All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
I think the ZMan always linked to Fairytale of New York by the Pogues every Christmas. And being a native New Yorker I have a certain nostalgia for the city from the time before it died.
And since this is the first Christmas since the ZMan died I thought I’d post something to remind me of his site.
Merry Christmas to ZMan wherever heaven for the dissident right might be.
I clicked on the link to the ZMan’s website to check out whether anymore comments appeared on the his last post and found the above copied error message from his webhosting service.
So that’s that. It finalizes a sort of empty place in my internet routine that is now reinforced by corporate schedules. A bank account is emptied, a bill isn’t paid and a website disappears. And the world moves on. I guess we all leave a small footprint when all is said and done.
Hail, hail and farewell.
I have a long trip tomorrow morning and I wasn’t sure I would post tonight but the ZMan’s death seems to require a post. And interestingly, yesterday my mind was on mortality. Just a coincidence but a strange one nonetheless.
I guess I’m looking to process the news a little bit to make it feel less strange. From what I remember, he was in his late fifties. I knew he wanted to lose a few pounds and was happy that the yard work around a rural property afforded him the excuse to do more manual labor. I guess with all the excess mortality after the COVID debacle he may be another victim of our regime’s ill-conceived and incompetently handled bioweapons program in China. I think everyone’s vitality has taken at least some damage from the spike protein saturating our environment. So maybe that is the primary cause of the ZMan’s untimely death. Or maybe he had an underlying condition that he did or didn’t know about. I’m guessing I’ll never know any more about it. So, let’s put aside his surprise death.
What about his work? I’ve been reading and (later) listening to the ZMan’s content for about ten years. I was already reading material from various “alt-right” sources and ran into some of his posts as links from other sources. And right away I could tell that his insights and his thought patterns were head and shoulders above most of the blogs I was then reading. Eventually he became my primary source, not for political news but rather for reaction to the news and for his take on what were the motivations for the actions that were going on in the world around us.
And I found his insights very useful. He could fit the events into a framework that accounted for the various factions and their agendas; the radical Left, the managerial state, the establishment Republicans, the Neocons, the rank-and-file Democrats and all the rest of the clown parade. He could lay out their machinations and even predict their feuds and friendships. And he did it in an entertaining and polished manner. And his Friday podcast added in the benefit of his suave speaking voice that I playfully referred to as the “Voice of Saruman.” Yes, the ZMan was a quality resource.
Now as much as I respected and agreed with much of his analysis of the political goings on in Washington and elsewhere, I had and have a very different political ideology from the ZMan. At heart I’m just a red-pilled civic nationalist and ZMan was a full-fledged member of the dissident right. What that means was that although I agreed with his diagnosis of our ills I disagreed with his prescription for a cure. I wanted to eliminate things like affirmative action and illegal immigration and restore an America that had existed before the Johnson New Society. I wanted the government to leave people alone to decide how they wanted to live their lives and let the government be a color-blind referee that only stepped in when a race war or something equally insane appeared in the streets.
The ZMan believed it was impossible to re-establish that kind of America. What exactly he believed was the radical solution to the dysfunctional condition of the United States he never explicitly revealed. On a number of occasions, he did state that a civil war wasn’t in the cards. I assumed he believed that a negotiated settlement that produced some number of successor states, one of which would be more pleasing to the dissident right, was the desired outcome. Well, I guess I’ll never know for sure now. But obviously we differed quite strongly on political ideology and for this reason I never commented on his site. After all, I was obviously not the target audience. As much as I admired his abilities as an essayist and a student of political history my positions on these matters would only lead to me being hounded off the site. And what fun would that be for me?
So, I read his content and linked to the essays that I found especially convincing or entertaining and time passed. I remember when he had that dustup with Michael Anton and that seemed to confirm that moderates would not be dealt with moderately. And although I said at the time that everyone is allowed to decide who is and isn’t their enemies, I had no desire to be in that position. So I lurked and enjoyed his work when it agreed with my views and ignored what did not.
But I will say I’m very sad to hear of his death. He seemed to be a genuinely good fellow. If I were on a train or plane with him and all we discussed was New England weather, Thucydides and the antics of Donald Trump I think we could have had a very enjoyable discussion.
And I’m going to miss his Friday Power Hour podcast. I looked forward to it every week and he provided entertainment and matters to contemplate, on a very consistent basis. And I always did hope that if Trump and his confederates had ever managed to “fix” the country and get back our rights maybe the ZMan would call a truce with the civic nationalists.
But now we’ll never know. Rest in peace, ZMan. You were an American original.
Probably the most eloquent and witty voice on the Dissident Right is no more. Reports on X by authoritative sources say that the ZMan passed away last night of “natural causes.”
Of course, his most skeptical fans will wonder if the cause was completely natural. But I will certainly miss his writing and podcasts. He had one of the greatest speaking voices on the conservative side of the aisle (or “great divide” as he called it). And his knowledge of political and sociological affairs was impressive.
Although I differed from him on some of the conclusions he drew from his facts I had to admit he was well versed on the mechanisms that had created the dysfunction that he reported on in his posts.
He has a legion of devoted readers who commented religiously on his site and who will be hard pressed to find a new home to replace his haven.
Rest in peace ZMan.
Update:
Comment by ArthurinCali:
Sad news, especially how sudden it was. Zman was one of the inspirations to me to try my hand at writing. His analysis and podcast will be greatly missed by many of us.
Is it Communism? Is it fascism. Is it just radical liberalism? ZMan walks through the origins and the functionality of wokism for the members of the elite and their lackeys.
And here’s the kernel of it:
“That is the key to understanding Wokism. It is not so much what it is but what it does for the people who embrace it. For the managerial elite, it provides a sense of legitimacy to their place atop the social hierarchy. For the climbers dreaming of a perch at the top and those who gain satisfaction aping those at the top, it provides an ever-changing set of cultural fashions. Primarily, Wokism provides a way to distinguish who is inside and who is outside the dominant social group.”
Well that’s clear enough. In his essay he fleshes out how and why this happened along with why the other labels are inaccurate. If you want to know what wokism is, the link follows.
Listening to ZMan’s latest podcast was something of an aha! moment for me. The way he laid out how the managerial state arose and evolved gave me a moment of clarity. It made it clear what we are dealing with. This is a system that interlocks all of the decision makers and their supporters across government, industry, academia, schools, NGO’s and almost every major institution in the western world. This is not something we’re going to overcome by voting in a President and Congress. Even if we had the Supreme Court, the White House and supermajorities in the House and Senate these people running the government will refuse to implement whatever programs those elected representatives legislate. They’ll figure a way to stymie it. And they will attack the leaders of those bodies and destroy them.
And let’s face it, we’re not going to have supermajorities in the Congress again. The Left controls the federal government and unless they do something so disastrous that it destroys the support their programs have with the managerial state that’s how it will remain.
Okay. That’s the starting point. I’ll stop counting electoral college votes. That at least saves me some time and aggravation. I’ll stop worrying about the House and the Senate too.
So, what can be done? To my mind the hopelessness of changing the federal government just reinforces the idea that the only place change can occur will be in states that have a solid Republican voting base and leaders who understand what needs to be done to protect their people from the federal government and its poisonous influence.
But the podcast on managerialism clarified what that protection looks like. It’s wonderful to see Ron DeSantis and some of the other governors getting laws passed and using executive orders to cancel out the worst aspects of the federal overreach. Banning drag queen story hour and criminalizing juvenile transgender medical treatments are wonderful ideas in and of themselves. But you can’t win this fight by being against things.
What must be done is to think clearly about what things must be preserved in order for our lives to be worth living. And then to transmit this information through schools and colleges to inculcate the young. And then you have to have the state and local governments legislate a coherent program for enforcing the actions that will preserve the values that have been recognized as necessary for the survival of a healthy society.
These laws will impact every layer of society and every institution. Corporations, towns and cities, religious organizations, even professional societies like the AMA and the state bar will be held accountable. The laws will be clear and enforced stringently. During a transition period maybe the state can accommodate helping dissidents to relocate to blue states when life becomes too much for the lefties that find themselves left high and dry in red states. For instance I’m guessing that the majority of people living in Austin, Texas will have to flee to California if my plan were carried out.
Now this all sounds very draconian. And the idea of all society bound by an inflexible code that doesn’t allow for many behaviors that we have grown used to allowing seems almost outlandish. But think of where we are. We now have teachers telling impressionable young children that they are not boys or girls but the opposite. We have men playing in women’s sports and sharing locker rooms with them. If what we have now allows for these dysfunctional and frankly insane situations then drastic actions to get things back to normal and keeping them that way are completely understandable and necessary.
So, this is what I’ve realized. We need to fix things from the ground up. And the federal government will fight this tooth and claw. I don’t doubt that everything from intimidation to assassination to military action may be brought to bear. And maybe there’s no hope. The federal government as I’ve said is backed up by the managerial state that encompasses an enormously powerful collection of organizations. They really do control a lot of what we call America.
But this is the only way it’s going to happen. Someone somewhere has to get the ball rolling and begin the process of standing up a state government that is committed to restoring all the things that make life worth living.
What are these things? I’ll leave defining the full list to wiser heads than mine but what I know is indispensable is preserving families. Whatever has to be done to allow men and women to raise their kids in functional and healthy families is the most important business of society. After that we can add the Ten Commandments and go on from there.
ZMan has a podcast (below) providing a very convincing explanation for how our present bureaucratic system allows government bureaucrats and bureaucrats in business and education control essentially all aspects of our lives. If you’re interested in understanding how the system you live in works, listen to this hour long podcast.
What the ZMan does not explain is how we get rid of such a system. He says the whole system has to be replaced. That leaves the question how exactly you go about such a thing. Curtis Yarvin would tell us we would have to somehow install a King/CEO who would fire/pension off the entire federal bureaucracy. It would be interesting to hear these two fellows discuss this idea but it would probably turn into a food fight.
Highly recommended listen.
This Thursday’s ZMan post is a comparison of the Sicilian Expedition to the Ukraine War. Comparisons of Thucydides’ Athens to America is a perennial favorite on the Right. As the ZMan very carefully adds this is not a perfect analogy. The Sicilian Expedition was a military debacle of horrific proportions. Athens had doubled and tripled down on manning and arming this expedition so that when the defeat occurred there was practically nothing and no one left to continue the war with Sparta. We may have emptied our armory to outfit the Ukrainians but in order to mirror the damage done to the Spartans, it would be necessary for the Americans to lose several million soldiers in the field.
Despite the inevitable differences it is amazing how apt the comparison of ancient Athens is to present day America. Even the current woke culture has its analog in the influence of the Sophists and their undermining of conservative norms.
It’s always interesting to look at the classics. But who would Biden represent? Certainly not Pericles. Even the despised Cleon proved a much more capable war time leader than balloon boy Biden. Maybe some obscure pederast in one of Aristophanes’ plays would do.
Anyway, a fun read.
So after Michael Anton wrote his final defense of natural rights in which he very interestingly quoted one of my posts, I found a number of reactions in the comments section thought provoking. Mostly they were apologies for the Z-Man based on the premise (which is one of the underpinnings of the Dissident Right) that a multiracial society is doomed to failure because of the biological differences between people.
I thought that was worth discussing further and so I wrote my article and I was happy to find that American Greatness was willing to feature it on their worthy site. So here is the link and I hope everyone goes over and reads it and leaves all kinds of interesting and highly complimentary comments that proclaim my groundbreaking insights and the general brilliance of Orion’s Cold Fire as both a font of political wisdom and also a source of entertaining cultural content.
In the comments section that followed Michael Anton’s recent post about natural rights (“Farewell to Z-Man!
Once More on the Question of Natural Right”), a commentor said,
“Z-man is anonymous because he writes about biological differences, which is a capital offense in our society. Anton is a colorblind civic nationalist, so he doesn’t have to fear having his life destroyed for his views.
I agree that Anton and Z-man would better spend their time fighting the Left, but the schism between those on the Right who believe that there are biological differences among the various peoples of the Earth and those who don’t believe that is fundamental.
That is at the core of the debate between Anton and Z-man. Anton says that natural rights are universal and ever-present. That implies are all peoples are the same at all times. Anton rejects biological differences. Z-man says that the rights put forth by the Founding Fathers were based on their nature. The rights grew out of the particular biology of that people, Anglo-Americans.
For Z-man, culture is downstream from biology. For Anton, biology doesn’t matter at all. That is a fundamental difference.
Anton is a colorblind civic nationalist. He doesn’t believe that culture stems from biology.
His issue with the refugees is that they come from a culture that despises American values. That makes complete sense. However, for Anton, it’s about the culture, not the people. It’s why people like Anton has such a hard time arguing with the Left about immigration.
The Left says we should have open borders or, at least, very large immigration, especially, refugees because we’re all the same so why keep people out. Anton tries to refute this by arguing that we can only let in so many so that they can absorb our culture and truly accept American values. The Left calls him cold-hearted.
Anton has no response other (than) technical arguments because he accepts the Left’s morality: that all people are (literally) created equal so the burden of proof is on him to show why some people shouldn’t be allowed in.
Z-man doesn’t accept the Left’s morality. His argument for why we should reject the Afghani refugees is that they are a different people who will never accept our culture because their biology is different.
And before you start acting like the Left and call Z-man (or me) a racist, just remember that Z-man’s beliefs are pretty much the same as most people around the world, including Israelis and Japanese.
If this was Israel or Japan, their version of Anton would simply say, “No. We will not let in these refugees because they aren’t Jewish or Japanese.”
Anton disagrees with the Israelis and Japanese. He and the Left believe in the Blank Slate, that we are all lumps of clay that can be molded into any form if you just get the culture right.
Ironically, Anton rejects nature’s role in culture.”
Much of what is said here is essentially an accurate description of the difference of positions between the Dissident Right (e.g., the Z-Man) and the Civic Nationalists (e.g., Michael Anton, me). But there are some subtle differences that I think need to be addressed. I won’t speak for all Civic Nationalists but I will say for myself that I categorically deny that all human beings are equal in their abilities and have the same temperaments. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that human beings are heterogeneous at almost every level. Even within the same nuclear family there will be remarkable differences of intellect, physique, personality and appearance among siblings. And between different ethnicities and races the differences will be even larger. You don’t have to leave the same continent to find the pygmies and the Tutsi. The first group are hunter gatherers who average less than 4’ 10” in height while the latter are pastoralists that average 6’ but are not uncommonly over 7’ in height. As far as differences of intelligence and temperament between groups of people there are all kinds of scientific studies and popular descriptions to provide speculation for these differences.
But the basic question isn’t whether these differences exist. The question is do these differences prevent us from living together in a meritocracy? In other words, if I’m stupider than my neighbor Bob will that mean we can’t live in the same society without eventually being at each other’s throats? My belief is we can live together.
The Dissident Right does not believe this. And as proof they point to the present nightmare we’re living through with “Black Lives Matter,” George Floyd and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion racket being run against white people.
Well, that’s a pretty powerful argument. Add that to the fifty years of affirmative action and forced integration and you have a pretty bleak picture.
But the Left has been using this equality of outcome scam for decades as a proof that white people are discriminating against blacks. And for whatever reason we’ve been letting them get away with it. I no longer think it’s a convincing argument. America is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society and there is every combination of races and capacities on display. And what is clearest is that trying to hire people according to their skin color is a recipe for disaster. Everyone has probably seen or heard of people who were hired under affirmative action quotas and were completely unqualified for the job. And what is also extremely clear is that African Americans are not the object of systemic racism. Currently heterosexual white men are the ones being discriminated against and openly. It seems clear that demanding the end of affirmative action and other anti-white policies and a return to a meritocratic system is the correct way to put all this racialist nonsense behind us.
To do this it will require places like Florida that have a Republican government to refuse to allow anti-white, affirmative action programs to continue. And the very color-blind approach that the above commentor seems to disparage is the correct approach. The United States need to get out of the race business. In fact, I don’t think we should even list it on birth certificates or other government documents at all. You might as well list my blood type and what kind of belly button I have too. Instead, we should be concentrating more on things like SAT scores and which computer languages have been mastered.
Now of course maybe the Z-Man is right and the Republicans are hopelessly unable to fend off accusations of racism and they will always be the losers when the Left plays this racket. If this is so we’ll see this play out. But I’d like to believe someone like Ron DeSantis is the future. He recently rejected the High School Advanced Placement curriculum for African American Studies because it was filled with lies. This is the way to change things. Just say no and then make it stick. It’s not easy. It’s a slog and a fight. But if we choose fighters to represent us, we will get results. If we choose squishes like Jeb! Bush, we get what we have now.
So sure, things are bad but I’m not ready to start the race war. I think we can have a first world country without a civil war. But it remains to be seen whether the people who claim to be our leaders are willing to fight to save it. If they’re not then the Dissident Right will be correct.