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    Waiting for Consequences

    Globalists Politics
    In yet another outrage from the scorched-earth Biden regime, the low-lifes running the White House awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to (among others) Hillary Clinton and George Soros. Bestowing this high honor on the Wicked Witch of the West borders on the comical, but laying the ribbon around the neck of Soros is one of the most brazen middle fingers that the outgoing criminal cabal has ever thrust in America’s face.

    This act is further indication, as if we needed it, that the cabal has no fear. Why should they; if everything proceeds as it has in the past, then the change of administration is for them just a temporary blip. Here is the likely thought process of a Jake Sullivan or a Karine Jean-Pierre as they box up their coffee makers and dog photos: After leaving the White House, I’ll get a cushy job at the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, or some other think tank or NGO. Periodic interviews on CNN to spice things up. Come January 2029 (or sooner, if we eliminate Literally Hitler), I can complete the round trip back to my old desk, or a better desk somewhere else within the Beltway.

    Conservative media is always chock full of assertions that so-and-so Swamp dweller is running scared, worried stiff that his time is up. These declarations are often heard after some atrocious mischief has been uncovered. All well and good, but you can expose Deep State wrongdoing until the cows come home, and it simply does not matter to these people. You are publicizing behavior of which they are proud.

    Scathing commentary and shocking exposés do, however, provide important information to our side. It gives us more ammunition to fight the propaganda battles, and it helps convince people who are on the fence. But it will not halt Leftist criminality and treason.

    Remember 2016, and “lock her up”? Do we really think that Madame Clinton was shaking with trepidation upon hearing those words? When the threat was exposed as mere bluster, her fame and status among the “elite” increased by leaps and bounds. She became an even stronger role model for countless Woke harridans. And now to top it off, the Freedom medal. (Another prestigious institution bites the dust. When these creeps are mentioned in the same breath as “freedom,” it reminds me of Yasir Arafat receiving the Nobel “Peace” Prize.)

    Only one thing will stop the Left: consequences. Brutal, real-world consequences for their malfeasance. This means, first and foremost, prison time.

    Obviously, nothing of the sort occurred during Trump’s first term. On the contrary, it looked like the sequel to Night of the Living Dead, with the zombies rising from their graves. I am hoping that this time will be different. But if no one wears the orange jumpsuit within six months of the inauguration, we will know that it’s business as usual in the Swamp. There would be nothing to disincentivize their psychopathic behavior. Why change their ways? They may be crazy, but they’re not stupid.

    Perhaps the Harridan-in-Chief will finally come out of the closet and declare that she’s a man. Then she can share a jail cell with her buddy George.
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    Crapflation, and Other Mysteries of the Monetary System

    Collapse Economics
    Many in the U.S. are hopeful that the incoming administration can solve the problem of inflation. This scourge continues to cause heartache for the population, particularly individuals and families with low income and without assets.

    As with so many other issues, the first step in any serious campaign to resolve the dilemma is to correctly identify the problem, without political propaganda and other extraneous inputs. Our rulers can begin by admitting the extent of the damage. Government statistics on price increases (and unemployment) are nothing less than fraudulent. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that prices are not rising by three percent annually, or whatever similar ridiculous figure is being proffered by the sorcerers in Washington.

    Moreover, in addition to nominal price, there are other manifestations of decreasing purchasing power that need to be included in the equation. One of these is shrinkflation, the shrinking of quantity for a given item. We have all done the supermarket double-take when encountering, say, a bar of chocolate that is suddenly smaller than it had always been. The price, of course, remains the same or rises.

    A related phenomenon is crapflation. This means reduction of quality for a given item. One day, out of the blue, you receive a shoddier product, or inferior ingredients, but, once again, at the same or higher price. It’s just another way to hide the erosion of purchasing power.

    So what exactly is this “inflation”? It is not, as our Leftist friends would have us believe, a cabal of cigar-smoking capitalists in the back room of Kroger headquarters, rubbing their hands together and guffawing as they greedily jack up the price of milk. Rather, consider the word itself. Something has been inflated; think of tire pressure. And that something is the money supply.

    This used to be common knowledge. My 1991 Webster’s Dictionary defines inflation as “an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods resulting in a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level.” Today, Webster’s still conveys the general idea, but with some obfuscation: “A continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services” [emphasis mine; also note the flipping of the order, and the absence of the word “substantial”]. The American Heritage dictionary just buries its head in the sand: “A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money.”

    Going further up the causal chain, the expansion of the money supply is primarily the result of “money printing” by means of an inscrutable process involving the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the banks. Much of this takes place to either fund the obscene Federal deficits or to goose the stock and housing markets. Incidentally, the money supply has approximately doubled in the last ten years, with the magic printing press conjuring around eleven trillion dollars into existence. Yes, that’s trillion with a “t.”

    Increasing prices can never be reversed until this monetary hocus-pocus is ended. Here we have the crux of the matter. Compared to this, every other factor is minor. If they double the quantity of something, what do they expect will happen to its price? That’s right, it will be cut in half. Would any sane and honest person deny that the purchasing power of the dollar has been cut in half since 2015?

    But yes, there are some other factors contributing to price increases, usually due to government overreach. One obvious instance is government regulation. Automobiles, for example, are far more expensive than need be, due to the onerous safety, emission, and mileage requirements that are now out of control.

    Then there are the downstream effects of government subsidies and other market interventions, which create artificial demand and speculation, which drives up prices. Suppressing the interest rate has led to the perversely-valued real estate market, as well as a host of other bubbles and malinvestment across the economy.

    Another case of market intervention is government-backed student loans. Allowed to feed at this bottomless government trough, colleges and universities can keep hiking tuition; after all, the money is always there. Incentives for competition and efficiency have effectively been destroyed. (And the Leftist propaganda machine has its ideological hatchery fully funded.)

    Another factor is crime. In addition to successful shoplifiting, prevention of such is a significant expense that is passed on to the consumer. Viewing the security personnel at my local Walmart, one would think they are guarding a top-secret military installation.

    Let us not forget the spreading plague of idiocy and incompetence. This leads to defective products, lousy repairs, wasted time, and other ill effects that in the end, all cost money. The deteriorating quality of the population also makes neighborhoods, or even entire cities, unlivable. This shrinks the available decent living space, driving up demand for housing and amenities in the zones with "good schools."

    In summary, I hope the incoming Trump Administration has the stomach to tell it like it is. Otherwise, the world of monetary make-believe will continue on its merry way.
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    The Therapeutic-Industrial Complex

    Culture Marxism
    In order for Western civilization to extract itself from the bog of crises into which it is currently sinking, it must eventually come to terms with the intellectual rot that has permeated its foundations. One manifestation of that rot, less obvious than, say, Keynesian economics, is the pseudoscience of “psychology,” embodied in the Therapeutic-Industrial Complex (TIC).

    The preaching and practise of psychology in the West, lo these last hundred years or so, is a natural outgrowth of Progressive ideology, which exalts the degenerate while attacking the productive and well-constituted. The TIC brings this maneuver down to the micro level, destabilizing and paralyzing the individual from within his own mind. Not satisfied merely with destabilization of the political and economic realms, the Progressives have infiltrated the most intimate chambers of our private existence.

    This is accomplished with the aid of two primary tools, guilt and inversion. Guilt is as essential to the TIC as debt is to the fiat-based monetary system. Wait a minute, you say; doesn’t psychotherapy release us from our burden of puritannical guilt, all that sexual and potty stuff? Perhaps, but that’s small potatoes compared to the guilt loaded onto us by the selfsame soul robbers.

    Guilt, guilt, guilt. The skilled pracitioners of the TIC construct an archeological dig within your memory banks, to find shards of ancient guilt that had been buried forever. And even if that shard cannot initially be reimagined in its original form, your friendly neighborhood ego-crusher will weave a wondrous tale, so that the image of the original full-sized mental pot or jug becomes crystal clear to the victim.

    If this sounds like witchcraft, that’s because it is.

    The more normal and sane you are, the worse the guilt weighs upon you. This is partially a function of conscience; better-quality people tend to be more self-critical. But it is also due to inversion, another major tool of the brain leeches. The natural order of society is inverted: normal is considered sick whereas mentally ill—the real kind—is considered perfectly normal. Ask your TIC representative how the American Psychological Association views transvestites, compared to, say, 1965. Now contrast this with the “treatment” of energetic and mischievous (i.e., normal) little boys.

    You’re sick, I’m sick, we’re all sick; the world is just one giant hospital (and they run it). You are guilty of all sorts of transgressions that you “suppressed” since birth. Don’t fret, says the TIC, there are ways to confront and process that guilt. Overwhelmed? That’s okay, we’re here to help!

    What are we to do with this parasitical class, this latter-day Carthaginian priesthood? Mao had the solution: send them to the fields!

    [Related: see my post of 12/13/24, Homeless Nation.]
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    A Tale of Two Frauds

    [To everyone I wish a Happy New Year!]

    Two of the greatest fraudulent narratives of the modern era are Covid, and the “oppressed Palestinians.” I would like to share with you links to a podcast and an article that summarize, in a succinct and straightforward manner, these two malevolent con games.

    Covid: a twenty-minute podcast by the indefatigable Michael Yeadon.

    Palestinians: an article in American Thinker by Shai ben-Tekoa.
  • Published on

    The Mark of the Slave

    Collapse
    One of the most disconcerting signs of our society’s decay has been the proliferation of tattoos. And it only seems to be getting worse.

    I grew up in the America and England of the 1960s and 70s. The only “ink” I recall seeing at that time was on veterans of the navy (typically a relatively small image of an anchor or mermaid), and survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. That was it. Never a conspicuously visible, multicolored, “artistic” design. To imagine such a thing being common, and on women no less, would have been to enter the realm of science fiction.

    For thousands of years, tattoos have been the mark of the slave, the criminal, and the pirate. In short, the dregs of society. This is reflected in the Bible, which in Leviticus 19:28 states, “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.” The prohibition is presented in the context of warnings against prostituting one’s daughter, wizardry, mediums, sacrifices to Moloch, and other sickly, idolatrous, and barbaric customs. To permanently engrave one’s body with ink is to spit in the face of God and man alike.

    In the current era, one peculiar aspect of the phenomenon is its appearance across the socioeconomic spectrum. If it were limited to the lowest classes, we might consider it to be a strictly vulgar pursuit, to appear street-tough and repellant. But when a young lady at Princeton, from an upper-class family involved in molding the cultural, political, and economic shape of the nation, thinks that inscribing on her body the mark of the slave is “cool,” what are we to expect from our elites? Nothing good, for sure.

    It’s one more strike against our youth. They have become dumbed down, humorless, self-hating, and uncultured; we poison them with psychotropic drugs, mutilate their genitals, and ruin their health and adulterate their DNA (or simply murder them) with safe and effective injections. Are tattoos their cry for help, or rather their proudly-displayed badge of membership in a new race of botched, confused, and profoundly ugly subhumans?
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    Back to Basics: Friedrich Hayek

    Book Reviews Economics Legacy AWOL Blog Marxism
    Among the many problems staring our society in the face is the imminent meltdown of the financial and monetary system. There are numerous facets: uncontrolled government spending and intervention; a looming sovereign debt crisis; the enormous, Byzantine derivatives complex; the insolvent banking system; the growing power of the BRICS countries; and on and on. Putting all the pieces together is a daunting task.

    Standing ready to assist us in this labor are the great thinkers of the field. Among these must be counted the incomparable Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992). He is best known as one of the founding fathers of the Austrian school of economics, and the outspoken nemesis of John Maynard Keynes. Hayek demonstrates conclusively how Keynesian economics—that web of misconceptions and mythology in which the West is now trapped—is dysfunctional and guaranteed to fail.

    But Hayek goes far beyond this level of analysis. He goes deeper, burrowing into every rabbit hole of socialism and interventionism to expose the ideological and spiritual foundations of this perennial challenge, not merely to the financial and monetary system, but to civilization in its entirety.

    I am reprinting below a post that I wrote about him in 2007, on the original AWOL Civilization blog.

                                        *          *          *

                  The Extended Order of Human Cooperation

    No blog on the deterioration of Western culture would be complete without a tribute to Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), the great Austrian-born economist and philosopher. When one considers the breadth of his work and the acuity of his analysis, he may very well be the preeminent sociopolitical thinker of the 20th century.

    No one has been such an outspoken advocate for liberty, or such a devastating foe of all forms of socialism—what Hayek often calls "collectivism." In The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952), he deconstructs the illusions of the early socialist thinkers, notably the false doctrine of “scientism," the misapplication of scientific methodology to social phenomena, particularly history.

    History, Hayek explains, is not a real thing, subject to the methods of the natural sciences. If we are to undertake a study of zebras, we need not hesitate to employ these methods. We see before us a type of animal that is clearly distinguished from other species. There can be little doubt that a zebra is a zebra. Our subjects behave in accordance with the characteristics of their kind. They cannot change themselves, and there is no emotional or intellectual bond between researcher and subject.

    All this is completely different when it comes to human history. Our subjects do not behave in a predictable fashion, and they can remake themselves. There are many bonds (and enmity) between researcher and subject. But most importantly, the creation of history is itself a subjective act. The actors are implementing what they believe to be “their" history of the moment; moreover, each individual has a different perception of his own behavior, his neighbor’s behavior, and indeed everything else occurring in the world. To say that this phenomenon is subject to laws in the same sense as natural laws is a serious error.

    In The Road to Serfdom, written during World War II, Hayek demonstrates that Communism and Nazism are two sides of the same collectivist coin. He traces the careers of the National Socialist (Nazi) leadership, showing that they were socialist in every sense of the word. In fact, many were prominent “left-wing" socialists or communists who embraced the swastika as Hitler rose to power. Hayek thereby dismisses the influential myth that the Nazis were some sort of ultra-conservative movement.

    In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), perhaps his magnum opus, Hayek lays out a philosophical blueprint for a 20th-century society based on liberty. This book is the modern heir to the ideas of Locke and Adam Smith.

    The Fatal Conceit (1988) is a general critique of socialism, in which Hayek shows that “rational" planning is doomed to failure. The very first paragraph sums up much of his thinking:

    “This book argues that civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism. To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread…”

    When I read Hayek, I am always struck by his vast command of history, culture, philosophy, and economics, as well as by his matter-of-fact tone. His attitude is distinctly non-ideological; he is never the advocate of a party or “program.”

    Hayek warned us about flirtation with the wily seductress that is collectivism. Will we take heed?