When the New Atheist Movement became all the rage, after the events of 9/11/01, I was so jaded about the subject that I paid it scant attention. I was more than familiar with Richard Dawkins’s work, true enough, especiallyThe Selfish Gene, and was mildly interested in his new stance against not only Christianity but Islam. Few dared say negative things about Islam, so I considered him something of a hero. But not an awe-inspiring one.
The second major figure in the New Atheist Movement was Christopher Hitchens, my favorite socialist. Or quasi-ex-socialist. He was glib, a first-rate writer, fast on his feet — or tongue — and did a good job in debates. But his book God Is Not Greatsported what I thought of as such a horrible thesis — spelled out in one of its subtitles,How Religion Poisons Everything — that I had to distance myself a bit, no matter how atheistic I may be. Indeed am. Further, his reaction against “Islamofascism,” as he called it, led him to support the West’s jihad against Muslim countries, thereby stirring the nest and exacerbating the situation, or, as F. Marion Crawford put it long ago, “sew dragon’s teeth.” As I argued at the time, exactly the wrong policy: if Islam is so dangerous, best not to poke it over and over again.
The third figure in this movement is perhaps the most important, philosopher Daniel Dennett. But, as near as I could make out, Dennett suffered from being wrong on the issues in which he carved out somewhat unique positions. I was more a John Searle man.
The fourth “horseman” of this atheistic quartet, said to be so revelatory as to be “apocalyptic,” was Sam Harris. And he was my least favorite. He spoke well. He seemed thoughtful. He was obviously smart enough. But his most interesting positions were, like Dennett’s, ones in which he was clearly wrong. And, like Hitchens, his political stances seemed, uh, worse than reactionary: exacerbatory! So I never really paid him much attention.
But the man is influential. And he is a part of the “regressive” left, even if he wishes to see himself as against that movement.
Be that as it may, I mention my initial impressions of Harris early on in the latest LocoFoco podcast, featuring David Ramsay Steele:
Steele is preparing a book of “Critical Responses” to Sam Harris, so Lee Waaks invited Mr. Steele to talk with us on the LocoFoco Netcast, which you can view on Rumble:
I encourage you to go to Rumble and Locofoco.Locals.com and sign up for my feeds. Or even send me money, to encourage me to make more videos. Whereas I know I am just learning this craft, you have to admit that Lee’s and my guests are always interesting. Very interesting. Yes?
There is nothing particularly mysterious about the anti-diplomacy surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war, or, for that matter, the FTX scandal. When a ruling elite loses its intellectual bearings and what the ancient Chinese called “the Mandate of Heave” (but what we might call, loosely, the consent of the governed), it needs two things: money and an enemy.
Our ruling elites, which are largely “Democratic” — most civilian government employees are Democrats — know, now, only how to scam us, not to rule even close to wisely. The current situation shows it: inflation, supply chain problems, debt, war. The elites’ policies exacerbate (if not outright cause) each and every one of these disasters.
So they need an enemy to unite us against it.
The enemy chosen and nurtured: Russia.
The comedy is that Democrats have almost been compelled to build up Russia as an enemy ever since Obama mocked Romney for suggesting it.
The tragedy is that it could lead to World War III and the destruction of our civilization and much of the life on the planet.
America’s actual enemy — less comic, more ominous, and chosen by Democrats for decades as an ally to build up — is, of course, China. Russia serves as a cover for all the past corrupt dealings with China, which have been going on since the Clinton Administration at least.
The Ukraine defense, which Democrats have backed as if Democracy Itself were on the line (they’ve said as much, but then they always do), has been funded with billions in aid. But this past week the weirdest financing effort was revealed: “the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire” (as MSN’s MarketWatch put it) and the formalized bankruptcy of FTX, the cryptocurrency, and the key parts played by both the Ukrainian Government and American Democrat politicians.
Tucker Carlson drew the circlular flow chart, this week, where U.S. Government subsidies to Ukraine were put into FTX, and how FTX’s “genius” founder, Bankman-Fried, then turned that into “charity.” Which somehow includes tens of millions to Democrats for their mid-term election campaigns.
This over-shadows Iran-Contra and Bernie Madoff combined. It seems as if scripted for some dark comic epic, with even the financial culprit’s name being satirical: BANKMAN FRIED???? It’s as if the Norns have been slipping stitches while in stitches over an over-imbibing of ’shrooms.
Events are moving too quickly now to follow easily. The desperation of the players becomes obvious, now that Ukraine has bombed Poland hoping to up America’s (NATO’s) war footing to DEFCON-11.
But there’s no deep mystery. This is how elites and empires fall. With lies, financial corruption, and death all around.
This Funny or Die production is an interesting attempt to be both relevant and funny. Interesting — because it’s an astounding failure. It only succeeds in being an object lesson in ideological witlessness:
There is no mystery about the difference between a protest and a riot. A riot inflicts violence and damages property. A legitimate protest does neither.
Or, more properly, a protest may or may not include rioting and a riot may or may not include protest. Riots can happen for reasons irrelevant to politics or any attempt at persuasion or pressure. Some riots happen because the participants just want to engage in mob mayhem. Sporting events have spurred mob violence, as have sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.
David Alan Grier, here, engages in a weird pretense that blacks during the BLM riots were the same as the Charlottesville tiki torch guys in terms of rioting activity — or that the 2016 Charlottesville event was more a riot — only (it is more than merely implied) anti-black racism prevents people from recognizing this putative deep truth.
But the real truth is that this is a blinkered falsity, and probably a lie. (I don’t really know what Grier believes. I can only guess. I think he’s a liar, but he may be just another bigoted race hustler or witless anti-white leftist.) The tiki torch parade of neo-Nazis did not engage in mayhem — I can remember no instances of it. They had gone through a (tumultous and duplicitous) permitting process, as is required by law. The only violence I saw was initiated by leftists protesting the neo-Nazi “protests.” I don’t remember what the pathetic neo-Nazis were trying to prove, but I do remember the gauntlet the police made the neo-Nazis run through — a gauntlet of their angry, violent enemies — and I do know that the kid charged with and convicted for murder had just been attacked by a mob of “protesters” before he drove out like a bat out of hell.
The rally/protest of the neo-Nazis didn’t seem very violent to me, in other words, and was not a riot. But the protests against them did turn a bit violent, though I’m not sure I’d use the word “riot” to distinguish them. It was mostly white people that I remember engaging in the anti-Nazi violence, as is the case with most leftist protests.
Now, I partook of protest marches back in the ’80s and early ’90s. But there was no rioting. Then I moved to Seattle in time for the infamous WTO riots, and that’s when I began really turning against the left — and Grier might note that those were lily-white mobs engaging in violence in that debacle. The protesters were also not good at arguing or making propaganda: I was there for the initatory “parade” in Capitol Hill, which was illegal (unpermitted) and stupid, childish — and the propaganda leaflets were not at all persuasive, though I WAS AND REMAIN OPPOSED TO THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION. But while I merely laughed at the parade, I was angry at the rioters in the days following.
Before the weird Trump epoch — or, more accurately, sparking the Trump epoch — BLM, BAMN and antifa engaged in riots to protest speech they did not like. They were violent and they were criminal and they were appallingly “un-American” (at least insofar as that they were explicitly anti-free speech). I would also call each and every one of the many mobs that destroyed Confederate statues also riots, and I saw a lot of white skin peaking around iconoclasts’ masks.
I judge Grier worse than a liar. He’s furthering the cause of racial tribalism in America, pushing prejudice and bigotry of a leftist variety against what he likely thinks of as “right-wing” “structural racism,” but in so doing is actually attempting to solidify an anti-white racism and a demoralizing “pro-black” excuse for violence. Grier is fanning the flames of the ideological divide and blowing smoke up our assessments, encouraging Funny or Die’s mostly white leftist audience to think that there is racial prejudice where none is in evidence.
And let me reïterate: I hate mob violence, and don’t approve of it when white people do it any more than when “people of color” do it. Back in 1999, I shocked my friends when I lashed out at the mob violence as well as stupid arguments of the WTO protesters. Because my friends, I gathered —most of them libertarians — bought the old romance of leftist protest. I gave up on leftist protest at that time, because I despise violent mobs.
Exception? Yes, I make an exception. I am against mob violence unless the violent mob overthrows a violent state and sets up a peaceful society. Only then will I support mob action: when it actually decreases State terrorism.
I have never seen that happen in America, though. Never in my life. It always seems to play into the hands of the statist elite. But if it did — if direct insurrection against the State has led to less state violence, then hey: I’m on board.
The point of race hustlers, though, and all this racial special pleading, is not to decrease state violence — though they sometimes bring it up as an excuse for their violence. They are really trying to excuse mob violence for their cause, and when they do this the State takes the cue to increase its power over the people. Tyrants historically love mobs, at least those that serve them. The left knows this, seeing that they ascribe to Trump an “authoritarian” plan to rally his mobs to engage in “fascism.” But so far, it is Trump crowds’ protesters who’ve engaged in the bulk of the violence. No Trump rally that I can recall ended with dead store owners and burnt-out police stations smouldering storefronts — and all the rest associated with the BLM riots of 2020.
I turned on the left because I am basically against violence against innocent people, and the left most evidently is not. And Grier is just another shill for the myths that excuse mobs and (in a back-handed way, via anarcho-tyranny) encourage states to terrorize peaceful people.
Also, for Funny or Die to promote this witless video — isn’t this a bit too on the nose? I mean, it’s not funny. So….
Until a recent video by Rebel Wisdom, I had never heard of Samo Burja. I just do not follow international affairs well enough, I guess. But Mr. Burja’s discussion of Putin and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine struck me as not only interesting, but very much along familiar lines:
This analyst makes three predictions:
1. China develops more financial alternatives to First World financial systems and offers them to rogue states around the world. (I’ve talked about this before, on Paul Jacob’s podcast a few weeks ago. This could help collapse the dollar, by the way.)
2. Russia successfully occupies large chunks of Ukraine that it did not control before. (Seems likely. Surely Putin’s keeping the eastern sectors, but, this man says, more than just the Donbas region.)
3. Putin remains in power for the next year.
He also says Russia will become something of a vassal state to China, which is something neither we nor the Russians should want. But it is something the Chinese quasi-commies want (why don’t we just call the CCP elite caste the warlords or oligarchs? Please advise). And it is something that the embargoes will ensure. This is also a point I’ve made before.
The Romney position that Russia is America’s most dangerous enemy — the position that Obama once mocked but now Democrats push with spittle flying — is something China needs us to believe, for I suspect (and, again, have said as much to friends) that China pushed Russia to do this as part of its plan to weaken America which would allow it to conquer Taiwan. That’s not the only end game, but it’s a huge one, and Burja identifies it as Xi Jinping’s life goal. Seems likely.
Given that China has invested so much in the Democratic Party (Biden being a paid stooge and almost certainly a traitor in technical terms, and worthy of the firing squad), that all of the media has rallied propaganda to this diversion is hardly surprising at all.
Above all I do not want WWIII, which I think is likely if Biden loses control of what remains of his senses. What I think the corrupt insider Democrats yearn for is a protracted set of brushfire wars with a weakened Russia. But pushing Russia is really, really dangerous. Past Ukrainian policy by the Dems has been as insane as their desire to regime change Assad and their “successful” regime change of Qaddafi. These people seem like fools, but I don’t know precisely what they want. But if they want a One World Government with the power center in Beijing, they appear to be doing great.
Secondarily I don’t want the U.S. to become any more like China. Or Russia. This element — an unintended effect of international conflict known to classical liberals for centuries — is also something that Mr. Burja makes clear.
In recent podcasts with Paul Jacob, I tried also to make this point:
First (6:50), I suggest that the COVID over-reaction police states of New Zealand and Australia maybe disqualify them from “free nation” status, and therefore as American allies. Then (9:46) I explain my concern over how disastrous American interventions have been generally — in one country after another — and most recently in Ukraine. And when I got to the subject of biolabs in Ukraine, Paul Jacob not only agreed with me but expressed a bigger worry: that these may have been established there the better to escape American law prohibiting bioweapons research (just as the American military did with torture under Bush/Cheney). And I went on (22:39) to suggest that the current war started in 2020 with the release and psy-op packaging of SARS-CoV-2 into global society, courtesy of the Wuhan biolab, and that the point of China egging on Russia was to demoralize Americans from war to allow China an easier walk-in over the Taiwan Strait. And Democrats, because they are basically crazed enviro-nuts who think that energy is bad and are willing to make Americans poor the better to virtue-signal their commitment to “the planet,” are helping China along.
This is not the first time American foreign policy has been shanghaied to subvert our own freedom. Without any pressure from Spain, the United States succumbed to liberticidal imperialism during the McKinley administration, as William Graham Sumner made so clear in “The Conquest of the United States by Spain.”
The extent to which the Democrats at large are bought off by the Chinese is probably limited. Actual, direct “Manchurian Candidate” subversion of an American political figure is probably limited to Joe Biden himself (though a subverted president is nothing to sneeze at). The rest just go along with subversion for the very reason subversion works, according to Yuri Bezmenov: you cannot subvert someone who does not want to be subverted, and Democrats have been pinko for my whole lifetime. They love big government transfer programs and all the rest, and since they themselves get involved in the government racket, they can add class-interest to their lust for subversion of the American system . . . which once upon a time was based on private property and distributed responsibility.
Which is why Democrats became such true believers in Trump’s vaccine program as well as enthusiastic pushers of lockdowns and mask mandates. They do not care about medical results, not really: they care about regimenting society, abridging the freedom of all for the sake of all (the basic idea of republican governance, but also of socialism) and, especially, of targeted victim groups. This is, after all, the basic game progressives play in psycho-politics: sacrifice by all for the benefit of a few. But the utility of the pandemic to the Chinazis and the globalists has been waning. People around the world now chafe under the lockdowns and idiotic (and obviously ineffective) mask mandates.
So: invasion to “the rescue” — the rescue of globalists’ subversion plans. The Great Reset and all.
Just how limp a noodle the COVID flail has become can be seen in how kid-gloved YouTube has been to Dr. John Campbell. In a series of videos, recently, he has explored the data that shows how destructive pandemic policy has been. And he has been allowed to continue. A half year ago he would have been de-platformed by the Deep State’s Internet service wing, Google/Alphabet.
And it is worth noting how amazing Campbell’s turn has been on the subject. Steve Kirsch, writing on Substack, explains the situation pretty well: “a former advocate of the vaccine, trusted by millions of people, has now realized he’s been deceived and he’s not happy about it at all.”
Paul Jacob wrote about Dr. Campbell’s discussion of recent Ivermectin study results, in “This Is Just Huge.” Kirsch fixes upon the doctor’s consideration of recent revelations from Pfizer about adverse effects of the mRNA treatment.
I share this not because the news seems all that new to me, but because many folks are just now realizing how wrong “the experts” were. In the wake of proof that the government has lied to us about the safety of mRNA coronavirus “vaccines,” we now get a lot of “how could people reject this information” and “how could they have suppressed information about adverse effects” sputterings.
Oh, the naivety. It is so very easy. Those on the inside had a lot of money and prestige on the line, while the masses of people are generally serviles, demanding to be saved by higher-ups. What I’ve seen over and over on this latter is incredulity that great groups of people could commit fraud and great harm, knowingly coupled with this: the belief that some must be sacrificed for the greater good — if some people must die that the majority be saved, all the better!
This sacrifice ideology, absolutely central to life in a wealth-transfer state, has been endemic for a century now. It is a sign that people have tacitly embraced what they would otherwise, in moments of clarity, describe as “fascist” or “Nazi” or “communist” principles. Because of this, along with propaganda-induced fear and tribal allegiances, the masses and the elites have pushed dangerous and deadly-to-some pseudo-vaccines while suppressing less expensive yet more efficient treatment and prophylactic regimens.
I think this is a sign of a decadent civilization.
To me, a decent, life-affirming political philosophy begins with the realization that majorities and even consensus opinion can be wrong. The low-level democratic idea insists that only a few “bad people” can commit great evils. This is obviously way off, and is the wedge notion that allows for a massacre society. Which we now live in.
And is that why we can actually encounter leftist Democrats talk about nuclear first strikes?
How low our society has sunk. But it can go lower, and, I fear, will. Under pressure to fulfill the entelechies they have already nurtured — let their adopted memes take over their lives and infect others — and as subverted by Chinese psy-ops and their own fears of imperialist Russia, American Democrats and neocons could actually destroy civilization. All it takes is a few nuclear bombs. Or a real plague. Or globalist totalitarianism.
2016 election. Rittenhouse. Covington. Russian collusion. Vaccines. Bounties on US soldiers. Lab-leak theory. Jussie Smollett. The Pulse shooting. The Atlanta shootings. Hunter Biden laptop. Inflation. Steele Dossier. The MSM got every single one wrong.
The major (Mockingbird) media didn’t merely get these stories wrong, they told untruths: they lied and spun and propagandized for the maximum state, for their beloved Woke Leviathan.
I confess to having thought that we had reached Peak Progressivism with the mass excoriation of the Covington kids, but O, how much lower journos could go!
when the sources of news keep getting things wrong, and all the errors lie in the exact same direction, and they are reluctant to acknowledge error, we have a problem. If you look back at the last few years, the record of errors, small and large, about major stories, is hard to deny. It’s as if the more Donald Trump accused the MSM of being “fake news” the more assiduously they tried to prove him right.
Regarding the Rittenhouse case, Mr. Sullivan tries to sound level-headed: “Almost immediately, the complicated facts became unimportant. The far right viewed Rittenhouse as a hero — which he surely wasn’t. He had no business being there with an AR-15.” This is very similar to Paul Jacob’s opinion, actually, who makes similar points in his most recent podcast:
But as I mentioned to Paul in this episode (I interview him for this project of his, every weekend), my position is far less centrist.
Now, when the Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots and Rittenhouse shootings occurred, I decided to wait until more information came in. I did not make a big deal of his innocence or guilt. I was willing — nay, eager — to let a jury decide. In that I was being as normal and centrist-civilized as one could hope for. But as evidence mounted, young Mr. Rittenhouse’s innocence looked quite likely. Then, after the prosecution has made its opening “case,” an acquittal seemed to me as obviously the only just result.
All those media mavens, Democrats and beltway libertarians who jumped on the bandwagon against Rittenhouse have lots of egg on face.
Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. The men he shot were trying to kill him. They were criminals and were very much acting in the wrong. Paul Jacob, being a nice person, states that it no one wants to see them killed, but — after the fact — I see no reason to shed the tiniest tear for these miscreants.
And while I am unclear as to the legality of Rittenhouse’s open carry, I admit: I do not much care. He was just to carry his weapons, and the rioters were in the wrong, generally, and politicians and cops who let it all happen were cowards at best.
Another major defeat for “woke,” riot-loving leftists. Good. They deserve nothing better than our spittle.
And as for Rittenhouse being imprudent for carrying an AR-15 — really? He had “no business” carrying it into a riot zone?
Everybody has by now seen the judge’s remonstrance of the prosecutor for a line of interrogation that is germane to the issue. The prosecutor was trying to show that Rittenhouse came to the event wanting to kill. The prosecutor was aiming to take a weeks’-old statement by KR about wishing he’d had his rifle with him to shoot some looters as evidence. The judge had declared that line of inquiry off limits earlier on, and, after removing the jury from the room, “yelled at” the prosecutor.
The principle the prosecutor relied upon (and got Rittenhouse to admit on stand) was that we do not have a right to defend property with deadly force. Democrats hold this as a bedrock principle. Perhaps that is why they let rioters riot. After all, a mob won’t stop mayhem upon mere instruction. Deadly force is required. So Democrats have convinced me that the use of deadly force to protect property must be at least sometimes OK.
Thanks, Democrats. You’ve changed my mind.
So I disagree with both Paul Jacob and Andrew Sullivan: when cops and politicians don’t do their jobs, it is up to citizens to take up arms and defend life and property. It is obvious that, contrary to the prosecutors, Rittenhouse did not go out hoping to shoot anyone. But taking a weapon did lead the crazies to attack him. And since Rittenhouse had been doing nothing wrong, their attacking him was a gross violation of his rights. His shooting of them was just. But I also go further: his arming himself in the melee was just, and more citizens should have done it.
Sure, it seems wrong for a 17-year-old to do this job. But that is not his fault. The adult officials who shirked their duty are to blame. And so are the fully adult citizens who should have taken up arms. And, if necessary, did what the prosecutor wanted to convince the jury that Rittenhouse himself itched to do: shoot at rioters.
Mobs are evil. That is, rioting mobs are evil.
At some point, they must be opposed just like we oppose marauding bands.
But Democrats are incapable of admitting that this is what a civilization must do. Democrats are so into “inclusion” that they look at all outsiders as “oppressed” and not, as rioters and illegal immigrant invaders are, themselves the actual oppressors.
Because Democrats no longer believe that the State is justified by the civilizational need to destroy those who would destroy us — hordes and mobs and criminals and even armies — they corrupt the institutions of police and courts and border guards and military so to disenable them from protecting us. I simply submit that when governments give up their prime task, citizens must take the necessary work.
Don’t want to see “vigilantism”? Then make sure the state does its Job One. When the State won’t do this job, it not only de-legitimizes itself, it legitimizes vigilantism.
Don’t want vigilantes? Then make sure the State (including local governments) does Its Job (their jobs) — or else consider institutional alternatives to the State. There are such alternatives, and maybe now is the time to talk about them.
Until then, young Mr. Rittenhouse may not be the hero we wanted, but he appears to have been the only hero on the streets in Kenosha that fateful day.
We just cannot expect the major media to even understand this. They have been trained to serve as (and are paid to be) the lickspittle of the Leviathan State.
The recent ITV reënactment (adaptation) of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair looks really good, but it seems unfortunate that the character Sambo — described as badly legged and black on the first page of the novel — is here a well-shaped, stately black African (played by a British actor), not an Indian, and is called “Sam.”
Racial, racism, stereotypes, blah blah blah. What would Thackeray make of P.C.?
The show is on Amazon Prime, but the book is everywhere. I have in my hand a very nice Könemann two-volume, boxed edition.
I started a new channel on Rumble. I will be putting future videos up on that platform. For now, this one from a few weeks ago is uploaded there:
Paul Jacob, with whom I make a podcast every weekend, is now on that platform, too, after having a video taken down on YouTube. His channel is This Week in Common Sense, and here is his first video on Rumble:
Wirkman Comment 