Month: August 2011

Individualism is nothing but the creed that truths can be perceived by individuals, and that by comparing notes, we can more consistently and accurately approach the useful, which is to say the true.

Opposed to it is, and can only be, dogma, which is to say “truths” articulated by specific individuals–named or unnamed–and codifed by those in power into what is supposed to be consensus truth, a truth that is “out there” rather than one that arose in specific times and places.

For example, the Catholic Church was anti-individualist in the Middle Ages, and remains largely so to this very day. There is a Church creed that is superior to all individuals. If you are in the Church, you must accept Church doctrines. Period.

On the other side we have various totalitarianisms. No doubt one of the reasons Mussolini found Keynes so attractive was his rejection of individualism. Fascism is a system in which truth, per se, is conflated with the judgement of the Leader. No other truths can exist. They are suppressed by whatever means are necessary, which include mainly threat of force, but actual force as needed.

Liberalism, as I use the term, is the only political system consistent with individualism, since liberty and individualism go hand in glove.

Conversely, no matter what words surround the claim, any argument that individualism is counter-productive in any way is necessarily a call for tyranny.

To be clear, there is nothing in the creed “you can make up your own mind” that prevents charity, kindness, altruism, and all the other ooey-gooey things that Leftists claim to care about, and the opposites of which they consistently practice.

There is no society so stable it cannot be wrecked by enough Leftists trying to “help” it.

Now for something completely different.

I had not read this before–and although names are named, this is of course amenable to reasonable criticism–but Neil Armstrong did, according to some reports, in fact see UFO’s on the moon.

According to the NASA Astronaut Neil Armstrong, the Aliens have a base on the Moon and told us in no uncertain terms to get off and stay off the Moon. According to un-confirmed reports, both Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin saw UFOs shortly after that historic landing on the Moon in Apollo 11 on 21 July 1969. I remember hearing one of the astronauts refer to a “light” in or on a crater during the television transmission, followed by a request from mission control for further information. Nothing more was heard. According to a former NASA employee Otto Binder, unnamed radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypassed NASA’s broadcasting outlets picked up the following exchange:

NASA: Whats there?
Mission Control calling Apollo 11…

Apollo11: These “Babies” are huge, Sir! Enormous!
OH MY GOD! You wouldn’t believe it!
I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there,
Lined up on the far side of the crater edge!
They’re on the Moon watching us!

A certain professor, who wished to remain anonymous, was engaged in a discussion with Neil Armstrong during a NASA symposium.

Professor: What REALLY happened out there with Apollo 11?

Armstrong: It was incredible, of course we had always known
there was a possibility, the fact is, we were
warned off! (by the Aliens). There was never any
question then of a space station or a moon city.

Professor: How do you mean “warned off”?

Armstrong: I can’t go into details, except to say that their
ships were far superior to ours both in size and
technology – Boy, were they big! and menacing!
No, there is no question of a space station.

Professor: But NASA had other missions after Apollo 11?

Armstrong: Naturally – NASA was committed at that time, and
couldn’t risk panic on Earth. But it really was a
quick scoop and back again.

According to a Dr. Vladimir Azhazha: “Neil Armstrong relayed the message to Mission Control that two large, mysterious objects were watching them after having landed near the moon module. But this message was never heard by the public – because NASA censored it.”
According to a Dr. Aleksandr Kasantsev, Buzz Aldrin took color movie film of the UFOs from inside the module, and continued filming them after he and Armstrong went outside. Armstrong confirmed that the story was true but refused to go into further detail, beyond admitting that the CIA was behind the cover-up.

I think I have mentioned this, but “conspiracy” thinking is what I call paradigm thinking. In my view, the quickest pathway to rapid scientific advancement is trying to find ways to new paradigms. New paradigms cause us to look for new things in new places. For example, before Einstein there would have been no point trying to see if light curved around the sun.

All a conspiracy theory does is say that certain fundamental elements in our consensual reality are false. Self evidently, when you are dealing with circumstantial, anecdotal “unnamed” professors, you have to be careful. Yet, I think all good minds have to remain open. You can look at things like this and just say “that would be interesting”, and then move back on to your thesis on economic conditions in Imperial Japan, or some recondite experiment in genetics. It need not alter your worldview.

To the point, you need not label it in any way other than “different”, and “potentially interesting”.

Once you grasp things like how the Fed works, or the sheer lunacy of not being able to get a legally valid document from our President that is required for all first time drivers and all passport applications, then it becomes obvious that large, important things can and often do sit in the open, and that pointing out the proverbial elephants in the room–or their footprints, or even the possibility they may be there–is symptomatic of nothing but mental and emotional health. The sick ones are those who lie to themselves to fit it.

Be that as it may, I spend no time worrying about these things. I will many months without thinking about them. I ponder things I can ponder productively; the rest I let go.

In my view, most men and women would prefer traditional sex roles, if they did not feel they were being taken advantage of. Most women would like to stay home and raise children, and most men would like to have a woman taking care of the affairs of the house. Most women want a decisive man who knows what he wants and most men want a nurturing woman who will salve their wounds, and protect their masculine pride.

This is not all men and women, of course. What we have now is an uneasy dance, in which neither side can assume the other will play its role. Many women feel like they are taking care of overindulged children; or, on the contrary, that they are disposable. When men don’t act like men, women see no reason to act like women.

To be clear, my own vision is something like that of the chivalric ideal. Women want to be on pedestals, and they want to be equal. They also want the man to be in charge. This is confusing for men, but basically I think if men make decisions, take care of themselves, and treat women with respect, the women can fill in the gaps. That’s what they do. I know of few women who have not endured quite a bit of crap, even in long term relationships. That’s what women do, and they do it better and more naturally than men. That’s my view.

But the point of this post is this: self evidently, many would not agree with me. I am looking forward to what our social orders might look like in 20 years, and what seems obvious to me is both that people instinctively crave cultural clarity–something telling them who to be and what to do–and that they sometimes need to break away from that order.

Let us say that the above describes 80% of men and 70% of women. What of those who don’t like that order? Simple: they move somewhere else. The San Francisco’s of the world are not just acceptable in my view–they are NECESSARY. I want freedom for everyone. This includes the emotional intelligence to accept cultural difference, which would include accepting people’s right to disagree with your own lifestyle choices.

This structure, combined with historical ignorance, is the most powerful Leftist argument against Conservatism, or what I call Liberalism.

Always, it is assumed at the outset that if you are not a Leftist, that you are opposed to bringing wealth to the poor, and justice to the wronged. Whatever arguments you might make in your own favor, these detriments are assumed at the outset.

In this strange world, balancing the budget “on the backs” of the poor is unjust. Yet, we have 50% unemployment among the youth of our ghettoes. This situation will only get worse as the economy gets worse, and the economy will not get better until business owners–particularly small business owners, who create most of the jobs and pay most of the taxes–feel confident in the future. You don’t sit on piles of cash unless you have a good reason. Huge–record–uncertaintly is a good reason.

The point I want to make clear here is that the choices are between high taxes, high unemployment and high rates of poverty, and low taxes, low unemployment and low rates of poverty. There is nothing to commend the first, and claiming otherwise is, if one understands history, a naked lie.

This concept of the Room is in some respects analogous to that of the Sphere, a movie by that name, if memory serves. The Sphere would bring to life whatever was at the center of your true consciousness; in some cases, this was not something pleasant, and resulted in at least one death, as I recall, and substantial danger for more.

I have often argued that Goodness consists in knowledge, and that growth consists in gradually eradicating from the movement of your personality all of the things that you normally would feel the need–on some level–to hide. This hiding can be from your conscious mind, or from others.

One of the roles presumably played by cults of evil–Satanic cults, examples of which would include for my purposes all cults including ritual torture and murder, as for example the Aztecs and headhunters–is externalizing unpleasant thoughts and sharing them with others, such that the need to hide one’s rage disappears. You can accept it in yourself, since you see it accepted by others. This does not make this a functional adaption, but it erodes the isolation that hate builds. Even Sade found it desirable, in his “300 days of Sodom”, to create a core group of four Satanists, who committed their crimes, in large measure, together.

The Room, then, if it grants you your heart’s innermost wish, acts as a mirror to tell you who you are. What comes out is who you really are. Most people do not want to know who they really are.

A Good person, however, has lit all his rooms. Water swirls about, but it is clear, so what is on the surface is congruent and indistinguishable from what is deeply beneath the surface. A good person is transparent.

Yet, what does this clarity grant you? The ability to see more deeply into the universe. You are no longer in your own way. Thus, in Goodness there is more latent complexity and order than in evil, which consists mainly in many dark, decaying rooms, none of which communicate in an honest ways with the others. Loneliness can be diminished in shared crimes–and through the connection with the victim through violence–but never released. True tranquillity is never possible.

I always have quite a few thoughts floating around. I drink more than I ought to in no small measure to stop my brain from racing around.

Saw the Transformers movie yesterday, and had a few comments. First, I think there is a before and after element to it. The before, the first part, had what seemed to me to be more or less open homosexual propaganda. This is common in Hollywood. A good example was the kiss in “Remember the Titans”, which never happened, and which was entirely superfluous to the actual storyline.

In this case it was quite obvious, at least for anyone accustomed to thinking symbolically. Most of it had to do with references to oral sex. First, the hot girlfriend says she’ll give him a “job” when he gets home. Then she brings him a glass full of licorice, which is vaguely phallic, and she walks out eating one. Then we shift to an elevator where you have one man eating a banana, and another slurping on “special” milk. Then he pulls him into the bathroom, starts talking about “Deep Wang”, and Deep Throat, and pulls his pants down. Finally, they tumble out of the bathroom stall, where one has his pants down. John Malkovitch, of course, says he doesn’t care.

What I think needs to be said about scenes like these, is that they tend to disappear from awareness. In part two of the movie, we get lots of heroic scenes, American soldiers performing well, and carefully placed shots of the American flag. This is all well and good.

But you have mixed the subversive in with the openly–what shall I call it?–the culturally common; the shared reference points, at least for most of us.

A principle means of seducing minds is combining what those minds do not accept with what creates powerful positive affects. Most people, unconsciously, will take that movie as a whole, and simply short-circuit the memories of what is incongruent with what they do accept. But it is still there. Actually, as I think about it, I had forgotten about John Turturro’s more or less openly gay valet, Dutch. Again, Dutch is given pivotal roles in several scenes.

Another scene I didn’t care for was when John Malkovitch was sparring with Bumblebee, and, with a gun pointed in his face, merely laughed. This is a species of sociopathy, like that exhibited by Kevin Bacon’s character in the latest X-men movie, who just laughed after two of his soldiers were killed, and he himself, one would have thought at that point in the movie, was in imminent danger.

These scenes act in an almost hypnotic way to implant images and ideas which, to the extent they are processed, are processed as humorous.

I went through a phase of interest in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. My final conclusion was that very little of what they did was original, with most of it apparently having been copied from Milton Erickson.

What they did do, though, is create terms for demonstrable phenomenon, and the one I wanted to mention here is pacing and leading. People trust people like them. Logically, then, if you want to manipulate someone, you must first convince them you understand them, are like them, and that they can trust you. Since it is unlikely all of these things are actually true, you modify your behavior–your breathing, body patterns, choice of words, vocal inflection–to more closely match that person. They call this “pacing”.

Having established rapport–connection–you can commence the download. You subtly change, and see if they follow. They start at Point A and you want them at Point B. So you go find where their Point A is, then lead them to Point B, gradually, gradually, with no breaks in the line.

In practice, of course, as with formal brainwashing, this is often done an inch at a time. You travel that inch over and over, until it becomes a part of their identity, and then you add another inch, and repeat the process.

What is the message here? That open sexuality–including homosexuality–is as American as apple pie. This is not, however, our history. This is a qualitative change.

For my part, I am quite willing to admit that some men and women are “born that way”. This does not bother me. What bother me are proselytizing homosexuals, and those who are unwilling to accept that some people find their lifestyle morally objectionable. Why does it matter to people in San Francisco that people in Roswell Georgia find their behavior immoral? They are in two different places.

Satanism: this should be obvious, but what I have termed Cultural Sadeism is functionally identical to Satanism. It is constituted in the decision to abandon coherent and enduring moral principles in favor of pragmatism in a power nexus predicated on violence and the threat of violence.

In Transformers, you have Patrick Dempsey as a Cultural Sadeist. The scene where all the rich, seemingly sophisticated folks are leaving the club, completely unconcerned about the fate of the girl in the car, is one which in some circles has become deeply embedded as emblematic of Satanism. There have been a number of books penned arguing that Marx was a Satanist.

Personally, I doubt he believed in God, but to the extent he did, he likely shared the rage of Sade at creation, and wanted to burn it to the ground. Death for someone existing at this level is in the end egalitarianism with the Earth.

And note, too, the use of iconic American symbols in the movie–the destruction of Abraham Lincoln, and the use of the reflecting pool to initiate the process.

Note, too, the location of the final conflict: Chicago, Obama’s old stomping grounds.

Few thoughts.

It occurred to me today that while it is a commonplace to talk the government-facilitated transfer of wealth from the rich to the “poor”, it is uncommon to point out that the same transfer creates tens of thousands of well-paying jobs in the public sector.

The wealth transfer that matters is not from the “rich” to the “poor”, but from tax-payers, to tax-consumers; from the private sector to the public sector.

Obama has increased the number of Federal employees by hundreds of thousands. All of these jobs have to be paid for by private employees and employers. This fact is inescapable.

The net reality, therfore, is that Obama has caused a large sucking motion from the private sector to the public sector; from the economically creative, to the economically consumptive. “Consumptive” is a good word. It is an illness.

Few thoughts on a whiskey night.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/opinion/krugman-the-centrist-cop-out.html?_r=1&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0803-L17

Krugman must literally have people coming in to his office telling him how to spin things. It is in my view impossible that he could be this consistently stupid.

My focus is on solving problems, but I certainly not innocent of intellectual estheticism. In this case, it is interesting to observe the texture of what he is doing, how he is massaging the facts. What he has done here is invert the actual facts in a quick, even deft way. This is in some respects one of the more clever columns I have seen from him. The flat earth analogy is one I had thought of, too, although I prefer my cyanide analogy.

What you have to do is pull these words from the page, lift them, and imagine them floating. Now, pull up in your mind the actual numbers.

Contrast, for example, the “projection” that we will achieve record tax revenues in 2014–which will necessarily involve something on the order of record tax increases–with the claim that

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation.

Despite the supposed “victory” of this debt ceiling negotiation, radical tax increases are already on the way. They can’t be stopped at this point, even by an Act of Congress, until 2013. Nothing ending Obamacare, which is the source of these projected increases in revenue–all of which plus borrowing will be spent immediately–can get through the Senate right now.

What made the Democrats feel like their fingernails were being pulled out was a drop, a tiny drop, in an ocean of blooming debt. If you want an analogy, how about the BP spill getting bigger, and Democrats calling for the leak to be expanded. We are not only going in the wrong direction, people like Krugman are calling for us to go FASTER. This is not insanity: it is wickedness. He is trying to engineer the wholesale destruction of the international economy. What motivates him I will leave to others.

The simple reality is that the increase of some $9 trillion over the next decade is a BEST CASE scenario, absent large change of the sort I expect to see in 2013. By that time–2020–we will be paying some $1 trillion in INTEREST annually. In looking at that number, keep in mind that until very recently an entire budget of $2 trillion was a lot. Look at that tax table.

This money, in turn, will either be borrowed, or taken in taxes. Taxes, in turn, not only damage economic productivity, but they are unnecessary, when used to support unproductive government, which is most of it.

Note in that regard the use of the phrase “business of government”. As Calvin Coolidge said “the business of America is business”. The business of America is NOT government. The more of it we have, the farther we are from the ideals of our nation, and noble ideals they were and remain.

What Leftist propagandists literally do, in my view, is make lists of catch words they know appeal to conservatives–and persons of common sense more generally–and consciously insert them in ironic and inappropriate ways to make the indefensible appear sound, and the idiotic appear wise.

Obama is not a centrist. He is a cynical pragmatist. He knows that as long as he stays in office the march towards overturning the Constitution and political liberty continues. To stay in office, he has to pretend to be a moderate. Yet, all the while, whether he is golfing, fete’ing himself, watching videos of his speeches, or watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, his people are pushing his agenda. We are being bankrupted. Money is changing hands in shadowy ways to shadowy people, for purposes we may never uncover.

Krugman: I can see why you are flighty and nervous. In another day and time you would be a chain smoker on TV. Question is: where will you be 20 years from now? You assume you will be a part of the New World Order, but you are dealing with people lacking consciences. How can good come from the destruction of truth in any form? It can’t, and it won’t. You have your use now, but do not assume you have any value to anyone past your immediate expediency.

Why not work to create a world you would want to grant to people you care about–I have no idea if you have children or even like women–and why not care about ALL of humanity, rather than a small elite?

It seems to me that mental health might be defined as “the capacity for tranquility”. In some of my best moments I am doing nothing whatever. I can spend an hour just watching the sky. I am endlessly fascinated by clouds and wind and light. There is nothing unusual in this, of course, until you get to our contemporary society.

I wonder how long the perceptual lines can be when children are acculturated to expect constant change from the time they are infants. They grow up in front of TV’s, and migrate to text messaging. From what I hear, most college students anymore have attention spans measured in seconds, not even minutes.

Fractionalized attention could possibly be argued to be useful economically–although I would dispute even that–but it is absolutely inconsistent with the deepest and best human states, and the mental health the capacity to reach such states implies.

I think a lot about inflation, because it is the primary leak in free markets, and the primary reason the developing world has not developed much further, and the primary reason we are in such debt.

So often, we see inflation talked about as something that just happens, like a storm sweeping in from the prairie. It isn’t. It is the result of conscious policy decisions by specific people. We need to be clear, as well, that inflation ALWAYS has winners. That most people lose does not obscure this fact. It is, in fact, a zero sum interaction.

As I have said often, in fact, most of what the Marxists accuse “capitalists” of in general–which is not accurate–is in fact true of those with the power to suck wealth out of the system without creating anything. Industrialists create things. Investors using their own money enable the creation of things. Inflationists use a legally priviledged place within the system to get without giving. I discuss all of this on my other site.

The point I wanted to make here was that inflation will not, in my view, happen in this country without confidence. Until people are confident in the future, they will not borrow money. American businesses are amassing record amounts of cash, that with another President, and without looming massive tax and regulatory increases, would be spent.

My reasoning is simple, and I have discussed it previously. Most price and following wage inflation comes from the fractional reserve system. $1 in what I have termed primary inflation, from the Fed, can be turned into much more. I forget the number, but it is about $28 if memory serves. With 10% reserves, you get 90% created, then 90% of that, and 90% of that.

Self evidently, this process is not always completed. Banks, like anyone else, have to get customers, and if people are self financing–as in the modern environment–then they can’t create much money at all.

Obviously, these facts, too, are why it is hard to track inflation. You would have to know about every disbursement of money from the Fed, and every loan made by every bank, and even then money flows around. It might be stored overseas, then come back, then leave again.

And over and above all this, you have normal market factors. The obvious example is oil. If oil goes up, everything goes up, since everything you buy has to be transported. This is not, properly speaking, inflation. It is price fluctuation in response to market conditions.

All of this is enormously complex. If we accept the existence of the Fed and the fractional reserve banking system, then we must accept the need for economists. I do not, and I do not.

If we had stable money, then ONLY supply and demand would affect prices. We would not need to concern ourselves with a variable prime rate, Fed policy, or inflation. There would be no inflation. It would be mathematically precluded from the system.

At some point I am hoping to attract some of the more clever Marxists out there. My deconstruction still enables you to feel righteous anger, but to direct it in the right direction, and to pursue actually helpful policies.