First up, apologies to new reader (?) Jacques, whose comment on that goober from Monday as “pretty much the Platonic form of an leftist asshole” is spot-on, but got buried due to the comment moderation thingie. I’ve monkeyed with the settings, but being tech-illiterate sometimes these things happen. I wasn’t ignoring you, brother – I’m just falling down on the job re: hosting.

Yeah, I’m sure she knows all about it. One big downside of getting back into a regular weightlifting routine — aside from the pain and weakness and reminders of the injuries that sidelined you in the first place, of course — is that the gym has tvs everywhere, and they’re all but impossible not to watch. Most are just sportsball nonsense — we all desperately need to know what LeBron thinks about Shitavious’s tweet about LaQueefa — but there’s always one tuned to one of those daytime chat shows for some reason, and I can’t avoid the occasional glimpse.

From one of them, I learned that this bint has a book out purporting to teach us how to raise boys. No, really, that’s what it’s called: “To Raise a Boy: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood.” I urge you to click the link, to her Washington Post bio. There’s a picture, which says it all — yep, I’m sure masculinity is just one of the many, many, many, many, many things she’s completely expert on. The still from this video is even better. Take a look — it’s 100:1 her “son” was conceived with a turkey baster. It’s 50:1 the sprog merely “identifies” as a boy, but if it’s actually a biological male, it’s 1,000:1 it’ll have bespoke pronouns by the time it hits high school, at which time it will discover that xzhey are really a girl. Phrenology, as always, for the win.

Update your style guides accordingly. Via Ace of Spades, a glimpse into the future. Really, the only surprise here is that it’s Colorado, not California.

…SB21-132, Digital Communications Regulation, which if passed, would fine websites $5,000 per day as a class 2 misdemeanor if they “allow” user comments that:

“…promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news; or authorize, encourage, or carry out violations of users’ privacy…”

A “digital communications division” would assume responsibility for licensing websites.

Fortunately, The Media have shown us the proper way to promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news; or authorize, encourage, or carry out violations of users’ privacy: Quote “administration sources” claiming the Russians did it, or that it’s “White Supremacists.” See below.

Incorrect:

Joe Biden is a human rutabaga suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s; the 2020 election was blatantly stolen; and Zhou Bai-Den’s embassy staff in Beijing really love those mandatory anal swabs.

Correct:

Administration sources say that totally legitimate President Biden, whose election was completely on the level in every way, has appointed embassy staff to Our Glorious Overlords, the People’s Republic of China, who really enjoy the Butt Swabs of Perfect Health. “We’re just doing our part, baby!,” moaned one official, “and any reports otherwise are Russian hacking.” In other news, a cabal of White Supremacists is reportedly asserting that Joe Biden, whose election was totally not fraudulent, is a human rutabaga suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. Anyone heard disseminating such blatantly fake news should be reported immediately to…

Please note that, in the spirit of bipartisan unity which our Benevolent Overlords have ordered us to observe, any comments not in the New and Improved Newspeak will henceforth be deleted.

The official Rotten Chestnuts rune. As Pickle Rick noted in response to Monday’s piece, Leftist certainly do seem to get their panties in a wad over old Norse runes. He suggested doing some psyops with that information, and I wholeheartedly agree. Thus, I give you the official Rotten Chestnuts rune: Wunjo. Take it away, guys who are just super into runes:

Wunjo – “Won-joe” – Literally: “Joy” – Esoteric: Hope, Harmony, Perfection

Key Concepts: joy, perfection, the art of correct wishing, correct application of the will, well-being, contentment, hope, expectation, relationship, family, bonding, trusted kinsfolk, shared ideals or aims, group harmony, symbols of shared identity, optimism, cooperative effort, like-mindedness, friendship

The great thing about this particular one is that it somehow, some way, seems to have no connection whatsoever to Cat Fancy (advanced hobbyists no doubt recall the “Strength Through Joy” organization, the most porn-sounding of all Third Reich bureaucracies, but their logo was a lot more in-your-face). Who knows, maybe it’s the unit patch of the Fourth Waffen-SS Mechanized Field Kitchen or something, but a brief google search says otherwise:

(Chart included strictly for your reference, such that, in line with the New, Kinder Gentler Newspeak comment policy, you don’t accidentally enter some ASCII code that might kinda resemble one of these. Can’t be too careful — kids these days can barely read, but you never know who has memorized all the unit badges of obscure military formations from 80 years ago).

Anyway, every town of any size probably has a screen printing or embroidery shop that’s really hurting right now. Order up some “Wunjo” gear, and wear it with pride! I recommend white runes on a black background for maximum fuck-with-ery, but feel free to accessorize. You do you, gang. Help stimulate your local economy!

Better yet, it’s plausibly deniable — if some triggered SJW does try to dime you to the Thought Police, you can say it’s just a stylized letter P. For “Pittsburgh” or “Pawtucket” or “Polymorphous Perversity” or what have you (be sure to give the cop the secret shitlord wink and the OK sign, just in case he’s based. For max bonus points, drop a Rotten Chestnuts reference. Maybe he’s a reader — there are, after all, at least 20 of us!).

Best of all, it seemingly really does mean “joy,” and that’s the one thing SJWs truly hate. Being congenitally incapable of happiness, or even contentment, nothing tears at their guts like the sight of a normal person being happy. Be happy, y’all — it’s good for the soul, and it’s the second-best revenge you can take on these sick fucks. Wunjo!!!!

or, Towards a Prolegomenon of Any Future Morality

The Z Man routinely points out that the Left wins because they’re moralizers. Though they still occasionally make hamfisted efforts to dress up their pronouncements as “science,” it’s always crystal clear that they’re really talking about salvation. Force this piece of Mandatory Make-Believe through the courts, my fellow Americans, and the bad juju will go away for another few months.

But as I always say, Leftists are Hollow Men. Since Leftism is an entirely negative creed, they’re moralizers without morality — “whatever is, is wrong,” is the whole of their eschatology. Since normal people still believe that words should bear some recognizable, systematic relationship to the truth, Leftists argue that everything is a “social construction.” Since normal people still believe that envy, sloth, gluttony, and the like are sins — or, at least, déclassé — the Left lionizes social parasites. Above all, since Normie still believes that one’s actions have at least some bearing on one’s life outcomes, Leftists insist that everything is someone else’s fault. Evil, be thou my good, as I’m pretty sure Dr. Dre said.

Thus the way back for Dissidents must start with an alternative morality. And since the old morality is deader than disco for the time being — being based, as it is, on the unchangeable human condition — we have to find a way to get the camel’s nose inside the tent, as the saying is. Such a new morality would have to work with the material to hand, and since we’re such a stupid, slothful, envious, degraded culture, and so addicted to Mandatory Make-Believe, I suggest:

Truthianism, or something like that (I stink at titles).

Basically, this valorizes the principle of “keepin’ it real,” as the cool kids used to say back in the 1990s. Base the new morality around telling “the truth” at all times…. and by “telling the truth,” of course, I mean “indulging your natural urge to tear people down” (again, remember that we’re playing the long game here). Why yes, that dress does make your butt look big. Gosh, you must’ve had egg salad for lunch; your breath could stop a charging rhino. You look like a fucking dork with that mask on. Nobody likes you; you’re ugly and your momma dresses you funny.

Such a new morality allows people to feel good about themselves while indulging one of their base impulses — in other words, it’s exactly how the Left managed to attain its unchallenged stranglehold over modern “culture.” But with the added bonus that the “truth” you’re telling is, in fact, true (just obnoxiously stated). Get people into the habit of telling the truth in small things, and soon enough some real truths can start to emerge….

I’m adapting well to this “45 minutes a day on the internet” thing. It does make my reading somewhat brief, however, so all this stuff is culled from Ace of Spades. I find that to be all the Clown World I need… from both sides.* It’s all “OMG! Look what those crazy Leftists and their despicable enablers in the GOP are doing!… next election, I’m gonna vote SOOO HARRRRDDD!!! against them!!” Pathetic, just pathetic…but informative, as this is pretty much where Joe Normie is here in the Nation Formerly Known as the USA.

Anyway, a picture’s worth a thousand words, so two visual items. First up, it’s the Nazis!!!

Ace wonders if they know how insane stuff like this makes them look. I suppose that’s a rhetorical question, but this one isn’t: Do they have some kind of master file of Nazi unit insignia somewhere? While I fully admit to not knowing as much of this stuff as certain Massively Online folks, I know a fair bit more WWII history than most people out in the real world, and I’ve never heard of this outfit…

…which makes sense, as Wiki informs me that it was deployed only within Yugoslavia, on anti-partisan operations. So, obviously a nasty bunch, but not what you’d call a legendary combat outfit. In other words, y’all, you’d have to be a serious field specialist to recognize their unit patch… or you’d have to be an utter fucking lunatic with access to some insanely complete database of German unit patches, 1933-45. Otherwise, I can’t even begin to imagine the effort this must’ve taken, to look at a picture of the CPAC meeting stage, mentally rotate it 90 degrees (along the Z axis!… heh heh, axis), and then go searching for corresponding Nazi regalia…

Then there’s this fucking guy:

That’s the president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, recently spotted dropping his kid off at a private in-person classroom, after insisting that all California schools should remain online indefinitely, because OMG the Coof is gonna kill us all! Or, you know, he’s just a lazy Socialist fuck who doesn’t feel like working; or a little from column A, a little from column B. Again, Ace seems surprised by the blatant hypocrisy. Dude… have you ever actually met a Leftist? If it weren’t for hypocrisy, they’d… well, they’d have to carry on like a California public school “teacher,” cowering alone in the dark while wearing three masks and (one assumes) a month’s supply of adult diapers.

But whatever. The only comment I have here is, Jesus, why did we ever call phrenology a pseudoscience? Leftists all look exactly alike, and their looks are 100% predictive of their politics. I can tell you every single one of that twat-waffle’s deepest personal convictions, with just the merest glance at his smug cock-holster mug. Franz Joseph Gall should get about seventeen retroactive Nobel Prizes; throw in William H. Sheldon’s unfairly maligned work, and you’ve got a physiology that is 100% predictive of psychology.

*Not to be confused with the excellent blog of sometime commenter Clown World, who seems to be dedicated to proving that the Land of Oz is somehow, someway, even more fucked up than ex-America. Check it out!

“The Equality Act.” Word comes, via Ace of Spades, that the House has passed something called “The Equality Act.” I hadn’t heard of this before, but it seems to be yet more Mandatory Make Believe from our benevolent overlords. In this case, we’re now required to pretend that any given person really IS whatever bullshit fakey-fake “gender” xzhey arbitrarily decide xzhey are today, or face a civil rights lawsuit.

There aren’t too many times I miss the ivory tower, comrades, but I must say this is one of them. As everyone with two brain cells to rub together has pointed out, not least of the big, immediate, obvious consequences of this act is the end of women’s sports.

After all my years at Flyover State, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what the typical — that is to say, pre-“Equality Act” — female collegiate athlete is like. Generally she comes in two varieties: ultra-butch diesel dyke (softball, field hockey), or willowy little blonde whose upper-middle-class parents could afford to indulge little Catniss’s hobby, such that she can now freeload off “scholarships” (everything else). Thanks to Title IX, any school that wants to have a football team has to field teams in unwatched bullshit women’s “sports” like soccer and swimming and golf.

This, feminists say, is “empowering.”

It’s going to be hilarious, watching the conniptions of the “gender is just a social construction!” feminists when all the “women’s” scholarships go to hairy dudes with cocks hanging past their knees. You know how all those women’s Olympic soccer teams keep losing to boys’ squads? And I do mean boys’ squads — “U-15” means that the oldest boys on the team are 15. (Bonus fun fact: the dyke in the lower left photo at the second link is Megan Rapinoe, the one who made such noise about how underpaid female pros are, and was of course hailed as some kind of feminist hero for it. I have no idea what she’s complaining about — having lost 5-2 to a squad of 15 year old boys, it seems to me she and her ilk should be making 40% of whatever a 15 year old boy makes playing soccer. But I digress).

Now imagine that there’s real money involved — the kind of money that floats around the Athletic Department of a major university. Damn right boys who were barely benchwarmers on their high school squads are going to go out for — and dominate — women’s collegiate teams. Women’s pro teams, too, for that matter — I’d love to see some based, hyper-competitive asshole like Charles Barkley lawsuit his way onto a WNBA squad. Sir Chuck’s nearly sixty, but does anyone doubt he could put up a quadruple-double every night for the Jersey City Carpet Munchers?

If any of you were thinking of a second career in the ivory tower, now’s your chance! Just figure out a way to say that in just this one special case, biology is real and gender isn’t a social construction. Use the word “reify” a lot; eggheads love that.

Another fun consequence of this will be mass conversion to Islam, if y’all are smart. The “Equality Act” says it has no religious exemptions — which is flagrantly unconstitutional, but whatevs, the Constitution’s deader than disco — but we all know that certain religions will be exempt anyway. Hell, though I’m Christian I’m going to steal an idea from the Muzzies: taqiya. Of course I don’t believe any of that stuff, and at one point “bearing false witness” was a sin… but since my parish priest has been hiding under his desk in mortal fear of the Coof for a solid  year now, and that goddamn Marxist on St. Peter’s throne wouldn’t know Jesus’s teachings from a McDonald’s menu, I’m going to go ahead and declare this concept scripturally sound. Aloha snackbar, bitches!!!

Finally, it should be a great test of whether or not there’s any community spirit left in America. Because the proper response to a crazy man in a dress who wants to go into the little girls’ room should be “Why, of course! Go right ahead!!”…. this being said by Billy Bob and three or four of his large, bearded, trucker-hatted friends, all of whom must’ve been working on the same flat tire somewhere on the side of the road, because they’ve got jack handles and crowbars in their mitts.

Bombs away!! A man should always admit when he’s wrong, and I admit it, comrades, I was wrong. I had “28 days” in the office pool for “how soon after his at-bayonet-point installation is China Joe Biden going to start bombing people?” Damn, missed it by thaaaat much. Special bonus fun: Again via Ace of Spades, I learn that our Commandatrix-in-Queef, Heel’s-Up Harris, was not informed of the impending missile strikes. And since Joe himself forgot about it five minutes after he signed the order, one does begin wonder who, exactly, is authorizing these things? I’ve heard tales of a misty, long-lost age in which there was an institution… the “Press,” I think they were called in whatever barbarous tongue they spoke back then … who would’ve been wondering the same thing, and perhaps investigating. Ah well; it’s probably just a myth, like Atlantis.

All of this is all to the good, comrades. Like Moses, we’re in sight of the Promised Land — if by “Promised Land” you mean “the total collapse of this batshit Clown World in which we somehow find ourselves” — but we’re not quite there yet. There’s still so much more work to be done! Pretending that men are women is a good start, as is throwing random bombs around for reasons no one has ever even bothered to explain. But it’s not enough. More! Faster!!

We’ve decided, as a species, to go full retard. So be it. You can’t back into the future, as I think Muad’dib once said. Let’s sprint full-tilt into that fucker, like “Caitlyn” Jenner back when she was Bruce. It’ll be fun, and we’ll probably get a few scholarship offers, too.

UPDATE: Dognapping!!! Damn, dudes. Not an hour after I hit “publish” on this thing, word comes that the FBI is investigating the theft of Lady Gaga’s dogs.

“Dognapping” is not a Federal crime. Theft is a local crime. (So is attempted murder, of course, but the dog walker who got shot was named “Ryan Fischer,” so, you know, obviously White, so fuck that guy, right “law enforcement” peeps?). But the Feeb is jumping right in, because Gaga sang at “President” Biden’s “inauguration,” and thus the crime might be politically motivated. Or so they say, despite the fact that the suspects are two Black guys, so, you know, obviously White Supremacists…

Now that’s what I’m talking about, gang! The Feebs are definitely stepping up their game. Going full retard is a flat-out fucking sprint here in the Bidenreich, and the G-Men are determined to cross the finish line first. I think now would be a good time for a reader poll: Will the Bee send more or less than 15 guys to investigate this heinous act of “domestic terrorism”? On the one hand, “dognapping” isn’t nearly as grievous an offense as “having your basic regulation $4.25-at-any-AutoZone door pull hanging in a garage.” On the other,  Lady Gaga is a much bigger celebrity than Bubba Wallace. Gaga’s obviously a trannie, it’s true, but Wallace is half Numinous Negro… this stuff gets complicated. Who will win this round of Victim Bingo?

Comments are open – speculate away.

Thanks to everyone for their input so far! Boiling all the excellent suggestions down, I’ve got the following rough nosology (a fun vocab word that should get a lot more play here in Our Brave — so brave, thank you for this — New World; a “nosology” is a classification of diseases).

SJWs:

Reject the past / embrace “the right side of history.” [metaphysics] This is a fairly easy one to tie back to Marx, but since so many people — including lots who actually still call themselves Marxists — don’t know about Marx’s metaphysics, it’s a great place to start. Tied to

“Fucking love science.” [metaphysics] Because of his metaphysics, Marx thought his system was the only truly scientific understanding of the world.

Embrace contradictions / are complete hypocrites: [metaphysics] another consequence of the “dialectical method.” According to Shafarevich, early Russian critics of Lenin compared the Bolsheviks to homicidal astronomers — they’re mathematically certain an eclipse will come, since it’s science, comrade… but the first thing they do upon convincing themselves of this is form a Party and start murdering people, to make sure it comes.

Are ahistorical. Since the past is by definition one long catalog of error, there’s no point in looking at it. Even their own “mistakes” contain no lessons, since these were merely the “thesis” which produces the “antithesis” which shall lead, inevitably, to the higher “synthesis” of utopia.

The outcome of all of this is “equality,” which isn’t some temporary state of worldly affairs but a metaphysical condition — utopia, the ultimate synthesis, the end of history.

See everything as zero-sum. [economics]. A consequence of the Manichaean worldview and the Labor Theory of Value.

This produces a view of the world that is both relentlessly materialist, yet at the same time strangely spiritualized. They — and only they — can bring salvation to us through their correct understanding of the objective, scientific processes of the universe. Which leads to

Are Manichaeans. [metaphysics] The other side seeks to hold back the inevitable, which makes them pure evil. There can be no compromise with evil. Also

Gnosticism. The Gnostics never got around to explaining how one can actually move up and down the levels of creation, since the higher levels should, by definition, be inaccessible to the lower. In the same way, Marx never explained how, if no one can transcend the cognitive limits of his “class situation,” he, Karl Marx, was able to transcend the cognitive limits of his class situation, such that he could see the objective scientific etc. This leads directly to the Fundamental Paradox of Internet Liberalism. Also leads to

Sense of themselves as a vanguard party. [Bolshevism]. Anything at all that advances the Revolution is fair game.

From there, the various flavors of Social Justice are just tools — to break down the family, undermine religion, etc.

Thoughts? Additions?

All,

thanks for the feedback on the Intro rough draft. After some thought, I’ve decided that the best way to organize the material is by discussing the characteristics of SJWs, and how those are derived from “Marxism.” For instance, I’m using the SJW’s characteristic belief in the “social construction” of “truth” as a way to talk about Dialectical Materialism.

To that end, I’d like y’all to help me come up with the definitive list of SJW characteristics. I mean the universal ones. For instance, 99% of SJWs are butt ugly, but “ugliness” isn’t universal the way “belief in the social construction of ‘truth'” is universal, because almost all Hollywood types are SJWs and lots of them are quite attractive.

Thanks!

Limiting my internet time to 30-45 minutes a day has been paying dividends so far. I feel a lot better, my blood pressure’s down, and I’ve gotten more work done around the house (including, as you see below, the intro to that Marxism book).

One downside is, I’m still figuring out how to use my brief online time. I have to do some things online, but which aren’t actual paying work, so that cuts in. I try to sample a few things every day, but maybe I should set myself a schedule: Check blogs on Monday, the news on Tuesday, and so on.

Anyway, I saw (on my brief dip into blogs) a bit at Ace of Spades on the possible upcoming impeachment of Andrew Cuomo. Since anything political in New York is obviously blue-on-blue fire, I have to assume this is a dry run for the Night of the Long Knives. Cuomo is a dinosaur — an old-school, Mobbed-up machine politician in the best Tammany Hall tradition. The guy leading the impeachment charge is surnamed “Kim,” so presumably Korean; ergo it’s the new breed of Diverse Democrats shanking one of the last of the old guard. If I were Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsome, I’d start strapping phone books to my midsection like they do in prison movies…

The “scandal” surrounding Cuomo is also interesting, and a possible very nice cause for hope. It’s COVID, of course, and while we know that the Dems could care less about all the old people who died as a result of Cuomo’s policy — think of how much the State will save in Medicare, plus most of them were White — this might be a pretty good indicator that even the Democrats are finally cottoning to the fact that you simply can’t run a nation this way. The Media have lots of practice spinning shit economies — how many “recovery summers” did Obama get, seven? — but not even they can spin “50-75% of small businesses permanently shuttered” as some kind of economic win for Uncle Joe Stolin.

The Media are desperate to hand China Joe a big splashy victory in his “first hundred days.” But since he’s a Democrat, and terribly stupid, and illegitimate, everything has gone straight into the fucking toilet. See where this is going? The one true fact in this whole mess is that New York alone accounted for some huge percentage of COVID deaths. Shank Cuomo, mutter that “mistakes were made,” and hey, lookit that, suddenly there’s some huge reduction in the severity of COVID! Big win for Joe, everyone cheers as a few restrictions are lifted, the rats shaking Cuomo in their palace coup get their reward, and goofs like Whitmer and Newsome are put on notice: Get in line, get your act together, or we’ll start looking into how many oldsters died on your watch.

And hey, dare to dream — perhaps some of the Pox, smelling blood in the water, will go after them anyway. COVID restrictions go away, Gauleiter Whitler gets the shank, and new Gauleiter LaQueefa Cucaracha-Pajeeta sends the whole damn state over the cliff. It could be highly amusing, comrades….

Here’s the rough draft of the intro. Any constructive feedback would be appreciated.

MARX BOOK

1. General Introduction

What is this and why should I read it?

This guide’s purpose is to show how we got here. While the various society-destroying notions of our Social Justice Warriors seem to be the random ravings of emotionally-incontinent lunatics, there’s actually a slim thread of intellectual argument connecting them. This thread is “Marxism,” as elaborated over the course of 150 years by some very smart, very evil people.

Please note that understanding this awful ideology isn’t going to do a Dissident much good in his day-to-day battle with the loonies. For SJWs, as we all know too well, history begins anew each dawn; though they may be making “arguments” straight out of Marcuse or Mao or Marx himself, they’ve barely heard of any of those guys, let alone studied their actual ideas.

The point of reading this guide, then, isn’t for intellectual ammunition – as we all know, you can’t reason someone out of a notion xzhey’ve never been reasoned into, and avoiding the hard work of thinking about the world, and how it came to be that way, was one of the main reasons your average SJW got into “Social Justice” in the first place. It’s our side who seek coherent explanations for things, who want to know the roots. These are they. The first and main purpose of this guide, then, is simply to fill in some backstory.

This is far from the only reason to get up to speed on this stuff, though. Understanding “Marxism” (see below for the quotation marks) can have predictive value. Second-wave feminism, for instance – the bra-burning “women’s lib” stuff of the late 1960s – could’ve been foreseen by anyone who read Engels’s 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State[1]. Lenin called this “one of the fundamental works of modern socialism,” and it’s easy to see why.

Engels argues that women’s household work is crucial to the modern economy, but unpaid; therefore:

• it’s capitalist exploitation; hence,
• the family must be broken up in The Revolution; hence,
• all the horrors of modern “Gender Studies,” starting with no-fault divorce, through abortion on demand, and ending with “transgender” activists at the top of major government departments in the United States.

Finally, understanding this stuff might help unlock the psychology of a very prominent, increasingly powerful type of person. As anyone who has met a programmer knows, there’s a type of person to whom huge, bloodless, all-encompassing abstractions are irresistible. As anyone who has met a lawyer knows, there’s a type of person who prizes verbal dexterity above all things. Finally, as anyone who’s ever met a human being knows, envy and self-righteousness are the two most addictive narcotics.

“Marxism” appeals equally to all of them. As early as the dawn of the 20^th century, Russian intellectuals (no slouches themselves in the “abstraction addiction” and “self-righteousness” departments) were commenting disdainfully on the signature Bolshevik “argument” style – at one moment bloodless, scientific, and oh-so-sweetly reasonable; then flipping instantly, effortlessly, to sneering, sanctimonious, and sarcastic. (Imagine a Twitter “debate” carried on at 19^th century Russian length, in Hegelian metaphysical jargon, and you’ll get the flavor of it).

So why the quotation marks around “Marxism”?

Because brevity is the soul of wit. Given what we’ve said above about Marxism’s broad appeal, there are about as many kinds of “Marxism” as there are Marxists. Worse, as we’ve also noted, while it’s all but certain that whatever your SJW is going on about derives directly from the “main currents of Marxism,[2]” it’s a thousand to one xzhey have never heard of the thinkers xzhey are so blithely parroting. Worst, xzhey probably haven’t even heard of the modern school of “thought” that most closely matches xzheir position. So while it might mean something to the professional academic to be able to label a certain argument “Post-structuralist Feminist,” neither you nor the SJW shouting at you would benefit from knowing that. Along the same lines, while most of the stuff SJWs go on about can fairly easily be traced back to either the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, calling this stuff “Cultural Marxism” often raises more issues than it solves, and again, see above – xzhey don’t know it’s from the Frankfurt School, and wouldn’t care if xzhey did, so it’s useless in interactions.

Just calling it “Marxism” keeps the focus, I hope, on the essential coherence of the doctrine without encouraging too many fruitless chases down too many ponderous, polysyllabic, rabbinical rabbit holes.

On orthography; or, what’s the deal with the footnotes and weird spelling?

Again, I’m aiming for concision and accessibility. I’m not a Marxist; my specialty isn’t intellectual history; and I’m certainly not a philosopher. I’m giving you my understanding of this stuff, which is an autodidact’s – albeit an autodidact with a Humanities PhD who spent a lot of time hanging out in the “theory” departments. I could provide you with the whole scholarly “apparatus,” as it’s called – the footnotes and bibliography of where I got this stuff – and I encourage anyone genuinely interested to go back and check my work, but for the casual reader, see the stuff about “rabbit holes” from the previous paragraph. It’s very easy to get sucked into one of those Politburo-style debates, about A’s misunderstanding of B’s revision of C’s deviation of D’s theoretical reframing of E’s…

…you get the point. If you enjoy that kind of thing, an exciting career in the ivory tower awaits (provided you’re a transgendered disabled Inuit lesbian Of Color, which is the only way you’ll get hired), but the rest of us will keep it simple, thanks. I’ll occasionally refer those interested to important books, or make a suggestion for further study, in a footnote, but that’s about it.

Same deal with the spelling. Referring to SJWs as “xzhem” and “xzhey” isn’t just mockery of their pretensions. For one thing, it’s actually somewhat useful. I refuse to use the hideous, clunky “him or her-self” construction the “style” manuals insist on, but the alternative – using the generic masculine – can cause confusion out in the real world. Because as we all know, chicks of both sexes and all 57+ genders make up the vast majority of SJWs and if you’re arguing about this stuff, it’s a hundred to one that your opponent is either biologically female or, thanks to a social media addiction and an all-soy diet, acts exactly like it.

For another, it highlights just how new and bizarre this stuff is, and how personal it is. Say what you will about the old-school Marxists, they had rigorous university educations back when that really meant something. A properly trained cadre from as late as the mid-Sixties could run rings around all of us combined, philosophy-wise. They had completely coherent, highly formidable body of doctrine back then, and they knew it cold. Today’s SJW, by contrast, has little more than a few cherrypicked buzzwords and a bad attitude. The old-school cadre would try to put everything on the abstract intellectual plane, where he had canned answers to every possible objection. Today’s SJW is viciously anti-intellectual; there are no abstractions for xzhem, because everything is, was, and always will be entirely personal.

How to use this book

I’ve tried to make each section as self-contained as possible. Each section builds on the last, and the section on the fundamentals is important for a complete novice, but hopefully those who know the basics will be able to follow individual sections without reference to the whole. I’ve also tried to indicate, insofar as I can, when we’re going “into the weeds” of the philosophical stuff, such that you can skim or skip it if you want. For instance, that “quantity-becomes-quality” stuff which so fascinated Hegel, and through him, Marx. It’s interesting if you’re into that kind of thing, but if not, just read the capsule summary of “dialectical materialism” and move on.

I’ve tried to keep it simple. That means no scholarly apparatus, of course, but also plain language and the occasional (at least attempted) joke. My hope is that you’ll find it interesting, quick, and useful; ideally you’ll be able to snip sections and send them to interested parties.

I’m always interested in constructive feedback – comment at the blog, or send me an email. Enjoy!

[1] Like almost everything written by a major 19^th century Marxist thinker, available for free online at Marxists.org.

[2] The title of Leszek Kolakowski’s magisterial study of this stuff; I’d recommend it, but the three volumes run to more than 1200 pages of close type. Moreover, Kolakowski is not just a professional philosopher, but a former Marxist himself, and while he writes clear, accessible prose, it’s still professional philosophy by an ex-Marxist. I’ve browsed around in it, which is the most I recommend for anyone not getting paid to do it.

Always in periods of great social upheaval, you see new, vigorous, usually frankly bizarre religious movements popping up everywhere. And while there’s probably a first time for everything, I wouldn’t bet against something similar happening in our age. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already…

One could — indeed, should — argue that modern Leftism is one of those frankly bizarre new religions, as it is obviously a suicide cult crazy enough to give the Heaven’s Gate people pause. But in revolutionary times, the existing religious forms get a shot in the arm, too — the age of the French Revolution was also the age of the Great Awakening, of Jonathan Edwards and the Wesley Brothers. “Evangelicalism” and Jacobinism go hand in hand.

The other reason I suspect a radical religious revival won’t be long in coming is: This simply can’t go on. “This” being the constant surveillance of the nanny state. While some rare individuals are Vladimir Bukovsky-level badasses, who just can’t parrot nonsense no matter how dire the consequences, most people lack the courage to simply say “fuck this, I’m done!” as they pitch their cell phones, disconnect from social media, and give the city CCTV cameras the finger. To get that kind of movement going needs divine sanction.

Perhaps Christianity is simply too cucked for even crazy snake-handling, glossolalia-inducing hillbilly preachers to overcome. It might be some sort of semi-Buddhism that gets the trick done — all those kids currently trying to be Stoics might find themselves studying Zen, which is as manly as Stoicism, but which comes with an actual program of practice. Or our old pal Islam — as I’ve said, all you really need to do is slap a kufi on your bean and yell “Allahu Snackbar!,” and you can tell the nearest SJW to fuck off right to xzhyr blue-haired, multi-pierced, genderfluid face.

Whatever it is, though, I bet we’ll see it here in a year or two.

As we know, one big problem with the study of History is our lack of access to the mind of the “common man.” I don’t know how common we are around here, but for the benefit of future historians, I think we should put up some discussions of vexing cultural issues. Who knows, maybe we’ll all end up quoted in some dork’s unread dissertation in 2136…

…suitably translated into whatever grunts and clicks Ebonics has devolved into by then, of course, but that’s a rant for another day. Anyway, today’s discussion topic:

Why do so many people want to be “geeks” and “nerds” these days?

Question inspired by this comment from dog on the previous post:

Meyers-Briggs was big with computer people in the late 90s early 2000s so this is not so much a comeback as a holdover, and significantly predates “generation selfie”. Lots of old school programmers tested consistently as INTP/INTJ, and it was part of “what kind of freak are you” games (along with for example something like “geek code”, a signature system that allowed you to communicate if e.g. you were a trekkie or a star wars fan in a cryptic way). _You_ rarely see it, because the silly fashion didn’t translate to millennials proper and the old timers are not spending much time in the kind of echo chambers where you get exposed to a lot of SJWs.

Not being a computer person myself, I keep forgetting that computer people are just people, meaning they’re no less silly, cliquish, and fad-chasing than the rest of us. Meyers-Briggs seems like a very short step above astrology to me — do I really need a long questionnaire to tell me I’m an extrovert? — but I shouldn’t be surprised that computer people like it. In my experience, “psychology” is to computer people what “computers” are to psych majors — randomly blinking ooga booga boxes that do some cool things, but are mostly a terrifying mystery. Liberal Arts people (of which Psych Majors are the most liberal) love Apple products not least because they promise to bury all that blinky ooga-booga stuff under “the user experience;” thus it shouldn’t surprise me that a quick-and-easy “test” that promises to unlock the secrets of the psyche appeals to the other sort.

Given that, I have to assume that the phenomenon of SJWs calling themselves “INFJ” or whatever is yet another iteration of the larger cultural trend of everyone under 35 calling xzheyrself a “nerd” or a “geek” now.

I realize I’m a bit late to this party. I first noticed this phenomenon when that “Game of Thrones” show was popular, and it’s been off the air for a few years now, so I’m probably pulling a Simpsons here, noticing and mocking a trend that’s already well over. Again, my only excuse is that we’re doing this for future historians’ benefit. Can anyone explain it to me?

My guess is that it was the first, crude attempt at bespoke identity-building. Agnostic — the creepy, lesbian-stalking weirdo cited in the “Dark Academia” post — had some good stuff about generational status contests back before he went completely off the deep end. Boomers and at least some Gen Xers, he argued, competed with each other in the material realm — who had the best car, nicest house, and so on. That kind of competition is simply too expensive for most of Gen X, to say nothing of the later generations, so they — the later generations — transferred their competition to the lifestyle arena. They competed over stuff like “who knows the most obscure band” or “who eats the weirdest fusion cuisine.”

The problem with that, obviously, is that it’s too easily faked, especially in the social media age — who hasn’t made a lame joke about liking something you’ve probably never heard of? To really compete, you need something that’s cheap, easy, and above all performative. That was the point, as I understood it, of that “dark academia” stuff — you don’t need to have read Dostoyevsky, but you need to put in the effort to be seen reading Dostoyevsky (or baking bread from scratch, or whatever that “cottagecore” stuff is).

Thus, my theory goes, it’s pretty easy to be a “nerd” or a “geek” or even a “gamer,” since computer stuff is available to everyone and you don’t actually have to be any good at the game (know how to program; have read Tolkien or whatever) in order to call yourself one. You just need to be seen doing it… in a selfie, which is of course static.

Or not. I understand that a lot of this stuff takes place on streaming social media platforms, so I suppose some of these folks actually have to play video games at least a little bit. But that’s a feature, not a bug, since, like the SJWs calling themselves “INFJ” or whatever, this seems to be almost exclusively a chick thing and even I’ve heard of GOTIS — “Girl On The Internet Syndrome,” which was a problem rearing its ugly head even back in my day, when “the Internet” was something you accessed with an honest-to-god landline phone. A guy playing video games is a “gamer,” and will be judged on his game playing skill; a girl playing video games is a girl, and will be judged on how much T&A you can see while she’s doing it. Image-search “Zoe Quinn” if you want to see what a low goddamn bar that is — she was apparently quite the smoking hotness among the “gamer” set, but normal guys… well, you’ll see.

I’m not going to say that’s the final nail in our culture’s coffin, but I will note how much of our ongoing civilizational suicide can be traced directly back to that kind of girl — the one who, with a LOT of effort, could make herself into a NormalWorld six, but who chooses to either abandon all effort and go full SJW fugly, or cocoon herself in a subculture like “geek,” where a six-with-a-lot-of-effort effortlessly becomes a 9.

Discuss.