Tag: philosophy

Is anyone actually surprised

The individual behind a series of “anti-Semitic bomb threats” turns out to be an Israeli-American Jew:

Israeli police have arrested a 19-year-old Jewish Israeli American from Ashkelon for his suspected role behind a slew of bomb threats made against Jewish community centers across the globe.

The arrest comes after bomb threats were made against dozens of community centers in Australia, the U.S., Europe and New Zealand over the last six months. Israeli investigators found that many of the threats led back to Israel, though the suspect is not believed to be responsible for all of the threats, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Israeli officials withheld the suspect’s name and offered few details on their background. Here’s what we do know: The person is a dual Israeli-American citizen, he is not a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, he is not ultra-Orthodox and at some point he made aliya (immigration to Israel by Jews in the diaspora) to Israel.

This Marxian dialectical summary was amusing, particularly in light of the philosemitic rhetoric one sees from Christian Zionist Americans from time to time.

thesis: The Jews did it!
antithesis: The Jooos did it!
synthesis: Seriously, though, the Jews did it.

Of course, it’s not just Jews. It’s all minorities. Any time there is a “hate crime” against any minority, particularly the sort of crime in which the perpetrator is able to remain hidden, one can be relatively confident that the perpetrator is a member of that minority group and that the crime is a hoax. I assumed these threats were being made by an American Jew; the SPLC has constructed a $300 million business on hoax crimes and Muslims tend to be more inclined to simply bomb things than idly threaten to do so.

It’s the same reason that you can be certain that a noose or a spray-painted KKK on a college campus will spark outrage up until the inevitable moment it is discovered that a black student is responsible.

The reason minorities do this, and not majorities, is that minorities are ultimately dependent upon maintaining the good will of the majority populations, and one way to achieve that is through instilling guilt in the majority population through obtaining and maintaining victim status. That’s why it is significant that the perpetrator here was an Israeli-American; American Jews consider themselves to be a minority, whereas Israeli Jews do not. Homeland matters.

The importance of morale

And why I don’t tolerate defeatism or defeatists. Last night’s Darkstream was well-received. As I mention, morale is the primary difference in the fighting effectiveness between the Waffen SS and the Regio Esercito, between the US Marines and the French Army circa 1940.

Those who reliably work to lower the morale of our side rather than the morale of the enemy should not be tolerated, even if their pessimism and despair happen to be honest. Everyone is prone to moments of doubt, and sometimes doubt is merited, but it is both foolish and counterproductive to tolerate those who pride themselves in wallowing in the expectation of failure and defeat.

Group-thinking is not smarter

Researchers debunk the idea that diversity makes groups more intelligent or more effective:

What allows groups to behave intelligently? One suggestion is that groups exhibit a collective intelligence accounted for by number of women in the group, turn-taking and emotional empathizing, with group-IQ being only weakly-linked to individual IQ (Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, & Malone, 2010). Here we report tests of this model across three studies with 312 people. Contrary to prediction, individual IQ accounted for around 80% of group-IQ differences. Hypotheses that group-IQ increases with number of women in the group and with turn-taking were not supported. Reading the mind in the eyes (RME) performance was associated with individual IQ, and, in one study, with group-IQ factor scores. However, a well-fitting structural model combining data from studies 2 and 3 indicated that RME exerted no influence on the group-IQ latent factor (instead having a modest impact on a single group test). The experiments instead showed that higher individual IQ enhances group performance such that individual IQ determined 100% of latent group-IQ. Implications for future work on group-based achievement are examined.

This falls into the category of science confirming common sense. Women and gamma males, both of whom tend to be obsessed with rules and process, almost invariably get in the way of the smart individuals who drive accomplishment. Sounding boards are useful, but they are vastly overrated, particularly by the kind of people who are incapable of fulfilling a proactive role themselves.

Anyone can critique an idea or offer a nonsensical spin on it. In most cases, it is not “helping” to do so, but distracting, if not demoralizing. That is one reason why I crack down hard on those whose immediate reaction to any announcement is to try to come up with an alternative or an improvement.

My rule of thumb is this: if someone doesn’t explicitly ask me what I think about something, I try to avoid telling them what I think about it. “Congratulations” or “I hope it goes well” is by far the most useful thing you can tell anyone who tells you about a new idea or a new product.

A libertarian take on the Alt-Right

The Anarchist Notebook reviews the 16 Points of the Alt-Right:

Aside from free trade and perhaps some elements of nationalism, much of what comprises the Alt. Right ideology is outside of libertarianism; it neither contradicts it nor agrees with it. The goals of the Alt. Right are not mutually exclusive of those in libertarianism.

Whatever the case, I see many similar values between the two movements. The areas of disagreement, in my opinion, are secondary and not fundamental components. There is room for friendly dispute.

It is my sincere hope that both sides can engage in thoughtful conversations and work together when mutually beneficial against common enemies. Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, it has become self-evident that the Alt. Right, whatever its flaws, is trying to preserve the only kind of civilization in which libertarianism can exist at all.

While I tend to consider the Alt-Right political philosophy to be more post-libertarian than alibertarian, I do agree that libertarianism would require an Alt-Right-compatible foundation to even begin to be a practical possibility.

I found it interesting to observe that while he didn’t find my anti-free trade arguments in the Tom Woods-hosted debate with Bob Murphy to be convincing, he did pick up that Murphy – and other libertarians and free traders – have come up with no answers whatsoever to the problems I, and others, particularly Ian Fletcher, have raised.

I was frankly a little mystified to see that a number of people actually concluded that Bob Murphy won that debate, when all he produced was the same free trade boilerplate that we’ve all known for decades. He didn’t even begin to address the substantive differences between theory and practice cited. But I suppose it is difficult for people to relinquish their grasp on defining elements of their intellectual identity, which is why it’s necessary for libertarians to cautiously examine the Alt-Right philosophy before they can seriously consider accepting it.

The core conflict between libertarianism and the Alt-Right is that the Alt-Right is perfectly willing to crush individual liberties if that is necessary to preserve Western civilization and the European nations. And that is something that libertarians are going to have to accept if they are going to remain intellectually relevant in any way, because for all that the nation-state is a necessary evil, it is to be vastly preferred to the multinational state or the global state.

And those are the three options on offer at present.

I expect most libertarians to eventually gravitate to the Alt-Right, simply because the latter is both viable and coherent, while the former is not. I hope you will note that I don’t say that with contempt, but rather, with regret.

The path of truth

An observation on Gab

voxday is fiercely loyal to people. But there is something else. He has an almost uncanny ability to sense who is seeking the path of righteousness, even if it is not superficially apparent from their behavior. Roosh has taken a far more spiritual path of late. Milo clearly wants to change.
Samuel Nock

There is really nothing uncanny about it. Most people tend to look at others where they were, and judge them by things they have done in the past, even in the distant past. That is why the Left constantly digs through long-forgotten personal histories in seeking to discredit people; to them, you will forever be whatever the worst interpretation of the worst thing you have ever done or said is. That this is patently absurd, of course, is irrelevant to them. They care nothing for the truth, they only seek to destroy. They are little satans, accusers in service to the Great Accuser.

But they are not alone. Petty people always insist on trying to force people into the box of their past. They cannot conceive of change, of personal growth, or personal improvement, and they hate it when others make them feel as if their understanding of the world is incorrect. They will never stop trying to remind even the most successful, most transformed individual of his less impressive past.

Fewer people look at others where they are. And fewer still look at the trend line formed by what a man was to who he is now, thereby providing a glimpse of what he may one day become. The man I am today is very different than the arrogant young man with a record contract whose primary interests were girls, music, and video games. The writer I am today is very different than the author of Rebel Moon and the generic, obvious-twist-at-the-end short story that was rejected by Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

The individuals I appreciate most are those who seek after the truth, even when they find it uncomfortable or personally distasteful. I am far more comfortable with the seekers than with those who are convinced that they have arrived at the final one true understanding of God, Man, the universe, and everything, whether it is the Catholic Church, the Bible, or Science that provides them with the basis for their baseless confidence.

I prefer those who know they see as though through a glass, darkly, probably because they are the only people who are not hopelessly self-deluded who also possess the courage to reject the despair of the nihilist.

Not everyone who walks the hard and narrow path of truth is, or will become, a Christian, but it is a path that eventually leads to Jesus Christ all the same.

Of false dogmas and founding myths

Now, I love and respect John Wright for many reasons. He is, among other things, a science fiction and fantasy grandmaster, and one of the three best writers of his generation. But I am in complete intellectual harmony with no man, and his civic nationalism – which I will note that other men I respect such as Mike Cernovich and Donald Trump share – is one of them. The problem is that their civic nationalism is almost entirely based on myths and falsehoods, as anyone who has done the necessary historical research already knows.

America has a dogma. America is based on the proposition that all men are created equal. Anyone learning and loving that dogma, who comes here, is a candidate for becoming an American, and, upon legal naturalization, will be as much an American as the man whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.

America does have a dogma. It is, like many national founding myths, a false dogma. There is no more truth to the idea that America is based on the proposition that all men are created equal than there is to the idea that Rome was founded by Aeneas and the Trojan refugees. John clearly has not read Cuckservative, or some of the relevant writings of various Founding Fathers.

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?
—Ben Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, 1751

Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson happen to disprove the romantic notion of the civic nationalists as well. They believed foreigners could assimilate, so long as there were sufficiently small numbers of them, and their blood literally intermingled with the English blood of the actual Americans in time.

The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.
—George Washington, letter to John Adams, November 15, 1794

Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience.
—Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Flower, 1817

The Left, in order to destroy this concept, wrote immigration laws and misinterpreted constitutional principles, to make it so that anyone with an anchor baby, or any relative, living here, could be welcomed here. This was done by enemies of American and is alien to our entire way of life.

Now, this part is correct. But recall that the Left achieved its goals by appealing to the very founding myths to which the civic nationalists subscribe.

America is not a nation in the sense that nations in the Old World are. We are exceptional. We are a new concept.

If America is not a nation in the sense that nations in the Old World are, then it is not a nation at all. There is absolutely nothing new about the idea of giving citizenship to small numbers of foreigners or permitting entry to immigrants in the futile hope that they will strengthen the nation without transforming it into something that it is not. And the Swiss confederation preceded the American by more than 500 years.

Why do I need to be explaining to you something we have both known since childhood? How can anyone American or not, who is aware of America, be unaware of how America works or what is the secret of our unparalleled success?

The difference is that I understand that the national founding myth is a myth, of no more truth than George Washington’s famous cherry tree. If America’s civic nationalists were Romans, they would insist that the secret to Rome’s strength was that the blood of Trojans flowed in their veins. Immigration and equality have very little, if anything, to do with America’s success, as the previous success of the British empire should suffice to show. America was successful because it was founded by one of the most successful peoples in the history of Man, and founded on a vast and wealthy continent protected from the powers of the Old World by an ocean. Moreover, Australia has hardly been a failure; its success can certainly be described as being reasonably comparable to the USA’s, especially given its relative geographic disadvantages.

This reminds me of the very popular view among economists that the secret to the USA’s post-WWII economic growth was the massive amount of government spending during the war, forgetting the considerably more important fact that the USA was the only industrialized country whose population and infrastructure was not devastated by the war.

Now, certain loudmouths on the Alt-Right heaps contempt on all these ideas, but never says anything that actually addresses or casts honest doubt on them. Aside from the emotion of scorn, there is no argument there. It is shouting, but no words underneath the noise.

I leave it to the reader to determine the veracity of those words. What aspect of John’s argument for civic nationalism have I failed to address? Point it out, by all means, if you can, and I shall do my humble best to amend any failures in that regard. One reason the Alt-Right’s rise is inevitable is our intellectual ruthlessness and our determination to accept even those truths that are most painful to us. We are not at war with the civic nationalists; they are not the enemies of the West. But if we are to see  the situation as clearly as possible and understand the current challenges as deeply as we can, we cannot permit ourselves to be hampered by their conceptual baggage.

If you want to get up to speed on this subject, I strongly suggest you read Cuckservative, by John Red Eagle and me. We learned a lot in the writing of the book, so it is safe to assume you’ll learn something by reading it.

A failure to understand identity

John Wright attempts to criticize identity politics and the Alt-Right, and in doing so, demonstrates that he does not correctly grasp what identity is, or how identity politics tend to function in modern multiracial societies:

Some say that the success of identity politics trumped up by the Left proves that a man will always side with his inborn tribal group, grievance group, and identity politics group rather than with any political doctrine or party or nation into which education, experience, or personal decision might lead him.

No, literally no one says that. First, identity is not limited to race. Religion, too, is an identity, and one of the most powerful. Second, while men can, and do, surmount their racial, grievance, and religious identities in favor of other identities and ideologies, the salient point is that the vast majority will not. One habitual weakness of John’s arguments I have observed is that he tends to be inclined towards binary thinking, and binary thinkers are particularly prone to the Ricardian Vice, which Joseph Schumpeter described in the History of Economic Analysis:

He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by these assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, given these assumptions, he set up simple one-way relations so that, in the end, the desired results emerged almost as tautologies…. The habit of applying results of this character to the solution of practical problems we shall call the Ricardian Vice.


John continues with an drive-by implied defense of the fictional concept of the so-called “proposition nation”.

Nations are never built on a proposition that all men are created equal and never have been: they are only build on tribes and clans. So runs the theory.

No, that is not the theory, that is the literal historical definition of “nation”. The concept is defined as: “an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or cognate languages.” 1250-1300; Middle English < Latin nātiōn- (stem of nātiō) birth, tribe, equivalent to nāt (us) (past participle of nāscī to be born).

The “proposition nation” concept is entirely false. Neither concurring with any proposition nor contradicting one will cause one to be part of the American nation, or cause one to be separated from it. It is simply incorrect to claim that the United States is fundamentally built on the principle of equality or any other idea; one need only read the entire Declaration of Independence to know that Jefferson’s flight of rhetoric was nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. “All men are created equal” is not the founding principle of the United States of America nor the basis for any nation.

The irony, of course, is that one might as just as meaningfully cite the statement as grounds for claiming that anyone can become Chinese or Polish.

Those who believe this say that the way to defeat Leftwing Anti-White identity politics is by adopting Pro-White identity politics. They are seduced into making a simple error. It is an error so simple that even a highly intelligent partisan of that movement might not see it. The identity-grievance politics groups on the Left are all about Leftism and nothing about identity.

The only people who ever side with their tribal group and identity politics group are people who have been indoctrinated by the Left. They are Leftists. Identity politics is their stock in trade. It is the only product remaining on their intellectually bankrupt shelves.

First, it is true that for some, their Leftism is their dominant identity. Second, it is apparent that a number of identity groups have concluded that Leftism is in their tribal interest, which may be a source of the causal confusion. Third, it is absolutely and observably absurd to claim that the only people who ever side with their tribal group have been indoctrinated by the Left. Tribalism and identity long precede Leftism, moreover, it is very, very easy to provide examples of those on the Right who practice identity politics. Identity consistently provides a much more accurate predictive model for one’s positions and behavior than one’s nominal place on the political spectrum. But again, it must be understood that there are multiple kinds of identities; ethnicity merely tends to be the strongest and most powerful form.

Tribalism says that the loyalties one has toward genetically similar groups will eventually overwhelm all other loyalties of religion, culture, language community, political philosophy, and self interest, and that therefore one must abandon loyalty to religion and culture and state but adhere instead to one’s tribe. A more naive reading of history is difficult to imagine: as if civil wars never happened, and nothing but race wars did.

It is strange to see John claim that identity politics and tribalism is a naive reading of history when he is simultaneously denying one of the primary engines of history. Again, he relies on simplistic binary thinking in order to reach a false conclusion. People have multiple loyalties, many of which are not related to their genetic inheritance; the homosexual is loyal to the gay community and hostile to the religious communities for reasons of sexual orientation, the Christian Zionist is loyal to the Jewish community for theological reasons, and so forth. But none of this changes the observable fact that Somalis in Minnesota reliably vote for Somalis, Indians in Quebec reliably vote for Indians, and African-Americans reliably vote for blacks.

John also fails to understand the Alt-Right. Because he seeks compromise and is willing to let the Left live, he implies the Alt-Right it is of the Left. This is a confusion of etiquette with objectives.

The lobbyist of the Right, by way of contrast, is not a religious zealot. He is willing to live and let live, and to compromise when need be. The Right thinks the Left are foolish, but not evil. The Left think the Right are an abomination, literally Hitler, and must be exterminated from the Earth as soon as this is practical.

The Alt-Right thinks the Left is both foolish and evil. The Alt-Right thinks the Left is a collection of rabid, feral, incoherent, irrational barbarians who are observably incapable of participating in any civilized society without destroying it. We’re not religious zealots, we are simply educated observers of the entire history of the Left, from the French Revolution to the Killing Fields of Cambodia, who have reached certain logical conclusions on the basis of those observations.

The Alt-Right is most certainly not willing to compromise with the Left. We have witnessed the conservative Right live and let live, and compromise, to the point that Western civilization itself is at risk. And we are not willing to allow conservatives to meekly permit the destruction of Western civilization simply so they can go down to noble defeat in the sacred names of equality and not being racist.

I note in passing that every time, every single time, the roots of the Democrat Party are mentioned, the Alt-Right goes into a tizzy of sneers and scorn, scoffing that one should never say that Democrats are the real racists. Why one should never say it, they never say.  But it does undermine their whole race-is-politics theory, because the race of the Dems did not change their race before and after Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs, but only changed their political tactics. The utility of accusing the Party of Lincoln and Nixon of racism only started then, and so the Democrats only because the advocates of anti-racism then.

This is simply absurd. Again, John is stating something observably false, then using his false statement as the basis of reaching an incorrect conclusion. It’s trivially easy to show that what he’s saying is not true. On this blog, and in Cuckservative, I have explained why one should not bother saying that Democrats are the real racists: it is ineffective and toothless dialectic that has no effect on a group of rhetorical speakers. I have also pointed out that it is ineffective rhetoric for the Right because no one but cucks and cons fears being called racist.

And the race of the Democrats has most certainly changed since LBJ instituted the Great Society. That’s why the Atlantic asks if the Democratic Party even has room for what it calls “less-educated white voters” anymore.

So in asking the Right to accept pro-White tribalism into its political platform, the advocate of race-based politics is attempting to fight a religion with a lobbyist group. This is the same mistake the mainstream Right has been making for decades, if not centuries.

No, we’re not asking. We are predicting it will happen as a natural result of the USA becoming a multiracial, multicultural, multinational state. And it will be easy to determine who is correct. If the Alt-Right is correct, whites will continue to gravitate right across the West. The likes of Jack Murphy, who voted for Obama, will vote for Trump in 2020. And the Democratic Party will continue to move Left, as the various non-white immigrants fill its ranks being depleted by the exiting whites.

We’re not making the same mistake the mainstream Right has made; quite the opposite. And it is the fact that we refuse to continue making their mistake of holding to the sacred, nonsensical symbolism that has led to their defeat that makes them uncomfortable.

Now, all that being said, John is correct to say that federalism is one solution to tribalism. But it is a solution that accepts and utilizes the reality of tribalism and identity politics, not one that rejects them. In any event, read the whole thing there, including the comments.

I close with a pair of quotes, and leave it to you to decide whether it is identity politics or proposition politics that are more firmly rooted in truth and historical reality:

“In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”
– Lee Kuan Yew


“America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens…. Every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.”
– George W. Bush

Why conservatives always lose

John Wright pens a long and thoughtful piece on why conservatives always lose. He contemplates the perspective of a hypothetical Rip van Conservative, a conservative who fell asleep in 1945 and awoke 72 years later, in 2017, only to discover that all many of the victories he thought won had been lost in the meantime:

One main reason why a Last Crusade must be called is that Conservatism, while perfectly sound when facing Commies in a Cold War, Nazis in a World War, or Slavers in a Civil War, has no defense to offer when the fascistic cultural Marxism seeps peacefully into the ivory tower, the theater, the press, the halls of power…. Now, as a conservative, you point out that all these things are simply illogical, paradoxes even a schoolboy could see cannot possibly be true. A thing cannot be itself and be the opposite of itself at the same time. A sentence that contradicts the same idea it affirms is a self-refuting sentence. Reality cannot be unreal.

You are answered that modern progress has proven that truth is untrue, for all things are matters of mere opinion that each man decides for himself. To say truth is truth offends the liberty of each man to invent his own truth.

You are answered that modern progress has proven that logic is merely a social adaptation mechanism formed by evolution, and has no authority to compel men to obey it. To say that logic is logical offends the liberty of each man to enjoy whichever of the personal and invented truths he sees fit.

You are answered that modern progress has proven that morality consists of the single rule that all must toleration any abridgement of morality anyone sees fit, aside, of course, from hate speech and badthink. Avoiding badthink is an absolute moral prohibition applied to all rightwing angloamerican white male heterosexual Christians. To say that morals cannot be defined as immorality is badthink. It offends the liberty of men to be evil, condone evil, promote evil, and worship evil.

You are answered with a fullthroated defense of unreality so complete that even Buddha would be shamed. The Progressive thinks that all life is an illusion, but that the illusion can be peaceful and pleasing, or the opposite, depending on the discipline and disposition of the subjective observer. You make your own reality.

This reality is called “a Narrative.” It is not based on fact, nor meant to be. It is based on emotion, whim, psychological defense mechanism.

Unlike the Buddhist, the Progressive seeks not to escape the illusion. There is nothing outside the illusion, no reality, no nirvana, to which to escape. There is no red pill to take.

The Narrative is an all encompassing world of illusion. It is an empire of lies.

And the first lie in the empire of lies is the lie that the Narrative does not exist. Only truths, as told by conservatives and anyone else looking at reality, are called Narratives.

Now, at the end of these answers, Rip van Conservative realizes that debate is impossible with a creature who cannot and will not speak in a coherent sentence, cannot and will not think a logical thought, and whose sole verbal reply to any criticism, no matter how true and trenchant, is merely to accuse his accuser of the flaws he himself possesses.

The stupid calls his smarter critic stupid. The fool calls his wiser critic foolish. The bigot calls his open-minded critic bigoted. The fascist calls his freedom loving critic a fascist. And on and on ad nauseam.

And so the conservative loses every battle. Why?

When conservativism is not only obvious, but self-evident, why does it falter?

When conservatism is not only a self-evident position, but the sole position seen not to contradict itself, why does it lose the field?

If all positions other than the conservative one are not merely incorrect, but immoral, illogical and insane, how is it that conservatism is soundly swept from the field, and no one polite society dares utter a word in its defense?

Conservatism falters, fails, and finds itself utterly effaced because and only because it fights the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield.

Now, I do not disagree with John here in the slightest, except to observe that there are competing explanations for the reason why conservatives are always fighting the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield. My explanation is the Alt-Right one, which is that immigrants wielding identity politics against an unsuspecting America have misled conservatives into believing false history and defending imaginary philosophical ground rather than defending their national interests. Of course, I expect John, being dubious about identity politics, would tend to disagree. At no little length.

Which is fine. Because regardless of why conservativism fights the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield, this piece serves as an informative illustration explaining why conservativism has so reliably failed to provide a philosophical bulwark against the Left, and why it will continue to do so. The more conservatives understand that more conservatism is not the answer, the more the winning will continue.

Scott Adams praises the God-Emperor

For flooding the playing field and thereby adulterating the Left’s fuel, which is outrage:

When you encounter a situation that is working great except for one identifiable problem, you can focus on the problem and try to fix it. But if you have a dozen complaints at the same time, none of them looks special. The whole situation just looks confusing, and you don’t know where to start. So you wait and see what happens. Humans need contrast in order to make solid decisions that turn into action. Trump removed all of your contrast by providing multiple outrages of similar energy.

You’re probably seeing the best persuasion you will ever see from a new president. Instead of dribbling out one headline at a time, so the vultures and critics can focus their fire, Trump has flooded the playing field. You don’t know where to aim your outrage. He’s creating so many opportunities for disagreement that it’s mentally exhausting. Literally. He’s wearing down the critics, replacing their specific complaints with entire encyclopedias of complaints. And when Trump has created a hundred reasons to complain, do you know what impression will be left with the public?

He sure got a lot done.

Even if you don’t like it.

In only a few days, Trump has made us question what-the-hell every other president was doing during their first weeks in office. Were they even trying?

So much winning they can’t even.

Don’t resist the truth

One of Rod Dreher’s readers feels the irresistible pull of the Alt-Right:

I’m a white guy. I’m a well-educated intellectual who enjoys small arthouse movies, coffehouses and classic blues. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably mistake me for a lefty urban hipster.

And yet. I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. Even though I’m smart and informed enough to see through it. It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.

I am very lower middle class. I’ve never owned a new car, and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege, and America will be a much brighter, more loving, more peaceful nation when I finally just keel over and die.

Trust me: After all that, some of the alt-right stuff feels like a warm, soothing bath. A “safe space,” if you will. I recoil from the uglier stuff, but some of it — the “hey, white guys are actually okay, you know! Be proud of yourself, white man!” stuff is really VERY seductive, and it is only with some intellectual effort that I can resist the pull. And yet I still follow this stuff, not really accepting it, but following it just because it’s one of the only places I can go where people are not always telling me I’m the seed of all evil in the world. If it’s a struggle for someone like me to resist the pull, I imagine it’s probably impossible for someone with less education or cultural exposure….

I’m sorry, but there are two alternatives here. You can push for some kind of universalist vision bringing everybody together, or you can have tribes. There’s not a third option. If you don’t want universalism, then you just have to accept that various forms of open white nationalism are eventually going to become a permanent feature of politics. You don’t have to LIKE it. But you have to accept it and learn to live with it — including the inevitable violence and strife that will flow from it.

This is why the Alt-Right Revolution is inevitable. Despite the propaganda in which the young man has been steeped for his entire life, despite being “smart” and “informed” and “well-educated”, which is to say “brainwashed” and “misinformed” and “maleducated”, truth and tribe attract him.

There are not two alternatives. Universalism is dead, because it only ever had appeal to a) white Anglo imperialists and b) Jewish globalists. Universalism can only hold lasting mass appeal in a homogeneous society where everyone is the same tribe; once the society becomes sufficiently heterogeneous, tribalism and identity politics will inevitably rise to the fore. This is the process we have witnessed in the post-1965 USA.

Indeed, even in the Jewish State of Israel, identity politics are rising to the fore; “identity” is the literal translation of the term “zehut”. But the USA is not a Jewish state, it is a white state, an Anglo-American state, and therefore some form of white American nationalism is as inevitable in the USA as Swedish nationalism and Russian nationalism and Catalonian nationalism and Jewish nationalism are inevitable in Sweden, Russia, Catalonia, and Israel. Identity is the only way a nation can preserve its values; to paraphrase the Zehut founder, a nation that loses its identity will eventually lose the sense of meaning for its existence as well as its legitimacy.

The Alt-Right is not a temptation, it is the answer for those who wish to save America from its loss of meaning, identity, and legitimacy. It is not the nationalism of the Alt-Right, but the civic nationalism of the Alt-Lite that is a mirage and a false ideal. Civic nationalism is no more true nationalism than social justice is true justice. And there is no reason for American men and women to resist the pull of the Alt-Right, because the Alt-Right is the only current political philosophy that is in harmony with science, history, reason, and current events.

Be sure to read the comments there. The speed with which the cucks and SJWs rush in to condemn men expressing even modest sympathies with their white identity is educational.