This Week in Reaction

So apparently these European Space Agency guys (yes, males mostly) landed a probe on a comet, which is a totally cool thing to do. And one of these guys, one Matt Taylor, was wearing shirt with anime-looking women on it. And some worthless persons at The Verge dug up the audacity and narcissism to proclaim this a teachable moment about how this is why women cannot land their own space probe. Butch comments here. Then, turning a tiny misstep for a man into a bone-crushing tumble down 6 flights of stairs for mankind, Matt Taylor apologizes for it, tears and all. Haven’t you ever heard, Matt, “Don’t feed the trolls?”. Welp. You just did. This led me to make the following observation:

In a sense a man always has two jobs: 1)His actual job; and 2)Batting away the sand fleas that appear when he does (1) well.

—
Nick (Bro) Steves (@Nick_B_Steves) November 14, 2014

Two jobs, Mr. Taylor. You had two jobs. Please, remember that next time.

Well…

Mark Yuray has been doing a lot of heavy lifting lately. This week he offers some penetrating analysis in Conceptual Caste Complications.

So… Nick Landed decided to take a shot across the bow of his co-belligerents on the “Outer Right” with Morality. Or at least I think that’s what (and whom) it was. It deserves an answer I think. One from someone more qualified than me.

Henry Dampier has been writing a lot of late: Most of it good and the remainder of it, as is the case with The Liberal Arts Are Too Important To Cede to Idiots, simply sublime:

In a real culture, it’s a unity of attitudes, of life sensibilities, of morals, of stories, of vocal tone, and other intangible factors that prevent people within the country from behaving like vicious Communists eager to betray their neighbors.

People who share a common cultural framework are more apt to cooperate within their own groups. Preventing that common framework from forming, or forcing a dysfunctional framework upon the whole society, damages the ability of people within that country to cooperate with their fellows.

Also from Dampier: That Farting Sound of Technological Stagnation, how Techno-Utopianism Can’t Deliver Techno-Utopia, and how advocates for “social justice” are licking their chops over the tender, delicious meat of the golden egg-laying goose known as Silicon Valley.

The New International Outlook (tNIO) offers an essay on Hysteria expertly created and managed:

A simple test to see if hysteria has spread is to review the conversations that occur with regard to the areas in which you think the hysteria has spread. You will notice that cogent discussion has broken down, and all dialogue will be within the framework of the new hysteria.

Now you can’t swing a dead cat by the tail anymore without hitting some part of modern “discourse” in which neither “side” (Fox News vs. MSNBC) articulates a logical, coherent position that even acknowledges brute facts, much less make sense of them. To the “red-pilled” observer, this seems simply stupid. But perhaps we ought not chalk up to stupidity things that can be explained by hysteria. Then again, hysteria probably makes us stupid. So there is that.

Karl made an update to the Lovecraft Horrorism post, in which Jewish questions were asked and answered. To me, Lovecraft, and Karl in quoting him, strike an appropriate balance toward the much-vaunted JQ:

There is a very real & very grave problem in the presence of an intellectually powerful minority springing from a profoundly alien & emotionally repulsive culture-stream, defying assimilation as a whole, & using its keen mentality & ruthless enterprise to secure a disproportionate hold on the mental & aesthetic life of a nation. In such a case it is foolish to quibble about ‘rights’ & ‘principles.’ The question is whether an enormous Aryan nation, with all the innate feelings & perspectives of Aryan culture, is going to allow its formulated expression (literary models, art, music, &c.) to bely & embarrass it by reflecting an altogether different & sometimes hostile set of feelings & perspectives through a gradual & imperceptible Semitic control of all the avenues of utterance.

…

In my opinion, all nations ought to take quiet & moderate steps to get such pivotal forces as education, large-scale publishing, legal interpretation, criticism, dramatic management, artistic control, &c. into the hands of those who inherit the respective mainstreams of thought & feeling of those nations. Chinamen ought not to let American missionaries dictate & interpret their policies — & by the same token Aryans ought not to leave their guidance & interpretation to persons of an irreconcilable Semitic culture.

Clark Hat, quite advanced on his way, kicking and screaming as is natural, toward neoreactionary trialectics penned a beautiful formulation on public morals the other day:

Taboo is conserved. In one era we blanch at homosexuality and fainted at "hell". Today we blanch at "the c-bomb" and faint at "the n-bomb".

—
  (@ClarkHat) November 10, 2014

“Taboo is Conserved”—a pithily phrased iron law for immediate dissemination by reactionary and neoreactionary pundits everywhere. Taboo is, of course, preserved, but perhaps a corollary: replacement taboos seem to get stupider and stupider.

… Over at Social Matter…

Social Matter is, in my view, the New York Times of the Neoreactionary Sphere. It is of the #NRx intelligentsia; for the intelligentsia—it’s own and that of near allies in the on-going cultural war against progressivism. Social Matter is, practically speaking, Neoreactionary Orthodoxy, so far as such a thing might exist.

Bryce Laliberte missed his usual Monday deadline. Perhaps he was traveling (or getting in a snow-induced car collision).

Thus, Henry Dampier leads the week with: Why Constitutionalism Is An Empty Doctrine For Conservatives. As a fan and once-paying supporter of Ron Paul, I understand the giddy elation that comes to natural conservatives, when a no-nonsense candidate proposes we “restore the constitution”. Henry asks poignantly:

Restore what, precisely? You can rewrite the document if you have the votes to do so, but rewriting it wouldn’t change the predispositions and moral characters of existing citizens.

Given that many American citizens are hostile to conservative values—indeed, permanently hostile—it’s sensible to seek political separation, so that we can end the pointless series of conflicts between mutually incompatible groups of citizens over control of a government which has out-stripped its constitutional limitations.

Hadley Bishop goes bare knuckles against deontology in Putting The NAP To Sleep: Aggression Isn’t So Bad After All. I am glad for that. I always thought complaints about deontology were about Christians and Thomists, but I never understood them well. I’m happy to find out we’re holding the higher ground of Teleology. Alrenous disagrees. (Possibly related: Hurlock offers a few definitions.)

John Glanton has a great review of the various ways by which men (and it usually is men) may Start Reaction. Encouraging people to pull on those lose threads of the Official Mainstream Narrative™ is a sort of evangelicalism I fully endorse.

Finally, on Friday, Ash Milton delivers Become Worthy: The Path of the Right—an informative meditation, drawing upon de Maistre, Evola, and Moldbug, on genuine rightism and the ways that leftward drift, of both liberal and conservative varieties, doesn’t even recognize it:

Progressives might claim that the Tea Party is full of scary racist ultra-capitalists, but at least it’s the enemy they know. The Right of de Maistre and Carlyle is a different creature entirely. But because it is a different creature, we should consider that its ways are as alien to us as the old world which embodied it.

The reactionary, Milton goes on to say, views legitimacy as the mandate of heaven, not of opinion polls or ballot boxes. Therefore eschew politics and become worthy—worthy to rule at least one small scrap of ground, the square meter on which you are standing. Rule yourself, rule your family, rule your community. It won’t be a waste of your time. On the contrary, to do any less would be the biggest waste of time of all. He concludes:

I won’t spend more than one sentence on an end goal to all this. Here it is: the end goal must be to be so much better than the Cathedral that we displace its influence over the best and brightest, whom all the rest will follow.

This is the path for the Right which neoreactionary writers have begun to lay out. Does it require a leap of faith? Certainly. We might well fail. If becoming worthy were easy, then the Left would be right and the Right would be wrong. But playing the Left’s game hasn’t worked in 200 odd years and the insanity of that strategy becomes ever clearer. Leave activism to the revolutionary activists. The Right understands where real authority comes from.

This is not a revolution. Cast aside the wheel and scrap it for firewood.

This is an ascension.

… At Theden…

Theden is the USA Today of the Neoreactionary Sphere. It is of the #NRx intelligentsia for dissemination of news and views for wider conservative and reactionary communities. It doesn’t so much formulate the neoreactionary viewpoint as direct the readers glance to stories that prove it. To read Theden is thus to glimpse the worm in its turning.

Filed under confirming stereotypes for… well…. just about forever: Greg Allmain points to another study linking violence to specific genes. Not only do your eyes lie to you, but MAO-A and CDH13 do too. I just love the warning on the label:

Nevertheless, it was also stated in the study that the mutated genes can also be found within the public in high frequency. It’s estimated that one in five people possess at least one of the two mutated genes without having committed any violent crimes or without showing any violent behaviour. It must be concluded that environmental factors, such as family history, living conditions and childhood well-being must also be of key importance in the manifestation of violence in individuals with these genes.

Yes. Thank you, O Cultural Masters, for telling us what stereotypes are not about. Of course 99% of blacks don’t play Knockout Game. But 99% of Knockout Game players are black. Stereotype accordingly.

One more time for the old canard (repeat after me) “Race is a Myth”. Experts (Experts! Science!! Peer Review!!!) all agree. The experts once agreed about the myth that the earth was the center of the universe as well. Thankfully, those experts were not quite as tenacious at clinging to their cherished “settled science” as the moderns.

And Greg Allmain again with Demography Is Destiny: What Four of America’s Most Violent Cities Have in Common. Oh lots of things I suppose. Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and St. Louis were all formerly great, top tier American cities. But the mere fact you know what they have most in common makes you a racist. And if you don’t know, then you’re a stupid racist.

… elsewhere…

In all things Son of Brock Landers (whom I carelessly neglected last week)… Play with Progressive Support of Obama’s Executive Orders; in Switch Parties on LePage we get some news from Maine in November election fallout (Wait? Maine is a state? I mean in the USA??); and a Thank you to veterans with a beautiful tribute to his grandfather, a still-living veteran WWII.

Also from SoBL: Commentary on a Rough Foreign Policy Stretch for USG—”rough stretch” so that’s what they call that; in overflow from Horror Month at 28 Sherman, we are treated to a review of Clue: The Movie worth more than the movie itself apparently. And finally an inside sports (and Joos and the NYT) piece on The Chutzpah of the NY Times and NBA Commissioner.

From Boston’s ABC news affiliate, a Revere [MA] firefighter charged with assault on child. The “child” was apparently participating, with 15 to 20 other fellow vibrants, in an ancient Hallowe’en tradition of verbally insulting and threatening less vibrant trick-or-treaters. As is almost universally the case with stories such as this one, the truth may be inferred from the comments. Imagine all those hateful racists in Boston with so much time on their hands. God bless Capt. Carl Holmberg and his family. (HT: Glanton)

Atavisionary has coverage of Tribal posturing: Parents of Michael Brown testify before UN. What a freak show: Of the freaks, by the freaks, for the freaks.

Don’t miss Mitchell‘s series (I’m not sure he’s calling it that, but it seems suspiciously like one) on China and broader Eurasian interests: parts one, two, three, four, and five (so far). I wish I had a handy Tl;dr for the series, but I don’t. It’s edifying, meta-political (neoreactionary), and predictive. Go read it.

The latest second latest whippersnapper to enter the neoreactionary blogosphere is Valkyrie Politics. And he has a nice piece up from last week (that I missed in last week’s review): Discerning the Devil: How not to lose—in which the writings St. Ignatius (who cannot be blamed for the farce the modern Jesuits have become) make food for thought:

Ignatius identified two types of people. Those who are good, and strive to be better. And those that move from one mortal sin to the next. There are then, the forces of progressivism, whom walk blindly lockstep from one mortal sin to the next. And those of Reaction, who strive to be good, and return to something better. How can this system serve as a tool for growth? If we are able to successfully recognize as a collective body when we are in a state of desolation, we will be able to better circumnavigate it. If we know ourselves, we will better know how to combat our enemies.

That latest actual whippersnapper blog to come into my field of awareness is The Millennial Review and they have a fine inaugural piece up on the virtues of localism (and making babies).

Speaking of baby making (one of my own few genuine talents), this tweet from Raptros was funny:

graffiti: "sex: do it for the kids"

—
aidan l. coyne (@raptros_) November 11, 2014

I hope that was real seen graffiti and not just a good suggestion. Well, it should be both.

Kristor, over at The Orthosphere pens a brilliant piece, uniting the science of search with normative spirituality, in Value is Conserved. Sometimes I think Kristor is #NRx in all but name.

Matt Briggs has a modest proposal for the terminal cancer that is the university system: Nuke it from Orbit: The Only Way To Be Sure. Also, filed under: “It’s usually better to write your own biography”, Briggs put a pretty big list of his classic posts—a good overview of the scope and depth his work, which I have been following for many years.

Speaking of the Comet Rosetta, Surviving Babel penned a bit of poetry about it. Nick Land curates. Move over E. Antony Grey.

Ooh, I missed this last week, but Butch had a bit of fun at leftist’s open-minded progressive’s expense. Also a great piece on Christian Thedishness I also missed from last week: Christians & Boiling Pitch. That sounds about right. (The carrier pigeons from Poseidon Awoke have now been coordinated. I’ll not miss anything of note again.)

Late breaking: Jim on the Decline of Google. Also Obama Gets the Finger. LOL. We’re so doomt.

That’s all I have time for. The week started out kind of sleepy, and then BAM! huge volumes of high quality and high interest stuff. Keep your thumb on the pulse of neoreaction Social Matter and Theden. Throw a few shekels bucks at Bryce. Visit /duck/ (but be sure to wash yer hands after). Do a <ctrl>-r often on The Aggregator. Keep on reactin’! Til next week…. TRP, over and out!