untethered

Had breakfast with Baltimore’s Violence Guy this morning.

Subscribe to my new YouTube channel here.

Update: No broadcast tonight.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel

I’ll be livestreaming this evening around 9PM Pacific.
Tomorrow I’m going to attempt a live interview on location with James LaFond, “Baltimore’s violence guy, who is in Portland.
James teaches fighting techniques and writes prolifically on violence and other things.

Here’s Kevin Grace’s interview with James from a couple of years ago:

“Does anyone remember laughter?”
–Robert Plant

The Guardian pokes the corpse of comedy to see if it needs bayoneting:

Comedy is in a period of extraordinary flux. The past two years have witnessed the reputations of revered comics, such as Louis CK and Aziz Ansari, implode in the wake of #MeToo allegations. Then there is the culture of unearthing old tweets, with standups being held to account for problematic “jokes” they’ve made online (for Kevin Hart, it even cost him his most high-profile gig to date, hosting the Oscars). There are also increasing fears around political comedy and censorship. This month, Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix special was pulled because he criticised the Saudi regime over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, while Michelle Wolf’s searing political set at the White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2018 led to the board announcing that 2019 will be the first time in 15 years that a comic would not be presenting the event. Elsewhere, Jim Davidson, a man once so vile he was almost immune to judgment, was reported for hate speech, at his own birthday party no less (although no action was taken). The comedy goalposts are shifting and there is a demand that the art form gets more socially conscious. But can you be woke and funny? And are we living in a time of such change and heightened awareness that the two can now never be mutually exclusive?

Jim Davidson is a British comedian. He was reported to UK police by an American citizen for joking she was a Serbian terrorist. At his birthday party. Police did not act. Presumably, if he was on stage when he made the joke he would be in trouble.

“When comedians say: ‘Oh you can’t say ANYTHING these days!’, what they are actually saying is, ‘I don’t know how to be funny without stomping on people.’ Which is fair enough: not everyone has those skills,” says Danish standup and podcaster Sofie Hagen. “But a lot of comedians do and they’re doing well based on that. Hannah Gadsby, Nish Kumar, Sara Pascoe, Mark Watson, Sophie Duker, Mae Martin: there are loads who manage to say a lot of things without repercussions; who are really, really funny while doing it. It sometimes takes a bit of extra work; you have to be aware of your own privilege and you have to educate yourself so you don’t use damaging language.”

The template applied in these articles is familiar: seeking out the narrative-approved comic Hagen, who then lists a bunch of other narrative-approved comics. It’s no different than an article about, say, foreign affairs, citing one ideological ally, who then cites a bunch of his allies, creating the illusion of a consensus among the rational.

One falls out of favor when one strays from the narrative.

But it is not just about laziness; sometimes there is a deliberate attempt to rile. Before the allegations, Louis CK’s comedy was subversive: poking fun at the inequalities of American society, while simultaneously acknowledging the ways they benefited him.

Presumably all the feelings CK might have hurt “poking fun at the inequalities” don’t count. All the euphemistic language demanding this is all just about preserving feelings (a new concern of comedy) obscures the reality: this is the ultimate Who, Whom? calculation. There are still all kinds of people you can tease: whites, men, straight men, and straight white men.

After allegations of sexual misconduct appeared last year, however, the comic seemed to react with horror at a new world that threatened his unexamined patriarchal mindset. According to reports, at a recent New York show CK made jokes about survivors of gun violence and minorities such as non-binary teens. When some listeners appeared shocked, he allegedly responded: “Fuck it, what are you going to take away, my birthday? My life is over, I don’t give a shit.”

The author doesn’t note the set killed. By the way, when will they start policing the violent language of performance? A comedian “kills” on stage or he “dies” on stage. The old line “break a leg” is not only violent but hateful towards paraplegics. Seriously, it’s probably no accident the language of performance, particularly stand-up, is suffused with violence, risk and death. To fail in real time standing alone before a crowd must indeed feel like death itself.

It was as if CK had reacted to the new wave of wokeness by indicting political correctness; he became an almost Trump-like figure, amplifying for shock value and catering to an audience who probably felt as if accusations about him were false or insignificant.

Notice how the audience is inevitably brought into it, for finding the accusations “false” or “insignificant”. The latter is most galling to the woke. But CK is most guilty of not taking his whipping in silence. The Narrative is relentless, insatiable: the worst thing you can do in its eyes is fight back.

If the woke comics were objectively earning their way by being actually funny, none of this would be a problem. The real problem is us–we’re still laughing. We’re the Covington Catholic kids. As they can’t come round for everybody, they have to do what they’re now doing, taking the comics away and replacing them with anti-comics.

They can take away our unauthorized laughter by removing the comedy, but they can’t force us to laugh at their authorized comedy. At least not yet. I am reminded of a “journalist” outing Brett Favre for not clapping enthusiastically enough at the former Bruce Jenner’s ESPN awards show speech.

The narrative-approved comics, like various cultural figures propped up by the Pozz, are the living avatars of the lie. We can’t be allowed to not find them funny. We can’t be allowed to make fun of them.
The old image of the comic standing against the status quo is unwoke, problematic now that the status quo can only be maintained by the social and financial pressure of which this article is a part.

Booting out the unwoke is the easy part. Bringing in their replacements is the hard part

However, there is a new generation of comics retaliating against the old template of comedy. Nights such as The LOL Word (for queer women and non-binary performers) and FOC It Up!, standing for “femmes of colour”, have emerged, along with the new comic voices including Chloe Petts, Jodie Mitchell, Kemah Bob and Sara Barron. Hagen is also emblematic of this new kind of comedian. Last year, she demanded that every venue on her Dead Baby Frog tour was “anxiety safe” (meaning audience members with anxiety could be allowed into the venue before others arrived, or be warned of any words or topics that might be triggering for them), had gender-neutral bathrooms and were wheelchair accessible. She had a positive response from fans, but faced an inevitable backlash online.

“The people who come to my shows, the people who enjoy my standup and my podcasts, they’re on the right side of history. They get it,” she says. “And I know that a lot appreciated it. The negativity I got was mostly online: loads and loads of hateful tweets and comments from people who were never going to go see my show anyway.”

If this follows the familiar pattern of progressive co-optation of culture, after failing to invoke genuine laughter they will try to force it. Failing that, laughter itself will be forbidden.

Laughter is a natural and not entirely understood human universal. It can be faked but it can’t be controlled. They’ll never be able to force people to find this funny and that not. One day perhaps it will be a mere legend, or understood as an ancient barbarity we’ve shucked off in our enlightenment.

Is there a future for comedy? For culture?
Louis C.K. insists on plying his trade as if there is

Protestors gathered in response to Louis C.K.’s arrival at the San Jose Improv on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019, and a man was punched in the face, as the controversial comedian began his first West Coast appearances since his career was derailed in the wake of sexual misconduct claims. 

The club’s parent company released a statement saying they respect the protestors right to assemble, but also “respect Louis C.K.’s right to perform.” Reports from inside the club suggest the comedian hasn’t changed his approach. At one point he reportedly referenced his action that caused the most outrage; masturbating in front of women.

I hear C.K.’s work is based on referencing his personal life, especially the embarrassing stuff, so I give him credit for staying true to his artistic vision; as far as guys talking about masturbation, this instance is almost noble. Of course he did have to get caught to work this into the act; does that lessen the artistic integrity?

Comedy is harder in a diverse a society because there are more people to take offense. True stand-up comedy barely seems possible, if the comic is no longer allowed his prejudices, biases and genuine reactions; it seems personal bias is stand-up comedy. The stand-up comic is the ultimate bigot, representing his little race of one, mocking, marveling at or criticizing the ways of the rest of us while indulging the privilege of self-criticism.

Of course criticism of others will be severely constricted in our (curiously non-vibrant) diverse comedy future; self-deprecation too, is problematic, as is comedy generally

Straight white guys will be allowed self-deprecating humor (self-deprecating humor for lesbian Hannah deprecates lesbians generally; self-deprecation by white guys is just more deprecation of white guys) until someone figures out it advantages them, then it will be cast as straight white privilege. The Vox-Slate thumbsuckers practically write themselves. If the end result is no self-deprecation for anyone social justice will be playing out here as it does everywhere else, stripping us of an aspect of culture due to its problematic nature. Diversity is why we can’t have nice things.

Presumably there’ll always be a place for honest comedy outside the mainstream, if only because social justice warriors can’t dictate to China, or Russia or Eastern Europe, should it survive the globalist onslaught (bitterly ironic it will be if white people find themselves on the wrong side of the old Iron Curtain).

But in banishing real satire to the outskirts of the internet they consign what I think of as the real jokes to obscurity. A real joke is one that hews to reality; a fake joke doesn’t. For instance, a joke that depends on conventional notions of “white privilege” is not a real joke; one mocking the concept of “white privilege” is a real joke. Fake jokes can work, if the audience shares the delusion about, say, white privilege, but only to the extent the audience shares the delusion. If the social justice goal is met, all comedy will be fake jokes; it will have become something entirely different, while maintaining the form of and ruse that it remains the same old art form.

Sometimes the truth is self-evident. Stand-up comedy strikes me as being about self-evident truth and revealing the ways we obscure it. These are the jokes.

So either the Narrative or Comedy is in trouble, and so far it doesn’t look good for comedy.

For a bought-and-paid-for Russian agent, Trump sure isn’t acting like it

Nord Stream 2 is the 1,222-kilometer pipeline being laid in the Baltic seabed which will greatly increase delivery of natural gas from Russia to Germany. It will double Germany’s import of Russian gas when complete. But the Trump administration has repeatedly voiced its objection to the project, claiming that it will give Moscow undue political leverage over Europe. Trump has warned of sanctions on participating companies, which include German and Austrian firms. 

The flagrant ulterior agenda is seen as the US trying to undermine German-Russian energy trade, for the purpose of selling more expensive American liquefied natural gas to Europe.  

The article linked here is mostly about the US ambassador’s supposed arrogance toward Germany’s policies and elite

Richard Grenell, however, has openly flouted these norms and acted as an unabashed mouthpiece for Trump, echoing the president’s contempt for the German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The upshot, according to Der Spiegel, is that Grenell has become politically isolated in Berlin. Merkel “keeps him at a distance” and most politicians, except for the AfD, have shunned his contact.

Normally the US subverts the politics of lesser nations, of course. This would be an epic flipping of the script. The US State Department has been helping gin up color revolutions against intransigent states to bring them into the friendly camp of post-national states. What if we started encouraging the nationalist, anti-immigration mood?

Trump in his boorish style is merely laying bare the long-presumed US hegemony over Germany. And it’s not a pretty sight. Berlin is being shamed into having to be seen to stand up to this American bullying.

Good for Berlin, if it’s forced into national sefl-esteem, even if it’s a threat to money and power and not to women and children that compels her.

Grenell, who was Mitt Romney’s foreign policy guy for his 2012 presidential campaign, appears to come from a neoconservative background and is hawkish toward Iran, but has taken up the cause of nationalism

In an interview with the far-right news outlet Breitbart over the weekend, Richard Grenell, who has been in office for less than a month, said: “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.

We’ve interfered with the politics, up to invasion, of nations with no democratic legacy, ostensibly on behalf of populations oppressed by governments that hate them.
I’d say Germany qualifies as such. Grenell might lack nuance–why not soft-peddle the criticism of the German establishment and talk to AfD?–but it’s encouraging to a nationalist and friend of Europe to see the emerging potential for a genuine global alliance of nationalists.

The instantly notorious APA “Guidelines for emasculating Psychological Practice with Men and Boys” (full PDF here) is a concern-trolling operation, claiming to address the crisis of men not seeking help because of their own toxic masculinity. I mean, if you can’t trust a coven of gender theorists, guys, who can you trust?

“Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” says Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and co-editor of the APA volume “The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.” Levant was APA president in 2005 when the guideline-drafting process began and was instrumental in securing funding and support to get the process started.

Men, especially white men, will not be relieved of their duty to belly-ache like women and minorities, who will be belly-aching about us. Which doesn’t mean we’ll be belly-aching about them, of course. We’ll be belly-aching about us, really.
There is the social justice concept, originating I think from black women, of “emotional labor”; white men will be expected to take up their share of emotional labor.

Prior to the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960s, all psychology was the psychology of men. Most major studies were done only on white men and boys, who stood in as proxies for humans as a whole. Researchers assumed that masculinity and femininity were opposite ends of a spectrum, and “healthy” psychology entailed identifying strongly with the gender roles conferred by a person’s biological sex.

Critical theory has to ignore biology and evolution, but we don’t. Theory won’t even allow historical perspective; certain universal notions of masculinity have prevailed across cultures, like strength and resolve–which the APA pathologizes, carefully, in the intersectional context of the Poz–so doesn’t it follow, especially absent biological/evolutionary explanations, that cultivating these traits in men has been a necessity for civilization?

But just as this old psychology left out women and people of color and conformed to gender-role stereotypes, it also failed to take men’s gendered experiences into account. Once psychologists began studying the experiences of women through a gender lens, it became increasingly clear that the study of men needed the same gender-aware approach, says Levant.

The study of women’s “gendered” experiences being such a success and all. Every one can see how happy women are. We put trannies in their public restrooms and they hardly batted an eye.

This vision of masculinity may summon up an image of a closemouthed cowboy, à la John Wayne. But there’s more to masculinity than macho swagger. When the rules of manliness bump up against issues of race, class and sexuality, they can further complicate men’s lives.

The fact of the matter is race and class do figure heavily in the crisis in masculinity–the APA’s vision of men as aggressive, violent, over-sexed bullies suddenly makes sense if we apply it to black men separately.

Likewise, the Me Too movement is launched on the degenerate behavior of Hollywood’s Democratic donors, and all men are condemned.

So it’s a little galling to the normal guy just trying to survive the onslaught that comes out of Hollywood, and Madison Avenue, to be lumped in with them, by them:

Nationalism is trending globally. It isn’t just manifesting in elections, it’s expressed, without self-recognition, in western identity politics. Minority groups within nations are beginning to identify as separate ethno-nations, albeit confusedly (and mostly obliviously) using the language of liberalism or globalism. What passes for a civil rights movement in America now is in fact vociferous ethno-nationalism expressed by blacks, Hispanics and others. Even identities based on fringe behavior, such as the trans movement, ascribe to themselves a sort of global-nationalist identity. The progressive movement in the West today can be understood as an alliance of imputed, contrived and genuine nationalities fighting in alliance against whites, condemning them for, among other things, having invented “nationalism”.

Nationalism is still building its critique of globalism. Nationalism is forming an analysis, in the Marxian sense, of our sick world. As a global movement it’s still unguided (despite Establishment hysteria); most people–including the incidental nationalists of, say, Black Lives Matter–don’t see themselves as such. Ethno-nationalism is encouraged in all but majority populations in western nations; you can be a black nationalist but not a white nationalist.

Nationalism based on ethnicity is society’s natural state, which people everywhere are trying to defend or restore in the face of globalism; even, or especially, minority rights activists in the West.

Nonetheless, nationalism, like Marxism before, is still developing an analysis of society and culture, one that questions every postwar premise upon which the present order is based.
We don’t have a whole critique yet. At the present we’re like sixties radicals, floundering between action and argument.

“We’re the Motherfuckers…we’re like a street gang, only with an analysis…”

Brazil’s new foreign minister has written a nationalist manifesto for like-minded world leaders. Here he is quoted in Frank Gaffney’s neoconservative Center for Security Policy:

There is no ‘us-versus-them logic’ here, contrary to what Trump’s detractors are fond of saying. There is instead an ‘us seeking to reclaim ourselves’ logic”

Despite invoking it all the time, it isn’t an “us v them” mentality the progressives fight against–obviously, for every concern they voice is expressed in precisely those terms, men against women, black against white, trans against “cisgender”– itself a word jimmied up precisely to provide the “trans community” with a  “them” to hate on.

No, what power right now is hostile to is the idea of “us”, for white people. If you ignore the bullshit you see the sum total of all this demagogy is to establish whites as the ultimate “Other”, by which to motivate resentful non-whites to plunder what is seen as their rightful share of the nation’s wealth and culture.

It matters less to the emerging globalist order that nations be democratic than they be open to capital and immigration and otherwise integrated into the economic system. Elections in one-party states suffice to pass for democracy, but a democratically elected figure like Trump is seen as a crisis for democracy because, all of a sudden, elections have meaning.

They now threaten the global order, because such states will confound the free movement of capital and labor–though it’s getting hard to view what Europe is being subjected to as the free flow of labor.
The free flow of consumers? Those faux refugees in Europe may not be working, but they are consuming. It’s just that ultimately the working, indigenous Europeans are subsidizing their sloth through the welfare state.

From the CSP article linked above:

[Brazil foreign minister Ernesto Henrique Fraga Araújo’s] scholarly article, “Trump and the West,” published in 2017, provides a coherent historical, cultural, and philosophical base that not only should guide the populist diplomacy of the Bolsonaro government, but can be a guide for the Trump Administration in the United States.

In Araújo’s view, military weapons do not present the greatest threat to mankind today. Brazil’s top diplomat argues that “the real huge danger is the disappearance of Western identity itself.” He sees Donald Trump as sharing that same basic, if less historically grounded, approach.

The new Brazilian foreign minister’s point of view, as a profoundly grounded outsider looking in, should be instructive to all Americans to understand who we are and what we stand for. His outside observation, as a foreigner, can lead to developing a theoretical base for 21st century populism and nationalism worldwide.

“This vision of the West does not mean conflict with non-Westerners,” Araújo says, writing of Trump. “The enemy of the West is not Russia or China, nor is it an enemy state, but indeed primarily an enemy within, abandoning one’s own identity; and an outside enemy, radical Islamism – which, meanwhile, plays second fiddle to the first, because Islamism only poses a threat because it finds the West spiritually weak and disconnected from itself. There is no ‘us-versus-them logic’ here, contrary to what Trump’s detractors are fond of saying. There is instead an ‘us seeking to reclaim ourselves’ logic”

It’s the left that insists on pitting us against one another, throwing us into close proximity and condemning us for the ensuing chaos, demonstrating just how dependent they remain on the potential for demagogy that arises. Class demagogy didn’t pan out; the West became too wealthy, too comfortable, the poor too docile in their comfort, so racial, ethnic, sexual and now deviant resentments, which will never be sated by mere plenty, naturally replaced class resentments.

YouTube has suspended livestreaming on my YouTube channel, probably for a copyright violation, after terminating a broadcast mid-stream last night (“due to a copyright match, your stream was interrupted”). Restrictions can last 90 days. No further word from YouTube. The appeal process around that appears limited to getting permission from copyright holders. It’s all vague enough I’m not even sure what constitutes a copyright strike and how many I have.

I have a second channel here, and I can stream there after 24 hours, but I’m not sure yet I’ll have to resort to it.
Dennis waits out the destruction:

The question looms silent over the caterwauling and self-congratulation: how will the ascendant coalition of the fringes manage things once they’ve run out of white men?

Aside from losing the focus of their demagogy–as long as one Pale Male breathes, they’ll manage–there is the problem of just who is going to run things once the only place for white men in the elite is as transitioning females. Who will be the first white guy to fake transsexualism to get ahead? Is he already out there?

Identity front men are a possibility, but politicians, in particular minority mediocrities, are increasingly that already–out of their depth on the issues and directed by party, donors and lobbyists. Reducing the pool of electable talent is a feature from their perspective, someone without intellectual depth being easier to manipulate.

But is that true? Are they down to recruiting people now who don’t know enough to keep quiet about the myriad internal hatreds that is the present progressive movement?

The recent Tablet expose on the antisemitism of the Women’s March movement’s nominal leadership revealed how brazen the black pets of Jewish activists have become in expressing their antisemitism

According to several sources, it was there—in the first hours of the first meeting for what would become the Women’s March—that something happened that was so shameful to many of those who witnessed it, they chose to bury it like a family secret. Almost two years would pass before anyone present would speak about it.

It was there that, as the women were opening up about their backgrounds and personal investments in creating a resistance movement to Trump, Perez and Mallory allegedly first asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people—and even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade. These are canards popularized by The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a book published by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam—“the bible of the new anti-Semitism,” according to Henry Louis Gates Jr., who noted in 1992: “Among significant sectors of the black community, this brief has become a credo of a new philosophy of black self-affirmation.”

To this day, Mallory and Bland deny any such statements were ever uttered, either at the first meeting or at Mallory’s apartment. “There was a particular conversation around how white women had centered themselves—and also around the dynamics of racial justice and why it was essential that racial justice be a part of the women’s rights conversation,” remembered Bland. But she and Mallory insisted it never had anything to do with Jews. “Carmen and I were very clear at that [first] meeting that we would not take on roles as workers or staff, but that we had to be in a leadership position in order for us to engage in the march,” Mallory told Tablet, in an interview last week, adding that they had been particularly sensitive to the fact that they had been invited to the meeting by white women, and wanted to be sure they weren’t about to enter into an unfair arrangement. “Other than that, there was no particular conversation about Jewish women, or any particular group of people.”

I think there’s a Jewish phrase for the nerve displayed by Mallory, in deigning to accept the offer of leading a movement she had nothing to do with creating, albeit with reservations and expressions of disgust. I’m blanking on what that word is.

Mallory, Perez and Bland (who I’m guessing is there to represent the sexually ambiguous) were recommended to the Jewish originators of the movement by another Jew, Michael Skolnik, and were cut out of the action almost immediately

…Wruble—a Washington, D.C., native who founded OkayAfrica, a digital media platform dedicated to new African music, culture, and politics, with The Roots’ Questlove—reached out to a man she knew named Michael Skolnik. The subject of a New York Times profile the previous year as an “influencer” at the nexus of social activism and celebrity, Skolnik held a powerful though not easily defined role in the world of high-profile activist politics. “It’s very rare to have one person who everyone respects in entertainment, or in politics, or among the grass roots,” said Van Jones, in a 2015 New York Times piece. “But to have one person who’s respected by all three? There isn’t anyone but Michael Skolnik.”

I couldn’t find out exactly why the former drama major Michael Skolnik levies the influence claimed. His biggest resume listing looks like his involvement heading MTV’s “Rock the Vote”.

When Wruble relayed her concern that the nascent women’s movement had to substantively include women of color, Skolnik told her he had just the women for her to meet: Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory. These were recommendations Skolnik could vouch for personally. In effect, he was connecting Wruble to the leadership committee of his own nonprofit—a group called The Gathering for Justice, where he and Mallory sat on the board of directors, and Perez served as the executive director.

In an email to Tablet, Skolnik confirmed this account of the group’s origins. “A few days after the election, I was contacted by Vanessa Wruble, who I have known for many years, asking for help with The Women’s March and specifically with including women of color in leadership,” he wrote. “I recommended that she speak with Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, also who I have known for years.”

Linda Sarsour, another colleague from The Gathering for Justice network, was not present for these initial meetings but joined the Women’s March as a co-chair a short time later. 

The Women’s March movement is withering and dying as a result of all this. I imagine donations have dried up. The group had, or still has, plans for a big march sometime this month. But it looks like the gravy train is now derailed, all because of Tamika Mallory’s lack of common sense.

Note it wasn’t Sarsour’s supposed connection to militant Islam or Mallory’s love of Farrakhan that did the movement in–the girls had weathered that controversy already. It took Mallory’s honest antisemitism at that first meeting to shut the thing down.

There are two ways to view the plight of Vanessa Wruble, one sympathetic–she’s a true-believer who got screwed, or she’s just cunning enough to want to disguise the Jewish nature of the movement by “centering women of color”. Skolnik does claim to have known her for years, so she’s probably more seasoned than not.

The exotics in the coalition of the fringes still don’t run things and aren’t learning how. They increasingly misread or disdain the protocols that have guided the left heretofore. And they appear to lack a certain self-awareness that would give whites embarrassed pause when being handed something they had little in creating. To be fair to minorities, these are minority activists I’m talking about.

My greatest fear now is that the progressive left becomes a one-party American state by way of demographic displacement and that party is completely incapable of governing because it is the present Democratic party, times ten.