politics – Prose Poetry Code

Point of no return

I’ve written a lot about the idea of the Third Dark Age, my belief that we are stumbling into a time of technological and social stagnation or even regression to rival those of the sixth century AD and the 12th century BC. A time when the flames of the Enlightenment go out, sending our Western world into the dark depths of tyranny, dogma, and destruction.

The last flicker of flame may have died on Wednesday.

I don’t hold up Charlie Kirk as any sort of intellectual powerhouse. I never listened to anything more than brief clips of his debates, and only really paid attention to him when screenshots of his Twitter posts appeared where I could see them. But I do know that he was a moderate. Indeed, a centrist, which is already a rare breed in this polarized times. Most of all, he truly believed in one of the core values of "classical" liberalism and the Enlightenment: that the free marketplace of ideas is where progress happens.

He attempted to face the anti-human forces in our modern world using a tried and true weapon, the same weapon wielded by Milton, Jefferson, and so many other luminaries. Through his work, he aimed to use rationality to debunk the claims of the irrational. He stated unequivocal truths—that a man cannot become a woman, for example—as his opinions, then offered to let anyone change his mind. For being moderate, he was branded an extremist. For showing tolerance, he was deemed a bigot.

For wanting to talk, he was killed.

That is what rattled me. Not out of any love for the man himself; I would claim indifference on Charlie Kirk as a person, not disinterest. But his legacy is as a man who tried to walk the same path I walk. That makes me acutely aware of the danger of the world for those of us who carry the light of wisdom in our hearts.

The danger, however, truly does come from both sides. Progressives have now demonstrated beyond any doubt that they will gleefully kill those who disagree with them. And I do mean gleefully: hundreds of thousands of messages on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Bluesky, Mastodon, and other hotbeds of anti-human thought illustrate this perfectly.

Yet conservatives are showing that they’re willing to destroy the foundations of modern civilization itself in retaliation. Prominent right-wing speakers on Twitter, for instance, are calling the alleged shooter and his ilk "literally demon-possessed". Which is, of course, nonsensical on its face. Demons don’t exist. It doesn’t take a Descartes or Kant to understand that someone can’t be literally possessed by something which doesn’t exist.

People who deny basic truths aren’t afflicted by a supernatural being—well, some of them are afflicted by their belief in one, but bear with me—they are victims of society, of a civilization that fails to protect its own. Morality is not only a virtue, but a necessary part of any functioning state. To prevent an inevitable decay into anarchy or tyranny, we must have a shared set of values.

In the United States, the foundation for that is supposed to be the works of our Founding Fathers: the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Federalist papers, and so on. Yet children are now taught to hate them, to vilify them for not being sufficiently left-leaning for certain modern types. When that link to the past, to who we are, is lost, we as a people are left adrift.

Charlie Kirk wanted to do what the Founding Fathers did. He wanted to live in a country where matters of import were solved through debate, voting, through the processes that great men created to break free from the vicious cycle of tyrannical kings. For that, progressives believe he deserved to die.

If so, then any right-thinking American deserves the same fate. Anyone who would dare to champion the ideals of liberty and justice for all, of the free marketplace of ideas, of a free press and the protection from Establishment, we all deserve death, do we not? For our crimes of standing strong in the face of darkness, for defending what we believe in, we would all be made martyrs to Lady Liberty herself.

So be it.

Those who would seek to destroy my country, I name them my enemy. Those who would grant me no quarter shall receive none in turn. Those who wish to bring about the Third Dark Age, know that I carry the light, and I will not relinquish it until my dying breath.

To be a libertarian is not, as many would claim, to be against government in all its forms. No, it is to understand that liberty itself is a value worth fighting for, that freedom is the first and most basic prerequisite to progress. Our country, if it is to regain the mantle of greatest, must have a populace who is free and secure, able to work towards the goal of betterment of all without fear of retribution. This I believe with all my heart.

To be an agnostic is to understand that, while there are things we do not yet know, there is nothing in this world that we cannot know. Knowledge is the light that casts aside the darkness. Rationality is our best protection in what Carl Sagan so eloquently named "our demon-haunted world". Yet all those demons are nothing more than men in costume. This I believe with all my heart.

To be an American is not merely to inhabit the territory of the United States. It is to carry on the legacy of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry, and so many other great men. It is to cast aside the notion of kings and accept the idea that we are all responsible for our country. Its survival, its prosperity, its very existence is owed to every American. Kennedy’s famous proclamation, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," did not refer to civil service or sacrificing rights to the state. It meant bearing the weight of history, which far too many see as a burden, to carry America to ever greater heights. This I believe with all my heart.

I know I am all but alone in these beliefs. Many will share one or two, but few share all three. I’m okay with that. For four decades, I have walked the lonely path. I expect I’ll keep walking it for however many years I have left.

But at least that path will have light.

Nightfall

I’ve written before on the topic of what I call the Third Dark Age, the hypothesis that our current Western society is on the same trajectory as those of Europe in the 6th century AD and the Mediterranean coast in the 12th century BC. I’ve also written about my belief that the only way to stop—or, at least, to cut short—the Third Dark Age is with a Second Enlightenment.

Both of those posts were written before the 2024 election. Now that we’re five months into the fallout of that election, the picture is becoming a little clearer…and a little darker.

It’s no secret that America is becoming increasingly divided. The fractures between political left and right have become gaping fissures that are busy swallowing all of us who profess allegiance to neither extreme. Battle lines are being drawn in the culture war, the race war, the war for control over hearts and minds for generations to come.

Truth is, both sides have a fatal flaw. This isn’t my natural contrarianism coming out. It’s not the fallacy of false equivalence, because—in this instance, anyway—leftists and rightists truly are equally bad. They both have the goal of dragging Western civilization into a time of darkness and regression. They just have different motives.

The left-hand path

The Left’s modus operandi is well known by now. The woke mind virus has long since taken root, and taken control of its host. Progressivism is dark and anti-human by its very nature: an erasure of all that makes humans, and human societies, unique and great. The idea that a man can become a woman simply by force of will, that anyone can become an American in the same fashion. A reduction of our status to mere numbers and the diversity boxes we check.

That sort of social rot has been in place for over a decade. We see its effects everywhere we look. We see the statues of our heroes being torn down because they were "colonizers" or "slave-owners", only to be replaced with nameless, shapeless figures who are exceptional only by virtue of being unexceptional. Monuments to mediocrity, an uplifting of those ugly in flesh and spirit. What better way to celebrate an ideology that encourages sterilization, than by creating something that lacks any sense of humanity?

In the progressive version of the Third Dark Age, we fall because we are dragged down to the level of the worst of us, Harrison Bergeron on the scale of a civilization. Whites and East Asians have higher intelligence on average, so we must not be allowed to use it. Men are stronger on average than women, yet we must only use that strength in service to the fairer sex. And even the word "sex" becomes a slur, because it implies the biological reality whose denial is crucial to the entire enterprise: if we recognize that there is an unbridgeable gap between men and women, what other innate barriers must we admit?

More than merely social, however, the woke darkness is one which transforms science into dogma, turning scientists into priests or heretics, depending on whether or not they toe the line of what the regime considers orthodox. We witnessed this firsthand over the past five years, watching as noted physicians, epidemiologists, biologists, physicists, climatologists, and many others were ostracized, fired, deplatformed for coming out—with verifiable evidence, in accordance with the scientific method—against the various tyrannies of the 2020s. Whether the tyrannical response to a mild flu, the pushing of a deadly genetic experiment in the guise of a vaccine, or the continued de-industrialization of our world in response to a fictitious claim of higher temperatures, people’s lives were ruined simply because they questioned the prevailing narrative.

This is the communist type of bad ending, an Orwellian Dark Age where the masses are kept sick and stupid, living in pods and eating bugs and being told that it’s for their own good. Rather than being denied the light, we are told that it’s bad for us. That we are creatures of darkness, and to aspire to anything better is offensive to those who lack the courage.

The right turn

One way to read the results of last year’s election is as a rejection of such progressive ideals. That’s not to say it’s necessarily the correct reading, but there is an element of truth. Enough people truly were tired of the status quo that they flipped.

Unfortunately, some are taking that to mean they would prefer the opposite extreme.

This is becoming an increasingly popular opinion among the farther segments of the Right. Rather than restoring our constitutional republic, the norms and values that made our nation great in the first place, they seem willing to reject it entirely. Worse, they’re ready to reject the Enlightenment itself.

Their reasoning, as much as there is reasoning involved, seems to be a case of mistaken identity. Progressives call themselves liberals, and actual—called "classical"—liberals are too few and too scattered to push back. Thus, these extremists consider those extremists to define what it means to be liberal. Following that twisted logic, they then deem that liberalism itself is at fault, and must be destroyed.

Of course, liberalism is the foundation of America in the first place. It’s what led to the Revolution. Without the bedrock of the liberal Enlightenment, there is no free speech, no free press, no free religion. Without liberty, equality, and fraternity, we cannot have the Red, White, and Blue.

And some people genuinely don’t seem to care.

Right-wing Twitter, for example, is becoming crowded with people who would gladly trade our Republic for a theocratic dictatorship, as long as that dictatorship was whites-only. These are people who reject the premise of the Declaration of Independence, that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights. They reject the notion that there is room for debate. They even reject the verifiable fact—I can verify it myself—that it is possible to have a strong moral compass without religion.

The nationalist-conservative Dark Age, then, looks a lot more like the Medieval Dark Age: a land of kings using their subjects as pawns, of priests keeping the masses in check with nonsense such as "divine right" and "original sin". Of power unchecked, because people are taught to believe that power in itself is the goal.

On this road, we come into darkness because we reject the progress we have made, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because the Left pushed mRNA "vaccines", we must toss aside germ theory. Because the Left facilitated an invasion of illegal immigrants, we must throw away equal protection for our citizens. Because Reddit-tier atheists convinced teens to question their biology, we must rip out secularism by the roots.

This, then, is the theocratic version of the bad end, and it’s Islamic in the literal sense of the word islam: submission. Here, we are not creatures of darkness, but creatures stuck in darkness through no fault of our own. We are not allowed to strive for the light, because that light is reserved only for the chosen few. But if we debase ourselves enough, believing all the right unbelievable things, saying all the right platitudes, we might be permitted a glimpse of that light as we die. For, in the world of the far right, a human is worthless when he is alive, but downright holy before and after.

The third way

I reject both extremes. To the Left, that makes me little better than a fascist. To the Right, it makes me little better than a progressive. And I don’t particularly care.

America was founded on liberal ideals. This much cannot be denied. We were a refuge for the oppressed from the start. We understood multiculturalism and diversity were important…within reason. On that, I must disagree vehemently with the nationalists.

Humans are diverse in many ways. Although theories like Sapir-Whorf have long since been debunked, we do know that cultures have differences that can be inscrutable, and nearly indescribable, to others. And some of these cultures are, to put it simply, incompatible with the ideals of the classical liberal. On this, I disagree with the progressives.

Some of the incompatibility does share its roots with religion, but only in the vaguest sense; even among the Christian nations of Europe, there are distinct variations between, for example, the Germanic peoples and the descendants of Rome. There have been closed or backward Christian societies and open, cosmopolitan Muslim ones. There is, for example, nothing innate about Hinduism that leads its adherents to reject modern sanitation. Tribal religions are not fundamentally opposed to technological progress. And a lack of religion does not imply a lack of spirituality or a lack of empathy.

Liberalism, however, is very much an ideology of plenty. When there are few pressing demands, when survival is largely routine, we have the ability to grow as a people. That is why the seeds of republicanism were born in the fertile period of Ancient Greece, and why the Enlightenment took root only after the Age of Discovery.

I believe it’s also why the liberal ideals are so foreign to the invaders in our country today. Sub-Saharan Africa is a dangerous place, as is most of South America. The Middle East is largely a wasteland. China, of course, is now a communist nightmare, though it wasn’t always so. The Indian subcontinent is so crowded and despoiled that a nuclear war might make things better.

In none of these places do we see the lack of scarcity that proved necessary for philosophical thought to flourish. Only with that sort of wisdom can we see beyond ourselves, to look at society and humanity from a wider angle and draw conclusions from what we find. That is why the time immediately following World War II, when there was such a push to reach a state of post-scarcity, gave rise to such rapid progress in America and Western Europe. We were on the cusp of a Second Enlightenment, even though we didn’t yet need it.

Progressivism failed us then, tearing down our lofty ideals, and we’re only now, a lifetime later, clawing our way out of that mire. But we must beware not to fall into the other extreme. The nationalist version of the Third Dark Age will serve us no better.

Fork in the road

The past week or so has been an eventful one in the game development world. Unity is still backpedaling on their disastrous attempt at charging devs per-sale. The CCP-infested Unreal Engine has lowered its royalty fee. Ubisoft is teaching us all how best to set half a billion dollars on fire.

And then there’s Godot.

I’ve written about Godot Engine in the past. It first came out about 10 years ago, and it took the opensource world by storm. Here was a pro-level—okay, semi-pro back then—game engine that was free to use, without worrying that Unity would demand payment when you only ever opened the editor twice. (This actually happened to my brother.) Over the past decade, it grew, evolved, becoming the premier engine for budding developers on a budget.

All that changed a few days ago. "Get woke, go broke," the saying goes, and Godot’s management has chosen to go for broke. A far-left "community manager" proudly boasted on Twitter that this engine was perfectly fine being on an admittedly overzealous list of woke games. Fine. Sure. Find me a AAA studio that isn’t utterly broken to the mind virus, and I’ll gladly buy their games. Well, except I can’t actually buy their games; they won’t sell them to me. (California got one right this time, amazingly enough.)

Most people probably ignored the initial message, seeing it as just another fluorescent-haired professional victim parroting the latest narrative. And that’s probably how it was originally intended. But then came the doubling down. People who questioned the intent of the message started getting banned. Developers were kicked out. Backers were kicked out. The project head first claimed to be apolitical, then whined about being bullied off Twitter altogether, retreating to the safe space of leftist Mastodon. At every turn, those who objected to, disputed, or simply asked about Godot’s underlying political agenda were purged.

The great thing about open source is that this doesn’t mean the end. Because anyone can take the source, compile it, and release the resulting binaries, an open project can’t be shut down by progressive whim; this is most likely why so many are switching to "open core" models or demanding copyright assignments.

End result, though, is Redot Engine. Yes, the name’s derivative, but that’s to be expected. The whole thing is derivative, but in the positive sense that only free code under a permissive license allows. Redot hasn’t even released a build yet, and they’re already overwhelmed with support, so much so that Godot’s screeching gallery has started openly attacking it. They use the usual communist methods, so familiar from Antifa, BLM, and anything to do with Trump: projection, accusations of white supremacist beliefs, attempts to clog the system with garbage, and vague allusions of unseemly images stored on the "bad guys’" computers.

All this, because someone said, "No, I don’t want my game engine to have a political agenda."

Nor should it. Tools should be apolitical, because a tool, in and of itself, is amoral. It does not think or act on its own. It simply exists. The uses of a tool are in no way indicative of any inherent moral qualities of that tool. Nuclear bombs were once considered a viable means of digging canals, after all. And even if we accept the idea that a tool can espouse an ideology, why would we want one that’s communist? Why would we want to support the single most deadly ideology in all of human history? The one responsible for the Holodomor and the One Child Policy, the one that gave the world Stalin and Mao and Castro and Chavez?

Redot, as I see it, can be a chance to show that some people are still fighting against the encroachment of anti-human ideology in software. That gives me hope, because I’ve often felt I was fighting that battle alone, as I watched project after project adopt censorious codes of conduct or otherwise wall themselves off from rational discourse.

It’s not perfect yet, so my other hope is that the Redot team understands two things. One, something founded purely on a negative basis—that is, solely to be against another—cannot endure. This was the downfall of Voat and Threads, among many others

Second, if Redot wants to be inclusive in the true, non-bowdlerized meaning of the word, then it must be open. As yet, it is not. All discussion and development is currently hosted only in walled gardens: Discord, Github, Twitter, Youtube. There isn’t any way for a privacy-conscious developer/author to contribute, and I won’t compromise my own morals by supporting the very platforms which have spread the woke mind virus to software development in the first place.

So that’s where we stand right now. Godot has self-immolated, and I have no problem saying they deserve it. Redot is carrying the torch, but they need to prove that their words are not just wind. If they do, then we will have not only a great game engine for free, but a beacon of light in an otherwise dark time.

LIVing it up

I don’t often talk about sports here on PPC. (As an aside, my original not-a-blog had a dedicated sports section. My, how things change in a generation!) The problem with major American sports is, like so many other parts of America, due to wokeness. The three major sports leagues—MLB, NFL, and NBA—all openly support a domestic terrorist organization. The NFL wanted to blacklist its best player for not getting an experimental and deadly gene therapy treatment; the tennis US Open actually did. NASCAR peddled a hate crime hoax and banned its biggest demographic from displaying symbols of their heritage. And the NHL might have backed off its requirement for players to support anti-human practices such as grooming and castration, but it never apologized for pushing them in the first place.

One of the few sports where the woke haven’t fully taken over is golf, and that’s for a few reasons. One, it’s an individual sport with low popular appeal, so Blackrock and the other ESG pushers just don’t see a need to inject idiocy into it. Two, golf is, unlike most professional sports played in the US, truly a global game. Many of the players are Asian, and Asians in general just don’t have time for the alphabet soup crowd. (And they hate “racial equity” nonsense. That’s something that’s common to Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, as far as I can tell.) Yes, one of the greatest golfers of all time is black, but almost nobody cares about that. To anyone watching golf to enjoy the spectacle, Tiger Woods is Tiger Woods. He’s easy to pick out of a crowd, sure, but we’d much rather remember, say, his performance in the 2008 US Open than his response to George Floyd’s death.

Of course, the PGA Tour is an American institution, and thus it is vulnerable to woke influences. Over recent years, they have crept in. They still aren’t very noticeable, compared to other sports, but they’re there. Pride Month celebrations and rainbow logos are the main illustration, but being woke isn’t just about supporting those who hate humanity. It’s also about supporting the global neoliberal order. Much like in tennis, where the Australian Open tried to censor supporters of Russian players, the PGA has it out for anyone who doesn’t swallow the US-EU-NATO narrative. And that’s where our story begins.

Rock the casbah

Saudi Arabia is one of the most barbarous regimes on the planet. That’s indisputable. Their treatment of women, for example, is heinous by any standard other than their own deranged one. They use their leverage as one of the world’s major oil producers as a bludgeon to prevent their crimes against humanity from being investigated or prosecuted. True, they aren’t the worst, but they’re definitely near the top of the list.

But they’re also filthy rich. Much like the United Arab Emirates, the Saudis have begun investing in sports. Part of this is image rehabilitation, but the rest is just simple good business sense. The oil won’t last forever. (Well, it will, because abiotic methane production is a thing, but that’s a different post.) Investing in other ventures is a hedge against the future, and sports are always popular. They also draw huge crowds; even Qatar managed that for its ill-advised World Cup last year.

Thus, it’s no surprise that the Saudi government’s slush fund decided to get into golf. The problem is, they’re Saudis, and the woke hate Saudis. Now, this isn’t for the normal reasons you and I should hate them. Oh, no. Progressives will instead point to the execution of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi a few years ago, as well as the Riyadh regime’s religion-based stance against homosexuality. To the left, these are crimes far worse than torturing political prisoners or imprisoning rape victims.

Even though woke mind virus hadn’t infected the PGA to the point of killing the host, the Tour’s leadership wanted nothing to do with Saudi “blood money”. So the princes decided on the Bender plan: they’d create their own golf tour with blackjack and hookers. They called it LIV Golf, and they hired one of the game’s greats, Greg Norman, to build it.

LIV promised a refreshing change from the staid formula of the PGA. They announced that their tournaments would be 54 holes instead of 72, with no cuts and a team-based format that encouraged every golfer to carry his weight. Oh, and the purses would be massive. In all, it would be something like a Champions League of golf…assuming anybody joined.

Of course, they offered huge contracts to the world’s biggest names. Tiger Woods reportedly got an offer of nearly a billion dollars just to sign. He refused, but others did not, and the LIV roster filled out with a host of top-tier players, quite a few blue-chip golfers, and some younger stars who likely wouldn’t be able to make a name for themselves in the crowded PGA field.

The PGA leadership, as well as those who didn’t take the offers, called this treason. They accused the LIV supporters of selling out, taking dirty money, and (worst of all for a progressive) supporting an enemy of America. Never mind that the Saudis are technically our allies. They’re enemies of the woke, and that’s all that counts here.

Alien vs. Predator

The PGA and the progressive monoculture did its best to fight LIV. Mainstream media closed ranks, issuing hundreds of press releases disguised as news articles, all talking about the heroic PGA golfers fighting against the “defectors” of LIV. They mocked the small schedule, as if a nascent tour could manage more than 10 events on such short notice. They most likely interfered in negotiations to keep LIV off American TV networks, and apparently banned any coverage of the tour on their websites.

In every case, the reasons were the same, and the columnists repeated the talking points almost verbatim. LIV was “sportswashing”, a made-up term that goes back to the woke distortion of the concept of original sin: to the left, some crimes can never be forgiven, only avenged. No matter how many years pass, we’re not allowed to forget that the Saudis killed a journalist! They don’t support gay marriage! These two facts, according to progressive logic, mean that Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s worst abusers of human rights.

It’s okay if the US imprisons political protestors without trial or charge. It’s fine that Israel operates the world’s largest open-air prison. Child trafficking is just part of the Ukraine’s culture, apparently. And locking people in their homes, closing their businesses, and seizing the assets of those who didn’t comply? Just par for the course, if you’ll pardon the pun. But anything other than total obeisance before the protected classes is truly unforgivable.

A few years ago, sports columns rarely delved into politics. Lately, of course, they’ve been getting worse and worse about not staying in their lane, but golf was one of the few exceptions until LIV came along. And it got especially bad when the Saudi tour announced its schedule, and the progressives saw that it included courses owned by Donald Trump. That, I can only assume, was the final straw, and the reason why so much vitriol was poured into reporting for a sport whose usual scandals are drunk driving and divorce disputes.

A whole new world

Earlier this week, all that ended with the surprising announcement of a merger between the PGA and LIV, as well as the European tour that is so unimportant that I don’t even care to look up its name for this post. In the agreement, all three tours get to keep some measure of autonomy, but they’ll be overseen by a board that is, for the most part, made up of Saudi picks. And the PGA gets a Saudi on its policy board. Oh, and whoever’s running the princes’ sports fund has right of first refusal for any future investors into the PGA Tour.

That’s not a merger. That’s a buyout. And it’s hilarious.

All the talk about blood money and sportswashing and human rights abuses went up in flames with this announcement. The reams of digital paper spent trying to convince golf fans that they should care about a random journalist who died years ago were wasted. Vilifying Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau backfired, and now we get to watch Rory McIlroy, probably the most outspoken supporter of the PGA status quo, cry about it.

Progressives on sports news sites are so shocked that they can’t even write a coherent article about it. All they can do is parrot the usual phrases as if trying to recite warding spells. They’ve even expanded this to include the mainstream falsehoods about the 2020 election (which was rigged) and the 2021 US Capitol protest (which was not an insurrection), thanks to the Trump connection.

But all their objections are hollow. They’ve been exposed as hypocrites and liars. They never really wanted what was best for the game of golf. I’m not saying that LIV did, but it’s certainly willing to try new and interesting things like, you know, not destroying a sport for political gain.

The woke mind virus is our enemy. In that, we take the allies we’re given. Whether that’s Russia fighting to prevent the globalist cabal from completing their villainous agenda or the leaders of random African countries giving their lives to expose the truth of the so-called pandemic, those of us on the side of right, on the side of humanity and Enlightenment, will accept any aid. For this instance, it is the Saudis with their near-infinite pool of money that has put the progressives in their place. I’d still hold a gun pointed at them—trust is earned, not bought—but I’ll at least shake their hand while I’m doing it.

The war rages on

It’s been a year since Russia crossed over the border and began its “special military operation” to liberate ethnic Russians in the Ukraine. Since then, the war has grown in scope, evolving from a border skirmish into what might be the prelude to World War III.

But all that evolution, all that expansion, has been one-sided. NATO, and more specifically the US, has poured billions upon billions of dollars into the Zelensky regime. Meanwhile, Russia expanded its conscription call-ups, but has otherwise been patient. Too patient, really. They have ignored blatant threats from supposedly neutral powers, not to mention actual terrorist attacks carried out by the United States. Any one of the dozens of incidents would be a valid casus belli, yet Putin has ignored the very obvious provocations at every turn.

That’s good for all of us, of course, since it keeps us out of a war that could very well escalate into something that makes WWII look like a schoolyard slap-fight. One has to wonder, though, how much more it will take. How many more times can we poke the bear before he awakens to tear our face off?

Because this much is clear: the US cannot win a war against Russia. Why? The answer’s very simple, and it’s the reason why the first two world wars started at all. Any fight that reached that level wouldn’t be the US versus Russia. No, there are too many alliances and treaties and defense pacts for that to happen. Instead, Washington would call upon its allies in NATO, which effectively covers all of Western Europe, as well as Turkey. Meanwhile, calls would go out from Moscow, forcing China, Iran, and possibly India to make their own decisions.

Yes, the NATO bloc outnumbers Russia on paper, and even has a technological advantage, but the past few years have shown how hollow this really is. Growing unrest throughout the Americas and Europe would cause any mass conscription—the only way to get a manpower edge over China—to be met with outright revolt. Diversity hires in the military have hollowed out its core, pushing the best of the best out to make way for a new wave of globalist-friendly forces. The technology often requires specialized knowledge to even operate, and the latest versions have seen almost no use in the field yet.

In other words, all the supposed advantages have fatal flaws. On the other side, things aren’t as grim. True, China’s economy is teetering due to its aging population and low fertility—something the whole world shares, but the effect is most pronounced in East Asia. Other than that, where is the weakness? Russia’s military is top-notch; even their private paramilitary (i.e., mercenary) companies can run roughshod over Ukrainian regulars, as is currently being shown at Bakhmut. The Kiev regime has no counter for hypersonic missiles, or even a mass wave of cheap Iranian drones. Despite its glaring flaws, China still has an unparalleled manufacturing base that can be converted to a full wartime mode with devastating effect.

The best the West can hope for is a stalemate, a war of attrition that accomplishes nothing but millions of dead soldiers and, in certain parts of the world, civilians. Everything old is new again, history repeats itself, and we are on the cusp of learning first-hand why World War I was called “the war to end all wars”. Except that this one would end a lot more than that.

Worst of all, those in power know this, and yet they continue on their path. The only attempt at a peace talk was almost a year ago, not long after the war began, and it was sabotaged by the UK. Now that Zelensky sees he has effectively infinite money coming in from abroad, why even bother with the facade? No one other than Vladimir Putin can stop the Ukraine from sending every one of its able-bodied—and, in some cases, disable-bodied—citizens into the meat grinder, because the ones who otherwise have that ability no longer have the inclination.

That, more than anything, is why I continue to stand against Zelensky, against NATO, and against my own country’s so-called government on this matter. Putin is showing actual regard for his countrymen, his ethnic brethren. He has accurately called out the West’s hypocrisy and the rot of progressivism eating away at its foundations. He has taken a stand for humanity, rather than against it, and he’s one of the few world leaders brave enough to do so publicly. After seeing what happened to others who have tried (Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Shinzo Abe, among others), we could fault him for stepping down, or at least toning down his rhetoric, but he has done the opposite. We need more people like that in power, instead of the mental hospital that passes for the executive branch these days.

If you still support the Ukraine after all this time, after seeing the aims of Zelensky, NATO, and the globalist cabal, then I can only see you as anti-human, just as they are. You’re standing for Drag Queen Story Hour, for the mutilation of children, for mass imprisonment, for depopulation. You’re standing against the last defense of the Enlightenment, against the bonds of shared culture and nationality. “Slava Ukraini,” you say? How about “Slava miru” instead?

Great Books: Areopagitica

As I said last month, I plan to read 12 of the Great Books in 2023. In this dark time of censorship and anti-Enlightenment, where cancel culture causes good men to be barred from society through no fault of their own, it seemed prudent to begin with something that represented liberty and free thought.

John Milton’s Areopagitica is often cited as the seminal argument in favor of a free press and one of the reasons the Founding Fathers not only created the First Amendment, but fought for their freedom in the first place. Written as a letter to the English Parliament, the relatively short work (my copy from Project Gutenberg was about 60 pages at the high zoom necessary for my failing eyesight) manages to be dense with both content and allegory.

The history behind Areopagitica is the history of the Reformation and the English Civil War. To prevent supposedly heretical and seditious tracts from finding their way into the public sphere, the aristocrats of Parliament wanted to create an official printing license. No book could be printed unless licensed, and unless it made it through their handpicked censors. That way, they reasoned, all the “bad” works would be weeded out.

Milton expertly tears down this argument, and his counterpoints still stand strong four centuries later. Banning books doesn’t kill the ideas within them, and every attempt to control society in that way has failed—good Protestant that he is, our author continuously refers to the Inquisition’s index of prohibited literature as the most egregious failure. His other point is also a salient one: reading something awful doesn’t make you an awful person; conversely, if you were already prone to vile tendencies, not having a book about them isn’t going to change your mind.

The marketplace of ideas wasn’t a concept that existed in 1644, yet its roots are laid down here. Let people use their reasoning abilities, and they will see which books are worth studying, which are worth printing and selling and buying. Prevent them from exploring, and they will become slaves, intellectually stunted and only able to think what they are told. (One might also say that John Milton predicted the NPC meme, as his argument accurately describes those who support lockdowns, vaccine mandates, carbon credits, and the war criminal in Kiev for no reason other than because the TV told them to.)

Of course, even a work so defining has its flaws. Mostly, they come from the thick religious allegory. Areopagitica isn’t peppered with Biblical references, like so many other proto-Enlightenment works; it’s caked in them. And, while Milton correctly recognizes that the Bible would, if it were properly examined, be one of the first books on any blacklist, he can’t quite make the logical leap that it should be held to the same standards as any other book.

He also falsely equates “good” with “Christian”, stating that one category of books which deserves to be banned is those that are impious. But this would censor many of our greatest works. It would silence the voice of his contemporary, Spinoza, among many others. While common sense tells us that there is an argument, however weak, to be made for censoring outright lies and fraud, freedom of the press must also include freedom of religion. Milton’s failure to recognize this is a product of his time: England in the 16th and 17th centuries was torn apart by the Reformation, as monarchs and despotic “protectors” alike took turns using force of law to persecute their religious enemies.

Despite all this, Areopagitica was a good read. It shows that people nearly 400 years ago faced the same problems we face, and some of them had some of the same thoughts about how to solve them. Censorship is never the answer; on this, Milton and I agree. On the other hand, we’ll have to agree to disagree on the limits of the free press. For me, it is absolute. But that’s because I was born after the Enlightenment, rather than in the years just before it.

For art’s sake

I never liked art class in school. In elementary school, I skipped art assignments whenever possible, and only finished them reluctantly. Middle school? I became a teacher’s aide for no reason other than to avoid hitting art’s spot in the rotation. And I outright failed the class in high school, though that was as much because of a teacher who hated me as it was my apathy.

But that’s specifically visual art, and there are other kinds. While I can’t draw anything more complex than a stick figure, I’m no good at any musical instrument, and I wouldn’t make it five minutes into a clay sculpture without needing to wash my hands, I like to think I’m a decent writer. I’m a (self-)published author, after all. So, as much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m an artist.

Thus, the arts have become my concern. They should be yours, too, but not for the reason you think.

Art is an expression of culture. That’s really its primary purpose, when you think about it. Great peoples produce great, er, people, and those people produce great works of art. The Renaissance is rightly praised for its works in many fields, works which evoke a certain “feel” that we as human beings can sense. Even if you don’t know a thing about Florence in the 15th century, you still get the sense that Renaissance creations belong to the same general time and place. Likewise the Gothic cathedrals, classical Greek architecture, or elaborate Chinese calligraphy.

Looking at modern art, however, you can only see a culture in decline. A sick culture, maybe even a dying one. And it doesn’t matter which of the arts you investigate; you’ll find the same problem in all of them:

Mainstream popular music is now largely based on repetitive patterns of monotonic drumbeats instead of, say, harmonized melody and vocals. Lyrics—the only sort of poetry still produced for public consumption—are typically uncreative, bearing little fit to meter or rhyme, and restricted to a few set topics.
Television and film have all but given up on new ideas, instead preferring endless sequels, reboots, and adaptations. Most original content being produced is in the form of sitcoms catering to the lowest common denominator or scripted “reality” shows. Characters are more like caricatures, lacking depth or motivation.
Literature suffers the same characterization problems in fiction, added to the low quality of modern prose. No one, it seems, can write in a “high” literary style anymore. Popular books tend to be either biographies or wish-fulfillment fantasies, with everything else considered “niche” in some way.
Modern architecture has fully adopted the brutalist style, eschewing attempts at beauty or emulation of classical grandeur in favor of bland, forgettable constructions. Cookie-cutter homes, McMansions, and the ever-popular “box of windows” commercial building dull our eyes and make even a vibrant city feel lifeless.

I could go on, but the other arts are very minor today (sculpture and poetry) or, as with something like photography, simply repeat the same problems as above. Better than listing problems is finding causes, then solutions.

The cause, of course, comes down to politics. The arts are almost wholly controlled by progressives, and the destruction of culture is one part of the overall progressive agenda. It comes from communism, originally, and who would have guessed that the ideology responsible for over 100 million deaths would also want to kill cultures? But that’s the goal, really. Creativity is individuality, and culture is individuals of like minds building something greater.

While I never like to use absolutist terms, this is one case where it’s appropriate. Progressivism and communism are just plain evil. By definition, as anti-human ideologies, they must be. And, as Tolkien reminds us, evil cannot create. It can only destroy and pervert. It’s only natural, then, that corrupting forces would drag a culture’s creative output down to the low levels we see today.

Progressives control Hollywood, and so we see cardboard cutouts instead of characters, protagonists who are chosen based on how many diversity boxes they check, and transparent morality plays instead of stories. The same groups own the hubs of music distribution—radio, streaming, whatever—and that gives us a succession of rappers who eke out a couple of hits before being killed in a Chicago shootout. Their stranglehold on publishers led to a reader revolt some years back, and now they’ve brought the same drama to video and tabletop gaming.

It’s hard not to see this as a controlled demolition of culture. But the intentions are irrelevant. What matters is how we respond to what can only be considered a threat to our people and our history.

As content creators, we should always be looking for alternative platforms and distribution channels. Make our art available where the censors and gatekeepers can’t touch it. Sites like Odysee and Rumble for videos, Substack for short written works, and so on. Federated, censorship-resistant content platforms such as the fediverse. Anywhere indies can go, you should think about being.

Even before that, though, we should create great works from the start. Pen an epic novel where the hero is a straight white male if that’s appropriate. Write a song with an uplifting, complex melody and lyrics that tell a story about something other than drugs or relationships. Learn Blender or whatever so we can get cartoons that aren’t transparent indoctrination drawn in CalArts style. Embrace who we are: Americans, products of the Enlightenment, the Space Age, and everything in between. Let that identity shine through in your works. Be proud of your heritage, not ashamed of it.

And for those who have the means, where is your support? Where are the conservative and libertarian patrons of the arts? Those who wail and gnash their teeth about the Left’s iron grip on art do nothing to stop it. Even when they do step up, it’s entirely in a reactionary manner, and that just isn’t tenable. Where is the wholesome Hollywood? Where are the conservative counterparts to Tor and Penguin?

Ordinary people dislike bad art. Otherwise, “get woke, go broke” wouldn’t be a saying. But they also enjoy good art. There’s a market out there. Look at indie gaming. Look at streaming. Except possibly for blockbuster movies, we have the tools to make art that competes with the progressive drivel for a fraction of the cost. All we need is investment from those who claim their support.

It’s not enough to complain. You also have to do something about the problem. If you don’t, you’re a part of it. Creators, keep creating. That’s how we can win. Everyone else, be willing to put your money where your mouth is, because art requires an audience.

Absolute zero

The news from the social media space is all about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the changes he has made. Predictably, most opinions on his moves have followed their authors’ political leanings: those on the left hate everything he’s doing, while those on the right are unapologetic cheerleaders. Very rarely does anyone have a nuanced view on the topic, which is, alas, entirely fitting with modern discourse.

I like to think of myself as an exception to that rule. Yes, Musk is making good moves at Twitter, clearing out some of the detritus and indeed trash that had accumulated over the platform’s fifteen years of existence. But he is not infallible, and a few of his public announcements, plus the implications of some of his policy moves, paint a very grim picture for the future of the West’s #2 social media platform.

Elephant in the room

Let’s start with the most recent media scandal attached to Musk: the repeal of Donald Trump’s permanent suspension. The ban itself was on questionable grounds, of course; the “official” reason given is that Trump lied about attending the inauguration on January 20, 2021. In reality, we know that hundreds of Twitter employees, indoctrinated by the dangerous ideology of globalism, were chomping at the bit to remove one of their few prominent and unabashed critics, and they used claims of “destroying democracy” and “denying the election” as their excuses to do so.

The facts are clear. Trump won the 2020 election, and only massive, systemic fraud in at least 7 states ever cast any doubt on that. The idea that a dementia patient who spent most of 2020 hiding in his basement, who can barely form a coherent sentence, and who wasn’t even the most popular candidate from his own party could legitimately earn the most votes in any US election would be laughable if it didn’t make such a mockery of America. Add in the documented cases of illegal ballot harvesting, the mysterious vote dumps that—despite probability theory and common sense—somehow went 100% for Biden, and the thousands of whistle-blowers that have come forth, and you see that the most vocal claim of the anti-Trump mob at Twitter, that of “election denial”, is mere projection.

Anyone sane can see this for what it is. Just as with the manufactured pandemic, Twitter banned those who spoke against the narrative. Democracy itself was at stake in the 2020 elections. Never mind that the United States isn’t a democracy; it’s a republic, as it has been since 1776. And of course someone who was cheated out of his victory is going to complain about it!

“Oh, but what about the January 6 insurrection?” you might ask, because that’s the other reason given for deplatforming Trump and his supporters. But think back to that day. There was no insurrection by the people. Those who gathered in Washington were exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, and petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. In this case, the grievance was election fraud, and there was no redress. The insurrection was by those who cowardly hid from their constituents, then waited until the dead of night to violate their oaths of office.

All that is old news, but those who wanted to silence Donald Trump—and who have, for nearly two years, succeeded—will have to face the consequences of their decision. That they are so terrified of even the idea he may be able to speak freely is telling, and it gives us a question to ask of any would-be censor. If they’re right, what are they afraid of?

Canary in the coalmine

Authoritarians the world over, in any era, have always feared two things more than any other: an armed populace and free speech. Social media has no way of defending oneself except through words, so only the second is of relevance in this case. But it is very relevant.

Free speech is the cornerstone of liberal society. When we are allowed to speak, to write, and to record without fear of reprisal from the state, we can achieve great things. Yet freedom of speech has been under assault almost since the concept was first formalized, and social media has become one of the biggest hindrances to this inalienable liberty. Entire topics are banned from discussion on Twitter, Facebook, and every other major platform. In recent months, those who wish to exercise their rights have been kicked off social media, removed from their web hosts or cloud providers, purged from global DNS servers, and even barred from using credit cards.

Those in favor of such extraordinary methods of silencing dissent always fall back to the same tired responses. “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences,” they’ll say. “Hate speech isn’t free speech.”

Both of these are incorrect. The entire point of free speech is that you are protected from consequences, specifically government retribution. Now, with banks and global corporations effectively functioning as additional branches of government, we are faced with the very real threat of non-state actors who have state-level powers, and they should be treated as such. Every social media platform, every payment processor, and so on must be held to the same standards of the social contract that we expect from Washington.

If Twitter is to be the public square, then it must allow the protections of a public square, such as the First Amendment’s right to free speech, the Fourth’s right of privacy, the Sixth’s right to a fair trial, and the Eighth’s freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. All but the most extreme would accept that the death penalty is not justified as punishment for an insult, so why should a “permanent suspension” be any different? Yes, Twitter can act as a corporation and private club, banning anyone for anything, but then they lose all claim to being public. An open society is entirely at odds with unilateral decisions of guilt and innocence.

After announcing Donald Trump’s reinstatement on Twitter, Elon Musk was asked if Alex Jones would be next. He replied flatly and unequivocally, “No.” This single word speaks volumes. Musk usually has a witty (or at least sarcastic) retort, but here there was none. And there was no room for interpretation, either.

How, then, can we reconcile that statement with Musk’s claims that he supports free speech? Alex Jones didn’t commit fraud, didn’t use true threats, and incite others to commit crimes—along with obscenity, the only categories of speech seen as unprotected by the First Amendment. Conspiracy theories are not illegal, nor is sharing one’s opinions on them. Whatever you think of his comments about Sandy Hook, he has the same right to express them as anyone. And he should have the same platform for that expression as those spreading the lie that an experimental gene therapy is safe for toddlers.

The solution

Elon Musk isn’t the answer. His reign at Twitter will make a lot of noise, but ultimately will change very little. Yes, he may end the silencing of mainstream conservative voices, but what does that accomplish? The site is still a dictatorship, not a place for open discussion, and nothing about Musk’s public statements says that will be any different under his watch. There will still be people who aren’t allowed to participate due to their views on the sensitive topic of the day. Indeed, in some cases the censorship will get worse: Kathy Griffin was suspended for impersonation, which is protected as parody (as long as there is no intent to defraud) in any free society.

No, the real solution is to create a social network where there is neither censorship nor centralization. That solution already exists in the form of the fediverse: a network of servers who share a common protocol and communicate with each other. In theory, one user on the fediverse can talk to any other, and can see posts of his own choosing, no matter their source. (In practice, it doesn’t quite work that way, because too many server admins simply block other servers whose policies allow anything close to free speech, thus breaking the idea of federation.)

This is the way forward. It’s the way email worked until Google got its hands on it. It’s how Usenet was the top method of disseminating news for nearly two decades. And it’s how we can get back to an internet where all are equally free to express their opinions.

No quarter

A recent article on the far-left site The Atlantic asks for a “pandemic amnesty”, and the very idea leaves me so enraged that I have to comment on it. This post is directed at people like that post’s author, not my general reader. Bear that in mind as you read.

You stole two years of my life over a bad cold. You forced me to put everything on hold because of your fears at best, your thirst for power at worst. Your mandates and machinations took me to the brink of suicide multiple times, left me broken in such a way that I still haven’t even found all the pieces, much less started to put them back together.

Lest you think this is about me, know that my story is not unique. You left thousands to die alone, left millions more wanting to, if not wishing they had. You tore holes in our social fabric. You set education back a generation by closing schools, destroyed public trust in doctors, the media, and government. You ostracized anyone who dared speak against you, calling us deniers, indeed murderers. You strove to see us not merely thrown in jail for beliefs you deemed heretical, but removed from society altogether. You sought to deny us our livelihoods if we didn’t bend the knee to your mad depopulation schemes. And now you want us to forgive you?

No.

What you did to us—to the whole world—is unforgivable. Every virus death after April 2020, when we knew that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were safe and effective treatments, is blood on your hands. Likewise every death from your gene therapy disguised as a vaccine, every lockdown-induced suicide, every senior who died alone because you wouldn’t allow families to visit, every child who can’t read at his grade level, every toddler whose development has been stunted because he never had the chance to see facial expressions, every American fired for refusing to get the deadly shot, and every couple who may never have the chance to reproduce.

All those are your fault. Anyone who took an unbiased look at the data two and a half years ago could see that this virus was nothing major. Yes, it was novel, and that was cause for concern. After all, it was made in a lab, so of course it was novel! Once our immune systems had a chance to learn about it, however, that novelty wore off, and we were left with a particularly pernicious case of the common cold.

Early on, we knew this. The Diamond Princess provided the perfect case study, and its numbers matched the actual data you tried to hide from us: 2 out of every 3 people infected showed no symptoms, about 0.15% of cases were fatal, and children were almost completely immune. The weaker (but easier to spread) strains like Omicron are even less cause for concern. Certainly no reason to shut down schools and small businesses.

Instead of amnesty, then, why don’t we talk about reparations? That’s what you deserve. You should be paying for the damage you caused us as individuals and society as a whole. Pay for the funerals of everyone your fear-mongering killed. Pay back the hospital bills of those injured by your so-called vaccines, and the unemployment benefits for those who were unjustly fired for refusing them. Pay for therapy: psychiatric therapy for the millions who now suffer from crippling depression and anxiety, speech therapy for the children who are finally allowed to learn visual cues again, couples therapy for the marriages strained to the breaking point. Pay for surrogates and sperm donors for the people your shots sterilized. Pay for the cancer treatments that had to be put off.

Then, maybe we can start talking about forgiveness.

From Russia with love

The war between Russia and the Ukraine has been raging for about three months now, and everything I’ve seen so far only proves that my initial suspicions were on target. While mainstream Western media is quick to cast this war as the heroic underdog fighting for its very survival against overwhelming odds, the truth is far different. If you look at unbiased (or at least not as overtly biased so far in favor of the Zelensky regime) sources, you can see that truth. Russia is winning, and that’s ultimately a good thing for all of us.

Okay, I know that sounds strange, but think about it for a minute. First of all, the Russian army is showing everyone how to wage a modern war without overwhelming firepower. They’re doing something completely different from the usual American plan of Shock and Awe, of leveling entire cities to rubble, then hoping the survivors would welcome them as liberators. Instead, Russia is playing the long game, adapting old-school siege tactics and encirclement strategies to the 21st century as they force their foe to expend valuable materiel and manpower.

Better yet, now that the Ukrainians are almost completely out of domestic equipment, they are increasingly reliant on NATO and the billions upon billions of dollars we Americans have been forced to pay to prop up this dying regime. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that “our side” had no intention of playing fair. It exposes the rot at the top of Western governments by showing that they care more about the haven for their money laundering and sex trafficking than they do for their own people. With trust in the media and so-called “experts” cratering all across the US (well, with the exception of socialist utopias like California and New York, where you’re expected to wear two masks while you’re paying $7 for a gallon of gas), Putin’s move comes at the perfect time. Every American who turns of the propaganda machines and algorithms is quickly seeing the truth of the matter. One would hope they’ll start to do that for everything else, too.

At every point in this war, Russia has had the high ground, both tactically and morally. They have limited civilian casualties wherever possible. Their stated goal, the liberation of Donetsk and Luhansk, has all but been achieved, and it was done in a way that made the “heroes” in Kiev look like the petty tyrants they are.

But the victories stretch far beyond the Donbass or the Dnieper. Russia has struck a major blow against globalism itself, that festering evil underlying so many of the ills of today’s world. The oligarchs said to control Putin’s country are finding themselves isolated by both their homeland and the West. US biolabs, possibly including the sources of the deadly mRNA shots forced upon us and the likely re-engineered monkeypox virus currently making headlines, are being exposed for what they are. The sanctions against Russia have failed utterly—indeed, they’ve had the opposite effect, if their intent was to turn the Russian people against Putin and the war—and their economy has come out even stronger than before.

To be sure, it isn’t all cheerful news. The West’s isolation tactics have pushed Russia further into the arms of China, which is all the things our media claims Putin to be, and much more. A rising economic power allying with a human-rights disaster against us means that we need to be that much more watchful with our own government. And the sanctions have truly backfired, forcing the people of Western nations to go without.

At the end of the day, that’s the lesson we can learn from the Russia-Ukraine war. For over 300 million Americans watching from afar, it’s not about the subjugated peoples of Donetsk wanting independence, or the Azov Battalion taking prisoners into a factory, or anything like that. It doesn’t matter that Zelensky’s posturing is in front of a green screen, not the backdrop of the country he claims to represent. Nobody really cares that generals are using screenshots from the Arma games as propaganda pieces.

No, what we take away from this must be that the alleged elites in this country have openly crossed the line from incompetence to malice. Their every move since the first Russian crossed the border has been to hold us back, to make our lives harder. That they choose to defend the most corrupt nation in Europe over their own people shows that they no longer purport to represent us—they believe they rule us.

We’re fighting the same war here that Russia is fighting half a world away. And whether you like it or not, anyone who believes in the American Dream, in the ideals of liberty and justice for all, has the same enemies as Vladimir Putin. Because globalism doesn’t just want to destroy Russia. It seeks to destroy all nations, all freedom. And its media mouthpieces will gladly try to turn us against the one force opposing it.