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One of the most disconcerting signs of our society’s decay has been the proliferation of tattoos. And it only seems to be getting worse.
I grew up in the America and England of the 1960s and 70s. The only “ink” I recall seeing at that time was on veterans of the navy (typically a relatively small image of an anchor or mermaid), and survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. That was it. Never a conspicuously visible, multicolored, “artistic” design. To imagine such a thing being common, and on women no less, would have been to enter the realm of science fiction. For thousands of years, tattoos have been the mark of the slave, the criminal, and the pirate. In short, the dregs of society. This is reflected in the Bible, which in Leviticus 19:28 states, “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.” The prohibition is presented in the context of warnings against prostituting one’s daughter, wizardry, mediums, sacrifices to Moloch, and other sickly, idolatrous, and barbaric customs. To permanently engrave one’s body with ink is to spit in the face of God and man alike. In the current era, one peculiar aspect of the phenomenon is its appearance across the socioeconomic spectrum. If it were limited to the lowest classes, we might consider it to be a strictly vulgar pursuit, to appear street-tough and repellant. But when a young lady at Princeton, from an upper-class family involved in molding the cultural, political, and economic shape of the nation, thinks that inscribing on her body the mark of the slave is “cool,” what are we to expect from our elites? Nothing good, for sure. It’s one more strike against our youth. They have become dumbed down, humorless, self-hating, and uncultured; we poison them with psychotropic drugs, mutilate their genitals, and ruin their health and adulterate their DNA (or simply murder them) with safe and effective injections. Are tattoos their cry for help, or rather their proudly-displayed badge of membership in a new race of botched, confused, and profoundly ugly subhumans?
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Among the many problems staring our society in the face is the imminent meltdown of the financial and monetary system. There are numerous facets: uncontrolled government spending and intervention; a looming sovereign debt crisis; the enormous, Byzantine derivatives complex; the insolvent banking system; the growing power of the BRICS countries; and on and on. Putting all the pieces together is a daunting task.
Standing ready to assist us in this labor are the great thinkers of the field. Among these must be counted the incomparable Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992). He is best known as one of the founding fathers of the Austrian school of economics, and the outspoken nemesis of John Maynard Keynes. Hayek demonstrates conclusively how Keynesian economics—that web of misconceptions and mythology in which the West is now trapped—is dysfunctional and guaranteed to fail. But Hayek goes far beyond this level of analysis. He goes deeper, burrowing into every rabbit hole of socialism and interventionism to expose the ideological and spiritual foundations of this perennial challenge, not merely to the financial and monetary system, but to civilization in its entirety. I am reprinting below a post that I wrote about him in 2007, on the original AWOL Civilization blog. * * * The Extended Order of Human Cooperation No blog on the deterioration of Western culture would be complete without a tribute to Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), the great Austrian-born economist and philosopher. When one considers the breadth of his work and the acuity of his analysis, he may very well be the preeminent sociopolitical thinker of the 20th century. No one has been such an outspoken advocate for liberty, or such a devastating foe of all forms of socialism—what Hayek often calls "collectivism." In The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952), he deconstructs the illusions of the early socialist thinkers, notably the false doctrine of “scientism," the misapplication of scientific methodology to social phenomena, particularly history. History, Hayek explains, is not a real thing, subject to the methods of the natural sciences. If we are to undertake a study of zebras, we need not hesitate to employ these methods. We see before us a type of animal that is clearly distinguished from other species. There can be little doubt that a zebra is a zebra. Our subjects behave in accordance with the characteristics of their kind. They cannot change themselves, and there is no emotional or intellectual bond between researcher and subject. All this is completely different when it comes to human history. Our subjects do not behave in a predictable fashion, and they can remake themselves. There are many bonds (and enmity) between researcher and subject. But most importantly, the creation of history is itself a subjective act. The actors are implementing what they believe to be “their" history of the moment; moreover, each individual has a different perception of his own behavior, his neighbor’s behavior, and indeed everything else occurring in the world. To say that this phenomenon is subject to laws in the same sense as natural laws is a serious error. In The Road to Serfdom, written during World War II, Hayek demonstrates that Communism and Nazism are two sides of the same collectivist coin. He traces the careers of the National Socialist (Nazi) leadership, showing that they were socialist in every sense of the word. In fact, many were prominent “left-wing" socialists or communists who embraced the swastika as Hitler rose to power. Hayek thereby dismisses the influential myth that the Nazis were some sort of ultra-conservative movement. In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), perhaps his magnum opus, Hayek lays out a philosophical blueprint for a 20th-century society based on liberty. This book is the modern heir to the ideas of Locke and Adam Smith. The Fatal Conceit (1988) is a general critique of socialism, in which Hayek shows that “rational" planning is doomed to failure. The very first paragraph sums up much of his thinking: “This book argues that civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism. To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread…” When I read Hayek, I am always struck by his vast command of history, culture, philosophy, and economics, as well as by his matter-of-fact tone. His attitude is distinctly non-ideological; he is never the advocate of a party or “program.” Hayek warned us about flirtation with the wily seductress that is collectivism. Will we take heed? [I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!]
"Aesthetic interest does not stem from our passing desires: it reveals what we are and what we value. Taste, like style, is the man himself." — Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, 1998 In my previous post, I wrote that Elon Musk should establish a movie studio that would produce alternative cinema, to challenge the longstanding dominance of the medium by the Left. The studio’s first film could be a sequel to the Jason Bourne series, this time with the CIA plotting a coup d’état against a conservative U.S. president.
Following are some further suggestions for movies that speak truth to power. Please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments. “The Butcher of Boulder” Liam Neeson once more plays his familiar role as the estranged father (or grandfather?) who must save his children from harm. In this incarnation of the role, he is a blue-collar guy living in Providence, Rhode Island. Life is fairly normal, until his wife becomes a lesbian, obtains a divorce, cleans him out financially, and is awarded custody of their only child, an eight year-old boy. She moves with the boy to Boulder, Colorado, and before long shacks up with another woman. After being denied visiting privileges, the father sells his last possessions to fund a move to a nearby town. After doing some undercover investigation, he discovers that the ex-wife and her girlfriend are about to bring the boy in for a sex-change operation. Liam must outwit the two women, the police, social workers, and the medical butchers, in order to save his son. The ensuing chase, involving multiple modes of transportation, ends in Uruguay, where Liam and the boy attain asylum. “The Broken Broker” Denzel Washington plays a stockbroker in Cleveland who is having a mid-life crisis. He decides to move to Portland, Oregon, to start a new life. Nearly every job interview in the new city results in a job offer, even when it is obvious that he is underqualified. In every case, the phony gushing over a black candidate is all too transparent. This makes Denzel feel humiliated and depressed. He buys a house, and sets up a home office for his own independent brokerage. When potential clients (both white and black) see him, most of them take their business elsewhere, assuming that he’s not really qualified. Denzel manages to eke out a living, and finds a supportive girlfriend. He becomes involved in the local Republican Party, concentrating his efforts on fighting DEI. After a number of spicy battles with political adversaries, Antifa burns down his house. He moves back to Cleveland with the girlfriend, and soon becomes the host of a right-wing radio program. “Jab Me Once, Jab Me Twice” In the darkest days of the scamdemic, a humble airline steward (played by Jared Leto) refuses to take the jab. He defies the airline, the FAA, and almost all of his friends and family. Everyone is amazed that such a mild-mannered man could confront the world in this manner. One day, just before boarding a plane, Jared is informed that he has been fired from his job. This will be his last flight. At thirty thousand feet, somewhere over Middle America, the pilot and co-pilot are gossiping about the steward, mocking him for being a “vaccine denier.” They share a good laugh. All of a sudden, the pilot has a heart attack and keels over. The co-pilot takes control of the aircraft, declares Mayday, and requests permission to land at the nearest suitable airport. But then he also has a heart attack, with terrible convulsions before his death. The stewardess screams; Jared rushes to the cockpit. He asks, over the PA system, whether there are any pilots on board. Silence from the cabin. Despite having no experience as a pilot, Jared rips off his Covid mask and begins to fly the plane. With guidance from air traffic control, the plane descends, in a nail-biting scene, to a bumpy but successful landing in a Nebraska wheat field. Jared becomes a national hero; his testimony before a Congressional committee leads to the cancellation of the killer jabs. “Seven Days in February” High officials in the Pentagon and State Department are attempting to start a nuclear war with Russia. They manage to pull off several minor but audacious attacks while planning the “big one,” a provocation so outrageous that the Russians will have no choice but to retaliate with everything they’ve got. The secret plans are discovered by a patriotic colonel, played by Matthew McConaughey. Being severely disabled from wounds suffered in Iraq, Matthew moves slowly, and is limited in what he can accomplish. On the verge of despair, he meets a young, intrepid female reporter, and together they blow the whistle on the whole affair. Nuclear war is averted. The Secretary of Defense and several other conspirators are imprisoned, and the President is impeached. There is great anticipation in the land, that the incoming Trump administration will set aright the capsizing ship of state. I examined this topic in my post of 12/9/24; now I would like to expand the discussion beyond the boundaries of the merely governmental.
There is a tendency among the forces of the Right to be fixated on the political realm, particularly the Executive branch of the Federal government, as the source of salvation. I have no doubt that this domain is quite important, but it does not have primacy. The Left understands this full well. They know that fundamental change, including in the political sphere, is the end result of cultural shifts. Remember the “long march through the institutions”? That was the Left’s gradual, patient, decades-long subversion of the culture. And it worked. Let us recall the domains in which the Left overthrew the existing structures, and ousted the last vestiges of sanity: criminal justice; primary/secondary education; art; movies; academia; medical; economy/finance; race relations; to name just a few. The Obama/Biden regime is the logical outcome of this process. It could hardly be otherwise. Can it now be overturned and expunged by a change of president and other high-level government personnel? I submit that it cannot. To be sure, many emergency fixes can be made. I do not wish to downplay their importance. I will be the first to applaud if, for example, all illegal aliens are deported from the country. This is essential to national survival. It is unrealistic, however, to expect that Trump and his associates are the people who can accomplish the required deep cleaning. They are liberals (in the classic sense) who have been “mugged by reality”; who are horrified at the excesses of the Left. They can apply the emergency fixes, but they are not equipped philosophically to lead us into the promised land. That work will remain to be accomplished by others. As a case study, consider Elon Musk. His support for Donald Trump, and his purchase and decensoring of Twitter, were laudable actions. But if he were a true cultural leader and visionary, he would go much further. He would confess that Tesla is a monstrous grift based on one of the biggest lies in the Left’s pantheon of big lies: the Global Warming/Green Energy myth. Musk would then convert the Tesla operation to the production of simple, $10K internal-combustion cars, sell the company, and use the funds to set up a movie studio that is bigger than all of Hollywood combined. The first film to be produced would be a Jason Bourne sequel, this time with the CIA plotting a coup d’état against a conservative U.S. president. Next step for Musk: Become the leading benefactor at the top five art museums in the country. Use that position of power to clean out the “contemporary” filth, replace curators and executives as necessary, and restore American art to its former elevated status. MAGA: Make Art Great Again. Now back to reality: Let us not live under the illusion that this monumental task can be delegated to one individual, namely Mr. Trump, and that’s that. The responsibility for cleaning out the rot has devolved upon each of us, every man in his respective domain. We must overcome, however, the propensity of our side to non-involvement in such affairs. Folks on the Right tend to be engaged in productive economic pursuits, as well as family, religion, and other “normal” activities. They are not, by nature, political animals. The Left has a huge advantage in this area, having armies of people whose religion is Wokeism, and who are willing to devote their lives to the cause. The Right builds, the Left tears down. An ancient template. When institutions are conquered by the Left, they become platforms to pillage and ruin what came before. Educational institutions become a tool to destroy education. Artistic institutions destroy art. And so on. Now it is time for us to do some destruction of our own—creative destruction, to return those institutions to their true roles. We need smart and preferably young people to attain key positions in education, the arts, and other areas in which opinions are formed and culture is determined. Ideally, the big guns like Musk could jump-start this process. When this is in place, we can speak truth to power, and solve the dilemmas plaguing our society. "The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all the facts established by biology and by history. Only fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely the effect of postnatal influences.
The presumption that civilization, progress, and improvement emanate from the operation of some mythical factors—in the Marxian philosophy, the material productive forces—shaping the minds of men in such a way that certain ideas are successively produced contemporaneously in them, is an absurd fable." —Ludwig Von Mises, Theory and History, 1957 Please indulge me for a moment; I need to get this off my chest. There are a few things about our everyday life that just annoy the hell out of me. Here is a list, in no particular order:
1. Sloppy/inappropriate dress. People, circulating in public, who look as if they just rolled out of bed. Colors and patterns in the most abhorrent taste. A grown man, in an upscale restaurant, wearing a football jersey and those ridiculous three-quarter-length shorts that make him look like a toddler. Women wearing tights that show every nook and cranny of their (usually) disgusting physique. Fat women with clothing that emphasizes their most unattractive characteristics. 2. Bodily mutilation. Tattoos, piercings, and Lord knows what else. I’ll be writing a separate post about this in the near future. 3. Dull faces. You know, that catatonic expression. Many years in the making; now exacerbated by (a) the scamdemic, with its extended isolation, and vax-induced brain fog; and (b) social interaction taking place increasingly on line. 4. Uptalk. Enunciating a statement as if it were a question; constant rising intonation. Especially annoying on men. Makes them sound like little girls. 5. Substitutions for “you’re welcome.” These include “of course” and “no problem.” The other day, in a shop, a young lady (with all kinds of metal protruding from her face) was helpful, and I thanked her. The response: “Of course,” said with a look of feigned surprise, and a little artificial giggle. 6. No sense of humor. In the Before Times, one could usually engage in mildly amusing banter with random strangers. This has become increasingly difficult. 7. Constant fussing with phones. Two people sitting together in a restaurant, each absorbed in his phone. Sitting with someone who shows you a photo of every object that comes up in conversation, or feels compelled to “google” every topic right there on the spot. Related to this: the annoying assumption that everybody and their grandmother has a smart phone, texts, scans, etc. etc. “Just scan your blah-blah code into the reader.” When I inform them that I don’t even have a phone, I get the catatonic look. Thank heavens I grew up without cell phones and computers. 8. After paying in cash, cashier struggles to make change. Here is yet another result of the online/electronic lifestyle, not to mention substandard education. The computer (in whatever form) does all necessary calculations. Even worse: you approach the cashier with your bag of dog food, or whatever. “Can I get a phone number?” or “Are you a discount-club member?” Good grief. Can I just pay for the goddamn dog food? 9. Awful customer service. Or lack thereof. On the phone, the ubiquitous Filipina. Endless automated prompts that lead you around in a circle. 10. Terrible quality. Nothing seems to work quite right. As commenter Mary Contrary over at Samizdata put it, “the general enshittification of everything.” 11. Loud and obnoxious music. I go to the supermarket at seven in the morning to beat the crowds, and they have some demented rap music blasting from the loudspeakers. 12. Left-turn scofflaws. I’m waiting at a red light. It turns green, but I have to wait for a succession of cars in the oncoming left-turn lane, who are all turning left despite their signal being red. Often I see a convoy of up to four cars running the red light, one after the other. Please feel free to share your own pet peeves. One of the most ghastly sights in America’s current societal breakdown is the throng of bungled humanity that adorns our urban landscape. This multitude is known as the “homeless.”
Is there a way out of this frustrating situation? Yes there is, but the first step must be to correctly name the problem and its component parts. As in so many other cases, the Left uses terminology that obscures the true nature of the issue. The word homeless itself is the chief culprit. Anyone who cares to walk the streets of almost any American city can plainly see that the “homeless” are an army of drug addicts, mental patients, petty criminals, and illegal aliens. If we can’t call them what they are, how can we begin to address the problem? As it stands now, with the Left in charge of the rhetoric, we are unable to formulate (sometimes even in our own minds) a coherent alternative narrative. In the Before Times, when America was a functioning country, very little of this existed. Common sense provided the necessary tools: Vagrancy and panhandling laws were enforced; illegals were deported (or prevented from ever crossing the border); criminals were imprisoned; and the mentally ill and drug addicts were hospitalized or placed in some other institutional framework, far from the nation’s sidewalks. Another obstacle to clear thinking on this matter is the very notion of mental illness. The Left has been adept at blurring this concept to the point of total confusion. They convinced everyone, back in the 1960s and 70s, that institutionalization was cruel and unnecessary. If someone is misbehaving, he just needs therapy. We’re all a little crazy, right? Who hasn’t had an episode or two over the course of a lifetime? With this muddled thinking, it’s no wonder the state psychiatric hospitals were shut down, and the patients released. Similarly, most criminals, even those with an established pattern of recidivism, are now usually arrested and then dumped back onto the streets. Today, those streets are overrun with masses of zombie-like creatures. Our public spaces are being destroyed. What kind of a society puts these desperate and dangerous people where they can threaten the safety of everyone else? The answer is, a society run by nutcases—of a different variety. I am reprinting below a post I wrote, on the original AWOL Civilization blog (October 2007), that examines some of the ideological underpinnings of this issue. * * * Burglary in Progress In “progressive” circles, ordinary crime is viewed not as a real hazard that must be confronted in the same manner as other clear and present dangers, but as a type of socio-political dysfunction. A burglar, for example, is not seen as breaking into someone’s home and endangering life and property, but rather as displaying behavior that is caused by a flaw in the structure of society: unequal distribution of wealth, insufficient education, racism, etc. According to this view, the primary danger involved is to the criminal, who is liable to be mistreated by a “system” whose raison d’être is to oppress the supposed class to which the criminal belongs. After the Second World War, but particularly after 1960, this type of thinking became virtually unchallenged among the ranks of the caretaker class: social workers, public defenders, activists of one stripe or another, therapists, etc. At its core a neo-Marxist ideology, it began to exhibit new forms derived from post-modern psychology, typified by the work of the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, author of The Myth of Mental Illness (1961). Szasz’s work is multifaceted, but what is relevant here is that he relativized deviancy. This paved the way for the claim that mental illness is a social construct based on power relations. In other words, whoever is dominant in society determines who, and what behavior, is deviant. Under a capitalist system, so goes the argument, the oppressed classes are labeled deviant whereas the upper classes, who cause all the mayhem, are labeled normal. Szasz’s theories, incidentally, helped pave the way for the release of numerous psychiatric inmates onto the streets—after all, mental illness is a myth—transforming them overnight into legions of “homeless” people. The influence of Szaszian behavioral relativism has been immense. The perpetrator/victim relationship has been stood on its head. The victim is now the burglar, while the hapless homeowner, as a representative of the social class who makes the rules, becomes the perpetrator of imagined systemic crimes against the burglar and his brethren. In this world of “progress,” it is the criminal who must be protected. This is closely related to the drive to advance the interests of deviants of all varieties. In any situation where a deviant causes damage and endangers the ordinary citizen, the Left steps in to shield the deviant and place the blame on society. Meanwhile, the deviant behavior is explained away or even elevated; for example, museums displaying graffiti as art. One is reminded here of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memorable phrase, “defining deviancy down.” From the point of view of the Left, violent anti-social behavior advances their cause. It demoralizes the majority, riddles people with guilt, employs hordes of caretakers and professional hand-wringers, and in general serves as a tool for blackmailing the West and delegitimizing its culture. When and if the totalitarian Left achieves unchallenged dominance in the West, perhaps we shall see Soviet-style cleansing of common criminals. Then they can say, “see, it was all due to capitalism.” "Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us."
--Descartes "Being that reason belongs to everyone but good judgment to only a few, man is prone to every kind of illusion." --Schopenhauer Since November 5th, the blogosphere has been abuzz with the question, can President Trump and his associates prevent the Titanic from sinking? Like everyone else, I felt a rush of excitement and optimism after the election. For various reasons, however, my optimism has been tempered (though not eliminated). To sum it up: I’ll believe it when I see it.
Western civilization is in free fall. There are vast forces at work, larger than life, possibly biblical in scope. This means that the task of saving the West is nothing short of monumental. Many on our side, “conservatives” for lack of a better term, live in a fairyland where America is a constitutional republic, essentially resembling the framework of 1950, but with a few harsh problems that need to be addressed. They think that these problems can be solved within the legacy political structures and rules of procedure. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible. Conservatives believe that policy disputes can be resolved, as in 1950, through open debate and the marketplace of ideas. They fail to comprehend that the Left has declared war on us, and they pay no heed to such things. Thus we witness the pathetic spectacle of influential conservative websites filled with articles about such-and-such congressman or pundit verbally “destroying,” in a congressional hearing or media interview, some spokesman of the Deep State. As if this would cause the “destroyed” person to alter his behavior in the slightest. The conservative seems not to realize that talk, debate, articles, speeches, reasoning, logic, shame, integrity, etc. have no impact whatsoever on the other side. Will the Trump administration take the necessary steps to impose accountability and consequences on the criminals currently running the country? Will they merely be “fired,” or will they go to jail? This is a decisive test. If no one is sent to prison within, say, six months of the new administration, then we may declare “business as usual,” and watch as the Swamp rolls merrily along. Another test will be the ability to rein in the clown show going by the name of “judiciary.” For decades now, they have been legislating from the bench, striking down government policy at whim while inventing new legal principles that have no basis in law. What will Border Czar Tom Homan do when a federal judge decides he doesn't like a deportation order, and nullifies it? Will Mr. Homan still retain his pitbull persona and ignore the illegal nullification, or will he hold a press conference and vow to appeal, gee whiz by golly, “all the way to the Supreme Court”? A further test, this one in the realm of health policy, was suggested by the investment guru Edward Dowd. In an interview with Neil Oliver, they pondered the likelihood of the government being able to impose accountability and consequences on the perpetrators of the Covid crimes. Dowd’s test was that all mRNA-based “vaccines” be recalled from the market within six months of the new administration. If this happens, we have hope that consequences are on the way. If not, then we know it’s business as usual. [In the Dowd interview, fast forward to 44:04 for this topic. But I recommend watching the whole thing. You'll get to hear about Dowd's impressive statistical analysis of excess death and disability following the rollout of the jabs.] Ultimately, our fate will be decided by the current power struggle among competing factions of America’s “elites.” Donald Trump was able to win the election, adequately suppressing the voting shenanigans of the Democrats, by virtue of his backing by a disenchanted segment of the Establishment. The grass-roots MAGA crowd is insignificant compared to the elite faction that ensured the victory. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, their less visible peers, and even Trump himself, are old-style liberals who are horrified by the excesses of the Left. These are smart people; they know that America and the West are collapsing, in every domain. They believe that they can manage that collapse, and roll Leftist practise back to 1980 or so, the latest date at which the zeitgeist could reasonably be called “liberal,” in the classic sense of the word. To that I say: if only. But I fear that they, as well as the conservatives, underestimate the odious nature of the Deep State, and its utter lack of restraint. By contrast, the habitual restraint of the American “right wing” is, and will continue to be, interpreted as weakness to be exploited. If Trump & Co. succeed—patching the hull of the Titanic and towing her to port—we may be fortunate enough to see a tolerably livable country. But to truly save the West, and ignite any kind of renaissance, the entire rotten edifice of collectivist ideology must be discredited. This means uprooting its most fundamental myths, first and foremost equality. |
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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