“Solid Snake: So, the Genome Soldiers mean that the experiments were a success?
Liquid Snake: SUCCESS? Don’t be a fool! They’re a complete failure! We are on the verge of extinction.
SS: What?
LS: Have you ever heard of the Asymmetry Theory?
SS: ?
LS: Nature tends to favor asymmetry. Those species which have gone extinct all show signs of symmetry. The Genome Soldiers suffer from the same problem…signs of symmetry. So do I, as do you.
SS: !!
LS: That’s right. We are all on the verge of death at the genetic level. We don’t know when or what type of disease will occur…”
From Metal Gear Solid
I’ve always preferred to listen to news/talk radio when I’m in the car. Music radio is a waste, re-playing the same five songs over and over again. NPR is faux-intellectual drivel for SWPLs who want their friends to think they’re cultured and smart. And I never really cared for sports. There’s nothing like a good screaming rant from some middle-aged white guy to keep you awake during those long drives.
Anyway, I was tuned into a distant New York station a few days ago when the local news came on. The top story was about how Governor Cuomo was going to launch his own advertising campaign to sell his plan of downsizing state government directly to the public, bypassing the public unions entirely. A Democrat making fiscal austerity the central focus of his time in office – who’d have thought we’d see the day?
Wanna know who the majority of public sector workers in the Empire State supported for governor last year? You’ve got three guesses, and the first two don’t count. My then-co-workers were ebullient the day after the election. A particularly loathsome forty-something woman who worked across the way from me, an overweight fatass who loved to brag to her girlfriends about how she was dating two men at the same time (neither knowing of each other’s existence, of course), snidely referred to Carl Paladino as a “homophobic fascist.” I told her that Cuomo would ensure that we’d all be out of a job in four years, especially since the Republicans had all but retaken the State Senate. She thought her seniority and PEF would protect her, as it had under Pataki, Spitzer and Paterson.
Given the choice between two candidates who would both fuck them in the ass, the tax-sucking makework parasites of New York went with the “lesser of two evils.” They didn’t sit out the election, they didn’t vote for a third-party candidate – they voted for their own anal violation. And now that Sonny Cuomo is whipping out his dick and telling his loyal constituents to grease up, what is their response?
I shit you not. These losers think a seasoned political narcissist is going to be dissuaded by something sappy liberals use to mourn gay bashing victims.
For all their bravado and chest-thumping, Americans are the most cowardly chickenshits in the Western world, far more gutless than the “Eurotrash” they love to mock. You suckers mocked the French as “surrender monkeys” and had a good laugh with your “Freedom Fries” jokes, but the average Frenchman has more courage in his pinky then an entire Tea Party rally has in their whole bodies. Why? He’s passionate about what matters. When public sector workers and university students in Europe have their livelihoods threatened by government spending cuts, they get angry. They hit the streets, they protest, they block traffic, they set cars on fire, they attack police. Their governments fear them because they don’t respond to threats to their lifestyles by vegging out in the soft glow of the flat-screen watching fucking Glee. Even if you think they’re a bunch of worthless moochers, you have to admire their resolve.
You, Mr. Tea Party Patriot, you strut around with your hunting rifle pretending you’re John Fucking Wayne, you wear a powdered wig to rallies demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate, you think you’re manly because you “support” braver men than you going to kill foreigners for you in lands you can’t even point out on a map. But when the owner of the factory you worked at outsourced the whole shebang to China so he could buy a new yacht, you did NOTHING. After all, he owned the place – he can do what he wants. He EARNED his wealth! Now you’re out of work and McDonald’s and Walmart are the only places hiring, but Sean Hannity says you’re a Great American for supporting your own impoverishment, so it’s all good.
And you left-of-center public workers, you’re even worse. Your behavior towards the Democratic Party, your supposed benefactors, is like a battered wife towards her abusive husband. He comes home late at night, drunk and looking to stab a bitch. You beg him to be merciful, no please honey don’t hurt me, as he readies his hairy palm for a backhand across your cheek. POW! BAM! SMACK! Now you’ve got a pair of shiners and three of your teeth are lying on the floor. But it’s okay, because he starts crying afterwards, he says he’s sorry and he loves you, and he’ll never do it again. You have make-up sex in your bedroom, the power of your orgasms threatening to melt your brain.
You won’t get fooled again.
But you do. And you do and you do and you do. Until finally one day, you fall to the kitchen floor, your lifeblood oozing out of the slash in your throat. The slash he made with the broken Bud Light bottle. You stare at his hateful face, mouthing shock with the last of your strength. You were stupid, and now you’re dead.
God damn you all.
…
Last week, an article entitled “The Blindspot” made the rounds around the blogosphere. The author posited a radical thesis – that leftism is basically dead:
There are many myths within the political blogosphere, but none is so deeply troubling or so highly treasured by mainstream political bloggers than this: that the political blogosphere contains within it the whole range of respectable political opinion, and that once an issue has been thoroughly debated therein, it has had a full and fair hearing. The truth is that almost anything resembling an actual left wing has been systematically written out of the conversation within the political blogosphere, both intentionally and not, while those writing within it congratulate themselves for having answered all left-wing criticism.
The post lead me to my own equally radical realization – he’s right.
Before the usual suspects start spluttering, “ARE YOU NUTS OBAMMUNIST DEATH PANELS PALIN/BACHMANN 2012!!!”, let me qualify that statement. It is socialism specifically that is dead. All of the other various hobbyhorses of the left – gay rights, multiculturalism, feminism – they’re alive and kicking. But economic Marxism, the historic core of the Western left-wing, is as dead as Marx himself. The only people who take it seriously anymore are high-IQ cranks like Robert Lindsay and recalcitrant old hippies like Alexander Cockburn. Most so-called leftists and liberals spout a softer version of neoliberal capitalism, and even supposedly socialist states like Sweden are functionally capitalist, albeit with more robust welfare states.
There’s a reason for this – economic leftism was totally discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. The fruits of Marxism were laid bare for all the world to see, and what they saw was rampant shortages of basic goods, widespread poverty, and the Gulag Archipelago. From Poland to Cuba, Hungary to Cambodia, socialists and communists utterly failed in providing a decent standard of living or basic freedom to the people they ruled. I don’t care what phony statistics you dredge up claiming that Cubans have a marginally higher life expectancy than Americans, that still doesn’t change the fact that they live in squalor and backwardness. And Venezuela is only buoyed by the high price of oil – once that gravy train runs out, people will respond to the question “Who is Hugo Chavez?” with “Uh, wasn’t he that migrant worker guy?”
Leftism has been dead in the U.S. and the rest of the West ever since Nixon resigned. Jimmy Carter made no meaningful additions to the welfare state during his tenure, and Bill Clinton was a neoliberal triangulator who carried on Reagan’s legacy by championing welfare reform and helping deliver the single biggest kick to the American middle class’ balls ever -Â NAFTA. The Jackass Party abandoned any pretensions of being socialist or pro-worker when a Democratic Congress passed that bill and a Democratic president signed it into law. Aside from the healthcare bill, President Obama’s economic policies are identical to Bush’s, with bailouts for the wealthy and useless spending on the military and already extant social programs like Medicare. (And don’t you dare try to claim that Obamacare, fucked up as it is, is socialism. The government forcing you to buy a product from a private company is not socialism, it’s fascism. Socialism would be banning the private companies and forcing you to go to the government directly.)
Being an economic Marxist in 2010 is like being a Nazi in 1946. You lost. Get over it already.
…
But just because the left was wrong doesn’t make the right right. Fukuyama’s “End of History” merged the left and the right in America into offering different flavors of the same shit, neither of which serves Generation Zero’s interests.
Think about it – what divides LIEbrals and CONservatives, Democrats and Republicans? One side is pro-gay, pro-weed, and pro-choice, while the other is pro-God, pro-prohibition and pro-life. In other words, the only discernible differences between the two are on wedge issues that don’t matter. Who the fuck cares about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Who the fuck cares about Roe v. Wade? I’d love to live in a country where I can screw 15-year olds while dropping acid without getting tossed in the slammer, but I’m not stupid. I know what’s really important.
Right now, an entire generation is condemned to debt slavery because of crippling college loan debt, working menial jobs for pitiful wages, assuming they can GET a job in a nation with at least 20 percent unemployment. (Don’t believe the official government statistics. They’re lies. My first-hand experience suggests we are slowly reaching Great Depression levels of unemployment.) Those who don’t have that debt will never rise above asking “Paper or plastic?” for a living or sucking off the dole. The former group will marry and have children late in life, assuming they do at all, and the latter group will swell the ranks of the underclass with their careless breeding. Meanwhile, the Democrats and Republicans haven’t found a bankster they won’t bail out, or a stimulus package they won’t pass.
My grandfather was able to marry my grandmother at age 18 and support a family of three on a factory job that didn’t require so much as a high school degree. My father could support my stay-at-home mother, me and my two sisters making less than $35,000 / year in the Army possessing only a high school degree, a job he got in his twenties. It wasn’t until MY twenties that I could get a job anywhere that paid enough to allow me to live on my own, a job I basically lucked into. Even with the salary from my previous job, I couldn’t get married and have kids even if I wanted to, thanks to the tens of thousands of dollars worth of loans that were a prerequisite to GET the job to begin with. And consider that I’m one of the lucky ones. Many of my friends are still stuck pumping gas and waiting tables, and a few can’t find work at all.
Generation Zero is the first generation in eons that will have a lower standard of living then the generation preceding them.
Some of you are going to respond to this along the lines of, “Stop whining you crybaby, your life is pretty good, you aren’t entitled to anything.” Unfortunately, you’ve forgotten that the U.S. economy is dependent on each generation being wealthier and more “entitled” than the last. Think about it – who’s going to fuel the engine of consumerism? Who’s going to buy all that stuff the Chinese are making? Who’s going to pay for your Social Security? Who’s going to make sure the beauty of the white Aryan woman does not perish from the earth?
By scamming your children for a few lousy bucks, you have effectively doomed your entire civilization.
…
Is it any wonder why young people don’t vote? There’s no one in politics who gives a crap about their interests! Neither Republicans nor Democrats, CONservatives nor LIEbrals are different on issues that matter. Mainstream LIEbertarians like Megan McArdle and Will Wilkinson are even bigger jokes, professional whores who’ve built their careers on wringing every last drop of cum out of the corporatists’ cocks. The Ludwig von Mises Institute crowd are no different – they’re the nerdy, pimply, four-eyed fat girl of the ideological world, mad because she didn’t get picked to be the banksters’ bottom bitch. The paleocons are a pathetic bunch of defeatists still whining about how they got screwed over by Bill Buckley two decades ago. The people who make the most sense to me nowadays are the soi-disant nihilists, whether they’re on the right (Vijay Prozak, Brett Stevens) or the left (Mark Ames, Matt Taibbi).
What’s the difference between a rapist who fucks you in the ass and runs off versus one who fucks you in the ass and cuddles you to sleep? Either way, you still have a bleeding asshole and a wad on your back.
Unbridled socialism doesn’t serve Generation Zero’s interests, but neither does unbridled capitalism. America has become a mirror image of the Soviet Union.
…
This is one of the ways that Generation Zero’s inaction will prove more effective than action. A critical mass of people, particularly young people, who cannot or will not participate in a system will cause it to collapse. This is what happened behind the Iron Curtain in the seventies and eighties, as eastern Europe’s own Generation Zero lost faith in their societies, grinding them to a halt. If the only choice is between a Turd Sandwich and a Giant Douche, fewer and fewer people will be stupid enough to play the game.
The future of the world will not be socialist, but it will not be capitalist either. We are on the verge of a great ideological shift that will upend our entire conception of the political spectrum. While I have described myself as a conservative in the past and I still sympathize with the alternative and reactionary right, my own beliefs have shifted far enough off the plantation that it doesn’t make any sense for me to wear the label anymore. From now on, I’ll consider each issue as it pertains to MY best interests. I’m not going to swallow a Turd Sandwich just so I can fit in with a certain club.
And if history is any guide, the most intelligent of Generation Zero will do the same.
To be continued…
…
Previous installments:
“The Rise of Generation Zero, Part 1: Everything You Know is Wrong” – 1/19/2011.
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Great summation of the inertia that’s basically liked the American political system. Why don’t Americans have the guts to vote for a third or fourth party candidate? Probably because Americans simplistically believe everything is like football — there is one winner and one loser.
Also, thanks for writing the sentence that has needed to be written for sometime now. Ross Perot warned about this:
“Bill Clinton was a neoliberal triangulator who carried on Reagan’s legacy by championing welfare reform and helping deliver the single biggest kick to the American middle class’ balls ever – NAFTA.”
Democrats and Republicans are the only parties that are allowed to have political participation. They are essentially the exact same thing in politics AND social issues despite the fact that the media (another arm of the government) spends billions and countless hours on TV and radio and in public schools (government indoctrination camps) to teach people that they are different and that a competition and struggle for ideology and ideas actually exists when it does not.
I want you guys to help me narrow down and discover what is the platform of the government party? What are their political beliefs?
I can sum it up with ONE LINE: ANTI-LIBERTY.
But to get specific…
Here’s what I think for starters:
The government party is:
1. Pro-abortion. Both parties fully support it. On this issue, the Republicans are the ones tasked to play the role of the “opposition” …but they never work against it. The only opposition since abortion began was symbolic and meaningless (post birth abortion ban) as it ignores the general issue. Really, abortion is nothing more than the facade of a greater eugenics belief the government holds. It’s their ideological battle with the people. If there’s no ideological backing and legal precedent for dehumanization and murder, then greater eugenics cannot be supported openly by the state.
2. Pro-Gun Control. Both parties seek to eliminate private firearm ownership. Like abortion, the Republicans are the ones tasked with role of “opposition” while really supporting it all the way. Like abortion, they’ve never, not once put up a single genuine opposition to gun control nor have they ever reversed any part of it ever. Not in D.C. not in anything.
3. Anti-worker’s rights. Both parties view you as a slave. Hence “human resources” …you are garbage and your life exists to serve them is how they see it. In this case, Democrats are tasked as playing the role of “anti corporate” or “pro working class” party. They ride the communist line on that. Democrats have never promoted not a single positive, productive or beneficial thing for workers in the history of the United States. Not once. Every policy, law or program has appeared to people on the surface to be an improvement or benefit, but has increased their slavery and lowered their wages and decreased the standard of living. Both parties are 100% corporate loving whores.
4. Sovereignty. The Republicans tend to play the role of nationalists a little bit more, but they’ve dropped that in recent decades. Both parties are globalist scumbags that recognize no borders. Only haves and have-nots. They don’t give a shit if you are Mexican an American or from Mars. You are filth. While nationalism is a bad thing for people as it is a tool of control – borders, laws and sovereignty is important as it defines legal limits which helps to defend ideology. When borders are erased, everyone falls under the same tyrannical doctrines.
5. War. Both parties are complete and total murderous warmongers. The Democrats try and play the role of the anti-war party, but they have never once in their history, nor will they ever truly back such a platform. They will never stop war, aggression, empire building. Just nonsense to win over hippies for election time. Both parties are owned by the same corporate scumbags who loot billions from the people to wage war causing death, destruction, suffering and sickness.
6. Welfare. The government backs welfare. Welfare is the key issue and the frontman issue of a greater dependency program of enslavement. Republicans have pretended to be anti-welfare, but they are not. They have never stopped it, ceased it, rolled it back or anything of the such. They’ve grown it themselves along with their Democrat cohorts.
7. Taxation. HA! Does this even need comment? Taxes only increase, and new taxes are always created. The Republicans play the role of the “tax cutter” while never cutting a single tax ever. It appears that way to the fools, but when you research it – you’re paying the same at the end. The Democrats play the roll of the “#$%^ the rich, tax them” which is also equally a myth. Doesn’t exist. Democrats fully support the rich because the rich own them like they own the Republicans. The rich do not pay more taxes under Democrats.
8. Drugs. Both parties are anti-drugs except for the ones they sell. Republicans are more hawkish on the drug war, but Democrats have done nothing to liberate drugs. The drug war is waged to destroy competition and increase the police-state.
9. Speaking of police-state. Both partied are 100% in favor of a totalitarian police state. Neither party ever promotes or passes any legislation that increases any kind of personal freedom. Both back more licensing, more restrictions on movement, more restrictions on speech, both scale back your rights when arrested or prosecuted….on and on. The ACLU is just like the NRA, while appearing to fight for rights, their “victories” are Orwellian exercises that do nothing more than actually legitimize and secure anti-liberty precedents and laws. They are the rubber stamp seal of approval on tyrannical laws.
10. Healthcare. Again, both parties back government and corporate-monopoly control over this industry. They both back taking away your medical freedoms, while increasing prices, decreasing options and decreasing quality. They both support nationalizing medicine. It’s already nationalized. The health insurance industry is nationalized in effect. The Democrats only want to give it it’s official title. Republicans do nothing to stop this and actually pass laws to assist this. Under Bush, there’s been more nationalization. Therefore, the government party is pro “universal healthcare” and there exists no other oppositional view in representation.
you should add a note thanking Christine O’Donnell for bringing you on the right path.
“America has become a mirror image of the Soviet Union.”
A comedy house mirror, to account for the fatness.
Neither socialism nor capitalism? That’s interesting. Do you have a theory that replaces it?
[No, though it will likely combine elements of both ideologies. The system that replaces capitalism will evolve organically. By the time we realize what has happened it will already be in place. - ed.]
Someone has to allocate capital, and to date only free markets and property rights have done that efficiently.
[Which explains why NAFTA made the average American so much richer!]
I’m sure you’re aware of the Malthusian trap, yes? Wherein population growth consumes all efficiency gains in the economy and living standards decline until subsistance is reached? We are staring that in the face, and it should be familiar because it was the standard state of the human race until England invented the Common Law. And only the Common Law (with protections of property rights) has ever lifted man out of the Malthusian Trap.
Just so we’re clear, I don’t support the “crony capitalism” of bailouts and tax breaks that Washington currenly serves up with each Congress. But I do support free markets. Truly free markets. It’s the version of capitalism where established players can’t get the government to force you to buy their products, and where start-up competitors don’t have the regulatory state stomping them down.
The corruption in Washington D.C. is disgusting, but if you advocate replacing the current system make sure that it doesn’t drop us back into a 10th Century lifestyle, eh?
[Capitalism and socialism create 10th century lifestyles. The future will be built by those not blinded by the theories of long dead men.]
Such insight! Never found in MSM, and rare enough on the internet.
Whatever the West becomes after final nail in the coffin is hammered home is anyone’s guess, and places like England, the United Nations etc are good indicators of encroaching intrusion in private lives, controlling speech and superficial expressions of identity.
Canada has, for as long as I remember, had a fixation on the Third World, falling over itself to appear guilty and generous. This was likely in the hope that when these cultures overtake us, they will show us some mercy – not likely however. They will be our masters and have ingrained resentment from an early age.
The liberals are starting to get this, the understanding that Utopia is a fantasy, that a perfect, safe society where Kumbaya is the song of the land only postpones the decline. I prefer a competitive, vibrant society where each “tribe” knows it is on its own and that the weak will, and should, fall by the wayside.
Drop your socks and grab your cocks, this party ain’t going to last forever. Idealism is not practical. Practicality says we can’t work with the consumer nightmare that is our modern economy and culture. The sexual market will mutate into some ugly form of tribalism.
It may happen after some of you are dead, but the last 100 years have been riding on the farts of banker barons. It was never going to last.
Ferd is correct, Fourmyle of Ceres. What we have is “Neither socialism nor capitalism?”, it’s fascism. Look up Mussolini’s definition of the system he created and then with a straight face argue that we don’t.
Further, describe “capital.” You allude that the allocation of one form of capital is determined by the legal sanctity of property rights and the utilization of free markets, but in truth we have neither. Even if you own you land and home or business property outright, don’t pay property taxes for three years and you will find out who truly owns that dirt – the State.
And of the other form of “capital?” The waving of a wand that creates what is believed to be “money” is where the real action is when it comes to “allocation”, and you aren’t in that “Club” and neither are the rest of us. Who exactly allocated that 600 trillion dollars tied up in “Derivatives?” Where did the 600 trillion dollars come from? Yeah, that “Trillion” in worthless gambling debts that the peons are going to have to cover (See Matt Taibbi’s extensive articles on what passes for “banking” and derivative trading.) or the ship goes down. Well, it’s going to go down because “allocation of capital” happened, and that so-called “capital” has worth only because someone who bought the law has the law behind them say’s it does.
“Allocation of capital.” Give me a break! You need to toss out your Econ 101 textbook because the same liars who paid to have that book written are the same bastards who are out “allocating capital” as described above. Like Cuba Gooding said, “Show me the money.” Find me the 600 trillion. Show me! It’s not there and never was. It’s imaginary, nothing but figures on paper in a big game played in a Wall Street casino with “protection” provided by the U.S. government, yet fools continue to believe it to be real.
The gig is up.
“You were stupid, and now you’re dead.
God damn you all.”
Slow clap
Economic leftism might be dead, but social leftism is still running full steam in Western society. See, Republicans are liberals too. They’re just one generation behind in their liberalism, but they are equally invested in destroying all the institutions upon which our society is based.
Conservatives and reactionaries might be correct in their ideas, but really there isn’t much to conserve anymore and there is too much to react against. Civilizational collapse is coming, and “Generation Zero” might be the one that gives the coup de grâce.
if you meant “left and right” in the title it should be “rechts” and not “recht”, since this means “law” or “right” (in the sense of correct) in german.
Maybe Cuomo remembers what happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger; the public employee unions totally destroyed his attempt at cutting spending with a year-long ad campaign that rivalled the car insurance companies for the amount of ad time they bought on TV. I guess the public employee unions do that in New York as well.
I think at one time the left thought cultural Marxism would assist economic Marxism, or the two were at least compatibe; then it turns out the workers found cultural Marxism repulsive, so they dumped the white working class as clients and took up gays, blacks and women. And for the left cultural Marxism is much more cool and fun anyway.
The system bases its legitimacy on providing some reasonable kind of prosperity for most people; it is forgiven all its other sins if it does that. I think the people who run things are hoping this is just a bad recession, and in a couple years things will have normalized enough to get back to normal. I don’t think this will happen, and things are going to get ugly, but I can’t say how or when.
The increasing admiration for China among our ruling class is disturbing. You expect this from shills like Thomas Friedman and James Fallows, but now Scott Adams is on the bandwagon. I think they see this as the new model-
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/freedom_of_data/
Ever hear any good screaming right-wing rants from some middle-aged white guy in the office you worked in in NY?
Jimmy Carter made no meaningful additions to the welfare state during his tenure? C’mon. The Mariel Boatlift did wonders for the Cubanization of Florida – and Jimmy C’s Amnesty for Illegals Phase One got the country rolling on the right mulit-culti Diversity Path. Just look at modern Los Angeles.
YOU may not be able to afford kids, but don’t worry: The welfare queen and parolee will make up the population difference from your reproduction slackage. So will Anchor Babies and Familia.
Your Gen Zero will do nothing about your predicament even though yours is the closest to the yawning chasm of doom. But it will likely end as the most despised generation – by your children who end up vegetable-picking slaves in 2050 for the coterie of Chinese Trillionaires who’ll use a post-collapse USA as farmland.
My good fortune – will be to be long dead
[Your pessimism amuses me. It's completely wrong, but it amuses me. - ed.]
Oh My God! He said the words! He said them! I guess that makes them true!
Do you remember something called the Civil War? It was fought between the North, pro-tariffs, and the South who was for free trade.
Every single history I have ever read says that the South, free traders, were massively industrially inferior to the North, which was very pro-tariff. So I guess being pro-tariff worked out swell for the North at that time.
So I guess the North had a “closed market”.
Almost every first world country in the world has free government run health care. They are almost all superior to American Health care, which isn’t free market actually.
So I guess that’s a “government run market” that works fine.
The Right acts much like a Turtle with “Property Rights” . If Property Rights benefit the non-rich, the Property Rights Rightist Turtles pull their head all the way into their shell and close it tight against the “bad people”. Zoning Laws and the tens of thousands of almost incomprehensible building codes “laws” are a gross violations of “Property Rights”, but they benefit the ruling class, so they are good. Victimless non-crimes like marijuana use or failing to buckle your seat-belt are a violation of more than mere property rights, they are a shackle around a persons OWNERSHIP OF HIMSELF. Again, the Property Rights Rightist Turtle can’t even see that, which should be pretty obvious as he has closed his shell so tightly he can’t see out of it.
Not to mention the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster. It was ironic to see all the Conservatives pull their little Property Rights heads and legs and tail all the way into their shell on that one. No blame for BP, no sir! Yes Mastah BP, you is dong your best’us Sir. They must have been running low on oxygen in their shell, because they even forgot about Responsibility.
On the other hand, when multiple companies form alliances and manipulate markets, then “Property Rights” are used as the end all and be all justification. When old car was hit about seven years ago it was barely drivable. I wanted to rent a U-Haul car trailer, drive it onto that and then take it to my apartment. No “sir”, I couldn’t do that, U-Haul has an agreement with the Tow Companies, and the Tow Companies get the in-city action of tows.
Likewise, Property Rights are the end all, and be all of Free Speech Elimination. The local mall has even banned “unaccompanied young’n who are under 18 from the mall during weekends. I am sure that will being some Property Rights Rightist Turtle out! He’ll stick his head all the way out and Bite!
“Well, I, being so gracious, will allow the young’n to play on their parents lawn. They should feel blessed, after all, I could have banned that to with a Subdivision Ordinance!”-The “Property Rights” Rightist turtle will say ever so wisely!
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t support the “crony capitalism†of bailouts and tax breaks that Washington currenly serves up with each Congress. But I do support free markets. Truly free markets.”
What is to prevent “truly free markets” from evolving into crony capitalism. What is to prevent the businesses that initially become the most lucrative under “truly free markets” using their wealth to leverage policy after becoming rich, thus converting the “truly free market” into crony capitalism? Nothing, of course. Crony capitalism is the logical end state of a “truly free market”. That’s not to say that a “truly free market” has ever actually existed or has ever been anything more than a libertarian, a priori constructed castle in the clouds, but even if you could create one, it would rapidly negate itself.
You’re a bunch of babbling, Ritalin Kidz ™ who can’t keep your attention focused on the important matters. Not even the topic.
No wonder Big Government easily enslaves you without fear of reprisal.
You do the Tea Party a dis-service. Because they are not shooting people in the streets (a recipe for failure, ask Tim McVeigh) you dismiss them. Instead, they are taking over the Republican Party, and making it into their own vessel.
[They have yet to accomplish anything real. If every greedy politician, CEO or moneychanger had to face down an angry mob of torch-wielding peasants, America would be a much better place. - ed.]
This is hugely significant — a bunch of middle aged, middle class mostly White voters taking over the Republican Party. Which is morphing, slowly but surely, into the Party of White Guys. Dems being the party of anti-White guys.
The productive White population is being depopulated. Mostly by abortion on demand, contraception, and the high cost of family formation along with unlimited female sexual freedom (chase Alphas until only one kid is possible). While higher fertility immigrants mostly Mexican threaten to overwhelm the nation (in both racial composition, and the dual of economic productivity/values-culture).
What the Tea Party is slowly grappling with, and creating a massive fight (you see the same phenomena in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Germany, even Sweden and France) with elites over is what American will become:
Either a Mexico-Norte style Banana Republic run by a few crony elites (either Castro or Noriega style) or a return to ethnic-based dominance with “space” (in defined limits) for non-Whites, non-straights, etc. to live with minimal intrusiveness but not outsized influence. This means essentially a return to the demographics of say, 1970, by kicking people out (because we’re running out of money) and a focus on economic productivity and international power.
Which are linked, as is culture. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell MATTERS. Because America like Britain before it depends on TRADE. Not “free trade” but certainly command of the Oceans (as an “Island Continent” America is like Britain, terribly vulnerable to the Ocean as a giant highway for any raider/invader, as 1812, and the Nazi submarine warfare 1940-44 off our Eastern Seaboard proved). Command of the Oceans and the ability to intervene in key areas has been a historical requirement for America to sell grain, lumber, finished goods, and what-not in exchange for things we don’t have a lot of: oil, chocolate, coffee, etc. America fought in North Africa (“Shores of Tripoli”) and the Persian Gulf not for “freedom” but for our own economic interests. Gays in the military equals a toy military focused on gay rights (and gay sexual harassment) with greatly reduced effectiveness. It is part and parcel of eroding America’s traditional culture with one of a anti-traditional one of nebulous internationalism.
Traditional culture, allows high-trust among a mostly White majority and restrains destructive behavior (like making Gays a dominant social group instead of one discreetly tolerated). It is part and parcel of wise protectionism (keeping American industry alive against Chinese low-labor competition) and a Demographic majority.
It is correct to be angry, but unfocused anger simply leads to despair.
The West has been in depopulated times before: Late Antiquity, the Dark Ages, the 1300′s following the Black Death. The way “out” has been to embrace society-changing technological change (feudalism, Medieval wool production powered by water mills, gunpowder and mass armies, nationalism) while keeping the core: the nuclear family, intact.
Open-ness to social change driven by technology is key. While retaining the nuclear family. So kick out the immigrants (it is “Survivor economics”). Bring in protectionism. Push new technologies like crazy. Reduce barriers to their adoption. End PC by pushing back on it and the feminization of culture (static, rigid).
Right wing Americans can’t fight back for the simple reason they’ll be arrested and fucked in the ass in jail. Left wing groups can create chaos in the street all they want. Right wing groups go to jail just for talking about fighting the state (see that Tree whatever militia). Don’t go giving us crap about how Americans are cowards because they want to avoid jail rape.
The truth is no one knows what even to fight for. The American system as originally designed has been completely dead since 1960. Why turn you life into one long jail rape when you don’t even have a real cause to fight for?
Fascism is exactly what we have. You ever wonder why our cell phone bills are so high? Fascism. The government makes the phone companies give out cheep phone services to poor people and we pay for it. I have a friend who comes from packistan. In Pakistan her cell phone bill is 9 bucks a month. In America it’s 50 bucks a month for much worse service. The difference? Regulation and giving fucking free phone services to trash peoples.
Comcast just agreed to give people poor people 10 bucks a month high speed internet to get the FCC to sign off on it’s merger. For those of you who don’t know, Comcast normally charges between 50 and 70 bucks a month for internet. Socialism has not stopped, they just corpatized it. It’s 100% pure facism and all lies to keep us in the dark.
I’ed love to see real capitalism where companies are allowed to fail and were we are not regulated to death. Hell, I’ve seen it. It’s call Singapore.
That’s not completely true. Ask Mohamed Atta.
The lone white male always is branded a nut by the MSM. When white male Big Government Liberal MSM propagandists predictably fall in line, they lend credibility to the mass media judgment.
Brown-skinned minorities are given sympathy automatically. You rarely see their “own” side against them at a Mosque and never in the media.
However, when the lone white male is indeed insane like Jared Loughner the action nonetheless instills paralyzing fear into The Leftist Establishment, as clearly witnessed in the Tucson shootings.
Organized numbers even as small as the 9/11 terrorist cells are apparently enough to paralyze a weakened America.
Nihilism is definitely where rational people live and breathe these days. I am a big fan of the Exile leftists; just as I am a fan of their right wing equivalents at Alt Right and TakiMag. We mustn’t settle for nihilism though. At some point, you have to build.
You darn str8 the French are men. hell they’ll even take their bosses hostage if they don’t like their severence pay. like you said americans will just walk away with their heads down like meek little slaves. you’ve been taught well guys.
Great post as per usual of late Ferds. You obviously haven’t had things in hand of late.
One disagreement though. You say The government forcing you to buy a product from a private company is not socialism, it’s fascism.
It would be fascism, and in my opinion not necessarily bad, quite probably an improvement, if it were fascism. Fascism is nationalist. Fascists believe in culture extending from race.
What we have is a non-nationalist fascism if you like. But I think it would be more accurate to describe it is an internationalist oligopoly.
Within formerly nation states though socialism is not dead but, to the contrary, thriving.
Fukuyama was wrong. As David Stove says in his short essay “The End of History: A Response to Francis Fukuyama”:
…
Internationalist oligopolies untethered to nations will continue their soviet strangle hold on the market, while national governments untethered to nation will continue to grind their populations into the lowest common equality via a socialist taxation system.
You can read Steve Sailer on the subject here.
“Nihilism is definitely where rational people live and breathe these days. I am a big fan of the Exile leftists; just as I am a fan of their right wing equivalents at Alt Right and TakiMag. We mustn’t settle for nihilism though. At some point, you have to build.”
But who will be the builders? It is very hard to motivate men in the West to want to do anything productive, and I can’t blame them, because there isn’t anything left for them in it. Marriage is/was (actual marriage, not marriage 2.0) a great motivator because it gives a man a family which is a much more immediate and fulfilling legacy than any kind of enduring “work” he might achieve in his lifetime. And the odds of your “work” becoming your legacy are pretty damn abysmal at this rate too. So fuck it – why not waste your days playing video games, scraping by at a tolerably but low paying job, getting drunk and banging women (if you can)?
Building takes work, man. Don’t kill my buzz.
Imagine the last line of the above also has [/sarcasm] after it.
irrelevant, but i think this is the same woman aspiring to be 1000 lbs. “donna” claims she avoids MOVEMENT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPB8yyucyjY
Sofia, you can back. how have you been?
“My grandfather was able to marry my grandmother at age 18 and support a family of three on a factory job that didn’t require so much as a high school degree.”
A couple of uncles, deceased for sometime now, were able to have a car or two, a decent home, and raise a kid or so while working various odd jobs over the years. One worked at the parts counter for decades of a major agricultural implement company. The other did something similar and other jobs. Neither man had a college degree but were bright men (one could translate Czech, Spanish, and English).
One of the cores of this issue though is the value of your money. I’m not going to harp on gold/silver, but whether a free people have the right to choose how or with what they will trade. I don’t see any benefeits from a corrupt central bank that can emit money without limit. Would you rather save or buy with a currency that can buy more, or less for you and your family?
I like the Mises crowd, but I did receive email recently from the now beaten down Liberty Dollar folks. I hear that the top brass at Mises did not offer him any encouraging words of support or anything else for that matter. Not that he needed it; the Liberty Dollar message was getting out until the evil Feds shut it down.
Fourmyle of Ceres wrote:
I’m sure you’re aware of the Malthusian trap, yes? Wherein population growth consumes all efficiency gains in the economy and living standards decline until subsistance is reached? We are staring that in the face,
Africa may be staring it in the face, I’m not so sure about other places.
A lot of it may be due to foreign aid, which allows higher populations and lowers the standard of living. I don’t think the current depopulation of Europe can be explained by the Malthusian trap. The Industrial Revolution kicked that area out of it a long time ago.
and it should be familiar because it was the standard state of the human race until England invented the Common Law. And only the Common Law (with protections of property rights) has ever lifted man out of the Malthusian Trap.
I read Gregory Clark’s book “A Farewell To Alms” and his argument was that the Industrial Revolution started in Britain due to the convergence of several factors. These factors include the accumulation of small genetic changes (favoring the thrifty, hardworking, and nonviolent), technological improvements, and favorable government institutions. Common law certainly played a role, but by itself wasn’t sufficient. Clark notes that ‘good’ government is ironically a net negative in the standard of living in Malthusian economies because of its contribution to population growth.
Just so we’re clear, I don’t support the “crony capitalism†of bailouts and tax breaks that Washington currenly serves up with each Congress. But I do support free markets. Truly free markets.
I know of no country where ‘truly free markets’ exist. The best we have so far is governments that will leave you alone most of the time as long as don’t breach certain standards of protocol. The US version of capitalism is where large, powerful corporate entities are subsidized at taxpayer expense but there’s little or no protection for the laborers who get the real work done.
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/01/state-of-suspension.html
Revolutions come in many styles. This one is shaping up to look rather red-and-slippery, because the grift has really amounted to the wholesale theft of a generation’s future. There are 21-year-olds out there right now laboring under massive burdens of college loans that they were swindled into signing at a time when the parts of their brain concerned with judgment had not fully developed, and they are every bit as smart as the men running the predatory corporations today. Even after they eventually give up paying their debt-peonage tuition loans, they are going to be very pissed off at the way the older generation ran their country into the ground. Let’s just hope that the mental torture inflicted on them doesn’t turn them into a legion of Jared Lee Loughners.
Unbridled socialism doesn’t serve Generation Zero’s interests, but neither does unbridled capitalism. America has become a mirror image of the Soviet Union…
The future of the world will not be socialist, but it will not be capitalist either. We are on the verge of a great ideological shift that will upend our entire conception of the political spectrum.
The future is National Socialism. Not Nazism, but Chinese-style.
I also continue to be disappointed that a thoughtful man like you, Ferd, still refuses to connect the dots between the economy and social issues that you say “don’t matter”. A healthy economy requires strong families, which means conservative social values. I will never stop repeating this.
“Civilizational collapse is coming, and ‘Generation Zero’ might be the one that gives the coup de grâce.”
…to be replaced with WHAT, exactly? Barbarism? Gen Zero can’t even emulate the VisiGoths: they can’t ride horses, wield swords (trust me, XboX RPG/Wii prowess doesn’t count for shit IRL), and most Gen Zeros are wimpy-ass beta-males pre-pussified by years of public schooling and parental coddling.
There’s a reason we old farts refer to Gen Zero as “snowflakes”. The average barbarian would eat you like Eloi BBQ.
You know who you sound like? The pathetic Yippies of the late 1960s who wanted to “burn it all down and start again, man”.
Good luck with that.
It might be a few months too late to say this, but I can’t let that last comment slide unpunished, especially seeing as how it comes from someone I have loathed for years. There are places in every major city in this country where you wouldn’t dare to show your pasty-white immigrant reich-wing face, even at high noon, to say nothing of past sunset. And on the far side of the world – the one you sit in your armchair and hoot about sending other people to bomb – the ‘greatest military machine in history’ can’t even hold its ground against peasant farmers. Know why? I mean, why all your technology and self-assuredness doesn’t seem to help much? Because barbarism’s actually pretty fucking easy. It doesn’t take a genius to be a barbarian. It doesn’t take much expertise to snap. It sure as hell doesn’t take ‘alpha male’ personality to set one’s little corner of the world alight. All it takes is having little to lose, a reason to despise those with more, and some spare time.
Of course, we’ve got more going for us than that. Your generation bankrupted the country. In case you haven’t noticed – and it would not surprise me if you hadn’t – civilization doesn’t maintain itself. Order doesn’t maintain itself. Shit costs money you don’t have and we aren’t going to make for you to tax away from us. Your unwarranted arrogance will be repaid in full when the country that should have rejected your naturalization on eugenic grounds falls not to Visigoths, but snowflakes.
You don’t actually believe in anything, you just believe in hating things.
Hey ASSFUCK, if you are a government worker and you complaining about someone actually trying to shrink this run away government you are part of the problem you stupid shit. Government is spending us into oblivion while eroding all our rights and liberties. Government is THE problem, worldwide, without exception. There is no such thing as a government “solution” and the government doesn’t have anything it didn’t steal from its citizens through threat of imprisonment. I think you belong in Greece with all the idiots that think even though they’re dead flat broke their salaries and benefits should stay the same, courtesy of the tax payers in some other country or whatever else is necessary.
http://www.singledudetravel.com/2011/07/greece-greed-graft-and-the-grim-reaper/
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