Fri, 11 Apr 2025 10:17:43 -0600WeeblyFri, 11 Apr 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/the-tariff-hoo-hahTrump did this, Trump did that. The Trump Effect. Trump is purposely collapsing the economy. Trump is saving the economy. The tariffs will lead to war. The tariffs will lead to peace. Trump is sticking it to Wall Street. Trump is working for Wall Street.

Many observers, pro and con, are assuming a tight causal linkage between two events: the implementation of the tariffs and the wild fluctuations in the financial markets. As the commentariat bloviates on the situation, they forget that correlation is not causation.

President Trump and his associates are not causing anything. On the contrary, they are struggling to keep pace with a rapidly changing landscape that is mostly beyond their control, and for which the die was cast well before the advent of Trump 2.0. Like a person sinking into quicksand, the Administration will grasp at any stick within reach.

Here is the quicksand they stepped into: The mother of all bubbles, an agglomeration of bubbles such as the world has never seen. A financial bubble. A debt bubble. A real estate bubble. A bubble of lies and fraud. A bubble of Progressive ideology, of Keynesianism, of central control, of fake science, of media propaganda. Of pure idiocy, of hypocrisy, of insanity. This megabubble is at its bursting point; a balloon in search of a pin.

The tariffs are related to the bursting bubble, but not in the way that many think. Sure, they might advance or postpone certain aspects of the bursting, but those aspects are baked into the cake. Looking at the big picture, the imposition of these trade restrictions is an attempt to outwit processes that are already in motion. The Trump policy is not causing the stock market to be unstable, nor is it causing the demise of free trade and the Bretton Woods economic order; it is rather a reaction to the crumbling of the order and its constituent parts, a movement that has been accelerating for several years.

The post-World War II international order, led by the United States, is dead as a doornail, with or without tariffs. The West is bankrupt, financially and in every other sense of the word. The financial system is a house of cards. NATO has been defeated in Ukraine. Europe is ruled by shrieking hags and ghoulish fanatics.

Meanwhile, the BRICS countries are severing their connection with the Western system of global economic fraud. They no longer want to play the game of make-believe. Thus the frantic accumulation of gold, the anti-bubble par excellence. (The BRICS may end up with their own fraudulent system, but it will be their fraudulent system.)

​The tariffs are a reaction to this massive realignment. The Titanic is sinking, and this is a handy lifeboat, albeit one that has been in mothballs for a while. Will it really help rebuild manufacturing in the U.S.? I certainly hope so, because the extreme market volatility is only the start of the Great Bursting. The phony-baloney financialized economy, along with its ecosystem of institutionalized grift, is disintegrating before our eyes. When it’s all said and done, the only edifice left standing may very well be manufacturing, energy, mining, and agriculture, and the networks that surround these sectors.]]>Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:54:07 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/the-rot-runs-deepKarl Denninger has written a good piece about systemic fraud in the U.S. medical system. Quite shocking in its implications. DOGE has been nibbling around the edges, but the rot runs deep, and it must be addressed.
]]>Fri, 04 Apr 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/conquests-law-part-ii[SERVICE NOTICE: For the foreseeable future, I am going to publish one article per week, every Friday. There will still be a smattering of other quick posts, such as quotes, and links to interesting posts on other websites. But Friday will be the day for the real "thought pieces."]

In my post of 3/24/2025, I discussed Conquest’s Second Law of Politics, which states that any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing. Part of my analysis revolved around the question of high versus low culture, and the difficulty in maintaining the higher form, which is a bedrock of civilization. The entropic forces in society, always present, tend to drag us down to the level of low culture, which is one of the symptoms of Leftism.

In the article below, first published on the original AWOL Civilization blog just after the 2008 presidential election, I examined this issue from a somewhat different perspective.


                                 *          *          *

So it finally happened: a bonafide neo-Marxist has been elected President of the United States. He will have a sympathetic majority in both houses of Congress, along with a choir comprising the judiciary, the press, academia, the cultural “elite," and the most hardened enemies of America at home and abroad. This is not a macabre scene from a dystopian novel. It is our reality.

In order to grasp the full significance of the catastrophe that has enveloped America—and indeed, Western civilization—we must cast our intellectual net far and wide, so that it encompasses the great thinkers of the past. They can guide and inspire us as we confront a phenomenon with which we, in America, have no experience. They can help us re-examine our approach to politics, the arts, education, and a host of other realms, a task that is part and parcel of salvaging and reinvigorating our culture.

We can start by reconnecting with the thinkers of the ancient world. It is there, in the literary masterpieces of Athens and Rome and Jerusalem, that one finds clues to the riddles that present themselves to us. It is there that one sees how people prevailed in the face of upheavals that defy the imagination.

In this spirit, I would like to present two ancient literary references that have been in the forefront of my mind in recent days. The first is from the Bible, the second is from the comic theater of Athens.

In Genesis 25:29-33, a moving scene occurs between Esau and Jacob, the sons of Isaac. Esau sells his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of pottage (a type of stew):

“And Jacob cooked pottage, and Esau came from the field, and he was faint, and Esau said to Jacob, Give me to swallow, I pray thee, of that red pottage, for I am faint…And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am going to die, and what benefit is this birthright to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day, and he swore to him; and he sold his birthright…”

The American people possess an impressive birthright: Living in a land of liberty, with all that is necessary to pursue their dreams. All the accoutrements are available: natural resources, a beautiful landscape, vast spaces, a noble history, brain power, and a deep tradition of opportunity.

But we have sold our birthright for the slick visage of Barack Hussein Obama, our latter-day bowl of pottage. The moaning, self-proclaimed victims have thrown away their heritage. What good is it? they ask. “Behold, I am going to die," so just feed me and clothe me, and let me forget the rest.

The second reference from the ancient world is The Frogs, a comedy by the great Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c. 450 – 388 BC). The play was written in 405 BC, as the Athenian empire stood on the brink of destruction. Dissension was rife in the city, and defeat at the hands of the Spartans was nigh (it occurred in 404).

The plot is simple. Dionysus, patron of the drama, descends into Hades (the underworld) to find the greatest Greek playwright. The intent is to bring the champion back to the land of the living, to Athens, where he might be able to rescue the city’s decomposing culture.

The selection process for best playwright boils down to a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in which each attempts to demonstrate that he is the greatest practitioner of the art of tragedy. Dionysus acts as moderator of the debate.

Aeschylus (525 – 456 BC) represents the old world, with its fine manners, its gymnastics, its piety, and its honor. Euripides (484 – 406 BC), by contrast, is presented as the poet of decadence, sophistry, and philosophical relativism.

Euripides accuses Aeschylus of using highfalutin language, of ignoring romantic love, and of being an elitist divorced from the taste and temperament of the people.

Aeschylus, for his part, accuses Euripides of contributing in no small measure to the downfall of the city:

“You have taught boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted themselves to outrage, in order that they might learn to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers…Of what crimes is [Euripides] not the author? Has he not shown us procurers, women who get delivered in the temples, have traffic with their brothers, and say that life is not life? ‘Tis thanks to him that our city if full of scribes and buffoons, veritable apes, whose grimaces are incessantly deceiving the people…”

Then there is the following exchange between Dionysus and Euripides, almost creepy in its applicability to our current predicament:

DIONYSUS: And you, Euripides, prove yourself [fit] to sprinkle incense on the brazier.

EURIPIDES: Thanks, but I sacrifice to other gods.

DIONYSUS: To private gods of your own, which you have made after your own image?

EURIPIDES: Why, certainly!

DIONYSUS: Well then, invoke your gods.

EURIPIDES: Oh! Ether, on which I feed, oh! Thou Volubility of Speech, oh! Craftiness, oh! Subtle Scent! Enable me to crush the arguments of my opponents.

We learn that Aeschylus used only heroes and god-like figures in his plays, whereas Euripides invented every sort of vulgar character imaginable. Euripides explains that his intent was to “please the people." Moreover, he says,

“I introduced our private life upon the stage, our common habits…I did not burst out into big noisy words to prevent their comprehension; nor did I terrify the audience by showing them Cycni and Memnons on chariots harnessed with steeds and jingling bells. Look at his disciples and look at mine. His are…all a-bristle with long beards, spears and trumpets, and grinning with sardonic and ferocious laughter, while my disciples are [the effeminate and loquacious] Clitophon and the graceful Theramenes.”

Euripides democratized the theater. He catered to the popular desire to portray the vulgar, the seedy side of life. Often, his characters were beggars dressed in rags. Theater was now for everyone, and about everyone.

It is tempting to speculate: How similar was the situation in the Athens of 405 BC, the year The Frogs was written, to the America of today? Could one not easily think of a contemporary Euripides, some best-selling author or popular screenwriter, succeeding handsomely here in our dumbed-down victimocracy, with its effeminate and sophistic king, crowned by the rampaging mob?

Which great cultural figure would Dionysus bring back to help save us? We cry out for our Aeschylus—who would it be?

​[Quotes from The Frogs taken from Aristophanes, the Eleven Comedies, vol. 2, Immortal Classics republication of the 1912 London Athenian Society edition, pp. 227, 245-46, 235, 239-40.]]]>Wed, 02 Apr 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/memorable-quotes-no-13“The greatest unmet medical need in the world is the care of the Covid mRNA vaccine injured. Period. Full Stop.”

​—Dr. Pierre Kory
]]>Mon, 31 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/progressing-into-the-abyssWhy are Leftists so obsessed with the continual march of “progress”? Where does this notion originate? These are important questions because this worldview prevents its adherents from dealing with reality, keeping them forever locked in a fantasy world.

The intellectual malediction of seeing history as a linear progression from bad to good has afflicted Western thought for centuries. But it is necessary if one is to engage in constant disruption of society, which is the cornerstone of Progressive behavior. If we are always moving from worse to better, then radical “change” comes with a built-in justification, regardless of its advisability.

The realist, by contrast, scours the past for both good and bad decisions, policies, and thought patterns. History provides a virtually endless laboratory, whose examples, both philosophical and practical, we can evaluate and apply to our own lives. The future is the arena for the application of lessons learned. It holds no intrinsic quality; the future societal landscape could be good, bad, or indifferent. We won’t know until we get there.

This more sober view has been the norm throughout most of European history, up until the Enlightenment. Non-Western cultures, for their part, have never adopted the idea of linear progress. With the exception of the post-Enlightenment West, the world’s various intellectual traditions have most often viewed history as fitting into one of three templates: cyclical; continual decline; or anarchic/indeterminate.

The Hindu tradition is a clear example of the cyclical view. Ancient Greek mythology tended to see the unfolding of history as a steady decline, with the world of the gods taking a step down to a society with demigods, and from there a further descent to a fully human world. Hesiod described the full process of deterioration (though with some interruption) in his Five Ages of Man, starting with the Golden and ending with the Iron. In the Jewish tradition, there is the concept of yeridat ha-dorot, the decline of the generations, with each one being inferior to the one before it.

Seeing the “arc of history” trending downward rather than upward also dovetails nicely with veneration of ancestors. Our predecessors were superior to us—so goes the default case—so it behooves us to admire them and treat them with respect.

Nietzsche gives us the anarchic/indeterminate view:

“Let us not be deceived! Time marches forward; we’d like to believe that everything in it marches forward, that the development is also one that moves forward. The most level-headed are led astray by this illusion … ‘Mankind’ does not advance; it does not even exist. The overall aspect is that of a tremendous experimental laboratory in which a few successes are scored, scattered throughout all ages, while there are untold failures, and all order, logic, union, and obligingness are lacking.”

These worldviews are clearly much closer to reality, as we can see when observing the broad sweep of history. Civilizations rise and fall; tremendous accomplishments are often closely followed by sensational collapse (end of the Bronze age, Rome, contemporary America). And sometimes, as in ancient Egypt, thousands of years pass with seemingly little change.

But then came the Enlightenment, which despite its veneer of scientific approach, ignored all logic and historical evidence when it promoted the idea of continual progress. The notion was expanded and buttressed over time; for example, the view of some Darwinians that evolution implies constant positive development. Just think of the famous graphic representation of man’s progress from hunched-over ape to upright modern human.

In contemporary Western society, the idea of linear progress shackles us with a conceptual framework that is myopic and delusional. We are intellectually handicapped, and I doubt whether anyone is completely free of the bias. The past is scorned, whereas the future becomes a glorious bed of roses, with utopia just around the corner if we could all simply embrace Progress. Remember “Hope and Change”?

​This could be one reason for various outbursts of insanity, such as Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is now morphing into the Elon Musk version. How can a former hero of the Left, champion of the holy electric car, be the subject of such animosity, merely for exposing waste and fraud? Naturally, there are many causes, not least of which is the derailment of the government/NGO gravy train. But I believe that part of the story is the challenge to Progress represented by DOGE. Rolling back any Leftist program, even if it is based on obvious fraud, opens the door for a potential return to the dreaded past. And this can never be allowed to happen.]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/judging-the-judgesWe have discussed in several posts one of the major challenges facing America at this late stage of its cultural meltdown: the seizure of power by rogue judges. This threatens to derail many of the reforms instituted by the Trump Administration, and to further tighten the stranglehold of the Left on our collective throat. The question I ask today: From what ideological septic tank percolates this audacious assault on the political system?

To begin with, let us note that this is nothing new, though admittedly the current surge is rather extreme. Degradation of judicial practice in the United States has a long and storied history. It received notoriety during the tenure of the Warren Court (1953-1969), i.e. the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. That period overlapped the Civil Rights Era, and the Court (along with the rest of the federal judiciary) did its utmost to stretch the Bill of Rights to a degree that would have made the Founding Fathers spin in their graves.

Earlier instances of creative interpretation still bore some relation, however shaky, to the actual wording of the Constitution. But in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court gave itself the authority to extract from the Constitution whatever principles they desired. In the words of Justice William O. Douglas, “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” Penumbras and emanations, got it. Translation: We can invent any legal principle we want.

The actual text of the Constitution became irrelevant; the door was opened to Leftist bullying under cover of supposed constitutional law. This brazen attack on the foundations of the American republic paved the way for the eventual complete disregard, by Leftist judges, of due process of law; nay, of the entire Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.

Our current judicial insurrection is an outgrowth of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ seemingly inexorable march toward totalitarianism; more specifically, the expansion of the modern administrative state to monstrous proportions. This springs from a compulsion to control human behavior by means of central planning. If it can be achieved in the realms of health, economics, education, etc., then why not the political machinery itself? It is up to us, says the federal bench, to ensure that the federal government (and state and local, for that matter) dutifully obey the maxims of the Progressive canon.

In this view of the world, everything is justiciable. There can be no sphere of life that remains outside the purview of the black-robed priesthood. Whether it be the laws passed by the legislature, the executive functions of the president, or the way a man interacts with a woman, they consider it their proper role to intervene, at any time and for any reason.

​A natural result of this infinite justiciability and destruction of the rule of law is the proliferation of lawyers, courts, and lawsuits. The legal system has become the arena for the settling of every imaginable type of dispute or moral controversy, across nearly all tiers of society. Normal human life, under these conditions, is gradually asphyxiated.

To my knowledge, no individual or institution has ever slowed the progress of this bulldozer. And here we are.]]>Wed, 26 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/memorable-quotes-no-12"People are sometimes confused about the apparent contradictions in that wider world: What do, say, open borders have to do with the trannification of the school system? Well, it's not difficult. What they have in common, throughout the West, is chaos: you get on the bus and a 'migrant' stabs you; you send your little girl off to school and she comes back a little boy; your boy gets picked for the rugby team and drops dead on the pitch; you could really use a break, but the airport is closed.

The easiest way to figure out the purpose of public policy is to look at the universal outcome: the abolition of even the possibility of normal life."

— Mark Steyn

]]>Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/the-ideological-face-of-chaosThere are three maxims, or "laws" of politics attributed to the British historian Robert Conquest. One of them is,

Any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing.

We see it occurring time and again. Why is this so?

The default state of mankind is entropy, decay, and chaos. If there is no force to guide society into a beneficial mold, and to maintain the required level of energy, then entropy takes over. Leftism is the ideological face of chaos; it provides the justification, putting lipstick on the pig.

It is futile to search for logic or consistency in any substantive Leftist program. Their “platform” is merely whatever coat of paint is needed at that particular moment to enable the entropy to flourish. For example, when the working class can be used as a catalyst for chaos, it is seen as good; when the working class is an impetus to stability, it is condemned.

One might be tempted to believe that the Left is clever and quick on its feet. They always seem to have us reeling from their attacks, like a boxer on the ropes. After we expend huge amounts of time and money to neutralize one of their insane campaigns, there is no time to catch our breath before multiple new salvos are launched. Are they really that clever?

I don’t think so. The apparent cleverness is largely an optical illusion, because the Left always starts from an advantageous position. It is easier to be glib when you have the wind at your back. Society’s ingrained entropic tendencies provide a permanent fertile ground for the rapid growth of Leftism’s core characteristics: envy, parasitism, manipulation, projection, and decadence.

This is analagous to the advantageous position of the petulant child vis-à-vis his parents and other adults. The parent invests an enormous amount of time and energy to turn the little savage into a respectable member of society, whereas the child can destroy the work of years by committing any number of simple acts that are fully within his power, and that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

To be “right-wing” means to resist the torrent of entropy, the tantrums of the misbehaving child. It is the task of building and maintaining civilization, which requires that common sense and tradition be respected, and that high culture prevail. Otherwise, society cannot suppress the ideologies that correspond to envy, manipulation, parasitism, etc. Wherever high culture retreats, even to the slightest degree, Leftism automatically flows into the space, like a gaseous substance filling a vacuum.

​And thus, “any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing.”]]>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/some-personal-testimony-for-dogeAs more reports of waste, fraud, and abuse emerge from Elon Musk’s DOGE undertaking, I thought it would be an opportune time to offer some of my own personal experience in the matter.

After returning to the U.S. in 2006 from an extended stay abroad, I worked for a major defense contractor, and then a defense-related research institute of the Federal government. In both of these environments, waste, fraud, and abuse were in full swing.

Let us start with the simplest aspect: basic incompetence. It was everywhere. Most of the people, from top to bottom, had no idea what they were doing. The majority of jobs were pure make-work. This was exacerbated by an inefficient, heavily bureaucratized organizational structure that suppressed any possible outbreaks of intelligence and creativity. Naturally, this state of affairs produced outcomes that were inexcusable, even by the low standards of FedGov. The problem was addressed by importing an endless stream of “experts,” many of whom were outside consultants living off fat contracts, providing zero value. They usually just added a new layer of procedure, clogging the system to an even greater extent.

Speaking of systems, it seemed as though everybody and their grandmother was a “systems engineer.” In most cases, this turned out to be a pseudo-qualification, a special favorite of women and minorities. It was a way to identify as an “engineer” without knowing how to do engineering. They were very good at PowerPoint slides and Excel spreadsheets, which were excellent tools for “streamlining” (adding more bloat).

Then there was the diversity grift. Its influence could be felt in every nook and cranny. Again, “experts” floating around. Incompetent minorities coddled and promoted. Constant drumbeating, seminars, emails, and thinly-veiled threats. At one “workshop,” after hearing about an hour’s worth of preaching from poster-children of the oppressed, myself and three hundred or so other attendees split up into little working groups. We were tasked with “brainstorming” ways to be more sensitive to the needs of the unqualified delicate little flowers injected into the ranks by the DEI tyrants.

When it was my turn to pour forth the result of my brainstorm, I asserted that diversity is a racist, un-American institution, a violation of civil rights, and should be abolished. Later that day, one member of my little group, a feminized, twenty-something NPC type, ratted on me to the authorities. I was warned by management in no uncertain terms that if there was ever another similar outburst of heresy on my part, I would be shown the door.

The amount of money wasted was off the charts. The budget back then at the FedGov research institute was around three billion dollars per annum; now it must be at least five. There may have been some real benefit to national defense hiding somewhere in that pile of manure, but I never encountered it.

Some of the issues were not caused by the organization itself, but rather inherited from the broken society as a whole. Some of the old-timers were bravely hanging on, trying to stem the tide of idiocy and wokeness from the younger cohort. But it is a losing battle when your recruits are graduates of the American educational system, particularly the “elite” “institutions” of “higher” “learning.”

The last straw for me was the response to the Scamdemic. As you can imagine, both management and employees were engaged in a frantic effort to outdo each other in worshiping the golden calf. Even DEI had to take a temporary back seat to the Chicken Littles proclaiming every five minutes the arrival of epidemiological Armageddon. I resigned my post at the moment when I expected a SWAT team any minute to bang down my door and force the poison needle into my arm.

​My only criticism of DOGE is that it doesn’t go far enough.]]>Wed, 19 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMThttp://awolcivilization.net/blog/memorable-quotes-no-11"When I was on the other side of the wall, I never really liked the term 'fake news'. Now that I am on the inside, and I can see what they’re reporting, I think the term 'fake news' probably isn’t strong enough."

— U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent]]>