Germany Destroys Itself, Dutch Farmers vs. Global Elites, US Military Readies Next Purge, Atlantic Monthly Hates The Rosary, Woke CEO Gets His Comeuppance
Hit the like button and use the share button to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you (be nice!), and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already done so.
Next entry in the HIV/AIDS series should be up tomorrow or Tuesday.
I have the material in place for the next one, I just need to figure out the structure. Most of it will deal with the initial medical reaction, showing how the two worlds collide. It'll be quote heavy, because first person sources will speak for themselves, and rather loudly.
Happy to hear that you, like many others, have been won over by the subject as we have made our way through it thus far.
Aug 28, 2022·edited Aug 28, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
That Price guy was omnipresent on my Facebook feed as naïve, entitled and lazy people I knew from High School spread his crap all over it a few years back.
Reminds me of Jonathon Bowden's line that left wing politics attracted only three types of people, sociopathic misanthropes, a few dweebs interested in "theory" and the numbers flushed out with airhead women with the "Vicar's Daughter" personality, who just believed if we loved each other more the world's problems would go away. Looks like Price was the former and Ms. Margis the latter.
Aug 28, 2022·edited Aug 28, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
The whole "change military personnel along political lines" thing is very unnerving. It reminds me of the scene in "The Death of Yugoslavia" where Borisav Jovic openly tells the BBC how he and Milosevic transferred all Bosnian Serb soldiers into the Yugoslavian army in Bosnia and all other soldiers elsewhere. Voila...a Bosnian Serb army, right where they wanted it.
Agreed! For those who are unaware, here is a summary from Ovarit:
TIM: Trans-Identified Male or man claiming to be a woman
TIP: Trans-Identified People or trans people
-Internet famous TIM Keffals gets SWATed and accuses a Kiwifarms troll
-Keffals uses social media and sympathetic news sites to whine about being bullied by KF users
-Keffals starts Twitter campaign to have Cloudfare stop working with KiwiFarms
-Twitter campaign gains traction as TIPs join in and talk about online harassment they've received, which they blame on KF
-News reports on the Twitter campaign, siding with the TIPs and condemning KF
-Sustained DDoS attack on KF (which is not unusual), but KF owner Josh is able to keep the site up regardless
-Last night far-right congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene gets SWATed; suspect (suspiciously) teases police with information that he is a KF user
-Sometime between last night and today KF is no longer available. It's not clear yet why, but -KF owner says those like Cloudfare, who help keep the site up day to day, are not responding to him about getting the site back up
“The crazy has really hit the mainstream in recent months and the public backlash is growing in leaps and bounds. TRAs are on the defense and are getting desperate.
Society will tolerate a lot of things, but systemic child abuse (transing kids, medical abuse, drag queen story hour, pediatricians/hospitals exposed, schools queering kids, pedos’ PR efforts, blatantly inappropriate lessons and books, etc etc. ) will bring this whole thing down. And that’s before the great monsoon of lawsuits even hits.”
The error page where KF lands now as is under attaq from the deviants has archive links for whom keffals and other linked people are.
Also KF is not ideological, even Niccolo (and the Salo forum) have a thread, I believe.
It just happens that the deviants and "neurodivergents" produce the cheapest, most voluminous amount of lolcow milk to be exploited, while having the worst opsec in humanity's history and being falsely sheltered by governments and big capital as "protected classes".
These deviants want every shred of real, negative information about them erased, so they can do their thing in peace, without reactionary intervention.
1. The Baltics, Poland etc with their demands that Germany do more economically to harm Russia are delusional - who do they think will pay the dole their countries depend on? UK will be paying into the budget for another few years only, and it is Germany who pays in the overwhelming bulk of the EU budget. Collapsed German economy means no EU budget to pay those still glomming off the rest - Spain, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Portugal. the former Communist states.
2. Rutte, Sarin, Trudeau are the poster boys and girls for Schwab aka cut price Dr Evil and WEF. Ruttes position as the avant garde of WEF Reset will be fought tooth and nail, and it will get dirty. The only way these people in Germany, the Netherlands etc can be deposed is by all other parties, no matter how much they hate each other, forming Popular Fronts to clear the WEF toadies and start again. A worthwhile Irish substacker is Conor Fitzgerald who calls our national Irish WEF/NAT)/DC arselickers The Goodboys, whose wet dream is a pat of the head from a mediocrity like VDL or Lagarde.
3. As a cradle Catholic, and seeing the devotion my late mother and her peers had for Our Lady, the scummy assertion that the Rosary is far right, fascist is disgusting.
In every political conversation, the three niformal ;laws' of Robert Conquest are worth repeating:
1, Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
1. above is subject to The Gell-Mann Amnesia Eddect, per Michael Crichton: 'Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
A useful 4th is that every self described male feminist/ally is a creep. Price/Lauer/Weinstein and co.
Day by day the 2020 US election looks more and more soiled, even if legal on paper. Talk of a Deep State was mocked as lunatic conspiracy-mongering. But now as we see once-respected government organs such as the FBI and even the DoJ become active parts of the DNC's campaign machinery, more and more of us (non-partisan "independents") adopt a firm skepticism toward anything blaring at us from Washington.
It would be interesting to read how you see things from over there. Ciao!
The past 3 years of nonstop obvious lies and corruption -- they don't even bother to hide it anymore: they wave it right in your face like they're proud of it and dare you to try to do anything about it -- and seeing how obviously scripted so much of their agenda has been at an international level, all of that has been a mindfuck like nothing else in my lifetime.
There have always been evil and corrupt leaders, but it seems like they at least used to try to hide it and pretend that everything was on the up and up. Now, it's like they decided they don't have to pretend anymore, like they can't even be bothered to come up with lies that are at least halfway plausible.
I don't know what to make of that, whether the elites have changed their tactics, or whether we just have better access to real-time information that contradicts their narrative now, or what. Something definitely seems different now than in prior eras.
To me what's different is up until the '90s at least there was a strong middle class and things were generally nice-now unless you're in the 1 percent or holding on to legacy property like us and stay home a lot the US has just become nasty. There was a good piece on how mass building design - commercial architecture primarily-reinforces depression and anomie. Just look at the average shopping center, mini-mall etc. I live in an upper middle class suburb and its just mostly ugly. Of course having more info and people like Nic to help with thinking is a big part of it.
Niccolo, the deindustrialisation of Europe is distressing for those who face a much diminished future...but the US is simply preparing for the next stage of global development. Obnoxious as it is, Turbo America is acting in its self-interest. Its elites are ghastly and incompetent, its culture shallow and its self-understanding self-serving, but why should they prioritise the welfare of the Europeans?
The US is wrecking Europe on its way out. EU based multinationals will relocate what they must to the US or Asia. EU oligarchs will send their capital to the US. Russia has no interest in taking over and will never waste its resources subsidising Euro lifestyles the way it did with the Warsaw Pact. The era of cheap energy is over and Europe is ill-placed to compete with the US, Russia or China.
Turbo America has punked Turbo Europa. The world will move on.
Europeans got demoralized with the two world wars but then enjoyed 6 unprecedented decades of peace and prosperity. They thought they were above history so abandoned all traditions, values and principles that helped them achieve that prosperity. Unfortunately, every decadent society find the hard way that it is in fact not above history.
It's harsh to say but Europeans are enjoying the fruits of their actions. But don't worry Europeans. We Americans are not far behind you. We will join you in hell and give you company.
Got it in one. The EU is a failed superpower, an abortive effort at constructing a great power. Moreover, there is no point sentimentalising the EU or taking its pretensions at face value. The grifters and parasites of Brussels are just a polyglot version of the gangsters and freaks of Washington. The failure of the EU to even attempt any organised resistance to the recent tidal wave of illegal immigration exposes the political classes as fundamentally unconcerned with the future existence of the nations they lead, while the COVID lockdowns and the Great Reset/decarbonisation scam have revealed that the social peace of Europe was as fragile as that of the US itself. The limitless indifference of the Europeans to the treatment of the Russians and Russophones in the Donbass and the southern Ukraine since 2014 demonstrates that the EU's pretensions to being a champion of human rights are an utter sham.
The US has some prospects for renewal (thanks to on-shoring and vastly greater reserves of energy). The EU has none. When the US has gone (and it most surely will leave) the Europeans will have to renegotiate their energy deals from positions of considerable weakness. The manner in which the US is making its slow withdrawl is odious, but this is irrelevant in terns of great power politics. In a way the US is exacting as much as it can of the accrued subsidy extended to NATO members over decades as the price of leaving.
The EU could harness the only natural resource it has left. The goodwill of the ordinary citizen.
All it to do is abandon its progressive principles. Ordinary people support a degree of nationalism, confining the LGBTQWERTY to consenting adults behind closed doors, and some sort of plan, any sort of joined up thinking on immigration. And farms and fisheries.
I suppose we will see which way the Eurocrats decide to jump - settle for an extant EU or hold out for EUtopia.
The only reason Europe is in this situation is because of America. Europe wasn't "demoralized" by two word wars, it was instead razed to the ground and infected by the moral syphilis that is American culture after the new deal regime. Europe is obviously an occupied continent i don't get how you can claim otherwise when Germany still occupied by American soldiers to this day.
Also please explain to me how the people in the west German republic and Italy experienced "6 unprecedented decades of peace and prosperity". That simply did not happen.
Europe self-destructed in a cycle of inter-state violence initiated by Europeans themselves. The US leveraged the war-debts of WW1 into geopolitical power, displaced the UK as the world's financier and joined WW2 to secure the lion's share of the gains to be had by the collapse of British, French and Dutch power. The occupation was marketed as liberation, diplomatic sleight of hand to conceal the fact that much of Europe had been in the defeated Axis camp. The US military still controls Europe, apart from Russia, but this is changing fast. In the future the US will probably maintain close defence ties with selected European states (the UK and the Scandinavians).
The "moral syphilis that is American culture" was perfectly adapted to attract mass support from the defeated and occupied Europeans, especially the workers and lower middle class. The Warsaw Pact got the proletarian ideology (despite Party sponsorship of the old high culture), while the West got Yankee capitalism and the plebeian culture created by mass entertainment, mass marketing and mass education. A plebeian culture suits the needs of societies in which the old bourgeoisie (which had sufficient capital to remain independent of the state) had been replaced by a welfare-capitalist mock-bourgeoisie sustained by state subsidies. It will be very interesting to see what aesthetics eventually emerge from an economically fragile post-NATO Europe.
In fairness, a lot of America's moral syphilis is the spoiled grandchild of bad ideologies our elites imported from Europe in the first place. To borrow the name of this substack, American intellectuals got fisted by Foucault, learned to like it, and spent several decades teaching it to their students, who then took those bad ideas into government, media, NGOs, foundations, etc. Now America is probably the world's top exporter of that moral syphilis, but she first contracted it from Europeans, especially the continental philosophers.
America and Europe are so intertwined that it wouldn't be fair to blame just one. But I would say the current obsession with equality or sorry equity infecting the world started in America, while the dominant libertine culture that only aims to destroy all social norms started in Western Europe. However, both ideologies have roots in both continents.
Blame? Only fools attribute agency or resolve to ideas. In the real world people behave badly because they have something to gain. Convictions are the names we use to disguise our appetites for power, recognition or resources. The dissolution of traditional intellectual and moral standards suited the interests of our masters, the ideas were simply a means to an end, a tool prepared by people caught up in events that they could not possibly have fully understood.
I'm not blaming anybody or anything. I'm trying to understand the conceptual history of the modern regime and how it reached its current state. Morals and blame have no place in this kind of task and would only distort the result.
The Nuremberg trials are what you get when you inject half baked "morality" in these kinds of questions.
A reasonable point. Sang froid is everything. I should not have used this thread to make a long-held irritation about the way ideas are misapplied in politics, something you were not doing.
Nuremberg was indeed a train-wreck from the legal perspective, but IMHO, an inevitable one. The Allies could not have left Goring etc just retire, so they settled on what were essentially show trials. A clean sweep with summary executions would have been cleaner and more morally dignified.
All of those French post modernists were promoted by the CIA, so its really not fair to say that they "infected" America. Foucault and especially Deleuze had a lot of valuable insights, you just have to separate the men from their work.
The moral syphilis which I'm referring to is grounded on the three pillars of Darwinism, Marxism and Freudianism. After WW2 these ideas formed the basis of the post war mass democracies and made possible the unprecedented social engineering campaign unleashed on the Germany during the Denazification process. You can even see this lineage on Jurgen Habermas who until a few years ago was the court philosopher per excellence here in Europe.
Also if those ideas seem out of date to you, its because they are. That's why our elites are perpetually stuck in 1990 an cant seem to understand that the world has changed.
Judging by the so-called elite (Baerbock, Von Der Leyen), at the moment, I very much doubt they read much Habermas, still less any Darwin, Marx or Freud. I expect that their worldview is fixed in the past, in particular their formative years, when they picked up a smattering of ideas by osmosis. Merkel was well-educated though, I believe. It is amazing to see the decline from Helmut Schmidt and Kohl to the present buffoons.
IMHO you simply cannot understand Western political elites on either side of the Atlantic in general unless you have endured a season or two of HOUSE OF CARDS. I know for a fact that political staffers and advisers are typically avid fans of that stuff.
In case people are not exhausted by the subject of Euro-craziness, here is a link to a youtube discussion ('The End of Abundance') between Alexander Mercouris, Alexander Christoforou and Gonzalo Lira. It is long (just over 2 hours) but very incisive and is relevant re de-industrialisation and the limitless ineptitude of the European political class.
"Every branch of the military is struggling to make its 2022 recruiting goals, officials say"
"The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years."
An advantage I’ve found with Yandex is there is a wider selection of reference and media and it opens video in its browser (if you have it too) instead of taking you to YouTube etc. Yandex Disk is quite good value.
THE ATLANTIC piece on the rosary may, I expect, be a reaction to the revival of interest in Traditionalist Catholicism by elements of the post-Alt Right, the celebrated Dime Square set.
If so, the exchange of provocations and hostility is petty. While it is offensive and obnoxious, it has a very performative aspect, as does the theatrical Trad piety.
IMO the many incidences of vandalism against pregnancy counselling services is more serious, as is the truly sinister jihadist arson against the churches of France.
Its much more simple than that. The author of the piece is presenting the opinion of a particular group of people that have always hated Christians, Catholics and Orthodox in particular.
Not to mention the churches in Canada burnt down over alleged mass graves in church run children's homes.
No evidence has been found to date.
This had credibility because of the Tuam Babies scandal. A nun-run Mother & Baby Home in Ireland where women have come out about cruel (yet, state sanctioned) adoption policy and cruel treatment. There was a high rate of infant mortality - notably, TB was rampant at the time and the last couple of years have reminded us that institutional living doesnt help in the spread of respiratory illnesses.
Many of the babies' remains were found in the septic tank.
Its heartbreaking from beginning to end. Cruel treatment was certainly meted out, and the state - and indeed the population - was certainly complicit.
It's very unusual that staunch Catholics would dispose of the remains of baptised children in such a fashion. Unbaptised babies, such as stillbirths, perhaps, there's a long tradition of stillborn babies being buried in corners of fields by night, or certain tracts of land being tacitly used for this purpose. But in the Irish Catholic tradition of the mid 20th C, a baptised person deserves consecrated land. A midwife would always be ready, in a difficult birth, to baptise a newborn at the point of emergence to save its soul or at least console its mother. It was taken very, very seriously - any Catholic can baptise any person in an emergency, using dirty dishwater or whatever is to hand, such is the seriousness of dying without a sacrament and being buried in unconsecrated land.
Some of these poor children were older babies, toddlers, not just newborns. They would have been baptised.
The Canadian Church burnings were clearly incited by the malicious propaganda of the Canadian media (which depends on state subsidies to survive). Not sure that I believe that the bodies of babies were ever disposed of in septic tanks...that sounds like an urban myth.
Life a few generations ago was certainly hard and people a lot less sentimental than they are now. Today people gratify their instinct for cruelty by watching sadistic and violent entertainment of a kind that would have shocked previous generations. IMO the people who express a keen belief in the value of compassion usually turn out to be pretty callous when it suits them.
It is absolutely accepted here in Ireland that babies bodies were found in the septic tank. I can't bring myself to believe it. But 25 years ago my parents generation couldn't bring themselves to believe that priests were raping altar boys and the church covered it up.
That loss of moral authority is only beginning to be played out
The rosary story is personal to me, as a devout Catholic. These people can't seem to help themselves as they always project onto others - themselves. I appreciate your writing, thank you.
Aug 28, 2022·edited Aug 29, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Re, the hit piece on Rosary. I will tone it down but delete this if you think its not appropriate. I think its safe to say that firm lines are being drawn for whats to come next. Its up to Catholics(and broadly other Christians) to decide if they side with the Rosary or the Atlantic. I had a Catholic friend in university who attended mass pretty much every week. He seemed fairly devout which is rare for my generation. But he is also a passionate liberal(also an hawkish internationalist for what its worth). Dare I say, he has two religions, Catholicism and Liberalism. If there were to be a conflict, I am not sure which of these he would pick. Perhaps the religion of his ancestors or perhaps the religion of his peers. Us on right have it easy because we know which side we are on. But liberal Christians will have to make a difficult choice between the Rosary and the Atlantic in the coming years.
Surely it is more complex than that. Since WW2 the Vatican has been an ally/client of the US, in much the same way that the Vatican was of Carolingian France and, later, Hapsburg Spain and Hapsburg Austria. So Catholicism and liberalism have not really been in opposition. This may change, of course. As US influence over Europe wanes, the Americanisation of Catholicism would presumably weaken. Interesting times ahead.
This is true. If I remember correctly, the CIA station chief in Rome in the late 40s and early 50s illegaly moved around lot of money through the church and the mafia to finance the Christian Democrats. I think its clear that without American money, soldiers, and the intelligency agencies' capacity to engage in very shady activities, most of Western Europe(except for perhaps the UK) would have fallen to the commies. Tbf to CIA, the commies were engaging in equally shady stuff.
Completely true. Also true that their hold on the Vatican seems to be weakening. Even pope Francis has refused to propagate the US narrative about the war in Ukraine.
I propose that the cult of Kek should be established as the State Shinto of a post-woke America.
Hit the like button and use the share button to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you (be nice!), and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already done so.
Next entry in the HIV/AIDS series should be up tomorrow or Tuesday.
Just want to say this is the best $5 I spend every month - godspeed.
I appreciate the vote of confidence. Thanks, man.
Ha I'm a cheapskate I subscribed for a whole year 😝
Ditto 100%
Looking forward to next HIV/AIDS piece
It’s fascinating, despite my first impression being that it was an uninteresting topic
I have the material in place for the next one, I just need to figure out the structure. Most of it will deal with the initial medical reaction, showing how the two worlds collide. It'll be quote heavy, because first person sources will speak for themselves, and rather loudly.
Happy to hear that you, like many others, have been won over by the subject as we have made our way through it thus far.
Absolutely the best stuff you've produced so far!!! (HIV article)
Vielen Dank!
That Price guy was omnipresent on my Facebook feed as naïve, entitled and lazy people I knew from High School spread his crap all over it a few years back.
Reminds me of Jonathon Bowden's line that left wing politics attracted only three types of people, sociopathic misanthropes, a few dweebs interested in "theory" and the numbers flushed out with airhead women with the "Vicar's Daughter" personality, who just believed if we loved each other more the world's problems would go away. Looks like Price was the former and Ms. Margis the latter.
I dread to think just how much of a presence he had on LinkedIn timelines (thank God I'm not on there).
"Dignare me laudare te, Virgo Sacrata.
Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos."
The whole "change military personnel along political lines" thing is very unnerving. It reminds me of the scene in "The Death of Yugoslavia" where Borisav Jovic openly tells the BBC how he and Milosevic transferred all Bosnian Serb soldiers into the Yugoslavian army in Bosnia and all other soldiers elsewhere. Voila...a Bosnian Serb army, right where they wanted it.
A retired military person told me several years ago that social experiments always started in the armed forces.
Yep. For example, US army desegregated 16 years before the civil rights act was passed
Defend KiwiFarms!
At all costs!
Have nice Sunday and week, Niccolo and readers.
Agreed! For those who are unaware, here is a summary from Ovarit:
TIM: Trans-Identified Male or man claiming to be a woman
TIP: Trans-Identified People or trans people
-Internet famous TIM Keffals gets SWATed and accuses a Kiwifarms troll
-Keffals uses social media and sympathetic news sites to whine about being bullied by KF users
-Keffals starts Twitter campaign to have Cloudfare stop working with KiwiFarms
-Twitter campaign gains traction as TIPs join in and talk about online harassment they've received, which they blame on KF
-News reports on the Twitter campaign, siding with the TIPs and condemning KF
-Sustained DDoS attack on KF (which is not unusual), but KF owner Josh is able to keep the site up regardless
-Last night far-right congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene gets SWATed; suspect (suspiciously) teases police with information that he is a KF user
-Sometime between last night and today KF is no longer available. It's not clear yet why, but -KF owner says those like Cloudfare, who help keep the site up day to day, are not responding to him about getting the site back up
source: https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/145432/anyone-else-following-the-drama-with-kiwifarms
To quote an Ovarit poster:
“The crazy has really hit the mainstream in recent months and the public backlash is growing in leaps and bounds. TRAs are on the defense and are getting desperate.
Society will tolerate a lot of things, but systemic child abuse (transing kids, medical abuse, drag queen story hour, pediatricians/hospitals exposed, schools queering kids, pedos’ PR efforts, blatantly inappropriate lessons and books, etc etc. ) will bring this whole thing down. And that’s before the great monsoon of lawsuits even hits.”
I did. Apologies.
Since you’re (rightfully) worried, I’ll also be indirect in the future
I’m sorry for causing you trouble
For the reasons you stated, one must be careful. I understand completely
There are other places to discuss this as well
The error page where KF lands now as is under attaq from the deviants has archive links for whom keffals and other linked people are.
Also KF is not ideological, even Niccolo (and the Salo forum) have a thread, I believe.
It just happens that the deviants and "neurodivergents" produce the cheapest, most voluminous amount of lolcow milk to be exploited, while having the worst opsec in humanity's history and being falsely sheltered by governments and big capital as "protected classes".
These deviants want every shred of real, negative information about them erased, so they can do their thing in peace, without reactionary intervention.
No deal!
KF has a thread about The Thread but not a dedicated point and laugh against Our Nic...... er, I hear.
Niccolo - what is the heating-bill situation looking like in Croatia for the winter?
Government has a reserve fund that will work to alleviate the worst of it, from what I have seen.
1. The Baltics, Poland etc with their demands that Germany do more economically to harm Russia are delusional - who do they think will pay the dole their countries depend on? UK will be paying into the budget for another few years only, and it is Germany who pays in the overwhelming bulk of the EU budget. Collapsed German economy means no EU budget to pay those still glomming off the rest - Spain, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Portugal. the former Communist states.
2. Rutte, Sarin, Trudeau are the poster boys and girls for Schwab aka cut price Dr Evil and WEF. Ruttes position as the avant garde of WEF Reset will be fought tooth and nail, and it will get dirty. The only way these people in Germany, the Netherlands etc can be deposed is by all other parties, no matter how much they hate each other, forming Popular Fronts to clear the WEF toadies and start again. A worthwhile Irish substacker is Conor Fitzgerald who calls our national Irish WEF/NAT)/DC arselickers The Goodboys, whose wet dream is a pat of the head from a mediocrity like VDL or Lagarde.
3. As a cradle Catholic, and seeing the devotion my late mother and her peers had for Our Lady, the scummy assertion that the Rosary is far right, fascist is disgusting.
You seem the sort to have a backward conception of sovereignty, Denis
Not sure I understand. Do you mean I have it back to front or that my view of sovereignty is backwards i.e primitive?
Nah I'm being a smartarse, and saying you might not agree with Micheal Martins most mocked soundbite.
Sorry if it came across as snide.
In every political conversation, the three niformal ;laws' of Robert Conquest are worth repeating:
1, Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
1. above is subject to The Gell-Mann Amnesia Eddect, per Michael Crichton: 'Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
A useful 4th is that every self described male feminist/ally is a creep. Price/Lauer/Weinstein and co.
Day by day the 2020 US election looks more and more soiled, even if legal on paper. Talk of a Deep State was mocked as lunatic conspiracy-mongering. But now as we see once-respected government organs such as the FBI and even the DoJ become active parts of the DNC's campaign machinery, more and more of us (non-partisan "independents") adopt a firm skepticism toward anything blaring at us from Washington.
It would be interesting to read how you see things from over there. Ciao!
Pretty much the same way you are.
The past 3 years of nonstop obvious lies and corruption -- they don't even bother to hide it anymore: they wave it right in your face like they're proud of it and dare you to try to do anything about it -- and seeing how obviously scripted so much of their agenda has been at an international level, all of that has been a mindfuck like nothing else in my lifetime.
There have always been evil and corrupt leaders, but it seems like they at least used to try to hide it and pretend that everything was on the up and up. Now, it's like they decided they don't have to pretend anymore, like they can't even be bothered to come up with lies that are at least halfway plausible.
I don't know what to make of that, whether the elites have changed their tactics, or whether we just have better access to real-time information that contradicts their narrative now, or what. Something definitely seems different now than in prior eras.
To me what's different is up until the '90s at least there was a strong middle class and things were generally nice-now unless you're in the 1 percent or holding on to legacy property like us and stay home a lot the US has just become nasty. There was a good piece on how mass building design - commercial architecture primarily-reinforces depression and anomie. Just look at the average shopping center, mini-mall etc. I live in an upper middle class suburb and its just mostly ugly. Of course having more info and people like Nic to help with thinking is a big part of it.
Re: military speech
Probably depends on what the definition of “extremist sentiment” is.
Of course, Biden just called all Trump voters semi-fascists, so he is casting a pretty wide net
Safest thing is probably to have ballot harvesters fill out all military ballots to ensure the correct candidates are selected
Precisely.
Surely the definition of extremist sentiment will be determined by the relevant commanding officer. Military justice.
Watch FROM HERE TO ETERNITY or, better yet, read the unexpurgated edition of the book.
Niccolo, the deindustrialisation of Europe is distressing for those who face a much diminished future...but the US is simply preparing for the next stage of global development. Obnoxious as it is, Turbo America is acting in its self-interest. Its elites are ghastly and incompetent, its culture shallow and its self-understanding self-serving, but why should they prioritise the welfare of the Europeans?
The US is wrecking Europe on its way out. EU based multinationals will relocate what they must to the US or Asia. EU oligarchs will send their capital to the US. Russia has no interest in taking over and will never waste its resources subsidising Euro lifestyles the way it did with the Warsaw Pact. The era of cheap energy is over and Europe is ill-placed to compete with the US, Russia or China.
Turbo America has punked Turbo Europa. The world will move on.
Europeans got demoralized with the two world wars but then enjoyed 6 unprecedented decades of peace and prosperity. They thought they were above history so abandoned all traditions, values and principles that helped them achieve that prosperity. Unfortunately, every decadent society find the hard way that it is in fact not above history.
It's harsh to say but Europeans are enjoying the fruits of their actions. But don't worry Europeans. We Americans are not far behind you. We will join you in hell and give you company.
Got it in one. The EU is a failed superpower, an abortive effort at constructing a great power. Moreover, there is no point sentimentalising the EU or taking its pretensions at face value. The grifters and parasites of Brussels are just a polyglot version of the gangsters and freaks of Washington. The failure of the EU to even attempt any organised resistance to the recent tidal wave of illegal immigration exposes the political classes as fundamentally unconcerned with the future existence of the nations they lead, while the COVID lockdowns and the Great Reset/decarbonisation scam have revealed that the social peace of Europe was as fragile as that of the US itself. The limitless indifference of the Europeans to the treatment of the Russians and Russophones in the Donbass and the southern Ukraine since 2014 demonstrates that the EU's pretensions to being a champion of human rights are an utter sham.
The US has some prospects for renewal (thanks to on-shoring and vastly greater reserves of energy). The EU has none. When the US has gone (and it most surely will leave) the Europeans will have to renegotiate their energy deals from positions of considerable weakness. The manner in which the US is making its slow withdrawl is odious, but this is irrelevant in terns of great power politics. In a way the US is exacting as much as it can of the accrued subsidy extended to NATO members over decades as the price of leaving.
Very well said.
The EU could harness the only natural resource it has left. The goodwill of the ordinary citizen.
All it to do is abandon its progressive principles. Ordinary people support a degree of nationalism, confining the LGBTQWERTY to consenting adults behind closed doors, and some sort of plan, any sort of joined up thinking on immigration. And farms and fisheries.
I suppose we will see which way the Eurocrats decide to jump - settle for an extant EU or hold out for EUtopia.
The only reason Europe is in this situation is because of America. Europe wasn't "demoralized" by two word wars, it was instead razed to the ground and infected by the moral syphilis that is American culture after the new deal regime. Europe is obviously an occupied continent i don't get how you can claim otherwise when Germany still occupied by American soldiers to this day.
Also please explain to me how the people in the west German republic and Italy experienced "6 unprecedented decades of peace and prosperity". That simply did not happen.
Europe self-destructed in a cycle of inter-state violence initiated by Europeans themselves. The US leveraged the war-debts of WW1 into geopolitical power, displaced the UK as the world's financier and joined WW2 to secure the lion's share of the gains to be had by the collapse of British, French and Dutch power. The occupation was marketed as liberation, diplomatic sleight of hand to conceal the fact that much of Europe had been in the defeated Axis camp. The US military still controls Europe, apart from Russia, but this is changing fast. In the future the US will probably maintain close defence ties with selected European states (the UK and the Scandinavians).
The "moral syphilis that is American culture" was perfectly adapted to attract mass support from the defeated and occupied Europeans, especially the workers and lower middle class. The Warsaw Pact got the proletarian ideology (despite Party sponsorship of the old high culture), while the West got Yankee capitalism and the plebeian culture created by mass entertainment, mass marketing and mass education. A plebeian culture suits the needs of societies in which the old bourgeoisie (which had sufficient capital to remain independent of the state) had been replaced by a welfare-capitalist mock-bourgeoisie sustained by state subsidies. It will be very interesting to see what aesthetics eventually emerge from an economically fragile post-NATO Europe.
In fairness, a lot of America's moral syphilis is the spoiled grandchild of bad ideologies our elites imported from Europe in the first place. To borrow the name of this substack, American intellectuals got fisted by Foucault, learned to like it, and spent several decades teaching it to their students, who then took those bad ideas into government, media, NGOs, foundations, etc. Now America is probably the world's top exporter of that moral syphilis, but she first contracted it from Europeans, especially the continental philosophers.
America and Europe are so intertwined that it wouldn't be fair to blame just one. But I would say the current obsession with equality or sorry equity infecting the world started in America, while the dominant libertine culture that only aims to destroy all social norms started in Western Europe. However, both ideologies have roots in both continents.
Blame? Only fools attribute agency or resolve to ideas. In the real world people behave badly because they have something to gain. Convictions are the names we use to disguise our appetites for power, recognition or resources. The dissolution of traditional intellectual and moral standards suited the interests of our masters, the ideas were simply a means to an end, a tool prepared by people caught up in events that they could not possibly have fully understood.
I'm not blaming anybody or anything. I'm trying to understand the conceptual history of the modern regime and how it reached its current state. Morals and blame have no place in this kind of task and would only distort the result.
The Nuremberg trials are what you get when you inject half baked "morality" in these kinds of questions.
A reasonable point. Sang froid is everything. I should not have used this thread to make a long-held irritation about the way ideas are misapplied in politics, something you were not doing.
Nuremberg was indeed a train-wreck from the legal perspective, but IMHO, an inevitable one. The Allies could not have left Goring etc just retire, so they settled on what were essentially show trials. A clean sweep with summary executions would have been cleaner and more morally dignified.
After WW2 the CIA was very keen to promote French theorists as a means of weakening the Left on both sides of the Atlantic. Gabriel Rockhill wrote a great piece on this: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-the-frankfurt-schools-anti-communism/
If this shit were any nuttier you could eat it in place of nougat.
All of those French post modernists were promoted by the CIA, so its really not fair to say that they "infected" America. Foucault and especially Deleuze had a lot of valuable insights, you just have to separate the men from their work.
The moral syphilis which I'm referring to is grounded on the three pillars of Darwinism, Marxism and Freudianism. After WW2 these ideas formed the basis of the post war mass democracies and made possible the unprecedented social engineering campaign unleashed on the Germany during the Denazification process. You can even see this lineage on Jurgen Habermas who until a few years ago was the court philosopher per excellence here in Europe.
Also if those ideas seem out of date to you, its because they are. That's why our elites are perpetually stuck in 1990 an cant seem to understand that the world has changed.
Judging by the so-called elite (Baerbock, Von Der Leyen), at the moment, I very much doubt they read much Habermas, still less any Darwin, Marx or Freud. I expect that their worldview is fixed in the past, in particular their formative years, when they picked up a smattering of ideas by osmosis. Merkel was well-educated though, I believe. It is amazing to see the decline from Helmut Schmidt and Kohl to the present buffoons.
IMHO you simply cannot understand Western political elites on either side of the Atlantic in general unless you have endured a season or two of HOUSE OF CARDS. I know for a fact that political staffers and advisers are typically avid fans of that stuff.
Very well said. Never saw that show but what you say makes a ton of sense when you observe how they behave.
Yeah these men were giants compared with what we have now, especially Helmut Kohl is a very interesting figure.
In case people are not exhausted by the subject of Euro-craziness, here is a link to a youtube discussion ('The End of Abundance') between Alexander Mercouris, Alexander Christoforou and Gonzalo Lira. It is long (just over 2 hours) but very incisive and is relevant re de-industrialisation and the limitless ineptitude of the European political class.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-NdpMg72I
"Every branch of the military is struggling to make its 2022 recruiting goals, officials say"
"The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/every-branch-us-military-struggling-meet-2022-recruiting-goals-officia-rcna35078
(Note: I have started using the search engine Yandex.com)
More foreigners to serve in the military with the reward of coveted US citizenship?
Yes. You jump all the queues that way. I’d have to double check, but I believe we are having an increase in these filings.
Probably. Of course that also means that the American army will be in an even worse state in the near future.
damn they're really trying to speedrun this whole Roman Empire thing, aren't they?
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/want-solve-america%E2%80%99s-recruiting-crisis-recruit-foreigners-204260
Its being talked about.
An advantage I’ve found with Yandex is there is a wider selection of reference and media and it opens video in its browser (if you have it too) instead of taking you to YouTube etc. Yandex Disk is quite good value.
THE ATLANTIC piece on the rosary may, I expect, be a reaction to the revival of interest in Traditionalist Catholicism by elements of the post-Alt Right, the celebrated Dime Square set.
If so, the exchange of provocations and hostility is petty. While it is offensive and obnoxious, it has a very performative aspect, as does the theatrical Trad piety.
IMO the many incidences of vandalism against pregnancy counselling services is more serious, as is the truly sinister jihadist arson against the churches of France.
Its much more simple than that. The author of the piece is presenting the opinion of a particular group of people that have always hated Christians, Catholics and Orthodox in particular.
Not to mention the churches in Canada burnt down over alleged mass graves in church run children's homes.
No evidence has been found to date.
This had credibility because of the Tuam Babies scandal. A nun-run Mother & Baby Home in Ireland where women have come out about cruel (yet, state sanctioned) adoption policy and cruel treatment. There was a high rate of infant mortality - notably, TB was rampant at the time and the last couple of years have reminded us that institutional living doesnt help in the spread of respiratory illnesses.
Many of the babies' remains were found in the septic tank.
Its heartbreaking from beginning to end. Cruel treatment was certainly meted out, and the state - and indeed the population - was certainly complicit.
It's very unusual that staunch Catholics would dispose of the remains of baptised children in such a fashion. Unbaptised babies, such as stillbirths, perhaps, there's a long tradition of stillborn babies being buried in corners of fields by night, or certain tracts of land being tacitly used for this purpose. But in the Irish Catholic tradition of the mid 20th C, a baptised person deserves consecrated land. A midwife would always be ready, in a difficult birth, to baptise a newborn at the point of emergence to save its soul or at least console its mother. It was taken very, very seriously - any Catholic can baptise any person in an emergency, using dirty dishwater or whatever is to hand, such is the seriousness of dying without a sacrament and being buried in unconsecrated land.
Some of these poor children were older babies, toddlers, not just newborns. They would have been baptised.
The Canadian Church burnings were clearly incited by the malicious propaganda of the Canadian media (which depends on state subsidies to survive). Not sure that I believe that the bodies of babies were ever disposed of in septic tanks...that sounds like an urban myth.
Life a few generations ago was certainly hard and people a lot less sentimental than they are now. Today people gratify their instinct for cruelty by watching sadistic and violent entertainment of a kind that would have shocked previous generations. IMO the people who express a keen belief in the value of compassion usually turn out to be pretty callous when it suits them.
It is absolutely accepted here in Ireland that babies bodies were found in the septic tank. I can't bring myself to believe it. But 25 years ago my parents generation couldn't bring themselves to believe that priests were raping altar boys and the church covered it up.
That loss of moral authority is only beginning to be played out
The rosary story is personal to me, as a devout Catholic. These people can't seem to help themselves as they always project onto others - themselves. I appreciate your writing, thank you.
this is sobering, Christianity declining in Europe: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/
Re, the hit piece on Rosary. I will tone it down but delete this if you think its not appropriate. I think its safe to say that firm lines are being drawn for whats to come next. Its up to Catholics(and broadly other Christians) to decide if they side with the Rosary or the Atlantic. I had a Catholic friend in university who attended mass pretty much every week. He seemed fairly devout which is rare for my generation. But he is also a passionate liberal(also an hawkish internationalist for what its worth). Dare I say, he has two religions, Catholicism and Liberalism. If there were to be a conflict, I am not sure which of these he would pick. Perhaps the religion of his ancestors or perhaps the religion of his peers. Us on right have it easy because we know which side we are on. But liberal Christians will have to make a difficult choice between the Rosary and the Atlantic in the coming years.
Surely it is more complex than that. Since WW2 the Vatican has been an ally/client of the US, in much the same way that the Vatican was of Carolingian France and, later, Hapsburg Spain and Hapsburg Austria. So Catholicism and liberalism have not really been in opposition. This may change, of course. As US influence over Europe wanes, the Americanisation of Catholicism would presumably weaken. Interesting times ahead.
Forgive my innocence, but how is the Vatican a client of the US? I can't see where the leverage is.
This is true. If I remember correctly, the CIA station chief in Rome in the late 40s and early 50s illegaly moved around lot of money through the church and the mafia to finance the Christian Democrats. I think its clear that without American money, soldiers, and the intelligency agencies' capacity to engage in very shady activities, most of Western Europe(except for perhaps the UK) would have fallen to the commies. Tbf to CIA, the commies were engaging in equally shady stuff.
Completely true. Also true that their hold on the Vatican seems to be weakening. Even pope Francis has refused to propagate the US narrative about the war in Ukraine.