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New at the Belmont Club. The cruel disappointment you feel when you view the world through the window rather than the TV screen.

Belmont Club: Waking Up

Totalitarianisms work by mass denial. Although living conditions can actually be bad, the public can be brainwashed through hypnotic sloganeering into willing reality away. The result is a kind of mass dishonesty called “preference falsification.” But it is fragile. The danger for the hypnotist is if the public snaps out of it. Once the subject wakes up the problem for the hypnotist becomes reality itself. We all know the movie dialogue:

New at PJMedia VIP. Hezbollah learns that you can’t live in someone else’s civilization with impunity. But will the West realize that when the world one makes determines survival, the culture which defines it is supremely important?

The Meaning of the Pager Strike: Mind Over Matter

Israel’s devastating strike on Hezbollah’s command and control structure, by turning the militants’ consumer devices into bombs against them, confirms what many have been suspecting since the war in Ukraine began in 2022: The entire modern world can be turned into a weapon by those who understand it against those who don’t. The pager attack maimed thousands of Hezbollah’s militants.

My latest at the Belmont Club. After the USSR collapsed in 1989, the progressives turned their efforts to taking over the institutions of the West. To their surprise resistance to their coup has emerged. Who and what is forcing a showdown?

Belmont Club: Dusk or Dawn?

There is a feeling among some that the November 2024 election is special. It is useful to consider why.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Is today the “hinge of history” where activists have a right, indeed a duty to do extraordinary things, act with unlimited license, attempt unprecedented transformations because the future depends specially on them?

Do We Live in a Special Time?

Peter Baldwin examines the question of whether we live in a special time. “Over a decade ago the late British philosopher Derek Parfit included the following statement in the conclusion of his last book, On What Matters.”

My latest at the Belmont Club. When fantasy has a price. How pretending to be Green made Europe vulnerable to red, red war.

Belmont Club: Coming to Terms With Our Needs

You may be surprised to learn that Russian natural gas is still flowing to Europe across Ukraine. Kyiv lets it happen, and even the pipeline at Sudzha in Kursk captured in the recent offensive will remain unmolested. “Even after 2 1/2 years of war and repeated rounds of sanctions, Russian natural gas keeps flowing through Ukraine’s pipeline network to customers in Europe. That hasn’t changed despite Ukraine apparently taking control of a gas measuring station near the Russian town of Sudzha as part of Kyiv’s push into Russia’s Kursk region.”

My latest on PJMedia VIP. The credibility of the media is a function of the credibility of the system, whose spokesmen they are. So the fundamental credibility problem is not with the Mouth of Sauron, but Sauron himself.

Why Nobody Believes the Media

The U.S. presidential candidates’ inability to agree on a Fox vs. ABC presidential debate venue is another indication that the belief in a neutral, impartial media is dead. News now travels down two separate channels. The only way for the establishment to regain signal dominance and re-merge these streams into one channel is to suppress their rivals as “disinformation.”

My latest at the Belmont Club. A ringside seat to drama. Miraculous misfortune versus miraculous fortune.

Belmont Club: The Battle of the Miracles

Why was there no security posted on the rooftop from which the would-be assassin of Donald Trump took his shot? Not for any profound reason but because the Secret Service was afraid of its agents falling according to Director Kimberly Cheatle. “There’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.” It is part of a succession of marvels that occurred on July 13, 2024. First there was the rapid preparation of the alleged assassin Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old cook in a nursing home, for the task of killing an ex-president. Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was advertised approximately ten days before the shooting. “Donald Trump will be holding a rally at the Butler County Farm Show grounds this Saturday … Doors for Trump’s appearance are set to open at 1 p.m. Saturday; Trump himself is scheduled to speak at 5 p.m.” reported Pittsburgh’s WSA. ’In the 48 hours before he opened fire on former President Donald Trump, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks made a series of stops,” reported CNN.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. The rise of virtual politics. No human candidates are required for an election between two ideas, both characterized by the same media outlets.

Virtual Politics: No One and Possibly Nothing Is Real

The administration courtiers are working overtime to keep their jobs as “Joe Biden.” Joe Biden is more a brand name for a political package than a reference to a specific person. Staffers speak for him, think for him, and possibly decide for him. There’s no way of knowing for sure to what extent things come from him personally because the individual in the package is only part and possibly the least important aspect of the overall product. The Huffington Post explicitly suggested that the president should actually be synthesized to avoid burdening his youthful, progressive message with his tired old body.

My latest at The Pipeline. We know what we can eat from a 100 thousand years of human trials. Suddenly we’ll replace all that hard won knowledge with …

Now They’re Coming for Your Food | The Pipeline

The greatest social-engineering project in history.

New at the Belmont Club. All over the Western world the status quo is being challenged. A countdown clock has started. We must adapt or face disaster.

Belmont Club: Countdown to Destruction and Renewal

It has been a momentous week with three nearly simultaneous developments: 1) the exposure of the senile Joe Biden to the public in the presidential debate; 2) the SCOTUS body blow to lawfare in the form of a 6-3 decision holding that “the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and 3) the political collapse of the center-left in Europe fueled by a grassroots rejection of unlimited migration are challenging the status quo as never before.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Suddenly the public has discovered that the President is missing, substantively speaking. With the chief missing, the race between those who would replace him and foes who would seize their chance is on.

The Man Who Was Not There

What was scheduled to simply be the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden rapidly became a full-blown political crisis after Biden’s manifest collapse into incoherence on stage. Within hours of the exhibition, stalwart Democratic publications like the Atlantic and multiple authors in the New York Times were openly imploring Biden to step down.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. The way of the frontier. First come the explorers. Then comes the sheriff.

Regulating the Future

Bill Gates is trying to start a whole new industry of new technology sodium reactors that reliably produce electricity while avoiding the use of hydrocarbons. “In Wyoming, Bill Gates moves ahead with nuclear project aimed at revolutionizing power generation,” writes the Associated Press.

My latest at the Belmont Club. Hiding hostages behind layers of civilian human shields doesn’t always work. When the raiders have information superiority you will need a Plan B.

Belmont Club: The Unexpected Hostage Rescue

The IDF pulled off “one of the most complicated hostage rescue missions in history,” by rescuing four hostages from a Hamas stronghold. Israeli author Hen Mazzig explains what made it so hard.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Why accountability is not the same as revenge and why “moving on” doesn’t take you to the future but mostly to a repeat the past.

The Unavengers

Some people may actually be reluctant to prosecute Hunter Biden to avoid repeating the unjust persecution of Donald Trump. The belief in the possibility of political prosecutions was revealed in the jury selection process in Hunter’s case. “Potential jurors were asked, ‘Do you believe that Americans can be prosecuted based on their political beliefs and affiliations?’ Many answered yes to the question … the judge would then probe as to what they viewed as specific examples of political prosecution. Every potential juror who stated that they believed in political prosecution cited Donald Trump as the example. These potential jurors gave examples of CrossFire Hurricane and Donald Trump’s New York Conviction.” That would ironically be a good reason not to proceed against the younger Biden, some would say.

My latest at the Belmont Club. When two groups decide to divorce they build increasingly separate lives. Although competition will predominate, conflict is also inevitable because of the winner take all nature of the game.

Belmont Club: The Next Civil War

Historical events, like people, have a life story. They are conceived, come into a life of their own, and are either rejected by events or become part of what is called the future.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Activists who would change the world want history’s approval in advance. Alas, sometimes history has other ideas.

We Should Know What History Says Before It Happens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”. So begins Charles Dickens’ famous opening paragraph in “A Tale of Two Cities.” By setting his story in the days of the French Revolution, at a distance of time from publication nearly equal to that between our present and WW2, Dickens is able ask the same question of a different generation. What would they have done had they lived in 18th century France? Be as vengeful as Madame Defarge or as self-sacrificing as Sydney Carton?

My latest at The Pipeline. What’s the difference between modifying the climate to make war and geoengineering to save the planet? AI and good intentions.

Good ‘Geo-engineering’ vs. Bad ‘Climate Modification’ | The Pipeline

For EMT technologies to work, they need AI.

My latest at the Belmont Club. How a 19th century theory that failed in economics returned as a 21st century theory of everything.

Belmont Club: The Woke God

The writer James Lindsay said in a talk (here available on YouTube) before the European Parliament that ‘Marx was not an economist. He was a theologian’. Lindsay, described in Wikipedia as a promoter of right-wing conspiracy theories, goes on to describe how 20th-century Marxists, disheartened by the failure of the abolition of economic property to create wealth, expanded their evangelical model to include other types of properties. Race, civilization, and even sexual normalcy were all regarded as oppressive advantages that had to be mocked, abolished, and otherwise scattered for “equity” — the great leveling — to be achieved. This expanded their audience considerably and allowed them to expand beyond the traditional working class.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. A cold civil war where the hated Other still needs to pay his taxes.

Birth of the Nations

There is considerable speculation about where the “cold civil war” alleged to be taking place in the West might be headed. “Is there any possibility of healing the rift and bridging the polarized gap?” From confrontation videos of pro-Hamas demonstrators versus their opponents it seems the answer is no. Both sides of the divide have increasingly set their faces and hardened their hearts. They are no longer attempting to persuade the Other. They are restating their beliefs with no intention of changing them.

My latest at the Belmont Club. You don’t walk but stumble into conflict.

Belmont Club: Flashpoints

It’s a tough time for those awaiting the End of History, “a state in which human life continues indefinitely into the future without any further major changes in society, system of governance, or economics.” The safe harbor we sought has eluded us; we seem to be reliving the bad old days, when good and evil fought for the dominion of the world. One bad sign, as Mike Studeman in War on the Rocks observes, is that China is embarked in absolute terms on perhaps the greatest military buildup the world has ever seen. “Despite … China’s recent economic setbacks and faux conciliations … Xi is militarizing Chinese society and steeling his country for a potential high-intensity war.” His theory is the buildup is happening for a reason.