Ultramundane ecclesiology
November 12, 2016 § 26 Comments
My main theory of Pope Francis continues to be that he is a fairly dim narrow minded Jesuit provincial Argentinian mid level bureaucrat who was raised to the Chair of Peter. He keeps on saying and doing things to confirm that perspective.
In the long run though I think that discrediting ultramontanism by practicing it is probably a good thing. Put not your trust in princes, and all that.
A victorious antibiotic infusion against the ku klux klamydia
November 11, 2016 § 50 Comments
Donald Trump won the presidency because tolerant, hard working, middle American white people got tired of having their American Dream deliberately destroyed for the enrichment of corrupt self righteous urban coastal elites – elites who at the same time were constantly accusing them of bigotry. The most tolerant, live and let live race of people on the planet finally got sick of being branded as the officially hated group, simultaneously exploited and despised by the hipster hegemony pretending to be two different political parties.
Trump won by explicitly rejecting the demonization of Middle American whites as illiberal, un-American bigots: the worst thing they could possibly be. He won by affirming that middle American whites actually really are good liberals despite what all of the lesbians and pedophiles and transwhatever freaks say: that the persecutors of middle American whites among the elite of both parties are wrong to demonize them as the subhuman Low Man. That he ‘lost the popular vote’ is irrelevant for all sorts of reasons, first of which is that of course all of the urban hipster SJW self-hating white liberals are against him, as expected. One might as well counterfactually assert that if the game he actually did win had been checkers instead of chess, he would have lost.
Trump’s victory may well hold back the influx of less liberal races of people into middle America for a while, thus preserving liberalism from its own worst self-destructive tendencies; though that remains to be seen. What Trump will actually do is anyone’s guess really, though I think that whatever it is will clearly not damage the interests of Donald Trump, Inc.
This past election day represented a victory for tolerant live-and-let-live liberalism and for white supremacy, which are the same thing.
Sending the offensive alt-right to the principles office
November 1, 2016 § 200 Comments
Liberalism survives and thrives over many generations of men by asserting unprincipled exceptions to deal with its own excesses. In a world where Marxist professors are being pilloried for their cisgender whiteness and right wing wrongthought, this gives rise to movements like (what the Current Year labels) the alt right.
The alt-right is a noisy (on the Internet) anti-establishment and – typical of anti-establishment liberalism – deliberately offensive minority part of the new conservative synthesis, which we might call Trumpism. Rather than seeing the 1950’s as America’s cultural high water mark, Trumpism sees the 1990’s as America’s cultural high water mark.
Some parts of the alt-right explicitly repudiate equality, so it is fair to ask why this repudiation does not in fact constitute a principled exception to liberalism. The answer is twofold.
First, the equality at the foundations of liberalism is equality of rights among the superman. Failure to specify that what is explicitly and unequivocally repudiated is liberalism’s assertion of equal rights allows the principle itself to sneak in by the back door, as a principle which still obtains among the superman.
Second, equality is not the most fundamental commitment of liberalism. Equal rights inevitably follow from liberalism’s fundamental commitment to political liberty, and when denied by right-liberals simply reassert themselves under other guises.
The most fundamental commitment of liberalism as a political philosophy is right there in its name: liberty. As long as the alt-right is going on about free speech and freedom of religion and the like it is simply policing liberalism’s worst excesses: preserving liberalism’s unquestioned rule for future generations.
It is fair though, given the ubiquity and existential necessity (to liberalism) of unprincipled exceptions, to ask what principled opposition to liberalism would look like. Obviously we can tell all sorts of fictional stories that might or might not resemble the unfolding of history if certain things are or are not done; but that kind of storytelling is not what I mean. Those kinds of things are always in the hands of Providence, and the idea that we can choose how history unfolds in some pilot-the-machine way is wrongheaded as an idea.
What I mean is simply characterization of principled opposition to liberalism, not a surround sound IMAX movie plot of the future.
Principled opposition to liberalism would repudiate political freedom unequivocally, without making excuses and without trying to sneak it in by some back door rationalization.
It would be willing to call sodomy a punishable crime, and would not promote flaming homosexuals (however talented and amusing) as thought leaders and rhetorical champions. As with all punishable crimes, there is plenty of room for argument over the appropriate range of specific actions balancing mercy and justice: but as a matter of category, sodomy would be a punishable crime.
It would be willing to admit that offensive speech can be a punishable crime.
It would be willing to call public religious heresy a punishable crime, and would acknowledge Catholic Christianity to be the true religion.
Examples can be multiplied. But we can certainly know a principled exception when we see it. And the exceptions we see on the alt-right specifically, and in the new Trumpist conservative synthesis more generally, are not principled.
Meet the new cuck. Same as the old cuck.
October 31, 2016 § 64 Comments
In the post below donnie suggests:
Trump supporters may be liberals who are still half-asleep, but at least that means they’re also half-awake.
I don’t see “make America 90’s again, other than the opposition to abortion and homosex” as half awake. I see it as the typical consolidation of a new ‘conservatism’ which attempts to protect liberalism from its current worst excesses (white genocide, safe spaces vs free speech, etc).
The central focus of Trumpism is on stopping white genocide, but under the guise of immigration/nationalism. The reason for this is twofold.
First, liberalism is the political philosophy of white people and cannot survive – at least not yet – under a system which is not ruled by a majority of white people capable of overruling dindu, la raza, and mohammedan tribalisms.
Second, Trumpism is promoted under the guise of ‘nationalism/immigration’ because that allows charges of racism to be plausibly denied while still opposing white genocide. Nationalist liberalism is still liberalism, so liberalism itself can remain unchallenged and unquestioned.
So Trumpism represents a walk-back of liberalism’s most recent and most self destructive excesses without any repudiation of liberalism whatsoever, and with the ‘successful’ innovations (e.g. normalization of sodomy) retained. That is how the process works: successful liberal innovations are retained, while unsuccessful ones are walked back and re-tooled.
Meet the new cuck. Same as the old cuck.
Trump as the third black president
October 30, 2016 § 12 Comments
We must not tolerate illegal immigration. Since 1992, we have increased our Border Patrol by over 35%; deployed underground sensors, infrared night scopes and encrypted radios; built miles of new fences; and installed massive amounts of new lighting. We have moved forcefully to protect American jobs by calling on Congress to enact increased civil and criminal sanctions against employers who hire illegal workers. Since 1993, we have removed 30,000 illegal workers from jobs across the country. – Between Hope and History, by Bill Clinton, p.134 , Jan 1, 1996
Donald Trump in 2016 is objectively very similar to Bill Clinton in 1992. The main difference is that from an Overton Window standpoint Trump is now an extreme right wing candidate rather than an extreme left wing candidate. Anything resembling social conservatism has simply dropped off of the radar: even the pro life movement these days is pro choice. Donald Trump when elected (assuming he is smart enough to let Grandma Abortion Witch implode) will just be the third black president.
Liberalism is insane and anti-human, but its insanity ironically makes it extremely adaptable. The Trump phenomenon is not some great new hope for the salvation of Western civilization: some new direction which represents the possibility of a future free from SJW excesses and other leftist insanity. Rather what we are witnessing is the action, in real time, of liberalism’s own internal mechanisms for protecting itself from the results of its own excesses as it continues to dominate more and more of reality. We are witnessing how it absorbs and repurposes any possible incipient opposition, turning the energy of that opposition toward liberalism’s own ends: ends which include self preservation.
Liberalism’s greatest enemy has for centuries been the consequences of its own comprehensive triumph. But by keeping all political conflict inside of its inescapable gravity well it ensures its own long term persistence, in spite of itself.
Yippee ki-yay …
October 26, 2016 § 37 Comments
So called ‘gold standard’ currency is a scrambled mess of confused and opaque financial nonsense, a toxic mix of securities and commodities which poisons the finances of governments and the minds of economists. I’ve explained why fiat currency is more transparent and honest than gold standard currency any number of times. But of course many folks know all sorts of things that aren’t true about sovereign finance, and can’t tell the difference between a financial security and the media upon which it is printed; so they disagree.
Sometimes folks relate better to concrete stories than to dry and abstract explanation of financial concepts. So in this post we’ll consider a hypothetical situation which will hopefully help the still-perplexed understand why fiat currency is more honest and financially transparent than ‘gold standard’ currency.
Suppose we are on a gold standard currency. The government issues official gold notes and for each gold note there is 1/40 gram of gold stored in the vault at Nakatomi Tower. Each gold note notionally entitles the bearer to 1/40 gram of gold, though in practice almost nobody ever actually turns in the notes in exchange for actual gold. The government accepts the gold notes it issues – and only those gold notes – for payment of taxes.
Hans Gruber and his merry band of faux-terrorists carry out a sophisticated paramilitary assault on Nakatomi Tower. Despite John McClane’s best efforts they escape with all of the gold and McClane’s selfish chunky feminist wife, whose constant whining causes half of the exceptional thieves to commit suicide. McClane reclaims his stolen children and lives happily for a while as a NYC cop, until he is killed in a Black Lives Matter terrorist attack on police orchestrated by the Clinton Foundation in conspiracy with a Saudi Arabian donor — a terrorist attack which gets blamed on Donald Trump, who at the time was innocently visiting Playboy Mansion but just for the articles.
Back in front of your iPad in suburbia, you have plenty of government issued gold notes and a tax bill that is coming due.
Should the government accept the gold notes that it issued from you, even though the gold is gone; or are you out of luck because your gold is in a non-extradition country earning 20%? Now that all of the gold has been spirited away, is everyone holding government gold notes a tax evader with literally no available legal means to pay their taxes?
If the government should accept the gold notes that it issued to settle your tax bill – even though the gold is gone, the top of the skyscraper exploded along with the heads of numerous Austrian economists, and the Johnsons and their helicopters are no more – doesn’t that tell you that the presence or absence of the gold doesn’t really have much of anything to do with the value of the “gold notes” as a financial security issued by the government?
