Tag: politics

Populism vs Democracy

Nassim Taleb asks a question:


I am still looking for someone to give a rigorous explanation/explanation of difference between populism & democracy. Nothing yet.

My response:

  • Democracy: liberal-imposed structural limits on the will of the people. 
  • Populism: when the will of the people exceeds those limits.
This applies to the real-world definitions of the concepts observed, not the dictionary definitions of the conceptual ideals, of course.

In other news, if you’re in the mood to trigger cucks and SJWs and other heretics upset by the incipient Ascension of the God-Emperor to the Cherry Blossom Throne, CryptoFashion now has red TRUMPSL!DE shirts inspired by the recent Day-by-Day cartoon. They also have a new shirt for Europeans who want to Make Europe Great Again.

Identity politics

Like war, it only takes one side to practice identity politics for them to become the operational rules of the game. The reason the Left is reacting with such fear and outrage to the election of the God-Emperor Ascendant is because they understand that the breaking of the so-called Blue Wall and the shift of the white woman vote to the Republican Party means that a majority of whites now effectively subscribe to the same identity politics to which Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Jews, Muslims, and Africans all subscribe.

The Trump administration need pay no more heed to the anti-White identity interests than the Obama administration paid to the White identity interests. In fact, it should not, because Donald Trump’s second term depends upon continuing to ride the transformation of the Republican Party into the White Party.

It is very hard for those with strong ideological principles to accept this transformation. It was, and is, difficult for me to do so. But the fact, the logic, and the observable reality is that you can no more successfully appeal to ideology in an age of identity politics than you can successfully argue dialectic before an audience limited to rhetoric.

Oh, please, YES!

The Washington Post suggests Milo Yiannopoulos may be under consideration for the role of Press Secretary in the Trump administration:

Washington Post: Trump Could Install MILO As Press Secretary If He ‘Really Wants To Shake Things Up’ Guess who Trump’s other Breitbart guest was? If he really wants to shake things up, Trump could install Yiannopoulos — the self-described “most fabulous supervillain on the internet” — as his press secretary. Just imagine briefings with this guy.

We’ll know Milo is being seriously considered for the job by the stricken white faces on the Secret Service agents responsible for doing his background check. As one gentleman commented on Twitter, “they’re going to need a bigger binder.”

Personally, I’d like to see William S. Lind for Secretary of Education.

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Stephen K. Bannon will be the White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor while Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will serve as White House Chief of Staff.

“Bannon and Priebus will continue the effective leadership team they formed during the campaign, working as equal partners to transform the federal government, making it much more efficient, effective and productive,” stated a press release from Trump’s transition team on Sunday. “Bannon and Priebus will also work together with Vice President-elect Mike Pence to help lead the transition process in the run-up to Inauguration Day.”

Not a bad start. Priebus is GOPe, but he played it fair and merits being given a chance to prove himself. Bannon upsets the cucks and liberals, and having an Alt-Right Chief Strategist is about as optimal as it gets. The Left is already freaking out.

“Trump names white nationalist figure ‘Chief Strategist to the President'”

Sounds pretty damned good, doesn’t it. Speaking as a Red nationalist, why shouldn’t whites have a nation too?

Past and future identity politics

The SJW Narratives on race and society, as well as the Democrats’ Rainbow Coalition, are ultimately doomed to failure because they are all predicated on a nonexistent People of Color vs Whites scenario that does not, and has never, existed:

Decades before Brown v. Board of Education ― the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that found “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” ― a Chinese family from rural Mississippi brought its own legal challenge to Southern school segregation before the Supreme Court.

In 1924, grade school students Martha and Berda Lum were barred from attending their local, all-white school because of their status as people of color. The family sued the school in an unprecedented but little-known lawsuit that made its way to the nation’s highest court.

A new book, Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South, documents the family’s struggle for educational equality.

Although the Lums sought to fight racism against Asian-Americans and provide their daughters with access to a quality education, their lawsuit was itself rooted in pronounced anti-black racism. The Lum family brought the challenge because they didn’t want society to see their daughters as being in the same category as black students, or force them to attend the same institutions as black children.

The girls’ mother, Katherine, “knew that such a classification would have instantly disenfranchised her family,” the book says. “For Katherine to send her children to the colored school would be to yield to the trustees, to agree with them that her daughters were not worthy of the privileges afforded to whites.”

However, there is also an important lesson for the more cuckish conservatives here. Neither the various Asian identity groups nor Jews are actually on the side of Whites. They may have more characteristics in common with Whites than other identity groups, but they also have their own identities and their own tribal interests, which contradict White interests every bit as dramatically as other identity groups, and as the Lum case demonstrates, they will never hesitate to cast aside White interests in pursuit of their own.

Ironically, the Alt-White’s fixation on Jews is not only somewhat misplaced, it actually understates the extent of the challenge facing Whites. The historical fact is that the Jews are not, and were never, unique in being an identity group capable of nepotistically exploiting a high-trust, high-altruism majority for their own benefit, they just happened to be the only group present in Western societies in sufficient numbers to do so. White Americans, and to a lesser extent, several European nations, as well as the Jews themselves, are currently in the process of discovering that various Asian identity groups, particularly the Han Chinese, are not only every bit as accomplished in this regard, but are considerably more numerous, and quite possibly more ruthless.

Various Asian groups are already driving out Jews from the elite universities originally created by and for whites, and the Chinese are now invading the Jewish power center of Hollywood in force. This is not an accident nor is it the usual corporate train wreck. The next step will be for Asians to begin replacing Jews in the media and in the Democratic Party elite; the Chinese-Hispanic political alliance is likely to be even more formidable than the historic Jewish-Black alliance.

This is why the Alt-Right is not going to fade away, but will gradually become more influential in the White Party, which is now the proper name for the Republican Party. The Alt-Right’s conceptual models, which are based on identity rather than ideology, not only describe past and current events much more accurately than the mainstream alternatives, but also provide much more accurate predictive models.

Even his hindsight isn’t 20/20

Nate Silver takes great pride in being less completely wrong than some of the other pollsters, in an article entitled “Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else (Except the LA TIMES/USC and IBD/TIPP Tracking, Who, Unlike Us, Actually Got It Right). NB: I added the bit in parentheses. At no point does Silver mention any polling organization, or individual, who did correctly predict the election results.

Based on what most of us would have thought possible a year or two ago, the election of Donald Trump was one of the most shocking events in American political history. But it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise based on the polls — at least if you were reading FiveThirtyEight. Given the historical accuracy of polling and where each candidate’s support was distributed, the polls showed a race that was both fairly close and highly uncertain.

This isn’t just a case of hindsight bias. It’s tricky to decide what tone to take in an article like this one — after all, we had Hillary Clinton favored. But one of the reasons to build a model — perhaps the most important reason — is to measure uncertainty and to account for risk. If polling were perfect, you wouldn’t need to do this. And we took weeks of abuse from people who thought we overrated Trump’s chances. For most of the presidential campaign, FiveThirtyEight’s forecast gave Trump much better odds than other polling-based models. Our final forecast, issued early Tuesday evening, had Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.1 By comparison, other models tracked by The New York Times put Trump’s odds at: 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent and less than 1 percent. And betting markets put Trump’s chances at just 18 percent at midnight on Tuesday, when Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, cast its votes.

So why did our model — using basically the same data as everyone else — show such a different result? We’ve covered this question before, but it’s interesting to do so in light of the actual election results. We think the outcome — and particularly the fact that Trump won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote — validates important features of our approach.

Translation:

  1. I’m a Gamma and I can’t admit that I’m wrong without explaining how being wrong only proves that I was right to do what I did. 
  2. Almost anyone else means anyone not KellyAnne Conway, Scott Adams, Nassim Taleb, Mike Cernovich, Vox Day, LA Times, IBD, or TPP Tracking.
  3. A 29 percent chance of winning is practically a near certainty. I mean, sure, you might have interpreted that to mean that Hillary was probably going to win, but that just shows how you don’t understand polling as well as I do. The fact of the matter is that we were closer to getting it right than everyone else who didn’t get it right.
  4. And by “29 percent”, I of course mean 28.6 percent.
  5. And by “such a different result” what I mean is “exactly the same result as everyone else, except those other guys who actually got it right and whom I will carefully refrain from mentioning.”

We strongly disagree with the idea that there was a massive polling error. Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump. We think people should have been better prepared for it. There was widespread complacency about Clinton’s chances in a way that wasn’t justified by a careful analysis of the data and the uncertainties surrounding it.

Translation:

  1. We strongly disagree with the idea that I could have been wrong. The Secret King is never wrong, by definition! You just don’t understand how the appearance of being wrong only shows that I was mostly right, and that just goes to show how much smarter I am than you. Still undefeated!
  2. Next time, don’t pay any attention to what I say before the election. Just wait until it is over, and then I’ll explain what I meant and how that proves I am right. Always.

Remember, at one point, Nate Silver and 538 gave Hillary Clinton an 87.3 percent chance of victory as recently as October 19. The good news for Trump, the Alt-Right, and even the Republicans is that these hapless morons are too proud to admit or learn from their mistakes, which means they are going to screw up just as badly, or perhaps even worse, in future elections.

#IOVOTONO

On December 4th, Italians have a beautiful chance to sink another knife into the bleeding, wriggling corpse-to-be of the European Union:

Italy referendum result could send shockwaves through markets and DESTROY Europe

THE EU’s days might be numbered with Italy about to vote on a referendum which could send shockwaves across the continent. Analysts believe the outcome of the ballot on constitutional reform could have massive global implications. With many European leaders already coming under severe pressure from anti-EU parties ahead of elections next year the significance of the Italian result is huge.

Defeat for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi could lead to even deeper social turmoil in countries already struggling with austerity, immigration problems and a growing contempt for Brussels.

Ana Thaker, a market economist at PhillipCapital said the Italian result could be as “significant as Brexit”.
She said: “Britain’s decision to leave the European Union was the first sign of trouble in the European Union. If Italy decides to leave, it is confirmation that the union is in trouble and could spark a long-term market rout which European equities would suffer from the most.”

This is the next major political front against globalism. Show your support for Italy, for Matteo Salvini, and for the Lega Nord. The hashtag is #IOVOTONO

How the God-Emperor ALREADY saved the world

I have spoken to several Europeans in the aftermath of the US presidential election, and they’ve all been very curious about what happened, and how it was possible for Donald Trump to win when everything they had heard from their medias indicated that he was a) very, very bad, and, b) certain to lose by a huge margin.

Of course, they were even more deluded than the US electorate, as the European media took the already misleading US narrative and exaggerated it, just as the US media does the same thing in reverse.

What is interesting is their reaction to finding out that Hillary Clinton supported NATO membership for both Ukraine and Georgia. It can be best described as “aghast”. Learning about Hillary’s foreign policy on Russia also suffices to convince them that Donald Trump was, in fact, the vastly preferable candidate. One man even said, “well, no wonder he won, given that he was clearly running against a madwoman.”

Unlike Americans, Europeans take the idea of war with Russia very, very seriously and understand it is something to be absolutely avoided at almost all costs. There are still millions of people who remember the brutal swath that the Red Army cut across Eastern Europe on its way to Berlin. They also understand that a considerable quantity of the natural gas that heats their homes comes from Russia, and that the first consequence of any military action will be for that pipeline to be shut off.

Very, very few Americans or Europeans understood just how serious the danger that Hillary Clinton posed to the world was. First, she supported NATO membership for Ukraine:

The former U.S Secretary of State is a far more vocal critic of Vladimir Putin than her party rival Bernie Sanders. She has argued that Ukraine deserves more military equipment and training and financial aid (the latter dependent on the government’s ability to carry out the necessary reforms). The U.S. Democrat’s frontrunner for the White House has also urged other E.U. states to be more committed to sanctions and has supported the strengthening of ties between NATO and Ukraine (unlike Bernie Sanders who sees NATO expansion as a provocation against Russia).

Second, she supported NATO membership for Georgia, who had already started and lost a brief war with Russia after being encouraged to join NATO in 2008.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington will continue assistance to Georgia in the field of security and defense and supports country’s NATO membership. The Secretary spoke at the opening of the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Commission plenary session in Batumi, Georgia. Georgia is strategic partner of U.S. as regards the issues of regional and world security. She stressed that increase in combat readiness of Georgia and matching it with NATO standards continues within the framework of agreement reached by both countries’ presidents, Gruziya Online reports.

Third, the woman who would likely have been Secretary of Defense under Hillary favored direct military intervention in Syria and called for spending $3 billion on military assistance for Ukraine.

The woman expected to run the Pentagon under Hillary Clinton said she would direct U.S. troops to push President Bashar al-Assad’s forces out of southern Syria and would send more American boots to fight the Islamic State in the region. Michele Flournoy, formerly the third-ranking civilian in the Pentagon under President Barack Obama, called for “limited military coercion” to help remove Assad from power in Syria, including a “no bombing” zone over parts of Syria held by U.S.-backed rebels. Flournoy, and several of her colleagues at the Center for New American Security, or CNAS, have been making the case for sending more American troops into combat against ISIS and the Assad regime than the Obama administration has been willing to commit.

Meanwhile, Russia has consistently warned, since 2008 when Ukraine submitted a Membership Action Plan and Georgia indicated its desire to do so, that it would respond to any such actions by invading and conquering both countries. This is just one of the many implicit warnings delivered.

Admission of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO will place Europe on the verge of a large-scale crisis, Russia’s Permanent Representative to NATO added. “One can’t imagine the situation when those countries [Ukraine and Georgia] keep cherishing the hope to join NATO and the alliance really plans to admit them, as this would explode the situation and put Europe on the brink of a crisis, whose size and scale can’t be imagined today,” Grushko said.

The warnings are not, as some foolish neocons insist, mere bluff. Russia has already invaded both countries for much smaller provocations than NATO membership. I strongly suspect that the troop movements that were taking place on both sides, which combined consisted of nearly one million troops, indicate that if Hillary Clinton had been elected President, Putin would have ordered the invasion and occupation of Ukraine before January.

I think the idea was for Crimea to become a NATO base as part of this ongoing campaign to surround Russia which has clearly been in the works now for the last 25 years despite the fact that when the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and even before that, the end of the Warsaw Pact, there were assurances that were given to Russia that NATO would not move eastward. Twelve new countries have been added to NATO since that time and Ukraine would have been number 13 and would have been actually I believe the most dangerous from Russian point of view…. I think that it is clear that the United States is pursuing what it views as its interests as it always does, the United States government. In Syria, in the Middle East and in regard to Russia and we, I believe, are very likely to see an even more aggressive policy in Europe against Russia if Hillary Clinton and her entourage come into power with the November 8 election.

For 25 years, the US has been knowingly playing a dangerous game, trying to see how far they can push Russia without provoking it to war. As her record in Georgia, Libya and Syria clearly shows, Hillary has no strategic vision, no understanding of war, and would have almost certainly erred on the side of excess provocation.

Many congressional members say that Putin has not been deterred, but he has, to some degree, because if he wanted to he could order the full-scale invasion of the entirety of Ukrainian territory. That he has kept Russian direct personnel support for the separatists’ brutal aggression relatively small (1,000 military and intelligence personnel by recent NATO estimates) demonstrates that his decisions are rational (to him) and done with some awareness of the likely consequences.

And that is why Donald Trump has been one of the most effective Presidents in U.S. history, even before he has taken office.

In Sessions we trust

Chris Christie, not so much. It appears – appears – as if the God-Emperor Ascendant may not be interested in business as usual.

Chris Christie’s fall from grace is now complete.

Months after Christie, having lost his presidential primary to Donald Trump, had ambitions for becoming Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Christie just suffered another dramatic fall from grace after President-elect Donald Trump shuffled his transition team three days after his surprising victory, and increased the influence of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Washington’s most vocal critics of illegal immigration, while diluting that of Christie.

According to the WSJ, Chris Christie was removed as Trump campaign transition chairman on Friday, a position that will now be filled by Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the transition team confirmed. Christie will remain on the transition team’s executive committee as a vice chairman, along with Ben Carson, both largely figured positions; they will be also joined by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mr. Sessions.

The most drastic change on staff was the elevation of Rick Dearborn, the staff chief of Mr. Sessions’ Washington office, into the role of transition director. The move sidelined Rich Bagger, a top ally of Mr. Christie’s who held that role for the last several months. Mr. Bagger couldn’t be reached for comment.

Aside from the now effective elimination of Chris Christie from any positions of power in the Trump team, what is notable is the rapid rise of Jeff Sessions, one of the handful of names tossed as Trump’s candidate for Treasury Secretary.

It’s hardly a fall from grace to remain on the team. Trump isn’t the sort to cast loyalty away lightly, but he’s also not going to let a man with questionable judgment in hiring and team-building remain in charge of his entire Cabinet. He might consider making Christie Secretary of Education; the man has a long history of dealing effectively with teachers.

This underlines something that was already very clear: the God-Emperor is absolutely ruthless when it comes to taking action on underperforming team members. He doesn’t care how it looks, he just shuffles the deck and draws.

“Cuck!” she urged, cuckingly

Why on Earth would anyone, especially Donald Trump, listen to the woman who twice voted for Obama, who didn’t see Trump winning the Republican nomination, and expected him to lose to Hillary Clinton?

It was a natural, self-driven eruption. Which makes it all the more impressive and moving. And it somehow makes it more beautiful that few saw it coming.

On the way home Wednesday morning I thought of my friend who runs the neighborhood shoe-repair shop. He is elderly, Italian-American, an immigrant. I had asked him last winter who would win the Republican nomination and he looked at me as if I were teasing. “Troomp!” he instructed. I realized at that moment: In America now only normal people can see the obvious. Everyone else is lost in a data-filled fog.

That was true right up to the end.

Those who come to this space know why I think what happened, happened. The unprotected people of America, who have to live with Washington’s policies, rebelled against the protected, who make and defend those policies and who care little if at all about the unprotected. That broke bonds of loyalty and allegiance. Tuesday was in effect an uprising of the unprotected. It was part of the push-back against detached elites that is sweeping the West and was seen most recently in the Brexit vote.

The previous 16 months were, for the Trump campaign, the victory project. What has to begin now is the reassurance project. The Democratic Party is in shock but will soon recover. Mainstream media, tired and taken aback, will reorient soon. Having targeted Mr. Trump in the campaign, they won’t be letting up now. Firing will quickly commence.

There is something I have seen very personally the past few days. The impolite way to put it is the left believed its own propaganda. The polite way is that having listened to Mr. Trump on the subjects of women and minorities, etc., they sincerely understand Mr. Trump and Trumpism to be an actual threat to their personal freedom. Trump supporters are overwhelmingly citizens of good will and patriotic intent who never deserved to be deplored as racist, sexist, thuggish. But some were not so benign or healthy.

The past few days I’ve heard from a young man who fears Jews will be targeted and told me of Muslim friends now nervous on the street. There was the beautiful lady with the blue-collar job who, when asked how she felt about the election, told me she is a lesbian bringing up two foreign-born adopted children and fears she will be targeted and her children somehow removed from her.

Many fear they will no longer be respected. They need to know things they rely on are still there. They don’t understand what has happened, and are afraid. They need—and deserve—reassurance.

What a terminally stupid woman. What an eminently characteristic cuckservative. This column clearly demonstrates three things:

  1. Moderates and cuckservatives have no idea how to win, and no idea what to do with a victory when someone else hands them one.
  2. Moderates and cuckservatives are always more concerned about the other side, and what it thinks of them, than they are about those whose side they claim, however nominally, to be on.
  3. Moderates and cuckservatives never stop to rethink their course no matter how often they were previously wrong.

And yet, I hope Mr. Trump listens very carefully to what the likes of Peggy Noonan advise him. Then, he would do well to review his decisions and make sure that absolutely none of his actions are in line with their advice. They are a reliable guide to failure.

Those who fear they will no longer be respected should understand they will not be respected. They will be rejected. The things they rely on will not be there. They will receive no reassurance from the Alt-Right. We are rising, we are winning, and we will not be merciful.

Don’t hesitate to fling their failure in the faces of your friends, family, and colleagues who are freaking out on social media and in your social circles. Fan their fears. Encourage them to expose themselves. Stoke their panic. Don’t let them think that you agree with them, or respect their opinion. They’ve rubbed their opinions in your face for years, for decades in some cases. Now it is time to return the favor, with interest.

Remember, you cannot convince such people of the truth through reason. You know that. They cannot learn through information. That is why this is the time to strike, and strike hard. Only now, when they are reeling in emotional pain and confusion, can the rhetoricals be convinced and reprogrammed. And through their need to escape the pain, they will learn to love the God-Emperor as passionately, and as mindlessly, as they once loved the false gods of the Left.