“KNOW YOUR DOPE FIEND. YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT! You will not be able to see his eyes because of the Tea-Shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can’t find a rape victim. He will stagger and babble when questioned. He will not respect your badge. The Dope Fiend fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his command-including yours. BEWARE. Any officer apprehending a suspected marijuana addict should use all necessary force immediately. One stitch in time (on him) will usually save nine on you. Good luck.
-The Chief”
Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Apparently, yesterday was the one-hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. You could tell from all the wrinkled, pasty zombies emerging from their hidey-holes chanting his name in unison. “RAAAAGUUUUNNNN…” It’s been over two decades since he left office and six years since he shuffled off this mortal coil, but the conservative cult of Reagan has yet to abate.
Though, can you blame them? The liberals have FDR, JFK, and LBJ among others, but right-wing heroes are few and far between. Eisenhower would be drummed out as a RINO today for his talk about bewaring the military-industrial complex, Nixon was tainted by that whole Watergate thing, nobody remembers Ford or the elder Bush, and conservatives have been trying to forget the younger Bush even existed. If you’re on the right and looking for someone to deify, Ronnie Raygun is literally the only choice in town.
I was going to write this installment on how Reagan was a lying scumfuck traitor and why a sane people would celebrate his 100th birthday by pissing on his grave, but John Dolan beat me to the punch. In a post for the eXiled, Dolan sketches a portrait of the cultural milieu that gave rise to the Gipper and his sub-retarded worshippers – a conflict between the resentful middle-class Calvinists of suburban 60′s California and the Bay Area hippies who spat on everything they believed in:
It’s tempting sometimes to think what one grenade, detonated at one of this “kitchen cabinet’s†meetings, could have done to change history. California could have been, was on the verge of becoming, something truly extraordinary. It’s no accident that Philip K. Dick’s Martian colonists in their hovels choose to dream of San Francisco in the mid-1960s, out of all the fantasylands they could visit. All the worst of America seemed to be melting away. The South of evil memory: melting away, not without blood and horror, but melting, doomed. The mean, stupid bullies’ world of jocks and losers to which all American children were violently introduced at an early age–melting away in a warmer and more humorous pantheon of possible identities. The dullards’ worship of Coolidge’s “business,†melting away in contemptuous laughter.
His essay is one of the best things I’ve read in months. Go, go read it now! I’ll wait.
Foreigners who observe the American political process often get befuddled when Americans make choices that seemingly run counter to their own best interests. “How could you re-elect Bush?” “How could you NOT want free government healthcare?” Their conclusions run from our “brainwashing” by corporate interests to just plain stupidity. The fact is, you can’t understand America without understanding the vein of Calvinism that runs right through its heart. Calvinism is the reason why average Americans not only NOT revolt against their government-corporate slavemasters, but actively revere them. Calvinism is why America is so utterly and completely fucked up.
And Calvinism is dying, and Generation Zero, its abused, bastard child is the key to its destruction.
…
America’s current crisis is the result of a synthesis of the worst aspects of the two horrid strains of thought that were battling for supremacy in John Dolan’s California – the middle-class Calvinists versus the hippies. As Dolan describes, the suburbanites who backed Reagan for governor in 1966 were the same ones that became Nixon’s “silent majority,” which morphed into the coalition that carried Reagan to the presidency in 1980. Both groups are loathsome in their own right – the Calvinists with their anti-pleasure, work ethic hypocrisy, the hippies with their one-world, New Age psychobabble – but the two combined are like hydrochloric acid to the social fabric.
As I mentioned in Part 1, middle-class Americans view themselves as part of a warped Calvinist elect. And like Calvinists, Americans demand their lives to be as dull and meaningless as possible. Their only goal in life is making more money, striving to be part of a moneyed elite and thus prove themselves worthy of entering the kingdom of Heaven. Pleasure and personal fulfillment are rewards for being an obedient little drone, and not to be sought for their own sake. In short, Calvinism is the perfect slave religion.
To a Calvinist, neoliberal capitalism is the ideal economic system, because it affords him the slim hope of becoming rich and allows him to screw over everyone who gets in his way with a clear conscience. After all, if they can’t cut it in the free world of Milton Friedman and he can, that means he’s truly worthy of God’s grace! Neoliberalism also allows him to be as miserly as he wants. I earned MY wealth, so I don’t owe you anything! Stop being a bum and pull your own weight! This sort of thinking only works in anarchic hellholes like Somalia – in a functioning first-world country, it causes slow social breakdown.
Concurrent with the Calvinist’s greed is his lack of self-awareness. It’s where you get military veterans who do all their shopping on base exchanges (and thus don’t have to pay sales tax) repeating the “government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem” line at Tea Party protests. It’s where you get middle-aged losers who lucked into their paper-pushing office jobs lecturing others about “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.” It’s where you get elderly Social Security recipients complaining about “welfare queens.” Ultimately, the Calvinist mentality writ large can only lead to the most zero-sum, atomized go-fuck-yourself society possible – which is exactly what America is, boosted by the Reagan right.
And anyone who steps outside of this Matrix is to be shamed, hounded and beaten.
…
This was the genesis of the suburbanites’ hatred of the Haight-Ashbury crowd. For all of their obnoxiousness, the hippies had figured out how to beat the American Dream at its own game. Instead of laboring for a pittance their entire lives and being content with a frigid wife and 2.5 bratty kids, they managed to have all the drug-fueled fun and orgasms they wanted right then and there, in the bloom of youth. They were failures by the standards of American secular Calvinism and not only did they not care, they were enjoying themselves way more than the people who’d stayed on the straight and narrow. This was heresy!
Like how a cuckold turns his fury on the cad instead of the whore wife who cheated on him, the suburbanites turned their anger on the hippies instead of the society that had lied to them their entire lives. Reagan tapped into this anger and rode it all the way to the White House, where on the advice of Milton Friedman, he sought to overturn the protections that had MADE a middle-class suburban existence possible to begin with. Labor rights were smashed, punitive taxes on the parasitic rich were lessened, illegal aliens were given amnesty so wages could be dragged down. No more naked a whore for the plutocrats have we ever had than Ronnie Reagan, and the Calvinists, happy that everyone else could be as miserable as they were, cheered him on every step of the way. The new Gilded Age was upon us.
And if you think the left is any better than the Reaganbots, you’re insane. At the same time middle-class America was rooting for their own destruction in the 80′s, the left was on their Long March through the schools and universities, advancing the hippies’ cultural revolution under the guise of stealth. As I mentioned in Part 2, Bill Clinton merrily advanced Reaganomics and managed to worsen the deal with a heaping helping of cultural Marxism on top. This was the era when the birthday of our first president was renamed to a generic “Presidents’ Day,” the only man to get his own holiday being Martin Luther King Jr., to remind white people just how evil and loathsome they are. It was when the frothy rantings of Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were transformed into public policy in the form of VAWA and sexual harassment laws, turning men into second-class citizens, able to have their lives destroyed on a woman’s fickle whim. This was when the public school system was “reformed” to cater to the lowest and dumbest in the student body, coinciding with the “sudden” increase of boys diagnosed with autism, ADD and other mental disorders and prescribed prescription drugs to shut them up.
Our current world is the worst of all possible outcomes. We have Calvinist laissez-faire capitalism making a virtue out of screwing people over in the elusive quest for riches. We have multiculturalism severing the bonds of community, turning each individual into an elementary particle in a never-ending war against his neighbor. Finally, we have feminism forcing men and women into becoming adversaries, whether it’s in the boardroom or the bedroom. And now we have an entire generation coming of age who have never known anything aside from a world full of broken, greedy, and hateful people.
Ronald Reagan is the father of Generation Zero, Milton Friedman their godfather, and Bill Clinton their nanny.
…
But our journey to the end of the night is almost over. Generation Zero will, regardless of what they do, totally discredit the Calvinists within our lifetimes, thanks to Calvinism becoming maladaptive in the past couple of decades.
The problem the hippies faced is that the social contract was still very much functional in their time. Despite all the turmoil in the 60′s, you could still be assured of a decent lifestyle if you played by the rules. The manufacturing base hadn’t been outsourced to Mexico, the labor unions hadn’t been smashed, the student loan scam hadn’t been implemented. The hippies’ rejection of America’s Calvinist creed was a lifestyle choice and not an act of survival or something they were forced into.
Nowadays, following the Calvinist lies will just lead to your ruination, assuming you can even follow them to begin with. Being a loyal, capable employee doesn’t guarantee that your boss won’t fire you for ANY reason. Jobs are evaporating, either due to technological advances or corporate greed, and they’re not being replaced. Not even being in a STEM field will protect you anymore. Forget about being able to buy a house or have kids – you’ll be lucky if you can even pay your monthly rent.
If things continue as they are, we won’t even need riots – the entire economic system will collapse on its own accord. Each underemployed twentysomething kid stuck playing video games in his parents’ basement is, through his inaction, a agent of revolution. Generation Zero will kill you with apathy, assuming they don’t come around to killing you literally.
But if you’re expecting a traditionalist wonderland of peace, rainbows and brotherly love to emerge from this collapse, don’t get your hopes up. Generation Zero will bring liberation, but they will NOT bring salvation. You can’t save a world that is already damned.
To be continued…
…
Previous installments:
“The Rise of Generation Zero, Part 1: Everything You Know is Wrong†– 1/19/2011.
“The Rise of Generation Zero, Part 2: Jenseits von Links und Rechts†– 1/24/2011.
“The Rise of Generation Zero, Part 2a: Lexington in Tunis, Concord in Cairo” – 1/31/2011.
{ 61 comments… read them below or add one }
Religion matters.
Well, good you are getting the word out that each administration is merely a continuation of past bad policies or policies that benefeit the few (from another perspective).
People look at me as if I have 2 heads when I tell them that Bush I to Clinton to Bush II to the current magic negro is merely a continuation of less liberty and more corporate/government slavery. Comfortable slavery, but still slavery.
People also overlook the professional courtesy of when a new president comes into office, he signs an executive order sealing the records of the past administration for a period of time.
Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html
Reagan also signed the law for the state income tax in California; liberals should thank him.
FDR actually worked with ‘big business’. Some businesses welcomed the New Deal policies like social security and others because it was cheaper to pass these costs to the government than do it themselves.
You’re right that deferred gratification makes life a lot less fun. And that the “protestant work ethic” is becoming less and less adaptive.
But the Calvinist ethic is also precisely why even the marginally productive enjoy such high standards of living. Our modern world, with all of its technological wonders, was born in the crucible of the religious conflicts of the 1600s.
The first glimmers of modern finance first appeared in the Calvinist Dutch Republic. The inventors of the modern scientific method were mainly English Calvinist dissenters. Isaac Newton was one of them. James Watt was a Calvinist Scottish Presbyterian.
And it’s not so well known that Newton became Master of the English Mint after completing the Principia Mathematica. He made England into a rich and powerful nation simply by giving it a strong currency.
Their work ethic was important. At least as important as their dislike for the nobility. Most nobles frittered the wealth away on art, music, and poetry, though hunting, gambling, drinking, and whoring were probably more popular. The Calvinists did none of these things, and plowed their profits back into their businesses to all of our benefit.
I’ll admit that the elite culture of the nobles has its allure. I would love to have been one of Castiglione’s Courtiers in Renaissance Florence.
But in today’s world I, the descendant of peasants, have the freedom to be my own version of the renaissance man. I don’t forget, however, that I owe this their Protestant Work Ethic. I live in the ruins of the Empire they built. In one or two more generations it will have crumbled to dust. But right now I owe my fantastic standard of living to them. Even if their ethic, today, is a crock of shit.
To be honest, I find the hippies far more hypocritical, and I’ve no idea why Dolan was so easy on them (he usually isn’t). It’s one thing to valorize a world of jocks and losers; it’s quite another to entice human beings into believing your world is different, only to act out exactly the same way.
I am a member of the moneyed men through my own entrepreneurial efforts. I don’t want my money stolen by the gov’t at gunpoint so it can go to single mother cunts and their mind-fucked spawn. The only reasonable way to redistribute wealth from rich to poor is to legalize prostitution and pimping for the johns. Anything short of that is a tyrannical state-sponsored theft of successful mens’ monies. Your redistribution of wealth scheme is like feminism, productive men are forced to give give give or else while unproductive single mother cunts take take take and receive sympathetic portrayals in the media to boot.
This isn’t a “Good American message board”. That means you can’t go full ‘tard.
For example, you shouldn’t say:
“You can’t cheat and honest man!”
your liable to get:
“Unless I change the expiration date on the bread I’m selling.”
or this sterling example of pureblood ‘tardism:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”-Founding ‘Tard of Good American Ideology
to which I say:
“It would be in the interest of the baker make more money by changing the expiration date on the bread he is selling. In the interest of the brewer to make more money by spiking his brew with dangerous additives. In the interest of the butcher to sell ground, processed poor meat x as ground, processed expensive meat y. Isn’t a lot of meat today in “capitalist” American sold as processed meat, and you have no idea what ACTUALLY went in it?”
I hope this has explained why the Truth and Free Speech(for ‘tards) can only exist on Good American message boards. Where such deviations from Good American Thought are immediately banned.
Only go full ‘tard in a “Good American Message board”.
And no, I’m not trying to be nice. America’s clock is five seconds from Midnight. I suggest you wake the fuck up now.Food stamps use is at fourteen percent! FOURTEEN PERCENT!
Ferd, you have interesting things to say at times, but you are seriously Looney Tunes on matters economic. I’m not even sure where to start, because I’m not sure how deeply our “first principles” divide.
I’ll just touch a couple points that jumped out at me–
“the Calvinists with their anti-pleasure, work ethic hypocrisy”
Calvinists may actually be like that, but most people who support a Friedman/Reagon “free market” are not Calvinists. They have their own hobbies and pleasure, and they know that in order to afford those pleasures, they must be wealthy. And a free market system is the system that produces the most wealth. This really cannot be challenged by any serious economist.
[Which explains why the salary of the average American hasn't budged an inch since the Reagan years while the top one percent now own close to half of the nation's wealth! Pay no attention to the con man behind the mirror! - ed.]
Consider that “common” people nowadays engage in hobbies that only nobles were able to engage in in past centuries, or no one could engage in. You don’t have to be a millionaire to enjoy skiing, or horseback riding, or painting. Even “free” hobbies, such as reading great books from the library, or playing chess/ engaging in philosophical discussion at the local park, requires an amount of free leisure time that only nobility could hope for in centuries past.
Nowadays, thanks to the great wealth of America, anyone can have the same education as landed gentry like Thomas Jefferson for the price of a library card. America’s schools obscure that fact and ruin many lives, but the wealth is there if we chose to use it.
["Remember to be grateful to Massa!"]
“Americans demand their lives to be as dull and meaningless as possible”
Evidence? Citation? The fact that you find American Idol dull and meaningless doesn’t count; many people the world over (not just Americans) probably feel the same way about your hobbies.
“Ultimately, the Calvinist mentality writ large can only lead to the most zero-sum, atomized go-fuck-yourself society possible”
Free markets are the opposite of zero-sum.
[Methinks you don't know what "zero-sum" means.]
And Americans are the greatest private donors to charity in the world, which nullifies your “go-fuck-yourself society” argument too. We are neither zero-sum nor uncaring.
[Charity is BS, the equivalent of giving someone a Band-Aid after cutting them in half with a machine gun.]
The rest of your rant though is pretty disorganized and lacking in postive statements, so I can’t really respond to it well. You’re clearly angry – I get that. But I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
Mostly I get the impression that you’re just disillusioned because someone told you the world works one way, and now you’ve learned it works a different way, and rather than just say “Oh well, I guess I was misinformed” and carry on with your life, you’ve descended into anger and bitterness. Snap out of it man!
[Oh, I'm carrying on just fine. The question is, what will everyone else do? You don't want to be on the side of the plutocrats for much longer...]
You’re on a roll, lately. I was reading the Economist this morning, put it down after being overwhelmed by the inanity of it, and went to go see what FB and ZH are writing. It seems like the only good writing is on the net anymore.
But if you’re expecting a traditionalist wonderland of peace, rainbows and brotherly love to emerge from this collapse, don’t get your hopes up.
Depends upon the time-line, and upon whether that wonderland will encompass everyone milling about today.
[It won't encompass ANYONE living today. - ed.]
didn’t regan start the “war” (dea) on drugs as well?
[Completely slipped my mind. Add that to the shit list as another manifestation of Calvinist anti-fun pathologies. - ed.]
FB,
More up your alley as far as subject matter for a future post goes.
—
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katy-hall/blue-valentine-how-derek-_b_819497.html
Blue Valentine: How Derek Cianfrance Destroyed Michelle Williams And Ryan Gosling’s Marriage
I’m going to translate most of the comments in my version of them:
Though scaling the corporate totem pole is friutless, between that and having to live the lifestyle of a filthy pissant rotting on a third-world shithole, I’ll take the corporate pole.
They are right. IS BETTER. But none of the above are actually GOOD options that will acutally lead to happiness.
What will? Fuck if I know.
I don’t think anyone is truly fathoming the result of all of this.
The collapse, and it is surely coming, will be a worldwide collapse. Every time there has been this sort of collapse in history, there has been a technological back step.
The reasons for it are many, the main one is that the number of men that fix things and maintain the system becomes smaller and smaller, which is occuring right now. I am sure the Romans thought this was fine back in the day, just as we celebrated the “Service Economy.”
Eventually there are no men to give a shit about plumbing, or electrictity, or the power plant, or transportation. The idea that the computer age will go on forever, the Singularity will be created, the sex bots will become mainstream with artificial wombs are all false hopes.
Instead of maintaining the infrastructure, the government has been squandering the money on the poor and single moms.
Think about how people farm today in their GPS guided, air conditioned combines. with fertilizers that make the farm more bountiful than it normally does.
Think about that ending.
The resulting starvation, war and death is going to be in the billions. Not millions.
Billions.
We’re going to be lucky to be at the level of steam engines when this is over.
As for an economic system that isn’t capitalist or soicalist that you mention.
You’re going to get that too.
It’s called landed gentry and serfs.
Enjoy the party while it lasts.
There were paragraphs here when I laughed at your briliance, and others where I disagreed vehemently. Not sure how you manage that, but it’s certainly to your credit. You couldn’t have been more right in your closing point:
You can’t save a world that is already damned.
Now I’m sure our agreement on this point comes from two radically different worldviews, but the thing about the truth is that it is, no matter who says it or why.
Thought-provoking stuff, FB.
Ferdinand: update on Julian Assange.
The female prosecutor intent on charging him with rape is anti-men.
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/assange-prosecutor-is-antimen-2206650.html
Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8308877/Julian-Assange-extradition-hearing-Swedish-prosecutor-is-biased-against-men.html
So that’s three radical feminists after him. Two false accusers and one prosecutor who has declared him guilty by reason of penis.
“The problem the hippies faced is that the social contract was still very much functional in their time. Despite all the turmoil in the 60′s, you could still be assured of a decent lifestyle if you played by the rules.”
That social contract was only functional for the older generation. The draft for the Vietnam War was a violation of said contract for young men in their teens and early twenties, who rightfully saw the outcome of “playing by the rules” as death. And this wasn’t a war where the well-being of American civilization could conceivably be at stake in the case of a loss, although those beyond draftable age found it easy enough to concoct plenty of convoluted rationalizations to justify their support of mass murder.
Otherwise, an excellent post. I’ve never seen any demographic exhibit such a cavalier attitude toward the infliction of misery and suffering upon others as the American middle class, or such a willingness to use moral arguments to justify such a state of existence.
As long as America still has centers of innovation that produces the technological advances that I care about, no element of mainstream American culture appeals to me enough to make me feel threatened by importation of foreign cultures. I wouldn’t want to live in an Islamic society, but I don’t see that as being anything resembling a threat here. The partial Latinization of the U.S. wouldn’t be such a bad deal for a male, given that Latin culture is far more tolerant of various libertine acts that are likely to get you locked up in the states. Say what you want about the political corruption, technological stagnation and high crime in Latin America — at least there are far fewer harmless activities that are likely to get you arrested down there. American freedumb, indeed. Latin America has heavy metal music, beer, legal escorts, great food, a lot of non-fat women (excluding Mexico, I know) — what’s the threat, exactly?
The right-left paradigm is a pretty sneaky ol’ trick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTahZE4q90U
Hopefully Generation Zero understands that.
Some wise soul here recently branded zeroes as “button-mashing nihilists;” the only way to motivate such sluggards is with PAIN and deprivation.
Appeals to Grand Concepts are lost… on chimps…
PS – Hippies were “united” in a “movement” because they didn’t want their coddled asses shipped off to Nam in a DRAFT.
Selfish self-interest as motivator.
I’m a bit cranky today from a Superbowl party hangover etc. So…
I can appreciate the article’s desire to motivate the zeros. But, just because they spent their formative years playing CoD and Metalgear Solid for 13 hours a day while listening to KORN and Slipknot does NOT make them Warriors.
Nor even on account of their single moms and lady teachers telling them every second of every day they are “diverse decision-makers worthy of self-actualization, validation, self-esteem and respect” merely for showing up.
Delusion – by its definitive core – is NOT reality.
Life’s gonna be a HUGE shit sandwich for Britneys and Brandons.
Get ready to take BIG bite, kids.
Reagan implemented a lot of protectionist measures during his time as president. He wasn’t the free marketer a lot make him out to be. I will never understand the cult of Reagan, their supporters repeat his praises as if they have been programmed emotionally like drones to sing his praises.
http://mises.org/daily/5009
Alte–
Who’s ZH? Link?
[Zero Hedge. - ed.]
zero hedge
The winners and losers have already been decided for the most part. There will be no collapse, mayhaps chaos and destruction, but no collapse. Any sort of civil unrest will be used as an excuse to crack down even more. The only winner will be the elite strong men who end up deciding what policies will get applied to everybody for the good of old.
We’re looking at the rise of totalitarian societies all over the world as things get harder and people become willing to empower a central authority to save them from obliteration.
The elites know the name of the game. If you think that those really in control are incompetent, as well as all their advisors you will be severely disappointed. They know we’re headed into Kondratieff winter and that with that comes internecine power struggles and war. http://www.jstor.org/pss/40241517
The easiest way to hold a cultural group together and impress group think is to give them a common enemy. The soviet union is gone. So we got a war on drugs, next we got a war on terror, next we’re going to get a real war over resources. Just look at the situation with Japan and China with regards to rare earth metals (the US is now ramping up production). There will be people in generation zero that end up being leaders and successful men, but if they’re composed of people like Zohan who don’t understand that in a society everyone is interconnected those who are going to be forced to eat cake at gunpoint have a truly miserable time ahead indeed.
I also see a state-crackdown coming, rather than more liberty. And more trumped-up wars. We’re sending warships to Egypt right this moment.
“Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”
If you were hitting quality pussy,you really wouldn’t have time to post token-compliant Posts such as this.
[You are an incredibly lame troll. - ed.]
A brilliant post, Ferdinand.
As a foreigner who lived in the States for some years, I was stunned at the American system and the way people think in America. After years of thinking and reading about the problem, I came to conclusions very similar to yours.
You nailed.
If you were hitting quality pussy, you really wouldn’t have time to post token-compliant Posts such as this.
And he’s probably gay, and he has a small dick, too.
Without disagreeing with much of the article….
….I do think people love to fashionably assert that living standards 50 years ago were better than they are now, even in America.
They were not. The percentage of the average person’s income required to buy a basic standard of food, clothing, and shelter has dropped greatly since that time.
Sure, blue collar workers earned an unnaturally high wage from 1946-73. Just like techies did from 1996-2000, and real-estate agents did from 2004-2007.
Judicial/Police State oppression is higher now than in the past, yes.
But aggregate purchasing power has risen a lot since 1960. For each anecdote about healthcare/education being more expensive, or blue-collar workers making less, I can provide at least 3 counters of everything outside those examples being far more accessible/affordable to more people.
[And yet, unemployment and underemployment are skyrocketing. This needs to remedied ASAP. A growing bunch of have-nots whose have-notness is constantly rubbed in their faces is never a good thing. - ed.]
“If you were hitting quality pussy,you really wouldn’t have time to post token-compliant Posts such as this.”
Spoken like a guy who lost his virginity yesterday.
@Alte …. But I didn’t say any of that token stereotypical garbage,did I?Why (do you believe)not?
Sorry, this post was just deranged. Placing Reagan and Clinton beside Lenin and Stalin!!! Perspective, my dear sir, perspective. To effectively go after our society, you need a scalpel not a shotgun.
[LOL, it took thirty comments for someone to bring that up? - ed.]
My own take is that we have become so insanely rich, thanks to the likes of Reagan, that we are now able to support massive numbers of parasites. The grotesqueries you see all around you are the result of our success not our failure. And our elites have become so effective at buying the general public off with videogames, new cars, Ipods, porn, and such that no one wants to rock the boat. I want my MTV.
Of course, the whole spectacle is pretty revolting if you are at any kind of thoughtful person. But most people seem pretty happy with how it all turned out.
[You mean like how the Egyptians clearly love Mubarak as evidenced by his ability to win re-election in overwhelming numbers year after year?]
But I didn’t say any of that token stereotypical garbage,did I?Why (do you believe)not?
No, you came up with new garbage. Congratulations.
If you have a problem with the argument he’s making, then address the argument. You have yet to present a logical counter-argument. Or have I missed something?
Or just continue on, as is. Whatever.
[He's a troll. Don't bother. - ed.]
Remember that progress constitutes taking 100 steps forward and 92 steps backwards.
A lot of people will focus on the 92 backward steps. A small number of hyperoptimists focus only on the 100 forward steps (I won’t quite accuse Ray Kurzweil of this, but some of his followers fit this description).
Man who was,
I partly agree with you. There won’t be a revolution in America until the price of slushies becomes too much for the average american. Once you take away the cheap inanities that allow people to think they have it made, and thus take their security and more importantly hope away, that’s when a revolution will begin.
we are the canaries in the mine, but no one is listening.
@Alte… It’s unneccesary for me to present any other principles. My comment wasn’t intended to replace FD’s;it was an addendum.You should probaly continue obsessing obout blackness,papism,obesity and neoprussianism.
@ Ferd: The problem with an inactive rebellion by generation zero is that it assumes that generation zero is needed by their overlords? During the industrial revolution, and the capitalist expansion that followed, human labour was necessary. More and more people were needed. Now, technology has advanced that society could do without all the video game players at home and our overlords wouldn’t lose their standard of living. In fact, with less people their standard of living would probably go up. What better way to get rid of unnecessary people than encouraging them to not breed and slowly weed themselves out of existence by wasting their lives on video games….
[That's precisely the point - we ARE necessary, and we can't participate in the system thanks to the various machinations of TPTB. Our overlords are living on borrowed time. Tick tock, tick tock... - ed.]
@ PT Barnum: Smith’s quote you referred to above is actually about the rise of unordered systems and how the complexity of human interaction has unforseen impacts and consequences through people’s lives. No matter what shape society takes this remains a fundamental axiom. Society cannot be planned, it happens and systems arise within it different from what anyone could see or plan. The same will happen with Ferd’s generation zero. People may plan the brilliant future but unexpected systems will arise and the new structure of society will be unpredictable.
First of all, a lot of us have memorized the works of H.S. Thompson well enough to recognize just how much of Fear & Loathing in LV you have ripped off here. So, you are, like, busted.
[I plead guilty by reason of SANITY! Saint Hunter, he hath shone me the way, and in his divine light I hath been SAVED! - ed.]
Second, Calvinism may not make a lot of sense in the cold light of logic but there is no deny-ing that it turned somehow a lot of hopeless white-trash losers into a pretty good facsimily of The Elect of God. Who were determined to act the part thereafter.
[Which ended sometime around 1965.]
Thus… America. Love it or leave it.
[I attack America not out of hate, but love.]
Rum
Calvinism may not make a lot of sense in the cold light of logic but there is no deny-ing that it turned somehow a lot of hopeless white-trash losers into a pretty good facsimily of The Elect of God
Calvinism still had its merits whist it was a religion, sans God it’s now become a purposeless habit.
@Thursday
My own take is that we have become so insanely rich, thanks to the likes of Reagan, that we are now able to support massive numbers of parasites.
There is some truth to this. Upper class super affluence serves to insulate our idiot politicians from their policies. On the other hand, the welfare state helps insulate the prole class from the consequences of their actions. Stupidity thus becomes entrenched in the body politic.
I think people don’t realise just how pernicious to U.S. society the Reagan administration was. The finance industry became rocket fueled under his changes and the seeds for our current financial crises were sown then. Reagan’s economic boom was fueled by the sudden cultural approval of personal debt, something the administration turned a blind eye to.
What made America great was the notion that financial, personal and civic virtue paid. The economic and social system by and large rewarded it, and Europe’s white trash knew that if they played by the rules they were more likely than not to be successful. That world is now gone.
Why do you think the motto of N. Carolina is something about being a “Tarheel”? Let me tell you. Being a Tarheel means that, come what may, you don”t have it in you to run away in a fight. You are stuck to it by your nature.
Pathetic, contemptible, backward, wtfe.
In the War Between the States about 2 Yankees died in combat for every Tarheeled whitetrash loser.
My forebearers are all deep Texians. We all grew up in the shadow of the Alamo. So it was like, no one gets out of here alive, if you are true to yourself. That is a given.
For the defenders of the Alamo, it was not LIKE they were, in their own minds, at Thermopolee with Leonidas – they were in MF-ing fact there. Enough so to die to the last man. For a cause that progressive manginas can never understand.
So, go back to snark where you belong.
[And yet, unemployment and underemployment are skyrocketing. This needs to remedied ASAP. A growing bunch of have-nots whose have-notness is constantly rubbed in their faces is never a good thing. - ed.]
Which will happen as soon as the fact that 70-80% of government spending being a transfer from men to women, is somehow made to be less lopsided.
Remember the Christina Hoff Somers article of the entire $800B stimulus being diverted from male jobs to female jobs, by feminist lobbying? Nevermind that the male jobs were the ones actually needed (like keeping the electrical grid running, etc.).
Government intervention to distort free markets, mainly to prop up women and shield them from meritocracy, is the problem here. It dominates ALL government spending.
It won’t encompass ANYONE living today. – ed.
Well, I don’t believe in Jesus-bunnies-and-rainbows or traditionalist wonderlands… but I do think that a society can move in a more or less traditionalist direction, when given the right economic and political incentives/disincentives. Traditionalism tends to increase in reaction to societal decay, through changing demographics and the rise of the middle class.
Perhaps we are discussing different time-horizons. You know my predictions for the near and medium-term, and they aren’t rosy.
[You mean like how the Egyptians clearly love Mubarak as evidenced by his ability to win re-election in overwhelming numbers year after year?]
As I have said before, their problems are not our problems. We have little to choose from between our political parties because no one wants to do anything that might stop the gravy train. They have no gravy.
The Fifth Horseman wrote:
Remember that progress constitutes taking 100 steps forward and 92 steps backwards.
Some years ago software engineer authority Gerald Weinberg ran an experiment to test the oft-repeated claim that there’s been no significant progress in software development technologies. He re-wrote a program that he had written about 20 years previously and completed it in a few hours. His first implementation took a few weeks. His conclusion was that the alleged lack of progress was an illusion created by a combination of factors. These include the existence of legacy software (acts like a dead weight which must be dragged forwards), the increase in demands from less sophisticated end users,
and the demands of interoperability between systems.
I think Weinberg’s conclusions about software parallel technological and social progress in other areas. Yes, there’s way too much lateral and reverse motion. But the inexorable trend has been forward, not backwards.
A lot of people will focus on the 92 backward steps. A small number of hyperoptimists focus only on the 100 forward steps (I won’t quite accuse Ray Kurzweil of this, but some of his followers fit this description).
A lot of people will focus on the 92 backward steps. A small number of hyperoptimists focus only on the 100 forward steps (I won’t quite accuse Ray Kurzweil of this, but some of his followers fit this description).
That comment was Fifth Horseman’s, not my own.
“[That's precisely the point - we ARE necessary, and we can't participate in the system thanks to the various machinations of TPTB. Our overlords are living on borrowed time. Tick tock, tick tock... - ed.]”
Are we all really necessary? Maybe we can’t participate because we aren’t needed? Increasing technology means that fewer people are needed. If our overlords don’t need us then they have two ways to get rid of us: Outright destruction or simply letting us amuse ourselves to death. They picked the latter.
Factories are automated. One man now does the work of a hundred. Soon it will be the same with increasing communication technologies. The majority of Western jobs are in retail, human services, HR….make work at best. An growing and expanding technological civilisation doesn’t need more manual labourers or secretaries. It needs smarter, more sophisticated and more capable technology that can displace those labourers and secretaries, and do their work better than them.
You’ve said yourself how many jobs in the gov sector are wasteful, makework etc. Its the same in the private sector. Work for the sake of work. If these people withdraw themselves from society, how much does society lose?
If they actively revolt, thats different.
[Production is only one-half of the equation. Factories et al may be more efficient, but somebody has to buy what they're making in order for them to stay solvent. You need money to buy stuff, and a job to make money, and obviously the more money you make the more stuff you can buy. Also, it's common wisdom that young people tend to spend more than penny-pinching old farts (which is why advertisers are always lusting after the 18-34 demographic in TV and radio), and middle-class/working-class folk spend more than the rich.
Knowing this, the ideal economic setup is to have the bulk of the wealth concentrated in young, middle-class hands. Right now, in the U.S. and other Western countries, the bulk of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the rich and/or elderly/middle-aged - the people who spend the least. Who's going to fuel the engine of consumerism? Daddy's credit cards and a minimum-wage burger flipping job can only go so far. The government could rectify this by circulating money back into the hands of the middle-class (think Bush's tax rebates in the spring of '08 and his encouraging people to actually SPEND the money), but they're doing the OPPOSITE of what they should be doing - giving tax cuts to the unproductive rich and bailing out failed companies.
BTW, this is why China is headed for collapse - their economy is entirely based on selling products to a foreign consumer base where disposable income is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the stingy. The Austrian and Chicago school dullards don't understand this at all. - ed.]
a) your generation is not really important enough, educated enough nor populous enough to really make a dent in the way of the future b) the lack of social cohesion is a direct result of the minority/immigration issue (nobody cares for people who don’t share a common history/culture) – reagan had nothing to do with that, the people who elected him were reacting to that – the left propagates overbreeding and immigration so they are the “original sinners” in that mess.
You need money to buy stuff, and a job to make money, and obviously the more money you make the more stuff you can buy. Also, it’s common wisdom that young people tend to spend more than penny-pinching old farts (which is why advertisers are always lusting after the 18-34 demographic in TV and radio), and middle-class/working-class folk spend more than the rich.
This is bad economics. Unless money is physically stashed under a mattress (miniscule), it gets spent. Inequality is a separate issue.
If you think that we currently have “laissez-faire capitalism” in this country, then you are utterly deluded. Government is bigger and more intrusive than ever and there are more regulations than ever. What we currently have in this country is a “mixed economy” that is partially capitalist and partially socialist. The idea that Reagan did anything to “limit” government is nothing more than a widespread myth spread in DC and among the partisans of the Democratic and Republican parties. There is very little about the current status quo that resembles the laissez-faire capitalism of the late 19th century (commonly called the “Gilded Age”).
I’m not arguing that either capitalism, socialism, or some form of mixed economy (these are the only possible economic systems, as either the government or the market must control production or some mix of the 2) is the right choice. I am merely arguing for the accurate usage of these terms. Obama isn’t a socialist because he doesn’t want the government to control the entire economy. Nor was Reagan supportive of “laissez-faire capitalism,” as he supported a great deal of government programs. Both supported a mixed economy, albeit with a different mix of the economic systems.
The Austrian and Chicago school dullards don’t understand this at all. – ed.
We understand things very well, thank you.
Cash handouts (calling Helicopter Ben) only help in an economy where the consumers aren’t drowning in debt (as we’ve seen, they use the handouts to stay solvent — not for additional consumption), and the total cash supply isn’t growing and therefore lessing the worth of the cash they’ve been handed. If you hand people $100, but then devalue the currency so that it’s only worth $50 dollars, people remember that and discount their next handout appropriately.
Also, lots of young and middle-aged people are struggling with unemployment and underemployment. People who are financially insecure tend to hoard money, rather than spend it, for fear of their future solvency. Even Aristotle noted that this is the reason that the elderly are so stingy; they have less time and ability to make up financial losses. People are now also more likely to spend cash-money, rather than using checks/debit/credit, and that also slows their consumption (people naturally spend less when using cash, because parting with cash is more difficult and painful).
You cannot spend your way out of a debt crises by handing out money from a highly indebted government. People instinctively see right through that, and react appropriately. They know that it won’t last, so they keep whatever you give them or use it to plug their debt-holes. You won’t see an increase in net-spending (and lagging that, a decrease in unemployment) until the deleveraging is over. We still have a long ways to go yet, and the government is currently making things worse with their policies, which is merely prolonging the pain.
We are also well-aware of the difference between the “productive rich” and the “unproductive rich”, and the spirit-crushing effect of dramatic inequality. And we know that China is headed for a collapse. We’ve known that for years.
I think one of the main problems that our economy has is that it’s geared toward perpetual growth in wealth, productivity, and labor. That is why we are so heavily leveraged; we’re fixated on progress. So when our economy and fertility slowed, we freaked out and started spending our children’s money, and then our grandchildren’s money, and now our great-grandchildren’s money. All in an attempt to keep growth going at an insane speed into perpetuity.
I think Alte is on to something with her last post.
It’s been said before that capitalism – at least of the globalist endless growth variety – is incompatible with the limited resources on a single planet.
All the more reason we should be trying to expand our basic production technology and moving into new spheres such as space.
Pureblood ‘tardism:
So that’s why just the husband working was enough to have a house and eight kids fifty years ago and now both spouses working is barely(or not) enough to have two kids(maybe)!
Of course that doesn’t really apply to kids in their twenties today because most DON’T have a house, and DON’T have kids! And yet their standard of living is even better than fifty years ago! Just not by any sane persons metric!
Thank you for clearing that up, TARD.
And, just remember how he summed it all up in the end – for context.
Zeros have not done anything up to this point, so there’s no trend that will magically appear to anoint them Saviors of Society. They don’t fight: they whine.
Actions speak louder than words.
I want to see spirit – action.
The clock IS ticking…and those youthful salad days of their 20′s will rapidly decay into the navel-gazing regret of complacency that is their 30′s. By 40, they’ll have spawned an even more wretched generation of singlemomkidz.
Their only accomplishment is Jared Lee Loughner.
It’s good to see thatunderneath your anarchist tendencies there is a lot of appreciation for the Old Right, who were right all along:
- no foreign wars
- ethnic balance
- community-based society
- they had no specific provisions for druggin and screwin, but plenty of space to drop out
We have multiculturalism severing the bonds of community, turning each individual into an elementary particle in a never-ending war against his neighbor.
This makes me wonder, FB, if you have read Michel Houllebecq’s novel of sexual dystopia, The Elementary Particles? Or was this just a chance turn of phrase? You should add it to your reading list, with your French-inspired blog name.
Also, you forgot that Reagan raised the drinking age to 21 nationally. F-ing Mario Cuomo actually signed a law that let me order my last legal drink in NY State at 11:50 on 11/30/1985; the same alcohol was illegal at 12:01 on 12/1.
I’ve been dealing with a lot of familial strife over the last few days — which may have required me to travel half way ’round the world. Then, last night I was talking to the closer relatives — and the father of one in the couple said that he could not see how going to sort it out would help as there is no ability to get any leverage or help.
I really enjoyed being patronised by some moron from socail services — and then being told that I could not be told anything. Particularly when a local lawyer got the same deal from them.
So… I’m really cynical today. Having said that…
1. Most of the small Western countries will survive. They will default (Iceland), sell of coal and assets (NZ and Australia) and retrench. NZ and Aussie are already handing over leadership to late boomers (we kept breeding a bit longer) and they grew up through the stagflation of the 1970s and the crash in the mid 80s.
2. The large economies are toast. The US is so indebt that you will either have to default or hyperinflate. Canada is not much better. And the EU is going to shatter.
3. To survive, expect that the “soft jobs” that exist in socail welfare systems will disappear. Expect the conditions for working in secure state employment will include a 30% pay cut. And expect hypercompetition in the private sector.
If you want to check for health and prosperity in society, look for the flowers, for the efflorescence. If there are a bunch of gay men partying — things are not too bad. But if they are fearful, or poor (ie there are no jobs for dancers, party planners and decorators) then it’s getting bad. That sign went a while ago. When minorities are getting bashed — it’s worse. That is happening in Europe now.
I deliberately have chosen to raise my sons in a small university town on a rock in the South Pacific, well away from centres of population. I have chosen to work for a university — and I am tenured in a STEM field. That is about as safe as it can get…
As men, we need to protect those around us. We need to set up communities that do not buy into the destruction that is going to happen. Our work may be more about raising bees and chooks, keeping a garden, and remanufacturng or making things as muttering at a computer while coding R (or SAS). If we collapse, my painfully acquired skills in statistics will be not as useful as my ability to raise chickens. I may be being paid in vegetables — which is what happened to doctors in the last depression.
If you are going your own way, you need a skill that you can barter for other goods you need (food, shelter). If you have a family, you need to be thinking on how you can survive if you lose two thirds of your post tax income.
At that level — which is where I fear we are going — feminism falls away, because it is not conducive to survival. Game becomes more about being able to do the hard, dirty and dangerous things than being a peacock.
That is where I think we are heading… but the perfumed fools inside the beltway (or in Brussels) choose to not see this.
What if they throw a revolution and no one comes?
As much as I’d like glamorize and exalt the integrity and self-respect of the modern American, it’s hard to. Where are we headed? Yes, you can raise the prices of goods, artificially squeeze commodities into scarcity, you can beat us over the head until we’re dizzy. We complain in bars, in hair salons, on Facebook, but all we do…is complain. We don’t take it to the streets or the boardroom. We are constantly performing a neverending cost/benefit algorithmic loop in our heads and the economic managers feed us just enough so we never become too disgruntled. In this fashion, there will be never any change because once again, these economic managers (and they are a powerful and incredibly vast group with unbelievable sway) will see to it that the delicate cart is never upset. Once that happens, our cost/benefit analysis will finally tell us to rise.
Fourmyle of Ceres and Dufu and right and FB is very wrong and deluded about economics and history, even though Reagan was a complete idiot.
I hope Fourmyle of Ceres and Dufu start their own websites. They are good and clear writers. Government needs to be destroyed.
I was about to say it looks like I was wrong and Mubarak is stepping down while the army is taking over (not really much a regime change).
Luckily, Mubarak is keeping my dream alive– http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/world/middleeast/11egypt.html?hp
It occurred to me today that your silent revolution by Generation Zero is just them “going Galt”. Score one up for Ayn Rand.
With you on everything except the critique of multi-culturalism… sure, PC bullshit covers a lot of lies (see the election of Obama) but how does respecting people from different ethnicities “tear communities apart?” Sounds like some minutemen nazi kool-aid to me.
Plus, MLK was awesome, he wasn’t primarily about racism, his larger vision critiqued the corrosive effects of militarism and capitalism as well, something that his official canonization is designed to hide (pretty successfully apparently).
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