In one way I envy the neocon entranced normiecons. They don’t have to think much or at all about geopolitical issues. If some neocon pseudo-intellectual like Ben Shapiro tells them Side A is good and Side B is bad, that is all they need to know. For those of us who fall under the broad umbrella of the “dissident right”, it is a bit trickier. Rarely is a major geopolitical conflict simple, black and white. The best example for me is World War II. WW II is considered to be the “good war”, and is often held up by conservative Christians as epitomizing a “just war”.
I bought into that for a long time until I started to do some thinking for myself on an issue that is usually framed as “Pearl Harbor plus Holocaust equals America was right”. Was the side that was allied with Joseph Stalin, and the victory they won condemning tens of millions of people to death and even more to half a century of brutal repression under Communism, really “the good guys”? Not to mention the internment of the Japanese in America, the firebombing of German and Japanese cities, the underhanded way that FDR manipulated us into war, the treatment of German POWs and civilians after the war, the way the West looked the other way while Stalin’s hordes raped their way across Eastern Europe and Germany and of course the atomic bombs dropped on civilians in Japan as an act of terror intended to be so horrific that it would force Japan to surrender. 78 years later and only one nation has ever employed nuclear weapons in warfare: the goodest of the good guys.
If WW II isn’t as cut-and-dried as it is made out to be, what about other conflicts around the world?
Recognizing this is what I consider to be the The Essence Of Dissident Politics: a worldview based in realism. I wrote:
The essence of being a political dissident in 2021 and beyond is this:
We are a movement based in realism, and we respond to the world as it really is rather than reacting to the world as we wish it was.
Being a dissident means being a realist. It would be nice if the flowery rhetoric of “all men are created equal” really meant that all men were equal in every respect, rather than all men have certain rights, but my inability to dunk a basketball or do math is evidence this is not true, never has been true and furthermore never will be true.
How this applies to The Current Thing is pretty straightforward.
When I examine the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, I see lots of ugliness on both sides. Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine but not without cause. Whether you consider their reason just or not isn’t really relevant. Ukraine is a corrupt nation run by a corrupt little leader who came into power after a U.S. organized coup. Putin is an autocrat for sure but one that seems to actually care about Russia and the Russian people. Zelenskyy is a weasel that would happily see Ukraine razed to the ground and everyone killed if it lined his pockets. There isn’t really a “good guy” in that conflict, just one you might dislike a little less.
Or the new Current Thing. Because I am a big boy, I can say that Hamas is a terrorist outfit that murdered hundreds of innocent people in order to draw Israel into a conflict that will lead to thousands of Palestinians being killed. I can also say that Israel is all too eager, perhaps gleeful, to play along and kill those thousands of Palestinians. Adults can hold those two positions at the same time because they understand that this isn’t a movie with rigid and clear lines of right and wrong. Unfortunately most legal adults in America are emotional and intellectual children who seek to neatly divide people into Good Guys and Bad Guys to avoid the inconvenience of thinking.
Israel is in fact an apartheid ethnostate, something I don’t have a problem with as such, but I do have a problem with most people who are Jews decrying my desire for the same thing for my people as “racist” and “xenophobic”. The secular ethnostate calling itself “Israel” only exists because guilty Western nations decided to make it into a state following World War II. As for Hamas, it is just one in a long line of Islamist terrorist groups who are willing to engage in unimaginable brutality in order to advance their vision of their primitive, violent religion. There isn’t a “good guys” in this conflict either and as is often the case lots of innocent people that just want to be left alone are suffering and dying as pawns.
Americans like to “fix” things and so we are endlessly tinkering around in a conflict that has been going on for centuries longer than the United States has even existed. Warring desert tribes have been fighting over the Middle East forever and nothing America can do will stop that, although there is plenty we can do that makes it worse (see: Middle East, American Foreign Policy for the last century). It is a problem we cannot solve and that sticks in the craw of the endlessly meddlesome American psyche.
The question of race is another of these “no solution” problems. We have tried to find a way to make blacks into Americans since freeing the slaves and making the fatal error of not shipping them all back to Africa. It hasn’t worked and with each passing year it is working less. American blacks have gone from being a regional headache to a national one, and since the “Civil Rights” movement, the descendants of Africa slaves have degenerated into a violent perpetually dependent underclass. There isn’t a solution to this apart from something so radical that few people would even consider it. It isn’t a matter of getting blacks back to church or jobs programs or simply making better arguments to explain why changing their behavior would benefit blacks and society as a whole. That might be a deeply unsatisfying position but it is one grounded in evidence and reality. It also explains why efforts to “fix” places like Detroit, Haiti and Africa have all failed and will continue to fail as the underlying problem in all three is not political, economic or theological. It is biological.
This is the way to think for political dissidents and why so many former conservatives and libertarians have come across what the Zman calls The Great Divide to /ourside/. Libertarians and conservatives love to talk about these grand theories while ignoring the reality of human nature and biological realism. People that are willing to kill children because both sides think that some deity gave them a divine right to some shitty desert real estate cannot be reasoned with. People that lack the basic minimum intelligence to function in a White society are never going to fit into that society and trying to force them to has been and continues to be a disaster.
Some problems can’t be fixed. Some conflicts, probably most in fact, are not Good Guys vs Bad Guys but instead are Bad Guys vs Worse Guys. Understanding this is incredibly freeing but as we can see, very few people are willing to see things as they are and prefer to pick sides like a sportsball contest.
What you say about most conflicts is undoubtedly true. Which is a great argument for not getting involved in wars/disputes beyond our backyard. There are too many bad guys /worse guys around the world and precious few should be the concern of America. I find the argument that if we don’t fight them there we will be fighting them here to be particularly weak. The Koreans, Vietnam Namese, Iraqis Afghnis were never going to be fighting us here. Neither will any stripe of Haji from the mid east. We certainly could be victims of terrorism by any number of groups, but fighting “there” is not likely to stop that.
The race issue here is a much bigger concern/problem. In small numbers and spread out blacks could probably be mixed (mostly) successfully into American society. But not in current numbers and distribution. As you said recently, “diversity plus proximity leads to conflict”. And the current niggerization of society and the love affair with all things black is making it worse. The solutions to this are not likely to be peaceful. But more time makes both the problem and solution worse.
Usually we end up backing what we think is a less bad guy and often we pick the wrong side, and end up fighting them later.
I actually disagree with one aspect of your comment.
We are already “fighting them here”. No, not in uniforms with formally recognized militias, but we are most certainly fighting the entire world right here within our own borders, and we keep on opening the borders wider so that the enemy within has a growing supply of combatants with which to battle us.
“The secular ethnostate calling itself “Israel” only exists because guilty Western nations decided to make it into a state following World War II.”
I have to disagree with this. The Balfour Declaration was made in 1917. That was when Britain announced they were committed to establishing a homeland for the jews in Palestine. There was no guilt to it. It was a payoff from the British government to their masters. Now, WWII made the jews into “victims” so the goy in the West would feel sympathetic to the “6 million” jews that were killed. The jews and Western media use the term holocaust. But, do you know what a holocaust is? A sacrifice, a burnt offering to their god/gods. Did the Germans perform the sacrifice? Why would it have been a sacrifice for them? It wouldn’t. The sacrifice was the few hundred thousand lower class jews that were sacrificed by their “betters” to appease Moloch. They sacrificed their own people so Moloch would reward them. They own Palestine now, along with the banking system in a large part of the Western world.
“Understanding this is incredibly freeing but as we can see, very few people are willing to see things as they are and prefer to pick sides like a sportsball contest.”
You have just described modern politics. Look at how the media presents politics. Stats (polls). And, “Who will the Demonicrats and the Repuklicans draft? Will it be Michael Obama or Gavin Newsome? Will it be the civic nationalist Hindu or the Magic Negro for the Repukes?” “Do they need more offense or defense for the Super Bowl (elections)?” “Oh, look, Trump was clipped on the last play. Will he do prison time now?” “Pete Buttgay just hit a homo run with the gay community!” And it works perfectly on what passes for men in America in Name Only.
Correct, Lord Balfour and his evil dealings with Rothschild can not be overlooked
I am familiar with Balfour but my point remains that the actual enactment of the Israeli homeland came in response to misplaced guilt from “the Holocaust”
Excellent post. We went to a local celebration today – standard small town parade and music, etc., starting off with breakfast at the local VFW post. As I looked at the aged White vets around me, and then walls of photos of local boys who had fought in America’s wars, I felt a significant gulf had opened between me and these decent, White, patriotic old-school heritage Americans. They were justifiably proud of local ‘heroes’ and had various flags with sayings such as “Our Cause Is Just.”
But it wasn’t just – in almost every case it was based on lies and manipulation by politicians and international bankers. And these local people were duped into serving, thinking they were somehow defending the nebulous concept of ‘democracy’ and their local way of life. Of course, it did neither (Zman has an excellent movie review on Substack about how WWII changed home-town life as well as the soldiers who tried to return to it).
How can one approach these people and explain their father/grandfather/uncles served a false god? It really is asking too much of them at this point, so all one can hope as that the next generation doesn’t cling to these same illusions. And the left, ironically, is doing this for us by teaching them to hate the historic USA. We need to take that hatred of the lies and globalist service but combine it with a pride in heritage and people, distinct and separate from the government and magic founding papers.
And like you, I can despise both sides in this conflict in the Levant. Israel’s very existence is a provocation to the landless peasants whose grandparents and great grandparents were serfs on land the Jews claimed to have bought from the distant Ottoman landowners. At the same time, only a psychopathic people would kidnap toddlers and infants and promote a video of themselves holding their proclaimed enemy’s children. The implicit threat is horrific. In this instance I’m forced to agree with that old bag Golda Meir -the Palestinians need to love their own children more than they hate the Israeli children.
And we, too, need to love our own people and secure a future for our posterity without leaving them only a scarred battlefield as an inheritance. Not easy when the other side wants your annihilation.
As you note, not all problems can be solved. We have enough of our own and needn’t import any more. Send all the ‘dual citizens’ home and let them and the Gazans battle it out. I’m sorry for unnecessary death and bloodshed, but it’s not our fight and neither side is our people nor even a ally – the enemy of one’s enemy is still not one’s friend. I want no part of any of it. Let’s stick to our own battle and cause, not look for far-off people to champion.
Great comment I have been seeing a shift lately , and it has been interesting. As for myself, I have thrown out anything that had to do with my military time, and two guys I work with were long time military, and we have some interesting discussions as of late. I have been noticing a shift in thought lately, and that’s great.
Bet you’re going to long for that web gear and such in a few.
You CAN BOTH despise the time served AND use the training received to help right the wrong that is the current thing, muscle memory is a thing.
Unless you were in a non-combat unit like a driver, then that field gear might hurt you and those around you, so it was good to be rid of it.
I can put a fire team or light squad together if they’re all about the same size as me with the stuff I’ve collected from vets whose wives badgered them to get rid of all that stinky, masculine army gear.
Dude, didn’t throw out any LBE’s or anything useful. Just bullshit like insignia and other such dreck.
I fucking dig it. That was unexpected this evening. I came here for mediocre memes and shit but I got this. I still say go Hamas. Soften them up a bit before we get a crack at them.
Keeping the same title, but with some minor tweaking and substitution in the body, this post could easily pertain to the futility of voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’ and the need to abandon all things connected to this rotten system in favor of volk and family.
Excellent Post.
I agree with everything, except the comment about the internment of the Japs. If only they had “accidentally” killed that little fag Takei, we wouldn’t have to put up with his shit now.
But yes, most of history has been dressing up the winner as the good guy rather than the “little less evil than the other guy” guy. Every presidential election, every war, every conflict.
I have to concur with the entirety of this post. I have been trying – and failing (predictably) to convey the same basic ideas to people around me who have already gotten the hook in the their mouth (courtesy of the shit media) and have already made up their minds (well, had them programmed, anyway) to believe “Israel=unquestionably good, Palestine=worse than the worstest Hitler ever, and the US must absolutely take on the burden of kissing Israel’s ass, no matter the cost”. Fuuuuuuck, the stupidity is just painful to witness. After COVID and Ukraine, and how the mindless simply lined right up to fellate the narrative on both of those scams, I can’t keep doing this. It pisses me off so bad it makes my scrote hurt.
Yup. Leave them alone and let them sort it out.
I guess I should clarify, the individuals in question are immediate family (I no longer discuss any of this stuff with non-like minded individuals outside of family members, as I know it’s a complete fuck-off waste of time). However, these are people who -should- know better by now (since they eventually figured out COVID and Ukraine “as officially presented” were bullshit, partly with my input, even if they didn’t quite fully reach my highly detailed POV on either).
And yet, now here we are with another official state narrative rolled out dutifully in overtly obvious lockstep by the TV whores, and it’s as if none of the lessons learned regarding cynicism towards and distrust of these lying shitbags in the last 3 years actually stuck at all. It’s as if I’m Phil Conners in Groundhog Day, figuring out more detail and gleaning greater clarity with every iteration, but those around me reset to a baseline where there is no actual progression in their understanding of these scams. It’s awfully damned frustrating to witness it happen repeatedly, in what has been a relatively short time span, at that.
How’n the ever living hell can the gullibility and trust factor reset to 100% each time a new major made for TV crisis is rolled out? These are not “stupid” people in the typical MSNBC watching NPC sense; they are a cut above that, but I guess not quite far enough. And so yet again they are in knee-jerk reaction mode regarding “our greatest ally”. This one is especially galling, as it can be largely ascribed to the extant mindless Israel worship that so much of this country is still so hopelessly afflicted with.
Also worth pointing out that no one in my family has any dog in this race. No extended family, no friends, no work associates, no one of any significance any of us knows lives, works or is even from Israel; there is quite literally no personal connection to imbue them with this is level of concern. And still they get worked into a frenzy over this shite, while utterly ignoring domestic problems, at least insofar as expressing much concern about any of those, which do – or eventually will – have direct impacts on their safety, economic standing, and quite likely their lives.
The very essence of what pisses me off here is how the outrage porn and fear mongering machine continues to be so highly effective despite overplaying it’s hand, even on people who managed (or at least appeared) to eventually cast off the two previous mass psyops. I never used to consider myself a genius – a big thinker, perhaps, and a contrarian most certainly – but increasingly I have to believe I’m operating on an entirely different level than 95% of the population, just based upon my observations of how their minds seem to work, versus my own. While that should be a source of pride and reassurance to myself, it really ends up being a cause of tension.
I just finished a not particularly notable “future history” novel wherein the author discussed in the afterward one of the main premises of the book, which was “Survival overwrites programming.”
I think we are about to test this thesis in the real world. Clown world is fast approaching the point where it can no longer stave off the collapse of their financial house of cards. We will get to see in real time how effective propaganda is when the standard of living is dropping precipitously.
As a former conservative libertarian that crossed the Great Divide, it was the reality of things opposed to the nice sounding theories that forced a major rethink of personal philosophy. The externalities of a libertarian society are plenty enough to doom it. Our “posterity” demands and deserves a nation and culture structured for success, not failure. I can only hope that hard times will wake up enough people to make this possible.
I sure hope you are right. Those of us who can see have been expecting “survival to overwrite programming” (that is a great and succinct turn of phrase BTW), for quite a while now. While some are clearly coming around, I am discouraged by how slowly that process takes place, even while we are overtaken by events working against us at a much great velocity than the “awakening” is progressing.
Much of what I see doesn’t qualify as a mere lack of being informed, or even a lack of concern; it is straight up congenital stupidity. And that won’t be fixed. Well, the deaths of the congenitally stupid on a large scale will “fix” it in a sense, but that isn’t exactly the solution to be hoped for.
Or maybe it is, as it will apparently be the only way to raise the bar to a functional level. Entropy has brought humanity to a failed state, as well as by making possible the survival of scores of dyscivic and dysgenic imbeciles. For all the good that casting off such dead weight would eventually do, the process of getting there from here is going to be unpleasant in the extreme. It is also too close to the view of future human endeavor espoused by scwabianesque technocratic assholes for me to be comfortable with adopting myself.
Arthur, this place is starting to glow.
They’re everywhere bro
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