I love it when a song comes together

The one thing I miss most about Psykosonik is the process of creating a song from scratch with the guys. Whether it turns out the way you first conceived it in your head or not, the process is always an interesting experience.

After Gene and I mixed and mastered the record, I listened back and knew we had something. I took a promo copy up to the Bronx and played it for my friends. But when the 45 ended, there was complete silence. Everyone looked at me, and someone said, “Dion, what did you do to it?” They were remembering that night at Ellen’s party and the spontaneity of what we had done.

I never thought I had screwed up the song, but I knew what they meant. I had had those feelings before—a record not quite capturing what I had intended. But with “Runaround Sue,” I knew I had nailed it, even though that didn’t come across for my Bronx friends.

After “Runaround Sue” came out in September ’61 and hit No. 1, I went to the old neighborhood for a party. My friends said, “You know, we couldn’t really hear how good the record was at first, but it sounds good now.” Ellen gave me a hug and said, “Wow, what a birthday gift to watch that song come together.” By then, the song’s attitude had grabbed everyone’s spirit. But you know, as great as that song sounds on the record, it was even better at Ellen’s party. Sad but true.

I get a little of the same buzz from designing games and software, but because the process is so much longer, it’s nowhere nearly as emotionally satisfying. With the music, you can hear it decades later and still recapture a little bit of what it felt like at the time it was all coming together. It’s really less about the destination than the journey.

Already at trade war

Cuckservatives, and economically maleducated conservatives, don’t realize that the fact one is not fighting a war does not mean one is not already engaged in one:

In retort to Trump pointing out a necessary shift in trade position (a shift to put American interests first – a shift to stop the dependency on cheap import goods – a shift to use China’s dependency on access to our market to OUR advantage) Jeb Bush came back with an example of Boeing manufacturing.

Donald Trump, responding to Jeb’s Boeing example, pointed out China is forcing Boeing to open a manufacturing plant in China.  As typical from a candidate who is unfamiliar and unbriefed on the issue Jeb looked back incredulously and said:

    “C’mon man”…

There you have it.  There’s the disconnect.  Almost everyone missed it.  There, in that exact moment, is the spotlight upon all that is wrong with a professional political class; globalists dependent on Wall Street for their talking points.

Trump was 100% correct.

But the issue is bigger.

Not only is China demanding Boeing open a plant in China, the intent of such a plant provides an opportunity to explain why Trump is vitally important – and time is wasting.

China is refusing to trade with Boeing if the company does not move.  Why? It’s not about putting Chinese people to work, it’s about China importing their research and development, Boeing’s production secrets, into their country so they can learn, steal and begin to manufacture their own airliners.

This is just how China works.  In time, Comac, a state-owned, Shanghai-based aerospace company will then use the production secrets they have stolen, produce their own airliners, kick out Boeing, undercut the market, and sell cheaper manufactured airplanes to the global economy.

Boeing, the great American company that Jeb Bush thinks they are, becomes yet another notch on the Asian market belt.

All of those Boeing workers, those high-wage industrial skill jobs that support the American middle class, yeah – those jobs lost.   And the cycle continues.

Theory, logic, and fifty years of free trade experience all demonstrate the same thing: free trade impoverishes a wealthy nation and lowers its per capita wages toward the global average. And those are just the negative economic consequences. No amount of magical thinking and repeated chants of “ricardosmith ricardosmith” are going to change that.

If you want to go into more detail on the subject, read the relevant chapter of Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America.

The social media war

Mike Cernovich puts what is already happening on Goodreads and Twitter and Facebook into perspective:

Until recently journalists loved social media, social media lined their pockets:

  •     Journalist writes a story.
  •     Readers share and discuss the story.
  •     Websites gets more pages views and journalists set the agenda.

Social media was great until a mindset shift happened.

Readers became writers. Readers began setting the agenda. Social media is the new media. Everyone in media knows this, and everyone is terrified.

This is about control of the information flow. It’s not possible to indoctrinate and propagandize when there is a sufficiently strong countercurrent, and the Alt Right is an increasingly powerful countercurrent. That’s why they are desperate to mute us.

The fight for social media is the fight for democracy.

Most people believe social media is a scrap book for your life, and if Zuckerberg has his way, that’s what Facebook will be for. The rubes and slobs can share memes, but if you share any thoughts that threaten the political establishment, you’re finished.

If Jack Dorsey has his way, the mainstream media will regain its power as gate keepers of information.

The rapefugee crisis will not be reported. The brutal beatings of women will be swept under the rug. Presidential elections will involve two sides of the same globalist coin.

Keep fighting back.

That’s what we’re discussing tonight. There is only ONE way to ensure that they can’t turn off our microphones, and that is to build our own. We need our own information flow, we can’t expect to be permitted to borrow the other side’s indefinitely.

They often talk a techno-libertarian game and proclaim their channels are for everyone, but their actions have repeatedly belied their words. It’s not a coincidence that it is always the voices on the right that are silenced and the memes of the right that are banned while the left is permitted to violate the so-called rules at will.

So much for Republican loyalty

The Republican Establishment always demands loyalty from its base, but never offers any of its own:

I have voted Republican in every presidential election since I first became eligible to vote in 1980. I worked in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and in the White House for George W. Bush as a speechwriter and adviser. I have also worked for Republican presidential campaigns, although not this time around. Despite this history, and in important ways because of it, I will not vote for Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination….

No
major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of
knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness. It
is little surprise, then, that many of Mr. Trump’s most celebrated
pronouncements and promises — to quickly and “humanely” expel 11 million
illegal immigrants, to force Mexico to pay for the wall he will build
on our southern border, to defeat the Islamic State “very quickly” while
as a bonus taking its oil, to bar Muslims from immigrating to the
United States — are nativistic pipe dreams and public relations stunts.

No wonder people have increasingly little use for Republicans. They stand for nothing but the status quo. They promise nothing but the status quo. They offer nothing but the status quo. They are, quite literally, hopeless.

For Republicans, there is an additional reason not to vote for Mr. Trump. His nomination would pose a profound threat to the Republican Party and conservatism, in ways that Hillary Clinton never could. For while Mrs. Clinton could inflict a defeat on the Republican Party, she could not redefine it. But Mr. Trump, if he were the Republican nominee, would.

Mr. Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects, but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the Republican standard-bearer. The nominee, after all, is the leader of the party; he gives it shape and definition. If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one. Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.

An angry, bigoted, populist party sounds a lot more appropriate and viable in the last days of a failing multicultural empire than a go-along-to-get-along Wile E. Coyote party. And a dramatic break with the Republican party’s best traditions, which are stabbing its base in the back and caving into Democrats, is long overdue.

The most certain way to know that Trump is doing well is to observe the way in which the liberal mainstream media is affording these cuckservatives a national platform to take these futile shots at him.

Trapping the wolves

The Anglican Community finally calls the false Christians of the Episcopal Church to account for their theological crimes:

For the first time, the global organizing body of Anglicans has punished the Episcopal Church, following years of heated debate with the American church over homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the role of women.

The Anglican Communion’s announcement Thursday that it would suspend its U.S. branch for three years from key voting positions was seen as a blow to the Episcopal Church, which allows its clergy to perform same-sex marriages and this summer voted to include the rite in its church laws.

It was also seen as a victory for conservative Anglicans, especially those in Africa, who for years have been pressing the Anglican Communion to discipline the U.S. body.

“The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union,” the leaders of the Anglican Communion, which represents 44 national churches, said in a statement during a meeting in Canterbury. “The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching.”

The Episcopalians are not Christians. They follow the world, they do not follow Jesus Christ. It would be better if their evil “bishops” were all excommunicated, but we live in a softer, more secular world at the present. This suspension is a long overdue start.

Musings On Immigration, part II

This is the followup to the original guest post on the ongoing European Migrant Crisis. As before, I don’t agree with all of it, but it makes for an interesting starting point for debate.

In the previous post, I discussed what I believe to be the origins of the current Migrant Crisis – and Europe’s collective inability to take measures before it was too late to prevent major trouble. In this post, I discuss steps that can – that must – be taken by European Governments, mainly Germany, but France and Britain too, to prevent the crisis from getting any further out of hand.

The problem facing those governments, however, is difficult. Can they safeguard their populations without fatally compromising European principles?

In Germany, the first step is all too clear: Merkel must go.

Angela Merkel is not just a failed politician. Politicians have lost credibility before and survived; Clinton, Bush and Obama all survived crisis that threatened to bring them down. Merkel, however, not only bears a large share of the responsibility for the Migrant Crisis, but in attempting to cover up the scale of the problem she has thoroughly discredited her government. Right now, I doubt very many people in Germany would trust a word spewing from Merkel’s mouth. When the government is untrustworthy – and anyone in Germany can see the disproof in front of their eyes – it convinces people that they can no longer trust the government to take care of them.

Merkel, not to put too fine a point on it, forgot who she was working for. A common problem among European politicians. Her duty was not to migrants, however pitiful they looked, but to the German people. A German, she failed Germany; a woman, she failed women. Her ham-fisted attempts to come to terms with the crisis have only undermined her further. For the sake of Germany, for the sake of law and order and common decency, Merkel must go.

Having said that, there are a number of practical steps that need to be taken as soon as possible.

First, the borders must be sealed. Unaccompanied young men must not be allowed to enter the country. The problem is already quite big enough. If worst comes to worst, those borders must be defended by gunfire. Europeans who marry non-Europeans should be denied residence rights unless they can convince officials that they have had a long-standing and genuine relationship.

Second, there must be a full registry of illegal immigrants and migrants within Europe. This can be accomplished by making it clear that any undocumented personage found within Europe, or Germany, after a cut-off date will be summarily deported. Fingerprints and other identifying characteristics must be collected, allowing any criminal elements to be quickly identified and rapidly deported.

Third, the police and security forces must retake control of the no-go zones. The areas must be flooded by policemen, backed up by soldiers if necessary. Any attempt to attack the police must be greeted with maximum force. Patrols must be run through the most dangerous areas, forcing local leaders to either knuckle under or send out their thugs (which will weaken them badly, when the thugs are killed or locked up in detention camps.) It must be made clear that any attempt to challenge the government’s monopoly on force will end badly.

Fourth, all Islamist preachers and suchlike must be summarily removed from the streets and placed into detention camps. The preaching of both radical Islam and terrorist ideology must be stopped, whatever the cost. Any riots following such arrests are to be brutally crushed.

Fifth, mosques, Islamic schools and other such institutions are to be ordered to warn immigrants of the new rules on pain of being shut down. The national languages used as the official languages; teaching materials are to be strictly vetted before they are allowed to be used in the schools. The rights of women in Western countries, for example, must be discussed openly, allowing young girls to make up their own minds about their futures.

Sixth, and finally, there must be a zero-tolerance policy towards any migrant crimes. Small crimes – defecating on the seats, for example – must be punished by deportation (or a one-way ticket to the camps, pending deportation). Large crimes must be punished by death.

I make no pretence that any of these measures will be easy. Islamist leaders, regardless of how hostile they are towards the outside society, will not take them lightly. Europe has made too many concessions to find it easy to retake control. The European Governments will have to build up their police forces and militaries while avoiding infiltration and grit their collective teeth against the howls of fury from the Left. Can they do it? I don’t know.

But they must, because the alternatives are worse. Fascism, Balkanisation (aka Civil War) and Caliphate.

I will explore these in the third post.

Sad Puppies can’t protect them now

Sarah Hoyt tries to explain what Brad and Larry couldn’t manage to get across to the SF SJWs last year.

What they don’t realize is that they’re attacking the people who read in favor of the imaginary “other” who will be so refined and perfect. They also don’t realize that Sad Puppies was the only thing PROTECTING them from Vox. I don’t know if we still are enough to protect them, and at this point I know any number of people who say “May G-d have mercy on their souls” rather than try to defend them.

Even if one disregards how many Sad Puppies were converted into Rabid Puppies by the actions of the SJWs, there simply isn’t anything the Sad Puppies can do to protect them from us this year. Nor are they particularly interested in doing so.

“I find Vox Day a bit abrasive but honestly at this point I’m ready for him to eat them alive.”

Last year, my alliance with the others tied my hands. You may recall that I did not talk much to the media or bother to protest most of their ridiculous characterizations, but left that to Brad, the SP3 spokesman. I had no need to defend myself against spurious charges, and there was no point in doing so anyhow.

This year is when the Rabid Puppies will respond. But not in kind. No, because we have no need to tell lies about them. I intend to do something far, far worse. I intend to tell the truth.

While they, apparently, are occupied with making Lego figures of us. It seems that is what they do when they are not obsessing over what they think we are thinking. Even in light of how poorly they anticipated me last time, it’s mildly amusing to see that they still don’t understand my perspective at all.

Rethinking nationalism

First, the self-appointed Western elites were surprised to learn that History had not, in fact, ended. Now they are reeling from the discovery that no one actually wants to live in their shiny, sexy, multicultural, and postnational utopia. Ross Douthat presents Ten Theses on Immigration:

Native backlash against perceived cultural transformation is very powerful, and any politics that refuses to take account of it will fail. 

Even if you suppose, that is, that mass immigration would be an unalloyed good in a world where Western populations could manage to overcome their (or what you think of as their) bigotry and nativism and racism, in the world that actually exists politicians have to account for those forces and not simply assume that the right Facebook rules and elite-level political conspiracies can perpetually keep a lid on populism. If you make choices that very predictably empower the National Front or Pegida or Trump, you cannot wash your hands of those consequences by saying, “oh, it’s not my fault that my fellow countrymen are such terrible bigots.” The way to disempower demagogues is not to maintain a high-minded moral purity that’s dismissive of public opinion’s actual shape; it’s to balance your purity with prudence, so as to avoid handing demagogues issues that might eventually deprive you of power entirely, and render all your moral ambitions moot.

In this vein, Tyler Cowen has suggested that because it courts backlash so brazenly, the open borders movement might not necessarily be good for open borders in the long run. But one could go further and say that extremely liberal immigration policies might not be good for liberal norms, period, in the long run.

Reading the Ten Theses, one might almost think Douthat had read Cuckservative.

“The Most Important Book of 2015”

The Most Important Book Of 2015: SJWs Always Lie

As someone who has been the target of SJW attacks for years, and who has helped bring awareness to their totalitarian interpretation of “justice,” I began reading Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie with enthusiasm. Not only does it go into depth about what SJW’s think and how they behave, it also gives you a strategy for fighting back when they come after you or your organization.

SJW’s have so infected Western institutions and corporations that it
is inevitable you will come face-to-face with an SJW who hopes to harm
you and your livelihood. For that reason, SJWs Always Lie amounts to essential reading for all men. It’s the most important book I read in 2015.

In the universities, in the churches, in the
corporations, in the professional associations, in the editorial
offices, in the game studios, and just about everywhere else you can
imagine, free speech and free thought are under siege by a group of
fanatics as self-righteous as Savonarola, as ruthless as Stalin, as
ambitious as Napoleon, and as crazy as Caligula. They are the Social
Justice Warriors, the SJWs, the self-appointed thought police who have
been running amok throughout the West since the dawn of the politically
correct era in the 1990s.

Vox methodically breaks down the enemy that we have been fighting for
years, including their strengths, weaknesses, and modes of attack.
While information on fighting SJWs are available on various sites and
forums, this is the first time it has been assembled in one cohesive
work.

I very much appreciate the distinction. Regardless of what you might think of him, Roosh has been on the front lines of the cultural war and he has fearlessly continued to stand up for men, even men who disdain and disavow him.

Roosh knows, much better than most of us, the lengths to which SJWs are willing to go to disqualify, discredit, and destroy a man. That is why his praise for the book is so meaningful, and so significant.

January Brainstorm

I’m sorry about the short notice, but if you’re in technology, this is a Brainstorm you do NOT want to miss if you are a member. Friday, 5:30 PM EST. Closed session, no transcript. We’ll be discussing the new projects that are underway, including the Big Enchilada, with a panelist who is working on an equally important project that every reader here will want to support. Invites go out shortly.