Archive for May, 2017

The Enlightenment debunked

Saturday, May 27th, 2017

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy gives us the official version of the enlightenment:

  • “Reason is man’s central capacity.”
  • “Beliefs are to be accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts, or tradition.”
  • “All men (including, on the view of many, women) are equal in respect of their rationality, and should thus be granted equality before the law and individual liberty.”
  • “Man is by nature good. (Kant endorsed the Christian view of a “radical evil” in human nature, but held that it is possible to overcome it.)”
  • “Both an individual and humanity as a whole can progress to perfection.”
  • “Tolerance is to be extended to other creeds, and ways of life.”
  • “The Enlightenment devalues local “prejudices’ and customs, which owe their development to historical peculiarities rather than to the exercise of reason. What matters to the Enlightenment is not whether one is French or German, but that one is an individual man, united in brotherhood with all other men by the rationality one shares with them.”

Hat tip Dark Reformation, who inspired me to critique the enlightement. I apologize for not giving this hat tip earlier.

The first two propositions superficially sound like a commitment to the scientific method – but somehow they have left out evidence, experiment, and observation. After dismissing religion, the Enlightenment demands adherence to three blatantly false religious beliefs, which beliefs contradict reason, experiment and observation far more blatantly than young earth creationism does.

  • All men are not equal, nor women equal to men, nor groups and categories of men equal to each other.
  • Nor is man by nature good. In the cold and morally neutral terminology of the dark enlightenment, the natural outcome is defect-defect, and avoiding this outcome, getting to cooperate-cooperate, becomes more and more difficult as the number of people that you have to deal with increases. It takes social institutions, and to deal with these ever larger scales, these institutions have to be ever more finely honed and precisely made, and are ever more vulnerable to entropy and error.
  • The “progress to perfection.” line is that our nature is entirely the result of environment. Just raise the self esteem of women and blacks, and everything will be lovely. This has been tried, and the outcome is far from lovely, but they just keep trying harder. The grotesquely inflated self esteem of blacks leads to blacks committing acts of violence against whites, and the grotesquely inflated self esteem of women leads to disastrous choices. They divorce the father of their children expecting to marry a six foot six athletic billionaire, or they marry late, or they do not marry at all.

The extension of tolerance is notoriously selective, and necessarily selective, for if tolerance is mandatory, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech is forbidden, which is not very tolerant at all. Tolerance is not extended to the “intolerant” meaning not extended to those who prefer to cooperate with people who are cooperative, and who prefer to refrain from cooperating with those who defect. Hence the financial crisis. Official minorities and single women, and in particular minority single women, and in particular blacks, and in particular black single women, generally do not repay mortgages. Any criterion that leads to banks extending loans to people that are inclined to repay, leads to banks discriminating against minorities, single women, and especially blacks. Which is forbidden. And so the 2007-2008 financial crisis. So the enlightened tolerate Muslims blowing people up and raping infidel women, but do not tolerate whites hanging out with people who are inclined to pay their debts. That is one creed and one way of life that they are not inclined to extend tolerance to. Forbidding an ever increasing range of speech and association is necessarily intolerant. We should stick to suppressing dangerous lies and heresies that aggressively pursue political power (such as The Enlightenment). Any suppression of freedom of speech, association, and assembly that goes beyond this is excessive and damaging.  Official tolerance is inherently and necessarily dangerously intolerant.

Civilization is the advance of technical and scientific knowledge, and most importantly, social organization. Most of all it is the capability to maintain cooperate/cooperate relationships in very large groups. You will notice that the enlightenment is a root and branch attack on civilization, and Rousseau explicitly framed it as an attack on civilization and intent to destroy civilization.

The devaluation of local prejudices and customs is the dismantling of Chesterton’s fence, the abandonment of the slowly and painfully accumulated habits, customs, laws and institutions that make civilization possible, the devaluation and abandonment of the roots of Western Civilization.  Our Cathedrals are empty and abandoned.

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Posted in politics | 210 Comments »

“Manchester will not be divided”

Thursday, May 25th, 2017

Manchester’s response to the terror attack is “Manchester will not be divided”, meaning they will continue to embrace with open arms those that murder their children and rape their daughters.

If, however, a white male member of a college fraternity hits on a drunken slut, then they will continue to throw the book at him. Nothing divisive about that</sarcasm>.

Also, anecdotal reports that young women in Manchester are responding to violence in the way that women are notorious for responding to violence. Hence Trump’s wise and important point that they should be called losers, not monsters. Women love monsters. Looks like fresh crop of light brown fatherless babies is under way. Manchester females are not being divided from Muslim males. The attack, and Manchester’s response to the attack, confirms Muslims as high status, and men who work and pay taxes as low status.

But of course, men in a society where unaccompanied girls attend a Ariana Grande-Butera concert, where unaccompanied girls go to watch prostitutes perform and the prostitutes present as high status, are low status men. Come the restoration, girls who attend such an event will not be blown up, but if they attend unsupervised by their fathers, fiancees, or husbands, will be sent to a home for wayward girls.

The problem with prostitutes is not that sex happens. The problem with prostitutes is that if a whore is high status and well paid, you are low status and low paid. Hence the epidemic of “rape” on campus, and hence the response to the Manchester terror attack. It is illegal for white males to hit on white girls, because it is illegal for white males to be high status.

The problem with an Ariana Grande-Butera concert is that a large part of the audience is unaccompanied eight year old girls, who see whores presented as sexy, successful, and empowered, and an even bigger problem is that the whores that they see really are successful and empowered. We have to stop girls from learning that stuff. Because girls do learn that stuff, men have no reason, no motive, no will, to resist Muslim conquest. Prostitutes should not be sexy, successful, and empowered. But if they are, we should make sure that other girls do not find out about it.

Women should not be allowed to get a substantially better deal by screwing around, and if some women do get a substantially better deal by screwing around, other women should be prevented from discovering it. And if you do let women discover it, your beta males, who are most of your police and soldiers, will not get their dicks wet, in which case they will not fight. And so, Manchester will not be divided. Especially the women.

Posted in war | 103 Comments »

The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017

If a Muslim is not murdering innocents and raping children, he is a bad Muslim.

Over the last thirteen hundred years numerous Kingdoms, religions, cultures, empires, nations, tribes, and peoples have sought to coexist with Islam. None have succeeded. We shall not be the first.

We shall capitulate, or we will suppress and expel them.

A short while ago, some Muslims detonated some nail bombs at an English concert, targeting mostly children and young girls, killing twenty two and severely wounding many more. I guarantee that the English response will be that there is not enough affirmative action for Muslims, not enough Muslim immigration, and we are being too hard on Muslims that rape English girls, and the big important tragedy that makes this event so sad is that it undermines Muslim immigration and affirmative action for Muslims.

Posted in culture, war | 96 Comments »

The permanent trump crisis

Saturday, May 20th, 2017

At a gut level, the Cathedral feels the Trump presidency to be illegal, unconstitutional, and improper. They simply know it is illegal, unconstitutional and improper, but cannot come up with any intelligible or coherent explanation of why – or rather any explanation that they can say out loud.

All the standard rules that you or I should apply in a conflict with Social Justice Warriors apply in a conflict between Trump and the Cathedral: They always lie, they always project, and any apology or concession will excite them to even greater rage. At the slightest sign of concession, they smell blood in the water.

They are not moving towards impeachment because they have found any exciting reasons to support the Russian narrative (Trump supposedly stole the election using the KGB). The real reason they are moving towards impeachment is that Trump bombed, and continues to bomb, Syria, that Trump appointed cuckservatives to the whitehouse staff, who promptly spread lies about him. When he did that, they smelled blood in the water.

Trump cannot appease them. They are unappeasable. He can only deter them. That is the nature of the beast.

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

Replies the scorpion: “Its my nature…”

Because the Cathedral is primarily driven by holiness competition, it is incapable of acting rationally. This is in some ways a strength. The way to win at chicken is to first drink a bottle of vodka, then at the last moment rip out the steering wheel and throw it out the window. Maybe they will succeed in impeaching Trump on the grounds of “cover up”

But it is also a weakness. The likely result is, sooner or later, to blunder into war, state to state, state level civil war, nonstate war, and likely all of the above.

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Posted in party politics, politics | 171 Comments »

When the rot set in

Monday, May 15th, 2017

total fertility rate
Eighteenth century view was that women were sex crazy and needed to be kept under tight control or else in their feverish sexual lust they would destroy the family, and because state, society, and the church rested on the family, if you let women loose, everything would fall apart.

Nineteenth century view was that women were wonderful, and the marital contract only needed to be enforced against men, never against women, because naturally a woman would never break it unless a man forced her to do so.

And everything did fall apart.

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Posted in culture | 232 Comments »

Moldbug model of communism

Monday, May 8th, 2017

The Moldbug account of communism, simplified, is that the that the Soviets were Democrat agents, a proxy force for the blue empire of the consulates against the red empire of the bases, and they were collapsed when they started to break free of the Democrats.

Simplified even further: “America is a communist country”.

Of course any useful truth is necessarily a simplification. Reality is always more complex than even the best descriptions. Puritan derived leftism (progressivism) both cooperated and competed with Judaism derived leftism (Marxism) and each infiltrated and attempted to use and manipulate the other. Both engaged in entryism, and entryist agents would turn, becoming double and triple agents, creating a dense maze of camouflage and lies. Obama is a red diaper Marxist, but he is progressive, and his Marxist mother was a double agent, probably a triple agent, who like most female agents, had sex with the enemy becoming unreliable as a result.

The Czars lost intellectual sovereignty to English intellectuals. Instead of the Czar being fount of all honors, mortal and divine, which is to say instead of the Czar setting the rules for status competition, the Czars competed in a status competition with the rules set by English intellectuals with Puritan derived memes, and thus sawed of the branch on which they sat, by disempowering aristocrats and empowering leftists. The bureaucratic government was left and getting lefter, and so eventually staged a coup against the traditional and legitimate government.

While the Czar was away at the front, the bureaucracy flooded the streets with rioters and protestors, forbade the army and police from taking care of them, and then piously announced that they had to surrender to the might of the justly enraged masses, though in truth no one except brewers, distillers, Jews, and pawnshops had much to fear from the rioting masses. This coup installed Puritan derived leftism in charge of Russia, but, of course, it found itself in dangerous alliance with Judaism derived leftism, which loudly announced itself to be lefter than thou. And since no enemies to the left, no friends to the right, puritan derived leftism in Russia had disarmed itself. So in due course the leftmost faction of Judaism derived leftism was victorious, under the slogan “All power to the Soviets”. Which workers soviets they immediately dismantled.

Thereafter there was alternate cooperation, competition, collaboration, and armed conflict between the blue empire of the consulates, and Soviet Russia, with cooperation and collaboration being dominant until shortly after World War II, competition and armed conflict from World War II to the Berlin airlift, and cooperation and collaboration from the Berlin Airlift till about 1980.

Russian leftism froze in place during Stalin’s rule, and ceased to move leftwards, while Puritan derived anglosphere leftism continued to move leftwards. As time passed, the blue empire became increasingly pissed off because Russia, like Charles Murray, was not keeping up, was not left enough. Did not those damned Russians know it is <the current year> now?

The blue empire strategy and meme had long been “Oh we must surrender to the might of the Soviets and their tremendously successful socialism”,  since surrendering to the distinctly right wing gun owning American masses was unattractive.  This is the vision depicted in the future history of “Startreck the Next Generation” episodes produced before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it became less attractive and less plausible because of the increasingly obvious economic failure and military weakness of socialism and because the Soviets were increasingly abandoning the claim to be lefter than thou, abandoning the claim to be the leftmost.

In the future history depicted in Startreck, reflecting the progressive wet dream, the Soviets theoretically win, but actually the permanent government of the US wins, just as in Russia, the masses theoretically won, then the Soviets theoretically won, but in fact the actual Soviets generally got shot or sent to slave labor camps while the bureaucracy that formerly answered to the Czar kept their jobs and increased their power.

Posted in politics | 377 Comments »

Trumpcare passes the house

Friday, May 5th, 2017

Still has to pass the Senate, but already the Democrats are terrified.

The essential and important feature of Trumpcare is that it “denies insurance to millions of Americans”. In other words, when you seek medical care, when those who pay for and operate our system of medical care seek medical care, they will not find one hundred drug addicts looking for free drugs and one hundred bums looking for free food, a free bed, and human contact in front of them. Those people, drug addicts, criminals, and suchlike, are still going to get subsidy, but they will go literally or metaphorically through a different door to the people who are paying.

Now even if Trumpcare passes the Senate, we still have to pass it to find out what is in it. The details are going to be filled in by regulators – regulators who are theoretically under Trump’s supervision, but are in fact far more answerable to the permanent government. So we still could be screwed nine ways from Sunday.

But like Trump himself, Trumpcare offers remote possibility of success, as compared to the absolute certainty of failure.

A possible outcome of this vote, a successful outcome of this vote, is that the marginal voter, the swinging voter, gets reasonable healthcare, or at least healthcare that is less outrageously terrible, and the Democrat voter core (vagrants, drug addicts, whores, single mums, and criminals) loses out – which of course is going to mean a major swing to Trump and Republicans, and a major swing away from Democrats. Hence the widespread abject pants-wetting terror among democrat politicians.

Trumpcare protects people with pre-existing conditions, without however giving them the same insurance you get. Which may in practice mean that people who don’t pay go in through the same door you do, or may not mean that. If it means that people who don’t pay go in through the same door, then that means that people who pay get treated like criminals, vagrants and drug addicts, in short like Democratic party core voters, that being the vast majority of non paying people showing up at hospital. People say that the very old are costing us a bundle, that the very sick are costing us a bundle. No, it is Democratic Party core constituencies that are costing us a bundle.

Not needing to pay for healthcare and having plenty of time on your hands makes a vastly greater difference to how much healthcare you consume than being old and sick does. In short, being a Democratic core constituency is the major variable determining how much healthcare a person is going to consume.

Any system that guarantees that some morbidly obese alcoholic on the street is going to get the same standard of healthcare as an affluent middle class person is going to guarantee that that affluent middle class person is going to get very little healthcare. If Trumpcare is going to provide a reasonable standard of healthcare for the median voter, it has to deny a reasonable standard of healthcare for the modal Democratic party voter. Whether it will do so is far from clear, but it is absolutely certain that Obamacare will not provide a reasonable standard of healthcare for the median voter.

Posted in economics, politics | 167 Comments »

Trump probably on track

Monday, May 1st, 2017

When Trump says one thing to us, and another thing to his enemies, we should not necessarily assume he is lying to us and telling the truth to his enemies.

One very promising sign is that he invited Duterte, who is on the State Department death list, to the White House, which would imply that he can control who gets murdered in the United States and who does not. I expect however that a swarm of Trump’s praetorians will be in the vicinity of Duterte at all times. Inviting Duterte is also another gentle hint to our lawless, corrupt, and criminal judiciary.

Of course, the real power in Washington has long been the White House Press Corps. This weekend he broke them. He skipped the annual White House dinner and, lo and behold, the celebrities fell into line with him against the White house press corps. This weekend, the White House Press Corps dinner was not only missing a president, it was missing hot young movie stars there to get nailed by high status alpha males, and Silicon Valley billionaires with briefcases full of hundred dollar bills there to beg and buy political influence.

The press corp piously announced that they had a good time, the party continued just fine, and it was just great to not to be crowded by movie starlets and silicon valley billionaires on their knees offering blow jobs. The press declared glorious victory over Trump’s attack on their status. The press tells you that they are high status and holy, that Trump is low status and unholy, that they are winning and he is losing. You would not be so low status as to doubt the press, would you? Only low status people doubt the press. </sarcasm>

Another good sign – the Cathedral Streisanded our smug Pepe meme – revealing profound status insecurity. People are starting to smell blood in the water. When a high status person shows status insecurity, you can gain status by insulting him and by desecrating what is holy to him.

OK boys, there is blood in the water. Time for the feeding frenzy. He who joins the feeding frenzy early is more likely to win status points than when everyone is doing it. It has been working for Milo, hence Scott Alexander is jealous. Also, time to split the ninth circuit. A necessary first step to splitting the ninth circuit is ridiculing and denigrating the ninth circuit judges as individuals – their races, their appearance, their personal conduct, their sex lives, their corruption, their conspicuous lack of intelligence, and last and probably least important, their arrogant and absurd judicial opinions.

Posted in politics, war | 282 Comments »