But you see, I had an ulterior motive in posting it; I am now going to use it as a vehicle to point out the intellectual paucity of most Historians.

***

Back in the day, I made the Mistake of taking History at University.  This is part of the reason I feel sympathy for the Occupussies, and it helped lead to the present Disgust I feel with the post-secondary shysters.

You see, here’s the thing; History ought not to be a joke-degree.

English is pure subjectivity; Art History is a minor at best; Sociology, PoliSci, and all their associated minors are nothing Ideology masquerading as Analysis.  But History?  When it’s done right, it’s a Science.

A handicapped Science, granted – there is certainly a deficit of experimentation – but when practiced professionally it involves data-collection and observation, hypothesization (which is then compared to new data), and finally theory.  The goal of history is to try and understand these aggregate-patterns that us oversexed chimps fall into, to develop a heuristic which informs us as to what data is relevant to the trends underway, and how to interpret the biases of ancient authors (and through those, realize which contemporary biases are informing us today).  There’s a lot of muddling, sure – but in the end, it’s a pursuit of an Objective Truth.

That’s the theory, anyway.

***

Let me tell you about my sister.  She wears the Mantle of the Feminist, while living the life of a Traditional Housewife.  Her husband’s a blue-collar Man’s Man, her children are well-disciplined and intelligent, she’s an amazing cook…

…and she insists on doing joke-degrees part-time.  Her current favourite is History.

So over the Christmas break, I tried to have a civil conversation with her; I shared the naescent hypothesis I wrote about last time, fully aware of her massive Hate-On for all things militaristic.  I figured a Historical Hypothesis which was anti-military (or at least, anti-joining-the-military-service) would acclimate well with her neural patterns.  However, before I could finish speaking she said-

“I think you have a very naive view of History.”

Rather than pointing out I had two years of Official Training over her, I responded with an articulate “Um, what?”

“When has war ever accomplished anything?”

“Alexander took over the known world.”

“And then his empire crumbled!”

“…Cleopatra had white skin because of him; he reshaped all of those regions.” She snorted. “Well, then what about Rome?  They re-wrote the pagan religions, spread a common language to all of Europe, built a system of highways, spread Christianity, and unified Europe into a common culture.”

“The Germans took them out!”

“800 years after it was founded!”

“Whatever, you’re just a war monger – and I’m a History Student!” At which point she stormed off.

This is why I tend to avoid family get-togethers.

***

Modern History isn’t about trying to understand our roots, or document the great events and turning points, or to understand the human condition; rather, the Modern Historian – like all of her sisters in the Dept. of Useless Degrees – already knows what The Truth is (after all, if Stephen J Gould and Noam Chompsky said it, it must be true!).  They have their Paradigm, their End Of History State, and if the facts contradict either of those – well, the facts must be biased!

It’s a sorry state of affairs.

Back in the early days of the War on Terror, when I was fledging Free Market Leftist, the schools weren’t quite so bad.  Nowadays Academia has been seeping in Leftist Juices for so long that well-known, and thoroughly proven Facts are Evil & Racist (even amongst STEM degrees majors!), but back then there was still a bit of critical thought going on…

A very little bit.

When I finally dropped out it wasn’t because of the incompetent professors (though I had more than a few of those); it was because of the incompetent students.

With a few rare exceptions, the student-body in most of my classes were the non-thinking, non-questioning, maybe-I’ll-teach-high-school morons.  Dull, doughy girls (and a few insipid, ballless boys) who sat still and wrote down every fact the Professor droned on about, without ever understanding the context; the Professor, for his part, uninspired by yet another Memorize and Regurgitate Student Body, simply skimmed the surface of the textbook.

What a contemptible lot they were.

The final straw was one professor used a BBC documentary to teach two-thirds of his classes during my final semester – I guess no-one ever told him that documentaries are entertainment, not education.

So that year I dropped out of University, quit the army, and moved out West.  My only regret is not doing it sooner.

If there’s any young kids out there, fascinated by the Deeper Questions of Humanity – philosophy, history, literature – by all means, pursue those interests.  Just don’t do it through the University System.  Best case scenario, you’ll live like my sister – enjoying and obeying all the dictates of the Patriarchy, while putting on airs of being a fashionable Leftist.  More likely, however, you’ll wind up impoverished, protesting a corporation for something they didn’t do.

Either way, you’ll remain ignorant, and you might even develop mental blocks against True Errudition.

I’ve learned more on my own, and through the Internet, than I ever did as a student.  You should only pay for education if there’s a trade certificate and a job in it for you; if it’s wisdom you seek, then the only true path is the Life of the Autodidact.

Never forget – the Devil was the first Whig.  In our modern world the Father of Lies is in charge of our Education.  Don’t drink the koolaid.

In the past two-hundred years, I can’t think of a single inter-state war that accomplished anything.

On and off, I’ve been brushing up on my history with the Khan Academy – a site hosting professional University lectures, which I highly recommend (though, like University itself, you should take them with a grain of salt).  I’ve been going through the lectures on the French Revolution, and that’s what triggered it.

Napoleon invaded all the way to Russia – but today, the borders of France are largely the same as they were before he took power.  Hitler did the same thing, with the same result.  WWI was a sadistic joke, Korea accomplished nothing, neither did Vietnam, and as for our adventures in Afghanistan…

It seems that Obama is negotiating with our Arch Enemies the Taliban.

While it’s obvious that these wars have affected the world (even effected the world) – American hegemony & Canadian independence from WWII, for exaple, or the spread of Republican ideals from Napoleon, leading to the unification of the Prussian city-states – it would be hard to argue that these results were Intentions and Goals of the belligerents.

The Utility of War is supposed to be that it enriches the victorous party.  That’s how it worked for Alexander.  That’s how it worked for Rome.  That’s how it works for chimpanzees, cavemen, and gang-bangers in LA.  You acquire territory and resources when you win.

Up until the 18th century, that is; then, all of a sudden, all you get from war is death, destruction, and a tumble of the dice as to which country comes out on top.  Borders don’t change; and there’s no profit to be had.

The Utility of War seem to have vanished.  Why?

One possible explanation is that the Atom Bomb prevents us from waging Total War; that is to say, are we pulling our punches, engaging in Police Actions rather than a Proper War.  Could it be this lack of Will to Power which is preventing conflict from ending decisively?

No, that’s not it – the Atom Bomb is a recent development.  Prior to its development, both the Allies and the Axis were engaged in Total War; they might not have been salting the earth & slaughtering the women and children, but neither were the Romans during most of the conflicts – Carthage was the exception.  The explicit aims of the Axis were to dominate eastern Europe and southern China – to take them over, destroy the local government, and ultimately absorb them.

This was also Napoleon’s goal, and neither did his methods Bar any Holds.

We’ve tried Total War, prior to the Atom Bomb, and it didn’t work.

Second idea – could it be that the Peace of Westphalia, in establishing specific national boundaries, ‘matured’ the relations between countries?  Did the development of nationalism made populations too unruly to conquer?

Again, no – we go back to Alexander, or Ghengis Khan, and find them in a similar situation.  While you can argue that they didn’t have to deal with The State as we know it today, they did have regions with a dominant religion, culture, and political class – close enough for Government Work.  Alexander took over the Persian Empire, parts of India, and the Egyptians.  Ghengis Khan took over pretty-much everyone.  These weren’t groups of European serfs, who cared not a whif who they paid their taxes to – these were ethnically homogenous groups chafing under the rule of foreign conquerers.

And it worked.

Both the Khans and Alexander’s empires eventually fractured – the Cult of Personality had been the glue holding them together – but note I said fractured, not crumbled.  The political establishment they put in place lasted for centuries, the landscape had been transformed, there was no reversion to the prior governments.

Thanks to Alexander, Cleopatra was white.

No, it can’t be matured relations or nationalism that’s rendering war impotent – the Druids were chock full of that, but it didn’t stop them from learning Latin.

So, a third possibility then – technology.  As the old saying goes, God made all men, but Samuel Colt made them all equal.

This one grabs some traction with me.  It would certainly explain why – after ten years, and with the most highly trained militaries in the world – a bunch of fourteen year old kids with forty year old AKs are fighting us to a draw in the Middle East.

This brings up anther corollary – while war has been a Dead Duck for the past two hundred years, revolution has gone through a different pattern.  During the 1800s revolution was about causing so much grief to the imperial power, that they’d let the client state go.  This is what the Americans did – this is what the Hatians did, and almost succeeded.  This is what the Boers tried, and failed, because Britain was able to bring enough Force to Bear to shut the blighters down.

No revolutionary army could withstand the force of a professional, 19th century military – though sometimes they could create enough pain to suceed in their goals.

By the time the twentieth century came around, this had started to change; the proliferation of firearms meant that pretty much any revolution would succeed.  Look at the spread of Communism, or more lately Democracy in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, these modern revolutionaries tend to be invariably Evil.  I trust I don’t have to remind you, gentle reader, of the sheer ammount of torturous death that Communism gave to us – or the psychotic policies that Hitler’s coup brought to the world – and as for the Arab Spring, well, Muslim Brotherhood sums up my argument.  Only the Left can run a revolution.

The Shahs that actually run Iran (rather than the idiot mouth piece people seem to think is running the place) are generally smart enough not to start a war with Israel or the United States.  What do you think would happen if a proper Democracy were running that place?  All I’m saying is that you might want to stock up on Potatssium Iodide pills.

So this seems to be the stage of history we’re at: militaries are utterly pointless.  They don’t accomplish what they’re supposed to accomplish for the country – though they might very well accomplish what Certain Individuals want them to accomplish… but as far as you or I are concerened, they just Eat People.  This is because of the Empowerment of the Individual through Superior Firepower – but, just like Democracy, the Individual is only powerful when the Mentality of the Mob takes over.  An armed citizenry will certainly reduce criminal activity on behalf of criminals, but it will not reduce the criminal activity of the government – it could replace it and grow it, but it would not shrink it.

Meanwhile, Obama is preparing for a War with Iran.

Interesting Times Indeed.

He’s doing more than just blogging – he’s actively laying out coursework for your own edification, from several books (down on the left-hand side-bar).  I might go through The Divine Comedy next – or not; I hate poetry.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say on the subject – if you want to understand Rothbard, go read Rothbard.  He says it much better than I could.  So for the Good of Humanity, go check it out.

However, I would like to riff on Rothbard & Entrepreneurship, if you don’t mind.

***

In the second chapter, Rothbard discusses the causes of less-than-full employment (employment meaning the people who want to work – obviously you’ll have a certain number of people switching careers at any given time, and they’re not included in this since they’re not immediately desiring employment).  The most obvious cause of unemployment is government price controls – i.e. the minimum wage.  Business owners can only budget so much for labour, before it eats into their bottom line.  They might want hire 10 people at $6/hour, but only hire 6 people at $10/hour – leaving for with no income.

Remembering that money has no inherent value – $1 is only worth what you can buy with it.  Having full employment at lower wages is the more desirous outcome.  Retailers and landlords will adjust to the reality of the situation; possibly by selling more bread and less cake.

Why has no one photoshopped Marie Antoinette into this meme yet?

However, there’s a second, more insidious cause of unemployment…

Workers, for example, become persuaded of the great importance of preserving the mystique of the union: of union solidarity in “not crossing a picket line,” or not undercutting union wage rates. Unions almost always reinforce this mystique with violence, but there is no gainsaying the breadth of its influence. To the extent that workers, both in and out of the union, feel bound by this mystique, to that extent will they refuse to bid wages downward even when they are unemployed. If they do that, then we must conclude that they are unemployed voluntarily, and that the way to end their unemployment is to convince them that the mystique of the union is morally absurd.[9] However, while these workers are unemployed voluntarily, as a consequence of their devotion to the union, it is highly likely that the workers do not fully realize the consequences of their ideas and actions. The mass of men are generally ignorant of economic truths. [Emphasis mine.]

This is where Entrepreneurship comes in.

I’ve long been of the suspicion that we have Far Too Many large companies in our modern world.  While there are certainly some industries that can benefit from economies of scale (cars, computers, and Noisy Shiny Crap) but the majority – I suspect – are top-heavy and unwieldly, unable to improvise or break from procedure.  The small business owner, on the other hand, is Versatile; for instance, I know a man who makes Trampolines for a living, who recently built some custom netting for a sky-scraper.

Good luck finding that at Walmart.

And yet – large megacorps abound.  And the reason is obvious.  It’s the regulations, stoopid!

I can’t fathom how small business owners do it – personally, I have trouble filling out my income taxes each year; the columns make me break out in hives.  These guys, meanwhile, take care of pay-roll taxes, somehow know the regulations for having 10 vs 15 employees, deal with property assesors and environmental inspectors, manage, lead, and train their employees, and yet still somehow find time to actually Git Er Dun.

Sounds like a nightmare to me.

So here we see the real economy of scale: it’s not just producing 1000 widgets instead of 10 – it’s because hiring an HR manager, a Lawyer, and an Accountant full-time is cheaper than a la carte.  The useless bureaucrats who clog this society (both in and out of government) are the real drag – that’s why small business is almost exclusively high-end boutique, or else immigrant run nepotism (that way they don’t have to deal with HR).

Even “government loans for small business” skew the reality; a lemonade stand should be making lemonade, not filling out forms for free money, so that they can afford to fill out all those other forms.

***

The economic inefficiency of megacorps (who manage to survive through punitive regulations) is just part of the problem, however; Rothbard’s point about the stupidity ignorance of the masses brings up the other important aspect.

Working as a salary man offers deceptive security.  Just as someone who’s never been in a fist fight thinks that the Cops Will Protect Them, the salary man assumes that his 401k plan will be worth something when he retires; he assumes that the Value of the things he owns comes from their price tag, rather than what they’re innately worth.

Entrepreneurs seldom fall for this illusion.

As Rothbard says, the Entrepreneur is an expert at predicting the future.  They instinctively analyze the market, predicting what will be profitable and what won’t.  Uncertainty is at the heart of what they do – nothing is guaranteed, as they apply their wits and skill to build a future for themselves, their company, and their employees.

The Entrepreneur lives in the Real World; even their employees, to some extent, rub up against this Real World when they cash out the till each night.  The Entrepreneur doesn’t mistake the dollar for having an innate value – he recognizes that it’s just a fungible (and less fun) version of gasoline.  He is a Real Man, and a pleasure to speak to.

Compare to the office worker, where go-along-to-get-along matters as much, if not more, than real productivity.  Whose goal is to tread water for the next 20 years until he can retire.  Who buys a new car because the service is guaranteed on it.  Who follows the recommended diet plan and runs marathons.  Who votes for smoking bans.  Who votes for alcohol taxes.

Who votes for more bailouts for his corporate masters.

Singularity2050 wrote about the Misandry Bubble; I present you with the Employer Bubble.  What we need is more Entrepreneurs, and less megacorps.  We need more human beings, and less sheeple, as the term goes.  Bloody cavemen managed to survive without free healthcare or social security – yet somehow we – with all our cars, computers, and sports memorabilia – we need protection from the Indifference of Nature?

The dissolution of Reliable Employment has only just begun.

That old, grey mare; she ain’t what she used to be.

I’ve been working on a project.

A little background, first – as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I’d written a novel, found an agent, and things seemed to be moving forward in All The Right Ways, up until a month ago.  My agent had it submitted to a local sci-fi label, whose owner was a good old-fashioned Heinleinian Ubermensch – the sort of dude who can debate philosophy, or fix a car – and quite frankly, it was probably the best book they would have published in 2012.

They were showing interest, requesting additional chapters, it looked like it was a shoe-in, despite the odds…

And then, after sitting on it for 11 months, they replied to one of his emails saying “Thanks, it’s well written, but we’re not interested at this time.” Not a form letter, mind you – a quickly written email, from somebody important in the company.  Would have been nice if they could have explained why they didn’t want it, particularly after 11 months, eh?

This may sound disheartening, but both he and I have been in the game long enough to take it in stride.  We sat down with a bottle of whiskey the next night, and Strategized; obviously, a cold-call was in order – pulling out all the stops and using Deep Manipulation (“So you say no – let me ask you, is it because of A?  Or because of B?  You see, I’m going to frame this conversation.”).

We had it all planned out, my agent was going to nail down a time and date, but then… my mother insisted that I look into self publishing.

And Good God, she was right for once.

Even going back five years, self-publishing was little more than ‘vanity press’ – that is, authors who couldn’t hack it in the real world, and decided to delude themselves by paying cash to have their poorly-written, unoriginal, narcissistic screeds printed in hardcover; following which, the boxes of books would sit mouldering in their garage, while their wives slowly lost respect for them.

In your case, Adam, I don’t think that many people will be laughing.

Needless to say, I wanted no part of that – but I was being an idiot.  The world is changing and I know it – didn’t I just write a post where I pissed all over traditional media?  Why did I still want the ‘pride’ of having an official label licence my book?

Traditionally, publishers have provided three things for a young author: Quality Control, to assure the public that the book is worth buying; printing and distribution management (books are heavy, bulky, and typesetting is a pain); and, finally, marketing.

Do they still do any of those?

Right off the bat, we know that Quality Control is a joke – if Fred isn’t enough to convince you, then the shelves full of John Ringo, paint-by-numbers, military sci-fi should.  The people reading the slush-pile are English Majors, after all – and you show me an English Major who knows what good writing looks like, and I’ll show you a Man who openly despises his degree.  They wouldn’t know a good writer if he bit them on the ass.  So – pride in the name of the company on the spine?  No thanks.  Readers stopped giving a damn about that ages ago.

Second, the printing and distribution – up until recently, printing a book was a lot of work.  Publishing mills would churn out books at no less than 1000 per batch, because of the sheer sunk cost of prepping the machines per-book.  Once again, those days are over with.  We’ve got these things call computers, now – Print On Demand is the Big New Thing, let alone digital e-books.  Self-publishing companies will take care of that for you, for a nominal fee.

Third, we’ve got marketing – and given that this is what I do for a living I think I’m qualified to speak on it.

Your traditional publisher – if you’re anyone other than Stephen King – is going to spend, tops, $2000 marketing your book; that’s nothing but a crapshoot.  Your typical small-business spends more than that each year.  With $2000 you’re rolling the dice – maybe some literary critic will fall in love with you, for god knows what reason, and you’ll Make It Big… but the odds aren’t with you.

So – because of all of that – the cold call never happened.  If by any chance the Anonymous Publishing Company is reading this – I bear no ill will towards you guys.  I wish you the best, but I’m simply not interested in doing business with you.  There’s more money in it for me if I fly solo.

***

So that’s the background – but it’s not the eponymous Secret Project of this post.

You see, upon reflection, As I Walk These Broken Roads is not what I want my First Novel to be.  Now don’t get me wrong, it’s great – on the old Tucker Max Message Board it was described as “The post-apocalyptic, feel-good story of the year!” It contains themes of brotherhood, ontology, the nature of violence, tribalism, and anarchy – and as one commentator described “I din’t think it was possible to write a car chase, and have it be exciting,” – in other words, it is good, hard science fiction, well written, and the characters are solid: overall, it is a damn good book.

But it has been put on the back burner for now, because it is not a good first book.

Nowadays I’m known as an alt-right blogger – not as a writer, per se.  So I asked myself: what sort of book would you guys be interested in?  Then I went a step further – in keeping with my recent post over on In Mala Fide, I asked: what sort of book would be socially responsible?  Broken Roads is – if you’ll allow it – too timeless.  Right now I want to write something that directly addresses the challenges we face in the world today.

And thus the unnamed Secret Project was born.

Some time ago, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a post on the Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence:

Any professional negotiator knows that to control the terms of a debate is very nearly to control the outcome of the debate.  If you start out by thinking of The Matrix, it brings to mind marching robot armies defeating humans after a long struggle – not a superintelligence snapping nanotechnological fingers.  It focuses on an “Us vs. Them” struggle, directing attention to questions like “Who will win?” and “Who should win?” and “Will AIs really be like that?”  It creates a general atmosphere of entertainment, of “What is your amazing vision of the future?”

He’s brilliant as usual, but there is an inversion to the fallacy he describes – while a science fiction author might accidentally mislead, he also has the ability to illustrate concepts which, to our modern mind, seem counter-intuitive.  A perfect example is Robert A Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon.

Ostensibly a sci-fi adventure & romance romp, he wrote it primarily as a PR vehicle to defend eugenics – showing how the science (rather than the Nazi pseudo-science) could be used to benefit mankind.

So I asked myself: what sort of sane, ‘free’, society could we have in eighty years that is post-democratic, post-feminist (while acknowledging birth-control), with advanced automation (pre-singularity), advanced geriatrics, but without Utopian rose-coloured lenses?  What if we were allowed to flourish without this slave-state imposed upon us?  Conflict would still be there – of course it would! – but it wouldn’t be quite so soul crushing as it is now.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple weeks; sitting and thinking and working out the details.  Economic systems in a post-scarcity world, the evolution of religion, attitudes towards immigration and ethnic groups, plausible technological advances, and – most importantly of all – characters!

As Ferdinand said:

Sci-fi, the other nerd genre, suffers from the same problems, which is why the number of worthwhile science fiction writers in the past hundred years can be counted on one finger (Philip K. Dick).

And he’s largely correct.  Heinlein in particular is bad for this.  Not only is he anvilicious, but he really only has three characters which he uses in every story – himself, his wife Ginny, and a younger version of himself.

His characters have philisophical disagreements; my characters have arcs.

So that’s the Secret Project: a damn-good story in its own right, and a sort-of rallying point for all of us in the alt-right – you’re all going to disagree with some aspect of it (it’s not a Utopia, after all [literally the impractical, idealisitc city]) – but that’s not the point.  The point is to pull together all these separate strands of social, economic, and philosophical thought, and show how they might work in the 2090’s – because we sure as hell ain’t going back to the 1950s.  The tech alone won’t allow that.

So with that said, I’m breaking ground on page one tonight: wish me luck.

Go read it here.

That said, I find it sad to see one more nail put into the coffin of the American Experiment.  When Obama signs-off on Section 1021 (was 1031) of the NDAA, indefinite military detention of citizens will be enshrined in law.  The experiment has failed; but I have no schadenfreude for it.  No, in fact I’m angry – not simply because the sight of a once beautiful slut hitting the wall is a pointless and tragic waste – I’m angry because this Shredding of the Fifth Ammendmant is Stupidly Reckless and Evil.

Which may sound strange coming from someone who has openly stated his disbelief in the sacredness of Human Rights… and that’s exactly why I’m going to talk about it.  Because my stance is a bit more subtle than “Benjamin Franklin is spinning in his grave.”

When it comes to Human Rights (the Classical Liberal ones, not our modern UN claptrap), I just don’t buy into the belief that there’s anything special about them.  They are not written down on stone tablets; they are not a fundamental particle of nature; and for that matter, they’re not black and white.  It’s possible to have some freedom of speech, without having perfect freedom of speech.

Hell, human rights were never absolute, despite the poetic paens – as soon as that 200-year-old Bill was drafted, every single article was immediately whittled down to a reasonable level.  Fire in the Movie Theatre and all that.

But just because I don’t think they’re sancrosanct, doesn’t mean I’m against them – I love living in a Free Country.  When you’re part of the Alt-Tight, you’re not allowed to hate freedom of speech – it’s the only thing keeping us out of prison.  Freedom against sodomy laws?  Sign me up!  No, I loves-me some freedom of conscience, speech, association, and property.  In fact, in most of these cases I don’t think we have enough.

However, as a Civilized Man I must look beyond my own benefits; my pleasure is not an argument for legislation – Welfare Bums vote Liberal, because the left keeps them on the pogey, and they don’t care about anybody else.  We are better than that.  My support of the Fifth Ammendment – as well as the others – comes from a place of Reason.

Namely: you cannot have a stable society if you cannot predict the rules.

Any system of justice which is Consistent and Explicit is a good one – Don’t Do What Johnny Don’t Does – it’s easy to figure out, ergo I can live my life while avoiding The Fuzz.  If the system also has an accurate understanding of human nature, then that’s just a Bonus.

I mentioned freedom of speech and the Alt-Right earlier; I was half joking.  From what I can gather, this blog is arguably illegal in My Homeland – the key word being arguably.  As things stand in our Western Democracies, any spoken word beyond weather-related inanities is arguably illegal.  The right person just has to be offended.  And then it’s legality remains in question until an argument occurs.

Sex – there’s another one.  Where is the line between Consent and Rape?  Once upon a time we knew.  Now it’s a question of feeeelings.  Divorce?  Property?  Environmental – Trades & Tariffs?  Each one has been getting progressively more obscure.  It’s hard to tell if one is Obeying the Law anymore.

But this Fifth Ammendment shredding?  Now we’re truly in cuckoo land.

It is now possible to wind up in prison – indefinitely – merely because of an accusation (only available in the United States, coming to a Democracy near you soon!).  There is no way to prevent a false accusation – keeping your nose clean won’t do a damned thing.  We’re all of us, driving down the highway with a B.A.C of 0.11, one set of blinking cherries away from jail.

How can we possibly have a prosperous society under these conditions?  Already, entrepreneurs are afraid to invest in their businesses because of the jerking-about which the politicians are doing to the economy.  Now it’s not even safe to walk to work.

“We’ll only use it against terrorists.”

Ich bin ein Criminal – and don’t you forget it.

***

There’s one other aspect to this whole thing which is quite interesting; I heard it from commenter on another blog, (forget where) but I don’t think he realized the potential salvation in it.

Namely: the US government may have just given their stamp of approval to a military coup.  Some people are already petitioning for the Generals to do exactly this – pointing out that their Oath is to the Constitution (just as mine was to the Queen), and not the dog fuckers who are shredding it.

Whether this is a good thing or not really depends on what you think of the American military.

I can tell you that the Canadian Forces are full of good people; the only problem with Our Army is the elected representatives running it.  As I recall, Gen Rick Hillier (a Great Canadian if there ever was one) quit shortly after I did, silently, without explanation or fanfare.  I suspect his reasons mirrored my own – he got fed up with the political bullshit.

But when it comes to the Americans, I wonder… there’s too many damned generals in that country, and they seem downright eager to develop Terminator Technology for use against farmers (and not just in Iraq).  There’s a lot of money at the top, and some very close ties to the Military-Industrial Complex.  I wonder…

But then again, it would be hard to screw up worse than Obama; and Starship Troopers is recommended reading on Marine bases…

I’m sure it will turn out for the best.

EDIT: Just ran into this video courtesy of Captain Capitalism linking to Complementarian Loners.  Tell me that this guy won’t be down with the military taking over.

So without further ado, allow me to introduce Omnipitron at The Phantom Tollbooth: One man’s journey through blended family, ADHD, and rampant Misandry; he recently wrote a 5-part series which – in my eyes – contained a stunning insight.

Let’s see if my summary can do him justice.

The Negotiation

Part 1

Why the hell are women so pissed off?  Why these fifty years of feminism, of misandry, and idiotic social policies?  In the Manosphere we tend to look at women – plural – from the outside, examining only their Effects upon the world as if they were some sort of Black Box.  It is only with a woman – singular – that we begin to examine her Causes: hypergamy, fading looks, & her enslavement to her own emotions.  We seldom ask what caused Feminism in the first place.

To understand the cause, we need to realize that women don’t have that much control over their lives – not compared to men, anyway – and this has nothing to do with Patriarchy, or Male Privilege.

It’s their biology that put them Behind the Eight Ball when The Negotiation started.

Part 2

We all know what’s on the table – Men are offering status, Women are offering beauty.  Now here’s the rub:

Us red-blooded Men can (more-or-less) control our status through hard work and learning Game.  Furthermore, our assets appreciate over time – we are not competing with our cohort, nor are we competing with George Clooney – we are only competing with the few-dozen other men around us.  The George Soldinis of the world are rare; generally speaking, every dog has his day.

Women, on the other hand, have almost zero control over what they bring to the table.  It’s Genetics, baby, Genetics!  Stupid can be Taught, but Ugly is Forever – in fact, ugly gets worse as time progresses.  And then – as if that’s not bad enough – unlike us, Women are competing with Jessica Alba – as well as the latest crop of Delicious High School Graduates.

Can you see at this very early stage of the negotiation why women get so butt hurt about men and their ‘preoccupation’ with a woman’s appearance? Hey, us guys do get a little hot under the collar when it comes to some women and their ‘gold digging’ ways, but we can choose to make more money, to us it’s simply a choice (look at that, we have a choice) to improve our status.

Oh, but he’s not done yet…

Part 3

In this part, he brings up numerous examples of celbrity Spring/Autumn relationships.  Women, despite their focus on status, also value Youth and Good Looks to a certain degree; Aston Kutcher QED.

But even if a 20 year old woman should marry a 20 year old sparkly vampire good-looking millionaire, nature will be working against the relationship.  Her market value diminishes; his increases.  The occasional Woman such as Demi Moore might retain her looks well into her forties, but that doesn’t change the fact that Time is her Enemy.

Men grow more secure, and more powerful as they age, right up to the point of senescence.  Women feel a creeping fear that nobody will love them in twenty years, and they will fall into spinsterhood.

Men have a future to look forward to; women have only the past.

Part 4

In this part he rewinds a bit – let’s re-examine the biological principle.

Men – we really just need sex.  In a pinch masturbation will do just fine, particularly with freely available Internet Porn; it’s not ideal, but we can survive off it.  Women, on the other hand, need children… and the money to raise them.

Women need men like fish need WATER, it’s men who need women like a fish needs a bicycle,

Neither sperm banks, nor one-night-stands will settle a woman’s biological imperitive.  Ultimately she needs resources, and a lot of them, before she will be as “free” as a man.  Her assets in the Sexual Marketplace devalue, rapidly.  That is why she has opted for Divorce Theft.

1)      Since women have indirect control over their assets, this means the type of man they can even initially assess may be much lower than they want. They have no means of increasing their value so this affects their asking price significantly.

2)      So long as her prospect is at least halfway ambitious, his value will increase over time, while hers has a very short shelf life and will ultimately decrease. This also means that she doesn’t have quite as much time to haggle with the price as doing so works to his benefit, but to her expense and even what sort of price she can ask in the first place

3)      The biggest one; this situation benefits her quite a bit more than it will ever benefit him so this too also means she can’t set a price for as quite as much as she would like. It also means that he can set a much higher price that she will have little choice but to accept.

But ultimately, not even this works – feminism is exacerbating the problems, by making sex even easier for us to access.  Sorry ladies, you can’t fight nature.

Part 5

‘Male Privilege’ isn’t about institutional power – it’s the biology, stupid!  They’re pissed off because it’s just not fair!!!

So now he introduces another brilliant analogy: pro Football players.

They can’t ask for too much however, because doing so may sour the team against signing them. This is the reality; there will always be other football players willing to take their place. In fact, consider the pressure on any starter in the game. All they need do is look to the bench and they will see many hungry eyes chomping at the bit to replace them if given half the chance. Injury, dismal performance, a downward spiral of attitude can and will eventually mean you and these ‘youngry’ players will switch seats. Does anyone need to state that NO athlete EVER wants to be on the bench?

And I thought sales was stressful.

Lots of pressure wouldn’t you agree? While the money may be phenomenal, would that pressure to perform be worth it? How many men reading this are glad they never have to face such pressures? … women face those very same pressures just by being born female and they have no choice in the matter.

He then goes on to provide roughly a dozen feminist quotes that fit perfectly with the theory he describes.

My Thoughts

I’ve seen plenty of great deconstructions of Feminist ‘Thought’ before – I’ve written a few myself – but this is the first time I’ve run into such an extensive and empathetic explanation of what underlies the ideology.

Obviously this is no excuse for feminism; quite frankly, it’s a juvenile mentality.  As any MRA will be quick to point out, feminism completely fails to acknowledge the sacrifices of Life and Limb that we Men have made throughout history… let alone the fact that Men have largely wielded their ‘power’ with kindess and care for the weaker sex.

So let me finish with a Sun Tzu quote, so well know that Google autocompleted it for me:

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

Oh, and one last thing – go read his damn blog.  Omnipitron’s a bit wordy at times, but there’s some good, wacky stuff bouncing around that skull of his.

The other night I found myself in the ignomious position of driving to my mother’s house to do laundry, like some sort of Univsersity student.  Not because I’m broke, mind you – though I am – I’d simply lost the damn card required in this era of Electronic Money and the Number of the Beast.  Coin-op washing machines are a faint and precious memory…

So while I was crusing along one of Calgary’s main-drags, tailgaiting an $80 000 minivan which refused to exceeded the speed limit, I Swear to Odin that the following stories came on the hourly news:

A Jewish/Muslim Alliance is protesting anti-bullying legislation which informs School Children that there are, in fact, six genders. Good Lord, I thought – wasn’t this the premise of a Heinleinian Dystopian Novel?

Next on, it seems that Helmets will now be necessary for skiing in Nova Scotia – a Province utterly free of Mountainous Regions.

Thirdly – if you drive through a CheckStop here in Calgary, and blow a 0.05 – which is below the legal limit of 0.08 – your car can be impounded for up to a month, without recourse, though you will not be arrested.

Fourthly – an MP was arrested that night for refusing a breathalyzer after having a glass of wine with dinner.

Every single time I turn on the news, without fail, it gets More and More Bizarre.  And it’s getting Bizarre at a Faster Rate.

It’s getting to the point where I’m not even angry over it anymore; nowadays I Laugh in Despair.  Truly, I am a Mad Man living in a Mad World!

And yet, in my current line of work, I’m constantly in touch with The Common Man – or at least, the common man who is also a small-business entrepreneur.  A nowhere do I see this constant insanity which seems to pervade, according to The Media.

A fellow Canadian Blogger pointed out some time back that 49% of the Canadian Population believes that we have too much immigration; a proposition which is so incredibly obvious that I once convinced a Mexican Immigrant of the Truth! of this statement, after only minutes of conversation (for the record, she was a Medical Doctor, not a Landscaper; Mexicans only landscape in places without winter) – but every political party wants to increase immigration, and your average Joe is ashamed of his Racism for being against it.

Your average blue-collar, white-collar, politically-bored and hard-working man I meet on a day-to-day basis is just as Sane as this Mexican Elite – no crazy at all!  Not a single one is as Pathologic as the nonsense reported by the Merchants of Mendacity.  What is it then, a trick?  A myth?  Normal People are Everywhere!

…at least, they are for 8 weeks.  That’s roughly the gestation cycle of The Worm.

It seems that folks will only talk sensible about what’s going on at any particular Time and Date.  Give it a few weeks, and they’ll say what the Talking Heads said; a few weeks and they’re buying it hook, line, and Stinker.

Let’s go back – waaaay back – and think about the smoking bylaws for a moment (a constant thorn in my side).  Back in the day, there were a lot of people against these things – even if they didn’t understand Private Property or other such Civilized Principles that our High School Teachers ‘forgot’ to mention…  Even years after those laws got passed, I could still talk to folks about the Insanity Of It All; and roughly 70% of the time the Signal Went Through.

Nowadays?  Bars have Always been non-smoking.  We’ve Always been At War with Islam.  That’s Just The Way Things Are.  You don’t want to go back to Monarchy, do you?  Democracy is the Wave of the Future.

Way back then, back when I was a civilian, back when the world was at peace, back when the sixties weren’t being re-enacted (this time Dirtier and More Destructive!), I used to have some Hope that the smoking bylaw would change; that me, the owner, and the other two dudes wouldn’t all have to step outside together to spark a dart, leaving his bar empty….  Surely this madness cannot last? I would say with a half-cocked grin.

It’s been 8 years.  And it’s getting worse.

Surely, we are living in the Cyberpunk Dystopia.  William Gibson is spinning atop his grave.

It’s lesser form, “I’m just doing my job,” brings to mind the incompetent half-ass; the man at the printing store who delivers $500 worth of stationary to you, with an obvious typo in the title – a typo you missed as you wrote the order in haste – which he didn’t think worthy of a telephone call to verify.*

For any Man of Red Blood, no explanation of the Nuremburg Defense is necessary: Right is Right, and Wrong is Wrong.  The very pathways of our souls are ordered along these lines.  Debates, perhaps, when the situation is particularly nuanced – but there exists a common sense as to what Justice means, as well as an acknowledgement that it is a social construct, existing objectively, outside of us; that it is not something subjective, ammenable to our whims and fancy.  There’s no need to write down what everybody knows.

But because we are Men, we have codified it explicitly.  The Canadian Forces Code of Conduct says:

…every member of the CF [Canadian Forces] has an obligation to disobey a manifestly unlawful order regardless of rank or position.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, if your CO commands you to execute a disabled enemy soldier, it is your duty to turn around and train your rifle on him.

Yet another document emphasizes just how serious Ethics are to a True Military Man:

QTC: You are an ambulance driver. Your military ambulance is clearly marked with the Red Cross. You are about to return to the front to pick up more wounded. A senior NCO approaches you and orders you to open up the ambulance so that he can load ammunition into it. You tell him that such action is illegal. The act of transporting the ammunition in the ambulance is illegal under the Law of Armed Conflict. True or false?

A: True. The use of a vehicle marked with a Red Cross for a military purpose is perfidy. Therefore, it is illegal to transport ammunition in an ambulance.

Now, I can’t say I’m a fan of the Law of Armed Conflict – it reeks of Univesalism, and the rampant Leftism of the UN.  There’s a callow vegetarianism to the whole thing, with an authorship coming out of the well-fed classes.  It lacks an understanding of aggression, violence, or the implications of total war, and yet…

And yet the soul of the document is bold statement, shouted out at the great unwashed masses of the world: “We are Civilized Men; we are Men of our Word.  We shall grant quarter to a defeated enemy, and respect the courage with which he fought.  We disdain the use of torture, indignity, and the savagery of chemical/biological weapons.  Violence is instrumental – not a principle.  We reject your Big Man State.  We shall fight you, and grind you into the earth… but we shall fight with Honour.”

This has been a principle I’ve lived my life by, in spite of Doctor Milgram; I always figured that the 65% who failed at morality were the cattle living in the suburbs, the doughy soy-bean people, the group which cops and criminals alike refer to as ‘citizens’ (not to be mistaken for Heinlein’s gun toting, meat eating, spaceship building, family raising Citizen).  I understood the world to be a place where the majority of Armed Men carried the Authority of the Karateka in their heart.

At least, that’s what I believed until a year ago; as I made my way through the distended bowels of that gluttinous beast known as the ‘Justice System’ I saw first hand the divergence of values between the militar,y and the government as a whole.

“Listen-” said the Probation Officer, after I pointed out, not just the cruelties and indignities, but the outright material harm she was subjecting an Innocent Man to; “I’m just doing my job.  We’ve all got a job to do.  I could have you put back in prison, right now, to await trial.  Is that what you want?”

Reading this article on The Spearhead got me thinking, again, on all of this; on just how Low and Contemptuous is the character of the modern Cop, Prison Guard, Prosecutor, Probation Officer, and Bureuacrat.

Events such as this – all too common nowadays – bring up discussions about the “militirization of the police force” – and in one sense, that discussion is bang on.  SWAT Teams have become paramilitary death squads, using weapons and tactics similar to what you’d find in Afghanistan.**  But there’s one important difference.

Before a Civilized Army attacks you, they declare war.  They are clear about their intentions; they are clear about their behaviour; they are clear about what led to the conflict.  And when they lock you in a POW camp, make no mistake – you are still resisting. You may have acquiesced for the time being, but you are still their enemy.  They know this; you know this.  And yet, chances are, you will be better treated than any two-bit crook locked up by the government which claims to represent him.

The acutal military at least has the civility to Declare War before grinding you under the heel of their boot; our Modern Police State bellows “We are your Friend!” whilst tasering you for no reason at all.

The concept of Right and Wrong as Abstract Ideals has flown out the window long ago; we’re back to the scoiety of the Big Man.  The legal system has grown capricious, schizophrenic; Right has become a question of Might – be it from the barrel of the gun, or from back-room politics.  Might makes Right, and Lies rule the day.  You show me a corrupt cop getting fired, and I’ll show you a bigger, stronger, better connected Media Conglomerate who took issue because the Innocent Victim had a sympathetic nature – a Media Conglomerate who turned a blind eye to the past hundred victims; members of the Unfavoured Class who wound up “bleeding from the forehead” as the cops like to say.

The book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (review) is a compendium of Legal Insanity.  Its eponomy based on the fact that – yes – thanks to excess legalislating, we all commit three indictable offenses per day, but it gets worse: most of these crimes lack the element of mens rea.  In other words, you don’t have to have evil intent, and your ignorance is no excuse (a premise which only makes sense when the laws are sensible).  Just piss off the wrong cop and you will find out, first-hand, what a Horror prison is to the Free Man.

So if I could offer one piece of advice to any of you Good Folk out there, it would be this: never leave your house without some cash in hand, your phone in your pocket, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

You never know who’s going to be taken next.

* The inverse of the lesser form is LFCA TC Meaford motto: “Never pass a fault.” If you see something that’s all fucked up – you stop and fix it.

** I lie, there are two important differences: the second being that SWAT Teams are utterly incapable of dealing with a trained, alert, and determined Man of Violence.  Their tactics – the cowards! – assume docility in the target.  Anything more dangerous than a gangbanger with his blat-blat is utterly beyond them.