Rhetoric and Pride

It’s always fascinating to see how those inclined toward rhetoric will always find a way to declare something to be bad, even if it requires a complete inversion of common, every-day terminology. This exchange was in the comments in Sigma Game, after I made an observation that applies generally to a large class of people.

EM: Nothing like painting with a broad brush, lol. I’ve never met anyone so certain of every single thing they say.

VD: That’s because if I’m not certain, I don’t say anything. You should try it.

EM: Only a fool is so certain of every single thing they say. I hope you hear the pride in your own words. That is a dangerous stance, my friend. Humility would be a good medicine.

VD: You have it completely backwards. Only a fool blurts out his thoughts when he knows little and opines in ignorance. I have 22 years of daily experience with hundreds of people who dislike me intensely dissecting every single word I write in order to discredit me or expose any weakness in my arguments. There is no pride in knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. What you mistake for pride is just absolute confidence based on the experience of having been repeatedly challenged and tested over a period of decades.

Now, obviously even the local midwits know perfectly well what’s going on here. But the interesting thing is the way that the rhetorical attacker doesn’t hesitate to invert the idea that remaining reticent about sharing one’s opinion and refusing to opine in ignorance is somehow based in pride rather than intellectual humility and the recognition that one’s opinion might well be wrong.

For example, I was very hesitant to do more than ask questions when I happened to notice the first anomalies in evolutionary scientistry, such as the inability of biologists, professors, and teachers to understand the concept that there not only is an average rate of evolution by natural selection, but that there absolutely has to be. Even after that first glimpse of innumeracy and philosophical inepititude, ittook years of cautious inquiry and detailed reading of various papers and books before I was confident enough in my reasoning, certain enough in my conclusions, to publicly challenge the likes of JF Gariepy and point out the mathematical impossibility of mainstream evolutionary theory.

And now, of course, all of those evolutionists who were so eager to lecture me on a subject they presumed I did not understand not only don’t want to answer any of my questions anymore, they are in full retreat from the very strong point they have defended for decades.

I am referring here, of course, to their headlong retreat to randomness, which is vastly amusing to anyone who recalls Dawkins’s passionate, but inept, attempt to argue that natural selection “is the very opposite of random”.

Those who have been here since 2008 will also notice that I no longer attempt to calculate the impact of debt on the economy despite a respectable past record. That’s because I don’t have the relevant information anymore; the Federal Reserve’s changes to its reporting has deprived me of the data I require to even begin formulating an opinion. So, I don’t say anything because I don’t know anything.

But to the rhetorical, intellectual humility can be pride for the same reason that black can be white and war can be peace. Because there is no information content in rhetoric, it’s merely an attempt to emotionally manipulate other individuals.

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The Classicist Conspiracy

The more deeply one looks into the facts related to the mainstream historian’s version of the official Shakespeare story, the more obviously implausible it becomes.

In my debate with classicist Philip Womack, he pushed the orthodox view detailed above that the apocryphal plays and bad quartos were all the result of some form of piracy. And I responded with something like the following:

Can you not tell how anti-Strafordian you sound here? You think the majority of plays attributed to William Shakespeare while he was alive and up till 1621 are fraudulent and the result of corruption (this is counting all apocryphal plays and bad quartos) despite the fact that:

  • Shakespeare never protested about his name falsely being used.
  • Shakespeare and company, who performed all these plays, never complained about their illicit procurement and unauthorized publication.
  • No one else ever mentioned it at the time or for decades afterward.
  • The real authors of the apocryphal plays never demanded proper credit.
  • None of the dozens of printers or publishers were ever punished for it.
  • These nefarious printers and publishers ended up pulling off a ruse that fooled the world for a century—as scholars, editors, etc. were still referring to “Yorkshire Tragedy” and “London Prodigal” as Shakespeare’s into the 18th century.
  • No other playwright of the Shakespeare era was similarly victimized. In fact, no other living writer in all of English history had a similar misattribution occur to him just once—let alone twelve times!

Expanding on the last point above, there is no known case in history in which an English printer or publisher has ever purposefully misattributed a single work (like a play, essay, or novel) to a single, living author whom they knew had nothing to do with the work. Why is that? Well, because the printer and publisher would know that the credited author would complain—and so too would the wronged author whose work had been stolen and assigned to someone else. In fact, as I have shown, there also may not even be an indisputable example of such a deliberate misattribution occurring to a dead author.

There’s just no rational reason to doubt Shakespeare’s authorship of the quartos attributed to him—and no one at the time, or for even a century afterward, ever doubted those title pages either.

As usual, the mainstream inverts the actual situation. It’s not those who are revising the official history on the basis of the available facts who are the conspiracy theorists, it’s the classicists who are defending their unsupportable dogma by concocting a whole series of conspiratorial explanations.

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China’s Demographic Decline

It’s not a great mystery why China recently revised its marriage and divorce laws to make the former easier and significantly disincentivize women from pursuing the latter:

The number of Chinese kindergartens has fallen by a quarter in four years, prompting the closure of tens of thousands of schools in the country as a precipitous drop in births hits the education system.

Enrolments in China’s kindergartens have declined by 12mn children between 2020 and 2024, from a peak of 48mn, according to data from the country’s ministry of education. The number of kindergartens, serving Chinese children aged 3-5, has also fallen by 41,500 from a high of nearly 295,000 in 2021.

Falling enrolments are now “baked into the system and that’s not going to change”, said Stuart Gietel-Basten, director of the Center for Aging Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He added that compared with five or 10 years ago, the decline in births was “huge”.

The contraction of China’s pre-school system is a foretaste of the challenges to come for business and policymakers from China’s demographic decline, which is expected to be one of the most rapid in the world. China has recorded three consecutive years of population decline to 2024 following the decades-long policy, ended in 2016, that limited many couples to one child. While the number of births rose by about 520,000 last year to 9.3mn, following a record low in 2023, they were still outpaced by deaths and have declined by nearly half since the peak of 17.9mn in 2017.

It’s fascinating to observe that the importation of Western feminism has proven to be even worse for Chinese fertility than the notorious one-child policy that was in place from 1978 to 2015. Which suggests that if the birth rates don’t turn around quickly, China is going to start cracking down hard on permitting young women to pursue higher education, given that education has proven to be the most efficient way to render women barren.

It’s far too soon to tell, but I suspect that it is the Enlightenment and its false values that the historians of the future will eventually hold responsible for the decline and fall of the West.

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Book of Ephesians

I suppose you might consider it a modern psalm of sorts given how many of them are devoted to God crushing His enemies. Anyhow, I had the impression there might be a Christian or two in our community who could use the reminder and the encouragement in these times of ceaseless Clown World retardery and incessant satanic inversion.

There is also the Cradle to Cavalry version of THE WORD DESCENDED.

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Where Does China Stand

Peter Turchin turns his structural-demographic analytical eye on the rising 21st century power. But can he gather sufficient reliable data for the analysis?

As the American Empire continues to disintegrate from within, the most likely next hegemonic power is going to be China. The size of China’s economy has already exceeded that of the US (measured in PPP terms).

In other forms of social power, military and ideological/soft power, China still lags, but is gaining on America. For example, Chinese movie industry produced quite a number of world blockbusters, starting with the 2000 epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I asked ChatGPT and DeepSeek, “If we consider a list of 100 world blockbuster movies in the last decade, what would be the breakdown in terms of countries producing them?” They gave similar answers. USA, of course, dominates, with >80% of world blockbusters, but China is the second, and fastest-growing, contender. ChatGPT estimated its influence as 5-8%, while DeepSeek (predictably) gave a higher estimate of 10-15%. In any case, China has a long way to go yet.

Whether China continues to gain, and eventually overtake America on these dimensions of power will depend a lot on its internal cohesion and stability. Thus, an empirically based and theoretically sound forecast is clearly needed.

On the other hand, it is not yet clear to me whether my team will be able to collect all the necessary data. We will find out.

It’s good to see more people are finally branching out from the obvious decline of the West and beginning to pay attention to the rest of the world.

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RIP Hulk Hogan

Wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan has died, his manager confirmed. He was 71.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, attained pro wrestling stardom in the 1980s and 1990s and was perhaps the biggest star in WWE’s five-decade history. He was the main draw for the first-ever WrestleMania in 1985 and was a fixture for years in its signature event, facing everyone from Andre The Giant and Randy Savage to The Rock and even company chairman Vince McMahon.

He won six WWE championships and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005 by Sylvester Stallone.

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RIP Julian LeFay

Legendary Elder Scrolls creator Julian LeFay passes away at 59. Julian LeFay, the designer largely credited with helping shape the vision of fan favorite Elder Scrolls franchise, has passed away at the age of 59.

This is a hard one to hear. I was friends with Bennie for years, and it will probably surprise a lot of people to learn that we even worked together for 18 months on what was supposed to be a launch title for the Sega Dreamcast.

He left Bethesda to come work for Fenris Wolf after we signed a $1.5 million deal with Sega to provide its first RPG for its new Katana system after our original producer at GT moved to Sega of America and made signing us one of his first orders of business. I’d licensed the rights to Traveller from Marc Miller, and Julian was not only tired of working at Bethesda after his friend Vijay had left for Microsoft, but was very excited to take his innovative design concepts into a science fiction space for the first time.

And, of course, he liked the idea of working with me and my partner, as we’d hung out together at various CGDCs and E3s for four or five years by that point. He, Vijay, Bobby Prince from id, and Carter from Spectrum Holobyte were the people I spent the most time with at the Westin and the various other locations outside of the CGW crew.

Unfortunately, Sega of Japan eliminated Sega of America and cancelled all ten launch titles that SOA had in development, including ours, about one year prior to the launch of the Dreamcast, in favor of spending the $100 million that had been budgeted for those games on putting the Dreamcast logo on the front of the Arsenal FC jerseys. This was, of course, a terrible decision that was much-mocked in the industry, and helped contribute to the failure of the Dreamcast to compete with the original Sony PlayStation despite its technical superiorities.

I still remember Julian, Kurt (from SOA) and I laughing about the fake headline in a parody newsletter given out at CGDC that read: “SEGA REFUSES TO REVEAL PLANS FOR SELF-IMMOLATION” or something to that effect. It wasn’t quite so funny when I got the phone call from Kurt telling me that a) he had been let go, b) SOA was being shut down by SOJ, and c) Traveller was canceled. In retrospect, that was the beginning of the end for my time in the game industry, as GT’s collapse followed Sega of America’s by about 18 months.

So Julian and I never finished our game. We talked once or twice about possibly working together, and I think he ended up getting back together with Vijay toward the end, but things never managed to quite work out. It’s truly a pity, because I think that what we could have – what we WOULD have – achieved would have been truly epic, in fact, more epic than Epic.

It is truly the end of an era. Julian LeFay is gone, but he should never be forgotten by the gaming community. He never received the plaudits of Richard Garriott, John Romero, or Sid Meier, but he was genuinely one of the great designers of the era. He always imagined things on a larger scope than most of us were able to conceptualize. He set the standard for complex randomized environments and laid some of the conceptual foundations for both the MMO and all modern games that incorporate random elements as part of their design.

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Release ALL the Epstein Files NOW

The Trump administration doesn’t seem to grasp that no matter how it shakes and dances and rationalizes, absolutely no one is going to accept their excuses for not doing what was promised.

Indeed, the MAGA world fury is not dying down after Bondi’s Justice Department released a July 7 memo on their investigation.

The document stated that the DOJ was not a possession of an ‘incriminating’ Epstein ‘client list,’ had no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals and concluded that the convicted pedophile was not murdered in prison.

‘No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,’ the DOJ flatly declared.

Suffice to say, it didn’t go over well.

Tim Dillon, a popular podcaster who interviewed Vice President Vance on October 26 in the run-up to the 2024 election, said he was invited to a dinner last week with Vance, who told him that the 10,000 hours of video files in connection to the Epstein case were ‘commercial pornography’ and cannot be released.

Dillion claims Vance told him ‘they do not have videos of any powerful person in a compromising position,’ before remarking with skepticism, ‘That’s the party line that they’re going with?’

‘What I told Vance, I said, “If you don’t disclose everything, you’re done. Nobody will support you guys. You are fully and completely part of this coverup if everything doesn’t come out.” I think it paralyzes their presidency,’ said Dillon, adding, ‘[Vance] agrees with me.’

Conspiracy theorist and InfoWars host Alex Jones appeared on Dillion’s podcast on Monday to say that he, too, has been contacted by the White House.

‘I’ve had the White House call up and be like in the last week, “What do you want?”,’ Jones said.

Jones said he told a White House staffer, ‘I want you to do what you were elected to do,’ a reference to Trump’s campaign trail pledges for complete transparency in the Epstein investigation.

Dillon then replied: ‘They want this to go away… [But] it’s not going to go away until [they] disclose the information [they] have.’

The Daily Mail can also report that the White House reached out to Charlie Kirk, the highly influential leader of youth movement, organized under his non-profit organization Turning Point USA.

‘I am not minimizing this,’ Kirk said on his podcast on July 15. ‘I am just the messenger here. I am simply the interlocutor. The young men, and the Gen-Z audience that I represent, they are flaming mad about this stuff.’

Kirk explained the conservative people he speaks to refuse to drop the issue because ‘they want to go after the deep state of government.’

The Daily Mail can also report that the White House reached out to Charlie Kirk, the highly influential leader of youth movement, organized under his non-profit organization Turning Point USA.

The Daily Mail can also report that the White House reached out to Charlie Kirk, the highly influential leader of youth movement, organized under his non-profit organization Turning Point USA.

A day later, Kirk appeared to backpedal: ‘Honestly, I’m done talking about Epstein for the time being. I’m going to trust my friends in the administration, I’m going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it, ball’s in their hands.’

However, this episode demonstrates the importance of cuckservative gatekeepers to the administration, and why they embrace certain people while keep others – like yours truly – at arms length. Because they know that the likes of Charlie Kirk are eventually, despite their better instincts, always going to knuckle under and defend the party line in order to preserve their access to fame and power.

They don’t want those of us who couldn’t care less about that sort of access because we’re never going to trust anyone or fall in line. There are only three ways out of this: release all of the information, lose all credibility, or resign.

Americans have been listening to their government declare it can’t do the things it should do and has to do the things it shouldn’t do for at least 40 years. That’s not a credible excuse anymore. The truth will set you free, so release all of it to the public, put all the videos online, and let the chips fall where they may. Everyone knows that world leaders weren’t visiting Epstein just because he had a copious porn collection that didn’t feature anyone of any import.

And if the system is so weak that it will collapse if people know the truth about it, then it’s going to collapse anyway. If President Trump is going to be destroyed if people know the truth about him, then let him be destroyed. The will of the American people is perfectly clear in all of this.

UPDATE: It’s never hard for the satanists to find those who are not only willing, but eager to sell their souls.

The Israel foreign ministry will spend $86,000 to finance a tour of Israel for 16 Americans to get them to use their vast online influence to craft more positive images of a nation openly engaged in genocide. The effort is being made as Israel reacts to a significant turn in public opinion against it, especially by Western youth. Tel Aviv realizes its usual methods of propaganda — and apparently its own inhouse troll army — are no longer working as they once did.

The daily Haaretz reported: “Foreign Ministry officials say the tour delivers significant media, advocacy, and diplomatic benefits – and represents a strategic shift, as traditional outreach is no longer sufficient to shape public opinion. They aim to leverage the massive followings of young social media influencers to bolster Israel’s standing in the U.S.”

The Americans, whose names have not been divulged, belong to the MAGA and America First movements, the newspaper said. They are all younger than 30 and each have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, a vast, target-rich environment for propaganda. Israel intends to bring more than 500 “influencer delegations” to Israel this year, the ministry said.

I don’t think it’s going to be hard to figure out who they are…

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Clown World Turns on Zelensky

It’s time for another so-called leader to be thrown from the high horse, if Simplicius has read the situation correctly:

Tonight the knives have come out for Zelensky and his gang. What started as gripes against push back on some irrelevant NGO-run organs has turned into a fledgling ‘Maidan’ against the now unfavored Ukrainian leader.

As always, establishment rags were swift with their coordinated messaging to energize the push:

Most eye-opening about the fall from grace is how boldly the chosen actors are playing their lines, pearl-clutching about some imagined ‘repressions’ of a pair of organizations virtually no one has heard of or cared about until a few days ago, in this case NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) and SAPO (Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office).

There are myriad other far more pressing concerns for Ukraine, not even counting the war itself, and yet the pitched fight around some Biden-era “anti-corruption” watchdogs is what has animated the intelligentsia and paid-off ‘influencer’ sphere to take to the streets with pre-branded slogans and obligatory ‘English’-scripted signs?

There’s no real point rehashing the whole backstory because it’s just a convoluted cover for the latest psyop-turned-color revolution…

“The US Embassy in Ukraine directly controls NABU and SAPO.” — Vladimir Putin, Feb 22, 2022

When you dig into how these organizations are run, and how their key players are appointed, you find that the process is controlled by a commission of European “specialists”. Ukrainians are also on the board, but the Europeans have the overriding vote.

So, just as in the “democracy” of the EU system itself, an unelected commission of outsiders has all the say in positioning their favored directors of these Ukrainian organizations. These directors then take all their marching orders from the US embassy, as per Putin.

Translation: both the 2014 coup that brought the Zelensky regime to power and the coming 2025 coup that will remove Zelensky from his unelected office were manufactured by the US State Department.

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