German History in Three Chapters

Thanks to Curtis Yarvin I got to watch a US propaganda film from 1945, warning of the danger of US right-wing politics using the Evil Germans as an example. 

There are three chapters of "German History" in the film:

Chapter 1: Führer #1, Blood and Iron (picture of Bismarck)

Chapter 2: Führer #2, Deutschland Über Alles (picture of Wilhelm II)

Chapter 3: Führer #3, Today Germany... Tomorrow the World (picture of Adolf Hitler)

Then, after pictures of mass graves, a swastika getting blown up, and the wreck of Hitler's Alpine retreat, we switch to the US of 1945 and "The ghosts of Berchtesgarten still walk. Right here in America..." and pictures of American politicians and activists that we are supposed to hate. Only I don't know who they are picturing. Presumably one of them is Charles Lindbergh. And another is Huey Long. And presumably Father Coughlin. But I can't be sure.

Bless their hearts.

When you know a bit of history it is interesting to see what the propagandists miss out. For instance, the whole point of Bismark's three wars, on Denmark, Austria, and France, was to force the various German states to unite. Bismark's genius was to understand that the only way to do this was with three nice little wars.

And why bother to unite Germany? Well, perhaps because of what had happened to the German lands before the film's Year Zero of 1870.

We could discuss the occupation of the German lands by France in the Napoleonic Wars. Friedrich Meinecke's book is called "The Age of German Liberation: 1795-1815." A lot of what we call German nationalism was born in that age when the Germans got together to decide how to stop the French from walking all over them every century or so.

Because in 1618-1648 was the Thirty Years War in which Sweden, France, and the Spanish/Austrian Hapsburgs pretty well devastated Germany. Thanks fellahs!

So if I were to write a History of Germany in three chapters, I would say

Chapter 1: Never Again. Leading intellectual lights in German lands during the Napoleonic Wars devise educational reforms to educate Germans to stand up against the French. The University of Berlin is the first research university. It leads eventually to Bismarck, who cunningly unites Germany in three short sharp wars.

Chapter 2: Age of the Idiots. After the fall of Bismarck Germany is ruled by the lightweight Wilhelm II, who makes enemies of France, Britain and Russia, while Germans invent the automobile, make a revolution in physics, and a revolution in ammonia fertilizer with the Haber process. After getting caught in a two-front war Germany -- Idiot! -- was humiliated and dismembered by the Treaty of Versailles, and that made young Adolf Hitler mad. So when the stumbling bumbling US Federal Reserve failed to act as lender of last resort in the 1929 crash Hitler rose to power, and then got Germany into another two-front war. Idiot!

Chapter 3: European Hegemony. Dismembered and humiliated again after World War II, Germany got smart and entered into a partnership with France to dominate Europe with the nominally supra-national European Union. So today Germany dominates Europe but does it through intermediaries. Sorry about the butcher's bill in the Age of the Idiots.

That's the thing about history. The more you know, the more you can stitch together a narrative to do anything you want. You can make the Germans the monsters of all time, or you can make them the helpless victims that finally got their act together. 

Your choice.

AntiFa Doesn't Want Powell's to Sell Anti-AntiFa Book

 I like to say that our liberal friends have No Idea. They've been patting themselves on the back for generations about their commitment to free speech, and all the liberal ladies at the public library do their Banned Books thingy every year and think they are incredibly brave.

But now Powell's Books, the independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, is under fire from AntiFa for daring to sell Andy Ngo's book on AntiFa: Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.

Of course, Powells isn't actually going to sell Unmasked in its store. Heavens No! Darling!

At Powell’s, a lot of our inventory is hand-selected, and hand-promoted. And a lot of our inventory is not. With several million titles available online at any given moment, complete hand-curation is not possible. Unmasked by Andy Ngo came to us through an automatic data feed via one of our long-term and respected publishers, Hachette Book Group. We list the majority of their catalogue automatically, as do many other independent and larger retailers. We have a similar arrangement with other publishers.

This book will not be on our store shelves, and we will not promote it. That said, it will remain in our online catalogue. We carry books that we find anywhere from simply distasteful or badly written, to execrable, as well as those that we treasure. We believe it is the work of bookselling to do so.

Decades ago we received credible bomb threats for selling the work of Salman Rushdie, and yet we carried on. We cannot behave any differently today when we feel differently about the book or writer in question.

As reported by Oregon Live: "Powell’s responds to protests over right-wing agitator Andy Ngo’s book: ‘We carry a lot of books we find abhorrent’" See, AntiFa has been doing mostly peaceful protests inside Powell's Books lately and Powell's has been closing early.

Actually, I feel for Powell's. There they are, just north of downtown Portland in the Rose District in a store that occupies a whole block. Whaddya going to do when AntiFa calls and the Portland City Council is busy defunding the police and the mayor is Ted Wheeler? Send for the Proud Boys? 

This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Because I doubt that a bookstore can afford to occupy a whole block in Portland's Rose District. Not any more.

And you think that all those hipster lefties in Portland are going to continue buying at a store that sells -- online! -- a vile right-wing agitator's screed about the mostly peaceful protesters of BLM and AntiFa?

It's all very sad. I've loved to visit Powell's for over 40 years, since I started driving down to Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1978. We met my parents in Ashland for a week and went to three plays. So that when my daughters grew up the elder one started taking her kids to Ashland every year. On the way down, and on the way back: the guilty pleasure of a visit to Powell's.

I'm afraid to tell you that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is not what it was. It was created by a high-school teacher in the 1930s, but now it is overrun with Wokeyness. There have to be opposite gender characters in pretty well every performance, and sometimes even in the main characters. For instance, we were to a Henry IV Part One with the Harry Percy played by a woman in tight camo with a big butt. Then there was the Julius Caesar with Caesar as a woman CEO.

When you do stuff like that you are advertising to the world that you have Literally No Clue.

But back to Powell's. The point about Powell's is that, when you check out a particular section, you find books you didn't know existed. That is perfectly wonderful. And in its psychology section there is a whole display bookcase exclusively devoted to Freud and Jung -- with Jung taking up 2/3 of the shelf space.

Only question is: how much longer?

I'd rather not think about that.

Zuck and @jack Have No Power, Because...

So now Curtis Yarvin has exploded another test nuclear device. "Big tech has no power at all," says he.

What does he mean? He means that, for Zuckerberg and the rest of the tech lords, the easy way out is to defer to the "press" and cancel anyone the press wants canceled. 

Zuck doesn’t want to do any of this. Nor do his users particularly want it. Rather, he is doing it because he is under pressure from the press. Duh.

Perfectly true. Only, I would add, the Breitbart Downstream Principle applies:

The press is downstream from activism is downstream from the Cathedral is downstream from the political formula.

For "activism" you can substitute "wokies" if you prefer.

The maxim above is merely a restatement of the Breibart Extended Downstream Principle I have inscribed among my Maxims:

Politics is downstream from culture (Breitbart) is downstream from religion (Wright) is downstream from “the meaning of life, the universe, and everything” (Chantrill). 

For those of you that aren't yet in the know, the Cathedral is the combination of all the people who are good and right and that have the right values.

Its inner circle, the Brain and the Voice, includes all professors, journalists, serious artists, published authors, etc. Its outer ring, the Conversation, is the whole upper social class. Its funding division, the Foundation, is the whole upper economic class. Its teaching division, the School, gets to indoctrinate almost everyone for over a decade. And its doctrine, the Dream, defines good and evil for all decent people.

To clarify things further, Yarvin argues that: 

There are three forms of regime: monarchy (rule of one), oligarchy (rule of a minority), and democracy (rule of a majority). The System is an oligarchy.

There are four forms of oligarchy: hereditary oligarchy (rule of nobles), military oligarchy (rule of soldiers), commercial oligarchy (rule of the wealthy), and clerical oligarchy (rule of thinkers). The System is a clerical oligarchy.

The Political Formula is the ruling class's moral and legal basis for its power. I described the political formula of our ruling class today at American Thinker.

The U.S. formula used to be that government existed to protect “the little guy.” The formula was celebrated in anthems like It’s a Wonderful Life, with the little guy homeowners of Bailey Park protected by St. George Bailey from the rapacious dragon Mr. Potter.

In our day government exists to fight systemic racism, and it is celebrated in anthems like the woke “oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors” narrative. If it weren’t for the “allies,” little kiddies are carefully taught from K thru Activism School, the world would collapse into a “literally Hitler” oppression of the oppressed peoples by the white oppressors. Sign here to become an “ally.”

Am I right, or am I right?

And what is poor old Zuck going to do standing up against the priests of the Cathedral and against the sacred principles decreed in the regime's political formula? He's gonna stand up against all that is good and true and anti-racist? He ain't, and neither is @jack at Twitter. 

So what do we do about it? Well, the answer is right there in my Downstream maxim. We gotta come up with a new "meaning of life, the universe, and everything." Which, of course, I have done in my "Vision of the Good Life."

So, what are we waiting for?

Direct Censorship, Reign of Terror

So, we've officially entered the Woke Reign of Terror, where you are not allowed to disagree with the regime. Curtis Yarvin:

As a student of history, I know what burden the System has taken on by this step. Such an escalation is a ratchet. Once you enter the mindset of the Eastern bloc and declare the revolution as a permanent axiom, which makes anyone who opposes or even doubts the revolution into a potentially violent criminal, there is no way back.

This "mode of direct censorship... works." But there is a problem. It takes a lot of energy. You gotta have your two minutes hate every day. Of course, you have to amp it up, as the French did, and the Bolsheviks did. The Jacobins guillotined their tens of thousands, the Bolsheviks executed and starved their tens of millions. And then the whole thing dies of exhaustion. I suppose that our Wok-eviks will just deplatform the top conservatives and Qanon guys and get thousands named and shamed and fired. And then one day it will die. Because, as Crane Brinton says in Anatomy of Revolution, people cannot live forever in the fever of revolution. And then comes the Thermidorean Reaction.

Because, you see, any regime that has to break the glass and go for direct censorship has admitted that their revolution has already failed. If things were really copacetic, and heaven on Earth were just around the corner, the regime wouldn't need censorship. The facts would speak for themselves with just a little nudge from regime supporters.

The whole thing also reminds us -- as if we need telling -- that the regime is actually scared of the Trump voters and the Commoners in general. Which means that, deep down, they know instinctively that they have visited monstrous injustice on the ordinary Commoners of America.

For the truth is that the Commoners, like the bourgeoisie, are not that interested in power. They just want to get on with their lives. Only, as Trotsky said, "you may not be interested in power, but power is interested in you." 

Now I would say that this is new. Back in the agricultural age there were more like just two classes: the landlords and the peasants; landlords had the power and peasants sucked up to power. The idea of people just going about their business, trusting trustworthy people, is new and revolutionary and utterly confusing to the people interested in power.

The question for our time is whether the Commoners that are not that interested in power can ever get a ruling class that respects them and lets them get on with their lives.

We know at least that the current ruling class down not respect us, and is damned if it will let us just live our lives in peace.

Democrats Shocked: Blair Kid to Intern with GOP

When Tony Blair’s kid Euan decided to try for an internship with Congress, where do you think he applied?
Like any ambitious kid, he applied to the “powerful” House Rules Committee. But why oh why
did the chip off the old New Labour block sign up with the eevil Republican majority committee staff?
Apparently the news has “stunned Democrats in Washington.”

But don’’t worry Dems.
Young Euan
is planning a stint on your side of the aisle in due course, before
he goes on to get an MBA at Harvard. Pop quiz. Who was the first US president to get an MBA from Harvard?

Why are Liberal Journalists like Muslims?

You’d expect that political philosopher
Mark Steyn
would have the answer and you would be right.

[Both] the U.S. media and
those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar,
two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of
the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs.

He is talking about the Koran flushing incident, of course. Did you know that it was a Pakistani
cricketer, the best bowler in the world, that started the flushing frenzy in Pakistan? Mark has more, much more.

The Democrats' Daunting Task

It's been great fun for the Democrats to spend the last four years damning President Trump and everything he stands for, but now they've caught the car they were chasing. And here's the problem. Well, here are a bunch of problems.

We need to boost the economy from the COVID depression. But we already spent all the money. Tax increases? Hmm. Back in 2009, after the Great Recession, President Obama passed a "stimulus" that mainly handed loot to Democratic constituencies. So I expect very slow growth for the next few years. Voters won't like that.

We need to reform the welfare state -- 30 years ago! I mean pensions, health care. Oh and welfare. I suspect Democrats have No Idea of the social cost of the administrative welfare state; all the conservative critiques have been brushed aside.

We need to put climate change on hold. Leave aside whether climate change really is a problem: all the plans to phase out fossil fuels will cause untold damage to the economy. Think Five Year Plan.

We need to stop the "systemic racism" canard. I get it: Democrats need to rile up their minority supporters to get them to the polls. And I get that politics is division. But in the end division ends in civil war.

We need to make the economy and the culture more "commoner friendly." That means making it easy for people to start businesses, with less regulations, and to revalue the commoner life of wiving, thriving, and childing over elite feminism and LGBT.

 Then there's education. The COVID time has taught us the eternal lesson of government bureaucracy: in the end the bureaucrats do nothing except pick up their pay and pensions. I say that politics must not define how people educate their children. We need a lot more informal education, from home schools to apprenticeships and internships, and a lot less supercalifragilistic-tenured-for-life-ism. What should education do? I don't know; I just think that most education reformers, from Horace Mann on down to James Conant, are fools and knaves.

Democrats think it is first-and-ten, with the opposing team ordered off the field for penalties. As John Hinderaker notes, Democrats think that both Trump and his policies are discredited:

Tax cuts? Discredited! An America-First foreign policy? Discredited! Enforcing the immigration laws, which is the president’s constitutional duty? Discredited! Stopping the China sellout? Discredited! Standing up to Russia? Discredited! Supporting the Israelis? Discredited! Cutting back on unproductive federal regulations? Discredited! Encouraging U.S. energy production and independence? Discredited! Objecting to political correctness and cancel culture? Discredited! Standing up for America as a positive force in world history? Discredited!

All the "discredited" policies are meat-and-drink to the globalist educated gentry: it's in the air they breathe. My judgement is that all those policies lead to trouble, and if the Democrats return to them they will create misery and mayhem -- for the American people and for themselves at the ballot box. 

Problem is that the elite, the educated gentry, don't pay for their mistakes: their errors, their crimes, their conceits. It's the ordinary schmuck that pays. That will never change, but it sure would be nice if ruling classes thought a bit about who-whom -- and not the way Lenin thought about it.

But why should I care? Even though I identify as a Commoner, I am really educated Gentry. And I'm sure the Democrats will take care of people like me.