Wilkinson did an interview with Robert Wright on the whole affair. Comprehensive defense of Cathedral institutions and ideology: the New York Times is an essential truth seeking institution (« please hire me »). Maybe they should rename it « the truth » (that’s an original idea). Academia as well. And we lost so much scientific and intellectual output over the centuries by excluding « black girls ». This is the real tragedy. So it’s essential for black girls to feel very comfortable now. Hence you need speech codes because horrible right wingers like Curtis or insensitive rationality bros could hurt their feelings. On a cringe scale from 0 to 100, it might be a 98.
Pravda was/is more of an established state paper, Iskra, as the name implies, a revolutionary/underground publication. So in this context, definitely Pravda.
In the throes of some kind of psychotic fugue state I made the unfortunate decision to watch that interview and am now overcome with the overwhelming desire to squirt lethal amounts of fentanyl into my eye sockets
"On August 26, 2016, Curtis Yarvin, a well-known conservative blogger who has reportedly advised Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and other members of the Trump administration, visited the Google office to have lunch with an employee. This triggered a silent alarm, alerting security personnel to escort him off the premises." (linked above in the Damore lawsuit document.)
my theory for why he was on googles hit list. in an UR essay moldbug mentions that he once asked a Googler if google employed more Blacks or Serbians(as engineers). anyone that truly believes in the uniform distribution would obviously think Google employs more Blacks. But since every actual knows the truth its up in the air. eitherway Google doesn't want any evidence of a hostile work place so they banned Curtis from talking to any of its Googlers.
First of all, that is genuinely hilarious. Second of all, to (mis)quote a dissident Russian poet attending one of her fellows' political trial: 'don't worry, they're just writing his biography'.
I love reading these. Curtis is cozily dismembering this guy. Nothing Will could ever say could harm him. He's harnessing the same phenomena where enemies of the cathedral ultimately type cast themselves into roles that buttress it.
Curtis the insurgent judo master from his high desert mobile sanctuary casting small but inexplicably painful stones at cathedral sycophants while in retaliation they attack their own foundation with giant bombs and take out a children's hospital in the process.
Alternative explanation of WW's behavior: it's kayfabe.
He's obviously a great writer; thus intelligent. And yet he writes stupid posts like this. Conclusion: he doesn't actually believe it. Instead he's doing his best to redpill normies by writing over-the-top stuff like:
> the Times, nevertheless ranks among our greatest, most reliable, least biased fact-gathering institutions.
> What a phenomenal publication the New York Times is!
And my favorite:
> he’s writing for the New York Times, where deranged, privileged fucks like Curtis Yarvin think the real power is. (The real power is in money, Curtis.)
This is why Powerball winners have such an outsize influence on our society, because they have a lot of money and therefore power.
If I didn't know the depths the commie Pravda mind would sink to, I would have totally bought that, wrt Wilkinson's disposition. Then again, there was certainly something to late-stage Pravda in fact redpilling normies. Reality hits you hard, I guess.
Discourse? Those are Diktats, indeed they are Papal Bulls.
And those issuing them have become inhuman and ridiculous.
The Dwarf Lannister gone mad and announcing purges of the Clegane's.
Really the ideal outcome for DC is the rest of us to treat it as the Vatican is treated within Italy, 14 acres of a vanished kingdom and a dead god [I'm Catholic and trust me it's dead] and proceed to find our Garibaldi's. Yarvin's problem is he wants to reform the Church and have said Church Unify Italy. There's reasons this never worked, and he's trying to do it with a senile pope and a pederast, venal Curia.
We outside DC must begin to regard DC as the Papal States and seek to circumscribe them within their Vatican Walls, note the Papal States and the Pope as weakest are unified the last. >To end the metaphor take any portion of America esp along the Spine of Texas north to the Dakotas means the rest defect immediately and DC can be reduced to it's proper sphere of inside the Beltway only. We are more than halfway there, they've already walled themselves in, saving us a great deal of not just work but the tiresome justifications for doing the necessary and obvious.
Splitting the country up would certainly be the best outcome for all, but it can't happen for the foreseeable future. USG won't abide Afghanistan governing itself, they certainly aren't going to set Texas free.
You misunderstand me. I say take all of America and just to begin wherever, then reduce DC to the equivalent of the Vatican within Italy. The Italians didn't split up their country they unified it.
To answer your point - no, splitting the country is the worst possible outcome as it would lead to sovereign nations who would then bring in foreign 'allies' to plunder and conquer us - and we have the richest stores of natural wealth on earth to plunder. It's the reason the 30 years war went on 30 years, and the Germans were lucky it ever ended.
Worse as you touch on the other side won't leave us alone.
Worst of all the geography of America mandates ocean to ocean, no competent government or people would ever settle for less. That's why once Lewis and Clark bought back the first continental map our 'destiny' became 'manifest' that is to say obvious. Obviously we must get to the Pacific. No competent people will ever settle for less than securing their flanks on the Atlantic and the Pacific, even the Mexicans didn't settle for less. If we split the country we'd immediately begin the American wars of reunification. Nukes would flat out not be off the table.
No, I simply said grab a base of power then take it all, take Washington last.
There was nothing in DC but legitimacy worth taking, they've destroyed it...and conveniently walled themselves off. Leave them be for the present, take America First.
Proceed with Strike and Siege, be prepared for war.
However it would be a step forward, costly but a step forward.
My answer is predicated on enemy capabilities and that the enemy has the will to respond instead of cave in. Please understand that while the soldiers and police are from the commons and sworn to the Constitution...probably the best they can do is forbear. There's no alternative for them to defect to.
Assuming the enemy is not paralyzed into collapse and responds:
Those who strike in Blue are going to be casualties, I think you'll find this is an expensive gesture few will make. Suicide without the bomb.
Red Siege: Be prepared for the counterstroke - which will not be mere tear gas or a few bullets on the barricades, but perhaps if you persist WAR. They will be organized.
You are spurning organization for flash mobs.
Your strike and siege is a flash mob. If you want to flash mob they must be prepared to vanish upon appearance of the enemy and then to escape and evade capture. To evade capture you need either to avoid detection or have an underground. It will be very difficult for the Blue/Strike to avoid detection and retaliation, it will be less difficult for Red/Siege *if they melt away upon the approach of the enemy.*.
The key to a flash mob that isn't state approved, as the Left is, as criminals are is to not so much suddenly appear but rapidly disperse.
You need to very seriously consider having some burly, dangerous men who are organized as your security, ala Kyle, ala Proud Boys.
Getting your ass beat by soyboys is no victory.
Again the best the police can do is not harm you, they cannot protect you. Getting your ass kicked is a foolish defeat, far worse than arrest.
Come to win a street fight or stay indoors.
Now I must tell you this would be an excellent learning experience for all of you. I'm not coming because I've been to war, and will only return for same. I will not deliberately die for a gesture, or go to jail for a gesture.
End result: it is possible the state will be paralyzed, esp if the police and army refuse to act. This would spread and succeed, perhaps.
This isn't a state sanctioned protest, it's an anti-state protest.
Generally for protests to succeed they are have powerful allies in the govts foreign and domestic, sympathetic and paid media, support from intelligence agents, the "International movement" etc.
I don't know if you noticed but non left wing protests have no effect, look at the yellow jackets. Look at MAGA. Look at the Right To Life marches - did you know they used to put hundreds of thousands in DC annually , once a million? No, few do.
If you show strength and win some victory then very slowly if you want a mass movement it may grow if allowed.
The other result: the state responds: You'll gain a few hard core recruits, and then in prison you'll bond and commit. You'll also gain a much larger number of one and done's, once they get smacked. A few of you will come out of prison hard and committed, more will be done period.
That's my answer on the excerpt of your link as regards Strike and Siege, proceed if you will, be prepared for the counterstroke, be prepared for a campaign. Understand what they CAN do to you wherever you stand, their capabilities. That is a campaign. Always be prepared to go into defense, or extract ...whatever that means for you. If you build an army and toss it away on a romantic gesture (and there is much romance in your ideas) do not expect it to be a success. If you plan coldly as above then whatever outcome if the bulk of your people are intact - you've won by playing the game and surviving.
It does sound like you agree that a protest (as described) would almost certainly put a lot more energy into the system. It's more that there's nothing good that would come of it—at least as things sit right now.
More energy isn't a small thing, though. A lot of the reason why change is basically impossible right, fundamentally, is due to the lack of energy. So identifying ways to create that energy isn't a terrible use of one's time…
How well (and how long) do you think Blue counties would hold up sans food and fuel? I'm thinking Katrina-level disorganization and looting within 48 hours, but maybe I'm wrong there.
OTOH, surely the National Guard in each State would be rolled out to reopen supply lines within hours (if not beforehand, to prevent protests entirely).
Mostly, I think the purpose of protests like that are to "clarify" everyone's positions: that the gov't HATES Red team with a passion. Once the National Guard starts shooting people, it's hard to imagine anyone remaining neutral. What happens after that is anyone's guess.
That said, I 100% agree that it's pointless to protest without a new regime available to transition to. I think hypercultures are a much more promising avenue to explore—voluntary, non-violent, with a truly surprising level of freedom, total legal, and *non-threatening* (just a bunch of religious nuts that the world can, and will, ignore).
I meant from a governance perspective. Obviously a velvet divorce is impossible here for all sorts of military reasons.
Italy started out disunified, which is why conquest bit by bit worked for the Piedmontese. USG already controls the entire country, and would react with extreme violence to any attempt to break part of it away. If you wanted to take the country back, as things stand now, you'd have to do it all at once.
You took too many happy pills with your booze this time.
"The absolute harmlessness of words and thoughts" sounds an awful lot like a doctrine of free speech, which, as you know, may be "a nice idea but I'm not sure it's ever happened".
Except it isn't a nice idea, and the reason why it's not is precisely because of those pesky "traditional exceptions".
The fact that there are exceptions shows that the principle is invalid. While there's no such thing as a sinful truth, it's certain truth can indeed be _used_ in immoral ways.
You give libel and slander as examples of exceptions to the doctrine of "harmlessness of words". Now, it's awful easy to take shots at libel and slander; they are easy targets of moral reprobation, being false and all. But what about the sin of detraction? Damaging someone else's reputation by [needlessly] telling the truth is also a sin—you're damaging someone's most valued personal property.
And there are plenty of other ways in which the truth can be involved in a sin, to the point that it's no longer inaccurate to speak of "dangerous truths". Here's a short inventory, off the top of my head.
1. Screaming "fire" in a crowded theater—even though there really is a fire. Depending how crispy the roof already is, this might be justified, or it might not. Is there time for everyone to line up and calmly evacuate? Will a stampede for the exit do more harm than good? It takes a balanced judgment. But no one can seriously argue that these words aren't _dangerous._
2. Telling an uncomfortable or dangerous truth to one deprived of the full use of his mental faculties is rightly seen as the act of a sadist. Imagine visiting Grandma, in the home, and telling her about little Robbie deciding to transition!
3. Such delightful truths as there may be regarding the physical comeliness of a particular youth or maiden, being long meditated upon, tend to seduce the thinker into wicked sins of luxury. Ceteris paribus, there are similar objects of greed and gluttony.
4. Information overload: irrelevant, useless truth crowding out useful truth. Solzhenitsyn spoke of the right _not to know_. Trivia is both dangerous and harmful.
5. There's also the basilisk... well, I don't believe in that one. But Catholic morality sort of breeds basilisks on its own. Let's say you know someone you believe to be acting in perfectly good faith, invincibly ignorant of some obscure moral law they're breaking. If you don't think they would stop breaking that law if you told them about it, then it looks as if you're doing more harm than good by informing them about it, "tying up heavy loads, hard to bear, and placing them on men's shoulders". Manuals for confessors notoriously spend many words discussing when it is or is not appropriate to inform a penitent of their unknown obligations.
6. Regarding censorship, we have a strong tradition of that, too, the principle of which always reduces to: don't disturb the simple faith of these peasants, you asshole, we're trying to get people to heaven here. In the long run, if your weird theological views are true, we will recognize them; in the short term, get in line, write in Latin, and keep your mouth shut outside the halls of scholarship.
Is this not enough? _Obviously_ there are dangerous truths. Duh!
Even with regard to the cause du jour, uh, yeah. I may be pretty confident there are intellectual differences between races; but I'm from Arkansas. I'm not about to give Uncle Billy a lecture on the Bell Curve. Uncle Billy already needs to chill the fuck out or he's gonna get in trouble at work. Prescribe him a red pill? ¿Qué? Are you crazy?
Arguments against free speech tend to raise the question "In whose judgment?" As usual, your implicit answer is "Mine." Maybe you'll be Yarvin's monarch and that will mean something. Or maybe someone else will decide Curtis is shouting fire and this blog will be shut down before its readers can stampede.
But speaking of the dumbest analogy ever, it might interest you to know: shouting fire in a crowded theatre isn't just morally acceptable, it's legally mandated. What do you think a fire alarm is? Also, you don't think the crowd might have a lower likelihood of stampeding before they see the fire for themselves? If they're going to stampede at a shout, they're not going to exit calmly in single file once they smell smoke, let alone once the flames start descending the walls. And if they do stampede, any moral responsibility for any violence people use against each other lies on their own shoulders - not that this ever actually happens in real life. It happened more regularly in the time before this stupid analogy was pulled out of a judge's ass, but the problem wasn't the crowd or the shouter, it was the fact that their doors didn't open outwards. The mob violence only started once they were sealed in facing imminent death. I'll let you adapt the analogy accordingly.
2. Prisoner: "What are you in for?"
Prisoner 2: "I told my Grandma about my sister Robbie's transition."
Prisoner: "All hail King Amitie..."
You'll be tempted to respond to this by saying that you don't mean this should be illegal, it's just an example of speech doing harm (again, by your judgment). But Curtis knows and we all know that "The absolute harmlessness of words and thoughts" doesn't mean no word or thought can harm. An insult can hurt someone and an insulting thought can hurt yourself - again, we all know this. But we're talking about power and government here, and Curtis is saying that government must take this attitude and not involve itself with these trivialities. Free speech is a legal principal - if you want to destroy it you have to provide an example of speech that should be illegal but isn't, and if you want to contribute (and avoid being guilty of number 4) you have to do so outside of the "traditional exceptions" we all know about.
3. You're starting to win me over here - your purple prose should be illegal.
4. Can you get me a job with you in the Ministry of Useful Truth please? I want to take down your useless comment - it's crowding out all the useful truth.
5. and 6. At least you're not getting high on all of your supply.
1. There is no free will, and no one is morally responsible for anything.
2. There is no objective right and wrong; all your feelings about morality are bred into you by evolutionary games but no one is really right or wrong about any moral (or aesthetic) stuff.
3. There is no afterlife; some people have very short, tragic lives, some times the bad guys win and are forever revered, etc.
FWIW, I actually think 1, 2, and 3 are all false (i.e., I *really* think there is free will, I'm *pretty confident* that there is an objective morality, and I think there are *good reasons to believe that* there is an afterlife). But a lot of other philosophy professors think 1-3 are true and even go around saying that stuff! See, e.g., https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2099162
Great comment! Still I don't think it's fair to assume Moldbug was actually endorsing that position. He was presenting it as the only revelation that could free Will from his thought prison in an ironic way. If free speech is the the only way to freedom, and thus the next logical step in the liberal carousel of ideas, but free speech is very dangerous indeed, then we can almost feel the cold prison walls of the captive mind and hear his master's keys jangle. I sort of feel sorry for the guy! Dealing with the devil always seems to work out like that. The Irony is so sweet and tasty! I am learning to love the postmodern world, for all its quirks. If I am reduced to scrubbing the feet of some blm activist jabba the hutt sociology professor for meager bread, it is only fitting that THEY should be the slaves of their own sins.
There is a perverse justice in liberalism defeating itself, that the tradition of institutionalized revolution should eat itself. This ouroboros is both haunting and beautiful. Its ingenuity is that it creates the need for power by striving for unattainable or self undermining goals. This is very exciting for bright young radicals and philosophy students alike, and entices many of them to join the revolutionary idea corps. This serves the state in two ways: it is a feeder system for talent and an internal security strategy, integrating any new ideologies that pose a threat. And yet to survive in this state of ideological instability, in an oligarchy built on a foundation of competing revolutions, unrestricted free speech is untenable and Highly dangerous. And thus Will finds himself imprisoned by the inevitable circumstances brought on by the collective will to expansive freedom.
Or he could just yank the needle out and face the world as it presents itself, and be free and unimportant. It's not too late Will! You can still save your soul! Just repent! REPENT! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DANGEROUS IDEA!!!
OMG! I got my money’s worth AGAIN : “ if we invented constructive treason now, we would have to call it STRUCTURAL treason.”
You DO have to read thousands and thousands of words to find these ABSOLUTE pearls, but - again - who else can write like this? Even though I was graduating with honors and entering medical school around the time CY was a ball of cells, a lump of tissue - te salute, master.
Just a reference to newspeak's use of the "structural"/"systemic"/"institutional" qualifiers to transform "racism" etc from relatively concrete acts/states of mind into a kind of ubiquitous ether. Abstracting a "crime" like this lets you target pretty much any individual or group as "structurally racist (treasonous)".
While I like these take downs as much as the next guy, I feel like we're losing the plot here. Surely there's a better use for Curtis' writing talents than knocking over tomato cans.
I nominate discussion/writing around *actual weaknesses in the current regime*. Compliance is boring and speech codes for me (but not for thee) are lame. We want Conan-tier content!
"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!"
I believe these are necessary to bring more people on board. Everyone loves a good highbrow knife fight.
The other essays are timeless but also feel like he is crafting an alternate reality in a vacuum. These takedowns actually show that these ideas touch the real world and their targets reactions reinforce Yarvin's citadel of thought time.
As much as I also liked this piece, I don't disagree. But this isn't really our blog. It's Moldbug's. Secondarily, and I have also noticed in other comments, it seems that there is an implicit assumption that our goal here is to find weaknesses in the regime. Will IS the regime, and his weaknesses are the regimes! In this light this piece is a masterful demonstration of weakness while using his infamy to protect Will. It's ingenious if you ask me.
But we are not going to crush our enemies, lets just be real. You're essentially expressing a desire to masturbate by thinking about all the ways you can take down the regime. Or rather, "We" can take down the regime.
Lets just enjoy the ride and study the world! If Curtis keeps crushing Will like this he may inadvertently complete the system of German Idealism. That would be noteworthy
> But we are not going to crush our enemies, lets just be real.
I think you misunderstand me, Conan is just a vibe—not an actual policy goal.
This regime will die of attrition; it will die when it no longer has the will to live.
A very good way to induce that end is to engage in asymmetric action—things that are cheap, easy, and fun for _us_, but expensive, hard, and tedious for the regime to handle.
Not every weakness of the regime will produce opportunities for this kind of action, but many will. It's worth finding them and making the regime spend its time, energy, and money exhausting itself putting out the petty rhetorical fires we can start day, after day, after day.
Moldbug must—it is an a priori truth—always write "sub specie aeternitatis".
That's what I worry we're losing most in the new grift format.
"Epistolae Adversus Fuccboii" are always a footnote in a thinker's history, another expression of his thought against which to better understand his _important_ works.
Besides, Moldbug doesn't have the heart to really take anyone down. He's too philanthropic! He always apologizes!
How can you ask such a kind-hearted man, allergic to the thought of blood, to become death, the destroyer of worlds?
"There is only one way out of the soft reign of terror: the universal and unconditional legal and social consensus that there is no such thing as a dangerous or offensive idea."
Has this ever happened in history? Like, even once?
"In America at least, the idea of dangerous ideas is easy to date. It dates to World War I, and specifically its ridiculous but freaky anti-German campaign. No frankfurters for you! Some would say the idea war has since gotten way more sane. Others disagree."
The practice of "tarring and feathering" may slightly predate WWI.
The problem is also that it's simply not true. Ideas spread insofar as they're convincing - hell, Curtis himself expressed similar sentiment in Aaronson's comment section a few years back. If we by some miracle return to a free market of ideas, all of this bullshit will play out the same way again, just with different actors.
It's not a problem in general. There are many factors (e.g. vanity, lust, the desire for power in the next regime) that can distort human reasoning and cause false and harmful ideas to spread. Curtis's quasi-libertarian solution would only work if (present) power were the only improper influence. In reality, regimes based on right principles have (almost) as many reasons for repressing wrong principles as the converse.
A question: What is the root of the state of being "privileged" becoming such a terrible thing in and of itself in this culture (and/or others)? Apropos of nothing, I can recall more than a few instances of people seemingly going out of their way in conversation to add little asides like "it's not like my parents were rich or anything..." and it seems so totally irrelevant, not to mention paradoxical, in a society so obsessed with wealth. There seems to be a bizarre purity aspect to it. If I recall correctly, part of this thread existed, or is mentioned, in Gordon Wood's "Radicalism of the American Revolution", though from where is it originally traced, and how does one fill in the gap between then and the present?
Any insight there would be much appreciated.
A comment: I want to extend the "fish in water" metaphor a bit from the standpoint of somebody interested in bird photography. I like hanging out at lakes, and watching large birds pluck unsuspecting fish out of the water. Say you're the fish. You're living the life aquatic, totally doing fish things to the fullest, as you would any other day. You might even be a relatively large fish, and the extent of your worries may simply be finding enough smaller fish to satisfy your hunger for the day. You may be aware on some level that there is something above you; another world of which you are and, by virtue of being a fish, capable only of being utterly ignorant of save for the fact that that other world is very unhealthy for fish. Perhaps, one day though, you get a little careless, daydreaming by the surface. Suddenly - a piercing pain in your side - unlike anything you've ever felt before. You feel yourself yanked inexorably against the resistance of the water, upward, upward, until, in a burst of tremendous violence, there is no more resistance, but also, more alarmingly, no more breath. Maybe through your weirdly positioned (to a non-fish) eyes, you see this large, feathered, beaked, decidedly non-fish entity, to which you are, very effectively, held fast. I sometimes get these pictures of birds catching fish, and wonder if they are aware of anything but the pain and shock of getting run through by a set of talons, or if there is any part of them (probably a huge stretch here), that is able to appreciate or take some awe in this beautiful new way of seeing the world, from above, the still water receding, and understanding only briefly how much goddamn bright and bigger the world is than you ever thought it was, believed it ever could be. I wonder if there is some awe there. Some humbling effect of being introduced to member of the food chain way above your station, after thinking you were at the top. Though I am very doubtful that this is anything like the experience of an actual fish (in the few moments prior to being devoured in a nearby tree somewhere that they have to even potentially enjoy it), I find myself hoping, after reading this column, that the Will Wilkinsons of the world get the benefit of such an experience, albeit on some more benevolent catch and release program.
Plato wrote about how in a dying democracy, the rich dress like the poor. If you blame all of society's problems on the "privileged", you can't tell people you are a privileged. You might actually have to take responsibility.
This reminds me of an early PKD story in which a guy feels as though as he's being contacted by extraterrestrials -- it's very mystical -- he ends up being sucked through some kind of portal -- into their frying pan -- they're not superior to him in the way that a bird is to a fish, they're just enormous cavemen with some kind of trans-dimensional hunting-technique.
"The phenomenon of mindkilling is a natural extension of the morality of power. Under all classical systems of philosophy, logic and morality cannot contradict each other: the truth cannot be a sin. But the 20th century learned to make many parallel lines meet."
Yet another horror to lay at the feet of elliptical geometry.
Interesting, innit, the poll that shows that the three biggest concerns of Dem voters are:
1. Donald Trump voters.
2. White nationalism.
3. Systemic racism.
I wonder how all those nice #WeBelieve ladies learned to worry about things like that? Do you think that they were carefully taught to hate and to fear? From chaps like Will?
And poor bloody Germans. There's a moment in a Willa Cather book where a judge in WWI tells a German-American to shut up or he'll go to jail.
Thoroughly entertaining. Favorite quote is "the fish don’t know they’re wet. But they know that water exists—so they point to the air, and call it “water.”'
I'm still trying to learn - how can one be a dissident by pointing out how corrupt a collaborator is? Isn't that breaking the most important rule of avoiding conflict? Ofc, I enjoy CY's writing immensely so I hope he keeps it up, but it seems like Curtis' ketman needs refinement.
Attacking some small time hypocrite who, in the past had committed thought crimes, and now is trying to go along to get along, ain't no big deal. The regime will not exert itself to defend this guy. In general, unless you're really going after big fish, like say Andrew Breitbart was, or being extremely annoying and causing repeated embarrassment, like certain incarcerated twitter trolls, the regime won't bother with you.
There are also disquieting signs of both an unmanly terror in our new repressive govt 😱😱😱 of actual citizens petitioning their legislators.
We also are appointing unstable and frankly insane people to positions of authority such as Merrick Garland. Finally how long can they buy off the actual Left? BLM is nothing, Black Bloc and Tifa true believers want blood.
Finally they may have teeth gritting compliance from the police and NG, they couldn’t get DOD to deploy on Jan 6 (DOD has learned to stay on base, believe you me) my point being we have an unstable repressive govt , clearly frightened.
Wilkinson did an interview with Robert Wright on the whole affair. Comprehensive defense of Cathedral institutions and ideology: the New York Times is an essential truth seeking institution (« please hire me »). Maybe they should rename it « the truth » (that’s an original idea). Academia as well. And we lost so much scientific and intellectual output over the centuries by excluding « black girls ». This is the real tragedy. So it’s essential for black girls to feel very comfortable now. Hence you need speech codes because horrible right wingers like Curtis or insensitive rationality bros could hurt their feelings. On a cringe scale from 0 to 100, it might be a 98.
The truth is not an original idea, there is already a publication with the exact name: "Pravda"!
New York Pravda would be a great name.
Rather than "Pravda", I think they're going for "Iskra"
"Iskra" as far as I can tell would be more likely a choice of Trotskyites.
"Pravda" is clearly the Stalinist preference.
Pravda was/is more of an established state paper, Iskra, as the name implies, a revolutionary/underground publication. So in this context, definitely Pravda.
Ron Unz has been using the nickname Pravda on the Hudson for the NYT for a while.
In the throes of some kind of psychotic fugue state I made the unfortunate decision to watch that interview and am now overcome with the overwhelming desire to squirt lethal amounts of fentanyl into my eye sockets
"On August 26, 2016, Curtis Yarvin, a well-known conservative blogger who has reportedly advised Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and other members of the Trump administration, visited the Google office to have lunch with an employee. This triggered a silent alarm, alerting security personnel to escort him off the premises." (linked above in the Damore lawsuit document.)
WTF?
my theory for why he was on googles hit list. in an UR essay moldbug mentions that he once asked a Googler if google employed more Blacks or Serbians(as engineers). anyone that truly believes in the uniform distribution would obviously think Google employs more Blacks. But since every actual knows the truth its up in the air. eitherway Google doesn't want any evidence of a hostile work place so they banned Curtis from talking to any of its Googlers.
That's funny, and awesome at the same time
First of all, that is genuinely hilarious. Second of all, to (mis)quote a dissident Russian poet attending one of her fellows' political trial: 'don't worry, they're just writing his biography'.
That's awesome he's on the list...classic
I love reading these. Curtis is cozily dismembering this guy. Nothing Will could ever say could harm him. He's harnessing the same phenomena where enemies of the cathedral ultimately type cast themselves into roles that buttress it.
Curtis the insurgent judo master from his high desert mobile sanctuary casting small but inexplicably painful stones at cathedral sycophants while in retaliation they attack their own foundation with giant bombs and take out a children's hospital in the process.
Alternative explanation of WW's behavior: it's kayfabe.
He's obviously a great writer; thus intelligent. And yet he writes stupid posts like this. Conclusion: he doesn't actually believe it. Instead he's doing his best to redpill normies by writing over-the-top stuff like:
> the Times, nevertheless ranks among our greatest, most reliable, least biased fact-gathering institutions.
> What a phenomenal publication the New York Times is!
And my favorite:
> he’s writing for the New York Times, where deranged, privileged fucks like Curtis Yarvin think the real power is. (The real power is in money, Curtis.)
This is why Powerball winners have such an outsize influence on our society, because they have a lot of money and therefore power.
If I didn't know the depths the commie Pravda mind would sink to, I would have totally bought that, wrt Wilkinson's disposition. Then again, there was certainly something to late-stage Pravda in fact redpilling normies. Reality hits you hard, I guess.
Not to be uncharitable to Will, but his writing really drove home how inhuman-sounding our discourse has become.
Discourse? Those are Diktats, indeed they are Papal Bulls.
And those issuing them have become inhuman and ridiculous.
The Dwarf Lannister gone mad and announcing purges of the Clegane's.
Really the ideal outcome for DC is the rest of us to treat it as the Vatican is treated within Italy, 14 acres of a vanished kingdom and a dead god [I'm Catholic and trust me it's dead] and proceed to find our Garibaldi's. Yarvin's problem is he wants to reform the Church and have said Church Unify Italy. There's reasons this never worked, and he's trying to do it with a senile pope and a pederast, venal Curia.
We outside DC must begin to regard DC as the Papal States and seek to circumscribe them within their Vatican Walls, note the Papal States and the Pope as weakest are unified the last. >To end the metaphor take any portion of America esp along the Spine of Texas north to the Dakotas means the rest defect immediately and DC can be reduced to it's proper sphere of inside the Beltway only. We are more than halfway there, they've already walled themselves in, saving us a great deal of not just work but the tiresome justifications for doing the necessary and obvious.
Splitting the country up would certainly be the best outcome for all, but it can't happen for the foreseeable future. USG won't abide Afghanistan governing itself, they certainly aren't going to set Texas free.
You misunderstand me. I say take all of America and just to begin wherever, then reduce DC to the equivalent of the Vatican within Italy. The Italians didn't split up their country they unified it.
To answer your point - no, splitting the country is the worst possible outcome as it would lead to sovereign nations who would then bring in foreign 'allies' to plunder and conquer us - and we have the richest stores of natural wealth on earth to plunder. It's the reason the 30 years war went on 30 years, and the Germans were lucky it ever ended.
Worse as you touch on the other side won't leave us alone.
Worst of all the geography of America mandates ocean to ocean, no competent government or people would ever settle for less. That's why once Lewis and Clark bought back the first continental map our 'destiny' became 'manifest' that is to say obvious. Obviously we must get to the Pacific. No competent people will ever settle for less than securing their flanks on the Atlantic and the Pacific, even the Mexicans didn't settle for less. If we split the country we'd immediately begin the American wars of reunification. Nukes would flat out not be off the table.
No, I simply said grab a base of power then take it all, take Washington last.
There was nothing in DC but legitimacy worth taking, they've destroyed it...and conveniently walled themselves off. Leave them be for the present, take America First.
> grab a base of power then take it all, take Washington last
Any thoughts on the "Strike and Siege Protests" approach I describe here (scroll down half way, you'll see the heading): https://hyperculture.substack.com/p/a-reply-to-curtis-yarvins-we-dont
Proceed with Strike and Siege, be prepared for war.
However it would be a step forward, costly but a step forward.
My answer is predicated on enemy capabilities and that the enemy has the will to respond instead of cave in. Please understand that while the soldiers and police are from the commons and sworn to the Constitution...probably the best they can do is forbear. There's no alternative for them to defect to.
Assuming the enemy is not paralyzed into collapse and responds:
Those who strike in Blue are going to be casualties, I think you'll find this is an expensive gesture few will make. Suicide without the bomb.
Red Siege: Be prepared for the counterstroke - which will not be mere tear gas or a few bullets on the barricades, but perhaps if you persist WAR. They will be organized.
You are spurning organization for flash mobs.
Your strike and siege is a flash mob. If you want to flash mob they must be prepared to vanish upon appearance of the enemy and then to escape and evade capture. To evade capture you need either to avoid detection or have an underground. It will be very difficult for the Blue/Strike to avoid detection and retaliation, it will be less difficult for Red/Siege *if they melt away upon the approach of the enemy.*.
The key to a flash mob that isn't state approved, as the Left is, as criminals are is to not so much suddenly appear but rapidly disperse.
You need to very seriously consider having some burly, dangerous men who are organized as your security, ala Kyle, ala Proud Boys.
Getting your ass beat by soyboys is no victory.
Again the best the police can do is not harm you, they cannot protect you. Getting your ass kicked is a foolish defeat, far worse than arrest.
Come to win a street fight or stay indoors.
Now I must tell you this would be an excellent learning experience for all of you. I'm not coming because I've been to war, and will only return for same. I will not deliberately die for a gesture, or go to jail for a gesture.
End result: it is possible the state will be paralyzed, esp if the police and army refuse to act. This would spread and succeed, perhaps.
This isn't a state sanctioned protest, it's an anti-state protest.
Generally for protests to succeed they are have powerful allies in the govts foreign and domestic, sympathetic and paid media, support from intelligence agents, the "International movement" etc.
I don't know if you noticed but non left wing protests have no effect, look at the yellow jackets. Look at MAGA. Look at the Right To Life marches - did you know they used to put hundreds of thousands in DC annually , once a million? No, few do.
If you show strength and win some victory then very slowly if you want a mass movement it may grow if allowed.
The other result: the state responds: You'll gain a few hard core recruits, and then in prison you'll bond and commit. You'll also gain a much larger number of one and done's, once they get smacked. A few of you will come out of prison hard and committed, more will be done period.
That's my answer on the excerpt of your link as regards Strike and Siege, proceed if you will, be prepared for the counterstroke, be prepared for a campaign. Understand what they CAN do to you wherever you stand, their capabilities. That is a campaign. Always be prepared to go into defense, or extract ...whatever that means for you. If you build an army and toss it away on a romantic gesture (and there is much romance in your ideas) do not expect it to be a success. If you plan coldly as above then whatever outcome if the bulk of your people are intact - you've won by playing the game and surviving.
It does sound like you agree that a protest (as described) would almost certainly put a lot more energy into the system. It's more that there's nothing good that would come of it—at least as things sit right now.
More energy isn't a small thing, though. A lot of the reason why change is basically impossible right, fundamentally, is due to the lack of energy. So identifying ways to create that energy isn't a terrible use of one's time…
How well (and how long) do you think Blue counties would hold up sans food and fuel? I'm thinking Katrina-level disorganization and looting within 48 hours, but maybe I'm wrong there.
OTOH, surely the National Guard in each State would be rolled out to reopen supply lines within hours (if not beforehand, to prevent protests entirely).
Mostly, I think the purpose of protests like that are to "clarify" everyone's positions: that the gov't HATES Red team with a passion. Once the National Guard starts shooting people, it's hard to imagine anyone remaining neutral. What happens after that is anyone's guess.
That said, I 100% agree that it's pointless to protest without a new regime available to transition to. I think hypercultures are a much more promising avenue to explore—voluntary, non-violent, with a truly surprising level of freedom, total legal, and *non-threatening* (just a bunch of religious nuts that the world can, and will, ignore).
I meant from a governance perspective. Obviously a velvet divorce is impossible here for all sorts of military reasons.
Italy started out disunified, which is why conquest bit by bit worked for the Piedmontese. USG already controls the entire country, and would react with extreme violence to any attempt to break part of it away. If you wanted to take the country back, as things stand now, you'd have to do it all at once.
No sir, your premises are false.
Your conditions for starting never mind winning impossible.
Well yeah, at present it's not possible. That fact being unpleasant doesn't make it untrue.
You took too many happy pills with your booze this time.
"The absolute harmlessness of words and thoughts" sounds an awful lot like a doctrine of free speech, which, as you know, may be "a nice idea but I'm not sure it's ever happened".
Except it isn't a nice idea, and the reason why it's not is precisely because of those pesky "traditional exceptions".
The fact that there are exceptions shows that the principle is invalid. While there's no such thing as a sinful truth, it's certain truth can indeed be _used_ in immoral ways.
You give libel and slander as examples of exceptions to the doctrine of "harmlessness of words". Now, it's awful easy to take shots at libel and slander; they are easy targets of moral reprobation, being false and all. But what about the sin of detraction? Damaging someone else's reputation by [needlessly] telling the truth is also a sin—you're damaging someone's most valued personal property.
And there are plenty of other ways in which the truth can be involved in a sin, to the point that it's no longer inaccurate to speak of "dangerous truths". Here's a short inventory, off the top of my head.
1. Screaming "fire" in a crowded theater—even though there really is a fire. Depending how crispy the roof already is, this might be justified, or it might not. Is there time for everyone to line up and calmly evacuate? Will a stampede for the exit do more harm than good? It takes a balanced judgment. But no one can seriously argue that these words aren't _dangerous._
2. Telling an uncomfortable or dangerous truth to one deprived of the full use of his mental faculties is rightly seen as the act of a sadist. Imagine visiting Grandma, in the home, and telling her about little Robbie deciding to transition!
3. Such delightful truths as there may be regarding the physical comeliness of a particular youth or maiden, being long meditated upon, tend to seduce the thinker into wicked sins of luxury. Ceteris paribus, there are similar objects of greed and gluttony.
4. Information overload: irrelevant, useless truth crowding out useful truth. Solzhenitsyn spoke of the right _not to know_. Trivia is both dangerous and harmful.
5. There's also the basilisk... well, I don't believe in that one. But Catholic morality sort of breeds basilisks on its own. Let's say you know someone you believe to be acting in perfectly good faith, invincibly ignorant of some obscure moral law they're breaking. If you don't think they would stop breaking that law if you told them about it, then it looks as if you're doing more harm than good by informing them about it, "tying up heavy loads, hard to bear, and placing them on men's shoulders". Manuals for confessors notoriously spend many words discussing when it is or is not appropriate to inform a penitent of their unknown obligations.
6. Regarding censorship, we have a strong tradition of that, too, the principle of which always reduces to: don't disturb the simple faith of these peasants, you asshole, we're trying to get people to heaven here. In the long run, if your weird theological views are true, we will recognize them; in the short term, get in line, write in Latin, and keep your mouth shut outside the halls of scholarship.
Is this not enough? _Obviously_ there are dangerous truths. Duh!
Even with regard to the cause du jour, uh, yeah. I may be pretty confident there are intellectual differences between races; but I'm from Arkansas. I'm not about to give Uncle Billy a lecture on the Bell Curve. Uncle Billy already needs to chill the fuck out or he's gonna get in trouble at work. Prescribe him a red pill? ¿Qué? Are you crazy?
Arguments against free speech tend to raise the question "In whose judgment?" As usual, your implicit answer is "Mine." Maybe you'll be Yarvin's monarch and that will mean something. Or maybe someone else will decide Curtis is shouting fire and this blog will be shut down before its readers can stampede.
But speaking of the dumbest analogy ever, it might interest you to know: shouting fire in a crowded theatre isn't just morally acceptable, it's legally mandated. What do you think a fire alarm is? Also, you don't think the crowd might have a lower likelihood of stampeding before they see the fire for themselves? If they're going to stampede at a shout, they're not going to exit calmly in single file once they smell smoke, let alone once the flames start descending the walls. And if they do stampede, any moral responsibility for any violence people use against each other lies on their own shoulders - not that this ever actually happens in real life. It happened more regularly in the time before this stupid analogy was pulled out of a judge's ass, but the problem wasn't the crowd or the shouter, it was the fact that their doors didn't open outwards. The mob violence only started once they were sealed in facing imminent death. I'll let you adapt the analogy accordingly.
2. Prisoner: "What are you in for?"
Prisoner 2: "I told my Grandma about my sister Robbie's transition."
Prisoner: "All hail King Amitie..."
You'll be tempted to respond to this by saying that you don't mean this should be illegal, it's just an example of speech doing harm (again, by your judgment). But Curtis knows and we all know that "The absolute harmlessness of words and thoughts" doesn't mean no word or thought can harm. An insult can hurt someone and an insulting thought can hurt yourself - again, we all know this. But we're talking about power and government here, and Curtis is saying that government must take this attitude and not involve itself with these trivialities. Free speech is a legal principal - if you want to destroy it you have to provide an example of speech that should be illegal but isn't, and if you want to contribute (and avoid being guilty of number 4) you have to do so outside of the "traditional exceptions" we all know about.
3. You're starting to win me over here - your purple prose should be illegal.
4. Can you get me a job with you in the Ministry of Useful Truth please? I want to take down your useless comment - it's crowding out all the useful truth.
5. and 6. At least you're not getting high on all of your supply.
Yeah, under 6, we might also put:
1. There is no free will, and no one is morally responsible for anything.
2. There is no objective right and wrong; all your feelings about morality are bred into you by evolutionary games but no one is really right or wrong about any moral (or aesthetic) stuff.
3. There is no afterlife; some people have very short, tragic lives, some times the bad guys win and are forever revered, etc.
FWIW, I actually think 1, 2, and 3 are all false (i.e., I *really* think there is free will, I'm *pretty confident* that there is an objective morality, and I think there are *good reasons to believe that* there is an afterlife). But a lot of other philosophy professors think 1-3 are true and even go around saying that stuff! See, e.g., https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2099162
They're lucky most people don't believe it.
Great comment! Still I don't think it's fair to assume Moldbug was actually endorsing that position. He was presenting it as the only revelation that could free Will from his thought prison in an ironic way. If free speech is the the only way to freedom, and thus the next logical step in the liberal carousel of ideas, but free speech is very dangerous indeed, then we can almost feel the cold prison walls of the captive mind and hear his master's keys jangle. I sort of feel sorry for the guy! Dealing with the devil always seems to work out like that. The Irony is so sweet and tasty! I am learning to love the postmodern world, for all its quirks. If I am reduced to scrubbing the feet of some blm activist jabba the hutt sociology professor for meager bread, it is only fitting that THEY should be the slaves of their own sins.
There is a perverse justice in liberalism defeating itself, that the tradition of institutionalized revolution should eat itself. This ouroboros is both haunting and beautiful. Its ingenuity is that it creates the need for power by striving for unattainable or self undermining goals. This is very exciting for bright young radicals and philosophy students alike, and entices many of them to join the revolutionary idea corps. This serves the state in two ways: it is a feeder system for talent and an internal security strategy, integrating any new ideologies that pose a threat. And yet to survive in this state of ideological instability, in an oligarchy built on a foundation of competing revolutions, unrestricted free speech is untenable and Highly dangerous. And thus Will finds himself imprisoned by the inevitable circumstances brought on by the collective will to expansive freedom.
Or he could just yank the needle out and face the world as it presents itself, and be free and unimportant. It's not too late Will! You can still save your soul! Just repent! REPENT! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DANGEROUS IDEA!!!
OMG! I got my money’s worth AGAIN : “ if we invented constructive treason now, we would have to call it STRUCTURAL treason.”
You DO have to read thousands and thousands of words to find these ABSOLUTE pearls, but - again - who else can write like this? Even though I was graduating with honors and entering medical school around the time CY was a ball of cells, a lump of tissue - te salute, master.
Hmm. Could someone explain this one to me?
Just a reference to newspeak's use of the "structural"/"systemic"/"institutional" qualifiers to transform "racism" etc from relatively concrete acts/states of mind into a kind of ubiquitous ether. Abstracting a "crime" like this lets you target pretty much any individual or group as "structurally racist (treasonous)".
Never explain anything to someone who says "hmm".
Too late, but point taken.
While I like these take downs as much as the next guy, I feel like we're losing the plot here. Surely there's a better use for Curtis' writing talents than knocking over tomato cans.
I nominate discussion/writing around *actual weaknesses in the current regime*. Compliance is boring and speech codes for me (but not for thee) are lame. We want Conan-tier content!
"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!"
I believe these are necessary to bring more people on board. Everyone loves a good highbrow knife fight.
The other essays are timeless but also feel like he is crafting an alternate reality in a vacuum. These takedowns actually show that these ideas touch the real world and their targets reactions reinforce Yarvin's citadel of thought time.
As much as I also liked this piece, I don't disagree. But this isn't really our blog. It's Moldbug's. Secondarily, and I have also noticed in other comments, it seems that there is an implicit assumption that our goal here is to find weaknesses in the regime. Will IS the regime, and his weaknesses are the regimes! In this light this piece is a masterful demonstration of weakness while using his infamy to protect Will. It's ingenious if you ask me.
But we are not going to crush our enemies, lets just be real. You're essentially expressing a desire to masturbate by thinking about all the ways you can take down the regime. Or rather, "We" can take down the regime.
Lets just enjoy the ride and study the world! If Curtis keeps crushing Will like this he may inadvertently complete the system of German Idealism. That would be noteworthy
> But we are not going to crush our enemies, lets just be real.
I think you misunderstand me, Conan is just a vibe—not an actual policy goal.
This regime will die of attrition; it will die when it no longer has the will to live.
A very good way to induce that end is to engage in asymmetric action—things that are cheap, easy, and fun for _us_, but expensive, hard, and tedious for the regime to handle.
Not every weakness of the regime will produce opportunities for this kind of action, but many will. It's worth finding them and making the regime spend its time, energy, and money exhausting itself putting out the petty rhetorical fires we can start day, after day, after day.
Moldbug must—it is an a priori truth—always write "sub specie aeternitatis".
That's what I worry we're losing most in the new grift format.
"Epistolae Adversus Fuccboii" are always a footnote in a thinker's history, another expression of his thought against which to better understand his _important_ works.
Besides, Moldbug doesn't have the heart to really take anyone down. He's too philanthropic! He always apologizes!
How can you ask such a kind-hearted man, allergic to the thought of blood, to become death, the destroyer of worlds?
"There is only one way out of the soft reign of terror: the universal and unconditional legal and social consensus that there is no such thing as a dangerous or offensive idea."
Has this ever happened in history? Like, even once?
"In America at least, the idea of dangerous ideas is easy to date. It dates to World War I, and specifically its ridiculous but freaky anti-German campaign. No frankfurters for you! Some would say the idea war has since gotten way more sane. Others disagree."
The practice of "tarring and feathering" may slightly predate WWI.
The problem is also that it's simply not true. Ideas spread insofar as they're convincing - hell, Curtis himself expressed similar sentiment in Aaronson's comment section a few years back. If we by some miracle return to a free market of ideas, all of this bullshit will play out the same way again, just with different actors.
Indeed. We're in this mess in large part because of the assumption that bad ideas would die out on their own.
A bad idea that makes you rich or powerful or some degree therein, esp more than other folk will never be a bad idea politically.
If I could get one political idea across it would be this:
Politics is Power.
That's it, that's all it is, so many are misled into thinking it's economics for instance.
He’s quite deadset against any violations of the NAP.
Non aggression principle.
Well and violence period.
I think this comes from enlightened self interest.
This is of course ridiculous, but it may throw the bloodhounds off the scent long enough to survive reality’s likely intrusions.
It's not a problem in general. There are many factors (e.g. vanity, lust, the desire for power in the next regime) that can distort human reasoning and cause false and harmful ideas to spread. Curtis's quasi-libertarian solution would only work if (present) power were the only improper influence. In reality, regimes based on right principles have (almost) as many reasons for repressing wrong principles as the converse.
A question: What is the root of the state of being "privileged" becoming such a terrible thing in and of itself in this culture (and/or others)? Apropos of nothing, I can recall more than a few instances of people seemingly going out of their way in conversation to add little asides like "it's not like my parents were rich or anything..." and it seems so totally irrelevant, not to mention paradoxical, in a society so obsessed with wealth. There seems to be a bizarre purity aspect to it. If I recall correctly, part of this thread existed, or is mentioned, in Gordon Wood's "Radicalism of the American Revolution", though from where is it originally traced, and how does one fill in the gap between then and the present?
Any insight there would be much appreciated.
A comment: I want to extend the "fish in water" metaphor a bit from the standpoint of somebody interested in bird photography. I like hanging out at lakes, and watching large birds pluck unsuspecting fish out of the water. Say you're the fish. You're living the life aquatic, totally doing fish things to the fullest, as you would any other day. You might even be a relatively large fish, and the extent of your worries may simply be finding enough smaller fish to satisfy your hunger for the day. You may be aware on some level that there is something above you; another world of which you are and, by virtue of being a fish, capable only of being utterly ignorant of save for the fact that that other world is very unhealthy for fish. Perhaps, one day though, you get a little careless, daydreaming by the surface. Suddenly - a piercing pain in your side - unlike anything you've ever felt before. You feel yourself yanked inexorably against the resistance of the water, upward, upward, until, in a burst of tremendous violence, there is no more resistance, but also, more alarmingly, no more breath. Maybe through your weirdly positioned (to a non-fish) eyes, you see this large, feathered, beaked, decidedly non-fish entity, to which you are, very effectively, held fast. I sometimes get these pictures of birds catching fish, and wonder if they are aware of anything but the pain and shock of getting run through by a set of talons, or if there is any part of them (probably a huge stretch here), that is able to appreciate or take some awe in this beautiful new way of seeing the world, from above, the still water receding, and understanding only briefly how much goddamn bright and bigger the world is than you ever thought it was, believed it ever could be. I wonder if there is some awe there. Some humbling effect of being introduced to member of the food chain way above your station, after thinking you were at the top. Though I am very doubtful that this is anything like the experience of an actual fish (in the few moments prior to being devoured in a nearby tree somewhere that they have to even potentially enjoy it), I find myself hoping, after reading this column, that the Will Wilkinsons of the world get the benefit of such an experience, albeit on some more benevolent catch and release program.
Sorry, that's a long question / comment.
Plato wrote about how in a dying democracy, the rich dress like the poor. If you blame all of society's problems on the "privileged", you can't tell people you are a privileged. You might actually have to take responsibility.
I suspected it wouldn't be a new phenomenon... thanks!
https://americanmind.org/salvo/woke-ideology-is-a-psychological-disorder/ has a short discussion of how Plato saw things. Worth a read.
This reminds me of an early PKD story in which a guy feels as though as he's being contacted by extraterrestrials -- it's very mystical -- he ends up being sucked through some kind of portal -- into their frying pan -- they're not superior to him in the way that a bird is to a fish, they're just enormous cavemen with some kind of trans-dimensional hunting-technique.
"The phenomenon of mindkilling is a natural extension of the morality of power. Under all classical systems of philosophy, logic and morality cannot contradict each other: the truth cannot be a sin. But the 20th century learned to make many parallel lines meet."
Yet another horror to lay at the feet of elliptical geometry.
Hair is looking very good, Curtis.
Guy's pushing fifty. So jelly.
> Talent in today’s cruel world really is a dime a dozen.
D-mn, that's good!
> The Janissaries and the Mamelukes
Hands up everyone who read "the Marmadukes". Wait, you say this isn't the Comics Curmudgeon?
Interesting, innit, the poll that shows that the three biggest concerns of Dem voters are:
1. Donald Trump voters.
2. White nationalism.
3. Systemic racism.
I wonder how all those nice #WeBelieve ladies learned to worry about things like that? Do you think that they were carefully taught to hate and to fear? From chaps like Will?
And poor bloody Germans. There's a moment in a Willa Cather book where a judge in WWI tells a German-American to shut up or he'll go to jail.
Thoroughly entertaining. Favorite quote is "the fish don’t know they’re wet. But they know that water exists—so they point to the air, and call it “water.”'
I'm still trying to learn - how can one be a dissident by pointing out how corrupt a collaborator is? Isn't that breaking the most important rule of avoiding conflict? Ofc, I enjoy CY's writing immensely so I hope he keeps it up, but it seems like Curtis' ketman needs refinement.
Attacking some small time hypocrite who, in the past had committed thought crimes, and now is trying to go along to get along, ain't no big deal. The regime will not exert itself to defend this guy. In general, unless you're really going after big fish, like say Andrew Breitbart was, or being extremely annoying and causing repeated embarrassment, like certain incarcerated twitter trolls, the regime won't bother with you.
This is possibly true, possibly. This govt has so far gone straight to the Directory and skipped the Jacobins.
However there are underlying structural difficulties when the Derivatives are at $606 Trillion. The official debt is a mirage.
https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/d5.1
There are also disquieting signs of both an unmanly terror in our new repressive govt 😱😱😱 of actual citizens petitioning their legislators.
We also are appointing unstable and frankly insane people to positions of authority such as Merrick Garland. Finally how long can they buy off the actual Left? BLM is nothing, Black Bloc and Tifa true believers want blood.
Finally they may have teeth gritting compliance from the police and NG, they couldn’t get DOD to deploy on Jan 6 (DOD has learned to stay on base, believe you me) my point being we have an unstable repressive govt , clearly frightened.
So they may or may not lash out unpredictably.