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“What the gentleman seeks, he seeks within himself; what the small man seeks, he seeks in others.”
— Confucious (The Analects, XV.21)
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In my post of 12/14/24 (“Annoyances”), I listed some of the more annoying aspects of current human behavior. One item was the following:
“Uptalk. Enunciating a statement as if it were a question; constant rising intonation. Especially annoying on men. Makes them sound like little girls.” I had hoped that with the change in atmosphere following the advent of the Trump Administration, a more masculine manner of speech would be heard across the land. Sure, I expected to still be subjected to pathetic feminized uptalking from a twenty-something woke moron working at Whole Foods, but among our thought leaders, absolutely not. Unfortunately, it seems that everywhere I look, even among bright individuals with good ideas, the plague has not ceased; if anything, it has worsened. Another verbal tic that has spread far and wide is the constant use of the words “kind of” and “sort of.” Or, in more rapid speech, kinda and sorta. Yesterday I began watching a podcast featuring an expert in economic and financial affairs. This was an intelligent person, not a Leftist by any stretch of the imagination. Almost every definitive statement was preceded by kind of or sort of. I was not able to watch more than a couple of minutes. It was kind of, sort of, like, you know, well, very exhausting. These words do have a use case. There are times that one wishes to qualify an assertion, as in “her demeanor was sort of hostile, though I couldn’t point to anything explicit.” But when making a factual statement, the usage is inappropriate. There is no reason to say “the Fed kind of held interest rates where they are, with no change.” The Fed didn’t kind of hold them, they held them, period. The effect is the same as with uptalking: information ceases to be communicated as cold, hard facts. Everything is in question, and nobody wants to commit. Given the multiple crises and challenges we face today, there has never been a time that demands more forceful, unequivocal speech. What we do not need to convey is weakness, uncertainty, and self-doubt. As the Trump Administration takes action to crush DEI, and put an end to this disgraceful chapter of American history, it is important to examine the ideological antecedents that gave birth to the plague. In this vein, I invite you to read an article I wrote in 2007 for American Thinker, entitled “Diversity, Nihilism, and the Anti-Rational Mind.”
When hysterical Leftists claim that President Trump and his associates are seizing power, or engaged in a coup d’état, in a sense they are correct. Over the course of the last century, the Deep State spread its tentacles into every nook and cranny of the Federal apparatus. On January 19, 2025, this entrenched Leftist administrative juggernaut was, for all practical purposes, the government of the United States. The president had become window dressing, a quaint relic of the bygone constitutional republic.
So when Donald Trump & Co. asserted authority over the Executive branch, thinking that the elected president and his appointees are actually in charge of their agencies, they really were trying to overthrow the government. Let us not forget that “our democracy” is a codeword for the Deep State; the function of an election, as in the USSR, is for the People to show their love and affection for the legitimate rulers of the country, not—Lenin forbid—to replace them. How can you replace the true representatives of the People? And thus we have this bizarre coup d’état, where the president is seizing control of the presidency. We need a new word to describe this phenomenon. Autocoup? Retrocoup? Whatever it’s called, Trump really is overturning the established order. This situation produces a host of ludicrous scenes. As I watched one of the signing ceremonies/press conferences, this one featuring Musk, I thought to myself: Trump and Musk are taking a much-deserved victory lap after uncovering the tip of the iceberg of what may be the biggest fraud in the history of man. This is how a normal human being would view it. But the audience in the room is the White House press corps, mostly composed of “journalists” who are essentially propaganda attachés of the Deep State. Musk is taking away their rice bowl. To them, US AID is not subject to the authority of the president, rather it is an independent branch of the government; dismantling it would be akin to abolishing Congress. Trump could expose waste, fraud, and abuse until the cows come home, and the Left wouldn’t care a whit. If a thousand worthless bureaucrats and consultants inside the Beltway each have to pocket a million dollars so that the election of one conservative East European prime minister is nullified, so be it. This is how the U.S. government works. It is absolutely normal, standard operating procedure. And now we have low-level Federal judges ordering President Trump and his Cabinet to keep their hands off the agencies under their purview. This galactic level of chutzpah is the natural outgrowth of the judiciary’s illegal usurpation of power, growing in intensity for decades. Of all the genies that must be stuffed back into the bottle, this is one of the most urgent. I cringed when I heard Trump say, at the aforementioned press conference, that he would obey the judges, and appeal the rulings. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this policy the following day. Did it ever occur to him that the President of the United States is not obligated to obey an illegal order conjured up in the feverish mind of a Leftist lunatic? If a judge tomorrow rules that Trump cannot speak with world leaders, or that the White House staff must all appear in public with ice cream cones protruding from the top of their heads, would he obey that as well? What is the limit of this farce? The Administration is going to appeal?! Does Trump not realize that in the eyes of the Left, he just surrendered to the authority of the Deep State? Does he not remember that his first administration was neutered in the same manner? This cannot be allowed to stand. Where’s our new Attorney-General Pam Bondi, that supposedly tough-as-nails supergirl? Oh, she’s busy bringing lawsuits against governors and other top officials of states (most recently New York) that are sabotaging the Administration’s enforcement of the law against illegal aliens. What is it with conservatives and lawsuits? For goodness sake, we are dealing here with criminals. Appoint a prosecutor, and slap on the handcuffs. The state officials are clearly engaged in obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a felony, and the judges are fomenting insurrection. These apparatchiks must be behind bars, pronto. Otherwise, the autocoup may fail, and Trump will have little else to do but attend MAGA rallies and rearrange the furniture in the White House. In summary, I will repeat the words of Curtis Yarvin that I quoted in my post of 1/20/25: “Progressives do not believe in the American system of government, only in power. Conservatives do not believe in power, only in the American system of government. Therefore, progressives always win and conservatives always lose.” "Vaccine worship looks like religious worship...I take a drug, put the word vaccine on it, and magically and miraculously it's perfect, like it came directly from God."
— Robert Barnes The Trump Administration has launched a multi-front attack on the slimy tentacles of the Deep State. We have all been witness to the blitzkrieg, and it has provided warmth for our hearts.
This campaign represents the end of an era; or more precisely, it heralds the transition from one era to another. Coming to an end is the modern era of Fantasy, perhaps the greatest and longest of its kind in world history; opening before us is the age of Reality, which is the default state of mankind. To whatever degree Trump and his associates succeed in resuscitating our bruised and battered country, there is no going back to Fantasy world. Even if they fail, whoever takes the reins of power will be staring Reality in the face. It’s here to stay. Our era of Fantasy began with the French Revolution, which instituted a slate of false, imaginary precepts by which man was expected to live. This constituted a mythological system that would put any primitive, superstitious culture to shame. The worst ideas and idols of the Enlightenment were dredged up and repackaged, forming the foundation of the Fantasy system, a foundation upon which we still stand. But not for long. The key ingredient is the myth of Equality. This is the biggest pipe dream of all, and the one upon which all else depends. It has enabled, over time, the construction of a mirror world, a parallel universe. Society devolved into two main divisions: those who perform productive work that results in the fulfillment of real human needs, and a steadily growing parasitic class. Today, virtually every sector is plagued with an internal and antagonistic Reality/Fantasy split. For example, agriculture. The Reality side: farmers, distributors, slaughterhouses, etc. The Fantasy side includes the bureaucrats and “thought leaders” that tell us to stop eating meat, and who bully the farmers into adulterating or destroying their crops and livestock. Once the Big Lie of Equality became entrenched, many other lies followed. Over time, we reach the postmodern society, in which misrepresentation is ubiquitous. We are saddled with fake art, fake religion, fake education, fake scholarship, fake jurisprudence, fake healthcare, and on and on. The never-ending train of lies has been interpreted by some observers to be the approach of the “Leftist singularity”: infinite Leftism in finite time. I believe that we reached something approximating this state of affairs as the Biden regime drew to a close. This is the hornet’s nest that was sliced open by Trump and his people, exposing unimaginable levels of corruption, malfeasance, and treason. In the Leftist singularity, or Fantasy world run amok, society deteriorates into a chaotic, dysfunctional mess. This has caused wealthy, powerful individuals like Elon Musk to defect from Fantasy world to Reality world. A type of fraud that is crucial to the operation of Fantasy world is fake money. Since time immemorial, money has been gold and silver. These are tokens of Reality world. In Fantasy world, money has been abstracted and transmuted, by degrees, into ever more empty and worthless derivatives. Cryptocurrency, the final divorce from Reality, is only the latest in a long line of these progressively more counterfeit forms of “money.” Fake money and its intellectual handmaiden, Keynesian economic theory, transformed debt from an embarrassing, temporary situation to an unquestioned and even praiseworthy status quo. Exponentially rising debt, like the universe exploding outward from the Big Bang, enabled the expansion of government to obscene levels. Needless to say, this has flooded Fantasy world with virtually unlimited resources. Until now. Of all the countless unsustainable aspects of Fantasy world, one in particular is the proximate cause of its demise, the spark that lit the fuse: the unfolding economic and financial collapse of the West. The debt/fake money system has reached the end of the road. The wealth is gone; the productive sector has been hollowed out by the parasites, and the rest of the world is no longer enthusiastic about supplying the goods or buying the debt. There are no suckers left to pay for the fun and games. Small wonder, then, that gold—prime symbol of Reality world—is experiencing a resurgence on the world stage. When it comes to international relations, Trump and everyone else knows that the jig is up. This was acknowledged by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when he admitted in a recent interview that the unipolar era of American dominance is over, and that we are now reverting to the historical norm of a multipolar world. Say goodbye to American exceptionalism; the dollar as reserve currency; “Pride” flags flying over U.S. embassies; the Fukuyama “end of history” nonsense; neoconservatism; and all the rest of the hokum. Incidentally, the Trump proposal for Gaza, whatever its merits and whatever its eventual result, is the first time an American president has proposed a solution that is based in Reality world. All previous Middle East “peace plans” were rooted in concepts derived from Leftist mythology, and thus doomed to failure. Fantasy world is in its death throes. Sure, it can still twitch in frightening ways, but it is a rotting corpse nevertheless. If Trump didn’t exist, he would have to be invented; someone was needed to officiate at the funeral service. The same applies to the other countries of the "collective West," many of whom are still testing the limits of the Leftist singularity. I do not intend to convey the impression that we are embarking upon some new, golden age. The Trump presidency is only the beginning of a lengthy journey into the unknown. All such interregnums are by definition unstable. We may very well emerge on the other side, healthier and happier. But it is quite possible that we descend into totalitarian madness; a host of thoroughly dystopian scenarios could ambush us. Whichever way it goes, the world as we knew it, the Fantasy world that emerged from the French Revolution, is over. Whatever comes next, good or bad, will be based in Reality. Have you ever noticed that the more woke a person is, the weaker his sense of humor? Leftist belief systems have an inverse correlation with humor; they cause an erosion of the mental faculties required for a humorous disposition.
Humor and woke are as oil and water. Comedy always makes fun of something or somebody. This means that “safe spaces” are being violated with extreme prejudice. Comedy also involves the use of satire and irony, both noticeably lacking among our Leftist friends. How can irony thrive within the soul of a person who looks at a transvestite, and, with a straight face, claims that this is really a woman? Granted, sense of humor is lacking among the majority of the population, of any ideological bent. This is because exercising the art requires a solid foundation of intelligence. Humor is how intelligent people amuse themselves, and relieve the tension in their brains caused by the unending swirl of thoughts and questions. An open-minded fellow of above-average intelligence will tend to see multiple sides to any given situation, predisposing him to sniff out irony. A left-leaning individual of reasonable intelligence may begin to feel the urge to laugh—real belly laughter, the kind that comes only from violating a safe space—but his wrongthink filter (self-censorship) is activated, and the urge is suppressed. We have all seen this on someone’s face, when the soupçon of a grin appears, only to be followed by a disapproving frown when he suddenly realizes that a commandment of the holy order of wokeness is being disobeyed. As intelligence declines, as it has in the West for decades (and at an accelerating pace), humor falls further into disfavor, shunned by morons everywhere. When garden-variety idiocy is combined with wokery, the laughter muscles atrophy. Will the inbreeding of these humanoids over the next couple of generations result in the physical inability to produce an ironic grin? In classic comedy, the joke-maker uses the moron as a foil, a role known as the “straight man.” This is what President Trump does in much of his interaction with the battalions of humorless Leftist (but I repeat myself) “journalists” who wouldn’t recognize satire if it punched them in the face. But there are so many of them, and their handiwork is so prevalent, it often seems that they rule the culture. They do, for the time being, but that supremacy is a mile wide and an inch deep. There are cracks in the edifice. Turning the Left into the butt of our jokes is one element of the cultural, artistic, and intellectual revival that is a prerequisite to the survival of Western civilization. Satire is a weapon that our side has in abundance, and which the Left does not understand, let alone possess. But the successful use of that weapon carries with it an important caveat: It must come on the heels of vigorous exercise of authority on the ground, of real state power; for example, the complete purging of illegal aliens from the territory of the United States. At that point, when CNN interviews a top government official, he can crack jokes that make the interviewer look like the dunce that he is. This will have no immediate effect on the woke “journalist,” as this species has no comprehension of satire, and no capacity for feeling shame. The viewers at home, however, will see this as a victory dance, driving the stake further into the heart of the Leftist vampire. But here’s the caveat: if authority on the ground has not been achieved, the viewers may very well see the use of humor as the pathetic squirming of defeat. Currently there is a feeling in America that we can dismantle the Woke grift apparatus: diversity, the institutionalization of sexual deviancy, the victim shakedowns, the Climate-Industrial Complex, etc. If and when these scams are smashed, we have to prevent their reemergence. The use of mockery will help seal the deal, leading to a zeitgeist in which people are embarrassed to propose the consideration of even the tiniest sliver of such madness. Keep those jokes coming; do not relent. If nothing else, it will help us maintain our own sanity. This past week I made the mistake of watching a few scenes from the Senate confirmation hearings for the appointment of RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health, and of Kash Patel as Director of the FBI. The behavior of the Democratic senators was beyond sickening. Especially disturbing was Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren, who, despite her mouth being sore from endlessly licking the boots of Big Pharma, managed to launch a loud and nasty attack on RFK Jr.
I cannot recall seeing a more vile performance by a person in a position of authority. This shrieking hag, in the space of a mere five minutes, displayed every aspect of rotten behavior: tone of voice, volume, posture, hypocrisy, pettiness, vulgarity, slander, arrogance; in short, the very picture of the totalitarian monster in full bloom. I asked myself: Did such creatures always exist among us? The answer, of course, is yes. The difference is, that in the past they had to control themselves. Such outbursts would not have been tolerated, years ago. For heaven's sake, this is a confirmation hearing, not a mother scolding a child. The show trials of the USSR are an eerie reminder of what happens when this kind of behavior gets out of hand. The genie must be stuffed back into the bottle. In one of my posts on the scamdemic (12/3/2024), I referred to the Orwellian phenomenon, “we have always been at war with Eastasia.” In other words, the astonishing capacity of the Left to reverse ideological positions at breakneck speed, and then act as if it had always been that way. Down the memory hole goes the old way of thinking.
In addition to the switcheroo on Big Pharma, who were upgraded from villain to hero, a prime example of this behavior is the treatment of the working class. Once worshiped by the Left, they were downgraded from heroes to Deplorables, and from there to Garbage. Below is a post that I wrote on this subject, on the original AWOL Civilization blog, in 2007. * * * The Redneck Paradox It has become common practice, in polite circles, to mock and deride a certain sector of American society. I am speaking of the ordinary working class, particularly those living far in the hinterland, and those with a strong attachment to traditional values. It is now de rigueur to launch blustering condemnations of this vague yet threatening tribe. People who would never dare utter a word of criticism against a minority feel perfectly at ease disparaging, often viciously, the enemy they alternately refer to as rednecks, white trash, Christian fundamentalists, holy rollers, or crackers. All of these labels blur into an image of the blue-collar guy in the pickup truck. Of course, the more that “tolerance" is preached as a general ideological position, the more vehement the condemnation of the working class. The blinders of political correctness have shut down the possibility of complaining about, or in some cases even perceiving, the real dangers and the really dangerous people. A substitute was needed at which to redirect the emotional energy. Not that there aren’t other targets; the same crowd inveighs against oil companies, Republicans, law enforcement, etc. The difference is that this particular target is composed of people who used to be the darlings of the Left. We’re talking about the proletariat! Who would have thought that the Working Man was destined to become an enemy of the people? But isn’t the Working Man supposed to be oppressed? Robbed of his labor’s surplus-value by greedy capitalists? One of the reasons for this twist of fate is that the Working Man represents one of the last bastions of traditional American values: he works, goes to church, has a family, owns guns, and believes in liberty (the horror). Also, he is less “educated," and thus less exposed and susceptible to the neo-totalitarian brainwashing that has rotted away the minds of much of our population. This resistance is resented by the high priests of collectivism. I realize that economic Marxism has been replaced by cultural Marxism, and local oppressed masses by Third World oppressed masses. But still, is it not ironic that our latter-day Marxists detest the proletariat? It’s the Redneck Paradox. As I wander through the dystopian wasteland that passes for a society, one aspect that stands out is the infantile fascination with flashy technology and electronic gadgetry.
About ten years ago, after a long absence, I spent some time in New York City. One fine day, the weather was perfect; I took a leisurely stroll down Central Park West from 96th Street, where I was lodging. Seeing those grand pre-war apartment buildings filled my spirit with admiration and satisfaction. Eventually, I found myself in front of the Museum of Natural History, at the corner of 81st Street and Central Park West, waiting for the light to change. I glanced around, and witnessed a profoundly disturbing scene: a mass of humanity, at least two dozen individuals, all staring into their little screens. They were oblivious to each other, to the scenery around them, in short, to the rest of the world. Naturally, I had previously seen groups of people communing with their electronic babysitters, but never this quantity of people, and with a backdrop of such magnificent architecture. The future had arrived, and it didn’t look pretty. This obsession is called, in our current Orwellian linguistic haze: smart. Welcome to our new smart world. Everything is smart, down to the last fingernail. Translated into reality: smart = a device which can perform every electronic pirouette, and serves every purpose except its original intended use. Infinite bells and whistles, but core functionality has been pushed so far into the background, it is often hardly visible. I have never owned a smart phone, but on the odd occasion when I try to use one provided by a friend, I find that one of the most cumbersome tasks to execute on this wondrous telephone is to make a phone call. Or consider a smart coffee maker. You can tear your hair out just trying to make a simple pot of coffee, without having to fiddle with the settings. Come to think of it, one is always compelled to configure; it is becoming impossible to use tools in an uncomplicated and straightforward manner. In other words, we are awash in counterproductive and unnecessary complexity. Then there is the modern automobile. Wasn’t the purpose of this machine to transport people, and light cargo, from point A to point B? Now, it is a computer with wheels attached. The constant ringing and beeping and buzzing can drive a person bonkers. Not to mention the harebrained and often dangerous “safety” features, such as the car suddenly taking over your braking or steering. My car is from the model year 2017. This may have been the last opportunity to opt out of these rolling video games, by insisting on the base model, with no options. Not anymore. Buying a new car? You can’t escape. What’s more, the endless gizmofication pushes the cost up. Instead of a simple means of transportation, with a reasonable level of comfort, priced at say, $10K, we are presented with these ludicrous smart monsters at nosebleed prices. (I realize that there are many factors contributing to the rising cost, but this is one of the main culprits.) If you want a device that performs its intended function simply and efficiently, you either have to buy it used, or pay more. I recently shopped for a blender, and was compelled to spend a fair amount of money to acquire one with actual dials (remember those?), three speeds, no screen, no settings, no Wi-Fi, no unrelated functionality; just a blender that blends, thank you very much. And I haven’t even touched on the issue of social control, where the government (or its proxies) can monitor, turn off, or modify one of your smart devices without your knowledge or approval. I am not opposed to technological innovation, it’s just that the innovation is not always beneficial. I would trade all the smart phones in the country for, say, a Japanese-quality subway system in all of our major cities. As the population gets dumber, the devices get smarter. I wonder if there’s a connection… |
Dystopian literatureWelcome to the blog! While you're here, check out the six dystopian novels by Gary Wolf. His latest is The Cubist Supremacy. 
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