The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 4, Ever leftwards movement

November 3rd, 2013

In his anti reactionary FAQ Scott argues that ever leftwards movement is not a bunch of conspiracies run by Harvard and the State Department, but rather a natural response to prosperity and power.  We are richer and safer, so can afford a little decadence, perhaps a lot of decadence.

This fails to explain the ever more drastic measures applied by the state to move us left, for example population replacement, and the ever more strident propaganda in school and on television.

This also predicts that no crisis shall ensue, that we will reach an equilibrium level of leftism appropriate for our level of prosperity and power, that there is a natural level of leftism, and this natural level has moved left because we are richer, have contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, dominate all our enemies, etc.

But every other leftwards movement has become ever more extreme, moved leftwards ever faster, eventually resulting in crisis, usually a bloody and disastrous crisis.  The reason that leftists of anglosphere puritan origin rule the world is in large part because all the other left wing movements self destructed horribly, leaving Anglosphere leftists of puritan origin the last power standing.

Karl Marx predicted the second coming crisis of capitalism, in which capitalism would collapse, and the saints his followers take over.

I can confidently predict the collapse of leftism, but alas, not that the saints get to win. It sometimes happens that reactionaries take over after the crisis, and all is peace and order, but the more usual outcome is outside invaders take over, sometimes genocidally, or pirates and brigands take over, and slowly over centuries the brigands transition to being feudal lords.

A reactionary victory is possible.  Strange things are apt to happen as history approaches a left singularity.  White autogenocide is also possible, in which first all white heterosexual males are murdered, largely by each other, then all whites are murdered (Jews discovering to their great shock and surprise that they are white after all), all heterosexuals are murdered, and all males are murdered, then anyone insufficiently leftist is murdered, then the bar for being sufficiently leftist is raised, and raised again, until some of the remaining leftists wise up and murder everyone who is excessively leftist, thus ending the crisis.

If it winds up that bad, or any where near that bad, will not end in the second coming of Charles the Second.

Apostolic Succession

November 1st, 2013

According to some branches of Christianity, notably Roman Catholicism, Jesus ordained his disciples to perform certain sacraments, and they in turn ordained others to perform these sacraments, and only the legitimate successors of the apostles can validly perform these sacraments.   So supposedly most sacraments are invalid unless performed by a priest, by someone who has been authorized by someone who has been authorized … all the way back to Jesus.

Trouble is that because the official Roman Catholic Church has not believed in Apostolic Succession for some time, Pope Francis arguably never got ordained, in the sense that his ordination did not grant him power over sacraments, in the sense that it failed to say, or act out, the granting of power over sacraments,  and is therefore only a layman who cannot perform a valid sacrament.

If you do not believe in apostolic succession, then Pope Francis is just another man.  And if you do believe in apostolic succession, then he is still just another man, because ordained by people who corrected the ordination to avoid expressing belief in apostolic succession. Read the rest of this entry »

The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 3, Freedom and Monarchy.

October 30th, 2013

In his anti reactionary FAQ Scott tells us how terribly repressive Queen Elizabeth was, failing to compare actually observable dissent in her time with actually observable dissent in our time:

Likewise, Elizabeth and the other monarchs in her line were never shy about killing anyone who spoke out against them. Henry VIII, Elizabeth’s father, passed new treason laws which defined as high treason “to refer to the Sovereign offensively in public writing”, “denying the Sovereign’s official styles and titles”, and “refusing to acknowledge the Sovereign as the Supreme Head of the Church of England”. Elizabeth herself added to these offenses “to attempt to defend the jurisdiction of the Pope over the English Church…”. Needless to say, the punishment for any of these was death, often by being drawn and quartered.

But every Shakespearean play was written from within the worldview that Roman Catholicism is true in its views about the next world, or that paganism is true, or that materialism is true and God or the gods care nothing for humans. They are incompatible with the official religion of which Queen Elizabeth was the head

In contrast, today every television show preaches our official religion. Thus, for example every father on television is an idiot and/or evil, and his family would be much better off without him. Read the rest of this entry »

Progress

October 27th, 2013

In 1900, there were no planes, no space travel. Motorcars were toys that enthusiasts played with, not useful means of transport.  There were no computers, no radios, no antibiotics, no rockets, no nuclear power, no knowledge or understanding of the interior the atom, no very useful plastics.

In 1961 we had all of this stuff

Since 1961, what have we got?

The last man on the moon is getting pretty elderly.  We have abandoned supersonic transport, and supersonic fighter planes are close to being abandoned.

Cell phones and the internet show radical improvement, but are just more intense and improved use of computers and radio, technologies that existed well before 1961.  Genetic technology shows promise, but is not yet doing anything big.  While reading genes continues to improve, writing them may well have peaked, and without vastly improved writing, gene technology is not going anywhere exciting.  AI remains thirty years in the future, as it has been for the past sixty years, even though every desktop now contains more computing power than the human brain.

And, as I regularly point out

The last man on the moon left in 1972

The tallest building in the united states was finished in 1974.

Cars are becoming humbler.

 

The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 2, Crime.

October 25th, 2013

A major reactionary argument is that since the early eighteenth century, since the reign of throne and altar, war, state political repression, state violence against respectable citizens, underclass crime, and minority crime have all risen enormously, that the overclass and underclass are attacking the productive, and the attack has been escalating.

Scott’s anti reactionary FAQ  points out that murder is pretty much the same as ever it was.  Quite so.  Those crimes that the state tolerates are increasing – thus burglary, assault, and mugging has soared everywhere, whereas home invasion burglaries, where the criminals riotously enter an occupied dwelling, have only soared in those countries such as Britain where home invasion is tolerated.

Scott tells us that Victorians felt profoundly unsafe from crime:

Violent attacks by strangers were seen as grave cause for concern. There was a disproportionate amount of attention paid to violent nighttime assaults by strangers in urban areas, called “garroting” and similar to what we might call “mugging”. There were garroting panics in 1856 and 1862

He neglects to tell us why the Victorians panicked.

The Victorians panicked because, over the course of several weeks, two people in the city of London were mugged, a crime that they had no words for, never having experienced it before.

Scott points out that crime has diminished over the last few decades, neglecting to acknowledge that this is a short term and small decline compared to the long term trend of a gigantic rise in private and state violence.

The cause of the decline is pretty obvious in San Francisco. Police are kicking black ass. The highly progressive far left elite piously averts its eyes while its police force does extremely racist and reactionary things to protect them from minorities.

It seems the same thing has been happening everywhere.

Although progressivism moves steadily ever leftwards, in any one area of policy there are waves. First a large movement left. Disaster ensues, as with freeing the slaves, then a small movement right, as with Jim Crow. Then after a while, another large movement left.

Crime has diminished somewhat because we are in the small movement right phase with respect to crime. From what is happening in New York city, looks like the next large movement left phase is about to resume, whereupon we will see gentrification end, white flight resume and New York head off in the footsteps of Detroit.

Crime has risen because of movement left. It fell because, for a little while, we moved a little bit right on crime.  But since progressives always need each to be lefter than the other, they can only move rightwards on crime by moving leftwards on something else – and in due course, are coming back to moving leftwards on crime.

The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 1, Terror and mass murder

October 23rd, 2013

In this post, I address Scott’s anti reactionary FAQ on terrors and mass murders.  In other posts I will address economic growth, sex, freedom, art, and other issues. The anti reactionary FAQ is big, and has a lot of points, most of which I will deal with in separate posts.

Reactionaries say that democracy leads to the left singularity, which at best results in great suffering, and usually in mass murder.

Scott in his anti reactionary FAQ refutes this by a pile of supposed reactionary mass murders, notable among them the horrible reactionary mass murderer Zhang Xianzhong, better known to reactionaries as the horrible radical leftist mass murderer Chang Hsien-chong, the man who distributed the wealth of the landlords to the poor, then ate the landlords for oppressing the poor, then exterminated the intellectuals for infecting the poor with insufficiently progressive ideas, then flayed the poor alive for being insufficiently grateful for having the wealth of their oppressors redistributed to them. Read the rest of this entry »

In favor of official religion

October 23rd, 2013

Official science is, as all reactionaries know, and all progressives deny, a disaster.

All progressives also know that official religion is a disaster, despite the fact that progressivism is the official religion.  This should make you suspect that official religion is a good thing – unless, of course, it is progressivism.

If a meme complex is selected for virulence, if for example if it is transmitted by street corner preaching, it is going to be a cult, will have characteristics likely to be harmful to the host.

If, however, a meme complex is parentally transmitted, then it is going to reflect the characteristics of those who successfully reproduce, hence likely to be beneficent, providing divine authority for behaviors that parents know to be beneficial, behaviors which provide long term rewards but not short term rewards. Read the rest of this entry »

Stupid U and faking the GPA

October 21st, 2013

Lately universities, especially high status public universities, have been introducing courses in stupid, to accommodate the increasing number of students that have difficulty doing traditional university courses.  The students who attend courses in stupid are overwhelmingly female and disproportionately lower class.  At the same time, degrees in smart, for example Computer Science, get women and blacks affirmatively actioned into them, and when those students struggle, get quietly and furtively dumbed down, becoming yet another degree in stupid.

In Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality the authors note with puzzlement that lower class students that come to university with a high GPA, tend to struggle doing traditional university courses, and repeatedly switch majors towards courses in stupid.  Because they repeatedly change majors, they spend an unreasonably long time in University and thus rack up unreasonably high debt, finally leaving university with high debt, a low GPA and a degree in stupid.  They then fail to get middle class jobs, being stupid people with a degree in stupidity. Read the rest of this entry »

The outer party rolls over

October 17th, 2013

The outer party has rolled over for the inner party and wet themselves.

Because they lost, they will be blamed for holding the confrontation at all. Had they won, Democrats would be blamed.

In that the Democrats had accepted funding to keep almost all the government open except Obamacare, the Democrats were most of the way to losing. In that the Democrats were starting to call the Republicans crazy, the Democrats were most of the way to losing (since in a game of chicken, the guy who can most convincingly demonstrate craziness wins). So the Republicans had no choice but to declare defeat.

That the Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory confirms my original analysis, that the whole thing was charade from beginning to end, which analysis I had started to doubt as the confrontation went on for two weeks and the Democrats came ever closer to capitulating.

The “shutdown”

October 16th, 2013

I have been analyzing the “shutdown” as politics as usual, which is to say, a fake conflict between the inner party and the outer party to give the appearance of democracy.  I predicted the Republicans would roll over and wet themselves in a week.

It has now been two weeks.

I still think it is politics as usual, but the increasingly strident reaction of the inner party organs indicates that some of them are seeing it as politics for real.  “Outside In” is therefore analyzing it as a real conflict.

In the Game of Chicken, the side that can most convincingly signal madness wins, so when the inner party call the Tea Party crazy, they are preparing to lose.  Or they could be preparing to ship the Tea Party off to concentration camps, after the fashion of Golden Dawn.

Two cars drive at each other at high speed down the middle of the road.  The guy who swerves loses.   In the Republican car, the establishment, the outer party, is in the driver’s seat, and wants to swerve.  The Tea Party is in the passenger seat, but is fighting for the wheel.

Given the commotion in the Republican car, the Democrat car would be well advised to swerve.  Or they could shoot the guy in the passenger seat. Read the rest of this entry »