ANDREW TATE, TOXIC MASCULINITY, AND THE RISE OF NIETZSCHE

 

Omnipotentblog never heard of Andrew Tate until he got banned. By literally everyone apparently, all at once. In a recent interview, he, of course, portrayed himself in the best light, saying he promotes all good things for men and loves women, puppies, and kittens. The truth is more complicated, as he is apparently kind of a jerk. Founder of “Hustlers University,” he teaches young men to be Alpha Males, which means having lots of money, beautiful women, and fast cars. Now, most young men would probably admit those things will not truly make them happy, but they want to test the theory first, just to make sure.

 

The Jerk Sage

 

Some of the things Andrew Tate has said are unquestionably cringy, especially some of his statements concerning rape. But one of them is, despite his insensitivity, is defensible. For instance, he stated that women who put themselves in risky situations where they get raped, deserve some of the blame. Now, rape is clearly so devastating and evil that to say a woman deserves it any way seems completely cruel. However, it should also be without controversy to say that women must understand some men are indeed prone to rape, and it might be wise not to make one’s self vulnerable. One should not get fall-down drunk at parties with men who enjoy parties with fall-down drunk women. In fact, women should not get fall-down drunk at parties consisting solely of monks, gay men, eunuchs, and 12-year-old boys. (Which might raise other concerns, but I digress.) One small, controversial study showed between 10 and 30% of men admitted they would rape a woman if they could get away with it. Crude and pithy, the more controversial he sounds, the more his bank account swells. Yet, in between saying things that make woke ears bleed, he gives good advice about not surrounding yourself with toxic people, working hard, and conquering depression, which he states is often a function of self-pity, and is therefore a choice. While depression is certainly a real and serious illness necessitating professional treatment, it is also frequently a spiritual disease indeed caused by poor choices and self-pity. Both are true.

 

Tate has millions of followers. In the space of about 5 minutes, he was banned by nearly all major social media companies and payment processers. The speed and uniformity of these actions should frighten you. He never actually said anything inherently evil. Crude? Sure, but have you been on the internet lately? I would assert that his offensiveness was merely a pretext to ban him. In an excellent piece from 2013, dissident feminist Camille Paglia discusses the left’s attacks on masculinity and the idea of gender itself. “What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide.” Paglia is a lesbian feminist. Tate is not. Paglia is a serious intellectual. Tate is not. But one thing they agree on is that masculinity is important, and there are aspects of it which deserve to be honored. To our cultural gatekeepers, of course, THIS. MUST. BE CRUSHED.

 

Permit me to state in simple terms what is happening here: Leaders of one religion point out a suffering minority and challenge the rest of society to help and honor this group. Because the subject of this suffering is gender confusion, the leaders of this religion argue that to help this suffering minority, the rest of society must radically alter (destroy) traditional beliefs about gender (and everything else, bigot.) The use of this suffering minority is a red herring, of course, as what they have always wanted was to bring men down to size because of their historical dominance in the family, work place, and centers of power. In their goal of radical egalitarianism, these leaders want to sap maleness and femaleness of their natural distinctions. No male, no female, no hierarchy. Voila!

 

(Honestly, I’m confused about the second one.)

 

I read two pieces recently, which I highly recommend. “Bronze Age Pervert” is the anonymous author of “Bronze Age Mindset”, a book that explains and extolls the virtues of the Alt Right. While the Pepe the Frog people deserve to be shunned, IMO, from polite society because they are unapologetically racist, there is enough of them that should make serious people pay attention. The Alt Right may be bad, but it is not crackpot. While BAP’s writing is the coarse, prankster style of Alt Right’s largely young and male adherents, he is due more than the dismissive mockery his book received. He is extremely well read, historically literate, and logical. Michael Anton of the conservative Claremont Institute treats the Alt Right with due seriousness. A lucid and thorough analysis that was a joy to read, he frames the movement as springing from the wells of Nietzsche. It is more than that, but BAP largely agrees. BAP speaks of the “eliminationist” rhetoric towards the white male. Maybe “eliminationist” is a bit hyperbolic, but the examples he uses are indeed outrageous. Some on the left openly state white males, writ large, are evil. Yet, unlike most who recognize that the outrageousness of the anti-white hatred (real consequences aside) will not actually result in white genocide because the rhetoric is largely coming from virtue signaling white women and beta males, The Alt Right simply takes them at their word, saying, “Well, if “whiteness” is bad and must be subdued, then what choice do I have but to stand with my team and fight?”

 

Friederich Nietzsche

1844-1900

 

To oversimplify Nietzsche’s large and complex body of thought, if there is a philosophy that celebrates masculinity, strength, and power, it is his. Nietzsche had great influence on the Nazis and their ideas of the ideal human. The concept of the “Ubermensche” (Superman) has great appeal to men, boys, and nations, who feel cut down, weakened, and humiliated. Germany felt demeaned and bullied by the Treaty of Versailles’ harsh reparations after WWI. To fight back, they hyperinflated the money supply, causing social chaos and radicalism to flourish in the midst of the obvious failures of democracy. Many of today’s young men hear the message loud and clear that the only moral thing for them to do is bend the knee, relinquish their desire for success, and become psychological eunuchs. They must reject their masculine energy, which calls them to build, compete, and win in life. The left blames masculinity for war, rape, racism, and violence of all kinds, and for a people who tend to think that reality itself is plastic, is it not a stretch for them to believe they can simply end masculinity altogether? Men all over the world are hearing that their very nature is the cause of all the world’s evil. They hear that success itself is bad, that the only solution is total equity, no one more successful or special than any other. To survive, some men meekly submit. Others, tired of their spiritual hunger and emptiness, begin to question everything. They listen to voices saying they can be great and powerful, and nobody can stop them, that they can have money, and Ferraris, and lots and lots of sex with hot women. They can be Ubermensche. Nietzsche is back.

 

AMERICAN CONSERVATISM: DEPARTURES FROM BURKE AND TOQUEVILLE

 

 

“We put great energy into our visions. We do everything but think about them.”

 

Thomas Sowell

 

Russell Kirk argued that classical conservatism is dead. Largely true, the idea is tied to monarchy, landed aristocracy, and state churches, which were effectively abolished by the appearance of Democratic Republicanism onto the scene. “Conservatives have been routed,” argues Kirk, “though not conquered.” This is not a sentimentality. It reflects the truth that, unless Hegel is right about history being an inevitable march toward “progress,”—and if anybody is honest, they will admit the last ten years have demolished that idea—conservatism will live on. Peter Vierick argued conservatism is little more than the political secularization of Original Sin. Conservatism and leftism may change over time but will never die because, to perhaps oversimplify things, they are manifestations of ideas present in the Garden: God is God, and Man is God.

 

In 1955, William F. Buckley Jr. explained in the first issue of National Review their standards, clarifying and centering American conservatism for the next half century.

 

Among our convictions: It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens' lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.

 

There is much to like about this statement. It is against the levelling instinct and the Utilitarian monster, which spawned the twin demons of Scientism and Marxism. It promotes freedom, respects tradition and the mystery of life, and asserts Truth over majoritarianism, all good things. In Matthew Continetti’s book “The Right,” he documents the congealing of American conservatism in the 50’s as a response to communism and the Cold War. The movement was a three-legged stool of strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, and traditional family values. Because conservatives are for order and stability or they are for nothing, Buckley purged the movement of lunatics and radicals like Ayn Rand, Joseph McCarthy, the John Bircher Society, and George Wallace, arguing apologetically that, despite Buckley’s rubbing friendly shoulders with racists in the 50’s, neither racism, nor hatred of religion, belonged in the party of Lincoln. When the Soviet Union fell, the three-legged stool wobbled. As the Neo-conservatism of George W. Bush was partly discredited by flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, conservatives drifted back to their natural positions of a more modest and isolationist foreign policy. As the culture unmoored itself from religion, the power the Moral Majority enjoyed in the 80’s shriveled. With the populist, nationalist, anti-globalist Trump, who could not care less about timeless truths, conservatives and the right, which are not the same thing, are still married but sleeping in separate bedrooms. This leaves thoughtful conservatives in an uncomfortable position: As the nation itself has splintered, so too, has our own movement. This is not necessarily to the benefit of the left, for theirs is even more shattered. Many liberals have yet to realize that their core values of openness and tolerance, still held by American conservatives, are hated by illiberal progressives, and if progressives had their way, they would, after the main course of traditionalists, devour liberals for dessert.

 

Conservatives are asking themselves, “Who are we?” This was never an easy question to answer. The American Revolution was drenched in Calvinistic, Burkean conservativism. What is also true, is that a government wholly rooted in the consent of the governed and individualistic Natural Rights had never existed. This codification of inalienable rights, free markets, civil liberties, and limited government, was not conservative; It was liberal. It was a republic and not democracy, of course, (a word completely vandalized by today’s left) as the founders distrusted the mob as much as elites, but in 1789, the scepter of power was dispersed as never before. To this day, American conservatives have the instincts of Burke, Toqueville, and Adams. What we are trying to conserve, however, is in part, a form of liberalism. Would it last? Many founders feared it would not. Conservative intellectuals, especially in the 19^th century, warned that all majoritarian and liberal roads lead to despotism. The notion is unsettling because the only way for a pluralistic society to exist is for an ethic of tolerance (liberalism) to rule the hearts of its citizens.

 

Liberalism, quite focused on liberty until the late 19^th century, became enamored with radical egalitarianism and the likes of Hegel, Rousseau, and Marx. Conservatives noticed.  Being meritocrats, they believe in the indispensability of a robust “gentleman class.” Yet, if you read Burke’s or Toqueville’s defenses of aristocracy, what stands out is the aristocrats’ immense responsibilities and duties to the people. If one had a title, a most shameful thing would be to squander the gift on hedonistic pursuits, fallow the mind on trivialities, or allow those in your sphere of responsibility to fall to hunger or poverty. The great irony is that modern elites, while embracing radical and fashionable egalitarian ideas such as Critical Race Theory and sexual liberation, seem stuporously oblivious to the impact of those ideas. One man noted recently that when he searched Tinder for a girl near an elite university, most were “polyamorous.” When he extended the search 20 miles, most were single mothers. The near total conquering of the elite class by leftism is recent. There is a generational realignment that is morphing the Republican archetype from bankers and industrialists to cashiers and oil riggers. Historically, conservatives on soapboxes shouted that perpetually increasing democracy would destroy the ties that bind us. They would argue today it was the very process of artificially equalizing power and resources, that stripped elites of their abilities, their greatness, and their responsibilities to the rest of us. While American conservatives distrust elites, a most democratic trait, we would argue that we did not lose faith in them; They abandoned us. Deep down, we know our salvation depends not on destroying elites, but in having better ones

 

So how, more precisely, do American conservatives depart from our ideological forebears? For one, we are not European blood and soil tribalists. For another, while retaining old notions about God, property, human nature, order, and stability, we embrace the democratic liberalism of expanded and equal rights and reject fixed classes and aristocracy. We love authority, but ours is a more conceptual love than a practical one. We love the authority of God and the rule of law, not government. We exist to fight the ruling class’s impulse to plan and control our lives. Modern elites and institutions, the ones conservatives, by nature, want desperately to believe in, have been corrupted and fighting their smugness, corruption, decadence, and pseudo-Marxism, has become our raison detre. It is an ironic way to live, one that makes sense to us instinctively, but confuses others.

 

Republicans are now poised to surge back into power because of the inevitable results of leftist kookery. It comforts Omnipotentblog little. With the confused, emotionally fragile, and deeply equalitarian younger generations coming of age, will the institutions so necessary for stability and order be reformed and reinvigorated? I am not optimistic.

 

WHAT IS CONSERVATISM?

“The stupid party.”

 

John Stuart Mill.

 

 Russell Kirk, author of “The Conservative Mind," admitted there were innumerable dull and slow-witted adherents of conservatism, which Edmund Burke likened affectionately to cattle under a great oak ignoring the buzzing flies calling for innovation. But the intellectual history of conservatism, from roughly 1790 onward, is a story of great and learned men who thought deeply about the nature of God, man, and government. Conservatism is a coherent philosophy, a way of life and thinking that, despite being instinctual for most, has led mankind to the greatest happiness over the long course of history. Despite this truth, the liberal axiom about conservatives is they are either a) Dumb, a collection of poorly-educated, superstitious, rigid, and boring people, b) Despite conservatism’s complete disconnectedness from race, adherents are, nonetheless, largely white, and hate brown people, and c) Evil, sometimes brilliant Machiavellis in the vein of Richard Nixon.

 

Tragically, our current political labels have been so thoroughly twisted and abused, they function more to blur and obfuscate than explain. They serve political purposes, not linguistic ones. Part of the confusion is that the thing American conservatives are trying to conserve is classical liberalism. American conservatives are sort of a hybrid of the two great ways. How so? First, we must understand classical conservatism, and hopefully, boiling down 429 pages of Kirk’s genius into two will not overly dilute the Great Idea.

 

Abraham Lincoln once quipped, “What is conservatism? Is it not the tried and true against the new and untried?” It is that but more. Kirk proposes six canons of conservative thought:

 

1.     Belief that a divine intent rules society. Kirk writes, “Politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which is above nature.” The society we live in has been fashioned over time through Providence. God has created an order, and to blow it up for the purpose of experiment and faddish innovation, is to challenge the will of God. Successful governance relies on a cosmic humility, and conservatives accept the mystery behind life as it is. “…there are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot fathom or plum,” says Keith Feiling.

 

2.       We are lovers of variety and personal freedom. Conservatism is enjoyment of life as it is. It contends against the forces of uniformity and equalitarianism. The word “unity” induces terror. “The people?” Rousseau’s “collective will?” No such things, only individuals, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, with unique dreams and goals. Are Americans as one? Are Africans? Are the desires of the Masai bushman the same as the strongman in Zimbabwe or the civil engineer in Kinshasa? Conservatism is independence, freedom, and paradoxically, alongside the stuffiness and conformity sometimes displayed by we who love order, eccentricity. The messiness of capitalism lives inside this concept. Woodrow Wilson dreamed of society as a hive, bees buzzing around in orderly fashion according to complex rules and plans designed by “the experts.” To a conservative, however, this conjures images of cattle herded through chutes by the electric prods of bureaucracy.

 

 

3.       Civilized society requires orders and classes. Inequality itself is neither good, nor bad. Kirk writes, “The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts at levelling lead to despair.” Society will have its leaders. Better they be chosen by ability, by education, and natural talent. Conservatives like Alexis DeToqueville gave full-throated defenses of aristocracy. They defended monarchy and titles. Burke and others, however, recognized the flaws in inherited nobility. Burke loved the responsibilities and demands aristocracy placed on elites to care for and protect their lieges but hated the incompetency and corruption that inherited or titled aristocracy often led to. Hence, Burke emphasized a “natural aristocracy” built on merit. Greater privileges for the talented did not offend Burke, and he saw failure as inevitable if positions are filled based on identity. Undeniably, chattel slavery fits within the conservative tradition, but I would ask, why would this particular form of bondage be considered so vile while the enslaving of an entire civilization under Communism, which fits squarely inside the Progressive tradition, be considered acceptable?  It seems that decent people recognize both as unmitigated evils.

 

4.       Freedom cannot exist without property rights. Property rights undergird and support all others. Destroy this right, or merely whittle it away, and there is nothing government cannot take from a citizen. Shall not people benefit from the fruits of their own labors? If you cannot keep what you earn or benefit your family and leave the results of your toils to your children, what is the incentive to work or advance the cause of society at all? Ever present in conservatives’ minds is the “Tragedy of the Commons,” the observed phenomenon that when all are responsible for something, the result is rank neglect. Private land is almost always better managed than government land, and is it not self-evident that unearned wealth, be it through legislated redistribution, lottery, or inheritance, is not appreciated as much as what was earned?

 

 

5.       Human sin is real. The failures of mankind lie not in ignorance or institutions but the structures of the human heart. Liberals must answer the question posed by St. Paul: “Why do I do what I do not want to do, and do not do what I want to do?”  In summarizing Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kirk writes, “…the real enemy of mankind is not social institution, but the devil within us…Man may diminish the influence of original sin, but this struggle requires nearly his undivided attention…Only one species of reform really is worth attempting: reform of conscience.” The Bible says the human heart is “wicked.” John Adams claimed the reason man cannot rule himself is not wickedness per se, but weakness. Potato, po-tah-to.  It seems blindingly obvious to conservatives that amongst the many happy and generous thoughts in the human race, lay fear and selfishness, and we must control our appetites, for man is ruled more by emotion than reason.

 

6.       We are skeptical of innovation. “Change is not reform,” noted John Randolph. Change must happen, of course, for reform is the very mechanism by which the body politick preserves its lifeblood. Neoterists, however—lovers of change for its own sake—do little but set fires to haystacks. Peace and prosperity are unnatural, and conservatism protects and preserves the good. The most dangerous species is the Technocrat, the compulsive tinkerer who experiments blithely with the lives of real humans. Kirk expends great energy railing against Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, the belief that society can be scientifically managed, that everything can be broken into parts, sifted, measured, and rearranged like blocks to create something functional. To a conservative, society is a living organism, and Benthamites would sooner take the legs off to see if they work better as arms. Utilitarianism is the enemy of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and if conservatives are for anything at all, it is those things; They have been available to man since he left the garden. Goethe said the thing revolutionaries love most is their own ideas. But if you examine history, you will find all their bright and shiny ideas, already having been tried, and already having failed. All is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun.

 

Next time, I will explore how American conservatives depart from their classical brothers and how the various branches and eddies of modern conservatism have shaped the American right of the last century. 

BTW, it is impossible to overstate how stupendous is "The Conservative Mind," a truly remarkable, expansive, and beautifully written work. 

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING PART IV (This is the end. I promise.)

 

“True civilization does not lie in progress or (technology). It lies in the diminution of the marks of original sin.”

 

Charles Baudelaire

The catalogue of decline continues...

 

GET THEE TO A CHURCH

It is widely known that religiosity has shrunk tremendously. You might think that meant people stopped going to church, but that’s not true. The same people still go, and the people whose faith was unserious or merely cultural now reject that. The result is a sharp increase in pseudo-scientific beliefs, things like astrology, UFO’s, and, (sigh) trolls and elves. What dominates, however, is not those. The God-shaped vacuum in the heart is usually filled with God, Government, or Gaia, and the current winner is a political faith. Social Justice Warriors are the new Puritans, scouring the countryside for victims to brand with a scarlet R for racism. For those who are religious, who understand the nature of faith, creeds, moral certainty, and fundamentalism, Wokeism checks all the boxes. It is a religion, full stop. There are responsive readings, confessions, kneeling, saints and martyrs like George Floyd, and actual talk of “sin.”

 

RIBALDRY!

 

In a race to the bottom, the country is increasingly coarse and vulgar. Sitting next to me in the coffee shop as I write this is a woman with a baseball cap that just says, “F__k.” Regardless of my agreement with the sentiment, it is a sign of cultural decay. Foul language is increasingly accepted. A congresswoman recently used the F word in a speech. There is a pizza restaurant in L.A. called “Best F___in’ Pizza. Then there is the disturbing popularity of the rap song “WAP”, which stands for…ahem, lubricated female privates. A string of celebrities filmed Youtube videos singing the song, and it was discussed in a flippant tone on talk shows. And, despite the virtual synonymity of Rock and Roll and depravity, it was usually kept in hotel rooms and tour buses. This story, however, is pure bonkers: A female singer during a recent show squatted and peed into the open mouth of a willing fan, who then sprayed it into the air while pumping his fist to wild cheers. Indeed.

 

IT'S NOT RAINING MEN

 

I have noticed something about motorcycles. They’re missing. And what remains on the road are not the muscular sport bikes that dominated the I 5 while doing mile-long wheelies at 90 mph. What’s left are these 250-500cc “sport-ish” bikes that sound like a 10-year-old boy’s long fart. Apparently, millennials and Gen Z do not like motorcycles as much. But mention a Tesla with its giant touch screen…Ooooh!

 

Remember this guy?

 

There is a war over the very idea of what it means to be a man. Conservatives like Josh Hawley have been calling for a "revival of strong and healthy manhood in America." The term “toxic masculinity” has been popularized, and one can be forgiven for being confused whether it means the toxic elements of masculinity, which are easily recognizable, or it simply means masculinity itself. In a recent speech, Hawley blamed the left for wanting to define traditional masculine virtues like courage, independence, and assertiveness as a danger to society. “Can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games?...American men are working less, they are getting married in fewer numbers, they're fathering fewer children, they're suffering more anxiety and depression, they're engaging in more substance abuse." In Omnipotentblog’s “The War On Men,” which Obscure Blog Magazine called “…one of the most prescient and insightful pieces of 2012,”*  I noted how liberal notions of collectivism and unity are challenged by the very ideas of competition. Everyone gets a trophy. Think of the typical responses to a young boy falling and skinning his knee during a race. The mother may “poor-baby” the child until his body dehydrates from tears. The man will often encourage the child to stop crying and finish the race. Masculine love is often conditional and sometimes the only thing that gets a child to move out of the basement. But if your view of love is always the “poor baby” version, you might see the enforcement of standards as crude and thuggish. As modern life becomes safer, as the economy moves from factory and field into the office, the need for tough and aggressive men doing dirty and dangerous jobs is diminished. As this happens, men are told that the fire inside them, the thing that makes them risk and compete and be great, is actually cause for shame. And now we have a generation of men unmoored, angry, and confused. BTW, nobody ever talks about toxic femininity, which, trust me, is a thing.

 

* This may or may not be completely fabricated.

 

 

EMOTIONAL FRAGILITY

 

In the last decade plus, the mental health of America’s youth has plummeted. I first noticed a rise in psychiatric issues around 2014 when I tried to hospitalize a runaway 15 y.o. wildly psychotic with voices and delusions. He was breaking into businesses at night, watching porn on their computers, and leaving Cheeto dust on the keyboards. Hospitals would not take him. No beds. A psychiatrist finally admitted there indeed had been a sharp rise in admissions, and MediCal had raised criteria. Why is this happening? For one, woke-ism is busy encouraging the replacement of objective reasoning with “lived experience”. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and science, has guided Western Civilization for centuries, but that is changing. Cultural leaders now embrace a more Romantic vision where the passions rule. Naturally, self-control and virtue are devalued, and when emotions dominate the inner life, they become like a wild beast, unmanageable and difficult to tame. Now, if humans are born good, if their natures are altruistic and eager to spread joy if only societal barriers were removed, this would be a good thing. This is the vision now being implemented. How’s it working out? Universities are awash in Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces. Uncomfortable speech is silenced to protect students from ideas that hurt their feelings. In the Woke scripture “White Fragility,” Barbara DiAngelo infantilizes People of Color, portraying them as wounded victims incapable of challenge, while in a tautological and stunning lack of self-awareness, she claims pushing back against the idea of collective white guilt is evidence of emotional weakness and defensiveness. For the woke, the strange solution to the problem of emotional fragility is the removal of the stigma of emotional fragility rather than the development of strength and hardiness. Seems kinda dumb.

 

LONELINESS

 

In 2000, eminent sociologist Robert Putnam wrote “Bowling Alone,” a study of the decades-long decrease in civic involvement and the increase in loneliness. The loss of social capital has only worsened. Republican Senator Ben Sasse wrote, “Them: Why We Hate Each Other—And How to Heal,” claiming that loneliness is the primary driver of the endemic tribalism and hate in this country. Crushing isolation is such a problem in Britain that former Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a “Minister of Loneliness.” Academics note today’s children have far less personal contact than generations past. Years ago, one teen told me, “Nobody really parties anymore.” I just couldn’t understand that. Now I do. Needless to say, Covid lockdowns accelerated a crisis already in progress.

 

At this point, I must apologize, because I lied. This is really not the theory of “everything.” One could go on and on about the social ills of the world, maybe write a book or two, or six, but this is a blog. At some point, I just gotta wrap it up. Is American civilization rolling gently down a hill or running towards a cliff? I don’t know, but people are angry, and we all sense something is wrong. The solution, IMHO, is to look back, not to the evils of the past, which are often uglier than today’s, but to the riches of tradition, of belief in Providence and humility before God, to the mix of conservatism, notions of human sin, and hopeful liberalism of the American Constitution informed by the belief that man is created in the image of God. The solution is to realize the only true reform, as Nathaniel Hawthorne believed, is reform of the human heart. Will our Democratic Republic last? Only if we embrace this observation by James Russell Lowe:

 

“Democracy in itself is no more sacred than monarchy. It is man who is sacred; it is his duties and opportunities, not his rights, that nowadays need reinforcement. It is honour, justice, culture, that make liberty invaluable, else worse than worthless if it mean only freedom to be base and brutal…”  

 

Amen.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING PART III

 

PORNOGRAPHERS AND PRUDES

 

Commenting on the desire to uproot traditional taboos, Edmund Burke stated there are ignorant men who are not foolish enough to take apart their clock but “sufficiently confident to think (they) can safely take to pieces, and put together at (their) pleasure, a moral machine…” far more intricate than an instrument of springs and gears. 

 

Since the 60’s, the left has wanted to obliterate these taboos about sex and gender. In “Marxist Feminism’s Ruined Lives”, Mallory Millett describes her involvement in the creation of the National Organization of Women. They’re kind of a big deal now, and they started their meetings with this chant:

 

"Why are we here today?" she asked.

"To make revolution," they answered.

"What kind of revolution?" she replied.

"The Cultural Revolution," they chanted.

“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?" she demanded.

"By destroying the American family!" they answered.

"How do we destroy the family?" she came back.

"By destroying the American Patriarch," they cried exuberantly.

"And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.

"By taking away his power!"

"How do we do that?"

"By destroying monogamy!" they shouted.

"How can we destroy monogamy?"

 

Their answer left me dumbstruck…, she wrote.

 

"By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!" they resounded.

 

“Geez, Omnipotentblog. Is literally everything a communist plot?” Well, not everything, but the other day, I sat down to eat lunch at home and watched some porn. I thought it was an animated sci fi show on Netflix, but that was apparently a lie. After trying to fast forward through the naughty bits, I gave up and turned it off. Recently, students at Grossmont High School in San Diego staged a near riot over a dress code that banned mid riffs and tank tops. Perhaps they have simply learned that political violence gets results, but any casual observer over 40 who watches TV or sits in coffee shops has surely noticed the swelling number of exposed boobs and lumpy mid riffs, even as waistlines expand. There is a strange feminist notion that to be equal to a man means to be just as horny and freakish. At the same time, actual teenage sex is down. Substantially. One kid told me nobody really parties anymore. Yet, while the college hook-up culture is strong, there is also a Puritan strain of thought among college students and administrators regarding consent that borders on moral panic. Coupled with a culture of victimhood and the fear of “toxic masculinity”, this simultaneous loosening and tightening of sexual mores has served to confuse people and ruin lives. And while the actual evidence behind the perceived epidemic of campus rape is paltry, the true believers fail to understand why some men, pickled in alcohol and teased to the brink of insanity, might be a little too eager to just, you know, “take it.” If, in the throes of passion, women can turn it off like a switch, can’t men? I mean, we’re all the same, aren’t we? Of course—and this is complete speculation—but men raised with self-control, good values, and respect for women are probably less likely to rape, no matter how drunk. Some years ago, I read a piece detailing how a consensual hook-up turned into a “rape” when a woke RA convinced a girl her post-coital guilt meant she really had not given consent. It turned into criminal charges against a confused and traumatized man. Speaking of Puritanism, there has been a strange alliance recently between social conservatives and hardcore feminists against pornography. And though conservatives hate (love, whatever) to say, “We told ya so,” in “Why Sex-Positive Feminism is Falling Out of Fashion,” NY Times’ columnist Michelle Goldberg, without mentioning it, or possibly even realizing it, admits that social conservatives were totally right about sex all along. Her epiphany is that the sexual revolution has brought only exploitation, poverty, and misery to women. But she wants to Make America Rut Again by creating a new “culture of respect.” Sure.

 

GENDER AND SEX

 

During the gay marriage debates over a decade ago, radio host Dennis Prager would often warn the great risk of the left’s arguments about sexual identity was not about marriage, per se, but about gender. He predicted a slippery slope, and now, he appears quite prescient. The left moves from victim group to victim group and now that gays and lesbians appear to be lower on the scale of oppression, transgenders are the victims du jour. Two genders plus confusion has become dozens of genders and sexual identities that have names for any combination of feelings people can describe, even an identity whereby some women can’t have sexual feelings for people they are not emotionally attracted to, which, if memory serves, used to be called “a woman”. What are the results of this? An explosion in the number of people identifying as “nonbinary” or not straight. The landmark Sex in America Survey survey by Laumann et al argued that culture had an enormous influence on sexuality. They pointed to a paucity of homosexuals in rural America and much higher rates in populated urban centers, only a small portion of which was explained by migration. They found the prevalence of homosexuality to be 2-3%. Numerous previous studies suggested about 2% of males and 1% of females. The rates were remarkably stable over decades, but with the massive recent cultural shift, what about now? As of 2021, Gallup estimated the rate to be 5.6%. Rates among older generations remained steady while rates of Millenials have exploded.  

 

Is this a good thing? Not according to data, which shows the problems in these groups as voluminous and severe. And while the left cheers the lopping off of private parts, there is a real thing called “Transition Regret,” compassionately documented by Walt Heyers, a detransitioned male, and 60 Minutes in an interview of people lamenting their permanent mutilations. One woman noted how she got on hormones after “a couple” therapy sessions. She was transitioned and detransitioned in less than a year. Various studies show that 85% of teenagers, if they do not receive encouragement or pressure to transition, will resolve their gender identity issues. Tellingly, the gold standard of guidance regarding surgical transition used to be the Harry Benjamin Standards, established in 1979 with the understanding that surgery was a radical, irreversible action. They recommended that a person should live fully as the other gender for at least a year before starting hormones. The standards also recommended “…extensive exploration of psychological, family and social issues…Identity beliefs in adolescents may become firmly held and strongly expressed, giving a false impression of irreversibility; more fluidity may return at a later stage. For these reasons, irreversible physical interventions should be delayed as long as is clinically appropriate.” The problem with the new gender ideology is that these standards have been ignored because, who are we to tell someone their feelings aren’t real? There are signs the tide is turning, however. Sweden’s renowned Karolinska Institute, after reviewing the literature, banned transition among teenagers outside of approved studies. And the UK High Court recently evaluated the scientific evidence for transitioning teenagers, determining the evidence suggested hormonal transition is still experimental and should not be allowed for children under 16, given their lack of maturity and inability to give informed consent. Contrast this with California’s  AB 1184, which gives children as young as 12 control of their medical and psychiatric records and bans health insurance companies from notifying parents of “sensitive” treatments such as abortions and surgical gender transitions. The staggering rates of suicide and general misery among both pre and post-transition transgenders should give them pause, but it doesn’t. The revolution must go on.

 

Next week: A proper discussion of church, men who ride mopeds, and Cheeto dust.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING PART II

 

"It was impossible, situated as we were, not to imbibe the idea that everything in nature and human experience was fluid, or fast becoming so; that the crust of the earth in many places was broken, and its whole surface portentously upheaving…No sagacious man will long retain his sagacity if he live exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without periodically returning into the settled system of things…It was time for me now, therefore, to go and hold a little talk with the conservatives…all those respectable old blockheads who still, in this intangibility and mistiness of affairs, kept a death grip on one or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday morning."

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Mosses from an Old Manse”

 

The breakdown of the breakdown continues…

 

THE SELF-HATRED OF ELITES

 

In Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart,” he describes Western elites living industrious lives of Protestant asceticism while pouring scorn on the very idea the poor should do the same. George W. Bush called this “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Former spy for the Soviets, Whittaker Chambers, said that in America, it is the rich, who are the communists, not the workers, and the algal bloom of Marxist thought has produced a parallel guilt over their own success. To expiate this guilt, they remove Western Civilization from educational curriculums, and dismiss the history of modernity itself as the study of old, racist white men. Even the corporate world has embraced this self-flagellation. However, actual policies that would pull them from their perches are mysteriously absent. One tenet of Critical Race Theory is that whatever policies are passed to help oppressed minorities, they always end in maintaining elites’ exalted status. Seems kinda true. Murray’s solution for the ever-widening bifurcation of America is for elites to simply “preach what they practice.”

  

INSTITUTIONAL THUGGERY

 

Partly due to the influence of Antonio Gramsci, the American left has engaged in a long march through the institutions. Leftism dominates Education, Journalism, Hollywood, Music, banking and finance, Big Tech, and increasingly, the military. The American Medical Association is now inserting overtly Marxist language into their literature. The fusion of government and corporations is the cornerstone of fascism. Yet, while they weep and gnash their teeth about the specter of right wing fascism, Democrats and corporations are practically sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. As much of our elite class banishes intellectual diversity from its ranks, increasingly pressuring its members into a pseudo-Marxist Borg, what have they done with their power? They censor news, cancel accounts, shadow ban, manipulate information, destroy businesses through litigation and protest, and coordinate with the government to run a Ministry of Information-like regime to purge traditionalists from society. The Biden administration admitted recently to flagging “misinformation” for Facebook to censor. California and other officials have been caught as well. Ben Shapiro, in “Our Authoritarian Moment”, describes how an intransigent minority bullies the complacent majority, creating a tipping point of submission. While conservatives find the idea disgusting, his solution is for the reasonable majority to start implementing the same nasty techniques of boycott and cancellation.

 

“Acknowledge your privilege, Captain.”

 

DECLINING TRUST IN INSTUTIONS

 

Lo, the conspiracy nuts will always be with us, but if you have never read about QAnon, you might be surprised just how unhinged they really are. Dr. Fauci is the son of Mother Teresa, who was a child sex trafficker, you see. Despite our ever-present paranoiacs, true social capital is dwindling. The Pew research graphic below shows a meaningful drop in institutional trust over the last 20 years.

 

 

The sharp divide politically is especially troubling, with a 45% divide regarding police and a 19% and 29% divide for TV journalism and newspapers. The worst category is Republicans’ mistrust of the media, which is somewhere in the Marianas Trench at 7%. The presidency is more politicized than ever. There are always suspicions by partisans when their candidate loses, but the “Not my President” phenomenon is growing. When Bush defeated Gore in 2000, and the Supreme Court discussed hanging chads and other ballot minutiae, only 18% of Democrats thought the outcome was fair. A full 30% thought the election was stolen. 37% percent of Democrats said Bush stole Ohio in 2004. 36 percent of Republicans felt cheated in 2012. After 2016, 52% of Democrats believed Russia hacked voting machines. However, weeks after the 2020 election, despite media and many establishment Republicans saying there was no evidence, up to 30% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans thought the election was stolen. Without rehashing the voluminous complaints both petty and significant, there was something different about this one. This tweet heard round the world (worth reading) outlined the many reasons for Republicans’ complete mistrust even before the election. For one, Democrats’ rage over Trump resulted in, to make a very long story short, the federal government using sexed-up oppositional research from the DNC to lie to judges so they could spy on Trump and initiate a years-long investigation they knew was total horse crap after one year. Former high-level government officials would testify to congress the government had no evidence of Russian Collusion, and days later, would go on TV to proclaim smoking gun evidence would come out aaany day now. And after the media’s corrupt lynching of the Covington High School boys and Judge Kavanaugh, Republican’s eyes were practically twitching. Then came the long list of 2020 election chicanery in partisan counties in swing states, including blatantly illegal “emergency” changes due to Covid. TIME magazine ran “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” The article was celebratory in tone, but in it were shocking admissions causing the right to call it a secret cabal to steal the election. Was the election stolen? I don’t know. With all the outright fraud that was alleged, where’s the beef? Evidence has not materialized. But the other improprieties might have made a difference. We’ll probably never know. Not content with just a win, Democrats framed the Jan 6^th riots as an insurrection, worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. This is complete twaddle, of course, and it puts Republicans’ belief that Democrats will do literally anything to get power at a fever pitch. And then came Covid. With the constant diet of terror and lies fed to us, is it any wonder how vaccines, which are safe IMO, got so unforgivably politicized?

 

HISTORICAL IGNORANCE

 

Embracing the Marxism of Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt school, leftists understand that to transform the nation, our connection to our history must be severed. The 1619 Project is only the most obvious and clumsy example of this intentional perversion of history. The great irony is the Progressive view history by definition: It is an important guide on what to dismiss. It is a pick axe for undermining the foundation. Progressivism, by definition, is contempt for the old, crusty ideas of old, crusty people. To the conservative, history is an antidote to all kinds of error, and I can’t help but think a mandatory course of American History that is simply true and honest, would end this revolution in a short time. What is the proper view of American history? I believe former slave Frederick Douglass, in his famous 4^th of July speech, has it right. Savage in his attack on America for accepting slavery, in the end, he proclaims his faith in and love for the Constitution. Confident in the eventual end of slavery, he defied critics to find a single pro-slavery clause in it, declaring that no soil on earth was more fertile for equality and change than America’s. William McClay wrote of British historian Herbert Butterfield, who railed against Lord Acton’s approach to the past, “that makes its meaning and its lessons subservient to the demands of the present and to the present’s reigning idea of what constitutes ‘progress.’” Butterfield felt such historical writing “was likely to be simplistic and one-sided, reducible to white hats and black hats.” The complexity of history shows the men of history to be suspiciously like the men of today, full of brilliance and greatness and sin and folly. However, to rustle the cattle into greener pastures, utopian levelers like Hanna Nikole-Jones must break off bits of the past until they get the shape they like.

 

Next week, I dive into some of the social elements of America’s decline. 

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING PART I

 

“It is difficult to conceive any situation more painful than that of a great man condemned to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption.”

 

Alexis de Toqueville

 

Some consider Toqueville the greatest political thinker since Aristotle and the greatest friend to and critic of democracy. He might define “great man” differently today, but he, too, lived during a tumultuous time, watching his beloved France slide into chaos. Toqueville believed that both men and nations have free will, and the great Russell Kirk, in summarizing Toqueville wrote, “…the perversion of democratic society into a sea of anonymous beings, social droplets, deprived of true family, true freedom, and true purpose, although terribly possible, is not yet inevitable. Against this, intelligent men should struggle like fanatics.” Struggle we shall.

 

Here is where I planned to argue the nation is in decline. Really, what’s the point? This is apparent even to fools and children. Only the causes need debate. “America, We Had a Good Run” Parts I, II, and III examine three major causes of our devolution. What follows is a more parsed and detailed discussion over a four-part series. Are barbarians inside the gates? Let me count the ways.

 

POSTMODERNISM

 

The roots of any social phenomenon are usually complex, but one thing beyond all others deserves a lashing. For my money, the grand villain is Postmodernism. I had intended to put this section at the end, but I would like you, dear reader, to overlay this section onto the others that will come, to think about how it feeds nearly every necrotic idea eating away the social marrow. I see three cancers at work, especially in the young: Identity, meaning, and emotional fragility, all closely related, three heads, one animal. The obsession with race, the explosion of transgender teenagers, the skyrocketing suicides and the weird popularity of self-mutilation, all are evidence of these diseases. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl noticed great disparities in how concentration camp victims responded to their afflictions. Those with stable and robust philosophical superstructures, who were spiritual, who did not struggle with moral confusion or succumb to broad hatreds and self-pity, fared better. Some of them even seemed…happy. Clay Routledge studies  meaning, primarily the effects of lacking it. He notes those with a confused or muddled worldview, who reject organized religion, often gravitate towards pseudo-scientific beliefs like astrology and belief in aliens that provide little comfort. The established faiths are the most readily available communities of meaning. Like-minded people embrace fixed sets of rules and support each other in following them. The aggressively irreligious mock the “weak” for needing a savior, a Santa in the sky. A kid told me once regarding church, “I don’t wanna sing cheesy old folk songs, I’d rather be cool.” Being cool means being above it all. So the cool amongst us, unencumbered (so they believe) by some bronze-age dogma, do the only thing they know: Scoff. Yet, non-believers are much more likely to suffer depression and anxiety. Postmodernism rejects objective truth, replacing the truth with my truth. Yet, if there is no truth, there is no beauty, no grand, historical narrative that belies a purpose of existence. Postmodernism repudiates the very idea of anything special or transcendent. Like Covid, believing nothing is truly better makes everything tasteless and bland. If nothing is true, and if those bigoted, old-time superstitions with their ugly, outdated notions of sin must be discarded, what is left? Nihilism. What is the only thing left to cling to? The self. Man must have a god, of course, and if there is no God, man must make himself God. It’s all very Garden-of-Eden-ish. Jurgen Habermas argues that Postmoderns, “are prey to a performative contradiction and a paradox of self-reference.” Sounds like virtue-signaling and narcissism. The loss of meaning and purpose dehumanize. When there is nothing to rank or order, thinking, reason itself, is banished. What remains is a meat shell, an automaton. Reality is the basis of common sense, of course, something widely mocked by elites because it’s, you know, “common.” In the end, however, everyone is forced to admit something: Reality has a vicious left hook. Like Mike Tyson in his prime, reality always wins. Here’s to its triumphant return.

 Modern man Pontius Pilate

INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA

 

The internet has democratized humanity like nothing else. No one has to read anything that doesn’t perfectly please or titillate them. Want to communicate only with Bronies, or big toe fetishizers, or exceptional minds who understand “The Wall” is superior to “Dark Side of the Moon?” You never have to bother with anybody else’s inferior opinions again. Infinite choice has led to a ghettoization of the world. Liberals need never bother with uncomfortable conservative facts and vice-a-versa. Reality itself becomes tailored. But self-selection is just a part of the story. Social media herds people into more and more radical corners of the mind. A petri dish of narcissism, you get more of you. In an experiment by Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, she created two fake accounts with similar profiles but differing political persuasions. The recommended items were increasingly radical, including suggestions for Qanon and a picture of Donald Trump with an anus photoshopped to replace his mouth. Facebook and others operate on a model of addiction, using things such as recommendations and infinite scroll. Whistleblowers have noted Facebook’s awareness that its model causes mental illness, especially in teenage girls, but they continue to operate as normal because change would reduce profits. Facebook is worth 915 beeelion dollars, but, “Man, wouldn’t one trillion be SO cool??” Not content with owning the world, James Bond villain Mark Zuckerberg’s new obsession is to shape the coming “Metaverse.” Robert Epstein discovered Google, which performs 90% of all internet searches, manipulates search results and auto-suggestion in ways that may give Democrats a 10% boost in elections. They have been caught manipulating elections all over the world. Google’s manipulations have subconscious but demonstrable impact. This enormous power isn’t enough, apparently, as they openly and routinely censor conservatives. Responding to complaints, Big Tech says, ‘well if you don’t like it, get your own social media company. So we can crush that, too.’ Parler was the attempt to make a conservative Twitter. Google, Apple, and Amazon destroyed it for supposedly allowing its members to plan the Jan. 6^th riot, which was mostly planned on Facebook.

 

URBANISM

 

The nature of work being increasingly white collar, few people have experienced a callus. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs is like John the Baptist, a voice in the wilderness crying out, preaching the spiritual value of hard, physical work. Except for computers, few know how to fix things. Except for my Luddite father, who doesn’t even own a cell phone, I don’t know anybody who owns a welder. We are disconnected from the very building blocks of society: how our food is grown, our minerals mined, and our wood harvested. When everything is finished, packaged, and processed, stacked neatly in well-lit stores with pleasant music piping over the speakers, you can’t help but be alienated from your own hands. The urban mind drifts towards collectivism and dependence. Here in Southern California, nature is managed to the point of absurdity. Trails are groomed and roped off with signs that warn deviation from the path will destroy the restoration of precious native habitat. Campground sites are almost on top of each other, making the loud gangster rap of the foul-mouthed guys at site 23 in the Sequoias, completely unavoidable. I went to the Badlands of South Dakota recently. You could get out of your car and just walk around and climb the alien dunes. It felt…naughty. And liberating. Urbanites call for the preservation of “pristine,” untouched wilderness. Certainly, some places of extraordinary beauty should be protected, but when you drive or fly across the U.S., the vastness of the land—what Midwesterners call “dirt”—becomes less romantic.

 

DECADENCE

 

When we hear the term “first world problems,” it’s usually a joke, but the reality is that most of our ennui and anger could only exist in a wealthy and decadent society. Nobody dies of malaria or Yellow Fever. Our “poor” are obese. The other day, I sat in a Starbucks in a shabby area of town. I heard maybe a dozen languages. I saw homeless people, disabled in wheelchairs, and teenagers, all waiting in line for $5 coffee. Some had the latest Iphone. You can get decent brew at 7-11 for $2 (or so I’m told. I’m a snob.) The poor in this country are awash in luxury (see The Fantasy of Equality II).

 

Stay tuned, because I’m just getting warmed up. Next week, there may even be a chart.