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    Fantasy vs. Reality: The End of an Era

    Collapse Culture Economics Marxism Politics
    The Trump Administration has launched a multi-front attack on the slimy tentacles of the Deep State. We have all been witness to the blitzkrieg, and it has provided warmth for our hearts.

    This campaign represents the end of an era; or more precisely, it heralds the transition from one era to another. Coming to an end is the modern era of Fantasy, perhaps the greatest and longest of its kind in world history; opening before us is the age of Reality, which is the default state of mankind. To whatever degree Trump and his associates succeed in resuscitating our bruised and battered country, there is no going back to Fantasy world. Even if they fail, whoever takes the reins of power will be staring Reality in the face. It’s here to stay.

    Our era of Fantasy began with the French Revolution, which instituted a slate of false, imaginary precepts by which man was expected to live. This constituted a mythological system that would put any primitive, superstitious culture to shame. The worst ideas and idols of the Enlightenment were dredged up and repackaged, forming the foundation of the Fantasy system, a foundation upon which we still stand. But not for long.

    The key ingredient is the myth of Equality. This is the biggest pipe dream of all, and the one upon which all else depends. It has enabled, over time, the construction of a mirror world, a parallel universe. Society devolved into two main divisions: those who perform productive work that results in the fulfillment of real human needs, and a steadily growing parasitic class.

    Today, virtually every sector is plagued with an internal and antagonistic Reality/Fantasy split. For example, agriculture. The Reality side: farmers, distributors, slaughterhouses, etc. The Fantasy side includes the bureaucrats and “thought leaders” that tell us to stop eating meat, and who bully the farmers into adulterating or destroying their crops and livestock.

    Once the Big Lie of Equality became entrenched, many other lies followed. Over time, we reach the postmodern society, in which misrepresentation is ubiquitous. We are saddled with fake art, fake religion, fake education, fake scholarship, fake jurisprudence, fake healthcare, and on and on.

    The never-ending train of lies has been interpreted by some observers to be the approach of the “Leftist singularity”: infinite Leftism in finite time. I believe that we reached something approximating this state of affairs as the Biden regime drew to a close. This is the hornet’s nest that was sliced open by Trump and his people, exposing unimaginable levels of corruption, malfeasance, and treason. In the Leftist singularity, or Fantasy world run amok, society deteriorates into a chaotic, dysfunctional mess. This has caused wealthy, powerful individuals like Elon Musk to defect from Fantasy world to Reality world.

    A type of fraud that is crucial to the operation of Fantasy world is fake money. Since time immemorial, money has been gold and silver. These are tokens of Reality world. In Fantasy world, money has been abstracted and transmuted, by degrees, into ever more empty and worthless     derivatives. Cryptocurrency, the final divorce from Reality, is only the latest in a long line of these progressively more counterfeit forms of “money.”

    Fake money and its intellectual handmaiden, Keynesian economic theory, transformed debt from an embarrassing, temporary situation to an unquestioned and even praiseworthy status quo. Exponentially rising debt, like the universe exploding outward from the Big Bang, enabled the expansion of government to obscene levels. Needless to say, this has flooded Fantasy world with virtually unlimited resources. Until now.

    Of all the countless unsustainable aspects of Fantasy world, one in particular is the proximate cause of its demise, the spark that lit the fuse: the unfolding economic and financial collapse of the West. The debt/fake money system has reached the end of the road. The wealth is gone; the productive sector has been hollowed out by the parasites, and the rest of the world is no longer enthusiastic about supplying the goods or buying the debt. There are no suckers left to pay for the fun and games. Small wonder, then, that gold—prime symbol of Reality world—is experiencing a resurgence on the world stage.

    When it comes to international relations, Trump and everyone else knows that the jig is up. This was acknowledged by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when he admitted in a recent interview that the unipolar era of American dominance is over, and that we are now reverting to the historical norm of a multipolar world. Say goodbye to American exceptionalism; the dollar as reserve currency; “Pride” flags flying over U.S. embassies; the Fukuyama “end of history” nonsense; neoconservatism; and all the rest of the hokum.

    Incidentally, the Trump proposal for Gaza, whatever its merits and whatever its eventual result, is the first time an American president has proposed a solution that is based in Reality world. All previous Middle East “peace plans” were rooted in concepts derived from Leftist mythology, and thus doomed to failure.

    Fantasy world is in its death throes. Sure, it can still twitch in frightening ways, but it is a rotting corpse nevertheless. If Trump didn’t exist, he would have to be invented; someone was needed to officiate at the funeral service. The same applies to the other countries of the "collective West," many of whom are still testing the limits of the Leftist singularity.

    I do not intend to convey the impression that we are embarking upon some new, golden age. The Trump presidency is only the beginning of a lengthy journey into the unknown. All such interregnums are by definition unstable. We may very well emerge on the other side, healthier and happier. But it is quite possible that we descend into totalitarian madness; a host of thoroughly dystopian scenarios could ambush us. Whichever way it goes, the world as we knew it, the Fantasy world that emerged from the French Revolution, is over. Whatever comes next, good or bad, will be based in Reality.
  • Published on

    Smarter and Dumber

    Artificial Intelligence Collapse Science
    As I wander through the dystopian wasteland that passes for a society, one aspect that stands out is the infantile fascination with flashy technology and electronic gadgetry.

    ​    About ten years ago, after a long absence, I spent some time in New York City. One fine day, the weather was perfect; I took a leisurely stroll down Central Park West from 96th Street, where I was lodging. Seeing those grand pre-war apartment buildings filled my spirit with admiration and satisfaction. Eventually, I found myself in front of the Museum of Natural History, at the corner of 81st Street and Central Park West, waiting for the light to change.

    I glanced around, and witnessed a profoundly disturbing scene: a mass of humanity, at least two dozen individuals, all staring into their little screens. They were oblivious to each other, to the scenery around them, in short, to the rest of the world. Naturally, I had previously seen groups of people communing with their electronic babysitters, but never this quantity of people, and with a backdrop of such magnificent architecture. The future had arrived, and it didn’t look pretty.

    This obsession is called, in our current Orwellian linguistic haze: smart. Welcome to our new smart world. Everything is smart, down to the last fingernail. Translated into reality: smart = a device which can perform every electronic pirouette, and serves every purpose except its original intended use. Infinite bells and whistles, but core functionality has been pushed so far into the background, it is often hardly visible.

    I have never owned a smart phone, but on the odd occasion when I try to use one provided by a friend, I find that one of the most cumbersome tasks to execute on this wondrous telephone is to make a phone call. Or consider a smart coffee maker. You can tear your hair out just trying to make a simple pot of coffee, without having to fiddle with the settings. Come to think of it, one is always compelled to configure; it is becoming impossible to use tools in an uncomplicated and straightforward manner.

    In other words, we are awash in counterproductive and unnecessary complexity.

    Then there is the modern automobile. Wasn’t the purpose of this machine to transport people, and light cargo, from point A to point B? Now, it is a computer with wheels attached. The constant ringing and beeping and buzzing can drive a person bonkers. Not to mention the harebrained and often dangerous “safety” features, such as the car suddenly taking over your braking or steering.

    My car is from the model year 2017. This may have been the last opportunity to opt out of these rolling video games, by insisting on the base model, with no options. Not anymore. Buying a new car? You can’t escape. What’s more, the endless gizmofication pushes the cost up. Instead of a simple means of transportation, with a reasonable level of comfort, priced at say, $10K, we are presented with these ludicrous smart monsters at nosebleed prices. (I realize that there are many factors contributing to the rising cost, but this is one of the main culprits.)

    If you want a device that performs its intended function simply and efficiently, you either have to buy it used, or pay more. I recently shopped for a blender, and was compelled to spend a fair amount of money to acquire one with actual dials (remember those?), three speeds, no screen, no settings, no Wi-Fi, no unrelated functionality; just a blender that blends, thank you very much.

    And I haven’t even touched on the issue of social control, where the government (or its proxies) can monitor, turn off, or modify one of your smart devices without your knowledge or approval.

    I am not opposed to technological innovation, it’s just that the innovation is not always beneficial. I would trade all the smart phones in the country for, say, a Japanese-quality subway system in all of our major cities.

    As the population gets dumber, the devices get smarter. I wonder if there’s a connection…
  • Published on

    The Extended Order, Part II

    Collapse Culture Economics
    In my post of 12/27/24, I reviewed the work of the great Friedrich Hayek. Now I would like to use that discussion as a springboard to further examine the ongoing collapse of the Western economic and financial system.

    Hayek helps us to see economic life for what is is: the “extended order of human cooperation,” as he calls it. This is society’s vast network of ideas, contacts, and exchange; an endless web of human interaction. This order is infinitely complex, and in a constant state of flux; as such, it lies beyond the ability of any single authority to direct it.

    The extended order has evolved into its current form. Hayek points to the pioneering vision of Adam Smith, who realized that a type of evolution is the driving force behind the genesis and development of economic and other institutions. (Hayek remarked that Smith and similar thinkers were Darwinian before Darwin, and may have influenced the latter.) Think of law, language, and money: none were the result of a unified, conscious plan. Rather, they evolved in a spontaneous, self-ordering process, in a series of adaptations, producing a workable framework in which people could function.

    The upshot is that economic structures cannot be planned. Interference with the extended order is doomed to failure, and if pushed far enough, will lead to death and destruction. The case of the Soviet Union is obvious enough. But the same principle applies to our current predicament. Consider the extent of the disease: the colossal edifice of central planning in the West, guided by Keynesian economic theory, is sufficient all by itself to guarantee disaster. It has resulted in an activist Federal Reserve, unbacked fiat currency, rampaging inflation, out-of-control debt, asset bubbles galore, and a rapacious government that now accounts for fully half of what passes for an economy.

    Add to this the other poisons administered to the extended order, such as DEI and the Green-Industrial Complex, to name two of the worst offenders. None of these monstrosities would exist without coercive government interference. Needless to say, they demonstrate a complete disregard, and even contempt, of economic reality.

    We can point to additional distortions that result from economic illiteracy. One of them is the absurd notion of a “consumer-based economy.” Consumption is a result of wealth creation, not its cause. The people parroting this inversion of reality confuse the fruit of the tree with the tree itself. And our tree is dying, and will continue to wither as long as we concentrate our efforts on simply eating the fruit.

    Related to the consumer-based nonsense is the notion that China is dependent on the American consumer, and therefore we can punish them by restricting access to our enormous market. This could make sense only if we were exchanging something of value for the imported consumables. If we were paying in gold, or oil, or even manufactured goods of our own, the dependency story might be plausible.

    However, we “pay” for the goods with depreciating dollars that are conjured up on the keyboards of the government, the Fed, and the banks. And this means expansion of debt, which, ironically, was until recently being funded by the likes of China. They stopped buying Treasuries, but we can always compensate by creating more dollars, inflation be damned.

    So let me get this straight. We will punish China (and other BRICS countries) by threatening to stop consuming their goods while giving them nothing of value in return. How on earth will they survive?

    Real-world, Hayekian economics teaches us that wealth is created by production of tangible goods (instead of financial products), savings (instead of consumption), and the use of sound money (instead of unbacked fiat currency). All of which is coordinated by means of true price discovery and other market mechanisms—not by the declarations and schemes of bureaucrats and clueless academics.

    What is the proper role of government? Mainly to get out of the way. Stop interfering in the extended order. Instead, grease the wheels; facilitate commerce rather than hindering it. Safeguard property rights. Enforce contracts. Prevent crime and fraud. Build and maintain infrastructure.

    Humanity is not a proper subject for rational central planning. The aggregate of all human action, beliefs, and behavioral patterns is unknowable. These facts, as Hayek laments, run against the grain of mainstream economic thinking. It is time for a new paradigm.

    The improvement-of-mankind fanatics consider man to be an input to their calculations, in the same way as one might treat a chicken, a plant, or a steel beam. In other words, in their view, man is a part of the natural world: understandable, predictable, malleable. With the correct laws in place, and the correct government subsidies, he can be forced to live in perfect harmony with nature.

    This is a false and dangerous assertion. Man can never be integrated into the remainder of nature. He is condemned to stand outside it, to be an observer and an actor with his own unique agenda. This means that answers to the riddles of our existence will not be found in interventionism and central planning, which pretend that society can be harmonized, as if man really were a chicken or a plant.
  • Published on

    Fahrenheit 451

    Collapse Culture Language
    Pondering the disaster unfolding in Los Angeles, I am reminded of the 1966 movie Fahrenheit 451, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. The film is a masterpiece of the dystopian/futuristic genre. It portrays a society in which the job of the fire department is to light fires, specifically for the purpose of burning forbidden books.

    And here we are. The job of the state and local government in California, apparently, is to ensure that fires break out, and when they do, that the people and equipment for extinguishing them have been degraded as much as possible. The accomplishments of the leadership thus far: malfunctioning reservoirs; precious water channeled into the ocean; empty hydrants; routine brush-clearing protocols ignored; criminals, drug addicts, and lunatics (“homeless”) running amok and starting fires; essential equipment sent to Ukraine; funding diverted to woke insanity; a mayor who has the intellectual prowess of a gerbil; and last but not least, fat lesbians making sure that ability is the least important qualification required for the post of “firefighter.”

    The dystopia has arrived. We are in it.

    As an author of dystopian fiction, I am concerned that my vocation will be mooted by reality. If things continue on their current trajectory, it will soon be impossible to write a novel like Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World. It is already problematic. How can one depict horrors that await us in a future society when those horrors are happening right now?

    The synopsis on Amazon for Huxley’s Brave New World declares that the book is “a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order.” Well, we’re about, what, eighty percent of the way there?

    We often hear that such-and-such government policy, or new piece of woke terminology, is “Orwellian.” What adjective do we use when everything is Orwellian? At that point, the term is useless; the outbreaks of depravity that plague us are no longer outbreaks, but rather the norm. Walking in the rain, you can say “I’m getting wet,” but if you jump in the pool, the phrase loses its meaning.

    If you want a picture of the future, imagine a mentally retarded black lesbian struggling to lift a fire hose—forever.
  • Published on

    Human Bioweapons

    Collapse Culture Globalists Migration
    Recent headlines have informed a wider audience that Muslim rape gangs are running amok in Britain. This has been known for some time, but it took the power and reach of Elon Musk and others to catapult the issue to prominence.

    This sickening chapter in the destruction of old Blighty is not strictly about pedophilia, although the rape and torture victims are very young. Nor is the core issue Muslim degeneracy, although clearly we are witnessing an open display of such. Rather, the crux of the matter is the purposeful importation of primitive Third World tribes as bioweapons to degrade and destroy the native population.

    The importation of human bioweapons into Europe sprang from the same psychopathic brains that gave us lockdowns, transgender madness, death jabs, and totalitarian measures to “save democracy.” All of these are cut from the same ideological cloth. All are weapons of war.

    Chaos has been the intent from the outset. Multiculti benetton kumbaya diversity blah blah blah—Fuhgeddaboudit. The results of planting these savages in the middle of England (or France, Germany, Sweden, etc.) are predictable with 100% accuracy. The 1400 years of Islamic history make it crystal clear as to what we could expect.

    Throw the "South Asian" rapists in prison and throw away the key. But don't blame them for this mess. They're pawns in the game. Muslims are gonna Muslim; a leopard can’t change its spots. Disruptions, often violent, will occur whenever you transplant a distinct and unified group into a culture with significantly different values, beliefs, and behavioral patterns.

    ​If your clean and safe Arizona town suddenly receives a huge influx of woke Leftist wealthy white Californians, you will soon be experiencing crime, social disarray, and urban blight. Conversely, if Pakistan suddenly became twenty percent Norwegian, there would be outbreaks of nonviolence, rule of law, personal responsibility, and orderly commerce. There is no mystery in any of this.

    I lived part of my childhood in London; that was back in the early 1970s. It might as well have been on a different planet. The city was safe and pleasant. I could travel alone or with a friend to any neighborhood, at any time of day, without the slightest fear. I don’t think that young people today could imagine that such a thing were possible.

    I grieve for the old London, and the rest of Europe, which is teetering on the edge of the precipice. We in America are heading for a similar fate, though possibly not quite as rapidly. But on both sides of the pond, unless there are drastic changes, all roads lead to extinction of European man. If Europe, our homeland, goes under, it will be a catastrophe, and will make it even more difficult for North America to keep its head above water.

    For decades, the U.S. Deep State has been advancing the woke agenda around the world, including the subversion of efforts to stop “refugees” and “migrants” (i.e., the bioweapons) from pouring into European countries. Presumably, with the incoming Trump Administration, this shameful chapter in American history will come to an end.

    The American foreign policy and espionage establishment is in love with “color revolution” and regime change. What we need is a new kind of regime change, one that liberates the people from treasonous Leftist leaders who are bent on the annihilation of their own nations.
  • Published on

    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.