Posts by Aaron Em

Re: "Care to clarify?"

If it were an idea or two here and there, I might agree with you. When the congruence encompasses every idea of any political signficance whatsoever, though, I find the claim of coincidence a little hard to take.

"Joe McCarthy would be proud"

"Un-American?" Why not? His words reveal him to be an internationalist, which means by definition that he has no use for the notion of nations, the US of A emphatically included. What could be more "un-American" than that?

And don't think you're going to upset me with a comparison to McCarthy, either -- Tailgunner Joe may have been a drunk with no more chance than Quixote vs. the windmill, but he did make life hard for a lot of rich Hollywood Reds for a while, and I have to say that doesn't exactly move me to shed any tears.

If you're going to try to shut me up, here's a helpful hint: I am not a progressive, and methods which would generally work to shut up a progressive will not likely work well on me. Try making an argument instead. And if you do, then for pity's sake grow a pair and put at least a nickname next to it, rather than hiding behind the rich boy's affectation? I'd hate to think I was wasting my time arguing with an adolescent.

In 500,000 years time

what we today call humanity will no longer exist, and neither will it be remembered. Keep on dreamin', though.

Re: Time to start an empire again, methinks

Is this an Irishman telling a Mississippi son what makes a Southron? How adorable. So you know, being born in Virginia's not nothing, but coming of Ohioan Puritan stock far outweighs it.

Re: 'Far too many religious nutjobs' indeed

You don't really deserve a response. But one point bears reiteration:

When things have been one way for more than two thousand years, and then things suddenly become the diametrical opposite way in less than one one-hundredth that time -- well, of course this seems natural to you, because you have no understanding of history and thus can't recognize that, historically speaking, shit don't work that way -- never has, and all the hockey-stick graphs and claims of eternally accelerating technological progress in the world can't change the fact of it.

(On that point: has it occurred to you yet that "eternally accelerating technological progress", aside from being a cipher for the kingdom of God, implies the manufactured world somehow magically converting itself into a perpetual-motion machine? Sure you were taught to believe it without question, but look at it for a minute -- does that make sense to you?)

Re: I want to be like America...

You're fondling yourself at the thought of how much better than us you are. Meanwhile, your lords and masters moot an implementation of government explicitly designed on the American model. Aren't you just too cute for words?

"Care to clarify?"

Gladly, Ben!

Let's start with: no one is what he says he is; instead, what he does defines him. I may say that I am a pacifist, but if I then offer violence to another person, I have disproved my spoken claim and demonstrated that, whatever I may be, a pacifist I am not -- actions, in short, take precedence over words, even in matters lately considered under the ambit of "personal identity" and therefore, apparently, expected to be taken as sacrosanct.

Fair so far? OK. Now let's look at the publicly declared and stated program of the United States Federal Council of Churches, as adopted unanimously by 375 representatives of 30-some denominations (including Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist -- the largest American Protestant sects) in a 1942 conclave at Ohio Wesleyan (i.e., Methodist) University. The article, still hosted by Time Magazine where it was originally published seventy years ago, is here. (The title is a reference to the "Malvern conference" of the Anglican Church in 1941; see Bonhoeffer, via Google Books, to understand why Time called it what they did.)

Note: If you're a Time subscriber, you can see the full article at Time.com. If you're not a subscriber, you're not quite in as much luck, as Time has recently decided to implement a paywall that can't be circumvented by clicking the 'Print' button. The full article can be found here, reproduced by someone with a religious bone to pick; the blue text is what you're looking for, and it exactly matches the content of the original article, to which I do have access. If you want to assume this is a sign of bad faith on my part, you're welcome; if you can't handle someone with beliefs that differ from yours, and therefore don't want to believe that what you find there is veracious, or if it upsets you to see words like 'pinko' used unironically and with derogatory intent (Time Magazine's editorial policy today isn't what it was in 1942!), then you are likewise welcome -- but before you go, Comrade, let me mention that keeping an open mind is the sine qua non of this exercise. If you're not willing to question the wisdom you've received, why have you read this far?

Quite something, isn't it? Internationalism to the extent of federalized world government -- the elimination of nations and of national sovereignty -- the elimination of tariffs and quotas to produce "free trade" worldwide -- freedom of immigration, in line with all else that redounds from the erasure of every national border on the planet -- an international bank to lend development capital free of the taint of "imperialism".

Is any of this sounding familiar? If you're a progressive, it should! If you're a progressive, this is your political program, and if you're having trouble recognizing it as such, perhaps that's because you weren't expecting to see it espoused as the Way of the Future, and the means of bringing about God's Kingdom on Earth, by a convention of gray-haired bishops from back when your granddaddy was still a young man. (You're also used to operating within a superset of what the bishops of 1942 felt they could get away with; we've had seventy years of effectively unopposed social engineering since then, and that counts for a hell of a lot.)

Thus we have before us the following:

P. No one is what he says; he is only what he does. If what he does fails to match what he says, then he is among other things a hypocrite.

S. The convened heads of mainstream American Protestantism, who were responsible for the direction of their denominations and their congregants, in mid-1942 publicly declared themselves and their sects in support of a political platform whose planks are indistinguishable from those of the modern American progressive (i.e., Fabian) platform.

Given such self-explanatory primus and secundus, tertius hardly need be stated outright, but let's make it clear for the children in the audience:

T. Modern American progressivism is mainstream American Protestantism, in slight disguise, and vice versa.

Of course, atheists -- who are progressive almost to a one, and "conservatives" are no more than rump progressives anyway and bear no further respect or discussion -- have plenty of bad things to say about notions like deity, religion, et cetera -- that being the case, though, one might find oneself forced to wonder: If atheists are anti-religious, then why is it, when these soi-disant godless and faithless espouse a political program -- as invariably they do -- that the tenets of that program are bang alongside the new direction for American Protestantism laid out at Ohio Wesleyan in 1942?

Coincidence, I suppose. And if you can believe that, then congratulations! You have exactly the intellectual and ethical sturdiness it takes to make a progressive true believer.

Of course, as with everything, there's a lot more to all of this; looked at historically, it can be taken back as far as the Quakers and Puritans vs. the Cavaliers, or further still to the Roundheads vs. the Royalists, which as best I can tell is really where all this modern bullshit comes from -- hilarious, isn't it, to imagine all of modern history as little more than the latest evolution in almost four centuries of uninterrupted warfare?

But I have to do other things today as well, so if you're interested in more, I can hardly do better than to recommend the incomparable Mencius Moldbug, who will reward your investment of time far more thoroughly and comprehensively than my little effort here. That said, I hope I haven't done too poor a job of answering your curiosity.

Re: Time to start an empire again, methinks

"[...]Woodrow Wilson, God damn his carpetbagging Yankee soul to hell and fry it to charcoal[...]"

Fixed that for ya.

A constitution

is just a piece of paper, and the restless utopians who've had charge of the United States for the last century or so know it full well -- their very first act was to abandon God and the outward trappings of religiosity, the better to dodge the establishment clause's obstacle to implementing their vision of the earthly kingdom of God.

This is why I love progressive "atheists" to little tiny bits: they're mainstream American Protestants and too ignorant of history to know it. Of course there's no telling them that, self-righteousness being the inebriant it is, but it's fun to chaff them with it from time to time -- and, if you do it often enough, they go away and stop bothering you with their muddle-headed little ideas about religion and politics.

Re: Interesting idea

Yep. Half the damn world just had an economic meltdown because its financial systems are so tightly tied together that there was no stopping everyone cheating like a motherfucker, despite the fact there are probably ten million human beings worldwide employed in the cause of making sure the fuckers don't cheat. The entire eurozone is losing its mind and getting scared about polities seceding over economic problems -- sound familiar? it should -- and you're telling us the solution is to tie everything together more tightly!

Do you also offer investment advice?

Re: Should be interesting

Most likely, sure -- although I wonder; Europe has a hell of a history, and I can't quite believe the meddlesome damnyankees have managed to beat it out of all of you in a mere century or so. That said, war being economics by other means, why assume the EU's civil war would necessarily involve artillery et cetera? I'd bet more on it being a modern-style "asymmetrical" or guerrilla war, if it's a hot war at all.

Re: "Stand by for the War Against The South"

I can imagine many worse things happening to Greece than another regime in power with an interest in ischia, taxis, kai asfalia. Yeah, I know the junta was hard on Red dissidents, but you know what? That's a clue not to be a fucking Red dissident. Same as how it works with antifas and neo-Nazis: antifas beat the shit out of neo-Nazis and get off with a wink and a nod, neo-Nazis defend themselves from antifas and go to prison for years. Anyone with sense doesn't become a neo-Nazi. Works the same way for Reds under the Greek junta, and being a rehabilitated White myself I have to say I'm not exactly heartbroken by the thought of some ignorant college-kid levellers learning a few hard lessons about the world by way of getting nightsticks broken over their thick skulls.

'Republican' my ass

You're a Communist internationalist, is what you are, and moreover one who's too ignorant to know the origins of his own received political wisdom. (You know -- just like all the rest of 'em.)

Well

it won't be a war between the US and Asia for ages, at least -- Asia'll win it handily, probably won't even take more than a couple of years. We might start a war with Asia, if we're stupid enough, but I guarantee we won't win one.

'Far too many religious nutjobs' indeed

Damn straight! The levellers have been working their way into power since 1865, and haven't seen a real challenge to their hegemony since about seventy years after that. By now, we should be getting into some really bizarre social engineering, and we are -- gay marriage, for example, has never been seriously contemplated as being OK since before Jesus was in diapers, and here the United States goes from zero to nationwide implementation in about ten years. (You don't think the next time the Supreme Court rules on it, it'll be to say "this is perfectly fine, stop bothering us with it"? Bet me a fiver.)

Whatever your ethics, whatever your opinion on whether gay people should be allowed to marry, you cannot seriously say that reversing well more than two millennia of common law, in less than two decades, is anything other than utopian social engineering on the grossest imaginable scale. If you're a fan of utopian social engineering, of course, you don't see a problem with that -- but it scares the everloving hell out of me, because I don't know what wild hair the people with their hands on those levers are going to get up their ass next.

"No one is doubting the dollar"

Really? News to me -- last I knew, even half the US has been doubting the dollar since about 2007, inasmuch as we're not all too terrified to contemplate a problem with the sole currency on which any of us really knows how to operate.

Unification as the only way forward

Talk of making assumptions -- where the hell do you get that idea? Star Trek?

Here's hoping for your sake

that it goes better than the federalization of the US did.

I'm also amused to see that everyone's acting like this is a new idea or something, rather than yet another universalist export from the United States. Yep, folks, the EU -- and the increased consolidation of same now being mooted -- is entirely a European idea, hatched de novo in Brussels without any influence from what is still the world's most meddlesome progressive empire, if no longer the world's most powerful empire of any stripe -- and the Bolsheviks came up with it all on their own, too, and certainly weren't following after the best American progressive thinkers.

Sure.

(And if you don't believe there can be any such thing as "progressive empire" -- well, enjoy the Kool-Aid, I guess.)

Not the bag

Just the guy who was supposed to be carrying it. Turns out they didn't bother to check if he'd ever seen a shoulder strap before...

No idea

but I bet you a dollar they blame it on the sad state of manufacturing industry in the UK.

Stupidity can itself be a crime

If they said "lol u can brake into NSA with this", that probably falls under the definition of "encouraging...a serious crime". Considering they were apparently engaged in the commission of such a crime themselves, to fall under the "encouraging" languge, wouldn't they have just needed to upload what they were getting and tell others to do the same?

What's this 'we' shit, Kemo Sabe?

You think we're going to get cut in on whatever they find out, except at cost-plus? Fair enough, I say; we're mercantile enough ourselves, but let's not pretend that "exploring space for the betterment of mankind" is anything other than now rather outdated NASA PR, shall we?

Re: Taikonauts

You're going to be seeing it a lot.

Re: Love the name

Sure, if you want a double plate of #3 with extra meat and some fried donuts on the side. Me, I'll stick with the stodgy old kind of name that just goes and tells you what the thing is that has it.

(Why not make jokes? -- what, they aren't hanging arses and middle digits out the windows at us as they rudely swerve into the passing lane on Imperial Motorway and prepare to make us eat their dust? OK, granted, that's more the Russian style, but still.)

Graphic designers

Worse than drummers, honestly. Of course, we have machines for that now -- much better than the real thing, too, you only have to punch the details into it once -- I wonder how long it'll take before graphic artists go the way of the dodo as well, and you end up with the leftovers chopping off one arm and pushing crayons with the other because you've got to have some kind of gimmick to stand out against utter perfection. Sad, really -- you could maybe do something with a flamethrower, or a neutron bomb.

Curly Wurly "created by a long-serving research confectioner"

It's a hard life, toiling away unheard-of and unrespected in the bowels of Cadbury Plc's giant R&D labs in Hull. And can you imagine the bittersweet (hah!) taste of it, when you've finally hit something big -- finally created something that'll write your name forever in the choccy-stained leaves of confectionery history -- only to discover that nothing truly great belongs to anyone for long. Watching the engineers come in and working with them to design a cold, impersonal machine to stamp out by the dozens what you've heretofore created each individually with your own two loving hands -- watching them discard the first try for jamming and redesign it into a hot-nozzled beast that can pump out forty bars to the minute -- sure, there's an award ceremony when it sells its first million, you get a lovely wall plaque and there'a always the gold watch at the end of it all, but you'll always wonder if it was really worth it, the twin occupational hazards of diabetes and dental caries, the long hours away from family, with only pointless locker-room banter (candy R&D is a very messy job) to show for it -- do your kids know you at all? Mine hardly do...last I was home, my oldest has decided she's vegan now and so instead of proper dinner I got a two-hour lecture over soy milk and tempeh. I don't even know what tempeh is but I'm eating it now apparently! And she told me working here, doing what I do, meant I was "exploiting" everything from cows to children to the whole bloody planet, it turns out, and I said "well then, love, suppose you'd better come home from that fancy college of yours, seeing where the money's coming from for it, and go to school to learn a proper job instead", and she stormed out! How about you, Frank? Didn't I hear your oldest wants to be a graphic designer? May as well be a hairdresser! You can't get a proper day's work out of the lot of 'em!

...wow, what's in this stuff? Should make work today a treat!

Sure is

Ever since they introduced comments, years and years ago. You're just now noticing?

Upvoted nonetheless for calling Dabbs crap. That can't happen often enough.

Since fucking when

is misanthropy considered a goddamned virtue, instead of being correctly identified as the stigma of a damaged personality?

Hey, wait a minute

Arrant appeal to authority? I thought science was supposed to replace religion, not become it!

...I see we haven't killed all the Lamarckians yet. More energy is required, comrades!

Re: What is driving this push to the cloud?

Well, who do they quote in articles like this one? People with technical chops and user-facing responsibilities, or PR flack types who talk for a living?