I have a long trip tomorrow morning and I wasn\u2019t sure I would post tonight but the ZMan\u2019s death seems to require a post.\u00a0 And interestingly, yesterday my mind was on mortality.\u00a0 Just a coincidence but a strange one nonetheless.<\/p>\n
I guess I\u2019m looking to process the news a little bit to make it feel less strange.\u00a0 From what I remember, he was in his late fifties.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I guess with all the excess mortality after the COVID debacle he may be another victim of our regime\u2019s ill-conceived and incompetently handled bioweapons program in China.\u00a0 I think everyone\u2019s vitality has taken at least some damage from the spike protein saturating our environment.\u00a0 So maybe that is the primary cause of the ZMan\u2019s untimely death.\u00a0 Or maybe he had an underlying condition that he did or didn\u2019t know about.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing I\u2019ll never know any more about it.\u00a0 So, let\u2019s put aside his surprise death.<\/p>\n
What about his work?\u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading and (later) listening to the ZMan\u2019s content for about ten years.\u00a0 I was already reading material from various \u201calt-right\u201d sources and ran into some of his posts as links from other sources.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And I found his insights very useful.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He could lay out their machinations and even predict their feuds and friendships.\u00a0 And he did it in an entertaining and polished manner.\u00a0 And his Friday podcast added in the benefit of his suave speaking voice that I playfully referred to as the \u201cVoice of Saruman.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, the ZMan was a quality resource.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 At heart I\u2019m just a red-pilled civic nationalist and ZMan was a full-fledged member of the dissident right.\u00a0 What that means was that although I agreed with his diagnosis of our ills I disagreed with his prescription for a cure.\u00a0 I wanted to eliminate things like affirmative action and illegal immigration and restore an America that had existed before the Johnson New Society.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
The ZMan believed it was impossible to re-establish that kind of America.\u00a0 What exactly he believed was the radical solution to the dysfunctional condition of the United States he never explicitly revealed.\u00a0 On a number of occasions, he did state that a civil war wasn\u2019t in the cards.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Well, I guess I\u2019ll never know for sure now.\u00a0 But obviously we differed quite strongly on political ideology and for this reason I never commented on his site.\u00a0 After all, I was obviously not the target audience.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And what fun would that be for me?<\/p>\n
So, I read his content and linked to the essays that I found especially convincing or entertaining and time passed.\u00a0 I remember when he had that dustup with Michael Anton and that seemed to confirm that moderates would not be dealt with moderately.\u00a0 And although I said at the time that everyone is allowed to decide who is and isn\u2019t their enemies, I had no desire to be in that position.\u00a0 So I lurked and enjoyed his work when it agreed with my views and ignored what did not.<\/p>\n
But I will say I\u2019m very sad to hear of his death.\u00a0 He seemed to be a genuinely good fellow.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m going to miss his Friday Power Hour podcast.\u00a0 I looked forward to it every week and he provided entertainment and matters to contemplate, on a very consistent basis.\u00a0 And I always did hope that if Trump and his confederates had ever managed to \u201cfix\u201d the country and get back our rights maybe the ZMan would call a truce with the civic nationalists.<\/p>\n
But now we\u2019ll never know.\u00a0 Rest in peace, ZMan.\u00a0 You were an American original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a long trip tomorrow morning and I wasn\u2019t sure I would post tonight but the ZMan\u2019s death seems to require a post.\u00a0 And<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[80,455,343,886],"class_list":["post-33708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-alt-right","tag-dissident-right","tag-thezman-com","tag-zman"],"yoast_head":"\n