The ZMan is Fed Up

As is my custom on Fridays, I listened to the ZMan’s Friday podcast today.  It was a little bit of a departure in format and content for him.  He did a free form rant about whatever he wanted to talk about.  He hit on the Canadian Trucker Protest and had some good things to say about that.  He discussed the economy and the strange way the numbers on unemployment, industrial output and the stock market performance now seem completely disconnected from the past relationships these factors had on each other.  He discussed the Joe Rogan nonsense as it related to anti-white racism and he talked about the recent nonsense about there not being enough black head coaches in the NFL.

But one thing I noticed about his comments in general was that there is definitely a sense of exhaustion with talking about things that the powers that be completely ignore but which are obvious from simple logic.  He says he’s fed up with commenting on the fact that manufactured outrages like Joe Rogan saying politically incorrect things ten or twenty years ago are obviously manufactured.  He no longer wants to try to educate anyone who still doesn’t get these things.  And he mentioned that some of these things are finally, finally percolating up to the “legitimate” circles of the media and politics.  He even stated that some of these circles read his stuff regularly and even contact him from time to time.

And that I find very interesting.  I’m trying to imagine a podcast with the ZMan and, for instance, someone like Michael Anton or Curtis Yarvin discussing the real solutions to the mess we’re in.  Now how that would come about is not clear to me.  The ZMan has blasphemed against the blank slate countless times.  Speaking to him is a sin comparable to throwing puppies and kittens into a shark tank.  It’s a crime that will not be forgiven.  But it is a fascinating idea because that kind of a conversation is exactly what needs to occur.  The dissident right and the mainstream right need to equilibrate.  Those two groups need to talk.  Once the mainstream is allowed to talk about these issues, they can start to address the reality of where we are today.  Most of our problems have to do with making believe that nonsensical things are true.  We think that women can be soldiers and men wearing sundresses and wigs are women.  We’re willing to let children decide to have life altering surgeries based on things they’ve been told by crackpots.

Now I doubt that the ZMan will ever talk to Tucker Carlson but I do note that Tucker Carlson is starting to sound a lot like the ZMan.  And that is a very good and hopeful thing.  In the same way that the COVID wall is crumbling, the whole Leftist infrastructure is starting to alienate large swaths of the population.  And maybe, happening at the same time as the economy tanks and crime engulfs the Democrat cities there might be a chance that enough people will be fed up to allow real change to occur.  The real solutions are somewhere between the apocalypse desired by the dissidents and the nothing provided by the mainstream.  But a genuine dialog between the two is what is needed.

Anyway, that’s what the ZMan’s podcast got me thinking about today.

The ZMan Has a Very good Post on the Hive We Now Live In

It’s actually two posts.  One on his site and one over at Taki’s.  They both describe the situation we find ourselves in where the bureaucrats now own us.  They tell us what to do and what to think.  These two articles are bang on the nose.  What they can’t say is how we escape from our fate.  Well, except to rise up against it, which no one can say out loud.  Highly recommended.

 

ZMan Talks About Anti-Racism

The ZMan had his usual Friday morning podcast.  It was a review of the Left’s use of terms like racist and white supremacy and how their meaning differs from what the rest of the world means by those terms.  It was as usual very interesting.

What stuck in my mind was the reminder that when dealing with the Left, the term that we can use that has enormous power is declaring their policies as anti-white hate.  The ZMan’s contention, and I think it’s a valid one, is that the Left’s narrative depends on people thinking that they speak from a moral high ground.  But if you can indict what they’re doing as a hateful and therefore immoral activity you rob them of this legitimacy.

And he’s right.  Specifying something as anti-white hate frightens and confuses leftists.    ZMan should be congratulated for popularizing this insight.  Equity, diversity, inclusion really just an anti-white ploy.  CRT is anti-white propaganda.  It’s a powerful tool.  Think about it.

No One Talks Collapsing Empires Better Than the ZMan

My favorite dissident has what I think is a fascinating discussion of what happens when an empire, e.g. the Soviet Union or the Romans starts to die.  He discusses the transition from central rule to oligarchs.  I think he makes some truly excellent points.  We may already be quite a ways along the process.  And he shows how differences in circumstances can lead to different outcomes.  A good read.

ZMan Bashes Conservative Inc.

No one enjoys bashing the likes of Kevin Williamson and David French more than the ZMan.  I always remember fondly his description of an apocryphal event where a Massachusetts state trooper was beating a libertarian somewhere in western Mass. and the ZMan and a number of passing motorists stopped to help the policeman in his useful and pleasurable civic duty.

I can’t remember if it was a pod cast or a column but I do remember it was sometime around Thanksgiving.  I think it w as an homage (in a way) to the Alice’s Restaurant story.

Well, he has a column about the self-loathing trolls that carry water for the cloud people over at National Review or wherever they’re holed up now.  And it is full of venom and scorn for these pathetic relics of a bygone era when many on the Right still thought of them as friends.  As usual, very entertaining if you like cruel mockery which, of course, I do.

The ZMan Discusses Supply Chain Disruption

Back when the COVID nonsense first started happening the ZMan warned that shutting down a tremendously complex system like the US economy was unbelievably dangerous.  Now he’s been born out by the shortages, price increases and general instability in the American economy.  His discussion is very worthwhile reading in my opinion.  On a personal note, Camera Girl returned today from the supermarket visibly upset by the empty shelves and runaway price increases.  For that alone I could see Dementia Joe tried for treason.

23JUL2021 – OCF Update – The Prisoner Speaks

I’ve been washing venetian blinds all morning and am still only half done!  I’ve calculated that there are 450 individual slats to clean by hand one at a time.  Camera Girl is a harsh mistress.  Pardon my absence.  I will catch up as soon as I am released from bondage.

As a quick note I listened to ZMan’s Friday podcast and it was on “The Book of Five Rings.”  The book’s author was a 17th century Japanese swordsman named Miyamoto Musashi.  The book is ostensibly on the strategy of sword fighting but is actually a meditation on the philosophy of living in the real world.  I thought his podcast was extremely interesting and I’ll have to read book soon.  I wish the podcast was much longer it took my mind off the drudgery I am enduring.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

The ZMan Doesn’t Hate J. D. Vance!

I suspect the FBI has swatted the ZMan, spirited him away to an underground, under-volcano lair for torture and replaced him with a robotic imposter.  How else to explain this post where he more or less declares that J. D. Vance might just not be an establishment fink.  Be still my beating heart.

Well, good for the ZMan.  Being a protege of Peter Thiel I imagine Vance is a very smart guy who has one foot in the cloud world but with still one foot dragging wistfully on the dirt side.  Let’s call him an ally for now.

ZMan Claims Collapse of Social Trust Will Mean Societal Collapse Soon

ZMan walks us through the institutions that have burned through their social trust and then finishes by saying that the American Empire will soon have its collapse like the Soviet Union.

I think he makes a lot of good points.  But it’s not clear to me that any systemic collapse is likely to happen anytime soon.  And the reason for that is a collapse doesn’t occur until some external event intrudes.  So, when will that happen?  Well, it could happen tomorrow or it could be a decade.  Now, I don’t think it will be a decade, in fact I could see something happening within three or four years but I wouldn’t even think of saying it’s going to happen on such and such a day.  I think a good trick would be to try to guess what the external triggering event is likely to be.  An easy guess is a financial collapse.  The result of some kind of stagflation or very high unemployment might be enough to destabilize the political situation.  But if we are talking about a societal collapse like the Soviet collapse it would be important to know what the US military would do in the case of essentially an insurrection.  And that will completely depend on who is in the military at the time.

It’s fun to imagine a scenario that will end the Left’s hold on power.  But trying to predict its occurrence against a calendar is maybe too difficult to try at this time.