Another weekend in Chicago brings another 20 shootings.
20 shot, 2 fatally in Chicago weekend shootings
As usual, the skilled marksmen in Chi-town managed to only kill 10% of the people they shot. Lots of teens, lots of drive-by shootings, lots of people shot very late at night.
It is a remarkable consistency that just last weekend, Chicago also saw 20 people shot, two fatally. I wonder if they have a quota or something?
I noted a mass shooting in Philadelphia last week but I missed an earlier mass shooting in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania, a 75% black suburb of Phillie.
Police: Two 15-year-old boys fatally shot in quadruple shooting in Chester
Police say two 15-year-old boys are dead and two juvenile victims are wounded following a shooting Tuesday afternoon in Chester.
That didn't even really make the news and didn't trigger my "mass shooting" news alert. The media likes to avoid calling it a mass shooting whenever it is apparent that it is just another case of black-on-black violence.
Meanwhile in Trenton, New Jersey, a city I had to go through on a few occasions traveling on business and one worthy of the epithet "shithole" there was a little good natured gun fire. Keep in mind that Trenton has a population of less than 85,000 compared to Chicago's 2.7 million people.
String of shootings in Trenton leave 1 dead, 6 wounded
A series of shootings over a four-hour period in New Jersey’s capital city left one person dead and six others wounded, authorities said.
It wasn’t clear if any of the three shootings in Trenton on Sunday night were connected.
I got a chuckle out of this line from the story:
There were other incidents in the city where shots were fired Sunday night, authorities said, but no one apparently was struck by bullets in those cases.
As I have said repeatedly, if the denizens of our urban areas could shoot worth a damn, the murder rate in American cities would rival Mexico.
The news is pretty much Chinese virus 24-7 and we are supposed to believe that everyone is staying home and doing their part but it seems like the message didn't get through to our criminal element. What appears to be happening is that the law-abiding population of normal, working and middle class Americans, are being squeezed and restricted more and more, while the other segments of the population are doing whatever the hell they want to.
How long will people continue to be locked in their homes while other people are having block parties and mass gatherings with impunity?
Monday, April 6, 2020
Why Don't Americans Trust The Media
Allow me to introduce James Hohmann. James is "National Political Correspondent" for the Washington Post (Democracy dies in darkness!)
The Washington Post is the paper of record for the national elites and oligarchs who live in the Washington D.C. region. If you aren't staring into the WaPo while waiting for the Metro, do you even matter in America? Don't bother answering, everyone that matters already knows the answer. Apparently being "National Political Correspondent" basically means tweeting all day about every single thing Trump says and why He Was Wrong and Orange Man Bad. Nice work if you can get it.
So Mr. Hohmann tweeted this:
As everyone knows, the national average gas price absolutely does not include a wide range of prices spread out of a country of 330 million people, including some states with really low fuel taxes and other states with very high fuel taxes, and that "average" gas price really means "the lowest price anyone can buy gas anywhere in America". If AAA says the national average is $1.94, you obviously can't buy gas anywhere in the country for less than $1.94. That is what average means. Good thing we have smart people like Jimmie to explain complicated mathematical concepts like "average".
Needless to say, the replies to his tweet were blistering. Apparently one can graduate from Stanford, *with honors* no less, and still not understand how averages work. Plenty of people helpfully pointed out to him what "average" means and provided examples of gas under $1/gallon, something that has been widely reported for a week now. His ratio is something pretty incredible to behold. He tried a little bit of damage control but no one is buying it:
"I didn't say Trump was lying even though everything I tweet says Trump is lying". I am not sure what would be worse, if he was just flat out lying to people when he posted the original tweet, or that he is so arrogant that he assumes only DC prices matter or that he really doesn't understand how averages work.
Whatever the case, there is a reason that we say that the media is the enemy of the America people and this is a prime example.
The Washington Post is the paper of record for the national elites and oligarchs who live in the Washington D.C. region. If you aren't staring into the WaPo while waiting for the Metro, do you even matter in America? Don't bother answering, everyone that matters already knows the answer. Apparently being "National Political Correspondent" basically means tweeting all day about every single thing Trump says and why He Was Wrong and Orange Man Bad. Nice work if you can get it.
So Mr. Hohmann tweeted this:
As everyone knows, the national average gas price absolutely does not include a wide range of prices spread out of a country of 330 million people, including some states with really low fuel taxes and other states with very high fuel taxes, and that "average" gas price really means "the lowest price anyone can buy gas anywhere in America". If AAA says the national average is $1.94, you obviously can't buy gas anywhere in the country for less than $1.94. That is what average means. Good thing we have smart people like Jimmie to explain complicated mathematical concepts like "average".
Needless to say, the replies to his tweet were blistering. Apparently one can graduate from Stanford, *with honors* no less, and still not understand how averages work. Plenty of people helpfully pointed out to him what "average" means and provided examples of gas under $1/gallon, something that has been widely reported for a week now. His ratio is something pretty incredible to behold. He tried a little bit of damage control but no one is buying it:
"I didn't say Trump was lying even though everything I tweet says Trump is lying". I am not sure what would be worse, if he was just flat out lying to people when he posted the original tweet, or that he is so arrogant that he assumes only DC prices matter or that he really doesn't understand how averages work.
Whatever the case, there is a reason that we say that the media is the enemy of the America people and this is a prime example.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
The Organized Religion False Dichotomy
One of the channels we watch a lot is Styxhexenhammer666. It is often a little cringe but I find him entertaining and amusing, and often informative as well. He posted a video last week that was probably one of his best and it deals with an issue I have been engaged in for many years.
I know it can be hard to take him seriously when he dresses like that but at least now that he is married his wife doesn't let him do the "shirtless under the leather jacket" thing. His point is nevertheless very important.
As we live in an ostensibly culturally Christian nation, it is generally assumed you are either a Christian of some sort or you are an atheist. There isn't a third option except for the small religious minorities like Jews, Muslims and Mormons. However that leaves a lot of people who are not Christians lumped in with atheists because most people conflate organized religious public observations with being spiritual or having faith. This is going to be the topic of a series of posts I am working on but the truth in America is that the proportion of the population that is "Christian", even in the most generous use of the term, is shrinking rapidly but that doesn't mean that atheism is ascendant. Unfortunately the lack of an intellectual movement that seriously addresses people in the growing group of "spiritual but not religious" means most of these people are meandering around and getting suckered in by healing crystals and stuff like that.
Watch for a new series starting soon. All across the faith spectrum we need to have dialogue about people who are deeply devout but reject organized religion for whatever reason.
I know it can be hard to take him seriously when he dresses like that but at least now that he is married his wife doesn't let him do the "shirtless under the leather jacket" thing. His point is nevertheless very important.
As we live in an ostensibly culturally Christian nation, it is generally assumed you are either a Christian of some sort or you are an atheist. There isn't a third option except for the small religious minorities like Jews, Muslims and Mormons. However that leaves a lot of people who are not Christians lumped in with atheists because most people conflate organized religious public observations with being spiritual or having faith. This is going to be the topic of a series of posts I am working on but the truth in America is that the proportion of the population that is "Christian", even in the most generous use of the term, is shrinking rapidly but that doesn't mean that atheism is ascendant. Unfortunately the lack of an intellectual movement that seriously addresses people in the growing group of "spiritual but not religious" means most of these people are meandering around and getting suckered in by healing crystals and stuff like that.
Watch for a new series starting soon. All across the faith spectrum we need to have dialogue about people who are deeply devout but reject organized religion for whatever reason.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Social Media Isn't Real
Our world is simultaneously hyper-connected and completely disconnected at the same time. While I can contact friends and family instantly, any time and from anywhere, that also means we are less likely to actually connect. Social media creates the illusion of community but it really is simply exacerbating our isolation. Many people seem perfectly fine with the self-isolation we are under because it really isn't much different from their normal lives.
Another thing social media does is give enormous platforms to people who otherwise would be working at some meaningless, low-level office job. Social media is full of people who reach millions of others because they have mastered the art of using the limitations of social media to their advantage and one of the big advantages is that it allows a small group of people to avoid gainful employment. These are people who don't have that much actual influence but seem to thanks to being online all day. These "extremely online" individuals can swamp a conversation because they simply have nothing better to do with their lives than troll twitter threads and Facebook comments, and once they get started their handful of allies will pile on.
The Left has their fair share of these people. There is some Asian "doctor", Eugene something, that seems to live for Trump's tweets because he replies immediately within minutes of Trump tweeting anything. Look at the replies of a few Trump tweets and you will see the same names over and over, all tweeting the same talking points that mirror the same thing they just said a few replies earlier. There are the low-T soyboys white knighting and virtue signaling in the hopes of catching the eye of some furry legged chubby feminist and of course the the black "intellectuals" and clergy that re-frame every issue into "how whitey done us wrong".
The Right has the same problem, in our case anonymous people that have graduated from edge-posting on 4chan and reddit and now spend their day "owning the MAGApedes". While there are many thoughtful voices on the dissident right, even some I disagree with on particulars, it can be hard to engage with them thanks to the sheer volume of a few people. I followed more than a few of them but have been dropping them one after another since the coronavirus outbreak. It only takes one post praising the Communist Chinese for their heroic response to the Wuhan flu to get unfollowed.
Many of the people who are intelligent and articulate in the dissident right, using that term in a broad sense to include people who might not label themselves as such, have finally had it with these clowns. There was a great post on the topic at Identity Dixie: THE WEIRDO “RIGHT”. Here is the key paragraph....
There’s one very easy observation to spot a member of the Weirdo “Right” – they are dyed-in-the-wool authoritarians. That’s the first nexus point and it helps explain their newfound admiration of Hillary and shilling for the communist Chinese. Second, they’re very transgressive and abnormal, this is well beyond the realm of traditional “locker room talk.” And, this is magnified by online anonymity and the quest for greater reach and internet stardom. Third, they are utterly and completely obsessed with race and Jews; it dominates all conversations and consumes every facet of their worldview. Finally, they have a very deep loathing for their own country and their people. Now, they may object to this final point, but many of the Weirdo “Right” openly celebrate for the hardship and deprivation of their own people. In their mind, pain will route the peasants to whatever en vogue dogma they’ve adopted.
Something I would add is that most of them are very young, immature even for their age and remarkably unaccomplished. They seem to have the answer to every question but have little to no experience in the real world to compare their answers against. Like hardcore libertarians, their philosophy exists in an intellectual vacuum, completely disengaged from human reality and experience. They also seem incredibly unambitious. A life lived in the basement, posting on social media and being mad at women for refusing to date them and welcoming a universal basic income so they can pay for internet and Taco Bell delivery without having to leave the house might be simple but it doesn't do anything to actually improve the lives of our people. Many of the loudest voice in the dissident right/alt-right don't seem all that right-wing at all. I made this point on Twitter recently.
Just being blunt, I find a significant number of the young men on the dissident right to be absolutely disgusting.
They exhibit the same "woe is me" attitude that lacks any agency that they mock when it comes from blacks. They laugh at "he dindu nuffin" and quote 13/50 but when it comes to their own lives, they act a lot like the people they mock. They are constantly kvetching because the "Boomers" made it so these guys can't ever have a middle class lifestyle. That is more whiny bullshit.
Are things different today? Absolutely they are and not for the better. Is it more challenging to live a "middle class" lifestyle than it was in the 1950s? Sure. Is it impossible? Absolutely not and it is grotesque to see the whining little bitches on social media complaining and pining for free stuff from Andrew Yang so they can live at home with their mom, smoke pot and play video games all day, complain about women and then make excuses for not having a family. Here is a suggestion: stop being a whining little bitch, be a man and work hard and you might find a woman to marry and have a family with. Real women want to get married and have families. They don't want an overgrown child to take care of in addition to having to work and care for the kids.
Here is a simple fact. An 18 year old guy, fresh out of high school, can go to a community college in any decent sized town in America. He can probably go for cheap or even free depending on how much his family makes. In about a year, he can learn a marketable skilled trade and walk into the workforce making $15-17/hour on day one or over $30,000 in his first year with minimal to no student loan debt. The upper limit on his earnings is in the six figures. If he takes home 80% of his pay, it is about $2000 per month net to start.
There are 77 homes within 20 miles of my zip code for under $125,000 with 2-3 bedrooms. Perfect for a young guy starting out. A 30 year mortgage on a $125,000 house with no down payment is about $800. That is a big chunk of your monthly income but it is doable. Add in $250 for a car, $250 for utilities, another $200 for insurance and you are at $1500. That leaves around $500 for food and gas and your cell phone. In other words, it can be done. Will you be able to afford a 2020 4x4 truck? Probably not. Or a $1000 smartphone? Nope. But people in the 1950s didn't splurge either, they lived within their means when they were younger and built a home and family. My wife and I shared one car for many, many years. I didn't have my first smartphone until just a few years ago. We don't have cable/satellite and haven't for years. We make do with used cars. In 20 years, will we lament not having smart phones sooner or will we be grateful that we made the decision to set aside some luxury items so my wife could be at home with our kids? I don't have to wait 20 years to answer that question.
These kids act like back in the 1950s white men were issued new cars, pretty young virgin wives who could cook, and mortgage free homes when they turned 18. Far from it. They had to save for a downpayment, you didn't get "no money down" mortgages back then. They often had to establish themselves so that younger women who were looking for a suitable spouse and provider could see they were responsible. Men tended to be at least 4-5 years older than their wives because they needed to prove that they could take care of a family before a woman would seriously consider them.
As they spend a great deal of time ragging on "MAGApedes" and "Boomers" and white women in general, groups that tend to be overwhelmingly white, it is also pretty apparent that they don't really care all that much about their own people. It is going to be pretty tough to form an ethnostate with a few dozen people who have as their primary life-skill shit-posting anonymously on social media.
A movement to preserve Western civilization and advocate for the interests of white people that is led by disaffected, childless young men is bound to fail and so far has been proving that over and over again. What appeared to be a nascent new political movement in America during the 2016 election cycle quickly imploded thanks to the massive egos of those who found themselves in the most prominent positions.
May I suggest that if a man is incapable of holding a job and forming a stable relationship with a woman, he probably is of limited utility in our movement.
Take Richard Spencer for example. As I have commented on repeatedly, Spencer is modestly famous because he served as a useful idiot for the Left, got sucker punched and took it like a coward on camera and did a few talks on college campuses. He is a cartoonish villain, a cross between Snidely Whiplash and a James Bond film ski villain. I am not really sure if he has ever had a job, his somewhat murky background makes it seem like he grew up as a privileged rich kid who latches onto political movements because he is bored and doesn't want to get a real job. If you owned a Subway restaurant, would you trust Spencer or someone like Nick Fuentes to be an assistant manager?
The dissident right is riddled with boys who never grew up. They are awkward around women and probably just as insufferable in real life as they are online and subsequently they are lonely so they complain about women, call them vulgar names and present ideas like MGTOW as serious political philosophies.
I know that talking about having a job and a wife is met with derisive, nonsensical "OK Boomer" responses: "Why do you want to be a wage slave working for the Jews? Boomer!" and "What a cuck, wanting a wife who is just going to divorce you anyway". While I share the disdain for corporate wage-slave jobs and lament the state of much of the younger, female white population, that doesn't mean you don't work for a living. America is full of men who make stuff and have their own businesses. I haven't been in an office for years but I still work and provide for my family. Not all of us have the combination of being a professional bullshitter and a pathological narcissist necessary to be a professional Youtuber or podcaster. While I am not sure what he does for certain, the Zman has a real job and his blogging and podcast are in addition to that job.
I strongly suspect that these handful of loud voices on social media are in reality an even smaller group than they appear. Likely most of these people have multiple sockpuppet accounts and probably even interact with themselves to give the appearance of broader support than they really have. That is apparently a common practice on social media to provide the illusion of broader support.
These disaffected, maladjusted weirdos are not just irritating, they are incredibly harmful to the movement.
There are millions of Americans who share many of the core beliefs of the dissident right but the single greatest impediment to reaching these people are the "leaders" in the movement who come across as childish, narcissistic, angry anonymous cranks. When someone strays from the Fox News and National Review world, and across what the Zman describes as "the great divide", they often run into the juvenile rantings of these weirdos. A white Gen X skilled tradesman who is waking up to the reality of a world that hates him isn't going to tolerate some kid screeching about all white women being whores and whining about wanting a UBI check. They don't tolerate that crap at work and they aren't going to tolerate it online. Who can watch someone interview Richard Spencer and think "Wow, that alt-right seems like a movement that is going places!"?
The weirdos, freaks and megalomaniacs hijacked the alt-right from the outset. We can't allow them to do the same with the broader dissident right, not if we want this movement to be something other than whining on social media. We are in perilous times and times like this demand serious, adult conversations. There will always be a place for memes and shitposting but the big people need to step in and take charge if this movement ever hopes to be something other than black-pilled doom and gloom social media posts.
Another thing social media does is give enormous platforms to people who otherwise would be working at some meaningless, low-level office job. Social media is full of people who reach millions of others because they have mastered the art of using the limitations of social media to their advantage and one of the big advantages is that it allows a small group of people to avoid gainful employment. These are people who don't have that much actual influence but seem to thanks to being online all day. These "extremely online" individuals can swamp a conversation because they simply have nothing better to do with their lives than troll twitter threads and Facebook comments, and once they get started their handful of allies will pile on.
The Left has their fair share of these people. There is some Asian "doctor", Eugene something, that seems to live for Trump's tweets because he replies immediately within minutes of Trump tweeting anything. Look at the replies of a few Trump tweets and you will see the same names over and over, all tweeting the same talking points that mirror the same thing they just said a few replies earlier. There are the low-T soyboys white knighting and virtue signaling in the hopes of catching the eye of some furry legged chubby feminist and of course the the black "intellectuals" and clergy that re-frame every issue into "how whitey done us wrong".
The Right has the same problem, in our case anonymous people that have graduated from edge-posting on 4chan and reddit and now spend their day "owning the MAGApedes". While there are many thoughtful voices on the dissident right, even some I disagree with on particulars, it can be hard to engage with them thanks to the sheer volume of a few people. I followed more than a few of them but have been dropping them one after another since the coronavirus outbreak. It only takes one post praising the Communist Chinese for their heroic response to the Wuhan flu to get unfollowed.
Many of the people who are intelligent and articulate in the dissident right, using that term in a broad sense to include people who might not label themselves as such, have finally had it with these clowns. There was a great post on the topic at Identity Dixie: THE WEIRDO “RIGHT”. Here is the key paragraph....
There’s one very easy observation to spot a member of the Weirdo “Right” – they are dyed-in-the-wool authoritarians. That’s the first nexus point and it helps explain their newfound admiration of Hillary and shilling for the communist Chinese. Second, they’re very transgressive and abnormal, this is well beyond the realm of traditional “locker room talk.” And, this is magnified by online anonymity and the quest for greater reach and internet stardom. Third, they are utterly and completely obsessed with race and Jews; it dominates all conversations and consumes every facet of their worldview. Finally, they have a very deep loathing for their own country and their people. Now, they may object to this final point, but many of the Weirdo “Right” openly celebrate for the hardship and deprivation of their own people. In their mind, pain will route the peasants to whatever en vogue dogma they’ve adopted.
Something I would add is that most of them are very young, immature even for their age and remarkably unaccomplished. They seem to have the answer to every question but have little to no experience in the real world to compare their answers against. Like hardcore libertarians, their philosophy exists in an intellectual vacuum, completely disengaged from human reality and experience. They also seem incredibly unambitious. A life lived in the basement, posting on social media and being mad at women for refusing to date them and welcoming a universal basic income so they can pay for internet and Taco Bell delivery without having to leave the house might be simple but it doesn't do anything to actually improve the lives of our people. Many of the loudest voice in the dissident right/alt-right don't seem all that right-wing at all. I made this point on Twitter recently.
Just being blunt, I find a significant number of the young men on the dissident right to be absolutely disgusting.
They exhibit the same "woe is me" attitude that lacks any agency that they mock when it comes from blacks. They laugh at "he dindu nuffin" and quote 13/50 but when it comes to their own lives, they act a lot like the people they mock. They are constantly kvetching because the "Boomers" made it so these guys can't ever have a middle class lifestyle. That is more whiny bullshit.
Are things different today? Absolutely they are and not for the better. Is it more challenging to live a "middle class" lifestyle than it was in the 1950s? Sure. Is it impossible? Absolutely not and it is grotesque to see the whining little bitches on social media complaining and pining for free stuff from Andrew Yang so they can live at home with their mom, smoke pot and play video games all day, complain about women and then make excuses for not having a family. Here is a suggestion: stop being a whining little bitch, be a man and work hard and you might find a woman to marry and have a family with. Real women want to get married and have families. They don't want an overgrown child to take care of in addition to having to work and care for the kids.
Here is a simple fact. An 18 year old guy, fresh out of high school, can go to a community college in any decent sized town in America. He can probably go for cheap or even free depending on how much his family makes. In about a year, he can learn a marketable skilled trade and walk into the workforce making $15-17/hour on day one or over $30,000 in his first year with minimal to no student loan debt. The upper limit on his earnings is in the six figures. If he takes home 80% of his pay, it is about $2000 per month net to start.
There are 77 homes within 20 miles of my zip code for under $125,000 with 2-3 bedrooms. Perfect for a young guy starting out. A 30 year mortgage on a $125,000 house with no down payment is about $800. That is a big chunk of your monthly income but it is doable. Add in $250 for a car, $250 for utilities, another $200 for insurance and you are at $1500. That leaves around $500 for food and gas and your cell phone. In other words, it can be done. Will you be able to afford a 2020 4x4 truck? Probably not. Or a $1000 smartphone? Nope. But people in the 1950s didn't splurge either, they lived within their means when they were younger and built a home and family. My wife and I shared one car for many, many years. I didn't have my first smartphone until just a few years ago. We don't have cable/satellite and haven't for years. We make do with used cars. In 20 years, will we lament not having smart phones sooner or will we be grateful that we made the decision to set aside some luxury items so my wife could be at home with our kids? I don't have to wait 20 years to answer that question.
These kids act like back in the 1950s white men were issued new cars, pretty young virgin wives who could cook, and mortgage free homes when they turned 18. Far from it. They had to save for a downpayment, you didn't get "no money down" mortgages back then. They often had to establish themselves so that younger women who were looking for a suitable spouse and provider could see they were responsible. Men tended to be at least 4-5 years older than their wives because they needed to prove that they could take care of a family before a woman would seriously consider them.
As they spend a great deal of time ragging on "MAGApedes" and "Boomers" and white women in general, groups that tend to be overwhelmingly white, it is also pretty apparent that they don't really care all that much about their own people. It is going to be pretty tough to form an ethnostate with a few dozen people who have as their primary life-skill shit-posting anonymously on social media.
A movement to preserve Western civilization and advocate for the interests of white people that is led by disaffected, childless young men is bound to fail and so far has been proving that over and over again. What appeared to be a nascent new political movement in America during the 2016 election cycle quickly imploded thanks to the massive egos of those who found themselves in the most prominent positions.
May I suggest that if a man is incapable of holding a job and forming a stable relationship with a woman, he probably is of limited utility in our movement.
Take Richard Spencer for example. As I have commented on repeatedly, Spencer is modestly famous because he served as a useful idiot for the Left, got sucker punched and took it like a coward on camera and did a few talks on college campuses. He is a cartoonish villain, a cross between Snidely Whiplash and a James Bond film ski villain. I am not really sure if he has ever had a job, his somewhat murky background makes it seem like he grew up as a privileged rich kid who latches onto political movements because he is bored and doesn't want to get a real job. If you owned a Subway restaurant, would you trust Spencer or someone like Nick Fuentes to be an assistant manager?
The dissident right is riddled with boys who never grew up. They are awkward around women and probably just as insufferable in real life as they are online and subsequently they are lonely so they complain about women, call them vulgar names and present ideas like MGTOW as serious political philosophies.
I know that talking about having a job and a wife is met with derisive, nonsensical "OK Boomer" responses: "Why do you want to be a wage slave working for the Jews? Boomer!" and "What a cuck, wanting a wife who is just going to divorce you anyway". While I share the disdain for corporate wage-slave jobs and lament the state of much of the younger, female white population, that doesn't mean you don't work for a living. America is full of men who make stuff and have their own businesses. I haven't been in an office for years but I still work and provide for my family. Not all of us have the combination of being a professional bullshitter and a pathological narcissist necessary to be a professional Youtuber or podcaster. While I am not sure what he does for certain, the Zman has a real job and his blogging and podcast are in addition to that job.
I strongly suspect that these handful of loud voices on social media are in reality an even smaller group than they appear. Likely most of these people have multiple sockpuppet accounts and probably even interact with themselves to give the appearance of broader support than they really have. That is apparently a common practice on social media to provide the illusion of broader support.
These disaffected, maladjusted weirdos are not just irritating, they are incredibly harmful to the movement.
There are millions of Americans who share many of the core beliefs of the dissident right but the single greatest impediment to reaching these people are the "leaders" in the movement who come across as childish, narcissistic, angry anonymous cranks. When someone strays from the Fox News and National Review world, and across what the Zman describes as "the great divide", they often run into the juvenile rantings of these weirdos. A white Gen X skilled tradesman who is waking up to the reality of a world that hates him isn't going to tolerate some kid screeching about all white women being whores and whining about wanting a UBI check. They don't tolerate that crap at work and they aren't going to tolerate it online. Who can watch someone interview Richard Spencer and think "Wow, that alt-right seems like a movement that is going places!"?
The weirdos, freaks and megalomaniacs hijacked the alt-right from the outset. We can't allow them to do the same with the broader dissident right, not if we want this movement to be something other than whining on social media. We are in perilous times and times like this demand serious, adult conversations. There will always be a place for memes and shitposting but the big people need to step in and take charge if this movement ever hopes to be something other than black-pilled doom and gloom social media posts.
Globalism Kills
Something the media is trying hard to avoid mentioning is that the coronavirus pandemic is a worldwide rather than regional pandemic because of globalism. When Africa has ebola outbreaks, they tend to stay in Africa because the only people going there are aid workers. China on the other hand has an enormous amount of air traffic which aided in spreading the Chinese virus around the world. The Zman has a new podcast up, The Great Plagues, that examines some of the most significant plagues and pandemics in history and one thing they all seem to have in common is that they originated somewhere other than where they had the most impact and were transmitted by travelers. Some food for thought.....
Listen to "EP 134 Great Plagues" on Spreaker.
Listen to "EP 134 Great Plagues" on Spreaker.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Prepper vs Survivalist
More wisdom from the weekly dispenser of truth at The Woodpile Report as Ol' Remus addresses the topic of differentiating between "preppers" and "survivalists".
When I use the terms 'prepper' and 'survivalist' I have something specific in mind. Preparationalists—"preppers"—anticipate a severe but temporary disruption of normalcy with a return in a season or two. Survivalists anticipate an extinction-level event with no significant normalcy in their lifetime.
Full-on preppers concern themselves with maintaining their former standard of living should the society around them devolve into disaster. Their model is the Roman patrician who decamped to his country estate in times of unrest or a summer plague in the city. Today they have well appointed and fully staffed retreats at remote but congenial venues. The more common prepper embraces the Five Acres and Independence self-sufficiency practiced by Scott and Helen Nearing, augmented with twenty-first century gadgetry and adorable techniques from antiquity.
Full-on survivalists concern themselves with the skills, fitness and tools to manage the worst of an apocalypse by living off the land, typically as seasonal nomads. Their model is the explorer or mountain man of the Jeffersonian era with a dash of Red Dawn for flavor. Today they have world class gear and advanced training in a wide range of disciplines. But the more common survivalist is a somewhat spartan all-weather outdoorsman well practiced in what works in his region.
These are two-dimensional caricatures of course, where the full-on prepper evades risk and the full-on survivalist engages risk. Most practitioners are a blend of the two, prepper-survivalists if you will, with one aspect or the other expanded as circumstances require.
I am not a survivalist in the sense that my primary motivation is to stay alive for the sake of staying alive. I take reasonable precautions via preparation to be able to provide for and protect my family and neighbors in the event of a serious crisis. If my family was gone and I were alone with no prospects for the future other than to keep breathing, I wouldn't expend much effort. While I grew up reading survivalist novels about a post-nuclear war dystopian future, the idea of being alone in a shack somewhere waiting for old age to get me doesn't appeal to me at all.
With any luck, the Chinese virus outbreak will lead to more people being at least moderately prepared for disasters. I expect that to be true for maybe 10% of the population or less. The rest will become more convinced than ever that the government should hand them a check whenever things get tough. With the chatter about coronavirus popping back up this fall, we might be heading into a semi-permanent state of low-grade lockdowns. Most people are incapable or at least unwilling to think about what comes next. It seems they are assuming that the Kung Fu Flu will dissipate like early morning fog and life will go right back to the way it was before. That is a very dangerous mindset. Things won't go back to the way they were and they shouldn't.
If you aren't reading the Woodpile Report every week, why do you even have internet?
When I use the terms 'prepper' and 'survivalist' I have something specific in mind. Preparationalists—"preppers"—anticipate a severe but temporary disruption of normalcy with a return in a season or two. Survivalists anticipate an extinction-level event with no significant normalcy in their lifetime.
Full-on preppers concern themselves with maintaining their former standard of living should the society around them devolve into disaster. Their model is the Roman patrician who decamped to his country estate in times of unrest or a summer plague in the city. Today they have well appointed and fully staffed retreats at remote but congenial venues. The more common prepper embraces the Five Acres and Independence self-sufficiency practiced by Scott and Helen Nearing, augmented with twenty-first century gadgetry and adorable techniques from antiquity.
Full-on survivalists concern themselves with the skills, fitness and tools to manage the worst of an apocalypse by living off the land, typically as seasonal nomads. Their model is the explorer or mountain man of the Jeffersonian era with a dash of Red Dawn for flavor. Today they have world class gear and advanced training in a wide range of disciplines. But the more common survivalist is a somewhat spartan all-weather outdoorsman well practiced in what works in his region.
These are two-dimensional caricatures of course, where the full-on prepper evades risk and the full-on survivalist engages risk. Most practitioners are a blend of the two, prepper-survivalists if you will, with one aspect or the other expanded as circumstances require.
I am not a survivalist in the sense that my primary motivation is to stay alive for the sake of staying alive. I take reasonable precautions via preparation to be able to provide for and protect my family and neighbors in the event of a serious crisis. If my family was gone and I were alone with no prospects for the future other than to keep breathing, I wouldn't expend much effort. While I grew up reading survivalist novels about a post-nuclear war dystopian future, the idea of being alone in a shack somewhere waiting for old age to get me doesn't appeal to me at all.
With any luck, the Chinese virus outbreak will lead to more people being at least moderately prepared for disasters. I expect that to be true for maybe 10% of the population or less. The rest will become more convinced than ever that the government should hand them a check whenever things get tough. With the chatter about coronavirus popping back up this fall, we might be heading into a semi-permanent state of low-grade lockdowns. Most people are incapable or at least unwilling to think about what comes next. It seems they are assuming that the Kung Fu Flu will dissipate like early morning fog and life will go right back to the way it was before. That is a very dangerous mindset. Things won't go back to the way they were and they shouldn't.
If you aren't reading the Woodpile Report every week, why do you even have internet?
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Ten Million New Unemployed People Spells Trouble
The news hit regarding new unemployment claims for last week:
Unemployment claims spiked to new record last week, with 6.6M Americans filing for aid
That is a huge number but to put it in perspective, the prior report showed 3.3 million new filings and that was an all-time record, a record that lasted for a week.
We are not even close to the peak of this thing and already the wheels are coming off of the economic system. I don't think we have any idea what this is going to look like with millions upon millions of people losing their jobs in a short time frame, and many businesses simply folding up and not re-opening.
As the economic collapse snowballs, it will lead to even more layoffs downstream as the suppliers of the closing businesses start to lay off their own employees. With a projected unemployment rate of over 30%, we are in for some stormy weather. Worse yet, the people who created this economic house of cards will be just fine and the normal American workers will be the ones suffering yet again. Makes you wonder how long it will be before the torches and pitchforks come out.
Unemployment claims spiked to new record last week, with 6.6M Americans filing for aid
That is a huge number but to put it in perspective, the prior report showed 3.3 million new filings and that was an all-time record, a record that lasted for a week.
We are not even close to the peak of this thing and already the wheels are coming off of the economic system. I don't think we have any idea what this is going to look like with millions upon millions of people losing their jobs in a short time frame, and many businesses simply folding up and not re-opening.
As the economic collapse snowballs, it will lead to even more layoffs downstream as the suppliers of the closing businesses start to lay off their own employees. With a projected unemployment rate of over 30%, we are in for some stormy weather. Worse yet, the people who created this economic house of cards will be just fine and the normal American workers will be the ones suffering yet again. Makes you wonder how long it will be before the torches and pitchforks come out.
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