Thank you.
Just read the excerpts on The West’s Darkest Hour blog.

Reminds me how after reading Del Noce’s critique of the Sexual Revolution, I got the sinking feeling that the obvious future pendulum backswing would be towards strict Puritan again… maybe even somewhat reasonably!? That’s when Del Noce stumped me, when later mentioning in passing that he sees Puritanism as gnostic.

But to me personally Del Noce’s most consequential thesis (besides “marketing character”, permissive society, limitlessness [from Domenach?], novelty, positivism, history & authority) is about perfectism, and its automatic, unavoidable progress into totalitarianism.
I derived from it that the key distinction of Christianity to all other religions is recognizing the issue, and moving perfectism as to be only achievable in the afterworld. We can still strive without end to make things better, but it’s categorically impossible to ever get even close to large-scale perfectism on earth. But that is almost entirely forgotten in Catholic, and for sure in Protestant churches, i.e. in institutionalized Christianity. And the US was actually built around that oblivion.
And it seems to me -I’m not well read enough yet to make stronger statements- that deep thinkers such as Hegel, Nietzsche etc. couldn’t let go of their perfectist striving, even when they had completely cornered themselves philosophically.
And I’m stating all this as a small-scale perfectionist myself. Beyond that I believe I’m living proof for Dostoevsky “who regarded atheism pushed to the highest degree as the condition for the discovery of God.”

Note: “moralin-sauer” is still an, if rarely used, German word meaning something like excessive, slightly suffocating morality.

as one interviewee states: “The truth is boring.” Simple or fanciful ideas are easier to grasp and more fun.

Well it seems both the interviewee and Jonathan haven’t thought deep enough on it.
– The truth is usually simple, only the lies are complex.

The hatred of Donald Trump, which certainly to some extent is legitimate if only due to his ignorance and boorishness

It’s more than just slander.
If I take that at face value it is proof that Philip only demands ‘moderate hatred’, or in other words he has at least partially accepted the basic tenants of PC SJW.

What a letdown. I hope he gives his words second thought.

The bullshit is strong in this one.

I especially like amputated.

Good one, Ted.
I especially like your

phony compassion

when criticizing all kind of things but completely missing the two most damning ones on Trump.

Hint: one of them, in a way, indirectly associates with your book title.

courtesy of the militant atheism of the former USSR, many, if not most, people in Armenia, Azerbaijan and even Russia nowadays are agnostic secularists

Wut?

Today, and maybe courtesy of the militant atheism of the former USSR, Christian values are thriving in Russia –
and I would go even further and state Russia is the last hope for Christianity to survive in the world!

Good article, but the last 6 paragraphs are difficult to understand and unpack for me.

So what is to be done?

That’s not coincidence that Pepe echos Lenin’s title here?
Then I’d need a mention about the pros of the Westphalian peace accord, before outright condemning and wanting to dispense with it. Also if you don’t like monopolization of power by the state, then what about the monopolization of rule of the law by the judiciary?

To me the central question seems to be if Confucianism has all the (necessary) ingredients that Christianity has. Specifically the concept of non-perfectism within this world.

All these authors that pretend to have some deep knowledge are just bullshit artists with an opinion, nothing more. Soon there will be another BS artist with a different slant.

Who cares?

I have no confidence in the dog-eaters to successfully overthrow their self-preserving-at-all-costs government without some MASSIVE fuckup on the part of the CCP or mass Christianization creating a secondary identity for the chinky bugs to clatter around. They’ve no mind for independent thought and no stomach for the initial stages of rebellion.

What we need is a giant can of Raid. That’ll do the trick.

Pointing out that
    hatred of [someone] due to [that person’s] ignorance and boorishness
is not a sustainable philosphy –

is now considered Trump-worshipping, Mr. Never-Trumper?
Thanks for the good laugh!

For a site that often comes off as dissident and “fringe,” the comments too often bear a remarkable resemblance to Breitbart: mindless worship of Trump.

No one with a double digit age and a triple digit IQ would think that they must reflexively side with Trump just because he has a lot of truly awful critics and enemies who often make unfair or outright dishonest criticisms of him.

Trump’s ignorance, arrogance and complete unsuitability for his job are so obvious as to be beyond all rational dispute, but many people still dispute these things because we live in a country full of idiots and nutjobs.

As for god, if you’d provide an email address or phone number, I’d appreciate it.

That would be hard, as god can best be understood as a concept, not a person.

If you are ever willing to spend 22 minutes as a rationalist with an open mind, watch that duration at the beginning of

Well only after I realized what the correct concept of God is, having been a rabid atheist all my life, did I become a believer in him/it a few years ago.

Jordan Peterson helped me with a few viewpoints (1) I didn’t consider myself before. A recorded talk shook me where an Orthodox Archpriest stated: “…others have a God of power, but the Christian is a God of weakness.”
But Augusto Del Noce really opened my eyes. I hadn’t fallen for Positivism that much as I always sensed the superficiality, but ‘mistrust of all authority’, and even more ‘dependency on nothing (2)’ – those had really gotten me (as “ideas have people”, not the other way ’round.)

Notes:
(1) Unparalleled in my opinion is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_7hCPYgXEk
Video Link
(2) That is actually the key Marxist fundamental proposition, read Del Noce.

I cannot find any deeper understanding in your article…
Read Augusto Del Noce.

He identified the core principle of Marxism to be “dependency on nothing [not even God],” for the genesis of the entirely self-created man. Therefore Marxism is atheistic, and not by accident. But it also makes Marxism the torch bearer for unfettered individualism!
Furthermore he parsed Marxism to be 80% philosophy with the goal to devalue/negate/destroy all values and all [relevance of] history, so to create a clean slate for the 20% messianic part that somehow, magically, in an unspecified way, would create the classless society afterwards.

Well guess what, the negation philosophy destroyed the messianic part too.
But if you look closely you see the 80% Marxism is nowadays predominant in -at least- all Western countries, but so far has only lead to a completely unrestrained bourgeoisie – as all limiting factors such as commonly agreed upon ultimate values, religion (but I repeat myself), and understanding of history have been dismantled.

Accordingly Del Noce’s last essay before his death in December 1989 was titled “Marxism Died in the East Because It Realized Itself in the West.”

Isn’t the Christian Church vitally important to the faith?

Not sure, maybe for the faith part –
but vitally important to me are the Christian principles (hope and love and charity and ‘acceptance of non-perfectism within this world’),
not institutionalized Christianity.

The second linked article needs a lot of interpretation to take it as negative.
Especially you’d need to avoid any comparison to other countries.

On the third linked article: Really, info from 2000, without any later update??
That comes close to trolling on your part, in my book.

1957 and 1968?
How about you look the last 10 years and ask yourself how come all but one outbreaks of new viruses occurred in China. Not all attacking humans though, but “only” their poultry or pig industries.

The Chinese asked themselves the same question, that’s why they were pretty prepared and pulled out the big guns right away, to fight the Coronavirus after it became known to top levels.
They treated it like a bio weapon attack, what it most likely was.

And Ilana Mercer is a bullshitter par excellence in this article of hers.

Ron Unz: Is there a way to put a “Troll” flag on this article?

I have to say, most articles here on the Unz site, even if IMO are wrong-headed or fallacious in their arguments, can still be assessed with some respect for the author’s perspective and deconstructed dispassionately.

This particular article, however, I find outright offensive. An insult to the reader’s intelligence, and a cynical effort to entrench anti-China dogma in a nest of disingenuous virtue-signaling which deflects the fundamental issue of just where Corona Chan actually came from to an argument over which part of the Chinese nation deserves to be blamed for it.

A clumsy ploy to preassign guilt by not even questioning the Western narrative, but instead launching into a contrived discussion over just who in China should be held accountable for the alleged crime.

Perhaps the author genuinely believes this piece to be an insightful contribution to the contemporary literature. I rather perceive it as a distasteful example of wantonly pernicious propaganda.

It reminds me a little of the Mossad’s notorious motto – “Through deception we shall wage war”.

Baron Cohen condemned Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for “deliberately amplifying … stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear”

As opposed to what he does in his “comedy” where he entraps people into behaving poorly and films the consequences? I remember in the first film he starts singing “Throw the jew Down the Well” and entreats the audience to sing along after he’s completed several verses. They do so, which is evidence of their villainy, but it stains him not.

“But we are facing an unprecedented attack on the foundations of democracy itself. If you are a US citizen, anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy.”

They ALWAYS project.

Apparently ‘democracy’ is when media, lawyers, business, education, a large chunk of the Republican Party and Deep State are on one side, and the other side only has these strange things called ‘voters’.

100% wishful thinking from your side.
Read my post #7 above for what Marx proposed and caused (not just what he wanted.)

Or if you want to convince anybody of your view,
give us details on how exactly Marx wanted to “regulate unfettered Capitalism” – outside and beyond the Rule of Law that tries to ensure fair competition, that is.

Because the MSM told you so?

I have a different theory to offer: because someone was attacking Chinese food supplies/sources.

Especially the fact that far-off pig farms got mysteriously infected too. Until it turned out criminals were using drones to “seed” those.

Witty Viktor Pelevin in his new novel suggests a different date:

Every Pelevin novel is of course mandatory reading, however they stopped translating his stuff for self-evident reasons.

The last ones to be translated though, are still brilliant, and available in English. The man himself has stated that he has nothing against people pirating his books, BTW.
This one is the last translated novel, where he started going off the reservation far too boldly:
https://graycity.net/victor-pelevin/221554-empire_v.html

Already deconstructing through pop culture allegory the parasite-predator system, but still had not yet began having characters literally contact CIA agents through forums for hypno-porn transvestites, or KGB-coerced Russian Jews on acid in sensory deprivation tanks sending “messages from God” to US presidents, or MtF feminists practice neolithic Castanedian magic against men…

Once that started going down the translations mysteriously stopped.

So, according to you, humans were the carriers of swine flu to those far-off pig farms?

OK, got it, you’re a troll.

I have a different theory to offer: because someone was attacking Chinese food supplies/sources. Especially the fact that far-off pig farms got mysteriously infected too.

Pigs are notorious for suffering from the same diseases as humans, and having pathogens that can cause disease in humans (tapeworms from “measly pork” for example). The Chinese countryside is full of people living much closer to pigs than is common elsewhere in the world, where pigs are considered unclean animals ro be kept at a distance. The Chinese know better, or think they do.

Civets are wild animals that the Chinese cage and horribly mistreat so they can defecate beans for what is supposed to make the world’s best tasting coffee. The Chinese think eating the body parts of Pangolins will make one more virile. The propositions are equally dubious. This is a billion backward people who still use their own excrement as fertiliser in many rural areas, and are bringing isolated disease pools in wild and domestic animal species into intimate contact with one another and humans too.

How could the Chinese possibly have known that something like this current pangolin-bat chimerical virus pandemic in humans could happen? There was only the 20003 civet–bat chimerical virus epidemic, and whole world begging them to stop the wet markets with associated wild animal trafficking before they created something even worse? Oh, and the model of HIV which got into humans through the chimp bushmeat trade.

I’m not sure I want someone like you lecturing us on morality, Fred.

You’re basically stating over and over, that the US should strive to maintain its ‘Only Empire in the World’ approach (which it did since at least Clinton),
but Trump is just doing it wrong.

What a total shill job by Reuters

Putin: “…see nothing criminal…”
Trump: “…used the debates to make accusations that Biden and his son Hunter engaged in unethical practices…”

Reuters: “…marking out [Putin’s] disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines…”

While dfordoom is completely correct in your cited comment,
he/she forgot to extend the line of thought to the non-elites:

Somewhere between late 1970’s and early 90’s the majority of working class people decided they also see no reason to be fearful anymore, for example that immoral behavior would lead to serious negative reverberations for them, down the road.
And as today’s problems are more bottom-up that top-down issues, that had an even bigger impact on the direction of our country (and the whole West.)

You didn’t get it, or are you deliberately glossing it over?

Reuters claimed a disagreement where there is no factual one.
Their whole article is a laughable attempt to exaggerate difference in used words, or even just visible irritation (about what exactly? why no video link?) into some foundational differences.

One more time very slowly:
Putin said “saw nothing criminal”, while Trump never stated Biden’s action were clearly illegal.
Trump said “Biden and his son Hunter engaged in unethical practices”, while Putin never disputed that or just declared said practices to be acceptable.
Now where’s the disagreement exactly?

Yes, exactly as in 2016 nobody was swayed by DNC shenanigan emails or being called “Deplorables.”

Pretty lame if that was the best Anatoly could come up to downplay this.

This article is a classic example of a slick marketing psy-op attempting to persuade people into believing that if capitalism did not exist, that we would be living in a Utopian paradise where only humanitarian goals would be implemented by the power structure. They have a very strong motive to persuade people into accepting this myth which can be proven to be a complete lie. They want to keep the system in place. They want to keep the people in place. They do not want to be held accountable for the actual problem, their own crime spree. It wasn’t their fault, it was the system’s fault. 

This article ironically uses the tobacco industry as an example of capitalism run amok. 

This article ironically does not acknowledge that Cuba, probably the most communist country in existence or at least on par with North Korea has sold Cuban cigars for centuries! 

The problem is corruption! Greed, and corruption can still exist in communist and socialist countries, and it has, and it still does. We know this to be a fact because China, Cuba, and Venezuela are all involved in The Big Lie, The Scamdemic, If capitalism is the problem, there would not be corruption in socialist and communist economies. 

Global Research has to their credit been a valuable source of scientific information regarding the Scamdemic, but why it is that Global Research refuses to hold China, Cuba, and Venezuela accountable for scientific fraud and extreme human rights abuses as a result of the Scamdemic is seriously problematic. They blame America, yet will not acknowledge that if America was actually as in control of the world as they claim that it is, America’s economy would be growing at a rate that surpasses China’s, and that America would not have the deficit problems, or the financial problems that it has. 

Most economies in the world are a combination of socialism, communism, capitalism, mercantilsm, feudalism, and agrarianism.
These are slick marketing tactics. 

China allows private property ownership, private business ownership, and China also has a stock market, so exactly what is not capitalism in China is a mystery! China also has billionaires and millionaires! 

This is all a slick marketing fraud! It is also a total insult to people’s intelligence! Should we blame it on capitalism, communism, socialism, or corruption? 

Andrea Iravani

There are a few separate scandals that have come from the Hunter Biden emails.

1. Hunter Biden’s clear illegal actions (smoking crack or meth – let the experts figure that out) and potential underage hijinks which have had zero legal consequences to him (as opposed to the ordinary citizen who would definitely suffer consequences)

2. Hunter selling access to his father Joe. The emails prove what is pretty much known in Ukraine, that Joe Biden was at the least aware and took action to benefit Hunter and potentially himself (it’s all the same thing: the family is pretty right). Ironically this is the kind of corruption familiar to Russia/Ukraine and which the US keeps pointing out. It is clear now that this goes on in the US as well (not that anyone doubted it; the emails are more proof of that)

3. The media’s absolute censorship, attacks on those who revealed these emails as part of a “Russian Disinfo” operation and denying there was anything to see here. This was the clearest evidence yet of Big Media is all-in for Biden and will gaslight the public – and even tell them that it is! (See Taibbi and Greenwald articles) – at will.

4. Clear evidence that Big Tech will act to protect Biden by throttling the reach of stories that were they about Trump would be encouraged to amplify even more loudly.

5. More clear evidence of the so-called deep state – the US siloviki – who sat on the evidence in the laptop for almost a year and when revealed start putting out disinfo about Russia

Each one of these is a major scandal – and taken together show the deep corruption baked into the US with the DC-establishment (and its European counterparts), Big Media and Big Tech colluding to censor, threaten and spread disinfo while allowing deep corruption within the state.

Yes,

it’s peculiar that Karlin reduces the whole scandal down to just one, probably least harmful thing of all and one has to wonder why is that.

I’m looking forward to reading Mr. Karlin’s straightforward, non-snarky response.

Excellent, insightful article.

I always thought, on the outer limit, the US empire will be clearly over when one of their carriers is sunk, but you make a much better point about things at the margin, instead of extremes.

I will read Greer’s book now!

In your fever dreams. By American standards neither Syria nor Libya count as anything like a war. We have troops running around Africa too. Obama fucked up in Libya for sure but for the most part used proxies and actual US involvement was minimal. Which is why Benghazi happened – we didn’t have boots on the ground protecting the Consulate.

Syria was just an extension of Bush’s Iraq policy in any case, and if you back and look at the establishment newspapers from back then you will mostly see people complaining that Obama wasn’t committing to a real war.

If you remember, the attacks against Hillary Rodham were that she was going to be a real hawk, not a wuss like Obama.

Nice piece, but let’s not get carried away here.

When a major party, in a country, presents a candidate like Biden, and a large number of people vote for him…that country is fucking dead. But this happened after a decades long illness.

Saker is so full of shit he’s in need of a roto-rooter operation.

Disinformation specialist, concocting lies and fabricated past discussions as if he’s some kind of Geo-Pol Socrates.

The US Empire became officially and finally the Jew-S Empire on 9/11/2001.

It has not collapsed. If anything, it is stronger today than then.

Why?

Because they are more desperate than ever to complete this “endgame”.

That’s means they are far more likely to use Military Power than ever before… ESPECIALLY Nuclear Weapons.

And Saker (((Faker)))… stop picking your nose at the New Smyrna Beach Winn Dixie deli counter. It’s not only unseemly, it spreads germs.

By working class I mean the vast majority of Americans who wouldn’t be able to cover a $500 unexpected outlay (as most of the middle class has been bled dry over the last 20 years.)

Here the definition or ‘moral’ I agree 100% with:

Existentialists say: Immoral things are precisely those things that you CANNOT get away with. That’s why people have identified them as immoral! The consequences of enacting will inevitably bear back on you, or the people you love.

And Jordan B.Peterson continued:

Modern relativists like to think of morality like something that’s just arbitrary, like it’s a cultural construction. […] But the Existentialists just undercut all that, they say “well, what’s immoral are those things -that you could change- that you do, that result in outcomes that are catastrophic for you.” That’s it, that’s what immoral is. So that’s universal, because it doesn’t really matter what the details are.

Working class people decided by their actions, not by making a well thought-through decision and then announcing it.

Don’t twist my words, please. I stated that working class people acted if is their immoral actions had no consequences. I didn’t say that assumption was correct.
You are implying the courts even could fix all (major) countries’ ills. That’s a kind of superhero fairy tale belief. And where do the impartial, wise judges come from?
What do you think the ‘march through the institutions’ exactly means??

Viet Nam 62.4%

That data point alone is quite funny.

It makes me wonder if Vietnamese consider Chinese a different race, and the answer is most likely Yes.
Which however makes the whole comparison an exercise in pure bullshittery, as I don’t expect more than a microscopic small fraction of Germans to consider French or Danish to be of a different race, for example.

Progressives Want a Revolution

False.
They don’t want a revolution, they want perpetual revolution so they can always ignore as irrelevant what they themselves did yesterday.

The central idea of progressivism is ‘history doesn’t matter, because nothing can be learned from history, as everything is different this time.’

His attitudes towards the environment and climate change are also a disgrace…

Somewhere, little Greta contorts her face in approval.

You have very little clue what you’re talking about, technically.
In the late 70s my family exported a two months old VW Rabbit (Golf) to Germany. At arrival the garage had to rip out the catalytic converter because you couldn’t buy/get unleaded fuel in Germany at the time. (And that only finally changed in 1984.)
So in other words all countries outside the US had no emissions standards worth speaking of, in the 70s.

In the early 2010s you could even in effing California still buy a new VW Jetta TDI (turbo-diesel) that got you about 48mpg highway.
After continuous tightening of the allowed NOx emissions for diesel engines (those are not a problem for gasoline engines with catalytic converter), some years ago the effort and cost became close to prohibitive for diesel light cars. VW and most other cars makers tried to use all regulatory loopholes, and then some, to let their diesel cars still pass emission testing. VW may have stepped over the line the most (others did too), but in the end the ongoing public condemnation is just a dog&pony show, as just a few years earlier those ‘excessive’ emissions would have been absolutely legal – and still no pedestrians had dropped dead on street corners.

Progressives are antiwar

Sounds attractive,
until you realize that all progressives are utopian thinkers, and therefore will remove anybody standing in their perceived path to Utopia by all means necessary.
In other words maybe no external war with progressives, but unlimited internal suppression instead.

You already forgot around what this discussion started?
Let me remind you:

today’s problems are more bottom-up that top-down issues

I stand by that stance,
and all your counter-examples only showcase where the laws were changed after a majority of individuals had changed their thinking about the rules they want to live by already years beforehand.

Laughable how you completely ignore Augusto Del Noce and some of his points I tried to lay out in my post #7 above.
And with your logic you could also defend Keynes to have been entirely correct, only the politicians didn’t follow all his advice.
Which basically both lead to the line
‘Karl Marx [or Keynes] was right, but he picked the wrong species.’ — Bert Hölldobler

Regarding your last sentence:
I don’t have to defend anything. Every system is always partially corrupt, and partially tyrannical. It takes continued effort from the citizens to keep it from descending into worse, and even bigger effort to improve it a little – but reaching perfection [in the earthly world] is categorically impossible.
Our system to try to make the small individual powerful enough to challenge negative developments even against rich people or corporations is the Rule of Law, as I mentioned in my post before and you ignored entirely. (However, the Rule of Law is also a system…)
Marx has nothing useful to add to that approach, except violence justified by the fig leaf of a theoretical utopia to be reached.

Absolutely amazing, detailed analysis!

Thank you very much.

The timing of the weeks four separate bombshells alleging a Biden family pay-to-play scheme mimic off course the effects of the July 22 and November 6th, 2016 Wikileaks pre-election revelations.

Though I’m going to vote for him, there are a few things that really bother me about Trump. One of them is that he’s left Julian Assange hung out to dry. Shameful. He needs to do the right thing and preemptively pardon him. His administration is the outlaw here with its completely illegal prosecution of this guy.

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/julian-assange-trial-extradition/

The fact that the NYT and the rest of the MSM are ignoring his extradition should tell you just how evil our effort to extradite him here really is.

The first link you provided leads to an article written by John Yoo.
That name rings any bells? Torture memo??

Not a reason to unequivocally discard it before reading, but I’d take it at least with a truck-load of salt.

Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Carter.

Eisenhower…

Not just a criminal, but a war criminal, and guilty of massive crimes against humanity. And a puppet for the One World Mafia. If you think that’s hyperbole, then please justify that mediocrity’s participation in the war on anti-Communists and his treatment of both Russian and German POWs after the fighting stopped.

If it were otherwise he would have experienced a Patton, Forrestal, or Kennedy moment.

Not surprising.

I, today, received a scathing email from Gordon Duff editor of Veterans Today who wrote about my article:

It appears to be a disinformation piece wrongly couched in a weak tome regarding the electoral process. The meat of the piece seems to be a calculated deception to raise as many issues to help Trump and his Zionist masters as possible. I am getting spam like this all the time now, articles based on GOP “talking points.” Just before an election I would expect to be offered cash to place something like this or, if I were to write it, a huge paycheck. The Hunter Biden story is fake. Minutes ago, we found Tucker Carlson’s story about stolen papers fake as well, UPS just delivered them a day late.

I very politely challenged Duff to provide just one fact that would refute the allegations against Biden, to which he replied,

It is not for me to disprove, it is for you to substantiate

Such are the excuses for censorship of this story.

As to Greenwald and the Intercept, considering his rag has not offered one word countering the MSM narrative on Covid19, ever, his outraged departure certainly adds to the overall claims of massive media censorship since he was good at it himself.

As I said in reply to Gordon Duff, and this should be asked of every publication not examining the allegations with facts;

I ask you for facts and you give me unfounded accusations of my work, and not one word to refute the Biden story? I expected better. Just one fact is all I asked for….and you couldn’t do it. Why is that?

At this point it is the censorship more than any one allegation that is providing legitimacy to the Biden story. Perhaps to my analysis as well.

#75, #79, #110

Comments posted: 3
Fact-based arguments presented, that refute anything BRT wrote: 0

The repair guy was tasked to recover the contents of the laptop, i.e. its hard drive(s).

The obvious way to try recovery is to attempt reading out all data, i.e. make a copy.
If the guy has enough storage capacity available in his repair shop, he very well might keep the copy until the customer picks up the laptop and doesn’t come back complaining some data is inaccessible, for a few weeks or so.

Nothing far-fetched on that end.

Pretty much agree.

Only one more point you didn’t mention:
This election’s “Deplorables” moment was the “I hope he dies” comment wave when he was in hospital, without any Dem calling for temperance.

But Trump is and will continue to be a liability, in many ways. His personality turns off a lot of what were once the normal Republican demographic – educated whites. I have lots of friends who have left the Republican fold, some of them thanks to Trump, others during the Bush Administration. If the fact that the last four Republican nominees are George W Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump doesn’t seriously depress you then you probably aren’t a real conservative.

Yeah, the Republican candidates–an unimpressive lot.

And yeah, Trump–his glaring insecurities, intellectual laziness, poor personnel choices, and rhetorical incoherence–is a frustrating guy.

But weirdly Trump is the only one of the Republican candidates who is actually something of a conservative. He actually shows some inkling–in fits and spurts–that he wants to conserve the American people and nation.

~

The real issue here is with your “friends”. Are they actually your “friends” in any meaningful sense? Do they share with you a common interest in preserving your nation for their children and yours?

I’d submit they are “the problem”. We have a large class of educated white people who are
a) deeply stupid
and
b) fundamentally disloyal.

Millions of “educated” whites now are so deeply steeped in Jewish minoritarian ideology that they are basically clueless saps cheering on their own destruction. They are like ghetto leaders helping maintain orderly loading of boxcars for relocation.

They have never given any serious thought to what is civilization? How is it created? Maintained? And Western Civilization–How was it built? Why is it valuable? Who and what is required to maintain it?

These “educated” whites just float in some cloud. They are actually loyal to nothing. (Yours may be loyal to their church–but that’s it.) They are not loyal to and do nothing to maintain Western civilization or the American nation. They don’t even think about the former–though they live off of its accomplishments. And they have a deeply stupid, ridiculous notion of the later. They nominally “care” about their family, their children … but have no deep loyalty toward their future and vote against their children’s, their posterity’s own future and survival.

Your “friends” are the problem..

I agree with what you wrote.

But what is the solution to fix the mess?
One can
a) use top-down to ‘easily change people’s thinking’, but that requires to put the right people at the top, which can be torpedoed, as they can as easily be changed again – and who controls the controllers?
b) use the slow and painful bottom-up approach to try to let the regular folks form a morality that they (somewhat) understand in its reasoning. Major advantage: after you achieved that, even a malicious top level guy won’t be able to quickly sway the majority of people into immoral acts.
Which is IMPO the Christian way.

I circle back to my mention of ‘march through the institutions.’
What happened there? It was a bottom-up approach too, but in that case with malicious intent. Sure, I never stated bottom-up is any guarantee for good outcome.
So it will take the same time -about a generation- to “fix” things again, in the optimal case.

But any hope for a superman able to cut corners to speed up that process will very likely fail, and almost ensure an even worse situation replaces the current one.

Next time if you don’t want to waste your breath, sketch a rough outline of your opinion and provide a link to an old comment of yours where you made a detailed argument supplied by verifiable facts, on matters of law (and hinted at your credentials) so we can see you can make thoughtful arguments. Don’t go full ad hominem without arguments, that just makes you look bad.

I’ve been on Unz only for 5 months now. I am a refugee from ZH, from where I had to flee due to excessive biased and/or click-bait articles, after being there for 10 years.

Some introductory remarks:
The ‘Rule of Law’ is a system. As Jordan B. Peterson explains nicely, “every system is always partially tyrannical, and partly corrupt.” Which means in the end we need to identify the underlying moral principles (or the ‘commonly agreed upon highest values’, if you are of a more atheistic bent) to steer the system in the right direction.
If this is too philosophical or even sophist to you and you prefer more pragmatic / practical, ask yourself, as I did once: “What is the first priority of the Rule of Law?”
My answer: “To preserve the Rule of Law, whatever that currently is, in your time and location.”

Now back to the issues at hand, as I see it US law and the Constitution leave a lot of details not fleshed out, even before going to Orwellian redefinition of words. Especially as you haven’t taken the time to refute just one of BRT’s interpretations by pointing to a written law, I have to assume your argument is mostly based on previous court decisions. Fair enough.
But I understand BRT’s attempt to interpret the laws as originally written, maybe even to their limits. Chief Justice Roberts style, so to speak.
Otherwise nobody would be allowed to utter a single word, maybe not even you if you’re not an expert on Constitutional law – and we all would have to subdue to the ‘reign of experts’ by the handful of such scholars in our country.
And if it comes to legal fights after the election (I actually don’t expect so), BRT’s exercise has some use.

I cannot vote for Trump again for two reasons: Assange and Soleimani. I still believe Trump will win, even so decisively that already on Wednesday evening the result cannot be seriously contested, so no Supreme Court involvement. But that doesn’t solve any underlying issues, and the US will see hyperinflation within the next 10 years, and maybe a civil war, and with some possibility a break-up of the union (with or without civil war.) Think about the USSR in 1990 for illustration.

Finally one note on GG and the Intercept:
I do not see Glenn as a shining beacon of journalism. His coverage of the Brazilian trials and tribulations -as far as I remember-, always had this underlying assumption “after the bad actor [Lula, …] is removed, the next one will be much better, automatically” which to me is unfortunately close to deranged leftist do-gooderism. That’s why I stopped reading TI years ago. And up to a few days ago I wasn’t aware he and Poitras had no bigger influence at all in The Intercept… and I have to chalk that up in large part as their [GG & Poitras] fault, as I read a lot of different sources, as long as they follow reason.
So all the best for GG’s future, a positive decision has been made by him; but he still has to clean up some of the mess he was part in creating.

There won’t be a ‘long march through the institutions’ in reverse because there are no conservative groups today with that kind of focus, motivation, organisation, leadership and coherent plans.

Correct.
Either such groups will form or the US will die, and in consequence almost all of the “West” -incapable of independent thought- with it.

Maybe Jordan B. Peterson and ‘his disciples’ can turn the ship around (I am one but too old.)
I see the highest survival probability in Russia and the Christian Orthodox church.

Wilhelm Reich, of all people.
I first read about him 18 months ago, and felt I’d surely never hear anyone else mention him again. Augusto Del Noce identified his works as an amalgam of Marx and Freud, driven to the extremes (“Orgasmotron.”)
But even more striking to me, Del Noce in his writings pointed out the “permissive society” as a purported good (along: more permissions => more freedom => more well-being [formerly “vitality”]), and separately but interlocking “limitlessness” [in every leftist policy proposal.]
It doesn’t take excessive perspicacity to figure out those both are DOA, as the entire (existential) human life is based on forgoing most immediate gratification, for higher values and/or future returns.

The way you write, it seems Dr. Jaffee -whom I never heard of- is stating “All systems are entirely pathological” as

every personal moral code […] is psychopathology.

which obviously then includes non-personal moral codes.
I don’t get it. How can you then be working in the field of Law?
Have you taken on a Gnostic viewpoint, such as Post-Modernists, Marxists, Puritans, and many Jews, among others.

(I don’t care what Greenwald writes about Bolsonaro nowadays. He ignored all signs that the Lula persecution was done by an even more corrupt judiciary [than Lula], and likely driven by foreign powers.)
Did you purposefully leave Russia out, from your list of Trump’s wrong treatment countries?

—
I feel You are truly lost.
If you ever find a spark of optimism (or in religious terms “hope”) in yourself, read
August Del Noce “The Crisis of Modernity”

I see the highest survival probability in Russia and the Christian Orthodox church.

Russia yes.

The Eastern European countries (Poland, Romania, etc) are doomed.

Hi Brett –
Thank you for your kind words.

I got started contacting you via email, however looking at
https://www.unz.com/author/brett-redmayne-titley/
I do not see an About section at the bottom (?)

Am I looking at the wrong spot, or are my tight browser settings (no cookie storage, ad-block, referer-block) hampering me here?

Good to see Edward finally accepting reality, only wonders me what took him so long.
But doesn’t the US cancel your citizenship if you deliberately take on another one? Whatever.

All the best for his forming family!

If you don’t understand the contrasting in my

The way you write, it seems Dr. Jaffee is stating […]

you either have a poor grasp of the English language, or simply chose to take my comments “literally but not seriously” as Peter Thiel coined it so well.

Excuse me that I found it bad style to litter my comment with question marks, and you are unable to overcome that [for the ‘Gnostic’ sentence.]

I’m still not seeing the slightest indication in your comment that you personally see any [positive] way out of the situation which even you decry. Unless you show such, the classification of some type of Gnostic thinking by you, stands for the time being.
The same thing was also holding me off from possibly reading Dr. Jaffee, as I can find endless amounts of nihilism wrapped in utopian theories in other books already.
Your last paragraph then suddenly hints at the total opposite, but lacks any substance about what Dr. Jaffee found, much less which of such no one else had found before him or at least why he summarized other peoples’ findings in a truly outstanding way.

Now that’s just plain wrong.
Asian women in the US are on average much more conservative than (young) white women across the whole country.

The extreme ones you see because they draw the attention, are just the very few [Asian women] who want to get rich/famous/whatever by all means possible.
Most of them however still try to reach the same through hard work. That’s also why most Asians in the US are -surprising to me at first- against unfettered immigration because they know what types such an approach draws in.

Unfortunately for Trump, most Asians (here including men) don’t care enough about politics to make a well-researched vote, or vote at all.

Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus […]
The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road.

LOL,
I do hope the collapse of the American Empire doesn’t take several centuries…

the Dems are terrified

Exactly my thought, two days ago. But I’d put it even simpler:

The Dems are (at least unconsciously) realizing things will get really bad now, when the moral US folks stop playing by the rules as well.

Not necessarily civil war bad although it’s a possibility, but still pretty bad.

Java is […] not sophisticated
Apple, to this day, recommends disabling JavaScript on Safari

Uh, I’m not a programmer but Java is to JavaScript what Outlook is to Outlook Express.

Well I don’t know about On-and-off Trump crony Roger Stone,
but On-and-off Trump crony Ted Rall’s blabberings are just numbingly contrived attempts at 85 D chess and therefore incredibly dull.

I can only state:
Ted, if you have a point, feel free to make it!

You’re still making projections solely from a recent snapshot.

A lot of the killer-quality household goods which I own and will use for the rest of my life, were made in China in the early 2000s.
If the Chinese stuff sold nowadays in the US is mostly flimsy, it’s not because they can’t produce better, but because the overwhelming majority of shoppers in the US won’t (or can’t) pay for higher quality anymore.

As an unconditional bet, this is silly. Your bet ignores an elephant in the room. I have two predictions.

In an unlikely scenario (5% probability) that the Ponzi scheme of the US dollar and US treasuries still stands, Chinese GDP would be about 2-3 times greater than the US GDP in absolute terms, and maybe 4-6 times greater by PPP.

In a more likely scenario (95% probability) that this Ponzi scheme crashes within the next 5-10 years, Chinese GDP will be about 10 times greater in both absolute numbers and by PPP. The reason for that is simple. The US spends a lot more than it has. So, it is 100% dependent on the US dollar remaining reserve currency, so that the US can print paper others accept as money. China has the economy producing real things (of poor quality), whereas most of the US GDP is “financial services” and other kinds of creative accounting, with real economy limited to trucking (distributing Chinese crap), bars, restaurants, hotels, and brothels, all of which will go way down when the Ponzi scheme tanks.

Nice to see someone is able to think outside the box, or in this case outside of Anatoly’s quick-sketched frame of reference!
Except for the “of [generally] poor quality” part, I fully agree with AnonFromTN.
Plus there will very likely be no more IMF in 2050, nor a direct successor.

And to the jokers here talking about [Chinese] age pyramid structure problems: yeah, just look at the large scale social unrest over the last few years in Japan!
The age pyramid is almost meaningless (especially when outright ignoring highly-skilled to lowly-skilled [immigrant] ratios) as what matters much, much more is social cohesion!
And there the US (and all the West) is once again in a much worse position than China, or most Asian (Confucius influenced?) countries.

In summary, Thulean Friend can almost give Anatoly the prize today, as the only conceivable scenario where he “wins” is one where most of us, and probably them, won’t be alive in 2050 anymore.

Mr. Rall is only here because Mr. Unz felt compelled to replace Tom Engelhardt with another lightweight, NPRoggy columnist. A complement to the “Conservatives” like Pat Buchanan and Michelle Malkin, he fusses around an edge or two of, but still reinforces, Establishment narratives.

If UR has to have a cartoonist

Going back decades, cartoonists of all political outlooks were always interested in Trump, and were much more realistic about his prospects of becoming president and what he would do in the White House than political analysts were. The UR needs Biden’s Scott Adams, and it’s got him in Rall.

Biden in the White House is going to be no one’s puppet, he has the power to have his ideas put into practice, even though some of the ideas will be completely ‘off’ none will dare say that mere months after being given one of the most coveted appointments in the country by a new President. Reagan did some things at the summit with Gorby that horrified White House advisors. We need to get past this idea that only conspiracies have agency.

Trump was outrageous in what he said, but in general he did not fully use the power that was available to him. Biden is an old man in a hurry and while his utterances will be bland, hemis likely to be far less wary about taking action. Rall is right, anything could happen with Biden.

Thank you!

An additional link about immunity from lawsuits, from the HHS:
https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/prepact/Pages/COVID19.aspx

Absolutely shameful how the author takes the deep wisdom of Fromm (and by extension Augusto Del Noce) only to trample it with Globull Warming bullshiff. Or maybe it’s even a deliberate act, to smear and destroy that wisdom.

You can draw a straight line from “Silent Spring” over “Globull Warming” to “Corona Lockdowns”, and every time perfectism has lead to ignoring all side-effects of the proposed ‘solutions’ (millions of excess Malaria deaths; trillions wasted for mostly useless electric boondoggles; or destroying the economy and the structure of society to save the last nursing home inhabitant, even after the overall low danger of COVID became apparent.)
Talk about insanity, indeed.

Liar or retard. I think both.

Millions of Malaria deaths -mostly children- definitely occur every year (and relatively quick),
while millions of potential cancer deaths were presumably prevented – according to which scientific source(s) exactly?

Plus the world has tried to come up with any as good approach to reducing/eradicating Malaria for the last 50 years, and has gotten nowhere.
And by the way, are you aware that there was Malaria in Southern US states, and it was eradicated by using DDT in the early 60’s?

And you, as most other retards, are trying to turn the argument into a black-or-white question: “no DDT or soak everything in it”
where the correct question would be “how much can we reduce use of DDT, while still having the immensely positve Malaria suppression effect?”

At first I found the article detailed and interesting, that Israel seems to have the same societal implosion problems as the US – I wasn’t aware.
But then coming across

In the US […] stop bothering with the Jews and Israel; they have nuisance value, but nothing more.

my B.S. meter red-lined.
And now I’m not sure anything Shamir wrote here has unbiased, honest truth in it.