The Politician As Symbol

Truth be told, Barack Obama is not a terribly remarkable fellow. Biracial prep school graduate, small time political hustler, minor league progressive politician- other than the biracial part, the blue cities are thick with this sort of character.

I have long believed a man must be destined to be President. Men of long and highly successful political careers have failed to reach this most lofty of offices, only because the fates that order our lives did not so will it, and the stars, for a few early months of an Olympic year, did not grant them favor.

For some, election as President of the United States- head of state, head of government, Commander in Chief- was the culmination of years of politicking, governing, organizing, preparing- Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan fall in this category. Roosevelt was a man of the establishment, Reagan was more of an insurgent, but they had both been around a long time, governors of large states. Their hour arrived, and they stood up.

For others, it was more a matter of chance, but not chance unaided by the gods. Bill Clinton was a prodigy, but not a man close to the huge and sclerotic establishment of his party. But the spectacular failure of that establishment- three terms of Republican presidents in a center-left country- as well as the spectacular failure of the liberal, Northeastern establishment Republican George H.W. Bush- cleared his path. But make no mistake, the path prepared for him, he was prepared to take it, something many can't do.

Eight years of comfort and prosperity, Clinton was ready to do something only two other presidents have done- leave the office as a legacy for his vice president. That the two men who achieved office in this way, Martin Van Buren and George H.W. Bush, are remembered as mediocrities, does not detract from the towering status of their predecessors, Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. And yet Albert Gore Jr. was not fated to be President. The man whose fate that was- George W. Bush- benefited as Clinton had from the tiredness of the opposition and the failure of his own party to prepare for its next grand chance.

George W. Bush is indeed a fascinating character, whose spectacular wielding of immense power is all the remarkable for the surpassingly strange manner in which it was done. I think I'll have to provide my take on this, and maybe it will be preserved on some server in the far-off decades when his real history is written. But with reference to my current point, Bush II came to function more as a symbol than a real person. What he actually was and actually did became completely obscured in what his opponents feared he was and to a lesser extent, in what his supporters hoped he would be.

Getting back to Obama, he is indeed an unremarkable individual. Nothing against him on that account- lucky is better than good any day. But the gap between what he represents- competent, confident progressive governance, unmarred by the dissent of the stupid, angry, and unenlightened- and what he actually is, a guy who makes too many speeches and plays an awful lot of golf, is wide indeed.

But what the hell were these people expecting? Progressive governance unhindered by unenlightened dissent doesn't even occur in Berkeley or Ann Arbor, so why would it suddenly occur in DC?

But even Obama is not the apotheosis of politician as symbol- no, he is not the undisputed ruler even of this. That would go to the anti-Obama, the person hated, feared and vilified more than any officeholder in the US, Sarah Palin.

Why is Palin a symbol? Well, just think about it. What do you really know about her substantive actions and positions? Anything? No? It is just as I though. I follow politics pretty closely, and I can't say I know anything about what she did or what she stands for. I will offer my presupposition though. I believe that poltically, Alaska is like other small, remote jurisdictions like Hawaii and Guam. Which is to say, you have Republicans and Democrats, but there is no ideological difference, it is all a matter of getting your hands on the loot.

Palin seems to have been a "good government" candidate, opposed to the grifters of both parties. These types occasionally show up when the usual game gets tiresome to the electorate. The current Republican governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, seems to be of this mold.

Palin doesn't seem to be an ideological conservative, a conservative activist, or even particularly conservative in any way. Her first drawback as a political figure is her sexiness, or better put her animal vitality. She's fairly good-looking, but that's not the issue. She has a primitive charisma, significantly sexual, and a personal power that deeply frightens and upsets a large portion of the population. People who went to good colleges, and people who look to those people for leadership and wisdom, know that these kind of people exist but the idea frightens them and they would prefer to forget it.

That segues into her second drawback, the deep belief in a technological elite of government, primarily composed of Ivy League graduates. The left wing investment in this is obvious; the right however has established an array of counter-institutions, also primarily drawing from the Ivy League, and these people want to be the ones running things. The fact that the alternatives are low-ranking Naval Academy graduate John McCain, and affirmative action Ivy Leaguer Barack Obama, neither of whom probably has an IQ meaningfully higher than Sarah Palin's- if they are in fact higher at all, does not seem to matter. It's the style of the thing.

A politician can go a long way on being a symbol- FDR certainly exploited it to the maximum degree, but he also ran things. Politicians must do things. And they either are or aren't doing these things while people are projecting their hopes and fears onto them.

George W. Bush did mostly what he wanted to do, which was put through mildly liberal policies and programs while being caricatured as a right wing fanatic. Barack Obama is doing little, mostly talking up initiatives of Congress, while being idolized as the ideal of progressive leadership. But people are people, and not symbols, at least until they have been dead for some time. A living man, as they used to like to say, puts his trousers on one leg at a time.

The Filth And The Fury

In his classic "The Redneck Manifesto", author Jim Goad says "If I don't work I'll starve. If I don't write I'll die."

This sums it up for me. I am currently undergoing special, high intensity training of a highly stressful and demanding nature. Nonetheless I must take a few minutes of my day to continue the war on socialism and the intellectual and cultural wasteland it produces.

Some things are just too awful to contemplate. This of course varies from person to person. Moldbug is shocked by the frankly racist blog South Africa Sucks, and while he mentions it he will not link it. You can now find it at www.mysasucks.com should you be curious. When your friends and relatives are being regularly raped, robbed and murdered by black people you will tend to hate them, even though the sentiment isn't completely rational. I won't hold it against them.

What frightens and repels me in this manner? The basic cable channel FX has a show about an outlaw biker gang, theoretically modeled on "Hamlet." They occupy a small town near the Bay Area, own the police force, assault and intimidate the residents, and sell assault weapons to Oakland drug gangs. They are unambiguously the heroes of the story.

Why? They keep their town free from developers! What does a socialist hate more than a violent criminal who engages in the illegal firearms trade? Why a developer of course! Other antagonists are a white supremacist biker gang that manufactures and sells meth (Drugs are bad, mmmkay?) and a white supremacist group hired by developers to run the hero bikers out of town.

The dual nature of socialist revolution is its most obvious feature. Socialists love laws, regulations, and other rules, and put a great deal of effort into demanding others follow them, and for this reason so many socialists are lawyers. So, then, do socialists adhere to these same rules? By no means! (Hehe that St. Paul thing again.) Socialists simply ignore, or openly violate any rule they don't like, because if they don't like it it is by definition illegitimate. The common name for this is civil disobedience.

Let's take the developer thing. Land development is regulated by complex rules most places, very complex rules in places where socialists are in political control. Anyone wishing to build on and profit from a piece of land they paid for and pay taxes on must adhere very carefully to all of these rules, at great time and expense. These rules give countless opportunities for those opposed (usually socialists) to stop the process by legal means.

If the permission is granted anyway? Socialists will use extralegal means, such as vandalism, or protest to stop it. All that shit goes right out the window when socialists are unhappy.

Conservatives have a strange dependence on the rule of law. But there is no law in a socialist society. Adhering to the law other than as a matter of discretion (which is plenty of reason enough, you don't want to be on the wrong side of the IRS) is just stupid. Law starts when a community agrees on it. Those who don't agree on it aren't in the community, they are "outlaws."

The Priestly Class

This is not as well developed as I would like but I don't want to let it sit forever.

One- we have a priestly class, in our case priests of the religion of socialism, and they are now in charge.

I had an employment dispute some years ago that led me to file a complaint with the Department of Labor. I got my ass handed to me, of course, because I hadn't quite realized that such institutions exist not for justice, but for the appearance of justice.

Every society must have some generally feeling that things are fair and that justice is served to maintain social peace. Whether this is actually the case as an outside, disinterested observer would see is beside the point. Often this has had a religious element. Someone who broke social norms might be obligated to make a sacrifice; personal misfortunes might be punishments from the gods, again requiring sacrifices, or the punishment might simply be postponed to the afterlife.

In more modern Anglo-Saxon society the regulation of social norms and the quest for a better society has been largely religious, often led by low church Protestant ministers or their followers. This is true up to the civil rights era; even today we often the Reverend Al Sharpton or the Reverend Jesse Jackson on TV demanding justice. It has been many years though since they used the Christian religion as support for their case.

Since the 60's the effort to ensure that society is "fair" and "just" has become a matter for various parts of the government. People or organizations are denounced; punishment is organized, sacrifices are made, sackcloth and ashes are worn. This is all managed by lawyers and activists rather than prophets as in the Old Testament.

To what extent anything that would be called "justice" is produced as it would be defined by you, me, or anybody else is not the point. Like the burning of a witch or the sacrifice of a virgin, it provides social catharsis. This comes with a price- hearings officers, lawyers, judges, and the associated government staff have a price tag, just as dead virgins and witches do. This catharsis is also valuable, despite what libertarians say. The anger and fear so alleviated would come out in some other way, possibly less convenient. Many Marxists have said this more artfully, and countless more much less.

Like anything else the costs and benefits must be balanced. The activist class is in the business of stirring up these resentments and then getting pay offs to keep them under control. The ruling class has to decide how far to let this go- not far enough and certain segments of society are angry and restless, too much and those paying the cost revolt. The priestly class is not in the business of ruling, they are in the business of managing peoples' beliefs and emotions.

So what happens when they become the rulers? The balancing function of the ruling class ceases to occur. This is what is happening today in the US government. The shakedown artists don't need to shake anybody down any more, they just pass the loot out to their clients. If you take one golden egg a day from the goose, it lives, although as a slave. If you kill it, with the hope of getting all the golden eggs, it dies and you get nothing.

The Laffer Curve is thought of as a conservative economic idea, but it is simply a theory of golden egg extraction management. The Laffer theory only says how the government can extract the most out of productive society, not to what extent it is actually beneficial.

It is a credit to how far extractive thinking had penetrated American society that to sell lower taxes, it was necessary to tell the people that the government (meaning them, as they saw it, the New Deal majority that Reagan coopted thinks he government is them, and exists for them.)

Unfortunately the 60's generation of New Left activists doesn't even have this minimal level of self-regulation. They don't respect the capitalist system in any way and given the opportunity to loot, as they have been, they will loot without reservation.

Can balance be restored? I think not. The New Deal consensus- maintaining a capitalist economy that supported the Democratic Party client state, managed at the margin by Republican Party business interests, seems to be gone. The 60's radical faction is for now ascendant. It can't last long- for the reasons I have stated- but nothing exists that will oppose it, or function as an alternative to it.

The Employment Demographics Of Socialism

I would like to further develop something I said in a comment at Mangan's. I have been thinking about this for awhile, and there are a couple of intertwined ideas here, that also relate back. I will have to carefully split these apart and write more on this, but I'll start with the following observations.

The HBD, immigration, reactionary and "white people that SWPLs' don't like" blogs have gone on at great lengths on the contribution of racial politics and immigration to the political and economic situation. As I have said, socialism is an entirely white concept and does not require any minorities at all for its implementation, although they obviously help.

Changes in employment have have affected the makeup of society for decades. The racial/ethnic part of the demographic has been discussed at length; the employment part has hardly been mentioned, but I think it is just as important.

It used to be everybody was a farmer; farming became more efficient and now hardly anybody is, although there is plenty of food. Then many people were factory workers; manufacturing became more efficient (or was moved overseas) and now hardly anybody works in a factory although there is more stuff than ever. Even distribution and services have leaned way down; ever tried to find a helpful, friendly employee in a store? Good luck!

So where do all those people work now? I don't have the numbers but I would say the growth sectors for several decades have been legal and compliance (including HR and other such administrative functions involved in following government regulations), education, and health care (why medical treatment is called health care is an Orwellian story of language distortion but I'll leave that aside.)

Education is obviously a government function; all those new education workers are thus dependent on the government. Health care, too, is largely government financed so those new workers are government dependent. Legal and compliance? It's not so obvious but all these people are effectively government employees, even though they may be paid by a private entity. Their livelihood depends on government regulation so they are government dependent as well.

So we have vast numbers of new workers who by the nature of what they do are not just liberals, but Obama liberals. The recession has only accelerated this trend.

These new members of the socialist regime fall into two basic categories- control, for legal and compliance; and amelioration, for education and healthcare. (Notice how "health care" often becomes "healthcare", an entirely new word has been invented. Truly Orwellian!) This has its own significance but I'm not entirely sure what it means.

"What White People Should Do"

I read various human bio-diversity and pro-white blogs and they often talk about what white people ought to do. In terms of government policy to be pursued, culture, behavior, et cetera.

Well I have news for you people- there is no "white people." There never has been and the subgroups of white people often hate each other more than they hate non-whites.

Socialism is a European concept. Its existence doesn't presuppose any non-whites. Non-whites are mostly socialist but are only relevant (in terms of politics in European or European settled countries anyway) because they ally with socialist whites.

Henry Louis Gates and the Mini-Riot

I was watching something called "Police Women of Broward County" the other night. The cops were busting a group of black drug dealers in a house. They were not surrendering easily, each one shouting and complaining as the were cuffed, and keeping up the chorus as they were sitting outside. The chief complaint seems to have been that one of the officers stepped on the foot of one of the arrestees, and this was intolerable police brutality. Mean while a crowd of (black) neighbors had gathered and were also shouting at the police about this awful violation of human rights.

It occurred to me this is simply a black tactic for dealing with police. It is hardly unique to blacks; I have heard of Lebanese in Australia and Kurds in Sweden doing the same thing, as well as Gypsies. I have read teachers saying a classroom of black students will simply erupt with shouting.

I suppose the hope is to discourage the police from making the arrest, or confuse and slow down the situation in the hope the police will change their mind. I think it is most likely to work just as the police arrive on scene, before they have actually seen any criminal activity.they may then decide the thing to do is calm and disperse the crowd and leave. Once they have actually seen something that requires an arrest or a citation, I doubt they are going to let it go.

If you come from a raw power culture- the culture of ghetto blacks and third World people- it makes sense to try to intimidate the police. In these cultures a cop is just another guy, and most likely sees himself as just another guy, who does not want too much trouble with his paycheck. In a principle culture though the officer must do his job, and is going to be offended at the attempt to interfere.

Still, to the extent it discourages cops from investigating or patrolling aggressively it has the intended effect. The same people then complain the police don't do enough for their neighborhoods, but nobody said it was rational.

This type of "chimp out" was apparently what Henry Louis Gates was attempting when the police came to his house. If you're a Harvard professor who summers on Nantucket and rides an adult tricycle there the opportunity to engage in real ghetto black behavior must seem like a dream come true- sort of like the "Frasier" episode where he starts to hang out and the pub with all the English blokes. Unfortunately for Prof. Gates he never stopped to think that for this to work well, you need a whole crowd of large, angry, foul-mouthed homies who have probably seen the inside of a cruiser or two, and probably the county jail. One small, "seasoned", frail Ivy League professor is not going to scare a hall monitor, much less a police sergeant.

The other element of the Gates "chimp out" was his accusation of racism. Superficially, this is always a good move for a black arrestee. It puts the arresting officer on guard and reminds him of the risk he's taking by arresting a black person. Filing a complaint later, no matter how groundless, is good too because it will harrass the cop and consume lots of police resources which might otherwise be used to enforce the law.

Had Gates been lucky, this complaint would have landed against an officer who had been investigated, and completely cleared, at least once for an allegation of racism. Again how utterly baseless this allegation or allegation might have been it would have still served the purpose of smearing the officer's record for future reference. Gates was not lucky, as the arresting officer was so politically correct as to be an instructor on the subject of racial profiling.

This leads into another issue, whether Gates should have been arrested at all. some people who believe his behavior was foolish and reprehensible believe the officer overreacted. I say no, for this reason. Due to his special status as a racial profiling instructor he was at much more risk than a regular officer. A regular officer might just say, "Just answering a 911 call sir. I'm glad to see you're OK, have a nice day." Cops have to be able to read people and as long as he thinks this is the end of it, he is probably inclined to take a donut break rather than do a couple hours of paperwork. I live in a politically correct northern city where the cops don't arrest anybody for anything short of murder, and only rather reluctantly for that.

This one (I don't remember his name and I'm too lazy to lok it up- some Irish mug named James, we all look alike to you people anyway so what do you care?) had much more need to maintain his unblemished record of racial bona fides. Let's say a passenger accuses a pilot of having been drinking just before a flight. What does he do? He cancels the flight, calls his company and demands an alcohol test. He has no choice, if he takes the flight he does so with some suspicion he was under the influence. He will never be able to prove otherwise without the test. The officer had to arrest Gates to prove he was doing his job properly and that Gates' interference was unjustified.

Lesson for blacks- one, always go for the racial complaint. It probably won't do you much good but it will help out another brother down the road. Oh, I forgot, black people don't give a shit about other black people which is why they do each other so much harm. Two, if you are a drug dealer or other criminal, when the cops show up the game is just beginning. Keep your mouth shut and let your attorney go to work. Three, if you are a middle class person who might benefit from the protection of the state, cooperate with the police even when it is unpleasant. Their job is tedious and difficult. The best way to get them out of your hair is to politely tell them what they need to know so they can leave.

Who Killed Che Guevara?

The answer is generally the CIA, although in my dim recollection a local pulled the trigger. Preppies don't shoot anything but birds.

I was reading another blog and apparently this is the anniversary of his death. I recently watched a documentary (available through Netflix! Now cut the pop ups and enroll me in the affiliate program you bastards! Just kidding! No not really) entitled "Nobody Listened" or in Spanish "Nadie escuchaba." I can only recommend it for hard-core anti-communists for two reasons. One is they use white subtitles against a background that is frequently white, so you can read maybe 80% of them. My Spanish is weak so I really would have liked to read it all.

My second criticism is more to the point. Almost every one of the plaintive interviewees, so distressed by their maltreatment by the Cuban Communist revolution, was a former member of it. A few were close aides of Castro who went to prison within days of his victory. Many more were functionaries who ran afoul of him a few years later. Well, what did you morons think was going to happen? Please understand this- if you believe something that is obviously not true, the untruthfulness of which is easily established by readily available sources, you are stupid, regardless of your IQ, SAT score, or GPA is. If intelligence is not a tool to cope with the world then it is nothing. Simply aping things you have read in books or heard in lectures will get you nowhere, not even in a Communist or other socialist regime. I'm sure every day some young idealist in government or education gets eaten alive by "dumber" people who know the office politics of the outfit.

Somebody said a revolutionary regime needs many supporters, but few activists. So once it achieves victory it immediately has a surplus of activists who must be dealt with. Apparently in Cuba this was done immediately, while in the Soviet Union it took some years before it got started. Had Communists learned from the mistakes there? Did Soviet advisors tell Castro he needed to take care of right-sizing the organization quickly? The study of history is endlessly fascinating.

"Che" would have been a special case. I'm guessing that he and Fidel were as good friends as such people can be, and yet Fidel could hardly stand to have a charismatic hero around. On the other hand jailing and shooting him as a fascist saboteur was out of the question, even allowing for sentiment.

Sending him out of the country to murder people elsewhere was the most convenient solution. Still I can't help but think Che knew he was being set up as soon as he got the assignment. Travel is quite dangerous for a high profile terrorist. The only place he would have had safe haven was Cuba, or traveling on a diplomatic passport as a Cuban government official. I doubt the romance of being out in the bush supervising operations had any charm left for him. It's a job for a young man, of much lower status looking to prove something. It's dangerous and having seen what happened in Cuba, the fascists were likely to be on guard, and keenly motivated to avoid the same fate.

My speculation aside, Guevara met with little success and a grim end after a relatively brief time. I don't think appearing on millions of T-shirts would have held much consolation for him, however valuable of a propaganda symbol he is.

Che Guevara was killed by Fidel Castro just as surely as any of the unlucky victims shot by Che himself in Cuba. But how is that novel or surprising? The top of a revolution is a place quite as dangerous as the bottom, as the French and Bolshevik revolutions proved. Guevara, like so many others, though it was different for him. Being turned on by something you believe in is a bewildering fate- Orwell was an insightful, discerning man and it even surprised him. At least Che was spared the humiliating end of Yezhov and others.

Maybe he maintained much of his illusion in the last moments- I doubt he maintained it all, but he was not an introspective man so he must have kept some. We all treasure our delusions, but for a revolutionary they are a little more precious.

Self Criticism in America!

Bus attack in Belleville- you've seen the story elsewhere, but not with my razor exegesis.

First, more black people behaving badly. I fear this is going to be a daily occurence for a long time. Black people would like to believe their dominance has been established by the election of Obama. In reality it has been established socially and culturally many places, but not politically over the whole country. There is a lot of resistance to Obama, and while the left elite loves to attribute this to racism the groundswell of popular discontent started with Bush II's massive domestic deficit spending, reached critical mass with Bush II and Paulson's bailout, and so was well established by the time of Obama's stimulus.

Speaking of established dominance, I'm guessing the white kid knew who was boss and tried to avoid annoying his betters but they will attack anyway on an unpredictable schedule to maintain dominance, and the bus is the worst place to be cooped up with bullies.

Here's the link-



What's interesting to me is not the retraction of belief in a racial motive. That is easily predictable. Public spokespeople backtrack all the time when they have said something a little inconvenient.

However Capt. Sax said it was "a personal and emotional comment" which goes to a deeper level. The problem is not the professional judgement of the police department, it's Capt. Sax's latent racism, or whatever.