"The Protestant Roots of Wokeness", Indonesia "Sanctions-Proofing" Its Own Economy, Rwanda the "Autocracy", "MAGA Communism", The Oral History of PREDATOR (1987)
Small world indeed. I interviewed him a few months back. I had included as a thumbnail on the video a picture of him and his parents and he wanted to change it. Didn't want to promote it until it was changed. So cagey a bit yea.
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As I'm sure you know, the name is directly lifted from the Lord of the Rings. The Palantir was one of the "seeing stones" that Sauron used to corrupt Saruman, and my AI buddy tells me, "Palantir has been involved in various projects, including working with the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although its engineers and products don’t engage in spying directly, they function like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information from various sources"
Additionally, Palantir was founded with some initial funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is a not-for-profit organization that invests in cutting-edge technologies to support the U.S. intelligence community.
Sometimes these guys don't even try to hide what they are, they will shove it straight in your face, I think it's vanity that makes them do it.
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, is quite open in his support of the USA and its military endeavors. And he has said that if anyone working at Palantir does not feel the same, they are working for the wrong company.
It's not even the support for the USA military and civilian espionage that really gets me. It's their self-congratulatory nature that really fries my potatoes. These guys could have been "Technosys LLC" or "Infoboing Inc." just another bunch of low-key nerds working for the man. But no, they have to be "Palantir" because actually they are all really Denethor, Steward of Gondor, Guardian of the free folk of the west, monitoring the distant lands from the White City of Minas Tirith.
I just finished reading "The Sibling Society," a book from the 90s, and found some interesting points relevant to Gen Z. It suggests that passive media consumption doesn't stimulate the brain effectively. Instead, brain development benefits from physical activity and long conversations with others. Without these interactions, language skills can suffer. Additionally, the author suggests that the neocortex is increasingly isolated from nature and the physical world, interacting primarily with itself.
"I think that there is a lot of merit in the idea that Jewish liberalism is a “triumph of assimilation”, but it overlooks one key fact: the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam (Heal the World). Jewish friends tell me that this is not a central nor mandatory element of Judaism, but they do concede that it is a powerful one."
You should get some better Jewish friends. If you spent the next six months dedicating yourself to studying talmud, commentaries and classic Jewish legal codes you'll probably find a lot of stuff you think is antiquated, or offensive, or moronic, but the likelihood is you won't come across Tikkun Olam even once. If you study kabbala (don't recommend) you will come across it, but it means basically that doing ritual commandments fixes breaks in the metaphysical world because of abra cadabra. The concept of Tikkun Olam as it understood today is, in fact, a perfect example of assimilation because it shows you can just put a basically random Hebrew term on gentile ideas and Jews will eat it up faster than keneidlach.
A far more important factor imo is Jewish distaste for Christianity, which usually takes about two generations to wash out even for those who assimilate. This explains a strong trend across countries whereby Jews identify Left in proportion to the extent that the Left-Right divide is coded around anti/pro Christianity. It probably played a role in the development of the American puritan/quaker tradition emancipating itself from Christianity. Also explains why Italian Jews liked fascism, why orthodox Jews like Trump so much and a lot of otherwise puzzling stuff.
Peng: "the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam (Heal the World)"
But not so "random" as Progressives (Jews and non-Jews, alike) would have us believe. The words תיקון עולם (Tikkun Olam) are the first part of a larger phrase -- לתקן עולם במלכות שדי (to repair the world in the Kingdom of God), which appears in the closing prayer of all three daily prayer-services (עלינו לשבח [upon us to praise {God}]) -- but they find it inconvenient to include the second part, and limit it to just the first.
Using food as an analogy, Judaism has three "categories": meat, dairy, and pareve (neutral). This "new" [mis]understanding of Tikkun Olam throws-out the first two, and goes "whole-hog" for vegan.
Since you brought it up and I am a nerd, you should know that the correct reading is לתכן, as it still appears in Yemenite siddurim. The root ת-כ-ן means roughly 'to establish' or 'to set right'. It is found about a dozen times in biblical Hebrew, exclusively in high poetry, and not at all in Rabbinic Hebrew. Thus, it was replaced with the common Rabbinic Hebrew verb לתקן, which almost, but doesn't quite, fit the context. This was facilitated by the fact that in most dialects of exilic Hebrew (and of course modern Israeli 'Hebrew'), the letter ק is pronounced as if it were an orthographic variant of the fricative כ.
WRT "The Protestant Roots of Wokeness" I heartily recommend Eric Voegelin's "New Science of Politics". His description of Hooker's encounters with the English Puritans evokes a chilling familiarity. Also, I would argue that the American Civil War can be viewed from this perspective -a continuation of the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. T. E. Hulme, in his seminal essay on "Romanticism and Classicism" draws a parallel line, seeing in Romanticism a "spilt religion" on a direct line from Calvinism: "From justification-by-faith to justification-by-self-regard.".
Surely the ethno-sectarian and cultural roots of American progressivism are significant for antiquarian purposes only? These roots tell us nothing about the function the progressives played and still attempt to play.
The progressive movement was an oligarch backed enterprise that aimed to block populists like William Jennings Bryan or, even worse, European-grade radicals. Progressives by definition work for the system, not against it. Unlike the Left they do not wish to empower the working class. Unlike the Right they do not seek to retain traditions for their own sake.
The original progressives recruited heavily from the ranks of Yankees whose parents and grandparents had won the Civil War and they used rhetoric and ideas drawn from American Protestantism. Later on assimilated Jews joined the movement and wrote themselves into the narrative with a sentimentalized and self-serving take on Jewish tradition that was (and still is) contested by traditional, observant, Jews.
Today's progressives do not face a threat like the populism of Bryan or radicals like the Wobblies. They rule a population that has been politically demobilised for generations and which lacks political agency at any level. The immediate threat they face is the routine corruption and incompetence of the leadership class and the subsequent loss of legitimacy. Progressive politics developed in the era of mass politics and are now archaic. Progressives cannot offer charismatic leadership nor can they offer the wider society meaning or purpose of any kind. At best progressives can play games by importing clients en masse to plague the masses or they can rely upon BioLeninist constituencies like the LGBQTI.
"A notable example was President Joko Widodo’s call in March 2023 for his country to abandon the use of Western payment networks like MasterCard and Visa, asking the public to use the Domestic Government Credit Card payment system implemented 12 months prior."
A few years ago I heard of a similar Brazilian project, but haven't heard anything about it ever since.
Great combo as always…but, good sir, you give American policymakers too much credit in thinking they weighed the costs and benefits of aggressive sanctions and forfeiture on Russia. There is a total failure to apprehend the degree to which large nation states can undermine dollar supremacy with no greater act than trading in some other currency (eg, Indonesia). That requires no rise of the BRICS or any other group.
It is your Turbo America manifest…Idiocracy plus Team America: World Police (“Sanctions are strong. We are strong. America is stronger with more sanctions! F yeah!”). The recent book “2034” by Messrs. Akerman and Stavridis elucidates these points through fiction.
Also, Predator is possibly the best action movie of the 1980s. Associates today miss the point when I tell them that we ain’t got time to bleed.
Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense, although this is the first I've heard of it. So I'm not familiar with all their ideas. I think calling it communism (from what I'm reading here) makes no sense and sounds like a mis-direction by critics. It seems to me they are attempting to resurrect the aristocratic concept of honor. Honor for women is chastity. For men there's school-yard honor and more complicated levels like courtesy being not a sign of weakness but strength. They are trying to come to terms with a genuine problem in real life that is affecting the morale of decent, non-elite people. At least that's what I'm gleaning from this excerpt.
MAGA Communism is actually a step in the right direction; Socially conservative, economically ‘left’ or populist. The Trump base is working and lower-middle class. Warmed-over Reaganism and Libertarian tropes won’t appeal to them considering their rapid social and economic deterioration the past 50 years.
The Indonesia piece illustrates how American hegemony might end : by suicide. « Do nothing » with the USD, and it remains #1, weaponize it is sawing the branch you’re sitting on. The MAGA communist nonsense shows how bereft of original ideas we are : smells like an interregnum.
Small world indeed. I interviewed him a few months back. I had included as a thumbnail on the video a picture of him and his parents and he wanted to change it. Didn't want to promote it until it was changed. So cagey a bit yea.
https://youtu.be/p7De2Un5BLk?si=g3Oo_PDrkdc9Gn8d
Hit the like button at the top or bottom of this page to like this entry. Use the share and/or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
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not going to be able to get the image of the US gov as the Eye of Sauron out of my mind
Do you know of Peter Thiel's company "Palantir"?
As I'm sure you know, the name is directly lifted from the Lord of the Rings. The Palantir was one of the "seeing stones" that Sauron used to corrupt Saruman, and my AI buddy tells me, "Palantir has been involved in various projects, including working with the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although its engineers and products don’t engage in spying directly, they function like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information from various sources"
Additionally, Palantir was founded with some initial funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is a not-for-profit organization that invests in cutting-edge technologies to support the U.S. intelligence community.
Sometimes these guys don't even try to hide what they are, they will shove it straight in your face, I think it's vanity that makes them do it.
Don’t get me started with Tolkien parallels/analogies - we’ll be here all day ;)
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, is quite open in his support of the USA and its military endeavors. And he has said that if anyone working at Palantir does not feel the same, they are working for the wrong company.
It's not even the support for the USA military and civilian espionage that really gets me. It's their self-congratulatory nature that really fries my potatoes. These guys could have been "Technosys LLC" or "Infoboing Inc." just another bunch of low-key nerds working for the man. But no, they have to be "Palantir" because actually they are all really Denethor, Steward of Gondor, Guardian of the free folk of the west, monitoring the distant lands from the White City of Minas Tirith.
I just finished reading "The Sibling Society," a book from the 90s, and found some interesting points relevant to Gen Z. It suggests that passive media consumption doesn't stimulate the brain effectively. Instead, brain development benefits from physical activity and long conversations with others. Without these interactions, language skills can suffer. Additionally, the author suggests that the neocortex is increasingly isolated from nature and the physical world, interacting primarily with itself.
"I think that there is a lot of merit in the idea that Jewish liberalism is a “triumph of assimilation”, but it overlooks one key fact: the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam (Heal the World). Jewish friends tell me that this is not a central nor mandatory element of Judaism, but they do concede that it is a powerful one."
You should get some better Jewish friends. If you spent the next six months dedicating yourself to studying talmud, commentaries and classic Jewish legal codes you'll probably find a lot of stuff you think is antiquated, or offensive, or moronic, but the likelihood is you won't come across Tikkun Olam even once. If you study kabbala (don't recommend) you will come across it, but it means basically that doing ritual commandments fixes breaks in the metaphysical world because of abra cadabra. The concept of Tikkun Olam as it understood today is, in fact, a perfect example of assimilation because it shows you can just put a basically random Hebrew term on gentile ideas and Jews will eat it up faster than keneidlach.
A far more important factor imo is Jewish distaste for Christianity, which usually takes about two generations to wash out even for those who assimilate. This explains a strong trend across countries whereby Jews identify Left in proportion to the extent that the Left-Right divide is coded around anti/pro Christianity. It probably played a role in the development of the American puritan/quaker tradition emancipating itself from Christianity. Also explains why Italian Jews liked fascism, why orthodox Jews like Trump so much and a lot of otherwise puzzling stuff.
Where do you see Jews heading politically now that we appear to be entering the post-liberal era?
I don't accept the premise.
Enlightening.
wanted to ask the OP if the Jewish friends in question had a solid rooting in traditional Jewish education, but you beat me to it
משכיל בינה: "a basically random Hebrew term"
Peng: "the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam (Heal the World)"
But not so "random" as Progressives (Jews and non-Jews, alike) would have us believe. The words תיקון עולם (Tikkun Olam) are the first part of a larger phrase -- לתקן עולם במלכות שדי (to repair the world in the Kingdom of God), which appears in the closing prayer of all three daily prayer-services (עלינו לשבח [upon us to praise {God}]) -- but they find it inconvenient to include the second part, and limit it to just the first.
Using food as an analogy, Judaism has three "categories": meat, dairy, and pareve (neutral). This "new" [mis]understanding of Tikkun Olam throws-out the first two, and goes "whole-hog" for vegan.
Since you brought it up and I am a nerd, you should know that the correct reading is לתכן, as it still appears in Yemenite siddurim. The root ת-כ-ן means roughly 'to establish' or 'to set right'. It is found about a dozen times in biblical Hebrew, exclusively in high poetry, and not at all in Rabbinic Hebrew. Thus, it was replaced with the common Rabbinic Hebrew verb לתקן, which almost, but doesn't quite, fit the context. This was facilitated by the fact that in most dialects of exilic Hebrew (and of course modern Israeli 'Hebrew'), the letter ק is pronounced as if it were an orthographic variant of the fricative כ.
Beat me to it. Judaism is singularly unconcerned with the dignity of man as such. It's about Jews!
Thanks Niccolo...he's a bit tough on the athleticism of <male> ballerinas...
lol, they are called danseurs, not ballerinas, but otherwise, your comment is spot on!
WRT "The Protestant Roots of Wokeness" I heartily recommend Eric Voegelin's "New Science of Politics". His description of Hooker's encounters with the English Puritans evokes a chilling familiarity. Also, I would argue that the American Civil War can be viewed from this perspective -a continuation of the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. T. E. Hulme, in his seminal essay on "Romanticism and Classicism" draws a parallel line, seeing in Romanticism a "spilt religion" on a direct line from Calvinism: "From justification-by-faith to justification-by-self-regard.".
Surely the ethno-sectarian and cultural roots of American progressivism are significant for antiquarian purposes only? These roots tell us nothing about the function the progressives played and still attempt to play.
The progressive movement was an oligarch backed enterprise that aimed to block populists like William Jennings Bryan or, even worse, European-grade radicals. Progressives by definition work for the system, not against it. Unlike the Left they do not wish to empower the working class. Unlike the Right they do not seek to retain traditions for their own sake.
The original progressives recruited heavily from the ranks of Yankees whose parents and grandparents had won the Civil War and they used rhetoric and ideas drawn from American Protestantism. Later on assimilated Jews joined the movement and wrote themselves into the narrative with a sentimentalized and self-serving take on Jewish tradition that was (and still is) contested by traditional, observant, Jews.
Today's progressives do not face a threat like the populism of Bryan or radicals like the Wobblies. They rule a population that has been politically demobilised for generations and which lacks political agency at any level. The immediate threat they face is the routine corruption and incompetence of the leadership class and the subsequent loss of legitimacy. Progressive politics developed in the era of mass politics and are now archaic. Progressives cannot offer charismatic leadership nor can they offer the wider society meaning or purpose of any kind. At best progressives can play games by importing clients en masse to plague the masses or they can rely upon BioLeninist constituencies like the LGBQTI.
"A notable example was President Joko Widodo’s call in March 2023 for his country to abandon the use of Western payment networks like MasterCard and Visa, asking the public to use the Domestic Government Credit Card payment system implemented 12 months prior."
A few years ago I heard of a similar Brazilian project, but haven't heard anything about it ever since.
"And the fact that critical journalists have disappeared – like John Williams Ntwali."
Liberals lke to throw around names in a way where I'm supposed to know who the fuck these people are.
"The long arm of the Rwandan regime stretches as far as germany"
My sides.
Great combo as always…but, good sir, you give American policymakers too much credit in thinking they weighed the costs and benefits of aggressive sanctions and forfeiture on Russia. There is a total failure to apprehend the degree to which large nation states can undermine dollar supremacy with no greater act than trading in some other currency (eg, Indonesia). That requires no rise of the BRICS or any other group.
It is your Turbo America manifest…Idiocracy plus Team America: World Police (“Sanctions are strong. We are strong. America is stronger with more sanctions! F yeah!”). The recent book “2034” by Messrs. Akerman and Stavridis elucidates these points through fiction.
Also, Predator is possibly the best action movie of the 1980s. Associates today miss the point when I tell them that we ain’t got time to bleed.
Second on "Predator". Eminently quotable. I know, because I almost memorized the dialog.
Hmmm? I think Sailer has been NOTICING for a very long time, and we “too few” that have been “peeking” over his shoulder are all the better for it.
I'm surprised you haven't noticed that Sailor's civic nationalism doesn't work – in real life.
Why is Rwanda willing to accept immigrants?
MAGA communism is no more ridiculous than Cultural Marxism.
Or Online Vitalism.
A generation immersed in the unreality of social media and digital entertainment can hardly be judged by traditional standards.
Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense, although this is the first I've heard of it. So I'm not familiar with all their ideas. I think calling it communism (from what I'm reading here) makes no sense and sounds like a mis-direction by critics. It seems to me they are attempting to resurrect the aristocratic concept of honor. Honor for women is chastity. For men there's school-yard honor and more complicated levels like courtesy being not a sign of weakness but strength. They are trying to come to terms with a genuine problem in real life that is affecting the morale of decent, non-elite people. At least that's what I'm gleaning from this excerpt.
MAGA Communism is actually a step in the right direction; Socially conservative, economically ‘left’ or populist. The Trump base is working and lower-middle class. Warmed-over Reaganism and Libertarian tropes won’t appeal to them considering their rapid social and economic deterioration the past 50 years.
No mention of the Second Great Awakening. Perplexing.
The Indonesia piece illustrates how American hegemony might end : by suicide. « Do nothing » with the USD, and it remains #1, weaponize it is sawing the branch you’re sitting on. The MAGA communist nonsense shows how bereft of original ideas we are : smells like an interregnum.