More on Midwits and Covid Conspirators

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Scott Adams’ almost-liberation from the epistemic bonds of covid cultism, where he came so close but ultimately fell back into the programming. Since then, he has continued to play the game of “doubting the doubters,” which has generally not been very convincing to most. Indeed, his continuing fixation on the subject makes it seem like the man just can’t get enough of being ratioed. Yet, it’s really not that surprising since trusters have to keep trusting as a shield against disillusionment.

The fun thing about midwits is watching them just keep on trusting even after the object of their trust has been shown to be undependable. In this case, as with millions of other midwits across this country, the trust being placed is in “experts,” people who are supposed to have the knowledge and expertise to handle complex and difficult situations. It has to be disconcerting for them to continue to see their revered experts be consistently wrong and wrongly inconsistent as they keep changing their stories, changing their data and statistics, and even changing something as basic as the definition of a “vaccine.”

Localism and Collapse

Today I’d like to discuss the intersection of two topics that have been on my mind quite a bit recently. These are (as the title suggests) localism and the coming collapse of America (and the West’s) current demographic-structural cycle. Either one by itself is an intriguing subject for deliberation that generates a lot of spilled electrons on social media. Yet, they’re subjects that naturally fit together, so let’s try to do so now.

It seems to me that the best place to begin is with the issue of coming collapse. I’ve written about this before, observing that whether anyone likes it or not it is growing increasingly likely to happen, that under favourable circumstances it would be beneficial to /ourside/, but under unfavourable circumstances it wouldn’t be beneficial to anybody.

What Romans 13:1-7 Really Means

If you’ve been around in American religious circles for very long, you’ve probably run across one particular kind of Evangelical. These are the ones who are very, very interested in fitting in with the progressive social and political powerbrokers in our society. One of the best examples of this type of “Big Evangelical” is David French, who routinely tries to burnish his sterling evangelical credibility by shilling for Drag Queen Story Hour when he’s not condemning Christians who actually care about their own country. However, he’s certainly not the only one who has sold out to serve as propaganda mouthpieces for the Regime.

One of the favourite arguments used by these folks when trying to convince credulous believers to sit down, shut up, and support Joe Biden (or at least oppose Donald Trump) is to appeal to a well-known passage of Scripture, Romans 13:1-7,

Ethnogenesis and American Breakup

A hot topic in the infosphere and on social media over the past year has been the idea of a “coming national divorce.” The concept is getting so mainstream that many normies have started to recognise that it could happen. Congresscritters have discussed it. Most importantly, I’ve even written about it a couple of times.

But why is this the case? Why does a potential breakup of the American union into individual states or confederacies of states seem as likely as it does? What is it that, at an instinctual level, is driving the understanding that this could be a very viable result of our current civil strife? I’ve written a lot in the past about demographic-structural cycles and secular collapse, and while decentralisation is often a result of secular collapse, it doesn’t have to be, and in many historical cases has not been. So while it seems likely, it’s not actually inevitable.

Yet what it is that seems to be driving our society in that direction?

Scott Adams’ Come to Fauci Moment

It has been interesting over the last month to watch the curious saga of Scott Adams on Twitter. He has gone from being a bog standard normie to very nearly crossing the bridge to covid enlightenment, only to draw back from the brink and instead go full on Branch Covidian. Of course, to save face for how he and others have been so wrong so often while a bunch of anonymous right wingers on social media have been right, Scott has taken to portraying himself as merely “doubting the doubters,” casting their correct predictions as mere luck, a case of the crowd occasionally getting something right entirely by accident.

Underlying all of this is Scott’s abiding faith in “experts,” and his corresponding incredulousness that non-experts, social media anons and the like, could have been right when the experts were wrong. It must be a fluke. Those who don’t think so are just engaging in confirmation bias, just”coping” (with what, being right when the experts were wrong?). Surely their rightness isn’t because they had access to better information or had better instincts than the experts, that’s impossible! All of this is even more ironic because Scott’s whole brand as expressed in his books and in his Dilbert comic strip is that those in positions of authority rarely know what is going on and the little guy drones in the trenches are the ones who really make things work.

They’re Gonna Make You Pay, Pal!

To start off the new year, I’d like to take the opportunity to comment on something that may have flown under the radar for a lot of folks due to more front page news like Covid and Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. Many folks may not be aware of it, but the recent stimulus package included a mandate requiring internet payment processors like PayPal and Venmo to report any earnings to the IRS that you may gain that are greater than $600 (in total) on form 1099-K.

Now, defenders of this move are technically correct when they point of that this rules change doesn’t apply any new tax burden on people who earn money over the internet and use these payment processors since technically you’re supposed to be reporting all of that income anywise. However, we all know that there is often a gulf between what is technically correct and what is functionally and actually going on, and so it is here. The IRS will be intrusively monitoring for monetary transactions that are much lower than what used to be officially accepted lower limit to trigger actual federal interest (IIRC, this was $20,000). Much of the time, what people are selling on the internet is used and has already been taxed, so enforcing taxation on it again is akin to the IRS monitoring yard sales and taxing you for the two dollars you made selling a set of used salt and pepper shakers.

Wakanda Syndrome

Twitter – always a great source for material about which to gripe – provided another gem in the form of this tweet that was making the rounds. Here we see an idyllic “solarpunk” future featuring high technology interwoven with an unspoilt natural setting. I have to admit, as someone who is a localist and traditionalist while also having a positive attitude toward technology and scientific advancement, the world depicted really doesn’t look half bad. (Go to the tweet to see the video, since Substack currently doesn’t support embedding MP4s.)

The main problem with it is that it’s not realistic. Even aside from the question of just how much environmental damage would be done by all of the lithium mines needed to support a worldwide application of these technologies, this futuristic solarpunk world – at least as it’s depicted – appears to rest on social technologies and demographic wishful thinking that no amount of fancy holographic readouts could bring to fruition. In short, it suffers from Wakanda Syndrome.

Red States Would Benefit from Secession

(Cross-posted from the Neo-Ciceronian Times’ new Substack)

Yesterday, Twitterer “A New Radical Centrism” (@a_centrism) made a few waves with this tweet below,

Obviously, he is responding to the on-again, off-again talk about a possible future breakup of the American union of states via secession, something that more and more people in this country are starting to realise could actually happen as the current Regime continues to bleed legitimacy. Certainly, when the Oklahoma governour last month challenged the Pentagon’s authority to require mandated vaccinations for Oklahoma National Guard personnel, this was seen as a shot across FedGov’s bow by an official state-level authority. Recent talk that Florida governour Ron DeSantis is planning on reviving (not “creating”) a World War II-era civilian military force that would be outside of the Pentagon’s control has had the Left all hot and bothered. This recent op-ed by three retired flag-rank military officers, while not directly related to the issue of secession, certainly indicates some legitimate fears on the part of The Powers That Be that their own military might not be as reliable as they could hope for should something like secession start to take place as a result of a future crisis of legitimacy.

So yeah, the issue is one that is on more radar screens than anyone since 1866 would have thought it could be.

Be Unpoliceable

Like most people who have even a shred of common sense and decency, I was pleasantly surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse self-defence trial. A couple of days later, I was disappointed (but not overly surprised) that Travis and Gregory McMichael and William Bryan were found guilty on murder charges related to the shooting of Ahmed Arbery. Aside from the issues of self-defence and citizen policing that were involved, both cases also touched on the larger question of the Right’s overall lack of organisation (including that of right-leaning normies).

Now, one topic that I’ve raised in my writings a number of times is the need for normal people in our heritage American communities to organise for community defence. Years ago, I wrote about the need for local militias. I’ve pointed out that militias are a vital organising institution for regular folks at the local level. More recently, I observed that this model was more or less successfully used during the troubles in South Africa over the summer. All in all, I strongly believe in both the right and the necessity for the free citizenry to deny the government a monopoly on the use of force.

The Incompetence of Arrogance

By now, everyone in the world is aware of the utter debacle into which the 20-year American occupation of Afghanistan has collapsed. In ten short days, the Taliban went from being an occasionally successful insurgent group to becoming masters of nearly the entire country of Afghanistan, capturing a huge booty of American military equipment and receiving formal, uncontested transfer of power from the previous puppet government. In the meantime, Coalition forces struggle to evacuate Western personnel and native collaborators before the international airport in Kabul falls to the Taliban. It’s difficult to imagine a more embarrassing outcome for advocates of American imperial intervention than that into which this situation has devolved.

Already we’re seeing the partisan recriminations fly. Republicans lay blame at the feet of Joe Biden, while Democrats are trying to argue that Trump created the conditions for failure by floating plans for an orderly withdrawal last year. However, both of these are missing the point. The ultimate blame for the breakdown of American nation-building in Afghanistan lies with the foreign policy establishment itself, that set of erstwhile allied factions within the Regime who have driven American imperial expansion since the end of World War II. Regardless of which exoteric set of politicians may appear to have power, irrespective of whether Red or Blue wins an election, there is a self-perpetuating substructure of bureaucrats, academics, generals, and other “experts” who have been driving American foreign policy for decades in directions preferred by globalist elites over and against the actual desires or interests of the American people themselves.