Tag: politics

The personal is always political

 

David Gerrold’s announcement that he will unfriend the majority of Americans who support Donald Trump for president is a clear example of why it makes no sense to attempt to be friends with SJWs or even be civil with them. Time and time and time again, I see someone explain that so-and-so SJW “is really a good guy” or that this-and-that SJW “is fine as long as we don’t discuss politics”.

But politics is all-consuming for the SJW, and when push comes to shove, the SJW will ALWAYS choose his politics over you because his politics are an intrinsic aspect of his personal identity. You might as reasonably expect him to cut off a body part in order to preserve the relationship once the inevitable conflict arrives. The SJW is not your friend. The SJW is incapable of being your friend.

So don’t associate with SJWs. Don’t cut them any slack at all. Once a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance reveals symptoms of SJW, you should quarantine them as ruthlessly as you would quarantine them if they had ebola or some other lethal and infectious disease.

Be the problem.

Why Trump is winning

Mike Cernovich explains one important aspect of Donald Trump’s success, as well as his own:

The Trump Mindset: Momentum + Focus + Energy

It’s clear none of Trump’s haters have read his books (Think Big and Kick Ass and Art of the Deal). If you had you’d know how Trump thinks and moves.

To understand how someone thinks, look at the language he uses. Kindle makes this simple. You can search for specific keywords in the Kindle version of a book.

Trump’s books are loaded winning, focus, push, enthusiasm, energy, and momentum.

Trump is a momentum player. He doesn’t wait for the perfect time to strike. He comes out swinging and he keeps swinging.

There’s even a chapter in Think Big and Kick Ass called Big Mo!

What do momentum types never do? We don’t apologize!

An apology destroys your momentum, as it causes you to stop.

Scott Adams is also a momentum type. How do I know this?

Adams talks about “energy” in his great book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Energy is mentioned 67 times and there is even an entire section on how to increase your personal energy.

Momentum types are obsessed with energy, as it’s crucial for us to keep moving forward.

Momentum types believe if we keep putting fire on targets, we will win.

As long as our energy holds up, this is true.

It’s funny, I don’t really think of myself as either a momentum or a high-energy guy because I am almost extraordinarily lazy. My ability to mentally check out and pay no attention to anything short of an assault team utilizing heavy weaponry is well-known throughout my entire social circle. One of the primary reasons I feed on the hatred for me is that it is about the only thing I find reliably motivating.

On the other hand, I do possess an unusual amount of what I think of as “focused stamina” which is how I was able to write ATOB in 18 months and turn in a complete 60-page game design document in under a week. I suppose if you consider that I’m on the verge of publishing my second book in four months while having designed two games and edited three books at the same time, it is possible that I am merely using different terminology than Mike is.

But I dont think so. Two things that I have learned from Mike recently is the importance of a) enthusiasm and b) thinking big. For example, I don’t think I’ve been thinking big enough for Brainstorm; it’s already nearly as well-attended as I imagined it could possibly be. And there is no real reason why my political books should sell any fewer copies than those published by Ann Coulter or Mark Levin, after all, as Mike notes, we’re both already outselling most books published by well-known mainstream conservative writers with substantial media profiles.

So, I’m working on learning to think bigger. Here is the first baby step: my goal is for Cuckservative to debut in the Amazon top 100 overall. In keeping with this objective, we’re going to modify a few of our usual launch routines in order to help make that happen. We’ve put together a solid New Release offer (don’t forget to get on the mailing list if you want to receive them), we’re only going to make the book available on Amazon for the first three days, and for the first time, those who buy through Amazon will be able to take advantage of the offer.

And yes, if you need the epub and don’t have Calibre installed, you can send us a copy of your Amazon order and we’ll get it to you.

There are a few other things we’re doing as well, including one moderately exciting one that I cannot talk about quite yet, but I am entirely confident that with your help, we can drive the book, and more importantly, the message, into higher orbit than any of us at Castalia House originally envisioned.

In terms of Mike’s advice, all I can really add to it is the importance of understanding your own motivations. Once you figure out what it is, use it relentlessly no matter what anyone else might think of it. It doesn’t matter what your own private Carthago is or why you believe it must be destroyed. Stay focused, stay motivated, and keep your momentum going, until one day, its walls are razed and its fields are sown with salt.

Counter-Currents interview

A transcript of my interview with Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents:

GJ: How would you describe your political philosophy and who are some of the intellectual influences on its formation?

VD: I would describe myself as a Christian Western Civilizationist. I’ve been a libertarian for a long time. I was briefly even a card-carrying libertarian. But I was always more of a small L libertarian rather than a capital L one. Mostly because there were certain amounts of libertarian dogma that didn’t quite work out in the real world. Then as time went on it became readily apparent to me as I traveled around the world, as I lived in different countries, as I learned different languages, it became apparent to me that the abstract ideals that we often tend to follow in America in particular are not really relevant to most of the world.

I was being interviewed by a reporter from Le Monde in Paris about two months ago and he had absolutely no idea how to even describe the concept of libertarian to his readers. That’s in France, which is at least Western civilization and so forth. Trying to have a conversation about that sort of concept in Japan or China is just totally meaningless. So, that’s when I really became more cognizant of the importance of the nationalist element.

I think that just as Stalin found it necessary to modify international socialism for the Russians and just as Mao found it necessary to modify international socialism for the Chinese, it’s necessary for every other ideology to also understand that there are nationalistic, tribalistic limits to the abstract application of those ideologies.

GJ: That’s interesting. I’m an ex-libertarian myself. I was not a card-carrying libertarian, but I subscribed to Reason magazine and read lots of Ayn Rand and Hayek and Mises mostly when I was an undergraduate. There were things that led me away from that.

Two books in particular. First, I read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions and the other was Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, which basically destroyed my liberal optimism about humanity.

What are some of the things that you think don’t work about libertarianism? You said that some of the abstract libertarian dogmas just don’t work, so specifically what are those?

VD: Well, the most important one, as we are now seeing, is the free movement of peoples. What really changed my thinking and it was a process, you know, it wasn’t an immediate thing, although it was a fairly quick process now that I think about it . . . I grew up on Milton Friedman. My father had me reading Free to Choose when I was fairly young, and so I was a big free trade dogmatist and around the time of NAFTA and all that sort of thing I could recognize some of the problems but I bought into the line that the problem is that it’s not real free trade. It’s a free trade agreement, but it’s not real free trade.

Then I read a really good book by Ian Fletcher, and he directly addressed the concept of Ricardo’s comparative advantage, and he really destroyed it. I think he had something like seven major problems with it, and that got me interested, so I started looking into it. I’m very fortunate in that I have a pretty active and intelligent blog readership and they really like to engage and they have absolutely no respect for me so they’re quite happy to argue with me.

Most of them were free-traders as well so we ended up having an on-going two or three week debate about free trade, and it got pretty detailed to the extent that I went through Henry Hazlitt’s entire chapter on free trade just to look at it critically rather than just reading through it and accepting it. Just looking at the arguments. I found that the free trade arguments were just full of holes. Not just Ricardo’s, but also Hazlitt’s. That’s what got me realizing that Ricardo’s argument was totally dependent on the idea that capital could move but labor couldn’t and so what that got me thinking about was the fact that a libertarian society – even if we could convince everyone in the United States that libertarianism was the correct way to approach things – would rapidly be eliminated by the free movement of peoples as people from non-libertarian societies, people from cultures where they have absolutely no ideals that are in common with the Founding Fathers or with libertarian ideals, would rapidly be able to come in and end that libertarian society in much the same way that the Californians have gone into Colorado and completely changed the political climate there.

So, Ian Fletcher’s book is what really triggered that whole shift in thought process. Now I look at the concept of the free movement of peoples, free trade, and those sorts of concepts with a considerable amount of skepticism. Of course, in Europe we’re seeing some of those problems related to the idea of the free movement of peoples just as you see it in the States with the Central Americans coming across the border.

Read the rest of it there. One factual update: the landmark Martin van Creveld essay mentioned will not be appearing in Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 since I made the mistake of showing it to Jerry Pournelle, who promptly stole it for There Will Be War Vol. X.

Mailvox: the key to failure

Is often past success. It sounds as if Team Clinton is attempting to pull another Perot out of their bag of tricks. A loyal member of the Ilk writes:

I just received a robo-poll from “Victory Processing, LLC”, asking whether I might vote for “a successful businessman” in a three-way race between Hillary Clinton, a Republican, and “Fred Strauss”.  I thought you would want to know about this call, because it suggests that the Clintons are considering putting up another Ross Perot, so that they can split the Republican vote and win the election.  It also suggests that the Clintons are going to try to run a completely issue-free campaign.

The robo-pollster sounded like a pleasant, decently educated, middle-aged white woman.  She started with the usual questions — Do I always vote in presidential elections?  Do I consider myself to a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Other?  Do I consider myself to be a Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, or Other?  If the presidential election were held today, would I be inclined to vote for a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Other?  Do I think that the people running the country are working for the rich and powerful instead of ordinary people?  Do I want an insider “who can get things done,” or an outsider who would bring “new ideas”?  There were **no** questions about the economy, or “Is the country on the right track or on the wrong track”, or foreigh policy, or immigration.  In fact, **there were no questions about any issues at all.**

Then the poll asked if I had a Favorable, Unfavorable, or Undecided view on each of Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump.  It also asked about head-to-head matchups.  If the presidential election were held today, would I vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, or be undecided?  Ditto for Clinton vs. Carson, Cruz vs. Clinton, and Clinton vs. Rubio.

Then the poll asked if I would consider voting for an unnamed “successful businessman” in a three-way race.  The unnamed candidate “grew a small family business from 2 stores to 600 stores in 30 states, with 40,000 employees.”  The poll asked if, regardless of my candidate preferences, whether I thought a third-party candidate could win.  Yes, No, Maybe, or Undecided?

Then the poll named the mystery candidate:  “Fred Strauss”.  The poll repeated the four matchups, this time with Strauss as a third-party option.  This time there were 7 options: “Definitely vote for” candidate X, “Probably vote for” candidate X, ditto for Y, ditto for Z, Undecided.

At the end, the poll asked some demographic questions.  Age range: 18-35, 36-50, 51-65, over 65?  Male or Female?  Race:  White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Other, Refuse to State?  There were **no** questions about educational attainment, income, profession, or employment status.

The poll ended by thanking me for my time, and saying that it was paid for by “Victory Processing, LLC”.

I hope this gives you and The Ilk some ideas about how the presidential campaign might unfold.

The other possibility is that Team Clinton is worried that Donald Trump will run as a third-party candidate if the GOP Establishment successfully denies him the nomination despite his popularity.

Which, by the way, he absolutely should do, given the way in which the GOP Establishment is now attacking him. Loyalty is only ever a one-way street for them.

Peaceful and tolerant people

So much for the idea that Donald Trump can’t beat Hillary Clinton:

An acid-tongued Hillary Clinton ripped into conservatives on Thursday for what she said was an ‘obsession in some quarters’ with the notion that the global spread of terrorism is a byproduct of the Muslim faith, denying that the two are connected in any way.

‘Islam itself is not our adversary,’ the former secretary of state said during a campaign speech outlining her foreign policy objectives.

‘Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.’

If Trump wins the Republican nomination, I would expect we’re going to be seeing those words frequently over the next 12 months.

Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.’
– Hillary Clinton

It’s rather astonishing. Hillary Clinton may actually be a worse presidential candidate than Bob Dole and John McCain. It must be the Democrats’ turn to throw the election.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, ten or so peaceful and tolerant people who have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism have attacked a Radisson hotel in Mali and hold 170 hostages there.

UPDATE: Le Monde reports that the Malian security ministry has confirmed three deaths so far in the siege.

Social justice serves justice

It doesn’t happen often, so enjoy it when it does. Sooner or later, the revolution always eats its own:

Students staged a protest Wednesday inside the office of Princeton University’s president, demanding the school remove the name of former school president and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from programs and buildings over what they said was his racist legacy.

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber told the students he agreed with them that Wilson was racist and that the university needs to acknowledge that, according to a video posted to YouTube. But a school spokesman said the president also told students it is important to weigh Wilson’s racism, and how bad it was, with the contributions he made to the nation.

Hi-freaking-larious. Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst US presidents in history. He set the stage for many of the problems we presently face today and he should be a significant hero to SJWs.

But he was racist and therefore he has to go. I look forward to hearing about Mr. Eisgruber’s inevitable apology and resignation.

It’s going to be even more amusing when they eventually turn on Scalzi.

Rubio is the new Bush

Not that anyone here will be surprised, but it looks as if the GOP establishment has given up on Jeb!

Marco Rubio, moving to capitalize on a wave of momentum in the Republican primary, will host a Capitol Hill fundraiser on Monday that will draw an influx of new supporters.

Around 70 of Rubio’s financial backers are listed on the event invitation — over half of whom, organizers say, signed on with the senator after last month’s Boulder debate. The fundraiser, which will draw lobbyists, bundlers, and several members of Congress, is expected to net around $200,000.

Monday’s fundraiser was initially going to be held at a Washington, D.C. townhouse, but organizers moved it to the Capitol Hill Club — where a large room has been rented out — after the RSVP list began to swell.

Among the names listed on the invitation, who are relatively new to Rubio’s fold, are Peter Davidson, a Verizon lobbyist; Christopher Chapel, a NextEra Energy lobbyist; Russ Thomasson, a former top staffer to Texas Sen. John Cornyn; and Mathew Lapinski, a lobbyist at Crossroads Strategies.

The GOP elite must be freaking out now that the Paris attacks have driven up Donald Trump’s support to 42 percent. They’re moving to Plan B faster than I had anticipated prior to the attacks.

Whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you believe him or not, you have to admit that his response to the Paris attacks was easily the strongest and most forthright of any of the candidates in either party.

Mailvox: the Farmer’s Iowa call

Farmer Tom makes a prediction:

I’m personal friends with the Iowa campaign managers for Trump and Cruz. I know Carson’s Iowa guy, Huckebee’s guy, hate the a-hole who was Perry’s guy. Met several times Rubio’ s guy, once in his Senate office.

I know these people and the insides of the system.

I can tell you right now that Trump will not win Iowa, he will get second or third.

1. Carson
2. Trump
3.Cruz
4. Probably Rand because the RP people will hang to the end.

I don’t predict American politics anymore because I’m far too out of touch with them. But that’s the word from the ground in Iowa.

GOP Establishment prefers Clinton

This Washington Post article demonstrates that there is, in truth, but one bi-factional ruling party:

Less than three months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them.

Party leaders and donors fear that nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands….

The apprehension among some party elites goes beyond electability,
according to one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to talk candidly about the worries.

“We’re potentially
careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to
be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the
job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody
Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana
peel and this person becomes president?”

Angst about Trump
intensified this week after he made two comments that could prove
damaging in a general election. First, he explained his opposition to
raising the minimum wage by saying “wages are too high.”

Second, he said
he would create a federal “deportation force” to remove the more than
11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. “To
have a leading candidate propose a new federal police force that is
going to flush out illegal immigrants across the nation? That’s very
disturbing and concerning to me about where that leads Republicans,”
said Dick Wadhams, a former GOP chairman in Colorado, a swing state
where Republicans are trying to pick up a Senate seat next year.

And one of the biggest concerns to the ruling party is that Trump will lead a nationalist surge against immigration. But keep this in mind when you hear them re-run the old “Most Important Election Ever” song-and-dance and use the Lizard Queen as a scare tactic. They would rather have Hilary as president than either Trump or Carson.

Second time farce

I used to think David Goldman’s “Spengler” columns were pretty good. But as time goes on, he seems to be getting almost deranged:

Kissinger’s latest offering has the distinct virtue of reducing the foreign policy Establishment’s thinking to absurdity. Kissinger saw the major powers as fixed entities to be moved around on a geopolitical game board, in a Parker Brothers’ version of the Congress of Vienna or the Treaty of Berlin. He missed the internal decay of the Soviet economy and its strategic consequences–the Russians’ realization in the mid-1980s that they could not compete with the American economy and its capacity to invent new military technologies. It wasn’t quite Stratego, to be sure: Kissinger drew on non-trivial mathematics, for example Thomas Schelling’s game theory. Variables in an equation and tokens on a game-board, though, both remain fixed entities to be arrayed according to given rules. Sometimes the long-term sometimes overtakes the short-term and mugs it.

The internal decay of present and former nation-states from Libya to Afghanistan is even more obvious, and even more germane to the politics of the region. Kissinger’s current recommendations for the Middle East, outlined in an Oct. 16 essay in the Wall Street Journal, treat the region’s players as if they were fixed entities that can be manipulated into a stable balance of power. It is obvious, though, that nothing is fixed about these entities, and this leads Kissinger to torture logic until it expires on the rack. Here for example is a characterization of Iran: “On one level, Iran acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy, even invoking the safeguards of the international system. At the same time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony based on jihadist principles….The U.S. should be prepared for a dialogue with an Iran returning to its role as a Westphalian state within its established borders.”

One can imagine Iran’s supreme leader attempting to parse Kissinger’s logic: “Westphalian? What is ‘Westphalian?’ I have Googled it, and behold!, it is a kind of ham! The infidel Kissinger likens us to pork!” Iran perhaps the least Westphalian political entity on the planet. It is not a nation-state in any sense of the term but the rump of a collapsed empire, in which Persians comprise barely half of the population, with “Azerbaijanis (16–25+%), Kurds (7–10%), Lurs (c. 7%), Mazandaranis and Gilakis (c. 7%), Arabs (2–3%), Balochi (c. 2%) Turkmens (c. 2%)” making up the rest, according to Wikipedia. Shi’ite messianism and attendant imperial ambitions are its raison d’etre. It is like saying, “Excuse me, Mr. Hyde, but is Dr. Jeykll at home?”

And about what should the United States engage Iran in its “Westphalian” incarnation? “It is preferable for ISIS-held territory to be reconquered either by moderate Sunni forces or outside powers than by Iranian jihadist or imperial forces.” If we had some Westphalian ham, we could have ham-and-eggs, if we had some eggs: if we had “moderate Sunni forces” we could persuade the “Westphalian” Iran to withdraw the “jihadist or imperial” Iran to acquiesce in the reconquest of ISIS-held territories by Sunnis. Then “The reconquered territories should be restored to the local Sunni rule that existed there before the disintegration of both Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty.” Someone should break the news to Dr. Kissinger that Saddam Hussein is dead and that the previous Sunni regime is not available.

Is Iran any less a nation-state than the USA? If diversity is our strength, is it not also the strength of “the rump of a collapsed empire” in which there is still an ethnic majority more solid than a mere “proposition nation”?

And Spengler misses, or more likely, intentionally ignores Kissinger’s observations about the breakdown of the Westphalian state. Indeed, some of Man’s foremost thinkers about Man’s oldest art have been thinking very hard indeed about the implications of what they call “the crisis of the State”.

The fact that Kissinger could be – and in my view, observably is – wrong about the dangerous geopolitical situation in which the world finds itself does not mean that either the man or his ideas should be belittled, especially by someone who is so shortsighted that he genuinely believes his people can simply jump to China when their welcome in America finally wears out.

The original Spengler was tragic. This pale imitation smacks of farce.