The Filibuster is Racism, Etc.

What a surprise! Our liberal friends are now saying that the Senate filibuster -- which basically says that you can't pass anything in the Senate unless you have a supermajority -- is racist. Because Jim Crow.

Only, for President Biden, Jim Crow isn't enough. He's now amping up to "Jim Eagle." 'Cos eagles are bigger and scarier, I suppose.

I know, it is really annoying, when you have won with presidency with the help of half a billion from the Zuck and "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election." Or, as it says in the Time <title> tag: "The Secret Bipartisan Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election."

Really annoying when you only have a 50-50 Senate and lost 13 seats in the House to yield a 222-213 majority. Because you have vital and important legislative measures like imposing federal rules on all elections. And pitching the US into a multi-trillion dollar program to save the planet from climate change.

There oughta be a law!

OK, now let's go to a bit of science. The best science on legislative voting that I know is The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. They go through a book full of various legislative combinations and dual-chamber and single-chamber legislatures. And what they eventually come up with is that the only just voting system is "unanimous consent." In other words, forget majority voting. Forget supermajority deals like the filibuster. The only just form of voting is for all the legislators to agree.

Why? Because if you have unanimous consent then the proposers of the legislation have to buy off the folks opposing it.  (And why are the opposers opposing? Because the legislation is going to cost them money. Duh!) In other words, if you want to pass legislation to force the country in some direction or other you have to make the losers whole. Or at least compensate them enough to vote with you.

If you want to get into my extended analysis follow the link to "Fifty Years of 'The Calculus of Consent'" that I wrote in 2012. There are various disquisitions on "logrolling" and "side payments."

No doubt this is what inspired me to invent my maxim: "There is no such thing as justice, only injustice."

See, there are two dominant views of politics. Our liberal friends think of politics as "doing good" in the world -- at least when they do it. Guys like me think that politics is civil war by other means.

In other words, I believe that politics is the way we avoid civil war by listening to the grievances and the complaints of the folks out of power. Of course, the chaps on the other side are contemptible and not really worth listening to. But, the point is to do enough to stop them from  giving up on politics and forming a head of rebellion and starting to run up a butcher's bill.

To understand that, in my view, is the beginning of wisdom. You really don't want civil war.

That is the point of the Moynihan law that you don't want to pass major legislation short of a 70-30 vote in the Senate -- in other words, major legislation needs overwhelming support if it is to endure.

An obvious example of what not to do is Obamacare, that passed by a whisker, and remains contentious to this day.

The filibuster is a similar concept to Moynihan's law. It says that if you want to pass something in Congress you'd better get 60 percent in the Senate. Otherwise, to coin a phrase, you got trouble, right here in River City.

Of course, the filibuster is associated in the minds of all good people sporting Black Lives Matter signs in their yards with the Southern Democrats in the time of Jim Crow. It grew up in the aftermath of the Civil War after the South had been devastated by the "bummers" of Gen. Sherman's army in its March Through Georgia and other Southern states, and after the disputed presidential election of 1876 and its "back room" deal to award the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1876 the Democrats had won control of the Senate and Congress.

Yes, you are asking. How come the Democrats had come to win Congress back? Because of the Crash of 1973 and Long Depression consequent upon the US gubmint deflation to get the US back on the Gold Standard. Experts now agree that deflations are not a good idea.

Of course, I always find an excuse not to accept the conventional wisdom. And my take is that probably the filibuster kept the South in the Union for the century in which the South had to deal with the humiliation of losing the Civil War and being stripped of its wealth and its political domination.

In other words, the South was consigned in the century after 1865 to the humiliation of what we would now call "deplorable-dom." But at least they could stop the really bad stuff (for them) in Congress with the filibuster. And, I dare say, the filibuster helped the Republicans to cool the jets of their over-enthusiastic partisans who doubtless thought that the the rubble in the South should be made to bounce for the next thousand years.

Today we have a slightly different problem. We have a ruling class that has ruled for a hundred years and is presently outraged that the "natives are getting restless." How Dare They, to coin a phrase.

So our ruling class is coming up with various dodges to keep their slipping grip on the reins of power. H.R.1 to federalize election rules is one such dodge. Abolishing the filibuster is another.

But I tell my liberal friends that when you are reduced to "dodges" to stay in power then the clock is running on your glorious era of power. Maybe instead of beating up deplorables and canceling heretics it is time to starting thinking about the unthinkable: "where did we go wrong?"

Hey liberals, let me count the ways.

And there is another thing. If you are going to commit the United States to a multi-trillion dollar program to save the planet in a war on climate change you'd better have overwhelming support from the people -- as in supermajorities in the United States Senate. Because in a war two things will happen. First, with your taxation and inflation you will destroy the wealth of ordinary people and put it in the hands of "war profiteers." Second, you will sacrifice the lives of a goodly part of a whole generation of youth on the battlefield. You better have a good reason for that, Senator.

Otherwise, I suspect, the people will show you the exit.

Excess Deaths Going Negative

Over at Powerline John Hinderaker observes that the death rate in the US and UK seems to be going negative. In other words that the "excess deaths" among oldsters like me during the COVID crisis of the last year were merely bringing normal deaths among oldsters forward a few months.

And for this we wrecked the economy and shut up the kidz?

OK, let's go with Ike, and make the problem bigger.

Speaking as a 74-year-old with two kids and six grandchildren, I say that once you have got grandchildren well on their way to adulthood, then you -- that is, "me" -- are surplus population. One fine day, you are going to die. Not because of a disease, but because ageing is part of Nature's program. There is a reason why old people have dry skin and dicky hearts. It is because Nature is planning to kill you off. Nothing personal, you understand.

But we in the West have erected the most obscene gubmint programs to throw money at the elderly. Social Security: hey, if you didn't save your nickels and your kids don't give a damn about you, well, good luck, chum. Medicare: why are we spending a fortune on old people in their last six months of life? 

Really, it is remarkable that the kidz haven't risen up in rebellion against us blood-sucking oldsters.

And, no doubt, when the kidz do rise up in rebellion they will attack the wrong fortress. Idiots.

But I get it. The only warrant for government power is to fight existential peril. And then reward the supporters after the fight with loot and plunder. In the good old days it was to the victor the spoils.

But today it doesn't make any sense to loot. Why loot Amazon? Because after you have looted it the looters don't have Amazon to serve them any more. And the same goes for all capitalistic enterprises.

Sure, you can prune and tap the capitalistic enterprises like they were maple trees and you want to tap the maple syrup. But it doesn't pay to kill the tree.

But the whole point of politics is to find something to fight. And right now we can see the end-point of this age-old instinct. The Biden Boys want to fight climate change with a multi-trillion dollar war -- just like FDR in WWII! Loot and plunder for all the producers of green boondoggles. And they want to fight systemic racism. Loot and plunder for all the "oppressed peoples."

Only the Green New Deal will be a net loss for ordinary people and for "oppressed peoples." And "systemic racism" logically leads to a war of all against all.

Something's got to give. And it will. The only question is the size of the butcher's bill before something "gives."

Meanwhile, we are going to find out that in 2021 the death rate is a lot lower than 2020, as the old geezers like me that might have died this year in 2021 actually died back in 2020.

What we need is a new moral calculus that makes it a moral horror to throw money at old geezers like me. And instead guts gubmint programs by 50 percent so that the young'uns have a chance.

As in, getting an education -- or more to the point, training -- without becoming a debt slave. As in, buying a house that's priced something short of astronomical. As in, keeping your wages out of the hands of politicians so you can save to start a business, to buy a house, to save for a rainy day, to help your kids get a good start in life.

But I don't expect this to happen soon. Not until our present rulers are sent packing.

And even then...

Meanwhile the funeral directors are not going to have a very good year. Sorry chaps.

The Day the Universe Changes. On Race.

I see that, in my "pejoratives" topic, that the first time I hoped, foolishly, for an end to the race grift was back in 2010: "The Year of the Race Card."

I wrote that the only way Democrats get elected is by scaring Blacks and Jews to death.

Back in 2019 I asked "Which is Worse: Trump's Insults of the Racist Canard?" Yeah, I know. I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'.

Then, back in June 2020 I published my alliterative "Codex of Preferred Progressive Pejoratives," helpfully pointing out the target of each progressive pejorative and the toxicity level of each pejorative.

Did you know that the dictionary definition of "pejorative" -- from my Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary that I bought used many moons ago -- is "tending to make worse?" It comes from the Latin, pejorare, darling: "to make worse."

And boy, oh boy, do our liberal friends make things worse with their race politics.

I am preparing for the Day the Universe Changes. It will be the kind of day when some liberal plays the race card on TV and their interlocutor will reply. "Oh great, the race card. Got any other cards up your sleeve?"

And when they say, channeling Greta, "How dare you!" the racist monster replies: "Read your Hegel, darling. He says that there is no difference between racism and anti-racism. The thing is equal to its opposite."

Back at the end of 2019 I wrote a set of pieces, starting with "Of Course I'm a Racist. How About You." I descanted upon the theme that everybody likes their kind best.

Doesn't everyone prefer their own kind best? For instance, your liberal anti-racist may sneer and be ashamed of his rich-kid whiteness. But that's because his whiteness is not his identity. For a lefty xir leftiness is xir identity. Call him a lefty and he feels the compliment.

And, the key thing, from my intensive research into "fake tribalism," is that people form into tribes when rallied by their leaders to confront an existential threat to their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. To coin a phrase.

A while back I tried to come up with a few clever retorts against the Racist Canard.

How's your Two Minute Hate going today, precious?

Look, diversity/ inclusion is racism, straight up. 

Where's the toxic masculinity if colleges are 60 percent female? 

What white supremacy? There is nothing more shameful and low-rent today that being a white male in a MAGA hat.

But in the end, I recommended the simple retort: "Of course, and how about you?"

Of course, the thing is that on The Day the Universe Changes on race, we won't do the liberal thing and lock every last progressive that played the race card up in Cancel Hell.

We won't because we don't believe in witch hunts and cancel cultures and naming and shaming and all the rest of the lefty rubbish.

Because, in the famous phrase of our First Black President, Barack Obama, That's Not Who We Are.

Oh You Brits: How Could You!

In this Cancel Culture age it is rare to see a good old-fashioned insult piece. But UnHerd.com is up to the challenge with "Why we French love to hate the English" by Frenchie Anne-Elisabeth Moutet. 

Now, for the first time in my life, I understand why the French talk about "perfidious Albion." Read this catalog of English crimes:

It starts with use of unregulated longbows at Agincourt.

I agree! There oughta be a law! Then there is

burning Joan of Arc at the stake.

OK, so that was nasty. We moderns would never do that to Greta Thunberg. But here is something I didn't know:

Pitt’s flooding fake assignats to devalue French paper money during the Revolution (typical of the perfidiousness of Albion in all things financial[).]

I had thought all the French financial messes down the ages were all home grown. And this:

“Les Anglais conspired to break the Peace of Amiens in 1803, led the entire continent into war, and managed to pin it all on Napoleon!” one friend raged.

Wow! I had no idea!

Had enough?

And on to St. Helena, to Kitchener’s stand-off against Marchand at Fashoda in the Sudan in 1898, and of course to the sinking of a good chunk of the French Navy at Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July 1940 by the Royal Navy, rather than risking it fighting on for Vichy.

Well. Now I understand the French. They gotta right to be outraged.

And that is nothing compared to the insult to Queen Isabella, daughter of the king of France, wife of England's Edward II. Insulted by Edward's gay relationships she was forced to go home to Daddy in Paris, shack up with Roger Mortimer, and return to Britland at the head of an army and depose her husband.

Hey, you Rosbifs, don't even think about shaming our fine French princesses!

Only now, of course, the French don't have any princesses any more. What a shame!

Seriously though, I think that the good old male tradition of the insult, best practiced after a few at the local pub or tavern, is a vital part of human evolution. To be able to give and take a good honest insult is part of what it takes to be a man.

It is gratifying to see a rough, tough Frenchwoman showing that she can give it out like the best. My view is that if women really want to participate in the Public Square they need to understand and master the art of the insult -- instead of being perpetually insulted in the popular refrain of "I can't believe she said that."

And don't get me started on "safetyism."

Against Kimball: Science Advances by Breaking the Rules

Everybody says that they are in favor of logic and reason: St. Thomas Aquinas; the rational Enlightenment; conservatives. Even radical lefties say that modern capitalism and liberalism is all a lie because the truth is that capitalism and liberalism are all about oppression.

Now comes Roger Kimball with a piece in American Greatness on "Science!" He starts with statement that the two great scientific fraudsters, "the egregious Michael “hockey stick” Mann and St. Anthony “mask theater” Fauci, have recently received gratifying comeuppances." About which we can all agree. But then he starts attacking all my favorite guys:

[Paul] Feyerabend maintained that science is no more cognitively privileged than (for example) astrology, voodoo, or necromancy. The “only one principle that can be defended,” he wrote in Against Method, “. . . is anything goes.”

[Thomas Kuhn.] According to Kuhn, [in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,] scientific truth is “paradigm relative.” For example, what was considered true under the Ptolemaic view of the solar system differs from what we, having read Copernicus, believe. 

[Karl] Popper’s 1934 book The Logic of Scientific Discovery made the curious argument that the distinguishing mark of a scientific theory was not (as everyone used to think) that it was verifiable by empirical evidence. On the contrary, Popper argued that a theory was scientific to the extent that it was “falsifiable.” 

Well, I think all three are right and Roger Kimball is wrong.

Feyerabend: The point here is that the record of the last century or so is that a new theory always busts up the assumptions of the reigning methodology. Maybe just a little, maybe a whole lot. Newton was based on absolute space and time; Einstein said that space and time are relative.

Kuhn: His argument is that the reigning princes of science will always defend the old ways. Only when the old generation dies off can a new "paradigm" get a foothold.  Of course this applies to everything. The current 80-year-old princes of the Democratic Party are about to retire and the Dems will only then complete their paradigm shift to lefty wokism.

Popper: The point of "falsification" is that if your theory explains everything it isn't useful. Climate change is an example. Everything that happens, from extreme weather to hurricane frequency, is said to demand that we stop using fossil fuels. Genuine science makes predictions upon which the theory stands or falls. The famous example of the 1919 confirmations of General Relativity is an example, including the "Perihelion precession of Mercury" -- which could not happen according to Newtonian theory -- and the "Deflection of light by the Sun" of a star that was close to the Sun during a solar eclipse. If these experiments "falsified" Einstein's equations instead of confirming them, it would have been "back to the drawing board."

The point that these three scientists are making is that every scientific theory is a stitch-up, good enough for government work. But once you start trying to apply it to more and more situations, then you are likely to find that, at some point, it doesn't work. The most obvious case is Newton's mechanics. It works at Earth scale. But when you get out into the universe, then it doesn't predict close enough.

And when scientists have to explain their anomalous results with things like "dark matter" and "dark energy" that is a "tell" that "Houston we have a problem." Nothing shameful about that: happens all the time. Here is an article that proposes that the "dark matter" explanation arose because scientists used Newtonian gravitation instead of relativity to model the behavior of galaxies. (Waat? Really?)

Now, my belief is that to understand what is going on here you need to understand the German Turn in philosophy and knowledge -- and Feyerabend and Popper were both born Austrians. Kuhn? He was Jewish American with a German name.

I have a lot to say about the German Turn, but it starts with the philosopher Immanuel Kant, a Prussian. He wrote that we cannot know "things-in-themselves" but only appearances. When we humans experience light hitting our eyes we process and interpret that light in our brains, and out of that processing we create an image of the world we are seeing.

For instance, I am sitting at a table. Hey, what more do I need to say? Well, if I wanted to construct a table, then I need to know more about the construction of tables, about materials, about tools, and so on. And if I were to use metals in my construction I would have to learn about the mining and smelting of metals. Behind what George Lakoff calls a "basic level" object hides an infinity of possibilities.

My argument is that Kant's theory of things-in-themselves and appearances set off the German Turn that leads directly, do not pass go, to relativity and quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are ridiculous at a "basic level."

So, whatever you believe, I suggest that you take the notions of Feyerabend and Kuhn and Popper, and ponder them in your heart.

Now, we conservatives and nationalists tend to ridicule the left and its "critical theory." Writes Andy Ngo in Unmasked, "Have you heard it argued that there is no such thing as objective reality and truth?" But the critique of objective reality and truth doesn't just come from Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School. Kant's masterwork was titled "A Critique of Pure Reason."

My point is that if we want to own the future and banish lefty rubbish from the face of the Earth "we" need to understand "critical theory" from Kant to Kuhn and then go beyond it. That's Sun Tzu: To beat your enemy you must first understand him.

And this begins with admitting that there is no such thing as "objective reality." All realities are constructed, in our minds.

The Border: Where Do the Mexican Drug Gangs Fit In?

Well, so today it's reported that the Biden administration is asking the Mexican government for help at the border. In return for COVID vaccines. Hey, politics!

Here's what I wonder. Where do the famous Mexican drug gangs and their "coyotes" come in?

And where does the money go?

We know, for instance, that border jumpers usually get assistance from a "coyote."

We know, for instance, that Central American immigrants send a lot of money back home, using modern high technology, and I believe that New York Times owner Carlos Slim gets a cut because of his Mexican near-monopoly cellphone company.

"Remittances," they call it. And last year was a record. Yes, but I wonder who that money goes to? I'll betcha the money doesn't all go to the family back home. I bet it is also paying back "coyote" fees and various add-ons. In fact, I'll bet you a nickel that illegal immigrants never stop paying the "coyotes" until they get a green card.

I mean. suppose you are in the organized crime game. What better suckers than people who are illegal and need to stay clear of the police? I bet that these folks get threatened into helping the drug trade.

And I wonder how many illegal immigrants are basically slaves working for the drug lords and getting all their wages docked to pay their "coyote."

Look, any time that people are evading a law -- remember Prohibition? -- you get organized crime getting in on the action, because the rules are a bit tougher when something's illegal. You gotta pay off the cops and the crooked pols. The Godfather, etc.

Hey, I wonder whether our glorious US politicians get in on the action. Oops, not whether, but where?

It's funny that I/we don't know anything about this. All the media interest is in "kids in cages" and other diversions.

And I wonder where the US activist community comes in. When people are wearing "Biden Please Let Me In" t-shirts, I assume that the activist community has got into the act. As when people are marching on foot across Mexico. Army generals and historians and people like me know that people don't march across country without needing food and lodging. You can "requisition" the food, if you have the guns.

Anyway, what with the Biden open borders batters playing on a bit of a sticky wicket right now, I just want to know a bit more about the bowlers, and the umpires, and the wicket keeper. And the intrepid journalists doing the play-by-play.

I just have this feeling that we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Is There Really Anything We Can Do?

In his Gray Mirror blog Curtis Yarvin agues against dissident political action against the regime. He argues that when it is time for regime change it will just happen as natural as you please. One day the old regime will be in power. Next day the new regime will start up.

I suppose he is saying that "take the streets" is a lefty conceit, having to do with their fantasy that they represent the oppressed peoples, whose only way of advertising their suffering is by fighting and dying in the streets.

Very nice, but what he is saying is that the old regime has to utterly discredit itself before it gives up the game.

For instance, I was talking with an elderly educated-class woman waiting for a ferry, watching first the electric bikes driving off the ferry, then the manual bikes, and then motor bikes. I suggested that this order of egress represented some kind of social ordering. She allowed as how she thinks that electric cars are a good idea.

And today Lady Marjorie tells me that Seattle City Council is putting off its plan to institute car congestion charges in downtown Seattle. But, says the Seattle Times,

In the next two years, Seattle will create incentives for public and private companies to electrify their vehicles, encourage more walking, biking and transit ridership and may propose fees on driving in certain parts of the city to decrease congestion.

In other words, the regime is pedal-to-the-metal on its "urbanization" agenda. So, do you write your councilman? Do you hit the streets? Do you argue with your liberal neighbors to change their minds?

Not really, because to our liberal friends everything they are doing is good and progressive and educated and evolved.

As the scientists say, living things just go about their business until, all of a sudden, something frightens them and they stop in their tracks. And recalibrate.

And we have just been taught what happens when the plebs peacefully protest at the Capitol. The ruling class and their bribed apologists all scream about "armed insurrection" and bring out the national guard. Which a bunch of retired Pentagon generals argued against during the Summer of Floyd.

Put it this way. Do we have a chance of changing America before the average nice liberal lady has given up on at least half of the ten woke ideas I tabulated yesterday?

Spiked-online reported on ex-Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings on the disjunction of science and bureaucracy in the British government.

Yesterday he eviscerated the British state’s contempt for science and technology, and the vast bureaucracy that has attached itself to science and technology policy. 

Apparently Cummings helped set up the Brits' vaccination policy which worked, while the EU policy did not.

But can any of us trust government and science? Ever? Surely the lesson of the COVID Year is that government loves to use science as an excuse to impose complicated bureaucratic rules and counter-rules.

The Zman shows the problem with government and science.

Over the last year the main thread of the [COVID] story has been the political class trying to contend with the unintended consequences of their actions. The reason their story keeps changing is their inputs never have the desired outputs. They have to keep going back and rewriting the story of their actions to fit the present reality. It turns out that throwing wrenches into the gears of human society was not the smartest play on their part.

 Then there is the $1.9 trillion stimulus. Does the government have a clue what it is doing? I doubt it. The pols and the deep state are just doing what comes naturally: spending and borrowing.

The people who initiated these changes in American society are not working from a grand plan or a set of ideological goals. There is no point to what they are doing. Instead, our managerial revolutionaries are swept up in forces they do not understand. It is a strange, recursive and reactionary revolution from the top. 

The point of the ten woke ideas is that to justify your ruling-class power you have to have an existential peril to fight against. And if nothing seems to change despite your brilliant agenda, then you pile on and redouble your efforts. The point about the COVID masks and shutdowns is that the pols have to show they are Doing Something to protect us.

The really interesting question about Life, the Universe, and Everything is what do you do when things go wrong.

Well, we know. It's all brought out in When Prophecy Fails by Festinger et al. First you redouble your efforts. Then you keep going despite your doubts. Then people start to desert, and leave the movement. Then it collapses.

And whatever happens, it ain't pretty. 

Just like Curtis Yarvin says. One fine day the old regime leaves office and the new one takes its place.