Monday Musing
I find that whenever I spend too much time reading the latest news cycle, looking at political polls, or dwelling on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump for more than 3 1/2 minutes, something feels... off. I've never been in a submarine, but I conceptualize this feeling with the mental equivalent of surfacing too fast, and the negative effects this has on your brain/general physiology.
As I mentioned in the recent collaboration with @Eng_Politics, this stuff is indeed important. The election matters, as does everything surrounding it. I'd actually argue that it matters more than many people realize. That said, the "stuff surrounding it" is eminently more important. These issues, the things driving people to ever-increasing violence, have little to do with the President. As I said in my video about why I don't talk about President Trump, this stuff existed before he was here, and will exist when he's gone.
We're see the culmination of 60+ years worth of cancerous ideology infiltrating our institutions, particularly higher education. This, coupled with a perverse incentive structure in the news media for the last 30+ years, that shaped the news from "appeal to as many people as possible" to "follow the BET/MTV/Lifetime model by picking a demographic, and tailoring your content to that demographic." It's a perfect storm, as they say. Yeah, it's a trite saying. I know. But it's also accurate.
Man, I gotta tell you. I keep going back to intuitions I had 3, 4 years ago about the trajectory of society. Back then, I didn't have the words, or the historical references, or pithy quotes and metaphors. But I did have a deep concern that our trajectory was disastrous, unsustainable, and needed to be dealt with. Every year, this feeling got stronger. Now, it's every day.
So what do we do? Good question. There's lots of room for theorizing here, at least in the practical "What literally do we do?" kind of sense. For my part, I'm going to spend the next few weeks thinking out loud about this question, but first we need to zoom out and understand exactly where we are. As I said at the top, I'm musing, about this, so it's obviously subject to change. But these are thoughts I've been kicking around and taking notes on for several months, if not years. So it's really just a matter of articulating them in a somewhat coherent format (harder than it sounds; I barely understand myself most of the time). Here's my basic outline of things to come, for your consideration (and to be honest, for my accountability):
1) "In defense of riots"
(as an aside, I started a very long essay with this title months ago, before ever hearing of that idiotic book defending looting. C'est la vie.)
-What is a "riot?"
-When do people riot?
-When is a riot justified? How do you know?
-Expectations vs. Outcomes, and three institutional shifts: Government, Higher Education, and News Media, and how their erosion informs decades worth of unarticulated, simmering frustration.
2) What is Far-Left Orthodoxy (FLO)?
-Religion and Cult
-Emotional & Physical Abuser
-Leaderless Movement
-Adaptive Virus
3) What now? Mapping the terrain:
-Obstacles & Pathways
-Re-examining The Watchman Principle
-"Many possibilities, a handful of probabilities"
-Failure is always an option. Always.
-Rubber meets road: practical advice for busy people
That's it. I will still continue to do election and political analysis, but this is where the bulk of my content will be pointing for the next... however long. Some of this content is stuff I have dozens of pages written about already, some of it is a notion I literally had in the last 5 minutes. That's how these things work. But I, and I believe we, need to figure out how to manage interest and focus on a very important election, without losing sight of the bigger picture.
In a vacuum, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not a total disaster for America. They just aren't, because neither of them really believe in or stand for anything. That said, we don't live in a vacuum. We live in a world increasingly being shaped by unapologetically dangerous ideas, many of which have credibility in the circles of those who currently influence Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And if it wasn't Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it'd be whoever else was on the ticket. That's my point here. Both the forest and the trees are important, but one is significantly larger, and accordingly, deserves a proportional amount of our focus and attention. Let's do this 🤙
While driving yesterday, I had an idea to help facilitate more regular content creation, especially during this time when it is all but impossible to make videos outside of livestreams from my phone. The idea is that of a biweekly post that roughly takes the form of a newsletter, of which this is shall be the first volume. As an aside, evidently a synonym for biweekly is 'fortnightly,' which I'd totally use if it weren't for the association with a game of stupid dances.
My current plan for the format is as follows, though obviously this is likely to change.
-Introduction, brief life updates, and maybe a thought or two I've had lately that I wanted to share with you.
-What books I have been going through, and any excerpts or takeaways I feel are worth sharing.
-Any other noteworthy podcasts or media I've consumed lately.
-What stories I'm paying attention to (if any) and why
-Any questions I might have for you guys
-?
Alright, it's called TL;DR for a reason. Let's jump in.
As I mentioned earlier, we have Covid again. I'm not going to ...
I know it's been quiet here lately. I'll eventually explain what's been going on with my personal life (most of it has been a mixture of our new baby being really, really difficult, and perpetual sickness. For example, last week three our of the four of us had to go to the hospital) but this is what has consumed virtually all free time outside of work and family time.
Please consider helping us bring justice to these bastards. Their indifference and complicity in the harm done to these kids has to stop. Please help us make that happen.
For those who missed it, here's an open letter I wrote to my community last fall after the suicide of a former student, himself a victim of this school district:
https://returntoreason.medium.com/an-open-letter-to-the-citizens-of-albany-county-ca507fa24cd8
Thank you for everything you do. You guys are awesome, and I look forward to filling you in on what's been going on in the near future. See you soon.
ps- I will be...
Salutations! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas. Here is my list of top ten the things I learned/conclusions I reached from this past year. Some are directly related to events, others are not. Either way, I tried my best to create a list of useful ideas for you to incorporate into your view of the present moment. I hope you find this list useful, as many of the items on it are lenses I find incredibly important for understanding the world around me. As always, I welcome any feedback you might have!
In Part 2, I use Conquest's Three Laws of Politics to expand on my specific critiques of Peterson's Manifesto, and flush out some of my own axioms that I failed to explain in Part 1. This is where I get into the nuts and bolts of how institutions deviate from their original purpose and begin to generate and pursue their own interests.
What began as a singular episode critiquing one of my intellectual heroes has turned into a multi-part series going after some foundational axioms of mainstream Conservatism.
In this introductions, I discuss Permanent Washington and the concept of accountability, and sew the seeds for what's to come in either trusting or rejecting many mainstream Western institutions.
It's worth mentioning that this recording, along with every other part in this series, has taken almost (in some cases more than) a day to upload. I have no idea why my internet is failing me as hard as it is, but here we are. Hopefully you find these recordings in time to assist you in your vote tomorrow 🤙
I've been wanting to do this for a while. It might have taken me two days to figure out how to get this from my phone to my computer, but I finally got it to work.
On Saturday, I used the voice recorder app on my phone to record a podcast covering Karl Schmitt, his discussions of power, and how we can map this onto our contemporary situation with The Regime that runs our country, and the Bureaucratic State which does its ideological bidding.
After listening to it, I realize there is some more context I need to add to the ending, so I might record another one tomorrow or Wednesday. Either way, it feels good to be recording stuff again. As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback!
"We don't know where this thing isn't."
-Bret Weinstein
@JamesDerian suggested I pin and regularly update a thread of sources I'm compiling to illustrate the total societal takeover of Far-Left Orthodoxy, including their explicit targeting of our kids for indoctrination. Here is that thread.
Compromised entities:
Nickelodeon
Cartoon Network
Kellogg's Cereal
Mattel Toys
Lego
Sesame Street (SESAME STREET 🤦♂️)
PBS
CNN
The New York Times
The Washington Post
NPR
NBC News
Gender/Sexuality
Cartoon Network celebrating transgender children:
https://twitter.com/stage13network/status/1377332951659151360?s=20
More Cartoon Network trans stuff:
https://twitter.com/cartoonnetwork/status/1377259794294259717?s=20
Cartoon Network on "normalizing gender pronouns"
https://twitter.com/cartoonnetwork/status/1338539346530537475?s=20
Lego released "rainbow set" for Pride Month:
https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2021/may/everyone-is-awesome/
"Queer up your morning routine" with Kellogg's new cereal featuring edible glitter, ...
