Author: White Whale

I’m sure I’ve pointed out many times that Hugh S. Johnson, who headed the New Deal in its early days, was an admirer of Mussolini:

Johnson played a major role in the New Deal. In 1933 Roosevelt appointed Johnson to administer the National Recovery Administration (NRA). One author claims Johnson looked on Italian Fascist corporativism as a kind of model.^[16] He distributed copies of a fascist tract called “The Corporate State” by one of Mussolini’s favorite economists, including giving one to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and asking her give copies to her cabinet.^[17] The NRA involved organizing thousands of businesses under codes drawn up by trade associations and industries. He was recognized for his efforts when Time named him Man of the Year of 1933—choosing him instead of FDR. 

What occurs to me today is to connect John Maynard Keynes, who was also a Fascist, with contemporary Democrats.  No one who reads “An End to Laissez-Faire”, or the final chapter of this General Theory, can fail to recognize his Fascist ideas.

Here is Mussolini himself--and I may note that Fascist was a creed which was actually practiced by someone, somewhere, and has not always existed as a synonym for “someone who doubts me for reasons I cannot refute”–on Keynes;

Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.

All of these ideas are explored at much greater length at the end of the General Theory, to the extent that I have been arguing for some years (my piece is pages 28-46 here) that the entirety of his work was aimed at generating Fascism by stealth, by steadily increasing the government, by steadily providing more needed services, such as jobs, medical care, housing, and then making it impossible to get them any other way.

Here, though, is a new idea:  LOGICALLY, if Keynes was a Fascist, and if prominent Democrats, such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich are championing his Demand Side economics, then it is a necessary conclusion that in the field of economics, the Democrats have become literally Fascist.  And why not?  Take away Hitler, and most of what is left they already agree with.  They agree with a merger of the private sector and the State.  They believe the State should provide everything, that the economy should depend on it, and that this arrangement, by minimizing any possibility of human error (outside the State, self evidently) makes life much happier, even if much, much less free.  They are already Fascists without realizing it.

And even though the Democrats have historically been the anti-war party, my god look at all the saber rattling where Russia was concerned.  The media said jump, and they said how high, how often, and do you need anything else, Sir?  Some seem to have literally been contemplating a nuclear war over some Facebook ads.  Craziness takes on its own energy after a while, I suppose.

But the opposite of Demand Side is Supply Side.  Supply side is ECONOMICS, PERIOD.  It is what people believed before Keynes, and what everyone after him with a shred of sense has also.  Hazlitt described in the mid-40’s why it didn’t and couldn’t work, and history has borne him out again and again.

So the entire economic program of the Democrats consists in some malignant melding of socialism and Fascism, and this is no exaggeration.  This is stating the case clearly.

I was an early Trump supporter.  Rand Paul was my favorite, but I never seriously thought he had any chance of getting nominated, especially after watching how the GOP squeezed his father out of the running.

But even though I admire the principled stands both Paul’s take on most issues–even when I disagree with them, as happens much more often with Ron–it takes a ego the size of Jupiter to even think about taking on EVERYONE, which is the task of being a non-conforming President as it has evolved.

Ponder that our last two candidates–Mitt Romney and John McCain–have rolled over and THEY ARE NOT EVEN PRESIDENT.  Nobody was putting pressure on them.  They rolled over just in case.  It probably took hours of convincing and getting hit with 10-15 advisers, telling him how badly he was hurting himself politically, to talk Trump into his “double negative” recantation.

It takes someone with both balls and media savvy to even think about taking on this monster.  And we are seeing this monster.  It has revealed its enormous eyes and enormous teeth.  It is not hiding, not for anyone who still retains the capacity to even begin to see what is in front of them.

I think Tucker Carlson’s take on this is spot-on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFRmF0SfHUA

As this most recent, and most intense, spasm reaches its point of ultimate tension, pray for Trump.  The media is nakedly trying to manipulate people’s minds and emotions.  If they fail, they will fail big.  They will Red Pill a LOT of people.  You cannot step outside the propaganda matrix once, and see it for what it is, and ever go back in.

It is easy to be seduced over time into a new one, perhaps.  Our shadow rulers know enough to always give people a choice of propagandas.  But this one, right now, is omnipresent, unavoidable, and so blatantly full of bullshit that I wonder how people who call themselves sane fall for it.

Trump just needs to keep being Trump.  There was no misstep, no error of judgment (unless it is true he approved Rosenstein’s timing, but everybody fucks up sometimes), and meeting with Putin was the right thing to do.

And if it is true that $400 million of illicit money was money laundered into this country by our intelligence agencies, as Putin alleges, then a swift and devastating counterattack should be launched at the earliest possible moment.

I continue to indulge in likely pointless political posts, because the future matters to me.  I continue to nourish the hope I have influence somewhere, to some extent.  So many good things are possible, but so many evil and just thoughtless, stupid human beings, continue to seek to destroy it.  That is how I see it, and my reasons I share.

Abstraction is always already a violence, and Communism is the perfection of abstraction, because a necessary element in it is to never see what is actually in front of you.  It rewards and demands a perfect rejection of the present moment, and genuinely spontaneous emotion.

In important respects, it is an idolatry, where the idol is the mind in place of perception.  It is a cruel and loveless world, precisely because in the only terms it cares about, it defines itself as kind and caring.

I see far too many psychopaths wandering our streets, speaking loudly on the internet, preaching from positions of power.  I fear the future, when there is so much insanity.

I feel most all of us are crazy.  Even normal people are crazy.  Our world is not focused on the permanent and real.

And all the digital distractions, the constant PRESENCE of one more hit, one more drag, one more one more, and our madness itself is mad.  As Lao Tzu put it, insanity goes on for a very long time.  Who can know where and when it will end for any of us?

I feel that all poetry ought to be bad, just as all art should be folk art.  Shelley did not become a good man by writing admired poetry.  He left polished shells which really belong in the ocean.

Poetry and song are the footprints you leave on the sand as you walk, which are quickly washed away.  It is a sign you were here, that you lived, that you tried.

And there is more poetry in washing dishes well, than in composing epic philosophical rants.

It is quite impossible to know what is there until you look, and few of us do.  I’m only beginning to become aware it is possible for me.

It can take a very, very long time to even get to the starting gate.  This is learning how to learn, as the Sufis put it.

This blog: it is toxic for me.  I feel it.  I like to think I have interesting and useful things to say, but the PROCESS of diving into abstraction is, at this moment, not healthy for me.  I am an addict–I am the “sort” who finds it hard to reconcile intent with regular action–so I will be back, I am sure, but I have now posted a Note To Self.

I think Buddhism is a pretty advanced set of beliefs.  It is for mature people.  It is not for screwups–too many days, like me–who are not facing life properly.

Buddhism, and you can quote me on this, is the maturity of mature people.  It is the growing up of grown ups.

If you are a child, focus on not being a child.  If you are juvenile, focus on not being juvenile.  If you are a grown up, focus on learning how to live in harmony.

If you can live in harmony, as an adult, then and only then, seek to learn about what lies beyond.

If I might offer commentary, it feels to me like many people think if they pay more money, they should get better experiences.

Your experiences flow from who you are.  And who you are is, over the long haul, the integrated sum of your decisions over that period.  What are you adding, today, to the sum, that will make it better?  What did you add yesterday?  What can you add tomorrow?

I don’t think life is so very complicated, or so very difficult.  It does not ask of us everything all the time.  It asks of us a bit, regularly.  It asks that we give willingly.  And it asks that we celebrate the dishes bought with what we have paid.

Dive in.  Remember who you are.  It is not so hard.

Well, I don’t think it is so hard.  I don’t remember who I am either.  If you figure it out, let me know.  We can both stand there looking at the waves and sand and wondering why shells make noise, and think we might write poetry, but it likely won’t be very good.  But we will know who we are, and that goddammit is something.

Buddhists don’t drink gin.  But we are supposed to kill the Buddha, or something like that.  Yeah, I vacillate between reason, rambling, and something that could be mistaken for poetry by an outsider

or an imbecile.

[editorial note: I find this funny]

Seems timely:

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King’s Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King’s Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people’s reign: 
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget. 

Communism partakes a bit in the myth of the return of the just king.  Think the return of Richard in the story of Robin Hood, or the ascendancy of Arthur in a time of war, or–what made me think of this just now for unknown reasons–the story arc of “The Lion King”.

When you are unhappy, the story of a rescuer is compelling.  Communism posits that the “rescuer” is the People, as represented–necessarily–by the intellectuals for whom this myth has the most appeal.  Most of these intellectuals are small, grubby, gloomy, unwanted human beings.  But as Communists, they partake of the glory of Kingship, nobility, and all that is good in the world. This is why this whole thing has a comic book feel, and always has.  It does not consist in the sober plans of competent people, but the juvenile fantasies of people too ignorant to even realize they are ignorant.

It is one of the horrors of history that such people have in many cases, in many nations, gained true power, and exercised it brutally.  They usually find a true sadist to be their leader, but even as the bodies pile high in the streets, they continue to believe that the are contributing to justice, truth, and a righting of wrongs.

First off, Communism, Fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism should be used as de facto synonyms in our present environment.  Yes, they have different shades of meaning, but the de facto discussion is if we should continue our Liberal project in the industrialized, democratic nations, or reverse it and return to ruling elites not constrained by any laws, whether juridical or moral.  Do we believe in human rights as a PRINCIPLE, or don’t we?  Simple question, but there are two broad and conflicting answers in the present social and political conflict, a fact which is complicated by the pervasive tendency of the authoritarians to mask their work in lies.

Be all that as it may, I wonder if we might stipulate that Communism is the result of disordered and insecure/avoidant Attachment Styles.  Better parenting supports freedom.  Bad parenting supports fascism.  If you want to know why so many hippies are breeding crazy children, we could of course blame excessive permissiveness, which is likely a part, but in my experience hippies in general are emotionally highly disorganized, highly addictive, and frequently unreliable and emotionally unavailable.  This creates life long effects in children, too.  I have heard plenty of hippy horror stories.  You probably have too.

I do think, other than the complete solution I have proposed, it would be useful to figure out some way for new mothers to stay home longer with their babies. Maybe tax credits to corporations who support it.  Maybe tax credits to grandmothers who are able to help.  Maybe a massive tax credit for the first year a woman stays home.

And for single mothers, it is likely a good investment to support group homes.  With a lot of these kids, we wind up paying later for their prison terms, not to mention the social damage they cause on the way to getting locked up.  It’s not a question of whether we will spend money on them, but how much, and to what purpose.

It is much easier to worship a person, group, or idea, than to take it seriously.

I think it was the Buddha himself who said “if you meet me on a road, kill me.”  People read this and think “oh, how clever he was.  What a good story that is.”  This is missing the point completely.

To worship is to separate.  To worship is to push away, not to reel in.

And I really think worship in a great many cases is a form of narcissism.  It is a way of creating the image of yourself participating in something great, without actual participation.  “Social Justice” is something a certain sort of person worships in our own age.  They don’t do the work of improving anything.  No, they do the work of celebrating the ideal in public, and demanding others do the same.

I will add a comment I think I can fit in here.  If you consider what narcissism is, which is, in my view, having had the proper social, empathetic brain taken off-line to some greater or lesser extent by Developmental Trauma, then its connection with outright sociopathy becomes clear.

What guides all morally sane people is some combination of empathy–which is a direct emotion felt at specific times, for specific people, for specific reasons–and principle, with the Golden Rule being the most common, most obvious, and by and large the most useful.

As a principle, the Golden Rule asks you to ask yourself if you would be OK with other people doing to you what you are about to do to them.  If not, don’t do it.

But sociopaths are unable to place themselves, imaginatively, in anyone else’s shoes.  They see through their own eyes, and their own eyes alone, and from that perspective, morality is limited only by what they can get away with, without corresponding violence to themselves.

I might state this as a general rule that “violent people require violent laws.”  This, in important respects, is the major disconnect between European standards of justice, as they have evolved, and the Islamists among them.

Be all that as it may, whether someone is only a narcissist or a full blown sociopath really depends upon where a fear of consequences was placed in them, if it was.  And I have to say, imaginatively, I am having a hard time myself distinguishing them.  All the narcissists I have known were capable of great cruelty.  Maybe the difference is the guilt response.  True psychopaths feel no remorse, and narcissists do, even if they can’t usually tell where and when guilt is warranted.  Although even there, guilt can be a conspicuous display, which provides narcissistic supply.

I’m not sure where I am going with this.  I will leave it for now.