Disinformation, Misinformation, Where Does It End?

The problem with censorship is not the harm it does to conspiracy theorists, regime enemies, racists, sexist, homophobes, and armed insurrectionists, although their sufferings are not to be marginalized.

No, the big problem is that when the regime gets to censor its opponents it gets to do stupid stuff that ends up hurting the ruling class and its power.

Yep, every ruling class wants to control the narrative, and it usually does, because almost all the voices in society want to suck up to power.

For instance, my nickel says that, at the end of the COVID experience, wise heads will nod at the idea that the censoring of critics of the lockdown, vaccination, testing regime will turn out to be a strategic mistake for the ruling class, that ends up damaging it and its reputation.

It seems pretty clear that regime spokesmen like Anthony Fauci have used their power to censor perfectly valid scientific and research opinion. For what, St. Anthony?

Social media like to flag regime-critical posts as "disinformation" and "misinformation." Facebook recently flagged a British Medical Journal article article on a "host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia" a "contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial." Facebook flagged the article as "missing context.. could mislead people." Really, Facebook? Apparently the article was flagged by a Facebook contractor called "Lead Stories." And I am supposed to believe that an outfit I have never heard of is more reliable that the BMJ?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Look it is getting pretty obvious that the censorship on COVID-related reporting is coming around to haunt all the governments of the world. They have turned to massive lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations and suppression of alternative narratives because that is what governments do.

And if they can get away with censoring alternative viewpoints they will do that, because having to answer critics makes their job harder, in the sense that they have to get their messaging to align with the overall message from science, not just the ones that support their messaging and their policy.

This all got into high gear during the ruling class's five year campaign to get rid of Trump, and it clearly extended from the usual Democrat-aligned media to manipulation of search-engine results and social media posts.

In my own case, I found that my government spending site suddenly experienced a cut in traffic by 50 percent on April 2, 2019. I think that on that day Google implemented a search engine policy that promoted known institutions over mere websites. Which is fine, but what if the known institutions are lying? Or just stupid and ignorant? How would you know? By trusting the government? By trusting fact-check sites? By responding to pressure from the White House?

Really, there is no substitute for letting the various political sides, from right-wing conspiracy sites to left-wing activist sites, fight it out in the public square.

Because, you know what? In politics, in culture, in religion, everyone is creating a narrative based on their own particular understanding of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

And if you give people half a chance, they will start to lie, and cover up their mistakes, and silence the opposition, especially when their sacred narrative, their prophecy, starts to fail to provide an accurate and useful picture of the world. Because that's when they get desperate.

And in the end, they will damage their own interest, because they will use their power to censor the opposition in order to cover up their follies and their mistakes.

My own feeling is that censorship of any kind should be illegal except in the case of world war.

And I'm not sure that censorship is a good idea in a world war either.

Why, Dems, Why?

So, the Democrats have decided to put off their gigantic Big Government plan, Build Back Better, until next year. Meanwhile they are going to push their nationwide vote-by-mail election reform bill. Because Democracy.

And we have Our Nance's January 6 committee that is making gigantic demands of cellphone records on Trump aides and staffers, because armed insurrection. Now the aides and staffers are suing.

I must say that all this rush and bustle, to take the fight to the enemy, is a bit puzzling to me.

I refer to the late great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who opined that you don't want to pass a big bill unless it has 70-30 support in the Senate. But you know, I can't find a reference to this in Google Search. Wait, here is a CNN transcript, with David Frum saying:

When President Clinton tried health care reform, Daniel Patrick Moynihan advised him, anything big passes the Senate 70-30, or it doesn't pass at all. The president is turning this into a political war. The Republicans are to blame, too. This is a problem America needs help with. But the parties have to deal in good faith. I am not sure the president is doing that.

Hmmm. Moynihan's point is that you don't want legislation rammed down the throat of the opposition. You want all reasonable people to agree that this is a Good Thing and so have it become part of the All American consensus.

This accords with the basic point in Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. Only they go a bit further. They say that the only just voting system is unanimous consent, because it forces the supporters of a piece of legislation to compensate the opposition for the costs that the legislation imposes upon them.

So, you see, for me, there is a basic practical reason for not ramming things down the throat of the opposition. It is that politics is civil war by other means. In other words, partisans can wrangle and speechify and manipulate in Congress without resorting to "speak, hands for me" as Casca says moments before the assassins plunge the daggers into Julius Caesar.

The point is: if you can't get a supermajority for your proposed legislation then all you are doing is stirring up conflict.

Now, I realize that our liberal friends don't see it that way. They see politics as a fight for justice, and their ideas are the just ideas, and the opposition is nothing but a bunch of racist-sexist-homophobic bigots and haters.

Yes, yes. And do you know, dear liberals, that every war is a just war -- to its warriors. And every religion is a true religion -- to its believers. And every cause is a just cause -- to its activists.

But whatabout the other guys? The chaps on the receiving end of the just war? The chaps on the receiving end of the true religion? The chaps on the receiving end of the just activists? Whatabout them?

Now, it is my belief, after Nazi Carl Schmitt, that politics is the friend enemy distinction. Or, as Curtis Yarvin writes, "there is no politics without an enemy."

You know, dear liberal friends, I don't think that "enemies" is a good idea. Because, as Carl Schmitt writes, when you are talking about enemies you are talking about the possibility of conflict -- and actual killing. Are we really talking about "conflict" with our fellow Americans? Even getting to killing?

Hello liberals?

Is that what you stand for, dear liberal friends, with your faith in politics and justice?

You see, I don't think of my liberal friends, or even BLM/AntiFa activists as "enemies." I think of them as fools and knaves, and I believe they Literally Know Nothing, and that they are unknowingly Making Things Worse.

But actually, I think we are experiencing another proof of God's existence, right now.

Because the Democrats are falling into a hole not because of their stupid Build Back Better or their nationalizing of vote-by-mail, but because of the sudden surge in inflation.

Golly, Democrats, I thought we had that inflation thing beat, what with MMT and all! You don't think that all the racist-sexist-homophobe conservative economists were right after all, that if you print money you get inflation?

Golly Gee Willikins! Ya think?

I mean, to me, the number one thing is Don't Do Stupid Stuff. If you are heaven's anointed, on a holy quest to bend the arc of history towards justice, then surely Job One is: Don't Do Stupid Stuff, like crank inflation up into the stratosphere.

My History of the Last Half Century is:

First, the ordinary American people reacted against LBJ's Great Society and elected Richard Nixon. But the Dems taught him a lesson. Hoo Boy!

Then the ordinary American People reacted against Jimmy Carter's "stagflation" and elected Ronald Reagan president. The Dems tried to teach him a lesson with Iran Contra but didn't quite succeed.

Then the ordinary American People reacted against Barack Obama's big government lurch and elected a GOP Congress and then elected Donald Trump. The Dems taught him a lesson and managed to defeat him in 2020. And impeached him twice in the House and went after his supporters with the January 6 committee.

I wonder what happens next?

Shocked, Shocked by Inflation Explosion

You gotta love our lefty friends, blaming Big Oil and Big Meat for the current inflation explosion.

It would be funny if it weren't so predictable. We get big time inflation in the wake of the Federal Reserve Board printing trillions in the wake of the COVID crisis. And Democrats blame big business.

One of the biggest voices going after Big Meat is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Hey Liz, you were there in 1979 at the height of the previous inflation. You were 30 years old. Do you really mean to tell me that you can pretend that it is all about greedy big business when you actually lived through the 1970s as an adult?

You don't seriously think that solving inflation is a question of complaining to the manager, Sen. Karen?

I must say that, as a man who lived through the 1970s as an adult, I shake my head at the present inflation explosion.

I mean, where are the "experts™ agree" being rammed down our throat by social media? Where are the social media censors on the "disinformation" of the blame-business liars? Where are the wise heads in prominent media telling the politicians that they need to ease up on the loot and plunder for a while until the economy recovers after the COVID meltdown?

Where are the "schientists™ shay" from our noble media? The economists? I mean, this is not rocket science, although it wouldn't hurt to listen to Elon Musk, now would it, Sen. Karen? You print money; you get inflation. Full stop, end of story.

OK. But I get it. There is no politics without an enemy. And when you defeat the enemy you kill his men and you rape his women and you loot and plunder his lands to the bare walls and give the loot to your supporters. Or you pass a Build Back Better Act which puts lipstick on the pig of old-fashioned loot and plunder.

But here's the point. We know better than that. We have knowledge about how the economy works. We know that loot and plunder ravages the economy. We know that FDR's New Deal and its handouts was an economic disaster that extended the Great Depression until World War II made the New Deal lefties use Big Business to supply the tanks and trucks and airplanes for their Crusade to save the world from Nazis and Japs. We know that LBJ's Great Society was a neutron bomb that has irradiated the lower orders in America, in particular blacks.

We know that it was the "amiable dunce" Ronald Reagan that had the courage to back the Federal Reserve to kill inflation and send interest rates up to 18 percent in 1981. Yep, sometimes it takes an "amiable dunce" to do the right thing when the wise heads duck their heads because they don't have the backbone to do the right thing according to the science™.

Well, my fearless forecast is that the Dems are going to be blown out of the water in the next two elections. And it serves them right.

Because you really don't want to eject all non-lefties from the education system. You really don't want to make establishment media a conservative-free zone. You really don't want to stage a cancel culture to shame people that don't adhere to ruling-class political and cultural norms. You really don't want to increase and extend the welfare state. You really don't want to come up with a joke of a theory like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that tells the spenders to go for broke.

Etcetera.

It's a funny thing, but in my version of history, the 1968 Nixon election was the first rejection of lefty big government. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it.

Then Reagan, the "amiable dunce" was elected in 1980. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it.

Then Bush Two was elected in 2000. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it. Bush must have stole it.

Then Trump was elected in 2016. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it. Trump must have colluded with the Russians.

Do you see a common theme running through all this? 

Hmm. I wonder what it is.

Well, I expect that the Democrats will learn their lesson in about ten years, and purge the crazies and tell us that they are New Democrats. And so we will get a moderate like Bill Clinton.

And then a new generation will arise that knew not the stupidities of the 2020s, like we now have a generation like AOC that knows not the stupidities of the Sixties and Seventies.

And "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." Shakespeare, dontcha know.

Religious, Legal: How Different from the Political?

Ever since reading Nazi Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political, that reduces to Curtis Yarvin's maxim that "there is no politics without an enemy," I have been thinking about the other social distinctions. But first, Schmitt on politics:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

But whatabout the others? Schmitt mentions various others, "moral, aesthetic, and economic." The distinction in the moral is between "good and evil" and in the aesthetic between "beautiful and ugly," and in the economic between "useful and harmful, or, for example, profitable and unprofitable." I think we need a table.

Social Category	Positive	Negative
Political	Friend	Enemy
Moral	Good	Evil
[Religious]	[God]	[Satan]
[Law]	Legal	Illegal
Aesthetic	Beautiful	Ugly
Economic	Useful	Harmful
Economic	Profitable	Unprofitable
Economic	[Collaborator]	Competitor

Note that I have inserted some ideas of my own -- with square brackets -- in respect of the religious. And in respect of an economic collaborator. Schmitt makes it clear that "enemy" in the political sense is a public, or collective, enemy.

In Section VIII of The Concept of the Political Schmitt criticizes "liberal thought" for trying to imagine that the political is not really about friend vs. enemy. "The enemy is no longer called the enemy but in return he is set up as a threat to peace[.]" In other words, "liberal thought" confuses the issue of the political and the enemy. Schmitt thinks that

Liberalism does not radically deny the state, but on the other hand it has not found a positive theory of state or its own state reform, but only sought to sequester the political on the basis of ethics, and to subject the political to the economic; it has created a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e., a system of checks and balances of the state that cannot be called a state theory or a constructive political principle.

 So what does all this mean when it's at home?

I think it means that the political is the biggie. If there is a political issue then nothing else matters. There is an enemy, and everything is secondary to the question of the enemy.

But then we get to the problem that, on the one hand the "liberal thought" of the Enlightenment wanted to bury the political in its doctrine that there really is no issue that makes us think of the "other" as the enemy. And there is the left that reduces all questions to the political, and thus to the friend / enemy distinction, and thus reduces everything to a fight with the enemy.

And there is the critique of Buckley conservatism, that it amounted to a rhetorical standing aside history shouting Stop, when it should have considered the Left as an actual enemy, against whom conflict was possible, as with the Soviet Union.

So, I would say that all the lines in the table above, other than the political, are questions of social distinctions for man-the-social-animal once the question of the enemy has been dealt with, and the enemy has been defeated; they are all disagreements about values, and good-vs-bad behavior.

But is the left really all about the political and the definition of the "other" as the enemy? It is interesting that the left always plays at conflict, as with its "activism" as a stand-in for revolution. As I say, the left's activism is really play-acting at revolution, as the medieval romances were play-acting at rough-tough feudal lords when the lords had become soft courtiers and needed the nostalgic recollection of the bad old days when men were men, and would just as soon cut off a chap's head before breakfast as eat a haunch of venison.

And when the left is in power, whether in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, or today when the woke left is in power in the US, it treats the populace not quite as enemies, but definitely as subhumans -- slaves really -- who need regular applications of the cowhide whip.

I wonder: should we call the left's bluff, and suggest that if they are really serious about revolution and the elimination of white supremacists and armed insurrectionists they should put their money where their mouth is.

Now, I like to say that the Age of the Political is over, in that I don't believe that the "other" is ever really an enemy since life on this Earth is no longer about securing food-growing land against other claimants for said food-growing land.

But I understand that there are bound to be reactionaries that still hanker for the good old days of enemies and revenge, and want to drive their enemies before them and hear the lamentation of their women.

It still comes down to the question, of how to deal with lefties that think of us as the enemy while we think of them as spoiled brats.

The Unbearable Whiteness of "The Nutcracker"

I was to a live performance of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker on Sunday and, of course, the lead child actors were black. And there were a couple of blacks in the corps de ballet.

But, sensitized as I am to all matters racial and cultural, I gotta say: The Nutcracker is as white as white can be. The first act takes place at a Christmas party in a very haute bourgeois household. And the girls get nice dollies as presents and the boys get to act like boys, playing at soldiers, and ambushing the girls as they play with their dollies.

Then, in the second act, we get a prime example of Edward Said's Orientalism, or non-European as exotic. Strictly speaking, we are talking about various sweets in the Land of the Sweets. So there is Spanish Chocolate, Arabian Coffee, Chinese Tea, Russian Candy Cane. Then Mother Ginger and Marzipan.

Yes, but whatabout South Asian Spice, and African fruits? How come they don't get a dance? Raciss!

The other takeaway for me, now I am so sensitized to everything, is that ballet, at its high noon with the classic Tchaikovsky ballets, is nothing but a display of the female form. The pas de deux seems to be designed to show off the prima ballerina's legs. The corps de ballet is a throng of pubescent girls fluttering around. The tutu is, again, displaying the legs of the female dancer.

And so on.

So I went and looked up ballet at La Wik. It started in the courts of the Italian Renaissance, featuring noble amateur dancers, and then spread to France with Catherine de Medici. It reached its peak under Louis XIV with a formal court ballet with a court ballet master and the five positions. Then it declined after 1830 in France until revived by the Russians. I seem to remember reading that in Paris, the ballet dancers of the Paris Opera were "available" to the various rich patrons.

I was reading about how San Francisco's Great Dickens Christmas Fair has descended into racial madness. It seems that some nice black ladies got involved and then brought their race politics with them. They want racial quotas for everything except that BIPOC characters can only be represented by BIPOC people.

I dare say that the same thing will soon apply to ballet and the Xmas Nutcrackers that are featured every Christmas in all our major cities.

It's amusing, really. Because ballet is such a whitey-white thing (as is Dickens). Everyone wants in on the white things, and then they want to bring their anti-white racism with them.

If I may be permitted to extend the dance metaphor just one step more...

Don't you realize you wokies and BIPOCs and all the ships at sea? You are not dancing to your own authentic dance tradition. You are dancing like marionettes, and ruling-class educated white liberals are pulling the strings.

And as I say with my Little Darlings notion, One Fine Day you will wake up and find the bed empty, because your ruling class Sugar Daddy has found a new Little Darling to pamper and exploit.

After Democracy

Back in the day, it seems to me, government was a simply hierarchical thing. The warriors ruled; their servitors served them, and the peasants serve the servitors.

Let's say that the rising bourgeoisie wanted something more than that. They wanted government under law, an expansion of the political class beyond the landholders of the feudal regime.

But they set a movement in motion that ended up with universal democracy, where governments are elected through the vote of all adult men and women.

And starting probably with Rousseau and Babeuf, and not later than Marx, we got the over / under political formula that rules us today, the coalition between the educated class and the underclass against the middle class.

The formula is the formula of any ruling class: we are protecting you helpless ones against the enemy. The enemy started out as the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, became a generalized notion that the country-club set didn't care about the man on the street, and finally became the notion of oppressed peoples under the thumb of white oppressors.

Really, it is an immensely cunning idea, that the rulers -- in this case the educated professional class -- are fighting for the folks at the bottom of the class or race or gender hierarchy. If only the bloody middle class or capitalists or patriarchs or white supremacists weren't arrogantly oppressing the poor helpless lower ones!

Of course, it has been a lie from the very beginning. The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the fathers, the white middle class don't have any ideology of supremacy. They are just living their lives, operating their businesses, presiding over their families according to the rules, without any idea of ruling or oppressing anyone. If their business succeeds, they hire more people and promote the ones that show promise. If the business does not succeed then their try to cut costs, and may lay off workers, and also try to cut labor costs.

But when anything goes wrong with the economy, the educated class does not hesitate to blame the businessman. Of course it does. The problem could not be the educated class, and it could not be the workers.

I'd say that this formula worked very well in the day when the working class was a majority of the population, and the middle class a definite minority. But now the middle class is probably a majority of the population.

So the question arises, can the old over / under political formula of the educated class continue?

Obviously, it can, especially if you convince people in the middle class that they are really helpless victims, and create new categories of victims to swell the ranks of the underclass.

But if you screw up the economy and Make Things Worse for the underclass and the fake victims then you may find that your over / under political formula no longer works.

Or, a cabal may arise within the ruling class to appeal directly to the middle class and get them to fight back against the rule of the educated class.

Obviously, according to the ZMan, the old conservative movement was not that cabal. It was always, as William F. Buckley, standing astride history, shouting Stop, but not really doing anything about it.

But what would such a new regime look like?

To start with, if it is a politics then it must have an enemy. That enemy would be the educated class of Barnacles and Stiltstockings: the Barnacles being the hangers-on to the megastate, and the Stiltstocking being the whole activism grift. Because? Because the ruling class had ruined the lower classes by its New Slavery of entitlement programs. Because it had declared war on ordinary people that just wanted to live ordinary lives of work and family. And because it had bankrupted the nation with its eternal fake existential crises from climate change to systemic racism.

Would it be an alliance between the middle class and the lower class against the educated class? Is such a thing possible? I don't know.

Here's the problem. I don't think that the middle class is interested in power. The whole point of the middle class is that it just gets on with life. It really doesn't believe in enemies, unless you stick it in the ribs with, e.g., recession and or inflation, like right now.

Take the Reagan years. Reagan got elected in the aftermath of the Democrats' failed 1970s "stagflation." He served a couple of terms, his vice president served a term, the Democrats said: "we are all moderates," and it was over.

Even so, the Reagan revolution was merely about fixing the most egregious mistakes of the previous decade. It never got to eat real meat, as in reform of the welfare state.

And Donald Trump said, right up front, that he wasn't going to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Guess what. One Fine Day, some president is going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Could the over / under political era be replaced by a middle / out regime, that rules under a political formula that says that the middle class is the best class, the worthiest class, the sensible class, the most American class, and the educated are conceited asses and the lower class needs to get a clue?

I don't know.

The Fire Next Time

With today's inflation numbers coming in with Drudge's flashing blue light -- remember that? -- I find myself saddened, having been a young man in the inflationary Seventies.

Aren't we humans supposed to learn from our mistakes?

And isn't the point of wise old men in human culture -- Biden, Pelosi, Schumer -- that they carry the memory of former times and stop the young firebrands from making the same deadly mistakes that they made in their youth?

But my reading of US politics since the dawn of the 1980s and its rling-class notion of Ronald Reagan as an "amiable dunce" is that our Democratic friends have exerted every effort NOT to learn the lessons of the Seventies and Arthur Laffer's  supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve that suggests that, at some point, when you increase tax rates you get less revenue. See "laffer curve debunked."

Well, they are going to learn their lesson this time, "good and hard." But so are the rest of us, and so are the ordinary Americans that don't know nothing about economics but vote their perceived interest, and the lower-class Americans who are the ones that will really be hammered by the economic chaos of the next few years.

And some eevil speculators, like the chappie that did The Big Short during the 2006-08 bear market, are going to make out like bandits.

Think of that liberals. Every time you do something really stupid, some eevil Wall Street guy cleans up. Mind you, sometimes the eevil speculator is George Soros and uses his ill-gotten gains to finance all your sacred activism! Yay!

But what is the lesson that the Next Regime needs to learn from the current debacle? I'd say there are two lessons.

First, the over / under politics of the last 170 years since it was codified by Marx is social poison. It is a false narrative to tell the lower classes that, by looting the middle class and the rich and getting entitlements in return, they will win the "struggle for justice." No they won't; they will just become the serfs and creatures of the new ruling class and will not be learning the skills to wive and thrive in the market economy.

Second, the administrative state of the last 120 years since it was imagined by the Fabians and the Progressives is a conceit of the educated class. Human society and the market economy are too complicated to be directed by an administrative elite of the educated and evolved.

Back in the day, when our Founding Fathers were codifying the structure of the United States they were conscious that they were doing something new and risky. How could they construct a government without a hereditary monarch and make it work? They studied all the authorities, ancient and modern, to answer the question. I'd say that the result of their studies was practically a miracle and a proof of God's existence.

But what should the Founders of the Next America know? I say that the answer is contained in the Greater Separation of Powers proposed by Michael Novak in his Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and in the fundamental limitations of political power laid out in my Four Laws.

The notion of the Greater Separation of Powers is that the three sectors of modern society -- political, economic, and moral/cultural -- should be separate. When politics meddles in the economy, and when businessmen meddle in government, the result is not good. When politics and religion get together the result is not good, especially for people believing in the wrong religion. Whenever all of the three sectors combine the result is really bad. And we have a name for a society in which all three are combined: Totalitarian.

My Four Laws are, of course, not mine. They are the ideas of far better men than I.

Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices (Mises). 

The administrative state cannot work because the Man in Washington does not have the bandwidth to run the economy (Hayek). 

Regulation does not work because “regulatory capture” (Stigler). 

Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them (Chantrill).

Well, maybe that fourth law really has been invented by me. Because when I Google Search it I just get entries on welfare reform until I put the law in quotes. And then all the responses are directly connected to me.

But do you see that the Four Laws are a direct attack on the politics and government of the last century or so -- and its conceits?

Socialism: how did that work out, Vlad and Joe and ZeDong and Fidel?

Administrative state: how is that working out, St. Anthony Fauci?

Regulation: Remember when we deregulated railways and airlines? Oh the huffing and puffing!

Gubmint programs: Yeah, you try reforming gubmint pensions and gubmint health care.

My hope and faith is that the architects of the next regime will be maybe half as wise as the American Founders of two centuries ago.

But don't get your hopes up. Not yet.