All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Just the first little inkling of what a real red state cooperation could look like. Coordinating efforts to resist and fight back against the Leftist agenda, both in government and elsewhere. It’s a start anyway.
DeSantis, 18 states to push back against Biden ESG agenda https://t.co/nRxHKK0dZS
— MSN (@MSN) March 16, 2023
Back on Monday the 27th of February I found a link in my mailbox to Curtis Yarvin’s substack, the Gray Mirror, with his latest post. It was a critique of Ron DeSantis’s efforts to replace the woke management of a small state college in Florida (called prosaically, New College of Florida) by replacing the board of trustees with conservatives. DeSantis put Chris Rufo and some other conservatives on the board and told them to excise the cancer of wokeism.
Yarvin tells a parable about how a drunken man chops down the mighty oak that shades the town square in some mythical Lithuanian town and the townspeople decide to replant the rootless trunk. But the wise man goes and scoops up acorns and plants them around the fallen tree’s stump.
Further on Yarvin explains that DeSantis and Rufo trying to reform Florida colleges is the town trying to replant a dead tree in the ground.
“The fallacy of replanting the tree is to believe that the past is something we can just have back. It isn’t. We can be inspired by the past. We can want a beautiful oak tree in our town square. But we live in the present and we have no oak tree, just raw lumber. We can build the future under the inspiration of the past—but it is not the past. And we have to be patient enough to wait for it, or we are just losers. Press F to pay regrets.”
But the wise man (according to Yarvin) is anyone who tries to build a new culture from the ground up by supporting coffeehouse artists in New York City that somehow aren’t woke.
“Do you want to win? Or do you want to wring your hands? Where did wokeness start? Among the cool kids. In the Village arts scene. To hear the story the world will be telling itself in 50 years, always listen to New York now. The future always starts at the center and at the top.”
So that’s one side. Today I read a rebuttal by Rufo. He calls Yarvin’s take “right-wing doomerism.”
“Yavin’s basic theme is that the progressive-managerial state, or Cathedral, is so powerful, that any action to challenge it will end up reinforcing its power. This is right-wing doomerism—if the beast is all-powerful, better to adopt the position of a prey animal and do nothing.
But I’m more optimistic than this. The takeover of New College has already changed the dynamics in higher education. We have a strong new president who has a mandate to change the administrative and academic trajectory of the institution. You’ll see changes in the next 120 days.
…
I believe in an uncompromising new conservatism that attempts to restore the authority of the people over their government—and lay waste to woke institutional capture. The Republic is not yet dead. We have a duty to do whatever we can to save it.
I’m ready to fight—and win.”
Okay, so there is definitely a lot of rah-rah stuff here. Rufo is cheerleading the efforts his people are making in Florida and anticipating victories and gains that won’t happen for years, or maybe decades.
But, so what? The progressives worked at this poison for over a hundred years. They worked away diligently and steadily. And the results have been astonishing. Horrifying, yes, but astonishing. So why should we expect that our results won’t be slow and incremental. As TomD said back a week ago or so in a comment “One step at a time is how we collectively got here and hopefully how we will get out.”
Sure, in my more pessimistic moments I fear that Yarvin is right. The Elites control everything and they have all the money. We can’t possibly win. But then I think, “Then what have we got to lose by trying to win?” So, I’ll take Rufo’s side in this cordial quarrel.
He’s making his play. Let him finish it before we start declaring him the loser. I hear DeSantis plans to roll out the same idea at other Florida state colleges. They’re talking about eliminating things like gender studies and DEI and even affirmative action. For all I know DeSantis is the next Pericles and Florida is the Athens of the new world. It’s certainly no stranger than the original Athens having happened.
How in the world do you get the Plato, Aristotle and Thucydides from a bunch of bronze age barbarians like the Dorians toppling Aegean civilization and celebrating it in epic poetry? Truly, the Afghanis aren’t that far removed in culture and lifestyle from the 9th century Dorian invaders. Predicting the Parthenon from them seems a bloody miracle.
Maybe we’ll get a miracle too. Our enemies aren’t geniuses they’re just better organized and better funded. There is such a thing as luck. And luck rewards persistence and intelligence. It’s like the old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” If you’re just willing to lay down and die then you’ve already decided your fate. Luck isn’t going to pull you off the ground, put your sword back in your hand and strike down your enemy. You’ve got to try. So, let’s give DeSantis and Rufo the benefit of the doubt and all the help we can think of. Let’s cheer them on and provide all the rah-rah we can muster.
If DeSantis can turn around the Florida state colleges it’ll make guys like Abbott in Texas envious and might start a movement to clean up all the Red-State state-colleges. And after that maybe it’ll spread to the grammar and high schools. See what I mean? Rah-rah is easy. And it’s cheap. What’s a few electrons rattling around in my computer?
Anyway, I’ll bet on DeSantis and Rufo in this quarrel. Right wing doomerism just isn’t my cup of tea.
“Just this week, NBC’s longtime purveyor of propaganda Andrea Mitchell wrongfully claimed during an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that the Republican governor “says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren.”
DeSantis’ office didn’t just shame Mitchell for spreading lies about the governor and Florida law, which requires students to learn about slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and more. The governor’s press secretary Bryan Griffin also called out NBC for being “maliciously intent on deceiving people” and threatened to cut off the media giant’s access to information, comment, and interviews from the governor, who is one of the top polling Republicans for the 2024 presidential ticket.”
Finally, finally some of the Republicans have figured out that the only way to hold the media accountable is to punish them by denying them access.
Donald Trump knew this. DeSantis has learned it. Now if only the rest of the Stupid Party could somehow become less stupid and learn this lesson. The media hates us, they lie with every breath they take. You’ll never get them to treat you honestly. Treat them like pariahs and you’ll have much better results with the public.
I was listening to the Z-Man’s Friday podcast while exercising this morning. Camera Girl informs me that he sounds exactly like our family doctor. Since I only go for a check-up once a decade, I cannot verify that this is true but she is a very observant and intelligent (if annoying) woman.
Today his topic was about how the dysgenic aspects of our culture were leading to a low IQ population, sort of the Idiocracy theorem. There was a good bit of discussion about how as society devolves local power centers like local politicians (or call them warlords) and institutions that have control over specific functions or technologies (e.g., Silicon Valley) would begin usurping the place of the federal government as it imploded due to rank incompetence.
It was a very interesting discussion and it pointed to a mechanism for transitioning from the current stalemated political situation to a future where local politics and power structures could evolve to benefit a local concentration of competent and cooperative people. Of course, it still depends on the crumbling of our society as the moving force to allow this untethering and we’re certainly not there yet. Even though the beginnings of collapse can be seen in the increase in the frequency of airplane crashes, train derailments (not to mention naval vessels colliding) and the breakdown in law and order in the cities, still, we’re probably decades away from the official fall of the empire.
As I’ve many times stated we won’t have hit bottom until the incidences of cannibalism become too prevalent to make the newspapers (or whatever they call the news purveyors at that point in time). So, this scenario that the Z-Man is postulating is still in the somewhat distant future. But it most definitely makes me think that the idea of a Red State pushing for more autonomy is the correct model for the Right to embrace. And I think that the idea of a Council of Red States is more and more the most effective way for people on the right to affect change.
I was reading an article by Salena Zito about what Ron DeSantis is up to down in Florida. She talks about the fact that both Biden and Trump are bashing DeSantis because he’s the likely contender that both of them would face. But then she spends most of the article going over the things he’s doing in Florida. And even though it’s apparent that she’s supportive of his run for president, what strikes me is that the things he’s doing for his state would be impossible for a president to do without both a veto-proof senate and the house under his control.
So once again, it makes me think that local control of people’s lives becomes more useful than battling for control of the dysfunctional federal government. If DeSantis is actually able to enact Florida Digital Bill of Rights
Gov. DeSantis Unveils Florida’s Digital Bill of Rights https://t.co/h0lbBOlHo3
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 15, 2023
he will be so far ahead of the rest of the country that the rest of us who toil under the yoke of internet tyranny will curse the fate that left us outside his benevolent rule. Let’s face it, Florida is marching forward, throwing off the culture war shackles of the Left while the rest of us are being dragged backward in our Antifa and BLM controlled hellholes.
I think DeSantis should consider carefully whether he will have more power and more influence as the leader of a group of Red State governors rather than as an embattled Republican president. And that’s not taking anything away from him as a presidential candidate. If somehow he ends up as the candidate, I’ll vote for him certainly. But how he gets there without antagonizing the millions of Trump-only voters is not clear to me. Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis should be sitting down and talking about this election. Even if they hate each other, even if both of them want to win above all else, they should look at all the options and decide what they can do to maximize the good outcomes from their campaigns. In fact, what they should do is agree that whichever wins the other will throw full support to him. And also offer the vice-presidential spot to his opponent first. That would be putting country in front of ego. Although I don’t think DeSantis should leave Florida to be a vice president. He is so much more effective now; it would be a waste. And I doubt Trump would accept the largely ceremonial duties of a Veep. He craves a larger role.
So, these are the things I’ve been thinking about today. I try to stitch together the various bits of information and find commonalities and synergies. And maybe it’s all just part of my echo chamber. But today I heard things that give me a little hope for the future. And for a Friday that’s pretty good.
Ron DeSantis has provided proof of concept for disinfecting a college of its woke parasites. The writer of this article goes through the why and the how of doing this to every Red State public college. and he shows that even the private ones can be stopped from many of their worst excesses by anti-discrimination laws that prevent many of the equity hiring practices.
He draws attention to the fact that although college administrators were willing to adopt the progressive agenda of the woke movement, nevertheless they are easily cowed into following the mandates of the state that pays their salaries. They’ll probably pay lip service to the cultural marxist outrage professed by the gender studies department but they’ll bend to the mandates of the governor and the legislature to keep their jobs and the gravy train of pension benefits.
And the same goes for the academics. They know where their bread is buttered and they’ll back down and toe the line rather than lose their generous salaries and fabulous perks. Kudos ot Ron DeSantis for pioneering this concept. May all the other Red State governors copy his play book and rid half the country of woke campuses.
So they’re going to shoot Dopey Joe up with Ritalin and fill the gallery with BLM and Antifa and everybody will clap for the Ukraine and award Joe the Congressional Medal of Honor for shooting down the Chinese Balloon. Does that sound like a good time to you?
I don’t think I could stand that much fun. I think I’ll skip it. I’ll use the time on something more productive. I’ll scrape hard water stains off the shower floor. I’ll be MIA this afternoon so I’m writing this piece now. I read an article about the approach Ron DeSantis took for reforming that Florida state college. He appointed conservatives to the Board of Directors and they fired the college president on day one. Now they’re working on removing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department and will begin hiring new professors for the upcoming school year.
Now, that’s the way to do it. Cut off the head and start over. No pussyfooting around the edges. Go for the jugular. It’s beautiful. Now, how about the rest of the Florida State University system? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I think the country gains much more with Ron DeSantis as the governor of Florida as opposed to him being president. The president is a hostage of the intelligence agencies. He should be the chairman of the Red State governors’ council (when they get around to forming one) and he can begin to help the rest of the country free itself from Washington’s corrosive effects.
It’s going to take coordination and planning to begin neutralizing the damage that Washington does and Ron DeSantis could maximize the good he can do by beginning to formalize a relationship between the Red States. The first step would be to define what a Red State is. Would it just consist of republican dominance of the state’s government? Or would it include social positions too? Obviously too much purity testing would blow up the whole process of forming a coalition but I think some list of basic positions must be established. But they should make a start on it. And high on the list of actions is a mechanism for protecting their citizens from federal persecution for the unconstitutional actions of the federal government.
And protecting police officers and police departments from the Justice Department is at the top of the list. The chaos we’ve lived through for the last decade on account of Obama’s Justice Department attacking the police proves that. Without the police doing their job things descend into anarchy, as we’ve seen in all the big cities of late.
So, the 2024 election is on everybody’s minds. But I’m more interested in seeing the governors get together and start to organize themselves into something that can help us now. Because as far as I can tell, the federal government is lost. At the very least, if Ron DeSantis wants to be president, he’d better leave a successor to carry on the work he started. Maybe he can have his wife get the job. I’m sure he’ll have some influence with her and make sure she doesn’t go Left. Then when he is term-limited out he can get back to work in Florida trying to restore freedom to America, one state at a time.
One of my very old friends sent me this interview of Matthew B Crawford whom I was not familiar with. The discussion was about the various aspects and causes for our current imprisonment by a managerial state that uses endless states of emergency to control us.
When the interviewer Freddie Sayers concluded the discussion by asking whether individual people should seize more control over their own lives, Crawford replied, “I do think it’s one by one from the bottom up, is how social change happens. But also, it is political, because I mean you don’t have the option of disengaging from this stuff. You’ve got an HR department at your work or your kid’s in school that again, have this sort of militancy to them. So, I think the response, by way of defending the space of normal human activity, normal human life and ownership over the things that are most meaningful to us. There has to be I think, some actual political power exercised in reining in these sort of Messianic transformative social engineering initiatives.”
And that sounds right. Individually we can try to resist, get on with our own lives and try to move in our own direction. But the forces of coercion that are arrayed against us are more than daunting. They’re implacable. So, unless a power center immune to this coercion creates an oasis of freedom in the current desert then it doesn’t seem possible for us to live normal lives.
So that seems to be what era we now live in. We’re like the Jews of the 1st century AD waiting for the Messiah. Will it be Trump, DeSantis, Gaetz or no one? Will it be a president or a governor or something completely unexpected? Maybe it’ll be a holy man who begins a religious revival. Or maybe it’ll be a labor leader who declares a general strike and shuts the country down.
It’s like the flame of freedom is being snuffed out across the country and someone has to build a shielded fireplace to protect it and allow it to warm the inhabitants. Then it can be a template for the next neighbor to copy. I like to think that Ron DeSantis might be that champion down in Florida. Maybe he’ll strengthen his state to the point that the feds finally give up trying to ruin it. That would take a remarkable effort to face them down. Because we know that the Justice Department would come after him hammer and tongs. I wouldn’t doubt that they’d come after him personally with trumped up criminal charges and try to imprison him. But if he won, that might be a breaking point.
But whoever steps forward, this is probably our last chance for at least a generation. The Millennials and the Zoomers are pretty much locked down by the safety culture. The Boomers are too old and Gen X is getting up there too. If it doesn’t happen soon, we’ll have that Great Reset that Dementia Joe spouts on about. We’ll have electric cars without electricity. Homes without heat. Cricket tacos for dinner and jobs at Uber and Amazon. And childless forty-year-old girl bosses cohabiting with their cats and goldfish while their male counterparts are playing video games and waiting for euthanasia.
“There has to be I think, some actual political power exercised in reining in these sort of Messianic transformative social engineering initiatives.” Very true Mr. Crawford. But who?
Finally, finally.
A red state governor FINALLY did something to change the orientation of hyper-leftwing colleges.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday made six new appointments to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees, including Manhattan Senior Fellow Christopher F. Rufo.
Rufo’s work has been featured on PBS, Netflix, and international television and has been notable for challenging critical race theory.
The New College of Florida in Sarasota, is a top-ranked public liberal arts college and is the designated honors college of the state university system.
DeSantis’ news press secretary Bryan Griffin sent a statement to Fox News Digital claiming that the academic institution has been “captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
“All of these appointees have a firsthand understanding of the Florida education system as a product of their work with us and the Florida Department of Education on other important initiatives. We are grateful to them for lending their time and expertise to the benefit of Florida’s students,” the DeSantis office told Fox News Digital.
“The New College of Florida is a public institution with a statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education.’ Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
The statement added, “In particular, New College of Florida has reached a moment of critical mass, wherein low student enrollment and other financial stresses have emerged from its skewed focus and impractical course offerings.””
It’s about damn time! Sure this is one college in something like 3,200 colleges in America. Sure there will be battles from day one and the feds will punish the college every chance it gets. But it’s a step in the right damn direction. Now every other red state governor should do the exact same thing over and over again.
This DeSantis guy is pretty good. He’s doing the right things. He’s thinking clearly about how things can be changed and he’s reaching out to good people to do those things. He’s making Florida a much better place. That’s got to be a good thing. Whether he should be president or vice president is a different question. Maybe he should stay as governor of Florida and maybe end up the de facto leader of the red state coalition. But any way you look at it he’s making a real difference. Bravo.
So I’ve returned from the dead. And it was a transcendental experience. Like one of those California, peyote fueled spirit journeys that most of the Eagles indulged in back in the 1970s I faced my demons and have come back with enlightenment. Or at least, I’m five pounds lighter from profuse sweating.
Yes, I have new insights. For instance, I’ve discovered that every third news story involves Elon Musk, Twitter and Hunter Biden. And what I realize is that none of this stuff will move the needle at all. Now sure, Elon Musk can do a lot of good if he turns Twitter into a meaningful business. And the first thing he should do is come up with a better name. Twitter just sounds hopelessly lame. Musk is a tech guy who makes rocket ships. He should rename it “Atom Smasher” or “This Island Earth” or something cool like that. But whatever. The main thing is he needs to make this expensive toy a money maker and a business opportunity that does something useful. Telling me about past management shilling for the Democrats is fine but it’s old news.
And all the rest of the news is the Republicans reporting on how hated Joe Biden is and the Democrats reporting on how beloved Joe Biden is. Not exactly must see tv. There was a little bit of news coming out of Florida. DeSantis continues to telegraph his legislative and administrative actions. And that makes him sound more and more like a 2024 candidate. And that is problematic.
Hopefully DeSantis is smart enough to recognize that the GOP establishment is setting him up to be the Trump-killer. And hopefully he realizes that attempting to fulfill that role will make him radioactive to at least twenty percent of the Republican electorate. That is not a good look for him. A better idea would be to have a sit down with Trump and thrash out a path forward for both of them. That’s what grownups would do. And DeSantis would have to swallow a lot of pride because Trump has already attacked him pretty hard in the last month or so. Let’s face it Trump is one of the prickliest personalities in the world. He needs a press secretary whose job should be to prevent him from saying anything about people who could do him some good.
But there’s no way around it. Unless Trump is imprisoned by the Justice Department, he will be the 2024 Republican candidate for president. And DeSantis is a very young man. He’s doing extraordinary work in Florida. Some might say being the governor of Florida is more powerful that being a Republican president of the United States. He can continue to make Florida the envy of the nation. And honestly, being Trump’s running mate would be a much, much better idea. Since it seems that the Democrats have managed to game the Electoral College permanently there’s not much upside to going to war with Trump to possibly get the nomination but certainly alienate the Trump voters and lose in the general election.
So yes, I’m back and I’m surrounded by boring and stupid stuff as far as the eye can see. By tomorrow I should be energized back to 75%. And I’ll be able to opine on some of this dreck. Today, this is what I could do. Enjoy your weekend.
I know, I know. We’re not going to vote our way out of this. Blah, blah, blah. But, damn, that Lake victory hit the spot. Maybe all of this is the dead cat bounce after hitting bottom in 2020 but right now I’ll take it. It’s just plain enjoyable to be on the winning side of these things. Whether it’s real or not, it feels like progress.
I saw that Dick Cheney put out a video defending his daughter by declaring that, “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who has been a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Boy, that’s rich. The Democrats allow thugs to burn down the cities of America. They use blatant voter fraud to foist a lying grafter on us as president while locking down the country for two years and destroying the economy. But Donald Trump is dangerous.
I read that Sinema is going to sign off on the mini-Build Back Better boondoggle. No surprise there. The fix was in with Manchin. I guess he got his cut of the pie. Figures she’d be in there somewhere too. That’s alright. Both of them are up in 2024. They’ll be remembered by their voters.
I was reading a speech that Hungarian leader Victor Orban gave recently. It’s remarkable how he openly names the real threats that face western countries. I guess when your party has a supermajority in the parliament you can speak honestly. He talks of the dangers of unchecked third world immigration and he also names the LGBTQ agenda of much of the western countries as the biggest external threats. But he also names the break down of the traditional family and the associated failure of women to bear enough children as the biggest internal threat.
This analysis is spot on. It’s a long speech and also has long sections on the energy crisis and the Ukrainian war. These other problems area also very grave, especially the climate hoax. But I think they might be self-correcting. After all, there’s nothing like losing your toes to frostbite to reinforce how important fossil fuels really are to our world.
Whoever the leaders of an actual conservative movement turn out to be, they should consult with Orban. He’s one of the few leaders who understand the challenges facing us. He gave a speech at CPAC yesterday. I just started to listen to it. Very exciting, very upbeat.
So, there’s all kinds of hopeful things happening right now. And in eleven days Liz Cheney gets the boot from the voters of the great state of Wyoming so the beat goes on. I’m sure I could dwell on the negatives. After all, the Chi-Coms didn’t take Nancy Pelosi off our hands and George Soros still walks the earth sowing destruction in all directions. But good things are happening. We’re winning elections and guys like Ron DeSantis are using their power to stop the bad guys from running roughshod over us in places like Florida.
You can always be depressed and sometimes I am. But not today. Smell the roses, enjoy the day.