Preparing for the Catastrophe

Time for a reset. Our new digital compact is as follows: I will type whatever pops into my head, and you are free to ignore it. 

True, this is actually the same as the previous compact, except sometimes I forget it, which becomes wearying on my part. This is because I begin to imagine 1) that I have an audience, and 2) that I must somehow satisfy the expectations of this audience.  The first is untrue, the second impossible. Still, from time to time I must rediscover the obvious.

By the way, I used to have more of an audience, and the audience used to grow at a measurable rate.  I wonder if this flatlining has something to do with those google algorithms we hear so much about -- the ones that bury conservative opinions under a sea of correct ones? 

I doubt it. Rather, I have to believe that if I were more popular, I'd only be less popular. People can only take so much. Or to be precise, there are only so many people who can take so much of this, whatever it is.   You'll see: most of you will give up before this post finds its way to the end, and I don't blame you.

Which reminds me.  President Trump has even some Democrats marveling at his superhuman level of energy as we approach Tuesday's singularity.  How does he do it?  How can a 74 year old man fly to four or five major campaign events and fire up the crowds, when Joe Biden can barely shuffle to the mailbox, nor would he be capable of conversing with the mailman without a teleprompter. How does Trump do it?

I know how.  It takes a great deal of energy to pretend to be someone and something one is not.  President Trump expends zero energy on that.  People call it "vulgarity," but it's actually quite the opposite.  For vulgarity, in the words of the Aphorist,  consists of pretending to be what we are not. 

Say what you want about the president, but he never pretends to be someone he isn't, whereas nearly all skank & foul politicians -- not to mention journalists, academics, and "artists" -- never stop pretending to be what they aren't. It's why most Republican politicians only pretend to be conservative, when they really crave to be accepted by the Right People, i.e., fellow vulgarians.  

President Trump is like your host, in the sense that he just says whatever pops into his head, the difference being that lots of people truly love what he says.   He is the most transparent president ever.  Imagine what it would feel like to be totally spontaneous and to be loved for it.  It would be like pouring out a kind of energy, and the energy coming back to you multiplied by a factor of 10 or 25 or 50,000. Bracing! 

Most people have to fake it in order to appear likable, and this takes a great deal of energy.  The pretense must be exhausting for someone as repellant as, say, Kamala Harris, or Obama.  Now, there is a vulgar man.  Imagine pretending to be unusually intelligent, articulate, a statesman, a literary man, when none of these are remotely true.     

Going back to the president, the spontaneous adulation must resemble what it felt like to be Elvis or the Beatles.  The remarkable thing about early "rock" (the reason I put it in scare quotes is that Elvis, or Jerry Lee, or  Bo Diddley, weren't trying to fit into some preconceived genre or satisfy any existing audience) is that its practitioners weren't consciously manipulating anyone, nor were they imitating some cultural- or corporate-approved fashion. 

Rather, they were spontaneously expressing something from deep within, and the public (equally spontaneously) loved it -- not just in America or the UK, but all over the world.   This is true multiculturalism,  in that it speaks to all cultures (as opposed to the bogus multiculturalism that pretends we should all be moved by Guatemalan lesbian poetry or infrahuman urban graffiti). 

Eventually the art form becomes self-conscious and therefore cut off from the archetypal nonlocal energies that animated it, which is what contributes to its gradual death.  Which goes back to the blog.  Rest assured: I will never try to please my readers.  Nor will I ever pretend to be something I'm not, including scholar, expert, academic, theologian, or writer. Just a blogger, which is more than I ever dreamed.  

Success is a trap, isn't it? Few musicians can survive it with their artistry intact.  It's not that one can't be popular and artistic, only that one must work hard to ignore the former unless it reflects an appreciation for the latter.  The Beatles were the quintessential examples of this. (Others who overcame their own successful formulas include Van Morrison, Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Scott Walker, and not many more I can think of.)

I know, I know:  okay boomer.  That's not what I mean. I'm not talking about nostalgia. Rather, how, up to that time -- 1965 -- if one were lucky enough to stumble upon a successful musical recipe, one did not f*ck with the formula.   This is precisely what the insufferable Mike Love said to poor Brian Wilson upon returning home from a tour and hearing the innovative tracks for Pet Sounds:  Don't f*ck with the formula, Brian! No wonder he went crazy.

Here's the formula:  even if you're an 80 year old self-beclowning parody, never stop singing about high school, surfing, cars, and teenage chicks, so long as it brings in the cash.  It's only cynical in the sense that pop music is always cynical, because it's consciously designed to appeal to the mob.  It's a cash grab. That's why it exists.   

No one imagined Louis Armstrong was producing art in 1927, which is one of the reasons why it is art.  No one, least of all Elvis, imagined on July 5, 1954, that That's All Right was a timeless classic.   For that matter, it didn't occur to Ray Charles that he was inventing soul music on November 18, 1954, with I Got a Woman. 

That was a lengthy prelude.  I had wanted to clear my desk in anticipation of Tuesday's election, which will clear off everyone's desk, like it or not.  As they say, you can accept your fate or be dragged there anyway, kicking and screaming. You know, amor fati. Doesn't mean you have to love it. 

At any rate, I do believe Tuesday --  Tiu being the ancient Germanic God of war, but that's just a coincidence  -- will be Cosmo-Historical, and that's no exaggeration.  But I'm just a guerrilla blogger, so what do I know?

Petey, on the other hand, spontaneously knows (in the usual manner of discarnate beings) a great deal, and he assures me that this is no ordinary affair. He can peek behind the veil and under the rug, and he insists that it will be catastrophic. In the best sense of the word. 

Preparing for the Catastrophe

Time for a reset. Our new digital compact is as follows: I will type whatever pops into my head, and you are free to ignore it. 

True, this is actually the same as the previous compact, except sometimes I forget it, which becomes wearying on my part. This is because I begin to imagine 1) that I have an audience, and 2) that I must somehow satisfy the expectations of this audience.  The first is untrue, the second impossible. Still, from time to time I must rediscover the obvious.

By the way, I used to have more of an audience, and the audience used to grow at a measurable rate.  I wonder if this flatlining has something to do with those google algorithms we hear so much about -- the ones that bury conservative opinions under a sea of correct ones? 

I doubt it. Rather, I have to believe that if I were more popular, I'd only be less popular. People can only take so much. Or to be precise, there are only so many people who can take so much of this, whatever it is.   You'll see: most of you will give up before this post finds its way to the end, and I don't blame you.

Which reminds me.  President Trump has even some Democrats marveling at his superhuman level of energy as we approach Tuesday's singularity.  How does he do it?  How can a 74 year old man fly to four or five major campaign events and fire up the crowds, when Joe Biden can barely shuffle to the mailbox, nor would he be capable of conversing with the mailman without a teleprompter. How does Trump do it?

I know how.  It takes a great deal of energy to pretend to be someone and something one is not.  President Trump expends zero energy on that.  People call it "vulgarity," but it's actually quite the opposite.  For vulgarity, in the words of the Aphorist,  consists of pretending to be what we are not. 

Say what you want about the president, but he never pretends to be someone he isn't, whereas nearly all skank & foul politicians -- not to mention journalists, academics, and "artists" -- never stop pretending to be what they aren't. It's why most Republican politicians only pretend to be conservative, when they really crave to be accepted by the Right People, i.e., fellow vulgarians.  

President Trump is like your host, in the sense that he just says whatever pops into his head, the difference being that lots of people truly love what he says.   He is the most transparent president ever.  Imagine what it would feel like to be totally spontaneous and to be loved for it.  It would be like pouring out a kind of energy, and the energy coming back to you multiplied by a factor of 10 or 25 or 50,000. Bracing! 

Most people have to fake it in order to appear likable, and this takes a great deal of energy.  The pretense must be exhausting for someone as repellant as, say, Kamala Harris, or Obama.  Now, there is a vulgar man.  Imagine pretending to be unusually intelligent, articulate, a statesman, a literary man, when none of these are remotely true.     

Going back to the president, the spontaneous adulation must resemble what it felt like to be Elvis or the Beatles.  The remarkable thing about early "rock" (the reason I put it in scare quotes is that Elvis, or Jerry Lee, or  Bo Diddley, weren't trying to fit into some preconceived genre or satisfy any existing audience) is that its practitioners weren't consciously manipulating anyone, nor were they imitating some cultural- or corporate-approved fashion. 

Rather, they were spontaneously expressing something from deep within, and the public (equally spontaneously) loved it -- not just in America or the UK, but all over the world.   This is true multiculturalism,  in that it speaks to all cultures (as opposed to the bogus multiculturalism that pretends we should all be moved by Guatemalan lesbian poetry or infrahuman urban graffiti). 

Eventually the art form becomes self-conscious and therefore cut off from the archetypal nonlocal energies that animated it, which is what contributes to its gradual death.  Which goes back to the blog.  Rest assured: I will never try to please my readers.  Nor will I ever pretend to be something I'm not, including scholar, expert, academic, theologian, or writer. Just a blogger, which is more than I ever dreamed.  

Success is a trap, isn't it? Few musicians can survive it with their artistry intact.  It's not that one can't be popular and artistic, only that one must work hard to ignore the former unless it reflects an appreciation for the latter.  The Beatles were the quintessential examples of this. (Others who overcame their own successful formulas include Van Morrison, Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Scott Walker, and not many more I can think of.)

I know, I know:  okay boomer.  That's not what I mean. I'm not talking about nostalgia. Rather, how, up to that time -- 1965 -- if one were lucky enough to stumble upon a successful musical recipe, one did not f*ck with the formula.   This is precisely what the insufferable Mike Love said to poor Brian Wilson upon returning home from a tour and hearing the innovative tracks for Pet Sounds:  Don't f*ck with the formula, Brian! No wonder he went crazy.

Here's the formula:  even if you're an 80 year old self-beclowning parody, never stop singing about high school, surfing, cars, and teenage chicks, so long as it brings in the cash.  It's only cynical in the sense that pop music is always cynical, because it's consciously designed to appeal to the mob.  It's a cash grab. That's why it exists.   

No one imagined Louis Armstrong was producing art in 1927, which is one of the reasons why it is art.  No one, least of all Elvis, imagined on July 5, 1954, that That's All Right was a timeless classic.   For that matter, it didn't occur to Ray Charles that he was inventing soul music on November 18, 1954, with I Got a Woman. 

That was a lengthy prelude.  I had wanted to clear my desk in anticipation of Tuesday's election, which will clear off everyone's desk, like it or not.  As they say, you can accept your fate or be dragged there anyway, kicking and screaming. You know, amor fati. Doesn't mean you have to love it. 

At any rate, I do believe Tuesday --  Tiu being the ancient Germanic God of war, but that's just a coincidence  -- will be Cosmo-Historical, and that's no exaggeration.  But I'm just a guerrilla blogger, so what do I know?

Petey, on the other hand, spontaneously knows (in the usual manner of discarnate beings) a great deal, and he assures me that this is no ordinary affair. He can peek behind the veil and under the rug, and he insists that it will be catastrophic. In the best sense of the word. 

Metapolitics, Schrödinger's Cosmos, & 15 Years of Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

"Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene" is the title Thomas Sowell used for columns consisting of unconnected observations about this and that. Same.  Except in our case we are explicitly coming at it from a vertical perspective.  Therefore, the observations aren't from within the scene but from above it.  If we may say so oursoph. 

It's the difference between being involved in a trainwreck vs. sitting atop a hill and seeing that two trains below are about to collide.  You might think that a passenger on one of the trains has more personal information about the wreck.  He does, in a way, right up to the moment he perishes in the crash. 

As we've suggested before, an eyewitness to the Crucifixion would have more personal information about it than do we.  Then again, not.  At all, really.  Except one of the criminals adjacent to Christ. He gets it.

Just so, politics looks very different from within than it does from above.  Metapolitics.  I've never used that word before, nor do I recall hearing it used.  Is it a thing?  Surely it must be, since it has been one of the main preoccupations of the blog lo these fifteen years.

Fifteen years! My son is fifteen. I started blogging when he was six months old.  That is a crazy thing to think about.  So I won't.  

By the way, consider this an open thread with a long addendum.  Feel free to ignore the addendum.  I'm just typing what comes into my head, which is disrespectful to the reader.  

It's just that we're in a kind of Schrödinger's Cosmos moment, aren't we?  One way or another, the future is bearing in on us like... like two freight trains on the same track.  One of them will crush the other.  I just can't make out which one at the moment.   My ears tell me one thing, my eyes another.  

Back to metapolitcs.  An amazon search produces 39 results.  Let's have a looksee if no one else is in our tree.

This first book sounds promising:  it is "a searing" -- searing, I tell you! -- "critique of liberalism" that "discusses the limits of political philosophy."  Uh oh. Postmodern gibberish ahead:

Metapolitics argues that one of the main tasks of contemporary thought is to abolish the idea that politics is merely an object for philosophical reflection. Badiou indicts this approach, which reduces politics to a matter of opinion, thus eliminating any of its truly radical and emancipatory possibilities.

Against this intellectual tradition, Badiou proposes instead the consideration of politics in terms of the production of truth and the affirmation of equality. He demands that the question of a possible “political truth” be separated from any notion of consensus or public opinion, and that political action be rethought in terms of the complex process that binds discussion to decision.

Starting from this analysis, Badiou critically examines the thought of anthropologist and political theorist Sylvain Lazarus, Jacques Rancière’s writings on workers’ history and democratic dissensus, the role of the subject in Althusser, as well as the concept of democracy and the link between truth and justice.

Indict. Emancipatory. Production of truth. Dissensus.  These are postmodern dogwhistles one can assemble in any order and get published in a major academic journal.  Another reviewer finds

very intriguing the idea that politics needs to work at the level of thinkability and not at the level of material practice. To align politics with thought, he turns to a language of naming, a language that refers not to what things are, but what things could possibly be. Names must be localized within multiplicities. In abstract terms, this makes sense.

Well, if that's case, then stop making sense.  This next reviewer makes just as much:

Badiou's work is often both refreshing in its Platonic instance of the reality of abstractions and the importance of ontology of events and truth-procedures, and infuriating in that he often makes bold claims without explicit argumentation using a methodology of suture to lay philosophy out as meta-truth procedure. 

We all have our pet peeves. One of mine is people who use a methodology of suture to lay philosophy out as a meta-truth procedure. 

Suffice it to say, none of this is in our attractor. Let's move on. The next book is one called Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind. It has only one review, but the reviewer is pretty worked up about it. He claims the author is "a polemicist with an extremely conservative cultural, religious and political agenda, smearing with a proto-Nazi tag those aesthetic and cultural movements that he happens to dislike."

Sounds like one of those typical left wingers who doesn't understand that fascism is obviously of the left. 

If I were a clinical psychologist, I might suggest to this fellow that polemicism, religiosity, and smearing are indeed going on.  They are "present," so to speak, in the space between you and the book. But we need to be patient about their source and vector.  So let's just explore them together, and not just assume they're emanating from outside your own mind.  (In short, you can't just come out and tell a leftist he's projecting; rather, you have to lead him slowly to this ego- and ideology-shattering insight.)

Now I'm reminded of an old gag. Can't recall who made it -- sounds like Whitehead, or maybe Chesterton -- but it goes something like this:  every historian has a bee in his bonnet. When you read his work, listen for the buzzing.  The buzzing is his vision, his conception of the whole.  His metahistory, you might say.  

Why else would he get so worked up about it? We're essentially talking about a religious category, or rather, a naive secular category unreflectively imbued with religious energy.  

Here's one called There is No Life without Metapolitics.  Couldn't agree more.  Life is far too interesting to merely live it.  Rather, it must be "meta-lived," as it were.  To paraphrase one of our founding Raccoons, Socrates, the anti-meta-life is scarcely worth living.

Anyway, this one is described as a "lined notebook for writing & note taking," and a "funny journal for metapolitics lovers." In other words, it is a potential space for incoming vertical murmurandoms.   Like this blog.

Metapolitics, Schrödinger's Cosmos, & 15 Years of Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

"Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene" is the title Thomas Sowell used for columns consisting of unconnected observations about this and that. Same.  Except in our case we are explicitly coming at it from a vertical perspective.  Therefore, the observations aren't from within the scene but from above it.  If we may say so oursoph. 

It's the difference between being involved in a trainwreck vs. sitting atop a hill and seeing that two trains below are about to collide.  You might think that a passenger on one of the trains has more personal information about the wreck.  He does, in a way, right up to the moment he perishes in the crash. 

As we've suggested before, an eyewitness to the Crucifixion would have more personal information about it than do we.  Then again, not.  At all, really.  Except one of the criminals adjacent to Christ. He gets it.

Just so, politics looks very different from within than it does from above.  Metapolitics.  I've never used that word before, nor do I recall hearing it used.  Is it a thing?  Surely it must be, since it has been one of the main preoccupations of the blog lo these fifteen years.

Fifteen years! My son is fifteen. I started blogging when he was six months old.  That is a crazy thing to think about.  So I won't.  

By the way, consider this an open thread with a long addendum.  Feel free to ignore the addendum.  I'm just typing what comes into my head, which is disrespectful to the reader.  

It's just that we're in a kind of Schrödinger's Cosmos moment, aren't we?  One way or another, the future is bearing in on us like... like two freight trains on the same track.  One of them will crush the other.  I just can't make out which one at the moment.   My ears tell me one thing, my eyes another.  

Back to metapolitcs.  An amazon search produces 39 results.  Let's have a looksee if no one else is in our tree.

This first book sounds promising:  it is "a searing" -- searing, I tell you! -- "critique of liberalism" that "discusses the limits of political philosophy."  Uh oh. Postmodern gibberish ahead:

Metapolitics argues that one of the main tasks of contemporary thought is to abolish the idea that politics is merely an object for philosophical reflection. Badiou indicts this approach, which reduces politics to a matter of opinion, thus eliminating any of its truly radical and emancipatory possibilities.

Against this intellectual tradition, Badiou proposes instead the consideration of politics in terms of the production of truth and the affirmation of equality. He demands that the question of a possible “political truth” be separated from any notion of consensus or public opinion, and that political action be rethought in terms of the complex process that binds discussion to decision.

Starting from this analysis, Badiou critically examines the thought of anthropologist and political theorist Sylvain Lazarus, Jacques Rancière’s writings on workers’ history and democratic dissensus, the role of the subject in Althusser, as well as the concept of democracy and the link between truth and justice.

Indict. Emancipatory. Production of truth. Dissensus.  These are postmodern dogwhistles one can assemble in any order and get published in a major academic journal.  Another reviewer finds

very intriguing the idea that politics needs to work at the level of thinkability and not at the level of material practice. To align politics with thought, he turns to a language of naming, a language that refers not to what things are, but what things could possibly be. Names must be localized within multiplicities. In abstract terms, this makes sense.

Well, if that's case, then stop making sense.  This next reviewer makes just as much:

Badiou's work is often both refreshing in its Platonic instance of the reality of abstractions and the importance of ontology of events and truth-procedures, and infuriating in that he often makes bold claims without explicit argumentation using a methodology of suture to lay philosophy out as meta-truth procedure. 

We all have our pet peeves. One of mine is people who use a methodology of suture to lay philosophy out as a meta-truth procedure. 

Suffice it to say, none of this is in our attractor. Let's move on. The next book is one called Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind. It has only one review, but the reviewer is pretty worked up about it. He claims the author is "a polemicist with an extremely conservative cultural, religious and political agenda, smearing with a proto-Nazi tag those aesthetic and cultural movements that he happens to dislike."

Sounds like one of those typical left wingers who doesn't understand that fascism is obviously of the left. 

If I were a clinical psychologist, I might suggest to this fellow that polemicism, religiosity, and smearing are indeed going on.  They are "present," so to speak, in the space between you and the book. But we need to be patient about their source and vector.  So let's just explore them together, and not just assume they're emanating from outside your own mind.  (In short, you can't just come out and tell a leftist he's projecting; rather, you have to lead him slowly to this ego- and ideology-shattering insight.)

Now I'm reminded of an old gag. Can't recall who made it -- sounds like Whitehead, or maybe Chesterton -- but it goes something like this:  every historian has a bee in his bonnet. When you read his work, listen for the buzzing.  The buzzing is his vision, his conception of the whole.  His metahistory, you might say.  

Why else would he get so worked up about it? We're essentially talking about a religious category, or rather, a naive secular category unreflectively imbued with religious energy.  

Here's one called There is No Life without Metapolitics.  Couldn't agree more.  Life is far too interesting to merely live it.  Rather, it must be "meta-lived," as it were.  To paraphrase one of our founding Raccoons, Socrates, the anti-meta-life is scarcely worth living.

Anyway, this one is described as a "lined notebook for writing & note taking," and a "funny journal for metapolitics lovers." In other words, it is a potential space for incoming vertical murmurandoms.   Like this blog.

The Truth is Priceless. For Everything Else There's Blustercard

Yesterday at Instapundit I was uncharacteristically drawn into a moronic debate, this one about music. I almost never get into online arguments, because they are utterly pointless.  At least a decade ago I realized I had never once lost such an argument; but that never once had my opponent realized he had been vanquished. So why waste one's time and energy?   

Instead, I try to hone my neurons and keep the synapses in shape by coming up with a pointed gag or zinger or quasi-infallible aphorism a la Dávila.  These are not for the edification of their recipient. Rather, just a regimen to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.  

This mirrors a much larger cultural phenomenon having to do with... with everything, right?  I don't want to take this post in that direction.  Too big a subject.  Suffice it to say that

Engaging in dialogue with those who do not share our assumptions is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time (Dávila).

This being the case, the only truly fruitful argument would be one regarding first principles.  I literally cannot conceive of any argument that could alter mine. I'll still hear them out, of course, but these are nearly always just ancient sophistries dressed in modern garb.  I suppose I'm pleased that there are conservatives who enjoy doing intellectual combat with our modern and postmodern sophists. I'm just not one of them. For  

Agreement is eventually possible between intelligent men because intelligence is a conviction they share.

BUT

Intelligence is a train from which few do not deboard, one after the other, in successive stations.

That is such an important wisecrack.  Take two people, each with an IQ of 145 or so, which is to say, three standard deviations above the mean.  Math is hard, but if I remember correctly, only around one in a thousand people fall into this range.  But ask these two about the nature of reality, and you are liable to be given answers that utterly contradict one another.

Conclusion: no amount of intelligence discloses the nature of reality.  But because I know this and they don't, I'm smarter than people who are smarter than I am!  Woo hoo!

What's really going on here?  What is really going on is that intelligence isn't just anything, at least in my cosmos.  Here we believe that intelligence is not intelligent unless it is an adequation.    If it is not an adequation, then it really is just about power, or status, or chicks.  Getting them, that is.  The rest is just for show -- to deceive the public and to fool each other.  

By the way, one reason President Trump drives journalists crazy is that he is a bull in their china shop of unearned status.  He is revealing these mediocrities to be what they are merely by his existence:  mediacretins.

Here is our first principle, more or less: that the object of intelligence is being; and that the subject of being is intelligence.  Conformity of the two is what we call "truth." And truth is certain, or it is not worthy of the name.  (Of course, there are relative truths, but they are nonetheless true because they are relative to Truth as such.)

Now, in the words of the Aphorist, 

Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment.

What does he mean by this?  Let's say I'm a naive metaphysical Darwinian.  I have written a check to the First Bank of Natural Selection that claims "humanness" is entirely reducible to selfish genes.   The check bounces.  It comes back to me with a note, "insufficient funds."

What happened?  I'm sure I had sufficient funds to cover the check: my portfolio is quite diversified and includes status, tenure, conventional wisdom, conformity to my peers, the climate of opinion, even some junk metaphysics in a hedge fund.

You forgot one thing: the nature of what is, and how we may know it.  How is this possible if Darwinism is true?   Not only have you been living on credit, you are actually as bankrupt as California would be if it were honest about its literally unpayable debts. 

But here is what I don't understand: this post was supposed to be about music. 

The Truth is Priceless. For Everything Else There's Blustercard

Yesterday at Instapundit I was uncharacteristically drawn into a moronic debate, this one about music. I almost never get into online arguments, because they are utterly pointless.  At least a decade ago I realized I had never once lost such an argument; but that never once had my opponent realized he had been vanquished. So why waste one's time and energy?   

Instead, I try to hone my neurons and keep the synapses in shape by coming up with a pointed gag or zinger or quasi-infallible aphorism a la Dávila.  These are not for the edification of their recipient. Rather, just a regimen to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.  

This mirrors a much larger cultural phenomenon having to do with... with everything, right?  I don't want to take this post in that direction.  Too big a subject.  Suffice it to say that

Engaging in dialogue with those who do not share our assumptions is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time (Dávila).

This being the case, the only truly fruitful argument would be one regarding first principles.  I literally cannot conceive of any argument that could alter mine. I'll still hear them out, of course, but these are nearly always just ancient sophistries dressed in modern garb.  I suppose I'm pleased that there are conservatives who enjoy doing intellectual combat with our modern and postmodern sophists. I'm just not one of them. For  

Agreement is eventually possible between intelligent men because intelligence is a conviction they share.

BUT

Intelligence is a train from which few do not deboard, one after the other, in successive stations.

That is such an important wisecrack.  Take two people, each with an IQ of 145 or so, which is to say, three standard deviations above the mean.  Math is hard, but if I remember correctly, only around one in a thousand people fall into this range.  But ask these two about the nature of reality, and you are liable to be given answers that utterly contradict one another.

Conclusion: no amount of intelligence discloses the nature of reality.  But because I know this and they don't, I'm smarter than people who are smarter than I am!  Woo hoo!

What's really going on here?  What is really going on is that intelligence isn't just anything, at least in my cosmos.  Here we believe that intelligence is not intelligent unless it is an adequation.    If it is not an adequation, then it really is just about power, or status, or chicks.  Getting them, that is.  The rest is just for show -- to deceive the public and to fool each other.  

By the way, one reason President Trump drives journalists crazy is that he is a bull in their china shop of unearned status.  He is revealing these mediocrities to be what they are merely by his existence:  mediacretins.

Here is our first principle, more or less: that the object of intelligence is being; and that the subject of being is intelligence.  Conformity of the two is what we call "truth." And truth is certain, or it is not worthy of the name.  (Of course, there are relative truths, but they are nonetheless true because they are relative to Truth as such.)

Now, in the words of the Aphorist, 

Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment.

What does he mean by this?  Let's say I'm a naive metaphysical Darwinian.  I have written a check to the First Bank of Natural Selection that claims "humanness" is entirely reducible to selfish genes.   The check bounces.  It comes back to me with a note, "insufficient funds."

What happened?  I'm sure I had sufficient funds to cover the check: my portfolio is quite diversified and includes status, tenure, conventional wisdom, conformity to my peers, the climate of opinion, even some junk metaphysics in a hedge fund.

You forgot one thing: the nature of what is, and how we may know it.  How is this possible if Darwinism is true?   Not only have you been living on credit, you are actually as bankrupt as California would be if it were honest about its literally unpayable debts. 

But here is what I don't understand: this post was supposed to be about music. 

The Eternal Clash of the Imbeciles

First, my unsolicited and entirely predictable take on last night's presidential debate -- and on every presidential debate, past and future.  In the words of Señor Dávila: 

The approval of imbeciles is the final factor in victories.

Of course I hope these imbeciles decide to pull the lever for Trump -- assuming they know how -- but they're imbeciles nonetheless.  Imagine how stupid one must be to not know whether or not one is a leftist!   And yet, the question of whether or not the United States will continue to exist as the United States is in the hands of these oblivious low- and no-fos.  

The principles that define left and right are deep, wide, pervasive, and irreconcilable.  Last night's moderator was, like Chris Wallace, another leftwing imbecile, but her final question was particularly imbecilic -- something along the lines of "if you win the election, what will you say to reassure those who didn't vote for you?"

There is nothing Biden could say to reassure me. Unless maybe he renounces Satan, which I don't see happening.   

Speaking of whom, let's get back to his revolutionary activity. 

No, wait.  One more thing.  What would Gagdad say to reassure those who despair at the prospect of a President Harris?  Once again, I will channel the good Señor.  I would draw from my own Book of Pointed Gags & Wisecracks, but they're too scattered and disorganized for quick reference:

Christianity does not solve “problems”; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level.

The conservative is a simple pathologist. He defines sickness and health. But God is the only therapist.

I do not belong to a world that perishes. I extend and transmit a truth that does not die.

Defeats are never definitive when they are accepted with good humor.

With good humor and pessimism it is possible to be neither wrong nor bored.

Resignation must not be an exercise in stoicism but a surrender into divine hands.

There's another principle I like to keep in mind: that that which cannot continue will not continue.  After all, I live in California, which is a daily experiment in trying to prove that the impossible is possible, e.g., mandatory electric cars when there's not enough electricity to keep the lights on, or open borders when there's not enough water for existing citizens, or more funds for public employee unions when we've already accumulated $1,000,000,000,000 (a trillion) in unfunded pensions.  

Which of course is why Nancy Pelosi is trying to lard the COVID relief bill with bailouts for Democrat run disasters such as California and New York.   

Back to the book we were discussing in the previous post, Revolution and Counter-Revolution.  I'm going to cut to the chase and give my bottom-line take before I proceed to defend it:  when we talk about the demonic or diabolical, we are fundamentally describing the "spirit of revolution," bearing in mind that we must define what we mean by "revolution."

For example, in this context it is entirely inappropriate to call our founders "revolutionaries."  In fact, they were very much the opposite, in that they wanted nothing to do with overturning the order of the world, but rather, restoring the ancient rights to which we were and are entitled.  Our founders were terrified of revolution, which is precisely why they created a constitution to "contain" and neutralize such destructive impulses and energies.   

Conversely, everything about the left -- especially since the Wilson administration -- is about weakening our Constitution in order to strengthen the Revolution.  Now they want to pack the Supreme Court in order to transform it into a revolutionary body, but this is what the left does:  it ruins everything, from art to religion to education to whatever it touches.  

Of course, they wouldn't agree that they're ruining anything, rather, perfecting it.  Marriage is better now that it isn't restricted to one male and one female.  For that matter, women are better now that they are free to deny their femininity and pretend to be men.  Likewise a pajama-soyboy castratti is a perfect man.  

Which reminds me of an article by the always excellent David Solway.  I still haven't figured out how to embed links with the new blogger format, but here it is:

(https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/10/17/the-despair-of-feminism-n1066231)

I was going to discuss the piece anyway in the context of the Revolution, because the denial of male and female nature goes to its very essence; you might say to its denial of essence, for denial of essence is the essence of the Revolution.  And no, I'm not just trying to be clever; this is the thesis of Weaver's classic Ideas Have Consequences, the most consequential idea of all being....

Put it this way: you really have only two choices, or a choice of two principles.  Depending upon how you choose, hundreds of implications and entailments follow, right down to whether you are a conservative or revolutionary (of course, the leftist is never intellectually consistent, so in his case it doesn't matter that he believes mutually exclusive ideas).  

The choice is:  common sense realism or nominalism; Aquinas or Kant; God or nihilism; intellectual or anti-intellectual; order or dis-order; freedom or egalitarianism; light or darkness; individualism or conformity; gratitude or envy; racial colorblindness or racist identity politics;  justice or "social justice";  Etc.  

Exaggeration?  Polemical?  Simplistic?  Tendentious?  I really don't think so.  Let's cite some passages from the book in question.  Here's a description of how the Revolution kills institutions and souls:  it attacks Christian civilization like a certain tree in the Brazilian forest, the "strangler fig," which wraps "itself around the trunk of another tree, completely covers it and kills it."

Analogously, "the Revolution approached Christian civilization in order to wrap itself around it and kill it." Consider how homosexuality infiltrated the priesthood with predictable consequences. It very much reminds me of Iowahawk's Timeless Tweet about the four stages of leftist destruction:

1. Identify a respected institution.

2. Kill it.

3. Gut it.

4. Wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

The Supreme Court.  Marriage. Academia. Journalism. The "art world." And increasingly, science. 

Oh yes, and gender.  Back to Solway's piece and then we're out of time.  Why are feminists such miserable people?  This is like asking why the palm tree you're trying to grow in northern Canada isn't flourishing.  You're denying its essence, which is to say, its reason for being (i.e., its formal principle).  

By the way, I haven't even finished the article.  I just know ahead of time that it will provide us with some insultaining examples of what we're talking about:

The weakening of men and the empowerment of women, as “women claw their way to ever increasing power and fix men (especially young, white men), in their crosshairs,” destroy the sexual, romantic and institutional bond between the sexes. Similarly, the common preachment that men should jettison their manhood and become more like women is to distort the gender relationship and introduce a schism into the culture that can lead only to turmoil and unhappiness for both men and women....

Modern feminism, however, is determined... “to depict everything pertaining specifically to women as ‘oppression’,” leading to a pervasive resentment that vitiates their “essential nature”....  

Feminism is a conspiracy against productive relationships, romantic love and the traditional family—a conspiracy disguised as a historical necessity, much like the anti-family [Revolutionary] communist doctrine with which it has close conceptual ties....

What we are witnessing, in Robert Curry’s terms from Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World, is a war on the crucial role common sense plays in our lives, for example, “the denial of plain fact that humans are either male or female,” with all that the genetic binary has implied since the beginning of recorded time. This “plain fact” has been routinely and programmatically denied by feminists and gender mavens, for whom sexual differentiation is “fluid” and a matter of choice or feeling. The real “deniers,” however, are the feminists and their male enablers.... As a result, the culture is in disarray and its future, as Kierkegaard saw, is despair.

The Eternal Clash of the Imbeciles

First, my unsolicited and entirely predictable take on last night's presidential debate -- and on every presidential debate, past and future.  In the words of Señor Dávila: 

The approval of imbeciles is the final factor in victories.

Of course I hope these imbeciles decide to pull the lever for Trump -- assuming they know how -- but they're imbeciles nonetheless.  Imagine how stupid one must be to not know whether or not one is a leftist!   And yet, the question of whether or not the United States will continue to exist as the United States is in the hands of these oblivious low- and no-fos.  

The principles that define left and right are deep, wide, pervasive, and irreconcilable.  Last night's moderator was, like Chris Wallace, another leftwing imbecile, but her final question was particularly imbecilic -- something along the lines of "if you win the election, what will you say to reassure those who didn't vote for you?"

There is nothing Biden could say to reassure me. Unless maybe he renounces Satan, which I don't see happening.   

Speaking of whom, let's get back to his revolutionary activity. 

No, wait.  One more thing.  What would Gagdad say to reassure those who despair at the prospect of a President Harris?  Once again, I will channel the good Señor.  I would draw from my own Book of Pointed Gags & Wisecracks, but they're too scattered and disorganized for quick reference:

Christianity does not solve “problems”; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level.

The conservative is a simple pathologist. He defines sickness and health. But God is the only therapist.

I do not belong to a world that perishes. I extend and transmit a truth that does not die.

Defeats are never definitive when they are accepted with good humor.

With good humor and pessimism it is possible to be neither wrong nor bored.

Resignation must not be an exercise in stoicism but a surrender into divine hands.

There's another principle I like to keep in mind: that that which cannot continue will not continue.  After all, I live in California, which is a daily experiment in trying to prove that the impossible is possible, e.g., mandatory electric cars when there's not enough electricity to keep the lights on, or open borders when there's not enough water for existing citizens, or more funds for public employee unions when we've already accumulated $1,000,000,000,000 (a trillion) in unfunded pensions.  

Which of course is why Nancy Pelosi is trying to lard the COVID relief bill with bailouts for Democrat run disasters such as California and New York.   

Back to the book we were discussing in the previous post, Revolution and Counter-Revolution.  I'm going to cut to the chase and give my bottom-line take before I proceed to defend it:  when we talk about the demonic or diabolical, we are fundamentally describing the "spirit of revolution," bearing in mind that we must define what we mean by "revolution."

For example, in this context it is entirely inappropriate to call our founders "revolutionaries."  In fact, they were very much the opposite, in that they wanted nothing to do with overturning the order of the world, but rather, restoring the ancient rights to which we were and are entitled.  Our founders were terrified of revolution, which is precisely why they created a constitution to "contain" and neutralize such destructive impulses and energies.   

Conversely, everything about the left -- especially since the Wilson administration -- is about weakening our Constitution in order to strengthen the Revolution.  Now they want to pack the Supreme Court in order to transform it into a revolutionary body, but this is what the left does:  it ruins everything, from art to religion to education to whatever it touches.  

Of course, they wouldn't agree that they're ruining anything, rather, perfecting it.  Marriage is better now that it isn't restricted to one male and one female.  For that matter, women are better now that they are free to deny their femininity and pretend to be men.  Likewise a pajama-soyboy castratti is a perfect man.  

Which reminds me of an article by the always excellent David Solway.  I still haven't figured out how to embed links with the new blogger format, but here it is:

(https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/10/17/the-despair-of-feminism-n1066231)

I was going to discuss the piece anyway in the context of the Revolution, because the denial of male and female nature goes to its very essence; you might say to its denial of essence, for denial of essence is the essence of the Revolution.  And no, I'm not just trying to be clever; this is the thesis of Weaver's classic Ideas Have Consequences, the most consequential idea of all being....

Put it this way: you really have only two choices, or a choice of two principles.  Depending upon how you choose, hundreds of implications and entailments follow, right down to whether you are a conservative or revolutionary (of course, the leftist is never intellectually consistent, so in his case it doesn't matter that he believes mutually exclusive ideas).  

The choice is:  common sense realism or nominalism; Aquinas or Kant; God or nihilism; intellectual or anti-intellectual; order or dis-order; freedom or egalitarianism; light or darkness; individualism or conformity; gratitude or envy; racial colorblindness or racist identity politics;  justice or "social justice";  Etc.  

Exaggeration?  Polemical?  Simplistic?  Tendentious?  I really don't think so.  Let's cite some passages from the book in question.  Here's a description of how the Revolution kills institutions and souls:  it attacks Christian civilization like a certain tree in the Brazilian forest, the "strangler fig," which wraps "itself around the trunk of another tree, completely covers it and kills it."

Analogously, "the Revolution approached Christian civilization in order to wrap itself around it and kill it." Consider how homosexuality infiltrated the priesthood with predictable consequences. It very much reminds me of Iowahawk's Timeless Tweet about the four stages of leftist destruction:

1. Identify a respected institution.

2. Kill it.

3. Gut it.

4. Wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

The Supreme Court.  Marriage. Academia. Journalism. The "art world." And increasingly, science. 

Oh yes, and gender.  Back to Solway's piece and then we're out of time.  Why are feminists such miserable people?  This is like asking why the palm tree you're trying to grow in northern Canada isn't flourishing.  You're denying its essence, which is to say, its reason for being (i.e., its formal principle).  

By the way, I haven't even finished the article.  I just know ahead of time that it will provide us with some insultaining examples of what we're talking about:

The weakening of men and the empowerment of women, as “women claw their way to ever increasing power and fix men (especially young, white men), in their crosshairs,” destroy the sexual, romantic and institutional bond between the sexes. Similarly, the common preachment that men should jettison their manhood and become more like women is to distort the gender relationship and introduce a schism into the culture that can lead only to turmoil and unhappiness for both men and women....

Modern feminism, however, is determined... “to depict everything pertaining specifically to women as ‘oppression’,” leading to a pervasive resentment that vitiates their “essential nature”....  

Feminism is a conspiracy against productive relationships, romantic love and the traditional family—a conspiracy disguised as a historical necessity, much like the anti-family [Revolutionary] communist doctrine with which it has close conceptual ties....

What we are witnessing, in Robert Curry’s terms from Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World, is a war on the crucial role common sense plays in our lives, for example, “the denial of plain fact that humans are either male or female,” with all that the genetic binary has implied since the beginning of recorded time. This “plain fact” has been routinely and programmatically denied by feminists and gender mavens, for whom sexual differentiation is “fluid” and a matter of choice or feeling. The real “deniers,” however, are the feminists and their male enablers.... As a result, the culture is in disarray and its future, as Kierkegaard saw, is despair.

Rules for Counter-Revolutionaries

Let us bow our heads and begin with a benediction... Better yet, let's lift our heads and begin with a malediction:

Transforming the world: the occupation of a convict resigned to his punishment (NGD).

Am I a reactionary?  I suppose not, if only because going back in time is impractical and impossible anyway.  No one believes more in progress than the Christian.  Indeed, we invented it.  It all depends on what one means by "progress."  Here is one man's definition, which we long ago adopted as our own on the basis of common sense:

The only possible progress is the internal progress of each individual.

And

Social salvation is near when each one admits that he can only save himself.  Society is saved when its presumed saviors despair (ibid.).

As a clinical psychologist I saw how difficult it was to facilitate "fundamental change" in so much as a single person. Beginning with myself, of course.  So much easier to change the world!  Just ask Obama.  

Yes, there are aphorisms for him -- aphorisms he will never understand, which means he is condemned to a certain kind of systematic stupidity -- or structural idiocy --  that debilitates whatever native intelligence he might possess:

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems (ibid.).

Imagine telling the average BLM member to rechannel his destructive revolutionary energy into something constructive, for example, working hard and studying in school.  The problem here is that doing so would reveal his lack of intelligence and talent.  Failure evokes the Revolution.  

Thus the perennial temptation and seduction of the Revolution -- a Revolution that will indeed turn the existing order upside down, such that the scum rises to the top.  

Which it already does, pretty much. It's why Al Sharpton is a Black Leader instead of Thomas Sowell (who would never accept the job anyway, since he doesn't believe blacks have some special need for leaders).  It's why Joy Reid has a network TV show instead of Candace Owens.  For that matter, it is also why pre-Trump Republicans were and are such cowardly mediocrities at best.

To fight the eternal Revolution we need counter-Revolutionaries.  Obviously. 

But in order to do this, we must first recognize the Revolution.  What is it? And why? And what do we do about it?

In one sense, we could say there has been only one big Revolution.  It takes place outside terrestrial time, and its outlines are transmitted to us via Genesis 3.  In response there has been one big counter-Revolution, which we might call John 1:  problem and solution.

By the way: which comes first, the problem or the solution?  One might be tempted to say the former, but if we stand outside and above time -- instead of being lost in the flux of historical contingency --  there is a proportionality and fittingness between these two that is not coincidental: a BIG solution for a BIG problem.   Man is sick, sick, sick.  Nothing short of a radical cure will suffice.  More on this as we proceed.

As I was saying above, I suppose I'm not a reactionary.  Nevertheless, the bad folks at Amazon directed this book to my attention, on the grounds that "people like me" had purchased it:  Revolution and Counter-Revolution  (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1877905178/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=onecos-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=0063d3cf3d4727a621761b6afb5fb095&creativeASIN=1877905178). 

Apparently the author is "controversial." I don't know anything about that. I only know that this is one of the best books I've ever read on the deep metacosmic structure of revolutionary leftism, AKA the Revolution.  I don't agree with everything the author says, but I do agree with just about everything he says about the Revolution.  Time enough for only few excerpts, but we'll get more deeply into it in the next post.

By Revolution we mean a movement that aims to destroy a legitimate power or order and replace it with an illegitimate power or state of things.  

It is a vision of the universe and a way of being of man that the Revolution seeks to abolish with the intention of replacing them with radically contrary counterparts.

Two notions conceived as metaphysical values express well the spirit of the Revolution:  absolute equality, complete liberty [which is of course an impossibility, thus guaranteed to generate only chaos and dis-order].

Among the intermediate groups to be abolished, the family ranks first. Until it manages to wipe it out, the Revolution tries to lower it, mutilate it, and vilify it in every way.... Even the psychological and attitudinal differences between the sexes tend to diminish as much as possible.

[L]iberalism is not interested in freedom for what is good. It is solely interested in freedom for evil. When in power, it easily, and even joyfully, restricts the freedom of the good as much as possible. But in many ways, it protects, favors, and promotes freedom for evil.