Tag: philosophy

High and hidden weirdness

From The Donald, /pol/ has unearthed some suspicious links concerning pizza places with connections to Andrew Kline of the DOJ, David Brock, and John Podesta’s cooking.

As one channer noted, who opens a pizza place two doors down from a pizza place? Does the picture below look like a normal pizza advertisement to you or is there a high creep factor there? Now note that it’s the main image on the front page. And after dinner, you can head to the back, which features “bathrooms hidden behind secret panels” to play! According to Infogalactic, “GQ ranked James Alefantis as the 49th most powerful person in Washington partly on the basis of owning Comet Ping Pong and its cultural cachet.”

How, one wonders, does owning a weird little pizza place serving mediocre pizza make you more powerful than most Senators and Congressmen? Do you really believe that a fucking pizza, and one that does not look particularly appetizing at that, is really supposed to be of such intense interest to the creeps below? The red-haired guy should be locked up on the basis of his physiognomy alone.

This isn’t the only hidden weirdness in high places being exposed around the world. In South Korea, which is more strongly Christian than the USA now, there are now hundreds of thousands of people in open revolt against  President Park Geun-hye, who has a bizarre personal connection to a Svengali-style adviser who is the daughter of the founder of a cult called the Church of Eternal Life.

4 days ago Park suddenly made statement: “From today Korea is cabinet government led by a prime minister” and appointed a prime minister Mr. fucking nobody. all this super crazy critical decision without a single discussion or debate literally no one ever discussed with Park about this matter Park literally went full borderline personality disorder, blocking all the communications, still thinking she’s absolute monarch

politicians went full wtf suddenly Korea is cabinet government by one day “Fuck the constitution, I AM THE COUNTRY” after this approval rating hits 5%

yes, 5%

only Megalians defending her now, saying Park’s being attacked solely because she’s woman, and this is all just patriarchal male conspiracy to remove women’s position even her own party preparing impeach

Park went more desperate, made 2nd 10 minutes apologize statement today: “There was no shamanic ritual happened inside of presidential house and I’m not a member of cult” a country’s president officially explaining about satanic, shamanic human sacrifice ritual inside of presidential house, and she’s not memeber of the Korean Scientology plus 6th grade tier of statement scripts, and confirming she won’t resign on her own

FYI the day when Sewol ferry sunk was 4 days prior to the 20th anniversary of death of Choi Sun Sil’s father and the president mysteriously went missing for 7 hours on that very day when Sewol sunk smells funky

suddenly a congressman made another whistle-blowing statement Psy, Gangnam Style, and the whole “Korean Wave” culture shit was involved with Choi’s cronyism cabal, deeply CJ, Samsung, Lotte persucuted for being against the 8 Goddess’s shadow government and their CEOs replaced with strawmen

The PyeongChang 2018 Olympic is actually Choi’s mass cronyism business party leaks after leaks, whistler-blower after whistler-blower, reveals after reveals, shocking after shocking, the endless exposures politicians talking on TV, former congressman openly saying they were chained and shackled, and now they’re free and able talking about the ‘Voldemort’

yes, politicians literally saying they were Korea’s Voldemort

opposition party’s leader saying in front of hundreds cameras, “The 8 Goddess’s secret cabal must be destroyed”

Josh Earnest made White House statement today; “Obama wants Park to leave, changing the leader won’t affect diplomacy between Korea and US at all” CIA Korea division chief Donald Gregg made statement, “We were wrong about Park, we thought she would lead Korea well, I feel deeply sorry for the fellow Korean citizens”

even worldwide masonic elite cabals throwing away this incapable hag

there’s big fucking rumor surfacing, the arrested Choi is actually substitute actor people already checking ear prints, digging the connections and corruptions 24/7

tfw the incompetent slave gook citizens who knew nothing but obey suddenly turned into anonymous Guccifer 3.0 revolutionary WikiLeaks tier info warriors at least 200 thousands people protested in the streets of Seoul today the absolute mad men brought real guillotins from 12 years old kids to 90 years old war vet grandpas, marching in the streets, chanting “GIVE US RESIGN OR DEATH” you can hear it from in every streets of Seoul

the court ordered cops to not fuck with protesters opposition party’s congressmen went to the protest scene to courage people up

HE WAS BEEN ATTACKED BY UNIDENTIFIED ASSASSIN WITH A KNIFE

the very fucking assassin who ran into congressman with a knife, literally beaten up to near death by the crowds, second pic

tfw we’re being united against the big, absolute evil, the all-female secret government that fucked us the whole time tfw right and left, progressive and conserative, women and men, kids and oldies, all united and we’re fucking mad as hell

A more conventional summary of what has been called Choi Soon-sil Gate can be read at Korean Expose. Stay flinty, everyone. This is no time to go wobbly. If you pray, pray. If you have a platform, however large or small, spread the word. The evil is real, it is material, and it is in high places around the world.

Stop whining and worrying about whether we know the full and complete truth about every single individual involved or not. I will tell you right now that we don’t, and that very powerful people are doing their utmost to try to ensure we never do. So the fuck what? Unless we dig and shine our little flashlights on it, unless we pay at least a modicum of attention to those who are courageously doing their best to dig away at the mountain of filth to discover what lies beneath it, their evil will never be exposed. Unless we take the risk of being wrong, we will never know anything at all.

If you’re going to make a lame gamma appeal to “credibility”, you can just go away and never come back as far as I’m concerned. The New York Times is “credible”. ABCNNBCBS is “credible”. The Washington Post is “credible”. And they lie, lie, lie and spin, spin, spin and deceive, deceive, deceive every single day. That is their primary purpose! They do not exist to inform or educate, but to deceive and distract the public, and defang negative public opinion.

I don’t give a quantum of an airborne rodent’s posterior for “credibility”. I never have. I am interested in one thing: the truth. And when you’re dealing with sociopaths who are quite willing to do anything and everything within their power to obscure it, you have to expect the occasional dead end. But a dead end does not mean that you’ve reached the center of the maze, or that there are no monsters hiding somewhere inside it.

Mailvox: the election and the non-problem of evil

11/4 notes a conceptual connection:

Vox, in your AMA you said you became Christian after discovering Evil exists.

This shit just about has me reading a damn Bible, which even 2 years ago I would have scoffed at.

No formal definition is necessary. You see the pattern and know.

I wonder, if all of this comes out, will many other Americans react the same way. Could there be a religious revival under Trump?

It’s not impossible. I’ve stated in the past that one reason I left the USA was due to my momentary glimpse into the social circles of power there. I met Donald Trump in passing back in 1988, as a consequence of a brief relationship with someone who was on the outskirts of those circles. And I had an amount of other exposure to various people in positions of not-insignificant power.

I didn’t, and I don’t, actually KNOW anything of substance in this regard. But, as the readers here know, my intelligence tends to run towards logic and pattern recognition. And what I sensed more than saw was an intrinsic and fundamental wrongness on the part of everyone involved. It literally made me feel a pressing urge to run, not walk, away from all of it. If you consider that I was not at all bothered being around the gay Chicago industrial scene that surrounded Wax Trax! at the same time, that may put the strength of that impression of wrongness in perspective.

The reason I have come to believe Christianity is true, that Jesus Christ is the hard and narrow path out of a fallen world, that the model of good and evil described in the Bible is real, is because it, and only it, explains the behavior of various people I have met in the course of my life to my satisfaction.

And it’s also why I suspect that Donald Trump, the man who once described pedophile procurer Jeffrey Epstein as “a great guy”, may have experienced a similar enlightenment at some point in time. As another commenter, leukosfash, observed:

I think The Golden Don found out about those poor kids years ago and he’s been plotting all this time to avenge their suffering, even if it cost him his last nickle. There is a flinty grimness in his pursuit of the White House that I noticed, even when he’s smiling, but I couldn’t understand it until now. He literally loathes all of those evil fuckers; which also explains his refusal to go along with the yukks at that roast thingy.


I’ve noticed that grimness too. And more than that, I’ve noticed it in his family and in his entire circle. Nothing fazes them. Nothing even causes them to blink. And nothing can disguise their obvious loathing and contempt for his opponent and everyone around her. Watch Donald Trump Jr. in particular. He looks like he’s itching to personally waterboard every single member of the Clinton inner circle.

A non-vote for X is NOT a vote for Y

It seems we have to deal with this nonsense every four years. But to say that failing to vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary, or that a vote for Egghead McUtah is a vote for Hillary, is completely false. It is a mathematical absurdity. Consider:

  • If you vote for Trump, he has one vote. Hillary has zero votes.
  • If you vote for Johnson, he has one vote. Hillary has zero votes.
  • If you vote for Egghead McUtah, he has one vote. Hillary has zero votes.
  • If you don’t vote, Hillary has zero votes.

Under precisely NONE of these scenarios does Hillary get a single vote. Ergo, a vote for X is not, and can never be, a vote for Hillary, unless that vote is for Hillary.

Now, I think it would be reprehensibly stupid to vote for Johnson for the obvious reason that he is neither a Libertarian nor a libertarian. It would be slightly less stupid to vote for Stein, because while she is a Green socialist, at least she does not pretend to be anything else. It would be even more stupid to vote for Egghead McUtah, because he is a less serious presidential candidate than Milo Yiannopoulos.

Seriously, Milo is not only a more serious candidate, he has a better chance of one day becoming President of the United States than Egghead does. Heck, David French was a more serious candidate than Egghead.

The reason to vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton is not innumerate appeals to impossible mathematics, but that his proposed policies are the best that any Republican candidate for President has offered the public in living memory. If that’s not enough for you, if you’re more concerned about superficial matters relating to posture, presentation, and personal idiosyncracies, well, you probably shouldn’t be voting on anything anyhow.

Scientistry vs scientody

The profession is structurally incentivized to fold, spindle, and neutralize the scientific method:

There’s no shortage of warnings from the scientific community that science as we know it is being drastically affected by the commercial and institutional pressure to publish papers in high-profile journals – and now a new simulation shows that deteroriation actually happening.

To draw attention to the way good scientists are pressured into publishing bad science (read: sensational and surprising results), researchers in the US developed a computer model to simulate what happens when scientists compete for academic prestige and jobs.

In the model, devised by researchers at the University of California, Merced, all the simulated lab groups they put in these scenarios were honest – they didn’t intentionally cheat or fudge results.

But they received greater rewards if they published ‘novel’ findings – as happens in the real world. They also had to expend greater effort to be rigorous in their methods – which would improve the quality of their research, but lower their academic output.

“The result: Over time, effort decreased to its minimum value, and the rate of false discoveries skyrocketed,” lead researcher Paul Smaldino explains in The Conversation.

And what’s more, the model suggests that the ‘bad’ (if you will) scientists who take shortcuts in relation to the incentives on offer will end up passing on their methods to the next generation of scientists who work in their lab, creating in effect an evolutionary conundrum that the study authors call “the natural selection of bad science”.

“As long as the incentives are in place that reward publishing novel, surprising results, often and in high-visibility journals above other, more nuanced aspects of science, shoddy practices that maximise one’s ability to do so will run rampant,” Smaldino told Hannah Devlin at The Guardian.

This isn’t even remotely a surprise. Scientists are people and people respond to economic incentives. To claim that scientists are “trained”, so they won’t be tempted to put a thumb on the scale is absurd; accountants are trained to do math correctly too and that doesn’t seem to stop a few of them from somehow failing to make the numbers add up right from time to time.

And keep in mind this doesn’t even account for the known quantity of dishonest scientists. The model was created to determine the extent of the effects the perverse incentives are expected to have on honest scientists.

I know some people think it is bizarre that I distinguish between science and science, and even give the three different aspects three funny names, but how do you expect to fix a conflict of this sort if you can’t even distinguish between the two parties, let alone determine how one influences the other? Clarity in articulation is the first step in clear thinking.

Mailvox: category error

Do you discuss ‘category error’ somewhere in your past blogs?

No, but here is a brief explanation, although upon looking at it, it really could be considerably improved as the examples are rather pedantic.

A category mistake, or category error, is a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category, or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. An example is the metaphor “time crawled”, which if taken literally is not just false but a category mistake. To show that a category mistake has been committed one must typically show that once the phenomenon in question is properly understood, it becomes clear that the claim being made about it could not possibly be true.

Category errors are very common, particularly when engaged in discourse with intellectually sloppy or dishonest individuals. For example, after I pointed out that weakness combined with a request for help was not “true strength”, or even strength at all, Mark Butterworth responded by quoting a Psalm about David’s sacrifice to God.

He wasn’t merely wrong, by which I mean a failure to successfully make a point, he committed an error of category, because offering up one’s weaknesses to God in praise is fundamentally different in nature than determining if the characteristic one possesses is a weakness or a strength.

The abstract category under discussion was “the nature of human strength.” To respond by pointing out that God does not despise weakness offered up to Him as sacrifice is to shift the discussion to a different and tangential category, “things that God values”, which is a category that is simply not relevant to the matter being discussed.

So, to point out that someone has made a category error does not necessarily mean that one is saying their statement is intrinsically false or incorrect, only that it is irrelevant. People usually commit category errors out of carelessness or ignorance or a desire to virtue-signal; when they do so out of dishonesty it is often as part of a bait-and-switch technique to which they resort because they know they cannot defend their position within the bounds of the relevant category.

The broken freaks of fandom

They really are mentally ill, self-hating nutcases. I’ve said for years that the SJWs of science fiction are a vast collection of human wreckage. That’s why their parasitical books are so dreadful, devoid of all beauty, joy, truth, and love, and from a literary perspective, amount to little more than fingerpainting in fecal matter. They are morally blind, mentally weak societal cancers. One would pity them if only they did not attempt to recreate the world in their ugly, soul-shattered image.

They have many reasons to dislike me, but they main reason they hate and fear me is because, in my self-assurance, I remind them of the bullies who scarred them for life. And here is the conclusive proof that I was right: 100+ Sci-Fi & Fantasy Authors Blog About Suicide, Depression, PTSD—a #HoldOnToTheLight Update by Gail Z. Martin

  • My wife, doctor, and I developed a scale of rage from 1 to 10, 1 being “everything’s cool” to 10 being “I am out of control and breaking shit in the house, car, and my body.” It’s been…let’s see…maybe a few months since I had no-holds-barred Level 10 outburst. But I come close every week or two. I probably reach an 8 once every ten days. But that’s down from a 10 every other week or so. I hate me more than any ten, a hundred, or a thousand people on earth combined could ever hope to. (Even more than Kirkus and Goodreads reviewers, if such a thing be possible!) That’s my legacy. 
  • I’ve dealt with depression and lingering self-doubt for much of my life, because of that long-ago bullying. Which gives me great compassion for those who are different or who feel like outsiders. And though I won’t name names, because it is not my story to tell – I can assure them that many of the writers and artists I’m friendly with have experienced either bullying, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or a combination of those things.
  • I grew up believing that I was not going to survive to adulthood. My parents were into doomsday politics and apocalyptic religion, so whether it was Soviet nukes or Armageddon, we were all going down in flames. Everyone around me—extended family and religious social group—echoed the same fears and beliefs. I was pleasantly surprised to still be alive at age 12, but I didn’t figure it would last. That’s the year I discovered Star Trek (original series) and read my first science fiction book (Destination: Universe by A.E. VanVogt). I still remember the moment when it hit me that other people saw the possibility of a completely different future than the fire and blood I’d been raised to expect. Cataclysmic destruction was not inevitable. I remember lying in the grass in my back yard, book open, tears running down my face when I realized I actually might live long enough to grow up.

Now, some of these people experienced genuine abuse. Most, however, experienced nothing worse than the usual societal disapproval for being weird little kids who couldn’t bother to abide by childhood social norms of behavior, conversation, and hygiene. But regardless, the ironic thing is that by wallowing incessantly in their “oh, poor me, I am so broken and depressed and suicidal” nonsense, they only cement their unhappy fate. Virtually none of them experienced the significant life challenges that Ivan Throne did. Very few of them were likely bullied as relentlessly as I was in my first three years of school, being younger, smarter, more athletic, and considerably smaller than everyone in my elementary school class.

I may, admittedly, have been a little arrogant in failing to conceal my intelligence, my athletic ability, or my interests.

(I couldn’t figure out why John Scalzi was such a broken little creature, given that he wasn’t particularly fat or ugly, and how he was handed educational opportunities of the sort one seldom sees outside of rich families sending their children to boarding schools, until I learned he’d spent a whole school year in a wheelchair hanging out with the school nurse during recess as the result of an accident. That’s where he learned to rely on snark and pretense as a means of psychological self-defense. An unsound body, when combined with a lack of honesty and courage, often produces a withered soul and an unsound mind.)

There is one, and only one, difference in the choice that these pathetic husks of human beings made, and the choice that men like Ivan and I made, when we were children under psychological pressure. We fought back. We never ran from reality. We never broke. We refused to accept our externally imposed fates, we also refused to pretend things were other than they were, and by doing so, we not only changed our fates, we changed who we were. They cringed, they cowered, they ran, and they have never stopped running.

About seven years after graduating from high school, I ran into the one boy who was smaller than I was in junior high in a weight room, a smart kid who also liked to write. We were doubles partners on the JV tennis team in ninth grade. He was still only 5’7″ but was 200 pounds of solid, barrel-chested muscle, and it turned out that he was the reigning state powerlifting champion. I’d added 40 pounds of muscle myself and was a ripped, skin-headed martial artist. We looked at each other and both burst out laughing. “You think we overcompensated a little?” were his first words to me.

The SF-SJWs genuinely can’t understand why their collective disapproval means absolutely nothing to me. They are confused and befuddled when a failure or a rejection fails to dissuade me from looking for another way forward. They can’t figure out why I get up and go back into the fray after I am knocked down. And that tells you everything you need to know, not about me, but about them. They cannot even imagine a scenario where you don’t curl up and die because someone doesn’t like you. They call me “the most despised man in science fiction”, but remember the Third Law of SJW: SJWs always project.

The reason the sad sacks of science fiction despise themselves is not because they have post-traumatic stress disorder or chemical imbalances in their brain or a crippling lack of god-belief. In most cases, those are consequences, not causes. They hate themselves because, knowingly or unknowingly, they harbor contempt for the child they once were. Their works are an endless and futile attempt to replay their childhoods to produce a different outcome.

And instead of humbling themselves, admitting that they are weak, fat, inferior, mentally ill cowards, and taking action to stop being those things, they band together and collectively proclaim that black is white, weak is strong, evil is good, and ugliness is beauty. The light onto which they’re holding is Luciferian, and nothing positive will come of their competition to be the most broken, the most abused, the saddest and least-deserving victim of them all.

“You’re not alone!” they cry. But you are. Everyone is. There comes a critical point in every man’s life when he faces the choice to accept reality and deal with it or deny it and enter a parallel world of self-centered delusion. You know what choice you made then, and you know why.

UPDATE: A reader comments: “My husband had a horrendous childhood. Beatings, starvation, severe neglect, homeless and living on the streets at age eight. He is a very high achiever, the strongest man I know, very happy, and successful. Why? He is a FIGHTER. A bad childhood is not a life sentence to misery.”

In fairness, I know who her husband is and to call him a “fighter” is akin to calling the Joker a guy with a few psychological issues. I like him, and he’s a good man, but on a “don’t mess with this guy” scale ranging from 1 to 10, his rank is “Vladimir Putin having a bad day”.

Childhood adversity will make you weaker or it will make you stronger. The choice is yours.

The petty evil of William F. Buckley

Anonymous Conservative exposes the thought policeman of the conservative establishment to have been a malignant narcissist:

Jonah Goldberg recently said it was time to John Birch the Alt-right. Good luck with that, numbnuts, as an economic apocalypse approaches and the nation finds itself overrun with your Establishment-approved, religion-of-peace amigos. You’ll be lucky to one day escape the mob that is coming yourself. I look on this piece as my get out of jail free card, should I ever have the misfortune to be captured in Jonah’s vicinity.

So I am free to discuss things like this openly now. If the Cuckservative Establishment wants to attack the Alt-right, lets take a look at their saintly standard bearer through the lens of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Our source material will be the piece written by his son in the New York Times. At the time I read it, I was repulsed by what appears to be a case of pretty severe Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Here I will explain why, after quotes from the article.

First is the picture of him. Notice how despite his youth, you can still see the glassy, disconnected eyes. And the sneer of contempt, almost to the point of a growl with an upcurled lip, which is manifest on the left side of his face, and masked on the right side. That facial asymmetry always seems to hold when I see something aberrant. Faces are handed, and the left side almost never hides the demons within as well as the right.

Now the article.

Pup’s self-medicating was, I’d venture, a chemical extension of the control he asserted over every other aspect of his life. The term “control freak” is pejorative. Put it this way: Few great men — and I use the term precisely, for Pup was a great man — do not assert total control over their domains…


He was invariably the sunniest and most pleasant creature in the room. The moods of those in attendance upon him — Mum’s, mainly — did not always match his.


A TV remote control in the hands of an autocrat of the entertainment room becomes a “Star Trek” phaser set on stun. He and Mum might be watching “Murder on the Orient Express” with a half-dozen guests when, just as a key plot point was being introduced, suddenly the screen would fill with a documentary on Che Guevara or the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara…


There, the three of us would eat one of Julian the cook’s delicious meals on trays and watch a movie. I say “a movie,” but “movies” would be more accurate, since several minutes in, without bothering to say, “Let’s watch something else,” he’d simply change the channel. One day, when I was out of town and called to check in, Danny reported, with a somewhat-strained chuckle, “We watched parts of five movies last night…”


Once or twice during the convalescence, I became so splutteringly frustrated after the fourth or fifth channel change that I silently stormed out of the room.

I know what Buckley was doing because I have seen this mind in action. That storming out was what Buckley wanted. Think about it. He was watching those shows. Was he not drawn into them? Was his interest alone not piqued to see the climactic resolution unfold? Was his boredom climaxing at the exact moment everyone else’s interest was maximally invested?

The satisfaction he felt when everyone else was enraged at that critical moment was more pleasurable to him than seeing the plot twists revealed…. Buckley was not a great man. He was, like all narcissists, an insecure, mentally damaged coward, elevated to his position by an establishment that saw him as a useful idiot who would happily suppress the most fierce advocates for freedom, from John Birch to Ayn Rand.

I never, ever liked Buckley’s writing. There was always something that was distinctly off about it to me. There was never any depth or substance to it; there is more meat to a single chapter of Sam Huntington than there is in Buckley’s entire oeuvre. His columns never seemed to hit the target, and his novels were meandering and pointless. Yes, he was intelligent and influential, but always in the most shallow and superficial manner. It is not even remotely surprising to me that the establishment he constructed and policed has not long survived his death. In a different situation, he would have been a dictator, and probably have met with much the same fate as a Mussolini.

Read the whole thing. The incident with the boat at Christmas makes it very clear that there was definitely something seriously psychologically wrong with the man. He was basically the real-life version of Ricky Bobby’s father in Talladega Nights, if the father had punched out the waitress and burned down the Applebee’s instead of just mouthing off to her and being thrown out.

AC explains the driving motivation of the intelligent malignant narcissist:  This is the cerebral narcissist’s dream – tangible proof which they can handle in their brain, that everyone else is an idiot, and they are the smart one. It relieves the great insecurity which drives them unrelentingly to try and one-up everyone else.

This is why I don’t worry about to those who can admit that they have failed, admit that they are wrong, and don’t feel the need to inappropriately flaunt their intelligence at all times, but keep a very wary eye on those who are never wrong, always win, and claim even the most abject defeat to be a victory in disguise. They’re not all malignant narcissists, they may only be garden-variety Gamma secret kings, but in no circumstances can any of them be trusted in any way.

Notice how often Christopher Buckley tried to reason with his father, to absolutely no avail. That’s an unwinnable scenario with malignant narcissists, it is the Kobayashi Maru. Don’t argue with them, don’t try to correct them, don’t try to fix things for them, don’t enable them in any way, just keep your distance, keep them out of your life, and leave them to their delusional hellholes.

Of Alt-West and Alt-White

The question is not whether there are at least two distinct branches of the Alt-Right already or not, but whether the Alt-White branch can get its swastika panties sufficiently unbunched to cooperate with the Alt-West and the Alt-Lite in the pursuit of its stated objectives, or if it is more interested in competitive navel-gazing and purity-spiraling.

After a few run-ins with true-believing Stormfronters who have been Alt-Right since the distant dawn of primordial identity politics in 2010, both here and on Twitter, it has become abundantly clear that the combination of a legitimate fear of entryism and an understandable case of spotlight envy, the Alt-White is having some serious trouble dealing with the inevitable problems of success and popularity.

It’s rather like a company that has sales that are rapidly growing. The increase in demand for your products is great, but it is still a real problem. How are you going to get the additional products made? How are you going to pay for them? Are these new customers going to stick around or will they disappear before you can even expand your manufacturing capacity? These are good problems to have, but they are definitely problems that will need to be addressed.

First, is a distinction really necessary? Yes, without question. This should be obvious, since Alt-White, Alt-West, and Alt-Light are all different strains of identity-based thought that are all also observably distinct from mainstream conservatism or libertarianism. In this sense, all three are ALTernatives to the traditional RIGHT. Hence the Spencer-coined term.

Second, should all three be considered Alt-Right? Here I would argue no, that while it is reasonable to describe both Alt-White and Alt-West as Alt-Right, the Alt-Lite should not be. The reason is that while both Alt-White and Alt-West sign on to the greater part of the 16 Points of the Alt-Right I’ve laid out, and which most Alt-Rightists have generally endorsed, the various people who make up the Alt-Lite are all over the place with regards to most of them.

The Alt-Lite, in other words, is the larval form of the Alt-Right, which means that they are not, practically speaking, Alt-Right in any meaningful or functional sense. They are merely those still undergoing the intellectual transition that most Alt-Rightists have made, at one point or another. Alt-Lite is a transitional stage, not an end point.

By contrast, the Alt-White and Alt-West are both destinations. Once one gravitates towards one branch or the other, or as may be the case, is directed there by virtue of one’s identity, one is simply not going to eventually move towards the other one. This leads us to the third question, what are the key differences between the Alt-White and the Alt-West. The following are my observations; I am quite willing to be corrected by someone who can speak more credibly for the Alt-White.

  1. Alt-White is for whites only. Alt-West is pan-racial and pan-national, which should not be confused with being multicultural or equalitarian or pro-diversity in the egalitarian sense.
  2. Alt-White is primarily concerned with white nationalism, and secondarily concerned with European nationalisms. Within the Alt-White, there is already a discussion concerning what the difference between a generic white nationalism and the specific European nationalisms are; I suspect there will eventually be a further distinction between American and European branches of the Alt-White. While the Alt-West supports white nationalism, that is not its sole concern, as it supports all nationalism, European or otherwise.
  3. Alt-White is neutral to hostile on Christianity. Alt-West is strongly pro-Christian, as it believes Christianity to be one of the three pillars of Western Civilization aka the historical Christendom. Pro-Christian includes, but does not require, actually being a Christian.
  4. Alt-White is neutral to hostile on Israel. Alt-West is pro-Israel, as it supports all nationalist homelands.
  5. Alt-White is hostile to very hostile to all Jews everywhere. Alt-West is friendly to Israeli Jews while hostile to globalist Jews and anti-nationalist Jews.
  6. Alt-White has a romantic view of National Socialism. Alt-West regards it as a suicidally stupid but semiotically useful form of German nationalism.
  7. Alt-White is neutral to pro-white imperialism. Alt-West is anti-imperialism, as it regards imperalism as being societally enervating and self-destructive.

As you can see, within the context of both the 16 Points and the grand political spectrum, Alt-White and Alt-West are largely in accord. They generally share a philosophy and a direction, but their priorities and perspectives are different. More importantly, with the possible exception of Christianity in the long term, there is very little reason for conflict between Alt-White and Alt-West, indeed, the distinction between the two eliminates the Alt-White’s primary objection to the Alt-West, which is the possibility of  being sidelined by the media and by the larger potential appeal of the Alt-West.

Some have accused me, and Milo, and several others, of wanting to assume the mantle of leading the Alt-Right. That is the exact opposite of the truth. In fact, one personal benefit of articulating the distinction between the two primary branches of the Alt-Right is that it makes it clear that a) there can be no unitary leader, and b) even if there could be, that unitary leader could not possibly be me due to my identity as an American Indian and member of La Raza.

The more significant benefit is to quell the fears of the Alt-White that they will be sidelined by their more numerous allies. But the Alt-West needs nothing from the Alt-White, and by establishing a separate identity, a much broader spectrum of members are made possible while respecting the rigid borders of the Alt-White. Regardless, the simple fact of the matter is that the Alt-White is not the only alternative to mainstream conservatism.

There are much bigger battles ahead than settling the question of whether Christianity is a necessary component of Western Civilization or not. Because we know the white race is absolutely a necessary component of it, and that is why, whether one is inclined towards the Alt-White or the Alt-West, every member of the Alt-Right who values both whites and the West has immediate and mid-range objectives remain exactly the same.

As before, this is not intended to be a definitive delineation of the differences between the two branches of the Alt-Right, but the starting point for an intelligent discussion. Keep it civil and substantive as those more interested in posturing will be spammed. As for those who will claim that Alt-West, Alt-White, and Alt-Lite are not genuine “things”, keep in mind that as a political taxonomist, I am creating nothing. I am merely describing what observably already exists.

The growth of the Alt-Lite

The power of the Alt-Right message can be seen in those who are rejecting conservatism, classical liberalism, and other pure ideologies in favor of watered-down versions of the Alt-Right that Richard Spencer and others have collectively labeled the Alt-Lite. This is one thoughtful Alt-Lite piece by a self-declared Liberal Christian Nationalist who has, in his own words, embraced identity politics.

I think I am a “Liberal Christian Nationalist,” and, now that Christians arguably have no real influence in this country – just as they, particularly nationalists, have little influence in Europe (first see here ; then here and here) – this shouldn’t scare anyone.[i] I don’t expect to get too many of my fellow Americans to identify with me in this, nor does it mean I expect to see a LCN party arise. I suspect that the list that I have put together below though – explaining what I mean by “Liberal Christian Nationalism”, might be of more use to countries who are young when it comes to their Christian commitment.

Please note that these points deal with issues of “race” in some detail, since that is, I think, always the elephant in the room and demands thoughtful engagement. Further, in full disclosure, I put together this 32 point list in part in response to a list that the “Alt Right” leader, Vox Day (author of The Irrational Atheist), put together.

Before jumping into my list, a key point: in my view, the Leftism of today includes many who would consider themselves on the political right. Their philosophy is ultimately deferential to the language used in the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey decision of the Supreme Court: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” (of course, logic tells us that “private beliefs” will ultimately only be permitted to be translated into action for some persons – others’ actions will inevitably be determined to be “out of bounds” – see below). A person who is conservative, on the other hand – including those who find room to account for the importance of identity in politics – would continue to agree with the words of the late Russel Kirk – or, perhaps, at least want to agree with him: “[conservatives are] all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.” “Conservatives” who say that what Kirk says is “no longer true” or irrelevant are being anything but conservative. After all, if what Kirk says it is no longer true, how was it ever more than an illusion to begin with (given that he speaks of the words “constant” and “enduring” as if these terms mean something)?

My list:

  1. The history of the world teaches us that the separation of religion and politics is ultimately untenable. Ironically, the possibility of conceiving of a “separation of church and state” could have only taken place in a nation that is largely made up of an influenced by Christians (“give to God what is God’s, to Caesar what is Caesar’s”), who justifiably, at their best, have a reputation for both being simple, humble, content, and not apt to glorify strength.
  2. The Bible is the Word of God. Whoever you are, Jesus Christ is your Creator, your God, your King. This is what Christians have always believed and taught. It is only for the sake of conversation and common ground with the world – all of whom we are to love with Christ’s love – that we might start by talking about how the Bible “contains God’s Word”, “contains the Gospel”, how Jesus is “our God,” or how we consider the Bible to be authoritative.
  3. If “true patriotism” means “freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said, one should consider supporting Christian missionaries who share the Gospel of Jesus Christ – His defeat of sin, death and the devil for us through the (unlikely) victory at the cross vindicated by the resurrection – out of sincere conviction and not with any colonial-esque designs.
  4. Those countries who have attained a high level of political liberty, including freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion – as well as greater effectiveness, mobility, and choice when it comes to economic issues (made possible by increased trust) – are nations that have been greatly influenced by Christianity.
  5. Greco-Roman culture, as well as the Renaissance and Enlightenment which drew from it, forced Western forms of Christianity to become much more reflective and nuanced in their understanding of biblical truths. Christianity also seeks to appreciate what is good, true, and beautiful from all cultures (see Philippians 4:8).
  6. Christians are first and foremost citizens of heaven, not earth. In, but not of the world, their “dual ethnicity” means that they belong first to the kingdom of heaven, and are members of “God’s chosen ethnos” (I Peter 2:9). Though all are one “in Adam,” God has, post-fall, also ordained a diversity of nations (see Acts 17:26), from whom He will obtain worship (Rev. 7:9).
  7. Biblically, earthly nations are inseparable from the concept of “ethnos,” from which we get “ethnicity”. In like fashion “genos”, from where we get “genes,” can be translated as offspring, family, race, nation, kind, or even sex. We see that these terms involve notions of blood and parentage, even if “ethnos” is more closely connected than “genos” with our notions of culture.
  8. Ultimately, the Church is a new Nation that re-unites, by faith in Christ, persons not just from this or that race, tribe, or nation, but from the entire human family – making one Nation, or, more accurately, Kingdom, to whom all the earthly nations will stream in the life to come, “Kingdom come”.
  9. The idea to rather sharply distinguish “church and state” comes from Jesus Christ Himself. He said to “give to God what is God’s and Caesar what is Caesar’s”. It is desirable that the Church and earthly nations support one another even as it is also desirable that each stay out of the other’s core business – the Church forgiving sin and giving eternal life, nations protecting their people while seeking truth and justice.
  10. It may indeed be better to be governed by a wise Turk than a stupid Christian (mis-attributed to the 16th Church Reformer Martin Luther, though it might seem to sum up his thinking well) though even with this consideration (which seems not to be mindful about continuity), the ideal or preferred persons to lead a nation are, in general, Christians with political gifts – not the leaders of the Church, but Christians nonetheless.
  11. In contrast to some, there is nothing in the Christian religion that demands we, in our earthly sojourn, must have Christian rulers or even a certain kind of government. If a beloved Christian chieftain or king were to step down to establish a democracy, even with the caveat that the elected ruler must be Christian (e.g. “firm Nicean”) – or at least persons sympathetic to Christianity – it is reasonable to debate whether or not this would, generally speaking, be a responsible move.
  12. Nevertheless, there is no theological reason, in theory, that a Democratic or Republican (understood classically, not in terms of the American political parties) Liberal Christian Nation should not be desirable – along with the desire to keep it thusly (Ben Franklin: “A Republic – if you can keep it” – see here).
  13. But if this is the case, here, a “balance of powers” is only one part of the puzzle. Collective theological – and hence cultural – formation must be seen as being absolutely critical: in order to have equality under the law, real respect for the dignity and rights of each individual, a wise degree of cultural tolerance, etc., one must, simply, have Christian teaching. “Liberal Christianity” and their progressive allies are, in fact, parasitical here (see here).
  14. As “childless men who had forgotten their childhoods” (Bertand de Jovenel), Hobbes and Locke (largely followed by Leo Strauss, the father of “neo-conservatism”) believed the false philosophy that we are by nature “free and independent,” naturally “ungoverned and even non-relational.” (see here) Hypothesizing “states” (personal and corporate!) that are devoid of nationality, ethnicity, and religion is simply unreasonable, and can’t not result in expressions of social Darwinism, glorifying the powerful and attractive, and impatient with, and dismissive towards (or worse) “losers”.
  15. When it comes to the sexes, the Left has, in essence, rejected fatherhood as a category. Might not the rejection of the notion of “fatherland” by related? (this article is worth pondering) America cannot be “an idea,” however much that statement might force us to consider its seemingly unique qualities.

The list actually consists of 32 points, but you can read the whole thing there. Unlike the intellectually autistic spergs of the Alt-White, I welcome the rapid expansion of the Alt-Lite, as it drives even more nails in the coffin of ineffective ideology politics in general and American conservatism in particular.

Refueling the tank

This essay by Scott Adams struck a familiar chord:

How do I know Trump has mastered the skill of converting humiliation into energy? The signs are all there. For example…

Trump has entered one high-risk business after another, guaranteeing that he would experience a large number of setbacks, failures, and humiliations. People don’t run toward humiliation unless they know they can convert that negative energy to fuel. When you see someone succeed across multiple unrelated fields, that’s often a sign of a Master Persuader who feeds on both success and failure. You are watching Trump do exactly that, right in front of your eyes. He has converted every “gaffe” into news coverage. He eats bad news and converts it into fuel.

Many of you have watched me do the same thing. You’ve watched as I jumped fields from corporate America to cartooning. Then I became an author of business-related books. I opened two restaurants that didn’t work out. I tried lots of stuff that failed miserably. Now I’m talking about the presidential election. What do all of those things have in common?

I risked public humiliation in each case.

And in each case, lots of people told me “Keep your day job.” On a typical day, dozens of strangers insult my body, my personality, my brain, my integrity, and lots more. Like Trump, I consume it as fuel. And it is a learned skill.

You might have noticed that both Trump and I are quick to attack anyone who attacks us. Observers tell me I shouldn’t do that, because it makes me appear thin-skinned. Observers tell Trump the same thing. But observers are missing one important thing: We use the critics to refuel

If you were an alien from another planet, and you observed a lion killing a gazelle, you might think that lion was angry at its prey. You might think the lion was insulted that the gazelle was using its watering hole. What did the gazelle do to deserve that treatment? Is the lion being thin-skinned?

Trust me when I tell you that sometimes the lion is just eating.

Not long after the release of Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg asked me how I handled the constant criticism to which we were both subjected. He tended to find it enervating, and wondered how I seemed to be energized by it. I explained that as a naturally lazy individual from a wealthy family, I needed a pretty good reason to put down a book and get off the couch, and the hatred of people I dislike served as a sufficiently motivating factor.

Disturbed put it best: “open up your hate and let it flow into me.”

I don’t think I’ve missed a single day blogging since I decided VP had to pass up Whatever in terms of traffic. It now has 5x more daily traffic, but I won’t be content until I also have more Twitter followers and more book sales than McRapey. The object is not to win, but to vanquish.

(This may amuse only me, but perhaps you recall Scalzi’s false claims of having 50,000 readers per day. Now, readers aren’t pageviews, so it’s not a precise comparison, but VP hasn’t had a single day as low as 50,000 pageviews in more than six weeks. 63,078 is the daily nadir in that time frame.)

Carnegie seeks embarrassment, Trump seeks failure, Adams seeks humiliation, and I seek hate, but it’s all the same thing: converting negative energy into fuel. When people ask me where I find the energy to do the various things I do every day, well, there are Saudi-sized oil fields of hatred out there.

Now, obviously I am far less successful than Trump or Adams. So, perhaps humiliation is a better goad than hatred. Or perhaps they convert negative energy more efficiently than I do. Or perhaps they’re just more fortunate. But regardless, it should be apparent that if you can teach yourself to feed on your critics rather than fear them, you will likely find the consequences to be beneficial. And, of course, to feed on them, you need to do something that inspires them to exist.