The entire electoral success list of Australia’s Larouche Movement.

The LaRouche Movement has had an interesting yet not very influential history in Australian politics. They actually won Joh Bjlelke-Peterson’s seat in the Queensland Parliament at a by-election following his retirement!  However, that was their only electoral success and they’ve basically been relegated to public access TV and local newspaper appearances since.

And now?

Former Queensland National Party member for Barambah Trevor Perrett charged with indecent treatment of a young girl.

His parliamentary career began in 1988 when he won the seat of Barambah as an independent with support from the far-right Citizens Electoral Council.

Oh the LaRouche liker guy

Within months, he joined the National Party and held office for a decade before he lost his seat to a One Nation candidate.

II.  Pieces of puzzle:  the Larouche — Jones matchup

He’s responsible!  Mr. Alex Jones and I used to be friends and spoke back and fourth on a personal dialogue. He’s even thanked before many times. I got him to let Lyndon LaRouche on his show back several years ago.
Huh.  At the time, the series of Larouche interviews were prefaced with one with Jeffrey Steinberg, who appeared alongside Sean Stone.  They strongly suggested Sean Stone was responsible for getting them in touch with Larouche.  But apparently Karl Ilonummi did it.  Or, “allowed it” — whatever that means.
Alex Jones moved on to having Mike Gravel on, where they engaged in fawning over the man … though Jones never does square the pro China sentiment moving forward into the Trump era.
Notewothy for Gravel.

As for William Binney.

III.  Have to address eventually because it is a constant in Twitter scans.

“Lengthy Mike Anderson” has a bee in his bonnet against claims of political correctness / woke ideology / social justice warrior / “cancel culture”,  (See here) (seeming to argue (and if someone considers this as putting up strawmen, right back atcha) a straight line between an essay published by Lyndon Larouche and this Family Guy clip — or, to the point, that Seth MacFarlane is a Lyndon Larouche dupe.  The responses to his Twitter hobby range from adequate to inadequate in terms of refuting him (and a wide range of gradations between these two poles), but he will regard them all as beyond the pale… Fixed position as he has.

For the great question, “Who are THEY?”,  emphasis staring down a “they” — I dunno… Assholes?

Ironic rebuttal to a parcel of the argument.

Hm… ” The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts. While the stupid ones are full of confidence.” – Charles Bukowski

To be sure, though, I am sure and lack any doubt that THIS

I think LaRouche has Badiou beat at the pass at least with Being and Event; but the interaction with the infinite in Immanence of Truths seems to level the playing field somewhat. Am waiting for Reinhard’s translation to tally the full bout

is pure crap.

IV.  LORG!  LPAC!  The Battle Rages…

local news coverage showing LORG taking it to the LPAC stronghold.    (Where they sell a backs history centered on NASA and space weaponry).

BURN! Is this Trump Political Action Committee? 🤣

It’s seen with Kesha Rogers gushing over Trump’s cpac speech as viewed on nrwsmax.

The word is not wholly out as we see those fellow refer to “the Schiller Institute of the Larouche PAC”.

LPAC may be having an identity crisis, as evidenced by the dropping of this biblical passage on a tweet linking to a nuclear power article — And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. —Genesis 1:28 —  subsequently deleted — Is LPAC unsure about the Christian market?  (They are Certain on the Trump repeater role.)

John McCarthy takes on LORG’s anti China stance.  He deploys the Big Insult — –  Comparisons with The Epoch Times.  This kooky article sounds like it belongs in the pages of Falun Gong Show rag The Epoch Times not on a site that pretends to represent LaRouche.  The Epoch Times being a Trump butt kissing paper.

Accusation from lorger to lpac of Stalinism, complete with a phrase I (roughly) used — ” Larouchism just for one country”.  (Lorg evidentally more true to Larouche’s Trotskyist roots.)  See also the demand to.”say her name” (Helga) and the plea Ben, why are you pretending to be the LaRouche’s Movement without Helga?  

Speaking of history down the memory hole: Chatted with some Larocuheites by my work. They have never read Dialectical Economics, nor did they know about LaRouche’s days as an SWP member. They did tell me that Marx was an agent of the British Empire though.

On LORG’s part… I don’t get it.  Unidentifiable bald old white guy’s (closest I can make out is Lyndon Johnson — which would be pretty darned anachronistic… Prince Philips, maybe?) rib-cage is Nazi?  I guess this is the message they are going with, suggesting LPAC may just win. 

Iran’s Press TV consults Richard Black.

V.  The passing of a royal brings out a bit…

of a this thing here… In 1998, when I worked for @algore, Lyndon LaRouche pamphlets proclaimed that Gore was engaged in Bond villain-style global conspiracy to rule the world with Prince Philip. It was not, to my knowledge, true. Still, I thought the Prince would rather like the idea.

The passing of Ramsey Clark leaves me wondering how deep in an obituary the name of the unpopular cause Larouche will drop.   Appears in the New York Times, one in a list of unpopulars.  See too Washington Post.

Conservatives came to loathe Clark, but support for him also began to erode among left-leaning activists as he made a habit of defending a rogues’ gallery of accused terrorists and war criminals.

I wish he didn’t do some of these things,” Leslie Cagan, a peace activist, said of Clark in a 2005 interview with the New York Observer. “He is one of the few public well-known leftists in this country, and it does make our work harder sometimes.”

His client list included political extremist Lyndon LaRouche; several followers of the Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh; former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, sentenced to death row for killing a Philadelphia police officer; and Lori Berenson, an American who was imprisoned in Peru for aiding a Marxist revolutionary group.

Mumia probably leaves “the Left” supporting him — not sure how to rate his backing of the North Korean dictatorship as opposed to America’s sham democracy.   Though we see round about some tweets suggestions on how “making it harder for us” may be the point,  with some Leftwing denunciations on twitter, following that analysis from that time period when Clark would appear on Democracy Now all the time and lobbying for Bush’s Impeachment at Bush’s high mark in public approval.

Clark also defended Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of former Serbia and Yugoslavia, who died while being tried for genocide by a United Nations tribunal at The Hague; Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a Rwandan pastor who was found guilty of engineering a massacre of ethnic Tutsis inside his church; and Karl Linnas, an elderly former commander of a Nazi concentration camp. … Saddam Hussein.

For LORG’s part it gives Helga the evangelical opportunity to dump the exonerate Larry he message to “heavy hitter” Ramsey Clark Memorializing Twitterers — heavy hitters who appear to delete the message almost instantaneous!y.  There is some hidden history in that Clark had prior been an enemy Larouche saw as out to get him.

VI.   Larouche references are in vogue in reference to news  on the Trump fundraising tactics.  

One issue that keeps popping up. Individuals who are in prison can still run for President of the United States. It’s only happened twice. Most recently was Lyndon LaRouche.

Leonard Peltier was on the ballot for President in 2004 and –though he dropped out before the election — vice president (position under the same legal restrictions) in 2020.  (And some states do have the prohibition against felons running).

Still, neither Debs nor Peltier had Verdi tuning on their platform.

(Um.  Was Roger Stone allied with Larouche back then?  No.  Was with Trump, though.)

VII.  Memories

One. I remember reading the Larouchies’ The New Federalist paper back in college. Used them as drop cloths for room painting as there were stacks of em left for free. The Q

Deleted: I swear I know of that guy. There was a house at 185th and Meridian that used to have all kinds of Lyndon Larouche stuff up in the windows. Obama in clown makeup and stuff.u

I used to enjoy getting into arguments with LaRouche idiots at the bus stop on 1st and Pine. That shit was hilarious. This was like 15-20 years ago

The Ave… you had to worry about everyone there. If it wasn’t the Larouchies, it was Hari Krishnas or Scientologists.

and Oh I so remember, this would have been about 1982, when the LaRouche people sent their crazy to a friend of mine who was a delegate to the state Dem convention. It included that Liz was a drug dealer. We all laughed.

Back in the 90s, I accidentally got on the mailing list for his newsletter. (note to self: never sign petitions)

heh. my grandpa telling an extremely boring story about the Socialist Workers Party
“Yeah anyway only this one guy, Lyndon, was making any sense. That was before I really knew who Lyndon LaRouche was, though”
Wait what come again

and when he died me and mdl spent a full week getting high and watching his speeches on youtube lmfao
always got a laugh seeing these guys with their booths outside of gun shows

and. I swear I know of that guy. There was a house at 185th and Meridian that used to have all kinds of Lyndon Larouche stuff up in the windows. Obama in clown makeup and stuff.

I used to enjoy getting into arguments with LaRouche idiots at the bus stop on 1st and Pine. That shit was hilarious. This was like 15-20 years ago

Blam!  when I was 15 a lyndon larouche acolyte cornered me in a cafe I worked at and pelted me with goldbug pamphlets — a single traumatic event that cost me likely 100k+ in btc appreciation

ba de dum. If you were a weird college student in the 2000s, your main options were Lyndon LaRouche, Bob Avakian, and improv theater. Two of those were actual cults, and the other one had some pretty interesting ideas about Maoism.

and soIs it wrong that I kinda miss LaRouchies? In college I would just get high and read about how we need to cancel HG Wells because Facebook is his fault.

Say it again. I remember watching and laughing at LaRouche’s 30 prime time infomercials. When people would try to give me political literature on the street, I would say “I’m sorry, but my leader, Lyndon LaRouche, doesn’t want me to accept that.” Oh to be that young again…

(Note: includes video of Alex Jones and Mike Gravel fawning over Larouche, though Jones never does square the pro China sentiment moving forward into the Trump era. Notewothy for GravelGravel.

And. I had a friend and his brother who dropped off the face of the Earth to go to Chicago to live with 8 other people in some apartment working for LaRouche. It was so fucking bizarre.

Debates!  When I was in grad school in Baltimore in the 1980s the Maoists, the Trotskyites and the Lyndon Larouche crowd used to scream at each other across the street while handing out leaflets. Good times.

and There was a local group here that was very pro-Trump and promoted themselves for a long time in front of my local post office, they’re not around anymore and fizzled out when he died but I assume some of them are still around

Yeah we used to have a very active LaRouche chapter in Seattle during the Obama years with the “Obama Hitler” poster, showing up to all the festivals and stuff. I feel like I hadn’t seen them around for a few years even pre-Covid tho.

zoom in on I was chased down the road by LaRouchies when I was working with United Farm Workers. LaRouchies are fignewton insane. They don’t have the right to define anything, let alone U.S. political discourse

The Oklahoma Panhandle is Larouche Land. In every Presidential primary, the Oklahoma panhandle says “watch us vote disproportionately for random candidates”. Klobuchar, Booker, O’Malley, Edwards, Sharpton, LaRouche in Dem primaries. But not just ancestral Dems–Ben Carson, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, too.

The Grateful Dead at Columbia, as too… will be interested in that one of my clearest memories of Ferris Booth was attending a mayoral debate in which the “Labor Committee” (NCLC: Larouchies, still kind of on the left) really viciously attacked the Communist Party, resulting in a full scale brawl.

The perils of what awaits Andrew Yang campaign. A long time ago, a bunch of white people were holding up Lyndon Larouche signs at the farmers market. Same energy.

The only time I have seen anyone mention LaRouche irl have been elderly black women. No idea what this means

   A long time ago, a bunch of white people were holding up Lyndon Larouche signs at the farmers market. Same energy. 

I rember when I was a kid we never heard about Lyndon LaRouche running for president. The press used to ignore the crackpots. Perhaps we really are returning to normal.

Right. For those old enough to remember, this is a little like encountering a band of Lyndon Larouche supporters out in a college quad, seeing a lot of them and how vocal they were, and worrying Larouche would get elected president.

What’s this have to do with Libertarianism?. I always think of the ’80s. My girlfriend and I getting way too high and falling asleep, only to awaken to a infomercial of Lyndon LaRouche. Talk about operation warped speed! It was weirder than this

Say there.  At 17, I had an argument with a bunch of Larouchians outside a Post Office who insisted that Congress should pass a Law revoking the 2nd Law of Thermo otherwise the Universe would end in heat death and everyone knows that’s impossible.

Parenting.  Then there was the Obama w/a Hitler mustache sign incident [LaRouche camp.] & we got into a verbal altercation. I’m my father’s daughter.

When?  I was a silly Trot in my early twenties and mostly considered LaRouche a quack at the time, but felt a bit of a pull from some of the overlap. Lol

Hum. The Schiller Institute is a LaRouche “think tank” – extremely fringe, frequently engaging in cult-like behavior, and for some strange reason rather active in Denmark in the early 2000s (which is why I know of them).

VIII.  Current Day

Skipping historical personal voting from Socialist Workers Party to Larouche when he becomes a “Democrat”, with one curious throw to Cox against Harding.  So… Historical Trotskyist turned Larouchite?

(I think this is a joke about Joe Manchin, Democratic Senator from West Virginia, but gets confused in a typo.)Prior Larouche groupings approved of Unger’s anti Bush book in a manner they don’t his anti-Trump book, never mind some Larouche citing for Trump’s Russia dealings.

Qanon is definitely designed to be magnet for the disaffected left, radicalized by repetition on social media , LaRouche -Trotskyist &Pro-Putin has been involved with anti-democracy support for RW authoritarianism narratives and agenda since the 70’s

Wait. Doesn’t The Larouche Movement get any credit?
Indeed, the other attack on the law—popularized by Sarah Palin’s false claim that it would lead to “death panels”—was based on Orszag’s IPAB and an amendment written by Republican Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who pushed allowing Medicare to pay for counseling beneficiaries who wanted to write end-of-life directives or living wills.

Finding Larouche debris amongst the Capitol Hill rioting.

Dateline Sweden. Swedish tiktok teens are going wild for Lyndon Larouche Thought

So when you’re not drinking you deal with your anxiety and various emotions by punching the guy handing out Lyndon LaRouche pamphlets on the corner, right? I mean, I did that drunk but it is really helping me get through some things.

The case of William Jones. The meeting will no doubt set the stage for relations moving forward. President Biden, unlike the former Donald Trump administration, said that he wanted to work together with China on issues that were “in America’s interest.” At this point, not much more can be expected, given the build-up of tensions between the two countries over the last several years.  Hey.  You know who else is advocating easing America’s China posture?  Henry Kissinger, and… Hearty praise from him.  Maybe they can team up?

LORG has wind against its front in American public opinion lpac wants to avoid.

Markel as the New Larouche .

Lyndon LaRouche paved the way for Meghan Markle. he is the real hero

Lyndon ran so Meghan could flyL

Lyndon codified pitch so Markle could sing

Markle is 100% tuned for Verdi pitch

oprahs not asking her what her musical freq of choice is. (Eye logo)

I haven’t seen the interview, but if she’s saying the right things about Aristotelianism, she has my support.

Princess Diane Death dust.  Rehashing the fight at the Princess Di death.

IX.  While everyone ponders the question of the possible coming Andrew Yang mayorialship — New York City — one candidate falls through the cracks.  Meet Jackson Rip Holmes, and a list of people he has met.

On September 8, 2016, an invited guest at former Senator Bob Graham’s (he allowed me  photo) Commemoration Honoring the victims of the 9/11/2001 attack on our country, I learned from other guests that our country has been plagued by inside jobs dating back to the Vietnam War (non-existent Gulf of Tonkin Incident) and beyond, occurring worldwide (Boston Marathon, London metro attack, Chechen attack in Russia 1999, Uyghur Tiananmen Square attack, China).  This launched my study of extraterrestrials, and I have had the honor of connecting with: 1) Roger Stone, friend of President Trump (he allowed me a photo), 2) former Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer, 3) Jeffrey Steinberg, of the Lyndon LaRouche PAC, and 4) John Lear, who was one of two people who exposed Area 51.

X.  History’s Mysteries

I had to Google “Mouse Crap Revolution”. The only thing it brings you to is a chapter at Laoucheplanet. Which I guess is why Helga needs to get something else down on it.

Perhaps the need to dig up Columbia University era Larouche lore comes from such kicking up of dust as this here.  (Curious implication that the Larry goes’ biggest foe / competition of the time was The Grateful Dead.)

Theory of the day:  Is it possible that Larouche invented a grandiose theory of British intelligence manipulating American politics to cover for the embarrassment of having ever been involved in the SWP?

An ultimate Rebuttal.

 Moreso.  The problem with Larouche is his lack of evidence. He’d have explained the origin of the cosmos ex nihilo from a British MI6 agent’s asshole if he were able. Certainly intelligence has played a part, but it is a uniquely yank fantasy to view World History as a James Bond film.

Illinois 1986 Perennial reference point for current electoral events.  Fun map!

In 2004, they were big Kerry boosters, as they were also disparaging of Gore as face of Green Fascism .  Now, view him as pushing that “Green New deal”.

To their credit, I haven’t seen that Biden Hitler merchandise from them.  Is there a market for such?

More history.

If you say so… Well worth pondering the influence this fellow Anton Chaitkin had on the Larouche narrative which invariably takes some useful information and somehow turns it into a ritual scapegoating of the British, no matter how objectively culpable Jews may be. He claims to be a founder.

Skip to here with that perspective in mind.

The Church of the Subgenius chimes in with a…

Their sleaziness and hypocrisy is incredible! Their press release brags about how they interviewed “America’s number one political prisoner in his jail cell.” But they wisely don’t say WHO that political prisoner might be. One might conclude they meant Leonard Peltier. No. If you ask, it turns out they’re talking about Lyndon LaRouche!

XI.  (Low) Arts and Entertainment.

Simpsons reference alley oop.

Cheers.

Star Trek.  The TNG crew have the same taste in culture as Lyndon LaRouche supporters. It’s his same very specific version of “Western Canon”. Religion may no longer exist in the 24th Century, but you’d think someone would enjoy a nice klezmer or a slice of kugel.  Interesting to note, though, the classic rock listener of Zefran Cochrane in First Contact (but then again he is depicted as an uncultured wino, whereas the Enterprise is the best and brightest) and The Beastie Boys are still played in the future in the reboot.

All famous people are there to misdirect you. ALL OF THEM. They didn’t accidentally get famous. They don’t accidentally get on TV or in movies or in books or on CDs or on the internet. And they certainly don’t earn their way into these positions, as is now clear.

So how did they get there? Why do you have to see them and hear them all the time? Why do you know who they are? Because they were placed there. They were chosen to fill that position, and they were chosen in order to misdirect you from the truth.

You will say, “C’mon, that can’t be true. All of them? I mean, they disagree with each other. How can they all be placed there?”
Look at it this way: say you wanted to control everyone in the world. Well people are at different levels. They have different interests and beliefs and levels of intelligence. So if you want to control everyone you have to place your guys at all these levels, all possible paths
If you are a football coach setting up a defense, you don’t put all your tacklers in the middle of the field, or on one side. You spread them out. You want to block all paths to the goal.
You have to defend against the run and the pass, the short ball and the long ball.

It is the same with government. If you want to govern people, you have to keep them on the path you have chosen for them. That is how the governors understand government.

You may think government is about keeping people employed and building highways and educating children, but it isn’t. It is about “governing” them. Moving them around at will.
Think of a governess. She keeps the kids out of trouble and molds them into the sort of adults her employer or her society requires. Same thing with the governors. They keep you from troubling them and mold you into someone who can make them richer.

With that goal in mind, the last thing the governors want is “enlightened” people or “self-actualized” people. Those people might make money for themselves, think for themselves, and govern themselves. People like that make very poor clients. People like that are just trouble.
Since people take many different paths, the governors have to place their blockers and tacklers everywhere.
They have to have blockers for smart people and dumb people, lazy people and ambitious people, caring people and uncaring people, progressive people and conservative people, men and women, young and old.

they have to have blockers and tacklers up and down the field, on the fifty-yard line as well as on the five-yard line. If you get past one line of tacklers, they have to have another line ready for you.
To switch the visualization, no matter how high up the mountain you climb, they have to have some guru on a goat-ledge positioned there to shunt you off on the wrong path.  […]

Just imagine the total market for domestic arms sales in the past five years. It boggles the mind. Which means the government is probably playing both sides, as usual.  […]

Hm. Looks like Lil Nas X has burned all his bridges to Country Music.

Or maybe Country Music star Lil Nas X is taking Country music into a brave new direction. The eyerolling terrain of Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson, Gwar…

Did Charlie Daniels ever pull blood sucking stage stunts for his devil themed music?

Much has been made about the “vaccines woot!” commercial with the assemblage of the bulk of the living ex presidents — Carter, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. A snicker aside at the focus presented by Bush — can’t wait to watch baseball! — the big point made is… Um… Where’s Trump?
Fauci chimes in to publically request Trump speak out for vaccination — lead his followerers to do that which he did but polls indicate his voters may not. In seemingly in the dead of night, Trump poked out to give his all important address — yeah, get yourself vaccinated. Humorously enough we then get a cnn interview with the yokels in small town diner — where the refusants get represented by one dismissal of the “Trump endorses” with “New York liberal” charge — presented by boing boing as Inctedulity and some sign that these nutjobs have turned on their nutjob leader for being rational — and presented by infowars with a charge against cnn as cluless mainstream liberal media for the incredulity. I guess you do have to give the dismisser credit against the assumptions of Fauci that they aren’t simply Trump Believers.
All good and well. But by definition, not everybody voted for these ex presidents. Should we not get another public service message from the likes of the surviving ptesidential losers — a team up with Mondale and Dole and Dukakis and Kerry and Gore and Romney? Then they can plunge into the third party candidates so all their voters can get convinced — Nader has to get in there somewhere. Then again we run into the troubles that the Libertarian Party contingent won’t comply, smd so we can’t ever get the margins fully filled in.

some things

What if the rich are – and always have been- “servile conformists”? Have you read ‘Excellent Sheep’? I think it’s worse than that: lots of rich people are servile before Mammon. Can’t comment on the specifics of your post but i think the main ‘ religion’ is that of progress, comfort and the ‘freedom’ to do what one wants (all of which are bound up with the liberalism you seem to be uncritical of here).

And so you’re going to build up a culture *only* on art? I don’t see how that sits with your religious beliefs Rod. Seems like a very odd thing to say.

I think the establishment will be very happy to endorse the idea of rebellion. After all, that’s what late capitalism has been about ( T. Frank on ‘dissent’ is excellent on this). The real rebellion or opposition can only come, i think, from religion ( which produces an ‘inner’ revolution).

It’s probably me but I’m struggling to understand you. The “pseudo-religions” you rightly criticizing are part of the DNA of capitalism and western liberalism.

Lately, I cannot help but notice how humorless political discourse is. The greatest casualty of hyper-politics is the loss of lightheartedness. And, it’s especially noticeable how humorless the left is becoming, whereas most of us grew up in a world where comedy had a vague center-left viewpoint.

When I read this post about rebellion against the dominant progressive order, I couldn’t help but think of the way totalitarians hate humor and go to great lengths to stamp out jokes. Humor is subversive. Humor skewers the powers that be. Humor can knock the biggest tyrant down a notch. I think it was Saul Alinsky who noted the power of ridicule many years ago (again, back when the left could afford to be funny and irreverent).

The left understands quite well that the way to infiltrate the “normie mind” and chase out the parasite is through humor and general cheeriness. Their operation crumbles when the manifest absurdities of their movement are pointed out. It breaks the hold of fear and introduces the potential for subversiveness and irreverence. The ruling class cannot tolerate this. In response, they’ve adopted this permanently dour, outraged, offended tone. It’s the old joke all over again, but taken seriously now: “How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? That’s not funny!”

wish us on the Left were as powerful as your random article write thinks, that we could start declaring American citizens insurgents by 2027.

The actual far more likely reality of 2027 is a 2nd term of Joe Biden (or a newly appointed Kamala Harris after Joe steps down after the 2026 midterms) dealing with a Senate that has 54 to 55 Republican seats, than total left wing domination.

I mean, we can’t even rig an election where we win more than a 50-50 Senate and a narrow House win, and in six years. we’re going to start a war against the normies.

I mean, it is true that every radical wants a revolution, but the far more likely reality is that in 2027, the vast majority of American’s will be going to jobs, visiting friends, going to church services, going to concerts, and watching superhero movies, than anything your article talks about.

think the assessment has been made that humanities are essentially (in terms of a concrete timeless content) worthless, in the context of what is essentially a technocracy with a very thin surface-level veneer of democracy: e.g. US, UK, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. These societies, and the relative “black boxes” of Russia and especially China, are the unparalleled geopolitical leaders because of their leadership in science and technology period (with the humanities being pretty much far behind in relevance). Therefore you alternate in terms of whatever surface-level “qualia” you teach in the humanities as long as you leave the fundamental technocratic system in place and unquestioned: this latter system is where all the major changes to human individuals and societies are going to take place (television, internet, cellphones; not to mention medicine, transportation, etc–but ultimately all these fall under the unitary area of computational scientific advances). So what is the function of humanity-focused (i.e. non-scientific elites), if not to continue the surface-level work of maintaining the patina of democratic volition under which lies the vast and ever more exceedingly complex machine of technocratic civilization?

The future elite described in the Weiss article will for the most part be (composed as it is of bright, but in no way brilliant, or even predominantly scientifically gifted students) a technocratically useless and therefore contingent and entirely substitutable one: the elite composed of lawyers; non-scientist doctors; executives; traders; rentiers; wealthy heirs; political dynasts; higher bureaucrats, etc). In other words, the *capitalist gentry*; said class has to be socially, politically, and economically kept both appeased and occupied. However, they must also be controlled politically: all political systems seek to control their gentry, as much as they do the proletariat; the middling class of grocers, tailors, bakers, etc). What ultimately is to remain unquestioned, even by said elite, is the sense of the US as a unique nation that should lead the world, including by deciding what should be the mores of the rest of the world.

This constant of the necessity for American dominance over the rest of the world, simultaneously in soft and hard power terms, is what continues to be inculcated in the context of US elite educational institutions (including elite prep schools), even while the ideological specifics may experience significant, even tectonic-seeming, shifts over time, an identity-defining ideology of American civilizational telic supremacy holds.

The elite prep students described by Weiss are being indoctrinated in the post-Cold War era forms of American ideological telic supremacism, which have made of philosophical relativism the principal instrument of its facilitation, expression and justification: they are being administered an englobing anthropological epistemic relativism which they themselves will then be entrusted to dish out as non-technocratic elite avatars of the American technocratic empire. To wit, specifically, as journalists, artists, designers, writers, entertainers, but also executives, elite academics in the humanities, politicians, trans-subscribing doctors, members of the foreign service/diplomatic corps, etc.

So, in short, what Weiss is describing is a disciplinary indoctrination process that may seem, because of its dependence on an exceedingly anthropologically relativistic philosophy, subversive of American geostrategic supremacist goals; except, that the anthropologically relativist ideology is itself ultimately philosophically and epistemologically deeply unrelativistic in its identity-defining adherence and loyalty to the telic supremacism of the ongoing American civilizational project, thereby making of it entirely compatible and equatable with the historically storied, but “living” and ever evolving bipartisan ideologically identitarian raison d’etre of American geopolitical strategizing, which continues to be ever imperialist and entropic of other civilizational and anthropological systems..

… Havel’s greengrocer – I read this metaphor many times, mostly from western authors. The reality on the ground was a bit/lot more nuanced…

The communists were not brought down by those young students with shining eyes protesting on the central squares. They simply “died out”. In the late 80’s you could barely find even senior party members who really believed in “the system”. Most people were members for cynical/selfish reasons. Outwardly everybody had to parrot the official propaganda line, but once you paid the lip service there was so much “freedom” – you could freely drink in the workplace, sleep on your desk (if you had a deskjob) and if you happened to work in a factory you could liberally “use” or “borrow” state property, as the saying from those days goes – “Who doesn’t steal from the state steals from his own family!”.

90 percent of our political conversations are battles over who has power, but with the goal of showing that it’s not you.”–Jane Coaston, regarding this article.

I think Rod thinks “the elites” have more power than they do, and are a lot more in lockstep than they are. I would like to see a lot more about how conservatives can rebuild a functioning mental map of the world and an actual intellectual ecosystem, because he actually has some influence in those quarters, and I think most people understand that adherents of “wokeism” have some crazy ideas.

I can’t overstate how jarring it is that if I walked into the closest conservative church, and said “Biden won the 2020 presidential election fair and square,” or “there have been a lot of studies saying masks probably work, so they probably do,” I would probably be ostracized, or at the very least viewed with suspicion. Rod Dreher doesn’t watch a lot of Fox News, or listen to talk radio, or share a lot of political stuff on Facebook. Based on his posts, he reads the New York Times, New Yorker, listens to NPR. What it seems that Rod misses is that he is the anomaly, and there are millions and millions of people who do watch Fox News, etc. Trump voters might not be the majority, but they are 45% of the country! That is a lot of influence.

Rod acts like we are living in Stalin’s Russia where dissent was remorselessly hunted down. There is a huge gap between “tortured to death” and “people at work or your $50k/yr high school get mad at you.” Do people get fired for anti-woke ideas, when they shouldn’t? Absolutely. Is that more than a tiny, tiny percentage of people? No. Do most conservatives do just fine? Yes.

Just as I have a hard time getting worked up about a couple who can demand $7 million for an interview being uncertain if their son was going to be given the title “prince” — a title I would live to see abolished — I have a hard time getting worked up over families who can afford $50,000 a year tuition worrying that their children are being indoctrinated. They can always enroll their children in the local public school, donated the $50,000 to make up for death by a thousand tax cuts, and join the PTA.

on another social war battle in the schools, probably misrepresented moving into moral panic land.

This is weird, even as paganism. The Aztec gods appear to have been “native” to central Mexico and shared among the several peoples there, but given names in Nahuatl among the Aztec. The Aztecs themselves appear to have originated farther north, maybe in New Mexico and adjacent parts of Arizona. Neither the gods nor the people have any connection to California or the native people living there. The latter do have some legit beefs with Europeans, both the Spanish and the Americans but instituting lessons in Aztec mythology addresses none of that. It’s a little like saying Celtic mythology should henceforth be taught in Greece to counter such wrong as the Turks did to the place. Sounds like the crazypants activists think all Native Americans are some sort of undifferentiated cultural blob.

I found a letter which that activist, R. Tolteka Cuahtin, co-signed where he refers to himself as a “Nahua Xicanx,” with “Xicanx” being a nutty gender-neutral, anti-colonialist way of calling oneself a “Chicano.” Of course, all those X’s make it look cool and exotic and tribal, especially to people who don’t know what it is, but my guess is that the dude is just a Mexican-American from California who is exoticizing and mythologizing his perceived roots. If that’s the case, then he’s more American in his behavior than he can possibly imagine.

Interestingly enough, the ancestors of the Aztec were likely among the ancestral puebloan peoples pushed out of the four corners region by the southward migration along the Rockies of the Athabaskan-speaking precursors to the Navajo and Apache.
Also interestingly enough the Athabaskans seem to derive a large component of their ancestry from a *totally separate* migration to the Americas, many thousands of years after the main migration that gave rise to most of the Native Americans today.

The Aztecs would be the last place I would start in attempting to vindicate the indigenous and their beliefs. It seems Chesterton’s War of the Gods and Demons has opened a new, transatlantic, theater. Admirable artists, agriculturalists, etc. Bad with religion. Cortez didn’t have to do much to make the Tlalascans and Jalapans and so forth help him overthrow the Aztec Empire. I believe it was Francis Jennings who said the Aztecs and Spaniards deserved each other.

There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”–Walter Benjamin

All civilizations are founded on human sacrifice. In some civilizations, such as the Western, the sacrifices are made off-stage and kept conveniently out of sight of the metropolitan citizens, who know nothing about what goes on in the colonies. In the Western case, as Sartre pointed out, Empire walks naked in the periphery, but dresses herself modestly in the center (where citizens can afford to nurture delicate sensibilities). In other civilizations, such as the Aztec, the violence that sustains the empire is brought directly into the heart of the metropole. Citizens are shown the true foundation of the empire. “This is what we are, and you better deal with it” is the honest message. Do you choose honesty or hypocrisy?

I think this is idiotic crap, although it has certainly been true that humans doing bad things to other humans has a lengthy history. However IF you’re right that civilization cannot exist absent human sacrifice, then
1. Why bother with all this justice and equality junk? Its all garbage anyway. We must kill!
And
2. If we’re gonna kill then shunting it to the frontier seems appropriate. Killing, according to you, is a messy necessity. Like pooping! I mean, all humans poop but we generally try to do it privately and without a lot of fuss. You dont host cocktail parties and say “anyone who chooses to go to the bathroom rather than pooping right on the couch is a hypocrite!”

It has been suggested by some historians that one reason why the populace (as opposed to the elites) of what is now Latin America put up so limited a resistance to the Europeans was precisely because they so disliked the bloody rituals to which they were subjected. (I do not know if this explanation is still current but it was 20 years ago.) The Inquisition was an unnecessary horror but it was not, alas, unpopular with the mass of people and found considerable support among the peasantry, who were less likely to be its victims than townspeople.

Ah yes, a batch of activists whose message is getting blurred in a city of boarded up store fronts and obnoxious graffiti, I guess aligned with Black Lives Matter but sometimes seem more affiliated to antifa got in a big patade again, noting the weather patterns — nice sunny day for Saturday, rain coming in SundY. And a bunch of the latest fliers calling for the revall of the Mayor for… I guess pepper spraying a man chasing after him and for shutting down attempted set ups of your CHAZ” mini cities. Oh, and not shutting down the police department.
In truth they would be calling for the Impeachment/recall of anyone. Better to eliminate the job of mayor. It is the Anarchist thing to do.
I never did get around to seeing what his November vote total was. But he failed to crack the 50 percent mark. His challenger forever resentful of that write in bid by the candidate who — to the degreee thete was one — was the choice of the chanting activists — or the base therein — thinking these ought be HER voters. Then again, so did Ted Wheeler back in thet day — until their giant display at the federal building indicated otherwise.
Likewise such would be the fate if she had won — just flip the names on the fliers.
On that other mark, we do see the question — the disgruntled murmurs I heard a block and two away from the main strret — “Yeah, and on to tear down the city” — big Wheeler voters?