The importance of rhetoric

Thales points out that the social media world is literally engulfed in low-level leftist rhetoric:

Surfing around Instagram, you will find a large number of scantily-clad women travelling the world petting cute little animals, talking about “body positivity” and posing provocatively, generally with the juicy bits only barely covered enough to avoid attracting the attention of the censors. Invariably, every cause spouted by these Instagram ladies is boilerplate Leftism. Save the whales, maybe, or fat is beautiful, or white men are vaguely shitty and probably shouldn’t even exist. Also, Christianity is crap, and Atheism is morally superior to the zombie sky wizard.

Now, we roll our eyes at this and go about our business. Why, after all, should we worry excessively about near-porn fusing with idiotic Leftism?

Truthfully, this is a massive problem. Leftism is seen, even by most Rightists, as the default position. It’s the ‘no thinking required’ setting. If you want to spout some kind of philosophical nonsense to make yourself look smart and cultured while your boob is falling out, you do Leftism. It’s easy rhetoric. Hey look, there’s a man with no fish. Saying “somebody should give him a fish, look he’s starving” is the easy rhetorical answer. Defeating this argument is simple with dialectic, but few people care about dialectic. It’s boring. Nerdy. Too many words. Better to just call somebody a bigot and move on.

The correct way to fight this is through memes. That’s why I created the Daily Meme Wars, although to be honest, the memes I create tend to incorporate excessively high rhetoric. But it would be more effective to simply subvert the low-level rhetoric by taking their imagery and repurposing it. This will tend to be even more effective than their incoherent, dishonest rhetoric because, as Aristotle notes, the most effective rhetoric is based on the truth.

One can even engage in destructive meta-rhetoric, by taking their message and attaching it to images that make it clear how absurd and false their rhetoric is.

So, I’m going to be experimenting with lowering the level of the rhetoric and making it more direct to see if that makes it more effective on social media. For example, it doesn’t change the message if the background image is a painting of the signing of the Constitution or a girl in an American flag bikini when the words, and the intrinsic truth underlying those words, are the same.

It is not your Country. It is not your Constitution. You have to go back.

The only substantive difference is in the effectiveness of the memes on different people. Some people do react emotionally to images from 1776. But a lot more react emotionally to images of attractive young women.

UPDATE: Here is an example from today’s Daily Meme Wars that directly addresses the feminist body-positivity rhetoric.

 

The Rainbow Coalition unravels

We can expect more of this inter-party conflict as whites cease to become the only identity group with influence who can be safely targeted:

California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, the prominent #MeToo activist now under investigation for groping and sexual harassment of former legislative staffers, was reprimanded by former Assembly Speaker John Perez in 2014 for making racially insensitive comments directed toward Asians.

Perez confirmed to POLITICO on Saturday that he had to “strongly admonish” Garcia after she made comments against Asians in a closed-door Assembly Democratic Caucus meeting in 2014 — the same year in which she also acknowledged using homophobic slurs aimed at Perez, the first openly gay speaker of the California State Assembly.

Sources familiar with the incident say Garcia’s anti-Asian remarks came during a legislative battle that arose when Asian-American community activists successfully lobbied to defeat a Democratic proposal to overturn California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions. They argued that such a move could hurt Asian student admission rates.

Perez in mid-March 2014 announced a move to return the bill to the Senate without any action from the Assembly, effectively blocking its advance. Garcia, the sources said, erupted in anger during a tense meeting of the entire Assembly Democratic caucus.

“This makes me feel like I want to punch the next Asian person I see in the face,” according to sources present at the meeting and other legislative sources who were told about the comments in the immediate aftermath.

It is beginning to look like there will be a Hispanic-Jewish alliance battling the Asians for control of the Democratic Party. Which is why LA Mayor Garcetti, who is the poster boy for that alliance, will be heavily pushed to be the next Democratic candidate for President.

Back to the balance of power

Russia now has the ability to drown the US coasts:

Russia’s new nuclear drone submarine could be capable of causing 300ft-high tsunamis, able to wipe out coastal cities, experts say. The existence of the drone, believed to be the Status-6 system – also known as ‘Putin’s doomsday machine’ – was confirmed by the Russian President himself in his annual state-of-the-nation speech in Moscow last month.

Experts say a 50 megaton underwater nuclear bomb would be able to create tsunami waves reaching more than 320ft – the ‘Status-6’ is allegedly able to carry a 100 megaton warhead.

Perhaps the neocons should stop trying to throw the US weight around and interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations. On the plus side, the prospect of having both coasts submerged underwater is considerably better than thermonuclear war. Indeed, one could quite credibly argue that the American nation would be better off without either of them.

Even dead, he’s more productive

JRR Tolkien is releasing a new book, The Fall of Gondolin, which sounds right up my alley.

In the latest sad episode of the saga of George R. R. Martin’s next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, never being published, legendary deceased author J.R.R. Tolkien has reportedly finished another book before Martin could complete Winds of Winter. Not only is the legendary Lord of the Rings author publishing a new book before Martin, but he’s publishing them at a faster rate in general. Tolkein’s new book, The Fall of Gondolin, which will be published in 2018, follows 2017’s Beren and Lúthien, meaning despite being dead since 1973, Tolkien is somehow able to release books at a rate of one per year, while Martin hasn’t released a new ASOIAF book since 2011’s A Dance With Dragons.

The Fall of Gondolin is billed as the first “real” story of Middle Earth, and tells of the fall of the titular city to dark forces. Edited by Tolkein’s 93-year-old son, Christopher Tolkien, the book was reportedly written while J.R.R. Tolkien was convalescing after the Battle of the Somme. The Guardian, which broke the story, provides a summary of the story:

The book, said publisher HarperCollins, sets the “uttermost evil” of Morgoth against the sea-god Ulmo. Morgoth is trying to discover and destroy the hidden city of Gondolin, while Ulmo is supporting the Noldor, the kindred of the elves who live in the city.

The story follows one of the Noldor, Tuor, who sets out to find Gondolin; during his journey, he experiences what the publisher described as “one of the most arresting moments in the history of Middle-earth”: when Ulmo, the sea-god, rises out of the ocean during a storm.

When Tuor arrives in Gondolin, he becomes a great man and the father of Eärendel, an important character in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. But Morgoth attacks, with Balrogs, dragons and orcs, and as the city falls, Tuor, his wife Idril and the child Eärendel escape, “looking back from a cleft in the mountains as they flee southward, at the blazing wreckage of their city”.

It might seem shocking that a deceased author could publish two books in his popular fantasy series in just two years, while Martin has taken over 7 years to provide fans with the penultimate chapter of his series and seems unlikely do so before HBO finishes Game of Thrones, the television adaptation that had to chart its own course after lapping Martin. However, it’s worth noting that, being dead, Tolkien needn’t be distracted by things like LiveJournal or WildCards books, so he has a distinct advantage.

Look for The Fall of Gondolin sometime this year. Don’t bother looking for The Winds of Winter. It’s never coming out.

They may well be right. I strongly suspect that George RR Martin simply can’t write at the same level as his previous books in the series anymore, and he knows it. Being a gamma, he’d rather not even try than take the risk of trying, failing, and destroying his literary legacy.

That’s my current theory, anyhow. And it’s totally not based on any concerns about the rest of A Sea of Skulls living up to the first two-thirds….

What we’re up against

It’s hard not to be stirred by the new SJW anthem, THIS IS ME. It hits all the right rhetorical chords. Only if you understand what the composer and lyricist are doing, and what their underlying purpose is, can you grasp the pure and unapologetic evil of the song. It is literally a celebration of sin and an assault on Western civilization.

And yet, most of those who consider themselves firmly anti-SJW will be tempted to deny the possibility of any ill-intent and to defend it, in much the same way they defend Hamilton, Let It Go, and other weapons of cultural mass destruction, despite the fact that the message of hatred, defiance, and opposition is openly declared.

Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the sun (we are warriors)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve become

My first response to hearing the song and seeing the video was to feel the profound and programmed emotional stirring. My second response was to put that emotional effect in intellectual context, and think, kill it with fire. And my third response was to reflect upon how good these evil rhetoricians are, and realize how far we have to go in order to effectively counteract their influence on the mass culture.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling oddly defensive of the song. That defensiveness you are feeling is testimony to the power of the rhetoric. But review the lyrics and analyze the imagery. It is powerful cultural programming, but it loses its power and becomes transparent when viewed through coldly dialectic analytical eye. “Reaching for the sun” indeed…..

Just remember that we’re the ones with the guns. We’re the side with no reason for shame. We are servants of the King and the defenders of the West. They know they are guilty, they know they are damned, and they are openly flaunting their sin. They are warriors and they are at war with our God, our civilization, our faith, and our nation.

I knew nothing about the lyricist, so I looked him up. Disney, check. Gay, check. Jewish, check. He even admits that “we were tasked with writing an anthemic identity song.” Quelle surprise.

Whatever. Their satanic hymns will not save them from the justice of the Almighty God in the end. Deus vult.

The dangers of Facebook dating

That is clearly the important lesson women should take from this British woman’s harrowing ordeal:

A British woman held as a sex slave in Italy and raped repeatedly by three men managed to escape after calling her family for help, police say.

The victim, from the north of England, originally met Mamadou Jallow, a migrant from Burkino Faso, on Facebook and travelled with him to Rosarno, south-west Italy. But when she arrived, Jallow, 37, held her against her will, took away her mobile phone and then raped her repeatedly. Two more men, from Mali, also abused her at the house, it has been claimed.

The victim, 39, was only able to escape when she managed to get access to her phone and made a secret call to her family for help. Eventually she escaped through a window and made her way to safety with the help of police.

Jallow had met the woman though Facebook and travelled to Germany to live with him. But she revealed that he was forced to flee the country after knifing a rival during a drugs dispute and they ended up in Italy, local media reports.

Well, at least she can’t say he was boring, right? This is a really irresponsible article, as I think we can all agree that the real danger here is that women might become afraid to date migrants from Burkina Faso. That would be racist and we all know there is nothing worse than that.

The dysgenic city

Freeman Dyson explains why cities, and indirectly, interracial relationships, are inherently dysgenic:

If a small population is inbreeding, the rate of drift of the average measure of any human capability scales with the inverse square root of the population. Big fluctuations of the average happen in isolated villages far more often than in cities. On the average, people in villages are not more capable than people in cities. But if ten million people are divided into a thousand genetically isolated villages, there is a good chance that one lucky village will have a population with outstandingly high average capability, and there is a good chance that an inbreeding population with high average capability produces an occasional bunch of geniuses in a short time. The effect of genetic isolation is even stronger if the population of the village is divided by barriers of rank or caste or religion. Social snobbery can be as effective as geography in keeping people from spreading their genes widely.

A substantial fraction of the population of Europe and the Middle East in the time between 1000 BC and 1800 AD lived in genetically isolated villages, so that genetic drift may have been the most important factor making intellectual revolutions possible. Places where intellectual revolutions happened include, among many others, Jerusalem around 800 BC (the invention of monotheistic religion), Athens around 500 BC (the invention of drama and philosophy and the beginnings of science), Venice around 1300 AD (the invention of modern commerce), Florence around 1600 (the invention of modern science), and Manchester around 1750 (the invention of modern industry).

These places were all villages, with populations of a few tens of thousands, divided into tribes and social classes with even smaller populations. In each case, a small starburst of geniuses emerged from a small inbred population within a few centuries, and changed our ways of thinking irreversibly. These eruptions have many historical causes. Cultural and political accidents may provide unusual opportunities for young geniuses to exploit. But the appearance of a starburst must be to some extent a consequence of genetic drift. The examples that I mentioned all belong to Western cultures. No doubt similar starbursts of genius occurred in other cultures, but I am ignorant of the details of their history.

West’s neglect of villages as agents of change raises an important question. How likely is it that significant numbers of humans will choose to remain in genetically isolated communities in centuries to come?

You know the current situation is becoming entirely unsustainable when both the traditional religious perspective and the secular scientific perspective are increasingly in alignment concerning the pressing need to eliminate big cities.

Ironically, despite the 20th century being known for eugenicism, it may prove to be the biggest experiment in dysgenics that Man will ever know. The Alt-Right is not only scientodific, it is apparently necessary for future human achievement, if not survival.

Terror attack in Toronto

  1. 9 dead, 16 injured after van strikes pedestrians in Toronto, sources say suspect is Alek Minassian.
  2. Minassian is an Armenian name.
  3. Armenia’s opposition leader has demanded a snap parliamentary election in the wake of former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation over widespread anti-government demonstrations.
  4. Why was Armenia mentioned recently? Clowns losing control. Q
Which makes me wonder if the Toronto attack could be revenge for Sargsyan being forced from office. Then again, it may be just another case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome.

In defense of the Deep State

Even its proponents are now admitting its existence and are worrying that it might have gone too far:

America doesn’t have coups or tanks in the street. But a deep state of sorts exists here and it includes national security bureaucrats who use secretly collected information to shape or curb the actions of elected officials.

Some see these American bureaucrats as a vital check on the law-breaking or authoritarian or otherwise illegitimate tendencies of democratically elected officials. Others decry them as a self-serving authoritarian cabal that illegally and illegitimately undermines democratically elected officials and the policies they were elected to implement.

The truth is that the deep state, which is a real phenomenon, has long been both a threat to democratic politics and a savior of it. The problem is that it is hard to maintain its savior role without also accepting its threatening role. The two go hand in hand, and are difficult to untangle.

The deep state has been blamed for many things since Donald Trump became president, including by the president himself. Trump defenders have used the term promiscuously to include not just intelligence bureaucrats but a broader array of connected players in other administrative bureaucracies, in private industry, and in the media.

But even if we focus narrowly on the intelligence bureaucracies that conduct and use information collected secretly in the homeland, including the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), and National Security Council, there is significant evidence that the deep state has used secretly collected information opportunistically and illegally to sabotage the president and his senior officials – either as part of a concerted movement or via individuals acting more or less independently.

As deep state officials get a taste for the power that inheres in the selective revelation of such information, and if the leaks are not responded to with severe punishments, it is easy to imagine the tools that brought down Flynn being used in other contexts by national security bureaucrats with different commitments and interests.

Even the most severe critics of Trump should worry about this subtle form of anti-democratic abuse. The big loser in all this will probably be the national security bureaucracy itself and, to the extent it is weakened, the security of the American people.

This is just a Stage One admission. “Yes, it’s real, but it’s not that bad, and besides, it means well.” That means we still have a few stages to go before everyone understands that the Deep State is the Praetorian Guard of New Babel, acting to preserve the secrets and the rule of the the elite Satanist pedophiles.