The Great Rebellion

Joel Kotkin tries to explain why the world is rebelling against the experts claiming the right to lead it:

The Great Rebellion is on and where it leads nobody knows.

Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movement around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.

The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.

It’s moderately amusing that Kotkin first asserts that nobody knows where the Great Rebellion is leading before promptly explaining where it is going to go. He doesn’t know. No one does, but the idea that someone whose sympathies clearly lie with the dishonest, predatory elite that has met with such a visceral rejection from widely disparate people suggests that he will no more be able to anticipate its direction than he was able to see it coming in the first place.

What “Independence” day?

I don’t celebrate the 4th of July. I don’t celebrate “Independence Day”. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas eloquently expresses my feelings towards the Imperial USA and its regime in his recent opinion in WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH v. HELLERSTEDT, 136 S. Ct. 1001 (2016)

“The majority’s embrace of a jurisprudence of rights-specific exceptions and balancing tests is ‘a regrettable concession of defeat—an acknowledgement that we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.”

John Wright has more on this from his lawyer’s perspective on his site. And in case you missed the vital phrase there, I’ll point it out: we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.

Now, this isn’t news to me. I wrote back in 2004 that the country formerly known as “America” was dead. Today is perhaps the most fitting day on which to remind everyone that the iUSA is not America, and that one cannot fix a corpse.

Tibetan religious tradition has it that when the Dalai Lama dies, the Buddha of Compassion leaves his body and incarnates in the body of a young child. The monks immediately go out in search of this blessed child, and when they find him – as they inevitably do – he is tested by a group of high lamas and enthroned as the reincarnation of his successor.

Imagine, however, if the lamas refused to recognize that the Dalai Lama was, in fact, dead. Suppose that instead of going in search of the Buddha’s new carnal home, they hooked up the corpse to a life support machine and waited patiently for the Holy One to awake and rise up. It’s not hard to see that they would be doomed to disappointment, and furthermore, would fail to find the next Dalai Lama as well.

This is precisely our dilemma today, for America, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, is dead. By every measure, large and small, the original vision of limited government by, for and of the people has been folded, spindled and mutilated beyond recognition. When one reads the Constitution, one simply marvels at the distinct difference between its words and our present reality.

Our paper Federal Reserve Notes are not Congress-issued gold and silver coins. Our direct taxes are not apportioned. We are entangled in a veritable web of foreign alliances, Congress shamelessly makes laws regarding speech, religion and guns, and the judicial branch has arrogantly assumed for itself unchecked supremacy over the other two branches.

Regardless of whether one see these changes as blasphemous treason against the Constitution, or as reasonable and necessary modifications to what was designed to be a living document that evolves with the times, it is impossible to deny that they have been made. It is likewise impossible to assert that a massive central government possessing eminent domain, owning over a third of the land, and claiming more than a third of all income is either limited or small.

For many years, conservatives and other freedom lovers have placed their trust in the Republican Party, hoping that it would fulfill its promises to return America to its national birthright of freedom and individual liberty. Those promises, unsurprisingly, were broken by the party of Abraham Lincoln, who is most famous for converting what had been a voluntary Union of free association into a forced Union made by military might.

Any last vestiges of hope in the Republican Party have been shattered by the current regime, wherein a Republican President, Republican House, Republican Senate and Republican-nominated Supreme Court have demonstrated that they have zero interest in the timeless vision of America’s founders. Supporting them in the hopes that they will revive American liberties is akin to hoping that shock paddles will suffice to revive a month-old corpse. American freedom is not only dead, it has been rotting for some time.

There are those who say that a vote for a third-party candidate, such as the Libertarian Party’s Michael Badnarik or the Constitution Party’s Michael Peroutka, is wasted. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, these are the only votes that are not wasted, for positive change will only come from those outside the corrupt bi-factional system. After all, it was neither the Tories nor the Whigs who fought for American independence.

Like the Tibetan lamas, we must go in search of those in whom the spirit of freedom and liberty burns. The revival of American liberty is still in its infancy, as only 482,451 people voted for the Libertarian and Constitution presidential candidates combined, 0.96 percent of those who voted for the victorious Republican, George W. Bush. But that is 482,395 more people than the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, and as for those who believe our present bipartisan system is eternal, well, tell it to the Whigs.

Or, for that matter, to the optimates and populares of Rome. The choice is simple, if not easy. A revival of liberty or the continued stink of an extinct republic as it decomposes into dictatorial empire.

America is dead. Let us go, then, and find her.

Derb embraces the cuck

The globalist shaming, I hasten to add, not the feckless and misandrist anti-nationalism:

In a conversation with Gavin McInnes while waiting for a subway train, I learned a new word: “cuckmercial.” That’s one of those TV commercials — one of the many, many — in which a clueless doofus male is set right by a smart, confident woman.

Browsing the Twitter feed later, I see that this is now a hashtag.

I’ll admit I wasn’t crazy about the “cuck-” prefix when it got started, but I’m seeing the light. Let’s try to get it up to dictionary-inclusion level. So far we have cuckservatives and cuckmercials. What else can we cuck-shame?

Well, there have been TV sitcoms along the same lines as those cuckmercials, going back to at least The Dick van Dyke Show. Cuck-coms!

I spotted the word “Cuckstians” in some comment thread, referring to Christians whose faith leads them out into missionary endeavors among people — preferably African — who accept their aid packages and medicines while laughing at the missionaries’ naive idealism when their backs are turned. Fair enough, I suppose, but I doubt “Cuckstians” will catch on: too hard to pronounce.

How about Cuck Lit.? Vanity Fair comes to mind, and Gone With the Wind. The memory’s dim, but I think The Wife of Bath’s Tale gets in there, too. And recalling the plot of Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, I think I may have contributed to the Cuck Lit. genre myself.

However, I wouldn’t advise going into a bookstore (supposing you can find one nowadays) and asking for the Cuck Lit. section. They’d probably just send you to the cookery books.

This is why we don’t let Derb come up with the neologisms. Still, he’s right in thinking that Cuckstian will never catch on – not only is it hard to pronounce but it sounds too much like “cockstain” – and anyhow, there is already a term that covers cuckservative Christians, which is “Churchian”.

What usually causes a term to catch on is its effectiveness as rhetoric. Cuckmercial is good because it is rightly dismissive of both the subjects of the commercials and the commercials themselves. Cuckservative is even better, because it observably flays the soul of those to whom it applies. An offensive term is supposed to offend; one reason the Left is so alarmed by the #AltRight is because they have long intimidated conservatives by taking offense at inoffensive terms.

What are they going to do when faced with terms like “cuckservative” and “Churchian” and visual memes like the flag on the right? The contempt fairly drips off the rhetoric; it is very clear that any offense given is not incidental, but intended. This immediately puts the Left on the defense and leaves them unsettled, as they find it very frightening when their hisses of “racist” and “sexist” and “xenophobic” meet with indifference and derision.

An unfortunate coincidence

Another of those unfortunate coincidences that just seem to surround those poor, unlucky Clintons:

The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.

Ashe — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.

Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.

And now we are told Hillary is in the clear with the FBI. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But regardless, the investigating agents might want to stay out of the weight room for the time being. Or at least stick to the machines and leave the free weights alone.

I’m just picturing the hapless UN official being told off by his superiors.

How could you have been so stupid! A heart attack?

They told me they were going to take care of it, so I thought-

Yes, but did they tell you how they were going to do it?

No, I just assumed it would be the same way they took care of [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted]!

All right, well, next time wait until you found out exactly how things were arranged before you release any details.

Selling vaporware, expensively

This is why we are going to crush Tor Books in time. Not so much because our quality is superior, although it is, not so much because people are sick of the SJW bullshit they are selling, although they are. But due to this:


Brings the Lightning, Peter Grant
Kindle: $4.99, Hardcover $19.99, Paperback $12.99, KU free
available now

Empire Games, Charles Stross
Kindle: $19.99, Hardcover $25.99
available January 17, 2017

FoundationThe Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi
Kindle: $12.99, Hardcover $19.99
available March 21, 2017

They simply can’t compete, not on quality, not on price, not on value, and not on delivery. Although we signed Brings the Lightning long after Tor signed Foundation’s Collapse, we will likely publish its sequel before the Scalzi book is out. They are cumbersome dinosaurs. We are fast-moving mammals. Vicious, fast-moving mammals who eat dinosaur eggs for breakfast and smash those we’re too full to eat.

I’m amused at the fact that the PNH-Scalzi-Stross cabal is finally united at Tor Books. SJWs flock together. Stross could have been a great science fiction writer – on the basis of his early work, he should have been a great science fiction writer – but his gamma instincts combined with his mindless devotion to the SJW Narrative led him astray and ruined him. Tor Books will make a fitting grave for his literary career.

It’s interesting to observe that Tor is already marking down the price of Scalzi’s next book considering that it’s precisely the same page count as Stross’s. We charge less because we have no overhead, and unlike Tor Books, I don’t believe in taking advantage of readers to cover nonexistent print costs on the Kindle versions. At 336 pages and $19.99, allowing for the usual channel discounts, Tor appears to be selling hardcover at very near cost.

I wonder what that signifies? Does it, perchance, have anything to do with the fact that Tor’s owner, Pan Macmillan, suffered the biggest sales decline of all the Big Five in 2015, -7.7 percent?

We may have interpreted John Scalzi incorrectly. He may not be the Bernie Madoff of science fiction after all, but the Star Citizen of Tor Books.

The corruption continues

As if we needed more confirmation that there is no rule of law in the USA:

According to sources that are familiar with the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server, the former Secretary of State is not expected to face charges in the probe. This, according to CNN’s Senior Producer Edward Mejia Davis, who took to Twitter shortly ago to indicate the likely announcement of “no charges”:

Edward Mejia Davis @TeddyDavisCNN
Sources tell CNN’s Evan Perez: expectation is that there will be announcement of no charges in Clinton email probe w/in next two weeks or so

The world of the 1980s appears to have gone full circle. The Americans are evil totalitarians bent on global conquest through their third-world proxies, the Russians are good guys defending Christianity, and Italy’s politicians are less criminal and corrupt than their US counterparts.

Mailvox: SJW convergence at Baen?

A new anthology would not appear to bode well for the future of right-wing authors at Baen Books who are not named “John” or “Larry”:

I finished the anthology SHATTERED SHIELDS. Supposedly a “military fantasy” anthology though there was precious little military anything about it. Two stories blatantly homosexual. Robin Wayne Bailey has a spunky warrior women sorceress who is also a lesbian.

James L. Sutter had a story of an “elite” legion of 100 pairs of homosexual lovers who fight as pairs in battles. Total bullshit on the fighting…. A Jennifer Brozek co-edited the anthology. An overweight red head from her picture. Edited a book called CHICKS DIG GAMING, a non-fiction book on how females love gaming. Ever hear of her before? She also wrote a Valdemar story for one of antholgies of stories set in Mercedes Lackey’s horse world.

I have no idea who Bryan Thomas Schmidt is.

Take home point: convergence is taking place at Baen. SJWs are infiltrating there. Nowhere is safe with the big publishers. I notice women seem to like the anthology at Goodreads. Some of this stuff manages to make Joe Abercrombie look good in comparison.

I was wondering how long it would take SJWs to go after military science fiction once Kameron Hurley won the Hugo for her ahistorical and risibly stupid blog post “We Have Always Fought”. After all, there is nothing to stop them from turning Mil-SF into converged Romance the way they did to science fiction proper, especially in the era of She-Rangers and infantrymen in red heels. Now we know. At least the Sacred Band of Thebes really existed, although I find it moderately amusing that they now appear in practically every historical fantasy for either bathetic or virtue-signaling purposes.

Baen has always been uniquely at risk of SJW entryism for two reasons. One, it is 25-percent owned by Tor Books. Two, many of its authors are libertarians who are fairly sound on the economic and political fronts, but are more than a little prone to virtue-signaling on the cultural side. It’s one thing to have the occasional gay character – but when you have more gay characters than Catholics or Baptists appearing in your work, it’s readily apparent that you are, at best, virtue-signaling for the SJWs.

And when you make a point of bragging about how your protagonists are diverse in one way or another, well, it’s not exactly hard to predict which way you’re going to bend when the cultural winds blow. Or the road you’re going to walk in the future.

aliceination @frumiouslyalice
@saladinahmed just finished your book! excited for the next one but wondering – any chance of some more explicitly lgbt+ chars in future?

Saladin Ahmed ‏@saladinahmed
yes. A 100% chance.

Despite what many SJWs think, Baen is not actually on our side, rather, Baen is the No Man’s Land between the SJW and the Right. I suspect we’ll know Baen has fully converged when it abandons its garish trademark covers in favor of the washed-out faux literary style favored by Tor. Not that there is anything right about one or wrong about the other, but SJWs always have the need to let everyone know they have taken control, and that would be the most public way of making it clear to all and sundry.

Anyhow, should Baen eventually go the way of its big brother, Castalia will be here
to assist any of its authors who prefer to align with the Alt and Traditional Rights rather
than with the cultural Marxists.

The minor hubbub over Judith Merril and the long, sordid history of the Left’s baleful influence in science fiction makes it clear what a unique opportunity is being presented today by the confluence of technology and events. No wonder they call us Nazis. No wonder they are terrified.

They should be.

Peccato!

To be honest, Germany deserved to win what was a very open, hard-fought 1-1 game, although that was the WORST penalty-taking by both sides that I have ever seen, and I have seen penalty shootouts all the way from the international down to the local scuola calcio. While I’ve seen penalties reach the #8 shooter before, that’s only because both sides were systematically making their penalties, not because both teams had 3 of their first 5 penalty-takers miss.

What on Earth was Antonio Conte doing substituting in Zaza right before the end of the second extra-time period? I would have said it was the worst penalty I’d seen taken in a Euro championship were it not for Bastian Schweinsteiger putting a bizarre lob over the net a few moments later.

The operative theory in the household was that the shooters were intimidated by going up against Neuer and Buffon, the two best keepers in the world. That’s as good an explanation as any, I suppose.

This has been a fun Euro, though, what with both Iceland and Wales upsetting everyone. It’s probably too much to expect Iceland to upset France, even though most of Europe will be pulling for them.

Good for the economy

I was thinking about it was strange how the mantra that immigration is “good for the economy always remains the same no matter what the costs imposed on the invaded nation are.

The tidal wave of refugees that crashed through Germany’s doors last year has long turned to a trickle, but the costs of the inflow will remain a burden on the country for years, budget figures released on Friday showed. The German finance ministry expects to spend $86.2 billion over the next four years feeding, housing and training refugees as well as helping their home countries to stem the flow.

So, the economy is measured in terms of GDP. GDP = C+I+G+(x-m)… wait a minute!

Immigrants are good for the economy, by definition, because they always increase government spending!