My roadtrips have tended to be to the east. To Florida to visit my maternal grandparents. To Tennessee to visit my paternal grandparents and my beloved second cousins.
And, as now, to Alabama to visit the Mises Institute.

So I have driven back west across Illinois so many, many times.

Each time I remember my parents telling about coming to St. Louis the first time when I was a baby... This metropolis rising on the horizon out of the flat plains of Illinois.

There's a funny thing about my city that my parents observed. People go away... for college, work, military. But, as people from Florida where everyone was a transplant from somewhere else, they noticed that folks tend to come eventually home.

I love to travel. But... I see the top of the Arch on the horizon... I always love coming home.

How much of a role does blackmail play in politics?

“We should reject the false doctrine of “collective security,” which makes every border disputes a world war.”

Lew Rockwell says to keep wars small.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/03/lew-rockwell/a-manufactured-world-crisis/

This post traumatized me. 🙃

The focus on “conspiracy” as an aspect of harmful content is definitely a paradigm shift to be sure. So too does the concept of a “harms bill” make my Gottfried/Francis senses tingle, the language is incredibly therapeutic.

Good info on the political character of the breakaway Ukrainian regions from Keith Woods.

I am surprised at this post by Counter Currents. They have, correctly, pushed back against those who would deny the Ukrainian people's right to self-determination either on the basis of their nations recognition by the Soviet regime or their current usefulness to either American foreign policy machinations or Western oligarchs.

But how then can ethnic Russians be denied the same right on the basis of either foreign support or communist imagery? I suppose the question is if the connection of Donetsk and Luhansk to Bolshevism goes beyond drawing from the well of Soviet nostalgia. Greg attaches a picture which he notes is of members of Spanish communists fighting for the Republics. This picture is from 2014, but there have indeed been such volunteers in East Ukraine. However, on the whole Anti-fascist groups in the West are on the side of Ukraine in this conflict ("tankies" are a small minority on the left), and I could post plenty of similar pictures of antifa volunteers supporting Ukraine, but I don't think it's fair to use images of foreign fighters as any kind of proof of the ideological character of either Ukrainian Nationalism or Russian separatism.

The post challenges the right to separation of the Republics on the basis that the Ukrainian minority there would have to live under Bolshevism - they "would kill and die not to be ruled by neo-Bolsheviks and foreign antifa"

How prevalent is Bolshevism in the Republics? We can look at representation in the People's Council of Donetsk, which is the breakaways Republic's legislature. The Communist Party of Donetsk does not have a single seat in the legislature. Instead, the seats are divided 68/32 between the Donetsk Republic Party and Free Donbas, both of which have Russian nationalist, socially conservative platforms.

In the legislature of the Luhansk People's Republic there is still no sign of the red menace - seats are divided 37/13 between the groups Peace for Luhansk Region and Luhansk Economic Union. The former is a centrist/moderate Russian Nationalist party, while Luhansk Economic Union is a center-right party founded by wealthy industrialists and entrepreneurs in the region.

This paper argues that "the official ideology of the DNR and the LNR, which developed under the influence of Russian far-right activists, is largely right wing, conservative and xenophobic in character", noting that "Anti-Semitism and homophobia play a lesser, though still significant role in public rhetoric"

Interestingly the report also concludes that the use of right-wing radicals has been far more important to the Russian separatist struggle in Eastern Ukraine than it has been for the Ukrainians - the former has been supported by a variety of nationalist and far-right groups like Slavic Union and Movement Against Illegal Immigration (both banned by the Kremlin).

This article concludes: "despite their neo-Stalinist paraphernalia, many of the Russian-speaking nationalists Russia supports in the Donbass are just as right-wing as their counterparts from the Azov Battalion."

We can also look at the constitution of the Donetsk People's Republic. The constitution enshrines the right to private property (Article 28.1), entrepreneurship (27.1) and intellectual propety (37.1), while defining Novorossiya as a "Social state" which will keep key strategic resources nationalised for the common good.

Socially, the constitution upholds a traditional view of marriage and the family (4.3) and Article 31.3 states: "Any forms of perverted unions between people of the same sex are not acknowledged not allowed and will be prosecuted in DPR.” Article 9.2 upholds the dominance of the Orthodox Church and 4.2 defends traditional social values.

The character of this document seems a world away from Bolshevism or anything we would associate with Antifa in the West to me, and could probably be best described as Social Nationalist. I would treat Ukrainians calling these movements Bolshevik with as much seriousness as I do when Russians call the Zelensky-regime Nazi.

Fascinating intro to the Russian political spectrum, where Communists (pro-Soviet) are the conservatives.

Focusing so much on Russia of late has redpilled me on how fundamentally different the Russian "political spectrum" is to the contemporary West's. This is interesting not simply because Russia is a compelling nation whatever you may think of it, but because it demonstrates how historically contingent political categorization is.

The description given in this article for example is compelling: https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/03/14/the-great-russian-restoration-iv-the-state-of-opposition-nationalist-politics-in-russia/

Consider American politics, which are based on the White/Black divide. Conservatives are the de-facto White party and the Democrats are the explicitly pro-POC party. All debate revolves around race and its relation to America’s history and the current socio-economic situation in the country. This is not unique to the United States—all countries have fault lines of political debate around which all politicking revolves. In Russia, for the last 30 years, the debate has revolved around endless debates about the Soviet Union and its legacy. In other words, your attitude to the Soviet Union determines where you fit on the political spectrum.

So, the Liberals and the Nationalists are at one end of the spectrum and vocally attack the Soviet Union and everything that it stood for while the Communists, as one would guess, are pro-USSR. Putin and his people fit in the middle of his spectrum and try to reconcile the Soviet past with the Imperial legacy and the Russian present.
As a result, Communists accuse Putin of being too Liberal and Capitalist and the “Nats-Libs” accuse him of being a secret Communist.

The pro-Soviet crowd are much older, socially conservative and economically “left” in the sense that they support large government programs, national industry and economic protectionism. The Nats-Libs are younger, more libertine and believe in the promise of the global, integrated, “free” market.
With all this in mind, it should be clear why it is so difficult for Westerners to wrap their head around the political situation in Russia, especially members of the formerly Anglo-Saxon world, where these camps are literally inverted.

Again, in America, the social-conservatives are also defenders of the free market. Even more bafflingly, the Communist Party in Russia is pro-Orthodox and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Gennadiy Zyuganov rally without a priest present at it on stage, microphone and crucifix in hand. It took me many years to wrap my head around this phenomenon as well, and for the longest time I thought that all these politically active personalities and parties in Russia had simply lost their marbles. But then, upon further analysis, I was forced to conclude that the political camps in America were just as absurd. After all, what does Jesus have to do with free markets and climate change skepticism? Well, the answer is that political apparatchiks “bundled” a bunch of different, unrelated positions into one united political platform. Over time, this political bundle of positions became solidified in the mass consciousness and simply became dogma.

That Russian and American political identity-relativity can be so radically incongruent only brings the right-left lightswitch brain into further disrepute in my eyes. Current year American political categories are the problem, and you reproduce them by taking a position within them. We need to think outside the box if we want to genuinely challenge the system.

Paul Gottfried has hammered this point home: The mainstream conservatives/right are leftists.

This was most obvious with the Neocons but it is true of pretty much every other personality or institution that is allowed to be the face of conservatism or the right.

Almost every week I see some "Right-Winger" talking about the necessity of "deconstructing" or "transcending" the political spectrum, or similar goofy nonsense.

I've said this a thousand times but you will NEVER catch a Leftist saying "ummm Left vs Right is a false dichotomy, we need to think outside of the box." They just say "all Right-Wingers are evil, redact everyone to the Right of Trotsky."

You aren't smart for going all postmodernist on rigidly defined archetypes that can be projected backward throughout the entirety of human history. Everyone knows what Right-Wing and Left-Wing mean.

The problem today is that the Overton window has shifted so far Left that the so-called "Right-Wing" is almost entirely Leftist in nature. We're got so-called "conservatives" repeating Marxist theory verbatim.

“It was not considered a dark age at all, rather a golden age for hundreds of years afterwards up until the Romanophilic prejudices of the Renaissance became widespread.”

Kill the notion of the “Dark Ages”.

I find the so called dark age following the fall of the western Roman empire in the 5th and 6th centuries, to be so alluring. This is the time the English emerged as a new ethnic group but it was also a time looked back on from the Viking era and the High Middle Ages as an age of heroes. The Britons placed their legendary Arthur in this era, the English placed Beowulf in this time and many of the heroes of the Vikings such as King Frodi, Ingeld and Starkad were all thought to have lived in this era. It was not considered a dark age at all, rather a golden age for hundreds of years afterwards up until the Romanophilic prejudices of the Renaissance became widespread. Yet even now, we are in want of more archaeological evidence for what life was really like in that time. This new study may have identified sites in Wales, Cornwall, Devon and Somerset with indigenous high-status royal burials associated with the British kingdoms of the Dark Age. The famous Tintagel, royal seat of Dumnonia, which I visited in a video about Arthur, is one of the sites the study identifies.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/03/new-study-identifies-the-likely-burials-of-up-to-65-british-kings/143071

A quick guess at how many political dissidents there are across the West from Academic Agent.

Personally I’m quite encouraged. These numbers are bigger than I would have guessed. (Look at our comrades in Canada and Australia!!)

https://youtu.be/0P3E-YJRrh4

"Public opinion has a near-zero impact on law-making"

Complete your journey to rejecting democratic illusions with Academic Agent.

Realism here is absolutely essential for us.

https://youtu.be/2gSrYIO_hX8

Important stat from the Babylon Bee.

Fascinating observation.

"Have you noticed that most people when they’re photographed today wish to look as nice as possible, as reflexive as possible, as open-hearted as possible? They’re pleading to be liked."

- Jonathan Bowden

“Putin is a liberal in the old fashioned sense that no longer exists in the West.”

Bold thesis from Paul Craig Roberts.

See what you think of the case he makes. (I think his case against the West is pretty strong at least.)

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/03/paul-craig-roberts/why-the-west-hates-putin/

One of the things about the modern world that never fails to provoke in me the strongest feelings of disgust and shame is modern warfare.

Modern warfare is right up there with grooming children, for me. It is peak dishonour, cruelty, cowardice, and the encapsulation of the inverted world we live in.

Yes, I know in the past that soldiers would sack towns and burn buildings to the ground and murder the inhabitants. But that’s not how battles were fought. Even taking into account sieges, during which civilians could suffer from starvation, old world battles were usually fought on battle fields by warriors, led by commanders who would lead from the front if they were truly heroic generals. Skill, bravery, and intelligence could win the day.

Nowadays, missiles are launched from a safe distance at civilian targets who have no chance. At least in the old world, the invading soldiers had to come to your town in person, find you in person. You could run, hide, or even fight your way to survival. In the modern world, the shells fall randomly and you have no idea if your name is on one.

And after the shelling, perhaps the tanks will roll in to pick off survivors, to demolish the homes that are still standing, along with people inside them. For the majority of “soldiers”, war has been reduced to nothing more than a video game. But the trauma and suffering they inflict, or can have inflicted upon them, is very real.

Even modern “battles” are just shootouts in urban cityscapes, with civilians caught in the crossfire. Modern warfare doesn’t even have the honour to settle the conflict in a field elsewhere, something which still occurred as recently as WWI, which seems to be both the last war of the old age and the first one of the modern age.

This totally unequal scale of force and utterly contemptuous form of warfare is I think one of the main reasons there hasn’t been a meaningful rebellion against the ruling class in spite of all the abuse and insults they hurl at us.