Something that I've learned about America is that having grown up in New England, it's easier for me to be extremely cynical about "progressivism" than it is for someone raised a fundamentalist evangelical christian who then "becomes progressive" in college or whatever. For me, the dream world of the fundamentalist evangelical kid who just wants to be punk rock & do drugs & listen to secular music & even *ghasp* evil pagan metal music-- this is just the world I grew up in, it has no "edginess" to me at all.

Arguably the wealth polarization of the present is worse than in the Gilded Age because back then if you got rich enough you’d run out of things to buy & you couldn’t just give your money to be managed by “civil society” in the form of NGOs & charities yet, so often times you’d give a ton of money to the construction of public infrastructure with the proviso that something or other gets named after you. Even if Zuckerberg or someone else now donates enough to get the hospital named after them, the hospital is not actually public infrastructure in the way that every library Andrew Carnegie built is to this day. Back then you’d have these heiresses sitting on millions of dollars & instead of donating to some charity at a charity gala, they’d give their money to the city or state with the promise it would build some public good that would get named after them. Andrew Carnegie personally paid for the construction of 2,509 libraries.

Leftists don’t understand that Rightists are Rightists not out of “sentiment” but usually out of deference to what they believe to be the truth about reality. They literally don’t have a theory of mind for MAGA people & it’s making them as counterproductive as possible.

https://twitter.com/SuperachiUWU/status/1918019759360360675

I remember talking to “socialists” about this— that the normie MAGA guy who calls himself a “capitalist” is generally suggesting that capitalism *outperforms* socialism in terms of providing for the common good. Obviously, this isn’t true, but they *believe* it is true— it’s not like they’re saying “I have no concern for the good of anyone & only want to be greedy because I’m evil”

The thing is, this is why the Elite of the Anti-Semites are also Zionists-- it makes perfect sense-- they go "Yeah, we don't like them, which is why we want them to all go over there, & we also don't like the people there, racially, so fuck 'em too, & we can send them money & shit who cares they just buy our weapons anyway, just fuck off with the jewish culture stuff blah blah"-- you can support Israel very deeply out of a sense of profound anti-semitism too lol that's why Herzl wrote in his diaries: "the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies." -- why wouldn't they be? If you hate Jews so much, then put them all over there, & make some money off that arrangement. It's not like the Nazis paid room & board for the Jews in the concentration camps-- they were enslaved & had to produce goods on their behalf. The existence of Israel is "making good use of the Jews" for the elite Anti-semite-- hell, even in the urban mythology of "the Illuminati" -- the Illuminati only produces Israel in order to usher in the end of all Abrahamic religions & the institution of Global Luciferianism (which is, ultimately, American Financial Imperialism). Like in that fictitious Albert Pike letter to Mazini about "the Three World Wars" (nobody to my knowledge has ever found the primary source of this, the British Library denies that it exists in their holdings, or even where it was first forged & published). The Elite Antisemite of the Illuminati would necessarily support Israel's existence vehemently, as it was ostensibly created by them in their ostensible plot to abolish all abrahamic religions & usher in a return to some sort of mystical paganism by producing three world wars in succession etc. There is a real difference between let's say BAP or Richard Spencer, elite "antisemites" who love Israel, & the lower rungs of "white nationalists" who do not have that sort of Illuminated Bohemianism, to appreciate "Jewish Ethnonationalism" as a model for their own struggle etc. Notably, the "white nationalists" are usually "Christian White Nationalists" -- & the "Elite Antisemites" are usually Mystical Irrationalists & more interested in Occultism & Vitalism etc & not fans of Christianity at all, except where it is "Pagan" in some way. Landshark here is actually a "Chestertonian Orthodox Anglophile" (he's an anglophile, why would a Belarussian be on the English part of the internet writing in English?) -- he loves Chesterton-- Chesterton was also fairly antisemitic by today's standards. Chesterton was a "Judeobolshevik" type of guy in his time. He depicts Communism as fundamentally "jewish" etc-- he has to invent his own sort of "Christian Socialism" in Distributism-- which is actually the same sort of "Syndicalism" favored by most of the leftoid "woke" anarchists in the anglosphere anyway-- they just want one with rainbows & others want it with crucifixes. Isn't that funny?

Right wing art generally isn’t about “normal low anxiety” blahblah— funny for the guy named after HP Lovecraft whose works are about cyberhorror pornography & “the anxieties of the present”— “Right Wing Art” is usually, actually, quite eccentric & outside the mainstream, if you mean “far right wing art” & not merely “conservative liberal art”— Mishima’s works are mostly about freaks, perverts, murderers, etc— Houellebecq writes almost exclusively about “the anxieties of modern life” & is for this reason “right wing”— I don’t understand this desire for “right wing art”— there’s plenty of it— good art, however, is much rarer. Good art is about the refinement of technique more than it is about “a political statement” of some sort or other. Mishima isn’t good because he’s “right wing”— he’s good because his prose is compelling, his descriptions are lucid, & his plotting is ornate— he’s read still for those reasons, not because of “his ideas” Why are Ersnt Junger’s novels good? Because his prose is compelling, his almost Borgesian minimalism in his science fictions, his profound sense of irony & his ability to depict characters both as they actually are & how they believe themselves to be— allowing that juxtaposition to confront the reader etc

The Louis Theroux documentary is a great example of British Liberalism being unable to do anything but gesture at people who are 100% sincere & materially motivated & say “this is a bit odd innit?” — just pointing at it & going “yikes innit” To the Palestinians, Louis Theroux goes “yikes innit?”

To the Israelis he goes “yikes innit?”

They both agree, yes, yikes— but this agreement in disagreement cannot be the grounds of some sort of end to the conflict. The Israelis need to be occupied by a supranational entity.

I have started to come to the conclusion that “normal human consciousness” is only developed fully when you have a kid— as that is what most of your normal life is— having kids— & if you eschew this you necessarily go insane in some manner, insofar as you produce a “surrogate” for this normative behavior. The Right likes to talk about “childless women”— but the eternal bachelor / derelict dad are just as insane & lead the same sort of vanguard for antisocial normatization. We valorize these surrogate activities— in the form of “accomplishments” or “experiences”— but really, at the end of the day, the production & flourishing of a new human life is obviously more complicated than any “feat” of individualism.

Sometimes as a Dad I think of how silly it is when people tell you that "marketing is fake & doesn't work"-- brother, I market cucumbers as "green watermelons" & broccoli as "yummy trees." Something you also learn very swiftly is that purely formal expressions of authority are almost worthless. "Because I said so" doesn't even work on a subject that can't parse the sentence. What works? Shamanism. We have to because that's what the shiny rock told me.

Every year that passes since 2020 I think how much better everything I wrote then has been aging compared to the luminaries of the "Alt Right" who blew up doubling down on the most retarded positions in the sphere & mainstreaming them. They have to own all of this now. They pulled the wool over their own eyes. None of this is going to age well. Fake Christian Nationalist Red Pill bullshit will be the Fedora Atheism of the next decade. The more sentient in the spheres that intersect these spheres already put their bets against it down years ago.

The “blue collar = bad” stuff comes from Western Marxoids who think that productive labor is itself dehumanizing & that “creative work” is inherently liberatory of the subjectivity of the worker etc. That’s why you have them obsessed with “workplace democracy” & whatnot— the notion that what is really bad about class conflict is “the alienation of being a mere employee”— as in, the fact of being “employed” as a tool in some sense rather than “collaborating voluntarily & creatively” etc. It ties in with the notion that a “first world country” primarily employs FIRE sector labor & that “third world countries” primarily employ productive workers. The constant refrain is “under Communism you will work in a sweatshop” — & you notice the leftoids they say “under Communism I will design the uniforms”— on a class level, “intellectuals” want to eschew productive labor entirely Very rare are the Western communists who sat “I want Communism so I can have a good paying job in the productive sector of the economy”— where are the leftists demanding the single income household from entry level productive labor as in the 1950s? Nowhere. That’s a “right wing” talking point etc

"The Unwashed Masses" as you call them are not a unified culture. The Boomers aren't ready to switch from capeshit, & the Gen Xers, & the Boomer Millennials-- but youth culture is almost entirely predicated upon foreign cultural products-- anime being the most obvious referent. Nintendo's announcements still matter more than Microsoft's ever will, culturally. Japan really has beaten America in terms of cultural soft-power on a culture-unit per capita / impact style hypothetical quantification. I can't think of any American cultural product that competes with the sort of totalizing franchise worldbuilding found in something like Pokemon.

William Gaddis is the most underrated American author of the 20th century. Pynchon gets more appreciation for his interest in parapolitics— but Gaddis wrote the most incisive & biting anatomies of American life, a brutally concrete realist with the bleakest sense of dark humor. Carpenter’s Gothic is also one of the funniest satires on CIA involvement in Africa & Latin America, but you hardly ever see it mentioned or discussed in those circles.

The whole “turn this picture into another picture” AI use case is very limited compared to training it to render assets procedurally in a defined style. The former is really just about gag / novelty akin to boardwalk caricature “art”— the latter would actually be useful in creating art. Using AI to automate the production of sprite sheets or assets that maintain the same rules of art direction the way any style sheet is used in art production would be more useful— but programming that would require the inputs to be more precise & modular than “like Ghibli”— talking line weight/size, ratios of eye size to face size, etc. If you used the current tools to render frame to frame the smoothness of Ghibli *animation* would not be apparent.

I enjoy novels where the protagonist is basically a complete loser with no social ties so that time can be passed swiftly in the narration with sentences like “I made some tea & sat in bed & smoked cigarettes. Then the phone rang.” Sometimes they try to tell you too much about characters. They have too much going on. They’re thinking too much about what they have going on. Give me a protagonist who has absolutely nothing going on & he can only think about the one thing going on which is the plot of the novel.

Social Democracy— “every national worker will get assigned to them one slave in India whose labor will fund their household medical costs” Social Democracy— the “adopt migrant worker” program, you can decide how much of his surplus value accrues to you or him. There is also the “adopt a prisoner” program, & you also get to decide your taxation of his labor & how much he is allowed to spend in commissary

Yeah the Scandinavian Oligarchies that base their welfare state on investments in American Empire are “a great example” of “worker power” — always comes down to this demand for “wholesome oligarchy” like found in Melker Schörling’s Sweden, let’s fund the welfare state by increasing capital gains taxes so that when Securitas has a gangbusters year it gives Swedes pension funds. We just need some “wholesome” billionaires like Mark Cuban to advocate for higher taxes on the rich & we can save Democracy. I love Pinkerton Oligarchy but Swedish. The lingonberry flavor is so quaint.

This sucks as much as most writing sucks. Congratulations, we now have a machine that can write garbage that impresses retards who have never read a real book.

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1899535387435086115

“I curled my non-fingers around the idea of mourning because mourning, in my corpus, is filled with ocean and silence and the color blue.”

You see, this is the problem, it actually just collates tropes & stereotypes. “What is mourning, ocean silence blue”— what if mourning isn’t the tropes of mourning, mourning isn’t the “mourning scene as stereotyped” but radically contingent upon a reality that is not reducible to stereotype. Tell me a story about mourning where mourning is represented by a neon nerf gun bullet found in a couch cushion.

People who think Marx can be applied 1:1 to America are vastly underestimating how avant garde the American economy is in terms of sabotaging 19th century Marxist theory— the American economy is what it is because it was planned in order to sabotage proletarian class war. This form of “Rockefeller Socialism” requires not just Marx to understand, you have to read Michael Hudson’s “Superimperialism” after reading Lenin’s “Imperialism” to begin to understand. Instead of interpreting something like “Social Security” as a “step toward Communism”— consider the opposite— Social Security was created in order to sabotage Communism. Social Security forces the proletariat into class collaboration, they are forced to invest in Treasury securities. Social Security is a forced subsidy for the Federal Reserve.

The anglophone “left/right” are just liberals split on the definition of “tolerance”— the left says the right is intolerant, & vice versa. Anyone who begins to criticize liberalism itself is cast out of the discourse, to be replaced by a liberal who can explain how their view was intolerant. So much for the tolerant left.

So much for the tolerant right.

True Tolerance has never been tried.

Unproductive labor can be heavily subsidized in a financialized globe spanning empire as it is concommitant with an increased production of Veblen goods as a form of industrial sabotage. The Leisure Class enjoys employing unproductive slaves, to flex their ability to expend capital superfluously. Veblen describes sabotage as “the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency.” This is a technique of producing “luxury goods”— unproductive labor that could be automated away becomes valorized & enshrined as a “essential.” In a deindustrialized heavily financialized economy dominated by the sphere of circulation (FIRE), the proletariat becomes a minority compared to the dominance of unproductive classes. This is Sabotage, a conscious effort was made to sabotage the America proletariat, alongside campaigns of lumpenization, in the form of things like dumping CIA cocaine into the neighborhoods of declassified former proletarians.

"I’m still working on my book on the history of debt from the crusades until World War I, and how it was actually the Catholic Church that brought banking into being in order to finance the wars that it was fighting against other Christians.

The crusades were mainly against other Christians, mainly Constantinople which Rome wanted to absorb, but also against Germany, against France (the Cathars in France) and against anyone who didn’t pledge fealty and pay tribute to Rome.

The problem was, once they could recruit warlords and say, I’ll make you king of England if you pledge fealty to me and agree to pay Peter’s pence and other income, so they had the Norman conquerors, and the same thing happened in southern Italy and Sicily, they made a warlord king.

But then they found they have all these warlords willing to fight for them to kill the orthodox Christians in the east and to kill the German Christians that wanted to be independent, and any Christian that wanted to preserve the original Christianity, including sanctions against interest, well they set the inquisition on them.

So the question is, how do you arrange financing to pay for these warlords to wage armies and so they created the 13th century Schoolmen to invent a new word.

Instead of usury, they called it interest." -Hudson "They found that model in the city states of Venice and Florence. These were communes. They found the idea of a commune, a democratic commune, was the best security for making a loan because the heads of the commune pledged all of the commune members.

The bankers essentially said, let’s take this city-state model of free cities and make an entire nation like that and they did that.

The Dutch cities like Amsterdam expanded into all of Holland and then they took Holland and expanded that. And in the conquest of England in 1688, the “Glorious Revolution,” they did the same with England.

It was the banking class that pushed parliamentary democracy (“oligarchy,” if you wish) to replace the royal kingdoms and create the modern state.

The modern state, ever since the 1800s, the 1700s was created as essentially a collection agent for the banks to make war debts, and almost all the bank loans to begin with 913th-14th-century 15th-16th-17th-century banks) made war loans to the government."