Bargain Counter Revolutionaries

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks!

I have some sweet and some fierce things to share today, and some which will sound partisan for awhile before inverting completely. Let me begin with something that will infuriate most, just so you understand the stakes I’m talking about. I am an anti-tribalist because I am a pacifist, and our popular cultural tribes in the west, both (fake) “Left” and (fake) “Right” have been effectively coopted to serve ruling-class psychopath purposes – driving a new great war which will absolutely devastate the entire world and leave the west a ruin of its previous self (and destroy our kids, utterly).

Yes, I am saying that almost everyone who now feels sure they are right and good are actually so completely wrong they are ultimately serving outright evil (state mass-murder for the sake of private capital is always evil – no matter how great our ability to rationalize and justify ‘feels’).

So – even though my days of (foolishly) aspiring to be a revolutionary are now many decades in the past, I now find myself returning to think about the studies I made and things I learned then. Our modern BigWar/BigMedia/BigMoney/Bought Politics system that we somehow still like to think of as “representative democracy” (though it had quite clearly represented only the already wealthy, for many decades) now manufactures large scale death for money, and so needs to be overturned for moral reasons (over there and right here at home both) – but the old 20^th century models of leftist and rightist revolutions have both led to extraordinary humanitarian disasters (and were almost always rapidly coopted by powerful cliques and turned against those self-same revolutionary citizens, within months, or a few years at most).

I don’t want leftist mobs to turn over the state – they are ignorant hate fuelled witch-burners – no part of culture, fairness, or rights would be left standing if they did (they really don’t believe in the basic humanity or rights of people who disagree with them – though it breaks my heart to say it).

I also don’t want right wing fury to ‘kick it over’ (as we used to say in the old days), because again, they are majority-reactionaries driven by tribal outrage, not plans for sound and sober mutual advance.

But here’s the thing which will probably anger everyone. The most serious critical, intellectual, social analysis and outright revolutionary energy of this moment is almost entirely on the right. The sharpest economic analysis still comes from (certain branches of) the intellectual left, who have a long tradition of probing the mechanics of capitalism, without being swept away by the blind-faith fake-religion side of money-thinking, which distorts the view of so many. But the mass of the modern left is so wedded to long disproven statism (control of all ends and means, framed with benevolent language) and full capitulation to dominance of all by ‘our betters’ (and their unexplained yet presumed immaculate reasoning) they are now a counterrevolutionary movement. And yeah, that’s a bad thing (worst insult I could offer, at 20).

When I was a small boy, my father (the greatest book-maniac I’ve met in my life) used to read to my brother and I, classics from all around the world. We heard the stories of the Brothers Grimm, of the forest witch Babayaga, the tales of Nasrudin and much else, (Beowulf – OMG!).

He had one habit which I have not heard others who were lucky enough to be read to, mention. He so loves language that when he found an especially beautiful or meaningful passage he would re-read it, just to deeply savour it, and to share with his boys the pleasure of the treasured word. Small wonder that he ended up with two (admittedly crazy and quixotic) writers for sons. For my friends who are parents – there is no greater intellectual gift you can give your kids than to show them by your own constant demonstration that you love great books and learning yourself!

I most often write long-form nowadays, but I remain especially well-tuned to compact lines which say subtle useful and important things. As an atheist, I do not have one single defining text – but do not take that to mean (of any atheist) that we have no powerful guide-stars to steer by!

Today I want to open with two of my all time favourite pieces of deep wisdom – from the well known (and yet philosophically underappreciated) humorist, Dave Barry. I have shared these before (apologies to old readers) but you’ll understand why they belong here in no time, promise!

1) The hardest thing in the world, is to stand-up for the guy who isn’t in the room.

2) If someone is nice to you, but not nice to the waiter, they are not a nice person.

The thing about standing up for someone who is not there to defend themselves is that it nicely defines principle. That is, will you throw principle away for tribal belonging? (emotional kicks)

The thing about being nice to your friend, but not the waiter, is that it reveals genuine attitude. Are you the kind of person who wants to be unfair or unkind, if you can justify or get away with it?

And to be super-clear about why I consider these lines so important, my wife and I both spent most of our lives in retail (even as a skilled repairman, I never escaped ‘the counter’). So we have both seen the shocking truth of these lines proven, over and over again (ad nauseum).

People who define themselves on the basis of what they are sure are ‘virtuous ideas’ about the world and politics (once a moderate rebellion, and now the most craven conformity imaginable) are the most outrageous contemptuous brats, when it comes to treatment of the working class.

My taxi driving friend used to put it this way. “You get tips from poor people, because they feel like everyone else is poor too, and want to show you respect, and rich people who have class. Middle class progressives never tip, they think they are so much more important than you.”

So now here’s something strange about the left and the right that neither tribalist side is capable of seeing about the other, yet both sides see very clearly about themselves.

“The Left” is a huge gathering of ideas movements and cultural fashion-trends (new marketing for flavours of papal indulgence?) which are not even close to being uniform in goals or means. (and no less uneven in soundness, compassion, viability, and many other important factors).

The left includes hard-core Marxists (rare, mostly pacifist intellectuals). Left-libertarians like myself who are convinced virtue comes from human beings in their communities, enabled with common rights and a rich commons, not top-down imposition and centralization of control. Absolutely huge legions of sentimentalists who gravitate toward a soft focus “Fabian Socialism” (dictatorship by our betters, but with plenty of pacifying free stuff and tribalist bear-baiting distractions for the masses). But it also includes normal middle class conformist go along to get along Liberals who believe the state is essentially benevolent, and whatever dictates it issues, must therefore be moral and affirmed – even if the proof and affirmation is at a level far above their pay-grade.

I have to stop to hit that one again from a different angle, because my ‘revolutionary’ friends are used to thinking of themselves as courageous, and Liberals as unprincipled complicit sellouts to state authority in exchange for the bribe of mere status and security (civil service union jealousy?)

No really – the comrades don’t think lefties with great jobs are real lefties anymore (and I kinda agree with them, from behavioural observations – despite my great desire for this not to be so). But it really is amazing how many people stop being rebels when they actually do get a decent opportunity, which makes them feel useful and their skill and integrity valued. (It is way easier for a lifelong walking maniac like me to dislike driving culture, than for someone who can’t walk.)

Oddly, the bourgeois left (in government and institutions) the last people in the western world who have a pension plan (at least they still do – pre SpaceX IPO – we’ll see, going forward) know full well that they are widely despised by the unwashed (and nothing to lose) more radical wings of the left.

So, as tribes of humans will, they end up using their power in government to define their own bourgeois concerns about things like hurt feelings as real leftism, ignoring poverty and decline for the working and middle classes with a wilful blindness which is quite grotesque (to anyone working class). And when a genuine worker demands economic action for the little guy – the statists call them “far right” and shamelessly invoke every tool of BigWar/BigMedia to make that slander stick.

Even stranger (to me, at least) both of these groups who call themselves (but not each other) left, do that offstage reference “above my pay-grade” trick, not occasionally, but as their foundation.

I have been very fortunate to have had many intellectual and creative mentors of rare acuity (several were insane also, but what can you do? Intelligence and sanity are in no way correlated factors, sadly). One of the most generous principled and helpful of them, spent years trying to persuade me of the validity of scientific socialism (and along the way caused me to read dozens of excellent if flawed books, which I am very glad to have in my head). He also challenged me more usefully about my writing than any man I’ve known (still use his advice, constantly). Let me here share with you his most powerful essay-writing gem.

When you want to say something challenging, use ‘we’ to include yourself in the sin and struggle. If you say ‘you’ even if it is accurate (you no longer think that way) you are standing outside the fray and accusing others. Not in fact, but in feeling – which is crucial to how our messages land! (what we want to say, matters only to us, and only emotionally – what we can get across, is what counts)

What I found vexing, even as a teenager, very eager indeed for the attention of a smart taskmaster (kids need purposeful challenge, infinitely more than they need empty flattery) was that there was always a point in every argument about the limits to the dogma and theory (especially in historically demonstrated practice) where he would make reference to the great socialist McGuffin which all were expected to presume lay deep within the corpus. That is, “I don’t know the answer to that one, kid, but I do know enough to feel sure it has been answered.” The exact same trick Radicals so despise in Liberals! (our good government says so, so it must be so).

The weirdest new modern expression of this is the sudden burst of wild devotion to scientism – a deep religious faith in a far away immaculate priesthood who it is a sin to question, and whose explanations are on a realm far above our understanding (pay-grade) and so, unchallengeable, morally.

Let me be clear – Science means asking questions, then asking questions about the questions we just asked. The minute we stop asking questions (the whole point of this disgusting malign scientism) we stop doing anything in any way related to science, we are in the realm of false faith.

I’ll link here to William Briggs, a stalwart one man crusader against dumb scientism (and a SUPERB mathematics teacher) who teaches rigorous mathematic skepticism (of models in particular) with wonderful clarity and considerable humour (Feynman energy). Even when I disagree with his targets, (not infrequent) I always learn much from his rationally founded critique.

Now here’s an indication of what an old fogey I really am. Because the left was on the back foot in the early 80s when I first got into it intellectually, the radical side was small enough to be intellectual. Back then, the worst thing you could call a beerhall socialist comrade was counterrevolutionary.

Counterrevolutionaries were even more infuriating than rightists, because they pretended to be revolutionary (misrepresenting or misappropriating the language and ideas, almost always for emotional purposes) but actually served the aims of the ruling cliques and the BigWar state. People who (falsely) call themselves anarchists to justify injecting violence into charged situations are a good modern example. They guarantee far more violence from authorities, to much nicer people than they are (they smash, then run away in their little black ninja suits, long before the horses charge baby-strollers).

Oddly, just as some (quite rightly) point out that military service can do a lot for the character of young men who never did learn self-discipline (despite the often very steep cost), I would like to suggest that even where the program is flawed, socialism which drives deep reading, hard study and sincere debate, has long had great cultural value for workers, just for that enablement – a gateway-drug to get working class intellectuals started on a lifelong quest to figure this mess out for themselves (without needing faith in anyone above their pay-grade, who they correctly know – from a lifetime of experience with clueless management – are a bunch of idiots anyhow).

Much closer to home, my wife and I have argued about public funding for Catholic education for as long as we’ve been married. My defence of the Catholic system has always been simple “At least they make them read – and teach them enough critical thinking to escape Catholicism!”

This might sound rather backhanded (apologies, to friends of faith). What I mean is not that someone must or should reject the framework in which they have been instructed, but rather that an honest framework is one which also gives you adequate intellectual tools to critique and effectively escape it, if that is how you ultimately react to your experience of it.

I should also add, a very old friend spent years teaching in the public system in Toronto, then worked her last few years before retirement in the Catholic system. She said it was a joy to teach there, because students arrived prepared and ready to learn. Very different from her decades of experience in the main system.

But now ask yourself this question. Does the “above your pay-grade” Liberal democracy supremacist crowd in power – those who think feelings count absolutely and foreign lives only in relative terms – teach our children enough about the world of ideas (and about thinking clearly and freely for yourself) to escape their dogma?

Since in many ways they do not (fading for decades, a mere homeopathic dose, now) we really should be asking ourselves why is that? Why do other older systems trust individuals with information and critical thinking tools which are dangerous to their perfect faith and obedience, and yet we’re afraid to?

What exactly are we afraid of? A huge wave of reason, science and understanding?

Now one last observation about movements and (self-described) radicals in them (from personal experience here, no self-important foolishness I didn’t first indulge in, before finally seeing past).

Not What We Expected To Learn

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February 8, 2022

I must admit that when I say it simply, it still sounds like a silly bit of dinner party wit, even to me, but I actually was part of a socialist comics collective way back in the late 1980s (my early twenties). Each of us had various talents drives and interests, all of us had a goodly dollop of self-seriousness, so it seemed obvious that we could accom…

In my early twenties I was part of a ‘Socialist Comic Collective” which misfired hilariously, but taught all of us a great deal (especially the only two of us who drew and wrote like crazy anyhow). We began as a trio – myself, Brian (the best natural illustrator I ever knew) and our mutual mentor (mentioned above) for wise-man depth and extra insight into older characters and politics.

Then another friend of ours, a self-described existentialist (which always seems to actually mean sociopath, in practise) and Trotskyist, wanted to join us. He too (credit where it is due) set me on to much productive reading, but he refused to agree to the very simple rules the rest of us had established (not really on any sort of principle, he was just universally all-case ornery).

Thing is, like I say, two of us, my illustrator friend Brian and I, were just naturally relentlessly creative (not trying to be fancy, more like constantly metabolizing the byproducts of our unquiet souls) so we had established those simple rules because of practical experience with production (zines, posters, cassettes, mini poetry books, etc). I argued strongly that he should be a friend of the group, but not a member, because our rules were not arbitrary or oppressive but respectful of production realities.

I was outvoted – so, though I did get into photography (to take background shots for the Toronto-set grand revolutionary comic arc we had planned) and both Brian and I produced thick stacks of drawings of characters and scenes, we never even finished arguing about the title, or got one volume published. Now this is an especially silly example of course – because we were young fools who were sure that all we had to do was “Get the Word Out” to help spur serious and sustained social change!

My proselytizing religious friends feel much the same way (and I appreciate their sincerity, truly, thanks to my own experience bearing what seemed an irresistible light, for a time), but sadly, they do far better in the long term, since they acknowledge early, that they deal in faith.

The thing is, this is a crucial dynamic in any social cultural or political movement (combos too)

Do we want to keep our group small enough that we all meet on a shared intellectual plane and commit to an agreed program and purpose, based on principles which we can all derive and prove for ourselves? Or do we want to let more people in, even if they don’t share our goals, principles (and emotional-attitudinal competence), to add numbers and weight to the project – remembering “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

There have always been different levels of mutual understanding and truly shared program in every group of people working to change things. But in the modern consumerist era we have pulled an especially foolish trick which has led us into disaster (with many still quite blind to it, sadly). We start with reasoning, or often, the delegation to someone else above our pay-grade who sounds reasonable, we next come to a passionate moral conclusion – then we lazily stick to that moral conclusion, long after the original reasoning which ‘justified it’ has been proven faulty.

I mentioned awhile ago that when they first started teaching feminist studies courses in the 1970s many leading theorists of the time were convinced that since violence and abuse were entirely male characteristics, therefore lesbian relationships would be entirely free of both! Turns out this is not only not true, Lesbians report having been in abusive relationships more often than straight women (45% vs 35%, from a recent study). The Dunedin (world’s biggest/longest longitudinal behavior) Study revealed the key reality years ago – though many still fight against the clear conclusions found.

On average, women are not less violent and abusive than men, they just aren’t as strong (and men rarely report abuse), so their violence doesn’t result in anything like as many hospital visits and police calls.

I don’t mean this to say any abuse or cruelty to others is reasonable, kindness respect and compassion are absolute anchors for me. I mean we have to work on this big human problem by facing what it actually is, an all-humans question – how do we return to healthy emotional self-regulation and develop robust empathy muscles? (Find real gratitude for and with one another, amidst this alienated and chaotic mess).

Hating men is extremely satisfying for quite a few people, but will not make anything better for anyone, and in fact very frequently turns into a whole different (very powerful) counterrevolutionary vector.

Do we want the emotional satisfaction of feeling superior, even if we justify war?

Or do we want to change the world for the better? (Think harder and win for real).

For those who think I’m being too sharp when I say “Fake-mob left” I’m talking about that frighteningly numerous tribe who cannot derive any rational or ethical principles for themselves, because they no longer deeply yearn to understand what being human is (or honour, excellence or compassion) – except as these things are derived, asserted, predigested into pabulum, neatly packaged and promoted by their betters. All of that sausage-making at a level far above their pay grade, natch – that mental effort is not what they are shopping for – “just give me the moral(ist) conclusion part!”

What I said before about “You can’t consume a revolution, you have to do it” goes double for simply being a full-range compassionate and effectively helpful human being (responsible adult).

Compassion is a skill and a muscle, and there is no form of conformity on earth (no matter how righteously it self-describes) which has ever once allowed for it. We either do the hard work of it ourselves, or we substitute laudanum for our kid’s breakfast (drug them all day, so we can go to work and not think about them).

Honour works just the same. Honour means recognizing that some of the most hate-filled people on earth are ‘anti-hate’ campaigners, who actively demonize huge swathes of humanity, just to flatter the biases of gossipy town mice, who don’t have enough spine to speak up for those not in the room. (and of course flatter their own wallets and their state and corporate contributions, too – no panic? no more funding!)

“The Right” is no less chaotic a category, and no less subject to being judged by sampling from worst cases, to make unfair (effectively straw-man) refutations and arguments. If our purpose is tribal belonging and emotional satisfaction. Rather than say, cause and principle.

Now I know full-well that I write with less experience and authority on the right (my reading on the right is much thinner too – though much greater in proportion than most from the left), but I have had many friends and mentors there too, and want to bear witness to my younger friends about some memorable and important realities.

First, after decades of trying and failing to convince me of scientific socialism, I accidentally destroyed my own mentor’s faith in it, by lending him Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” That he was open enough to see the key points being made was a great testament to his intellectual honesty, but honestly, I felt kind of guilty about that one. My own anchor is retail-worker reality (and solidarity against the special-case sociopaths – that is, asshole customers) which I’ve always seen as a modern equivalent (in tone and usefulness) to the old Wobbly “one world union” ethos. He, far more isolated socially and from work, had no such foundation to fall back on, just more books and more theories, a sad and lonely sort of maelstrom. Never let anyone tell you being an intellectual comes without risk! (Castles made of sand - Hendrix)

And here is a good place to note something that radicals on left and right ignore constantly. Hayek’s criticism of Marxist politics is as precise and useful as Marxism’s criticism of capitalism, and yet his prescriptions for solutions to a correctly identified fault are no less completely disproven, unsound and dangerous than anything Stalinism ever concocted at its very worst!

Two Freakin’ things at once!

(Analysis does not inevitably indicate sound program – you need humanity too!)

I can say with absolute certainty that almost all of my most important mentors when it came to work and productivity were conservative in disposition, regardless of their voting politics. I’ve had some deep-leftie bosses too, but they have a tendency to go bankrupt way sooner/more often.

Being a guy with a naturally artistic romantic mindset, who was trained in hard-science (repair) I always saw working with people who had different frames as a chance to learn, more than to fight (though I do enjoy a good argument, when it is actually a sincere rational argument).

For conservatives, I switch over to hard-reality “Bench-Head” where you must look at the object in front of you (for technicians, a broken whatever) figure out what it was supposed to do, then why it doesn’t, then what would it take to make it do that again, then whether that effort is worth-it (and also whether the customer will think so). Nothing but realism works for any step of this (even dealing with unreasonable customers – which taught me a lot about relating to the hostile, effectively).

The thing about engagement with facts and only facts is that it allows serious work to get done – and this is not actually the aim in every other sphere (especially the ‘feels’ theories our masters now prefer). There is a way for a scrawny sixteen year old to shift two and a half tons of oranges safely, and also a way which leads to lifelong back injury! The difference is entirely practical and realist.

Material reality is not a despicable plane, and workers who address our crude animal needs are to be greatly respected by all, not ever despised as ‘losers,’ taken for ignorant or lacking in zeal.

We almost learned this during the lockdowns, when we asked menials to take risks for all of us, but then very quickly forgot and went back to despising angry workers as ‘far-rightists’ who the government should be further empowered to smite (abridging rights for all) to address a set of (largely state-concocted) amorphous city mouse fears of the (ignorantly) hated country mice.

But I was shocked to hear workers just like the parents of many students, disparaged by their teachers as the sad result of educational failure (a loser path the students should avoid) instead of dignified honourable hard-working people, sacrificing consciously on principle, by putting duty to family ahead of theory, whimsy and rarefied aspiration, as so many workers very simply are. Not only was that psychological bullying, but also a huge disservice to respect for sincere effort.

(and I can’t tell you how many brilliant artists I have met, who have heavy tools in their hands all day long)

Having apprenticed and worked a few years with a master repairman who taught me everything from 1930s five tube radios to the latest in digital audio tech, I then spent a few years in the 90s, working as an assistant educator (Librarian/Computer Guy and Special Ed assistant), and I have to say, despite the flaky funding and starvation-thin weekly hours, it was super satisfying work.

I’ll give you a funny example of how I enjoy teaching without being the teacher (lifelong). At one point the grade seven teacher tested her students in math and decided that seven of them were ‘advanced’ and the rest needed much more work to catch up. So she sent the seven to the library to do some standard bland math busy-work. Literally negative numbers as elevators, as if twelve year olds aren’t yet capable of abstraction. So freakin’ insulting! (and a waste of active minds).

Being the kind of librarian who knew his library and wanted the students to find gold there, I went and grabbed a few old British math textbooks I rather liked, for some more challenging interesting and genuinely useful math puzzles to give them (with explained solutions they could look up).

They appreciated my effort, (and my empathy for their aching boredom with the busy-work assigned) but looked at those old hardbound books with great suspicion. So instead I just grabbed a blank piece of paper and wrote out five problems in linear algebra. I explained to the students that algebra was a detective puzzle, where you get just barely enough clues to figure out x. I showed them a few rules for how you can move things around from one side of the equation to the other, then I let them work on the problems for awhile before we talked about them together.

They were even more eager the next week, and I was far better prepared, having brought several of my own math books from home. They were excited when I showed them they were working on introductory College Algebra problems, but they still wanted me to write some out myself by hand, then copy that as a handout for the group. I was happy to do it, math joy gives me joy!

We kept this up for several weeks, and had more and more interesting conversations about ways to approach problem solving every week. Then the teacher gave the class another math test – and the whole class failed! Rather than taking the obvious information from this (that she had clearly failed to teach the material adequately, to anyone in her class, even the keeners) she got mad at the students and disbanded the ‘advanced math group’ on the spot. Her offence somehow more important than the students’ genuine (and growing) enthusiasm (sadly, this was in no way atypical).

But here is where it got strange and wonderful. The kids didn’t want to stop doing math problems, so they (grade 7s, remember) started coming to me on the sly, behind the teacher’s back for college level algebra problems as if they were the most delicious and illicit contraband! And I can prove this is no hyperbole, because soon other students saw them getting these handouts from me and asked to be included. I solemnly warned them, “This is extra math work, you won’t get any credit from the teachers at all,” but they wanted one anyhow, just because the others had made it cool!

And I don’t mean they wanted one as a souvenir, I mean I soon had more than a dozen students bringing me extra voluntary advanced math work every single week and coming by the library to talk about it, when they had a break between classes.

Curriculum counts, but not without genuine joy in learning.

As regular readers can imagine, I did much wackier still for the history keeners among them – but I see at least two fine philosophers a clever musician and a great journalist in that grown and established cohort now – and am enduringly glad for any help I might once have been.

Nothing will bring you more satisfaction than working with young minds – or more frustration and heartbreak – but those come always together, with any meaningful human interactions – not even as the cost, so much as the texture out of which the greater significances emerge.

But here is the strange part. The teacher considered herself a real stalwart leftist because she believed the union should fight hard against the government for her benefit, and voted Liberal. To her, I was a capitalist, because I was a freelance repairman in the evenings (owner operator of my own informed hand-eye coordination, really – but that was enough to qualify for category).

But the dynamics were in no way unclear. She was management, using the power of her office to make arbitrary rulings which were not helpful to those under her, or to the greater goal, just because she could. This is the thing workers (left and right) always see about the reality of management (whether it pretends to be left or right), that makes them the least willing to do that offstage referent ‘above my pay grade’ faith trick, of all the social classes – not just least to lose, as is very often noted – but also best informed with first-hand evidence! (as is not ever mentioned or respected)

Now, at last, let me get to my first, more testy opening – I leave it here for honesty’s sake.

I have both grumpy and positive aims today – and this is already important to recognize, because this is now a very common mix of aims – and almost no one does (admit it, frankly).

In fact, the way we have got used to writing and speaking as if it is reasonable to pretend away half of our motivation is extremely damaging to sharing truth – because it is actually about satisfying our emotional needs, even though these satisfactions come at cost to community and society. And I must here stop to be very clear – we are all very upset for good reasons – but also because very rich people have been conspiring to make us more afraid and divided, to protect their long term plan for destruction of, and foreclosure on, the commons (everything of value we all share, including spaces, social conventions of fairness and due process – and some institutions).

So – my anti-tribalism comes from putting the goal (better life for normal people and no more murder and exploitation done in our name overseas) ahead of my own emotional needs. That it has also cost me much bile from lifelong friends who remain brute tribalists, will be obvious to anyone else who has put human beings ahead of dogma and tribal compliance. Painful stuff, to be sure – but I have to be clear, from my view, they are actual outright traitors – and I don’t need friends who would destroy humans, principle, truth and rights just to feel they are superior.

The weird thing about idea-tools used in service of emotion, instead of truth and principle, is that they frequently serve purposes exactly opposed to the ‘superior morality’ being falsely invoked.

“Supremacist” is a great example of a word which sounds like a powerful moral accusation – but made by who, exactly? There is no set of ideas in the entire world which is anywhere close to being as blindly supremacist, intolerant and violently dominant as the conceit that (still relentlessly mass-murderous) Western Liberalism™ is a settled and established MORAL truth.

No really folks – don’t you dare tell me about the feelings you are protecting, when you have been cheering actual murder of people in countries you know nothing at all about for decades, and finding ways to rationalize that and make it just fine, as a perfect supremacist. (Left and Right both!)

There are very old roots to that kind of conceit (and violence enabling righteousness) on the popular (fake ego-tribalist, instead of working class rooted) left. But an especially big shift happened in the early nineties as The Soviet Union collapsed. Many now laugh at Frances Fukuyama’s idea that the end of the cold war was “The End of History” and the American system of liberal capitalist democracy was the clear all-time victor. Most “prosperous, free, creative and ethical.”

But this idea was not seen as outrageous hubris at the time – at the time it was so widely embraced that it even worked its way into the thinking of many (self-described) ‘leftists’ who openly opposed the ultra-conservative political tribe which Fukuyama always represented.

None of that is even a tiny bit accidental or coincidental. I have written about CIA plots and tricks many times (especially about the ways they distort history, and destroy positive futures) and I know some think “War isn’t my issue, so the CIA doesn’t affect me.” That is very simply wrong – if there is any issue which you feel passionately about in any other country in the world, there is an extremely good chance that the CIA already has a probe stuffed so far up your backside it reaches (and messes with) your brain! Apologies for putting it like that, but recognizing an imposed and invasive parasite which we have become accustomed to, can be very difficult. Invoking disgust can help make it twitch enough for us to feel it, and know we need to be rid of it!

How did they do this? (Why am I confident enough to be that impudent, for purpose?)

Simple – after decades of CIA running secret propaganda and dirty tricks campaigns to destabilize foreign countries (allies included – see link below on Gladio) and getting into all kinds of trouble when these covert rings were discovered, the evil genius screwballs at CIA did something very bold. They decided to make them open public facing programs instead, and fund them as “Freedom” and “Rights” promoting NGOs.

This way they could not only spend much more money directly screwing-with the politics of other countries (because the money could all go into programs, instead of the previously massive overhead required to keep these programs secret), they could even get many of their former opponents to help them with the project, by invoking ‘moral’ causes chosen very carefully to appeal to them as absolutes (that is, emotional issues, rather than questions requiring nuance).

Long ago, Plato said “You may not be interested in War. But War is interested in you.” In the modern era we could say the same about CIA, though it is only one especially malevolent part of the whole BigWar/BigMedia/BoughtPolitics world we now somehow all inhabit (unhappily and unconsulted).

I can give you one very strange example of massively distorted history, which I do not see often discussed, which reveals the way this trick was played on many sincere Christians on the right, so my old leftist friends might find it easier to see the mechanisms involved. (no ‘triggers’ for that tribe)

South Sudan is the most recently established independent nation on earth (July 09 2011). The history of the region is twisted and complex, inter-tribal and religious conflict is usually stressed above all other factors, when we in the west discuss events there. (Though my readings on Sudan as a whole also make me think of the Mahdi and “Chinese Gordon” more than a century ago).

In November of 2006 I was walking home from a job and decided that since I had skipped lunch and was saving the transit fare by walking, I owed myself a new book, as a reward (any excuse works, for a genuine junkie). I ran into an interesting off lease shop with trestle tables which surely represented the superbly curated collections of at least three defunct bookshops (one on Drama, one on self-help and language books, and one with a super wide range of non-fiction) all discounted now (I felt for the ruined shop owners, but poor kids love cheap, maybe two books?)

While I scanned every title in the rather large place, I heard a wiry older man regaling the student cashier (literally, homework all over the counter) with wild tales of mountaineering in the Himalayas in the 1960s. When he shifted to international politics I just had to join in, and as soon as he realized I was well-briefed on world affairs (enough to understand the significance of his odd stories) he said, “Hey, can I buy you dinner? I just made a small pile, and I’d like to celebrate with someone.”

I had to borrow his cellphone to call home and tell Catherine I wouldn’t be home for dinner (very unusual, she was worried) and then off we went for a modest Chinese feast at his favourite place on Dundas. He’d made the money, he explained, using a promotional credit card he was given at the exhibition (our local fair) and a stock tip he got while locked up in the drunk tank with the head of maintenance for a major airline. He was even a bit mad that the cops let him out after only a day. Had they kept him in all weekend (as they had, last time he was in the drunk tank), he would have made way more money on the trade!

He was disappointed to find I was a leftist, but appreciated my intelligent ear enough to forgive it with a smile and a wave. He was himself an international businessman and frequent freelancer for CIA, for which my writer-head instantly forgave him, because his stories were rich and fantastic, and yet always rooted in extraordinarily specific detail that I recognized as accurate from my own years of study into the weirdness hidden under rocks by ‘the agency.’

I had a good friend who did freelance intelligence work long ago, and exhibited the same combination of extraordinary gifts and wild self-destruction, even down to the exact same flavour of rationalizing alcoholism. This fellow read ‘real,’ because he bore the right weight of guilt.

Why was he in that bookstore? He was hoping they might have some books on the two primary dialects of the Dinka people of South Sudan – one of the nomadic herdsmen, one of the settled farmers – the oldest real culture-split in civilization, still not completely reconciled, in many regions. He was married to a rebel partisan, he explained with a smile that I took to mean ‘once married’.

But here’s the really weird thing, when I mentioned that I understood American Christians had been convinced that it was actually a battle between Christians and heathens he laughed and said most of the Dinka were animists, in modern terms, and affirmed they were not majority Christians at all. Which meant that the Christian “Charity” groups which were literally running guns to the rebels for years (at their own risk and expense) were indeed serving CIA purposes. But the weirdest part of all was that the CIA only started boosting those rebels when the Soviet Union ran out of money and could no longer fund them themselves.

No wait, what?

Why on earth would a rebel group appeal to both the CIA and the Soviets? Simple as hell, because South Sudan has tons of oil, and the rebels needed a foreign power to help them take power, then develop that industry and buy the oil, making them not just rulers, but rich!

I do not mean to minimize the struggles within the country, or say no other factors apply aside from foreign influence – this is simply not ever true (even where foreign influence is extreme). But if the real conflict was the evil north versus the virtuous south we would not expect the south to have descended into civil war again, as the newly empowered rebel factions jockey for most power. (So common an outcome for successful revolutions or overturning of regimes, it is heartbreaking)

Now of course when westerners think of Sudan they think of Darfur, and there is no question that outrageous and inhumane things have been done. But I can’t help thinking that the fact that foreign powers kept supporting South Sudan independence and calling that support “moral” instead of ‘oil-seeeking’ is a big part of why Darfur thought they could rebel also, and win more independence and power.

Problem is – they have no oil, so nobody with deep pockets is interested in their cause (no less moral than the South Sudanese one) except as a way to accuse the Sudanese government – under constant attack by world powers after their oil for decades, let us remember – of being brutal (true, but woefully incomplete when shorn of all context).

The Obama regime pulled much the same trick in Syria, using both Al Qaida and Kurdish forces with American funding to seize key oil regions and crop production and export Syria’s lifeblood away, causing absolutely deliberate and desperate poverty and famine, nation-wide. But he mass-murdered and war-crimed ‘morally’ though – ‘cause of his inherent ‘blackness’ right?

Assad is bad, became an adequate moral short-form to justify mass scale war crimes from the US. And across the western world millions who considered themselves progressives cheered ‘rebels’ instead of opposing war crimes, foreign interference, rights destruction and state cooption.

Because the thing called left is now a movement so bloated with joiners that the majority follow leader-figures blindly, because it satisfies their emotional needs (to feel at once superior, besieged, empowered, affirmed and yet heroic – main character syndrome – narcissism – writ large) and so cannot restrain themselves on any solid moral principles, when leaders spout dangerous crap.

What frustrates me so very much about this is that the ever multiplying and competing furies of our age are all about our mass failure to connect to other humans, and yet we have the greatest difficulty returning to that source from which all human strength and goodness has always come.

The way social media has distorted perception and interpersonal connection is especially strange. (And again, let me add a fogey qualifier, I bought my first (used) cellphone when my wife fell ill a few years ago, and still think of it as an emergency walkie-talkie – I use it a few times a year, tops).

Just the fact that dating websites allow a height-minimum setting has sidelined an absolutely vast group of excellent men from the dating pool. And it isn’t just well educated rare beauties setting high-minimum (purely physical) standards, either. People with much less impressive offerings still aim very high.

I don’t want to say women who have been conned into thinking that dating is about shopping for bodies without catching feelings are enacting a form of accidental eugenics, by app. But kinda.

More precisely, women who are shopping for men as if they are bodies are bound to come away with the feeling that men are unfeeling and unfair, because the small percentage of men who do meet the weirdly high physical metrics (most want ‘six foot two’ and up) get more offers than they can use, while many superb and worthy shorter men are going crazy with loneliness. I don’t mean scary incels – that’s divisive state propaganda (like Hillary warning the public of the coming wave of young black “Super-Predators”) I’m talking tragic depression and profound feelings of unworthiness.

But I want to skip categories for a moment, just to avoid all of the strangeness of accidental (but entirely predictable) selection from the limited pool of least-caring (oversubscribed) partners stuff. Again, I want to share a line that stuck with me, because it just said so damn much.

Catherine and I have tried to be a warm and restorative hearth for a lot of folks, over the years (out of gratitude for others who did the same for us, in low moments), some were more needy and troubled than others. One of our most desperately heartbroken friends spent months healing enough to be open to talking to guys, then started chatting to guys online, to see if they had shared interests. She found one guy who really seemed to understand her, liked her, and made her laugh. He sent her a picture and she pronounced him handsome, “Definitely do-able.” But then her face took on an agony as she explained. “But he wears a hat! How can I show him to my friends online?”

Get offline, go to a library or a bookstore, get a great book and sit on the grass (or under a tree, or wherever is your best little getaway) and read yourself into another world. Meet a human being and talk to them without wanting or needing anything from them. Practise it. Openness.

Think about your favourite idea, the one that you are most sure you are right about, and work as hard as you can to utterly destroy that idea, so you understand the valid critiques, and why those which are not valid, fail – and understand also the reasons for the approach you have disdained.

Build the toolkit, in head and heart, that you will need for the difficult times ahead. The rulers of the world really are flying the ship of the global economy into the ground – deliberately – full-speed ahead for WWIII – and we will all be paying for their demented gambling for many years.

But the great depression reminded humans beings who they were, and who was on their side – other workers, not owners, not managers and almost never politicians (since so few are sincere). It taught a generation extraordinary resilience strength and solidarity, and it led the state (in abject terror of revolutionary trends and feelings) to make the grand concessions of The New Deal.

The worst war in history also, of course – but then, that’s where liberalism ALWAYS leads, when it has exhausted its legitimacy and ability to do anything but control, manipulate and exploit the citizens it is supposed to represent, to the exclusive benefit of the politics-corrupting overlords.

Buckle up, my friends! (This is all getting way way worse, before it gets better).

BUILD THAT TOOLKIT – HEART, ABOVE ALL ELSE (and read at least one thing that makes you feel wonderstruck, every day – keep that brain from gettin’ smug!) ;o)

It isn’t about making the tent we already like bigger, its about getting out of the dogma tents and meeting on the open plane of reason, dialogue, respect and compassion – where we can all be humans instead of tribalists, see the gleaming towers, and plan at last together, for a better future.

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First up for end-matter – here’s another instalment of my eccentric bibliophile’s bibliography Bookstores are temples – keep your brain well-fed by keeping them busy and active!

(And you can do a heck of a lot worse than picking someone up in the poetry section) ;o)

Coming up for Air – George Orwell

I am crazy for the Orwell that no one seems to read or discuss anymore. I like the more famous stuff too, but he’s got a lot more to say than the rather overdramatic fables, most featured! Above all, he bears witness to his time with extraordinary perception into the lives of everyday people. “Keep The Aspidistra Flying” was the book that first showed me that my grandfather, before the second world war, was every bit as fed-up with the vacuity of mass marketing consumerist culture as any modern is (and thinks themselves so advanced and daring, for thinking it). “Coming Up For Air” did the same for Vegetarians and Mystic Cultists – doubly hilarious for me, since I read it while laughing real time at the epic-scale missing the point of it ‘New Age Movement.’ But far more ominously, it gave me a vision of a world which knew war was ahead, and felt helpless to do anything but wait for the grim event to arrive. I have never forgotten that very strange alienated feeling he described, and so recognize the new arrival of same, with a particularly sad clarity.

A Solider From The Great War – Mark Helprin

This is perhaps a bit too nail on the head for our modern moment, but I can’t resist including it here, because it is an absolute masterpiece novel (and that is too rare a thing in the modern era). The story opens with a brilliant young man who understands Europe is heading into war (WW1 this time), and decides to visit art and culture across the continent, before it is lost. He ends up fighting in the Italian alpine campaign (much overlooked, exquisitely described) and throughout this novel combines deep insights into human character and others into philosophy, art and great faraway powers, which move and stimulate us usefully.

Helprin is also a superb modern example of the art isn’t the artist. I disagree with him on almost everything politically, but almost nothing philosophically or aesthetically (another reminder why lazy moral simplifications can’t get us to the good stuff that is too alive for any mere category).

The Rebel – Albert Camus

I ran long today, so I won’t do my rant against (and gordian cleaving of) “Sisyphus” his most dangerous work by far. Coming soon – stay tuned! For today I want to suggest this as the spiciest and most valuable thing he ever wrote, for people who want the world to be different. Not only does Camus pick a very strange group of rebels, some of whom are outright shocking, he challenges us to think all the way through our own reasoning, by giving many examples that went off the rails, or used means we consider entirely unallowable, by modern principles.

Power ain’t nothing without the restraint of deep principle. (Why anger without program is so incredibly dangerous and easily manipulated by the powerful).

Labyrinths – Jorge Luis Borges

If I had to reduce my several thousand books to a Desert Island Book-bag, this would surely be in it. Don’t think I have ever read anything more intellectually delicious in my life (and the number of times I have re-read it with undiminished pleasure, bears this out). The funny thing is it is also completely weird and wild and filled with far-flung imaginations and grand scale invented lost scholarship about the never existent anyhow. So much of a fairy tale, and yet so utterly not.

Fans of the outstandingly brilliant and yet devastatingly humane Umberto Ecco will love the work of Borges instantly, but anyone with an imagination, a sense of humour and a deep attention-span will fall in love with Tlon and Iqbar just as I have. Unforgettable and unique.

Tales of Ancient Egypt (and Greece), King Arthur, Beowulf etc – Roger Lancelyn Green

For my friends who have kids, keep your eyes out for copies of anything by Roger Lancelyn Green – absolute classic stuff with the gritty textural weirdness intact (kids know when a story has been dumbed-down and made too safe – and react with boredom, as well they should!)

His collection of Tales of Ancient Egypt is another that I re-read every few years. Yes literature suitable for smart kids (whose minds are not bubble-wrapped), but superb objectively, too! He does many other well known tales (A Robin Hood I liked a lot). A superb grand tour of great literature written with enough intelligence and poetry to entice young readers to want another.

I have mentioned before that Catherine and I used to like to sit in the window seat at “Fran’s” restaurant once favoured by the internationally appreciated Toronto pianist Glenn Gould. I find many things fascinating about him, creatively, intellectually and in character – but this particular clue is especially sweet. I have yet to find true humane brilliance without outstanding humour.

Here is the funniest thing Glenn Gould ever wrote (playful joy in brilliance – so funny/beautiful) So You Want To Write A Fugue

Here is that superb (and for the complacent, no doubt shocking) report from Kit Klarenburg about operation Gladio – and how many of the dramatic political events we thought were driven by crazy radicals (that we needed the government to protect us from) – were actually our own governments scaring the shit out of us, to make us so dumb and compliant we’d beg them to shackle-us for our own safety!

This is a superb note about the value of difficult old classic works for the minds of the working class - and the way it is actually the modern bourgeois elites who want to displace that hard work path which once built mental muscle, and replace it with an up-to-the-minute orthodoxy-compliant code of received morality (blind and state-compelled obedience). Administered of course by them (but you knew that already).

I know I have said a lot of dire things about the financial bubble underpinning AI (and other aspects also). I do not retract any of them (add multipliers to most, actually). But I still figure that also obligates me to share the all time funniest post about AI (ever).

No kidding. ROTFL stuff!

Finally, I have linked to this one a few times, but since it’s my own damned ‘stack, I figure I can do a long excerpt from it if I bloody well want to – and I do.

This is stuff the sincere on left, right and libertarian sides can all meet around (rare). The list was written by Ernest Lesignes – then famously shared by Benjamin Tucker.

There are two Socialisms.

One is communistic, the other solidaritarian.
One is dictatorial, the other libertarian.
One is metaphysical, the other positive.
One is dogmatic, the other scientific.
One is emotional, the other reflective.
One is destructive, the other constructive.

Both are in pursuit of the greatest possible welfare for all.

One aims to establish happiness for all, the other to enable
each to be happy in his own way.

The first regards the State as a society sui generis, of an
especial essence, the product of a sort of divine right outside
of and above all society, with special rights and able to exact
special obediences; the second considers the State as an association
like any other, generally managed worse than others.

The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State, the second
recognizes no sort of sovereign.

One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State; the
other wishes the abolition of all monopolies.

One wishes the governed class to become the governing
class ; the other wishes the disappearance of classes.

Both declare that the existing state of things cannot last.

The first considers revolution as the indispensable agent of
evolution ; the second teaches that repression alone turns evolution
into revolution.

The first has faith in a cataclysm.
The second knows that social progress will result from the
free play of individual efforts.

Both understand that we are entering upon a new historic phase.

One wishes that there should be none but proletaires.
The other wishes that there should be no more proletaires.

The first wishes to take everything from everybody.
The second wishes to leave each in possession of his own.

The one wishes to expropriate everybody.
The other wishes everybody to be a proprietor.

The first says : Do as the government wishes.’
The second says : Do as you wish yourself.’

The former threatens with despotism.
The latter promises liberty.

The former makes the citizen the subject of the State.
The latter makes the State the employee of the citizen.

One proclaims that labor pains will be necessary to the
birth of the new world.
The other declares that real progress will not cause suffering
to any one.

The first has confidence in social war.
The other believes only in the works of peace.

One aspires to command, to regulate, to legislate.
The other wishes to attain the minimum of command, of
regulation, of legislation.

One would be followed by the most atrocious of reactions.
The other opens unlimited horizons to progress.
The first will fail; the other will succeed.

Both desire equality.

One by lowering heads that are too high.
The other by raising heads that are too low.

One sees equality under a common yoke.
The other will secure equality in complete liberty.

One is intolerant, the other tolerant.
One frightens, the other reassures.

The first wishes to instruct everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to instruct himself.

The first wishes to support everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to support himself.

One says :

The land to the State.
The mine to the State.
The tool to the State.
The product to the State.

The other says:

The land to the cultivator.
The mine to the miner.
The tool to the laborer.
The product to the producer.

There are only these two Socialisms.

One is the infancy of Socialism; the other is its manhood.
One is already the past; the other is the future.
One will give place to the other.

To-day each of us must choose for one or the other of
these two Socialisms, or else confess that he is not a Socialist.

And yeah I know I ran a bit long today – sorry – but I cut eleven full pages out, I swear!

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