In the last 24 hours, Musk has attempted a coup against Trump. It has failed, and will continue to fail. Every aspect of this power-play has been ill-conceived and poorly executed.

There are lessons. 🧵on Machiavelli, wealth, and power: Though few of us will be vying for power on the national stage, all of us have to think about influence, relationships, and objectives within our local environments.

The core dynamic at play in this saga is the clash of wealth versus institutional power.

The death penalty is good and Christian - and we need it back.

My thoughts on Rotherham, & why there's a universal sense that justice has not been served.

'Justice' has become entirely managerial and amoral, & thus has forgotten the necessary & legitimate virtue of vengeance. UK government fails us now for exactly the same reason that it failed those young girls then:

It treats criminal punishment entirely as a policy concern for the optimal ‘management’ of society - on par with other managerial concerns such as ‘race relations’...

Christianity is not a pacifist religion.

Every Christian should know the history of this misunderstanding.

The Church Fathers were less concerned with violence than idolatry.

A thread about empire, patriotism, violence, martyrdom, and loyalty in the Early Church. There was a time when the scholarly consensus was that the Early Church Fathers were unanimous in their advocacy of pacifism.

This ‘classic consensus’ was assumed by many of the great authors of our sphere, and appears in important texts like Spengler’s ‘Decline of the West’.

S. Korea spent $200b trying to increase its birthrate. Hungary spends 5% of GDP.

Both are failing.

Yet the small country of Georgia spiked its birthrate massively without spending a dollar. How?

They understood that fertility isn't about money. It's about status. Before explaining the importance of status, let's quickly note that the common explanations of why fertility is collapsing cannot be the whole story.

As the above countries and the Nordics show, giving people economic benefits to have children doesn't move the needle.

Heaven vs. Valhalla: which is more exciting?

A defence of Heaven, drawing upon the work of exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger.

Heaven is neither a mere church service nor a peaceful village on a hill.

What does it mean to look upon the face of God?

Staggering intensity.

🧵 In Heaven we are given unfiltered access to God: we no longer look upon him as ‘through a glass, darkly’.

And yet we remain finite beings perceiving an infinite Being.

Although we can see Him perfectly we can never understand Him in totality.

Too many analyses of the future of AI miss a key factor:

The regime forcing the tech to advance the grand progressive project.

This leads to tech-literate but politically naive predictions.

The reality will be neither utopian nor apocalyptic.

But it will be deranged. 🧵 The regime wants stable growth.

Thus it always attempts to shape the populations it controls to be more productive and manageable.

How the regime defines ‘productivity’ is determined by economic and ideological priorities at any point in time.

How many of us have been seduced by the Spengler passage on the Roman centurion who died at his post in Pompeii?

But isn't there something faintly horrifying in these lines, a touch of madness and despair?

🧵 on Spengler, Tolkien, hope, and Northern Courage. Spengler's lines are beautiful but horrifying.

Lurking behind them one finds a grotesque superimposition of an exquisite virtue - noble steadfastness in the face of death - and the madness of an ignoble vice - nihilistic despair.

Since people enjoyed my conversation with @exit_org about life in woke big tech as a white guy, sharing some funny moments:

1) HR announces that 3% of workforce is now disabled - and they intend to increase those numbers. Worried looks from colleagues (what are they planning?) 2) Social organizer plans team social at some quite radical gay bar to be progressive. Small group of compliant normies attends and emerges looking shellshocked

The medieval Icelandic hymn 'Hear, Smith of the Heavens' is hauntingly beautiful.

Yet the vision of God as a smith seems conflicted, echoing an ancient pagan understanding.

🧵 on Catholic 'inculturation' in a strange time of kings, demons, myths, miracles, and warring faiths: "Heyr himna smiður" (literally "Hear, smith of the heavens") is a medieval Icelandic hymn.

It written on his deathbed by chieftain and poet Kolbeinn Tumason in the 13th-century, as his head was caved in by a rock.

Spengler’s body of work appears to be charged with a divine spark.

It imbues titanic vision on those that make contact with it.

Consider Asimov's magnum opus, Foundation.

Or author James Blish, who, writing in 1978, prophesized the next 50 years of history.

THREAD:

"In such a period, politics becomes an arena of competing generals and plutocrats, under a dummy ruler chosen for low intelligence and complete moral plasticity, who amuses himself and keeps the masses distracted from their troubles with bread, circuses and brushfire wars."

The healthy conservative instinct that is destroying conservatism:

Respectability.

In times of madness, the desire for respectability must be cast off.

On this, Christians and Nietzscheans align.

Why? THREAD: Respectability is derived from maximally embodying consensus morality.

It is the satisfaction of knowing that those around you admire you for who you choose to be.

In healthy times, it incentivizes men to act in unison with their brethren.

Sam Hyde’s (@wigger) attacks on Hassan Piker represent the next great artistic frontier:

Action art.

A return to the rawest forms - physicality, emotion, violence.

Captivating, undeniable, and breaking through cultural programming.

Why? THREAD: Contemporary art’s connection to reality has been severed by over-intellectualization.

This decline is a symptom of a sterilized society, untethered to beauty and truth.

It is time for the Right to take up its rightful role as the true artistic avant-garde.

The right should not promote shows just because they are implicitly right-wing.

Subtext is wasted on normies, who need explicit instructions.

Take Harry Potter, which draws its seductive power from reactionary undercurrents, but spawned an army of ultra-lib fans.

Why? THREAD: First we must clarify an important distinction, using terms that I’m going to bastardize from the philosophy of language:

Denotation vs. Connotation.