Nine Republicans are up for re-election. Only one seat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s, D-N.D., is rated anything below “toss-up” at “lean-R,” according to Cook Political Report.

RealClearPolitics gives Democrats a smaller edge in the House than Cook, factoring in a number of toss ups. Their latest House elections map shows Democrats taking 203 seats versus 198 for Republicans. Thirty-four races are listed in the “toss ups” category.

So, we’re expected to believe that the President’s approval ratings are rising to the highest level of his presidency at the same time that the mid-term elections are going strongly against him? It does not add up. And while Wasserman is waffling only five days out, I will stick to my prediction from May 31, 2017, there will be no “blue wave”.

Nate Silver presently predicts an 84.9 percent chance of Democrats taking the House.

CBZ vs Kindle Unlimited

Question for Arkhaven fans: We are giving serious thought to taking the comics out of Kindle Unlimited in order to offer higher-resolution digital editions in CBZ format. The files would be about 20 megs apiece and would cost the same $2.99 as the Kindle editions. Despite the files going to the backers free, we still sell literally hundreds of copies of each Kindle edition, not including the KU downloads.

But due to the way Amazon pays virtually nothing for a KU edition, one CBZ sale would be the equivalent to 22 KU sales. Also, since it appears that Amazon has begun playing algorithm games with our books in order to reduce the visibility of our Kindle editions, there is no material benefit to our being on KU anymore.

The resolution would be 3150 x 2100 vs 1280 x 800. Please share your opinions.

When Truth is Hate

Robert McCain doesn’t leave any doubt about who is the father of these Children of the Lie in the American Spectator:

George Soros has been a major funder of much of the institutional infrastructure the Left has built during the past 20 years. David Horowitz’s site Discover the Networks says that “a strong case can be made for the claim that Soros today affects American politics and culture more profoundly that any other living person.” Such organizations as Media Matters for America are beneficiaries of Soros’s vast wealth. While the total of his political expenditures over the years is perhaps beyond calculation, it is known that between 2003 and 2011, for example, Soros spent more than $48 million to fund media properties. Given his enormous influence on the Left, it is understandable that conservatives suspect that Soros is behind every allegedly “grassroots” left-wing activist group. It’s not a paranoid conspiracy, but a documented fact that, for example, the Black Lives Movement received more than $30 million from Soros’s tax-exempt organizations. Likewise, it has been documented that so-called “Antifa” groups, implicated in riots in Berkeley and elsewhere, got money from Soros-funded foundations. And it should surprise no one that Soros has spent many millions in support of an open-borders immigration agenda.

“Soros’s agenda is fundamentally about the destruction of national borders,” researchers David Galland and Stephen McBride wrote in a 2016 article titled “How George Soros Singlehandedly Created The European Refugee Crisis — And Why.” Galland and McBride documented the involvement of Soros’s Open Society Foundation in the crisis that flooded Europe with millions of Muslim migrants. When Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban took action to halt the influx of “refugees” into his country and named Soros as the sponsor of this invasion, Soros responded: “[Orban’s] plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

This was a startling admission, and it is clear that Soros also views America’s borders as an “obstacle” to his plans. In their book The Shadow Party, Horowitz and his co-author Richard Poe explained that a massive 2006 pro-amnesty rally in Los Angeles involved no fewer than eight groups funded by Soros, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza. As for the current migrant caravan from Honduras, it is being supported by the so-called “CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project,” a coalition of four organizations, three of which receive funding from — you guessed, didn’t you? — George Soros.

To identity Soros as the sponsor of this open-borders agenda, however, is to be guilty of hate, as explained last week in a Washington Post headline: “Conspiracy theories about Soros aren’t just false. They’re anti-Semitic.” You will not be surprised to learn that the author of that article, Talia Levin, works for Media Matters, which is funded by Soros. Levin previously worked at the New Yorker, but was fired in June after falsely accusing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo (the agent, it turned out, is a Marine Corps combat veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan). So here we have a Soros-funded writer declaring in the pages of the Washington Post that it is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say that Soros is doing what he’s actually doing.

In other words, telling the truth is now “hate speech.”

Let’s apply logic to what we’re being told here. If telling the truth is now speaking hate, and taking an anti-Satanic position is now anti-Semitic, doesn’t that necessarily require the conclusion that George Soros and others who share his religion do not worship the Christian God, but rather, the god of this world?

The 14th Amendment lie

Ann Coulter efficiently disposes of it:

As the court has explained again and again and again:

“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th) amendments, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

That’s why the amendment refers to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States “and of the state wherein they reside.” For generations, African-Americans were domiciled in this country. The only reason they weren’t citizens was because of slavery, which the country had just fought a Civil War to end.

The 14th Amendment fixed that.

The amendment didn’t even make Indians citizens. Why? Because it was about freed slaves. Sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court held that an American Indian, John Elk, was not a citizen, despite having been born here.

Instead, Congress had to pass a separate law making Indians citizens, which it did, more than half a century after the adoption of the 14th Amendment. (It’s easy to miss — the law is titled: “THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT OF 1924.”) Why would such a law be necessary if simply being born in the U.S. was enough to confer citizenship?

Even today, the children of diplomats and foreign ministers are not granted citizenship on the basis of being born here.

Anyone claiming otherwise is either a) ignorant, or as is much more likely the case, lying. Ben Shapiro and any other lawyer attempting to claim that the 14th Amendment establishes birthright citizenship should be disbarred.

Interview with a sociopath

This interview is taken from a British dating show on which a convicted murderer appeared as a contestant. It’s interesting to see the similarity to the way gammas talk total nonsense about themselves.

How would you describe yourself?

John Cannan: ‘I think a ruff would suit me. Tights and sword, I can see me on some bridge, on some galleon, being a pirate – yes, I can handle that. Yes, I have a dislike of inflated egos – people who are, they look at me – “I’m great”, type. I don’t like that, I can’t handle that sort of inner weakness.’

That kind of pretention?

JC: ‘Yeah, I don’t like that at all. I just like just normal, average people.’

What do you look for in a person? What attracts you?

JC: ‘I think apart from the physical side, again I think somebody who’s pleasant, who’s natural, who’s relaxed, somebody who’s calm – just pleasant, someone nice.

You’re not worrying about if they’re career orientated?

JC: ‘No; no, no; no, no. As somebody who’s career orientated myself, I couldn’t blame them for that. No, not at all.’

Do you admire any famous people, past and present?

JC: ‘Yes, I’ve admired a few. People like Gandhi, philosophers like Bertrand Russell. Present day people like Prince Charles, who’s socially aware. Physically, somebody like Stephanie Beacham.’

Who’s that?

JC: ‘No, it’s actually… I think she’s in Dallas, or from Crest or something. No, joking apart, somebody natural, nice, pleasant, somebody with character, a little personality.’

Practical?

JC: ‘Practical, yes. Just somebody normal – somebody who’s easy and relaxed to be with.’

Now what about TV comedy programmes, is there anything that you like?

JC: ‘I’m a little bit dry as regards humour. Dave Allen, Benny Hill is OK.’

How dare you say Benny Hill?!

JC: ‘It’s a bit slapstick, I know, Benny Hill is OK – or he used to be, not so good nowadays, but he used to be. Yeah, that type of… mainly dry humour.’

Now, do you have any ambitions for the future, or do you feel like you’ve achieved your ambitions already?

JC: ‘I’ve achieved them. Basic, financially I’ve achieved them.

So you’re just going to curl up and keel over then?

JC: ‘No, no, not at all. I’m just looking now – I’m in a sedimentary period, where financially and career wise, I’ve achieved what I’ve wanted to achieve, I’m just now looking for what, the next thing to achieve.’

I’m always suspicious of people who use words improperly, such as the use of the word “sedimentary” when he meant “sedentary”. Keep in mind that the man was completely unemployed at the time. And on what planet was Benny Hill ever “dry humour”?

One thing I’ve learned over half-a-century on the planet is that the small things matter more than most people believe. Even the smallest error that reveals a pretense can tell you a great deal about an individual.

Australian shenanigans

The promoter of Milo and Ann Coulter’s Australia tour is trying to pull a fast one:

Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to visit Australia for a five-show tour alongside conservative speaker Ann Coulter in December. The pair was set to discuss the topic “how to save Australia”.

But on Monday, tour promoter AE Media emailed ticket holders advising them that “due to unforeseen circumstances” Milo Yiannopoulos’ 2018 tour had been cancelled. Instead of being offered a refund, fans were told their tickets would be honoured in the form of tickets to see the joint speaking tour of British conservative personality Tommy Robinson and self-descibed “western chauvinist” Gavin McInnes.

Mr Yiannopoulos confirmed the news in a post on Facebook and Instagram.

“Yesterday, I woke up to the news that my Australian tour with Ann had been cancelled and the promoter was “transferring” tickets to another series of events,” he wrote. “This is illegal. If you’re a ticket holder and want a refund, they are obliged to give you one and I will make sure that happens.”

It’s always interesting to learn who is deemed acceptable and who is not. Needless to say, this sort of thing is only one of the many reasons that I have never accepted a speaking invitation to any group, university, or corporation.

Facebook bans Proud Boys

Don’t complain about being deplatformed, build your own damn platforms!

Facebook has started banning both individual accounts and pages, as well as associated groups, that are affiliated with the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys. The news was first reported today by Business Insider, which noted that members of the Proud Boys and adjacent online communities had begun complaining about the takedowns on Twitter.

The removals come in response to an act of violence in New York City earlier this month, in which members of the Proud Boys assaulted anti-fascist protestors outside a Republican club in Manhattan where Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, also an original co-founder of Vice Media, was speaking. Facebook confirmed to The Verge that it was banning Proud Boys members and affiliated groups and pages from both its main social network and from Instagram. McInnes’ personal page is still active, but a number of high-profile groups, pages, and accounts have begun to disappear today.

“Our team continues to study trends in organized hate and hate speech and works with partners to better understand hate organizations as they evolve,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We ban these organizations and individuals from our platforms and also remove all praise and support when we become aware of it. We will continue to review content, Pages, and people that violate our policies, take action against hate speech and hate organizations to help keep our community safe.” The company is citing violations of its rules on hate speech and the organizing of groups that spread hate both online and offline as the reason for the bans and removals.

The social media giants need conservatives and other right-wingers on their sites more than we need to be on them. We have repeatedly demonstrated that. The Darkstream has become popular enough that YouTube is now throttling recommended videos there and it is probably only a matter of time before that channel is deplatformed, which is why it has been on BitChute for the last few months.

People follow content, not platforms. Platforms are worthless without content. Yes, a change of platform will reduce one’s audience, but the part of the audience lost, the part that can’t bother to follow you to the new platform, is the trivial and largely irrelevant part. I’d rather have 2,500 staunch followers than 250,000 casual fans. Being deplatformed from Twitter and losing my 33k followers there did not harm me or slow me down in the slightest. I’ve never used Facebook for anything important. This blog is already backed up in multiple locations and we will not even break stride if Google forces Blogger to shut it down… although you should subscribe to either Castalia Book Club or the Daily Meme Wars to be alerted to the new site when the time comes.

When, not if.

Everyone needs to stop expecting fairness from their self-declared enemies or thinking that cucking just a little will cause them to spare you. If the next wave of deplatformings doesn’t affect you, then the one that follows the social media giants’ fury and despair when the Blue Wave fails to appear very well may.

Darkstream: In Defense of the US Border

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

The problem is that Americans don’t understand that the frontier closed over one hundred years ago. These people are not coming to America to become Americans, they’re invading America to demand tribute. There’s an old saying about the Danegeld: once you pay the Danegeld you’ll never be rid of the Dane. The United States brought in immigrants, brought in refugees, and all they did was encourage more. And that’s why the United States is falling apart.

The average IQ has fallen by as much as eight points. The country is literally stupefying itself, enstupidating itself, however you want to describe it, the country is actively lowering its standard of living and its ability to maintain its infrastructure. It is not sustainable. Trump understands what is politically possible better than me, that’s true, but it’s not about politics. War is not about politics. When Clausewitz talks about war being politics by other means, that’s the whole point, it’s about other means. Once you’re in the realm of defending borders, that’s not something that you need to win support for, you either do it or you don’t, and if you don’t do it then you have failed. It’s that simple.

Gordon says the entire West is infested with that mentality. That’s absolutely true and it’s not an accident. It’s a mentality that has been pushed systematically on the West by a coalition of peoples whose interests are intrinsically anti-Western. It’s not a single group of people. It’s not just the Jews, it’s not just the socialists, it’s not just the various immigrant peoples,  it is a coalition of peoples whose interests are in general opposed to the interests of the Western people.

Now the West has brought it on itself, you know. The fact that the West colonized these other countries, the fact that the West imposed their economic systems and their currencies and their legal systems and everything else on other countries, is now coming back to bite the West. This is a normal reaction to empire. If you study the empires of the past, whether you study the Athenian empire, whether you study the Roman empire, whether you look at some of the Chinese empires, whether you look at the German empire, whether you look at the British empire, all of these empires were fundamentally weakened by the nature of their having established their rule over foreign nations because it’s a relationship that goes both ways. When you set up a colony in another nation you obviously affect that nation, but that nation also affects you. That’s why the Dutch have an issue with the people who obtain Dutch citizenship through living in the Netherlands Antilles.

This is a historical pattern that repeats itself over and over and over again, and the logic of empire is what is now destroying the United States empire. People say, well, you know, the US is not an empire, we don’t have an emperor. Well, who was the emperor of the Athenian empire? You can’t name it,  there wasn’t one, because an empire is not about what you call the ruler or rulers, it’s fundamentally about whether one nation is ruling over a series of other nations or not.

A reader is reminded of the historical cycle described in the ancient Chinese classic:

The latest Darkstream immediately brought to mind the famous opening lines of Three Kingdoms:

“Here begins our tale. The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

The urge to unite speaks to man’s hubris and arrogance, and the eventual division, to the inevitable end of that folly and hubris.