STAMPEDE

by Brett Stevens

Reflecting on our current situation, one cannot help but think back to the Cold War, when what beat the Soviets was as much McDonald’s, blue jeans, and grocery stores full of plenty. Their system did not work; ours did, at least during that period. Somehow however we ended up, just a few decades later, in the same place they did.

THE 'SPORTSBALL' SNEER

by Andy Nowicki

To make an allusion to a certain hairy-fairy poet of celebratory bombast and glorified deviancy (no, not Milo), every mass movement can be said to “contain multitudes.” Such a circumstance is inevitable, when one considers the fact that “mass” invariably equates to “massive”; when more people are added to a group, that which could be called the group’s essential core is in some way diluted by the result.

Thus, the would-be leaders of any burgeoning movement inevitably wind up imposing, or at least prescribing, with a heavy dollop of “extreme prejudice,” a certain top-down set of precepts or attitudes, to which those in the general herd (that is, the would-be underlings under these would-be leaders) feel a need to conform, lest they be ridiculed for the ridiculous gesture of standing alone with their hideously contrary views and looking like a bunch of uncool, uncouth, autistic fedora-clad goofballs who most assuredly never get laid. 

WHAT THE ALT-RIGHT MEANS TO ME (HILLARY CLINTON REMIX)

Alt-Right on her mind. 

Reports are that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will soon publicly denounce the "alt-right" movement, as well as her opponent Donald Trump's alleged allegiance to this highly unsavory and deeply sinister gang of racists, misogynists, homophobes, anti-Semites, jackals, jackasses, jokers. and anime-porn masturbators.

HOW GOOGLE DESTROYED THE INTERNET

by Brett Stevens

The internet was created to resolve a simple problem: in communications networks, any central node through which all messages passed was vulnerable to attack or takeover. To counter this, engineers designed a network where any node would pass messages to other nodes, routing around any damage.

Then came commerce and the democratization of the internet.

Under this model, frightened sheep flock to certain central sites that provide the services they need, and avoid everything else, lest it be politically incorrect or upsetting.

CUCK YOU!

Don't be fooled; he's only out to cuck you, too.

by Andy Nowicki

Back in college, I spent two years in a dormitory called "Studio House," a residence hall for students with an interest in theater and the arts.

It wasn't anywhere near as faggy as it sounds, honest Injun.

The "Studio House" crowd, like most communities, developed its own distinctive lingo. Certain terms became hip and trendy, and caught on with nearly everyone. (I, however, was a consistently contrarian outlier on this front, being a curmudgeonly nonconforming grumpy old fogey even at the tender age of 19, albeit certainly vulnerable to manipulation in other ways.)

CROWDS, CONTAGION, AND CONFORMITY

Lunatic, poet, purveyor of "cruelty": Antonin Artaud

by Andy Nowicki

In my previous post, I attempted to draw attention to the inevitable discord between one's individual willingness to struggle for the sake of the truth – however raw and lacerating be the resultant strain on his psyche – and his simultaneous desire to wrap himself in the sort of deliciously comfy cocoon of collective "struggle" provided by mass movements, through which he is provided the opportunity to remove his autonomy and subordinate his will to that of whichever "Party" he has opted to join.

WHAT MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES FAIL TO UNDERSTAND

by Brett Stevens

I avoid the sports pages because they are the officially approved method of administering the “opiate of the masses,” along with the rest of the media products that have no actual use in a healthy life. Occasionally however the sports pages produce something of interest because, much like the audience for GamerGate, the sports audience is aggressive and realistic. Too much intervention by cultural Marxism or PC and they head for the hills.

WE HATE BIG BROTHER

by Andy Nowicki

At the end of George Orwell’s 1984, hero and would-be revolutionary Winston Smith is tortured brutally by ghoulish government goons at the Ministry of Love. Following this ordeal, his will is utterly broken; he betrays his closest allies as well as himself; moreover, he learns to “love” Big Brother, the awful totalitarian entity who has made his life unbearably miserable. Winston himself gets absolutely nothing out of this bargain except a certain warped peace of mind and a perverse sense that he has in some way “done the right thing”:

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn self-willed exile from the loving breast!... It was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”