* There’s quite a cottage industry in deconstructing 4chan threads and Pepe twitter memes for shock horror presentation to the masses. A few people perhaps hoping to find it a way to tenure, following Matthew Goodwin in the UK, who parlayed being the go-to media talking head on “right-wing extremists” into a professorship at Kent (UK).
* This [Hillary Clinton] speech was a boon for the alt-right. What better way to show that your movement is cool and hip than getting denounced by Hillary Clinton? It was like the cool kid in high school getting scolded by the boring and old principal.
* Why the (alt) right produces the best memes: They’ve survived the rigors of a free marketplace of ideas, and risen to the top of the heap. Competition simply works better!
Why the left produces crappy memes: Centralization never produces the best results. Socialism simply doesn’t work!
* The article was written by Nina Burleigh – who said she and all women should fellate Bill Clinton for having protected their “right” to an abortion – and it cites Mikey Weinstein – who “alleged that Christians in America could “pose the same kind of threat” as the terrorist group ISIS does in the Middle East”*.
These people are rogues and would have been put on trial in a healthy polity. Weinstein is particularly odious. His life’s mission is concern trolling the military. Every GI who attends a service appears to him as a “crypto-Nazi”.
* All those left wing comedians (Oliver, Colbert, Amy Schumer) are representatives of the ruling elite, all they do is sell the the ideas of the ruling elite. Then you have all your mainstream sitcoms, again, all they reflect is a lifestyle that the ruling elite would endorse (or at the very least tolerate as non threatening).
* The irony and humor gets people to look at the arguments and data, which are ironclad and true but which cover taboo topics like race, racial interests and so on. No one’s actually hiding their true beliefs. They’re just using irony and humor to ease people actually getting into reading it and thinking about it; and it’s a winning strategy since the arguments are better.
* Picking sides in the 1400 year old conflict over “who” rightly succeeds Mohammed has brought the US no end to grief, and cost in treasure. It’s not our business. By sticking our nose in their business, the Mohammedians have made us their business.
* One of the more obscure “alt-right” idea that I hope will go mainstream, and which I am in complete agreement with, is support for Middle East Christians, as well as the Druze and Assad’s Alawite tribes, who are crypto-Christians. To a lesser degree I support the Kurds, who take Islam much less seriously than their neighbors, and the Yazidi, who have a bizarre ancient religion that over time incorporated Christian, Persian, and Greek elements.
I am super happy Putin and Assad are winning the Syrian civil war together. And likewise to see the Kurds doing so well in both Iraq and Syria.
As a general guide, our Middle East policy should favor in disputes the lower numbered group from this list:
1. Christians and Jews
2. Kurds, Druze, Alawites, Yazidi and secular Arabs (no compulsory beards on men, no face covers on women)
3. The small Gulf States (as long as they stay pro-USA, which they probably will do)
4. Jordan
5. The Saudis and Sunni Lebanese
6. Turks and Azeris
7. Military dictators who usually stay in line (Qadaffy)
8. Iran and its proxies
9. ISIS and Al Qaeda
The most extreme support should therefore be to the Iraqi Christians who over the past five years were massacred, enslaved, and driven from the cities they have dwelled for more than 1500 years by ISIS.
Economic aid and military aid should be flowing heavily to them, and we should put at their disposal some of our elite grounds troops and advisors who will call in bombing and drone strikes for them.
* All comedy is essentially a counter-politics.
No matter which of the many forms it takes, from the buffoonish lampooning of tradition, to the embittered sniping of the offended, to the arrogant snark of the cynics, to the studied irreverence of kitsch, comedy is the political activity of those who cannot act politically. It is in a sense the guardian of the ego, for the psyche cannot bear the radical nullification of complete impotence.
Thus, comedy skates close to the edge of civic disorder. The cathartic experience shared by the audience at a comedy show is a substitute for, and sometimes a prelude to, mob violence. Enthralled by the antics of the comedian—whose jokes are always cryptic indications of the fundamental injustice of their state, and affirmations of their frustrated will—the crowd is transformed, subtly and subliminally, into a “faction.” To laugh is to be converted, indeed to be suborned. It is the reflexive confession of the soul that it now belongs to the new party.
There is no greater divide than between those who laugh with the crowd and those who do not. Such is the fundamental, the soul-deep indication of what side of life you belong to. “The attire of the body, and the laughter of the teeth, and the gait of the man, shew what he is.” (Sirach 19:27) Those who love their traditions, and their country, and their people, and their God, cannot laugh while these things are being mocked. Those who hate them cannot refrain. “Woe to you that now laugh: for you shall mourn and weep,” saith the Son of Man. (St. Luke 6:25)
It is always possible to discern the operations of a political agenda behind the comedy routine, and it is always an agenda of revenge. Contrarily, the un-embittered man, against all popular opinion, becomes graver, more serious, less amused. Transient moments of mirth, wit, or transcendent joy—these he knows. But he is not a laugher. He will not be moved from his place by the prattle of fools.
Herein lies the secret of much treachery and disappointment. When has someone ever amused you, but that you took him as an authority and coveted a share of his power? When have you not felt others’ laughter at something you abominated, as anything but betrayal? Anyone has simply to put this to the test to observe the truth of it.
