They say that in democracy the people generally get the government they deserve. The problem is that within the population there are clear-thinking people that don't deserve.
"humdrum imbecility," "twofold failure," "fractal fuckup," "recognize past errors...keeps making them," "outmanouvered," etc.
May I suggest these descriptions are far too charitable? Pattern recognition to the degree presented becomes an override of Hanlon's Razor. Whereby an inversion of it becomes closer to truth: "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice."
Two examples in US presidential election history that stand out to me as evidence that parties and politicians will "throw" their own election.
- 2008. John McCain v. Barack Obama. Obama was cleaning McCain's clock in polling. Then McCain put Sarah Palin on the ticket. An obscure governor from Alaska with populist notions but ill-equipped to become a national figure spokesperson for populism. Her acceptance speech at the RNC convention electrified the GOP base voter enthusiasm. McCain surged in popularity. This surprised the McCain team who thought she would sink the ticket. Because McCain and party heads were in cahoots to throw the election; Barry Soetoro was pre-ordained to "fundamentally transform" the nation with the blessing of the Uniparty. Yet, despite the best efforts of McCain's own staff sabotaging Palin, insiders leaking embarrassing stories, many fictional, to harm McCain's chances the "bitter-clingers" in the base of the GOP were still keeping McCain competitive, back and forth in the polls with Obama. Until McCain did the unprecedented: suspended his own campaign with just weeks to go before November. Ostensibly over a contrived banking crisis, so important to McCain that he declared he would rather lose the election to preserve the nation's banks, requiring his full attention...as a senator. Obama didn't match McCain's concerns and continued to campaign as usual. That's how McCain threw his own election, he had to end it prematurely so voters wouldn't choose him over the Chosen One.
- 2012, Mitt Romney v. Barack Obama. Obama was struggling. He wasn't a popular president. Voters were angry over Obamacare fallout. Had given him a "thumping" in the 2010 midterms. The war in Iraq he had campaigned to end was still ongoing, his base was dissatisfied, his opponents were motivated. But Mitt Romney was unappealing to the GOP base. Inauthentic. Had Romneycare, an Obamacare prototype in Massachusetts he passed while governor as an anvil. Was the Wall Street private equity corporate raider who stripped value from struggling companies he acquired, leaving corporate carcasses in his wake. Occupy Wall Street was in the media spotlight. Romney was perfectly positioned to make case for capitalism, the creative destruction aspect of it, that says nothing should be "too big to fail" such that market forces will always seek efficiency and profit, even the biggest will fall if it is no longer profitable; must fall so that other uses of the money and resources can be used more efficiently, more profitably, that meet the market where it is, don't try to hold it back to where it was. Romney was silent. He couldn't attack Obamacare with his own anvil and he refused to speak up for the *virtue* of true market-force capitalism.
As a result Romney was down for most of the campaign, even against a very unpopular incumbent. Until....his second debate against Obama when he started to give voice to the concerns of the GOP base. He sounded like the fighter that the base had been looking for. And surged in popularity, overtaking Obama's lead as enthusiasm in the GOP base grew for a candidate they had little hope in. Until the third and last debate. When Romney went back to the effete 'mom pants'-wearing out-of-touch squish he had been the entire campaign prior to debate #2. Going on to lose bigly, never daring to let 2nd debate Romney be seen in public again. It was like it was intentional, seemed like it, I mean, he had found the secret sauce and then dropped it the moment it began to work.
Seemed intentional. Until 2016. When Romney confirmed it. He was weighing in on joining the presidential campaign before Trump's popularity had grown. In interviews Romney was asked about the 2012 campaign, what he had learned, why he wanted to run again. His response was a confession. He said he really hadn't campaigned as hard as he should have, he was just going through the motions, especially towards the end. But this time (2016) he would campaign differently. Pinky promise. He "thought" he would campaign harder for it this time, "hoped" he wanted it more.
He confessed! He didn't want to win! He threw the 2012 election. And likely would've thrown 2016, too. A rare moment of honesty.
Yes, candidates can and do throw elections. Whether you attribute it to malice, laziness or stupidity this is true. But when patterns emerge malice can and must rise to explain it. Nothing else is sufficient.
As much as I will give credit where credit is due, I never had read the inversion of the principle until I wrote it. That doesn't mean others haven't figured it out, just that it must be an uncommon understanding of a world of motivations that's been expressed to the commons to obscure it from view. There's a lot of principles, maxims, idioms, etc that most people tend to give credibility to. A lot earned. A lot is unearned, though. The ones that become more true when inverted.
I dispute this. All of the reversal of climitoid stupidity by Trump and Congress has met with virtually no pushback from the Dems. Yes, a few marginal talkers. And among the people, I feel the general feeling is “thank God!” Yes, some AWFLs still give it lip-service.
One of them is anti-matter. The others matter a lot. They should be encouraged to meet and hence both would disappear in a puff of energy - something much more useful for the rest of us.
It's abundantly clear that in most of the West, we haven't hit collective bottom, yet. Of course we got Trump here in the States, but the Congress -- despite the majorities -- are beholden to or believers in noxious globalism and all the ridiculous politics outlined in your articles. Germany longs to return to the good old days of the DDR and top-down authority, whether they say so or not, while we continue to act as if the judiciary is anything but captured. I wish I spoke Hungarian.
Notably in Germany it's the people living in the former DDR who don't want a return and vote AfD in far higher numbers than in the west. Whereas the people of west Germany are racing full steam ahead into more and more green multicultural communism.
If the "working people" so overwhelmingly support AFD, who are the "nonworking" people? Bureaucrats?
I always find it so funny that "populism" has been turned into a slur. What is democracy but populism? Currently reading some Thomas Frank, who writes about this kind of thing.
"They have redefined democracy, or rather redefined demos to include only Good People. Then they created the new word populism to denote what before had been called democracy.
"Progressivism is 90% word magic. The other 10% is daddy issues."
Well, don't feel too bad. Idiots won't stop busting out all over. Everyone here in the commentariat: Can you find more than, say, two politicians from any party from wherever you are who isn't a complete total deranged moron? Who manages to be even half-sentient a quarter of the time?
A couple of years ago, during the Covid scam, you wrote an opinion that the bureaucratic reaction was not malicious, but was an emergent property of the bureaucratic imperative. Your German politics would seem to confirm this, but...
This weekend I read an article cross-posted by Jessica Rose from <escapekey.substack.com> on Maxwell. It took more than an hour but gave history over 60 years of the trail from Robert Maxwell to Jeffrey Epstein, and even back to the nineteenth century with the Rothschilds. We get to vote for whoever is selected; this has been quite evident in Canada through my lifetime.
The article synthesises the political/economic/scientific arrangements which have created the current world. I did not even dip into the links and references except for a glance at the Surgisphere hoax.
This is pretty well confirmation that the Rothschilds are driving most of the development of society over centuries. Other conspiracy theorists note the black nobility and Khazarians as important powers. I have not figured out exactly how China fits into the scheme but their contribution to the Covid plandemic was certainly important.
The importance of central banks must be considered, as well as the functions of intelligence agencies. Recall that Iraq, Libya, and Iran did not have central banks and have been attacked since 2000. As an aside I now wonder if Bitcoin is a construct of the CIA (40% odds), Mossad (30%), the Rothschild legacy (25%), or some anonymous programmer known as Satoshi (5%)
I think... that Sweden, Poland, France and Norway ought to cut deliveries of power to Germany.
And then ask the German Greens and their voters, how they propose to fix this.
Reason being, none of us propping up Germany since it shuttered its nuclear plants, coal plants and decided to snub Russia by shooting itself in the face with embargos (and to let US-Ukrainian sabotage of NS go unpunished), are really able to continue to do that for much longer.
Sweden f.e. is 5-15 years from rebuilding full nuclear power, and that's on a timeline where construction starts today (which it isn't). We simply can't afford it.
The profits go into the pockets of capitalists and doesnt benefit the nation at all, while potential investments are lost because we can't supply power to new industry/businesses.
Perhaps a smaller version of that would be a good lesson for the voters of B-W?
A massive blackout might be a beneficial thing for us if it succeeded in waking people up from their stupor. However there's a good chance that the average CDU/SPD/Green party voter would promptly find a way to blame Trump/Musk/Putin/Iran for the consequences of our terrible energy policy.
The bitter truth is: no matter how bad the economy becomes, the vast majority of voters are living off the state. Either by being employed by it (directly or indirectly) or by receiving pensions or welfare.
These people will vote for the parties that promise to keep the state money flowing.
In the end, everyone who pays net taxes will vote for the AfD, and everyone else will vote for one of the parties of Ourdemocracy. And the latter will keep the majority, no matter how destructive they are to Germany.
But it cannot continue forever, they will run out of money to buy voters, all western countries are fast approaching that wall. Question is does it happen soon enough to make a difference.
Germans haven’t been turned into retards by prosperity, Germans have been turned into Germans by their Germanosity.
The real red/black/clear pill about Germanics is that we’re, in all our various flavours, beset by a kind of “mass formation autism”. It’s worst with the Nordics and “core Germans” – the Anglos are too mixed with Celts and the Austrians with Slavs to get it full strength. Of course it’s also best with core Germans and Nordics; the same trait makes for amazing engineering and there’s a reason why German cars used to be coveted luxury goods everywhere in the entire world and a tiny nation on the precipice of a frozen wasteland creates globally competitive fighter jets.
National character giveth, and national character taketh away.
A core symptom of this “Deutism” is that we choose a “special interest” at a time (currently climatism with firewall characteristics; could be – and has been – even worse!), and then we ride it in a straight line until we’ve crashed into some immovable object.
Especially not that one. The photo tells all. He looks like the kind of fellow prone to stomach upsets caused by spicy foods... such as vanilla ice cream.
we’re being told we should be grateful it’s only 37 cents because it was much higher a few years ago and they’ve lowered various grid fees to give us this great gift.
In Austria, Germany’s southern neighbor — a country where far more than half of electricity is generated from hydropower — electricity costs around 12 to 17 euro cents per kWh.
I am sorry.
They say that in democracy the people generally get the government they deserve. The problem is that within the population there are clear-thinking people that don't deserve.
"humdrum imbecility," "twofold failure," "fractal fuckup," "recognize past errors...keeps making them," "outmanouvered," etc.
May I suggest these descriptions are far too charitable? Pattern recognition to the degree presented becomes an override of Hanlon's Razor. Whereby an inversion of it becomes closer to truth: "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice."
For reader consideration.
I have never read that "malice vs stupidity" principle in reverse, but yes, there is probably a lot of that.
Two examples in US presidential election history that stand out to me as evidence that parties and politicians will "throw" their own election.
- 2008. John McCain v. Barack Obama. Obama was cleaning McCain's clock in polling. Then McCain put Sarah Palin on the ticket. An obscure governor from Alaska with populist notions but ill-equipped to become a national figure spokesperson for populism. Her acceptance speech at the RNC convention electrified the GOP base voter enthusiasm. McCain surged in popularity. This surprised the McCain team who thought she would sink the ticket. Because McCain and party heads were in cahoots to throw the election; Barry Soetoro was pre-ordained to "fundamentally transform" the nation with the blessing of the Uniparty. Yet, despite the best efforts of McCain's own staff sabotaging Palin, insiders leaking embarrassing stories, many fictional, to harm McCain's chances the "bitter-clingers" in the base of the GOP were still keeping McCain competitive, back and forth in the polls with Obama. Until McCain did the unprecedented: suspended his own campaign with just weeks to go before November. Ostensibly over a contrived banking crisis, so important to McCain that he declared he would rather lose the election to preserve the nation's banks, requiring his full attention...as a senator. Obama didn't match McCain's concerns and continued to campaign as usual. That's how McCain threw his own election, he had to end it prematurely so voters wouldn't choose him over the Chosen One.
- 2012, Mitt Romney v. Barack Obama. Obama was struggling. He wasn't a popular president. Voters were angry over Obamacare fallout. Had given him a "thumping" in the 2010 midterms. The war in Iraq he had campaigned to end was still ongoing, his base was dissatisfied, his opponents were motivated. But Mitt Romney was unappealing to the GOP base. Inauthentic. Had Romneycare, an Obamacare prototype in Massachusetts he passed while governor as an anvil. Was the Wall Street private equity corporate raider who stripped value from struggling companies he acquired, leaving corporate carcasses in his wake. Occupy Wall Street was in the media spotlight. Romney was perfectly positioned to make case for capitalism, the creative destruction aspect of it, that says nothing should be "too big to fail" such that market forces will always seek efficiency and profit, even the biggest will fall if it is no longer profitable; must fall so that other uses of the money and resources can be used more efficiently, more profitably, that meet the market where it is, don't try to hold it back to where it was. Romney was silent. He couldn't attack Obamacare with his own anvil and he refused to speak up for the *virtue* of true market-force capitalism.
As a result Romney was down for most of the campaign, even against a very unpopular incumbent. Until....his second debate against Obama when he started to give voice to the concerns of the GOP base. He sounded like the fighter that the base had been looking for. And surged in popularity, overtaking Obama's lead as enthusiasm in the GOP base grew for a candidate they had little hope in. Until the third and last debate. When Romney went back to the effete 'mom pants'-wearing out-of-touch squish he had been the entire campaign prior to debate #2. Going on to lose bigly, never daring to let 2nd debate Romney be seen in public again. It was like it was intentional, seemed like it, I mean, he had found the secret sauce and then dropped it the moment it began to work.
Seemed intentional. Until 2016. When Romney confirmed it. He was weighing in on joining the presidential campaign before Trump's popularity had grown. In interviews Romney was asked about the 2012 campaign, what he had learned, why he wanted to run again. His response was a confession. He said he really hadn't campaigned as hard as he should have, he was just going through the motions, especially towards the end. But this time (2016) he would campaign differently. Pinky promise. He "thought" he would campaign harder for it this time, "hoped" he wanted it more.
He confessed! He didn't want to win! He threw the 2012 election. And likely would've thrown 2016, too. A rare moment of honesty.
Yes, candidates can and do throw elections. Whether you attribute it to malice, laziness or stupidity this is true. But when patterns emerge malice can and must rise to explain it. Nothing else is sufficient.
Best example: the new administration in Virginia.
As much as I will give credit where credit is due, I never had read the inversion of the principle until I wrote it. That doesn't mean others haven't figured it out, just that it must be an uncommon understanding of a world of motivations that's been expressed to the commons to obscure it from view. There's a lot of principles, maxims, idioms, etc that most people tend to give credibility to. A lot earned. A lot is unearned, though. The ones that become more true when inverted.
How about starting to consider the term "malice" as a misleading euphemism for "high-treason" ??? ... 🤔🤔🤔.
There's NEVER been any stupidity in politics !!!
The quote ends with “ good and hard “ ..HL Mencken
You got off quite lightly. In the UK not only are the Greens stupid they are Islamist apologists and Marxists . God help us all !
In the USA despite Trump’s pivot to fosssil fuels , the masses still believe in climate change . It is hopelsss .
I dispute this. All of the reversal of climitoid stupidity by Trump and Congress has met with virtually no pushback from the Dems. Yes, a few marginal talkers. And among the people, I feel the general feeling is “thank God!” Yes, some AWFLs still give it lip-service.
The states have picked up the grift. NY is still subsidizing solar where the sun doesn't shine and the snow doesn't melt. Follow the money trail.
Still, "climate change" regularly finishes dead-last when poll respondents rank issues in order of importance.
They're also LGBTQ+ enthusiasts who want to legalise drugs so it's probably best if their supporters never meet.
On the contrary.
One of them is anti-matter. The others matter a lot. They should be encouraged to meet and hence both would disappear in a puff of energy - something much more useful for the rest of us.
Yes, all that lovely carbon !
Ha, turkeys voting for Ramadan !
They won’t be happy until they’re living like preindustrial Irish, huddling together under a peat-moss blanket and scavenging for roots and berries.
It least it doesn’t get really cold or hot out here. Germany doesn’t have the best climate for energy poverty…
Irish? Did preindustrial Irish live much differently from preindustrial English, French, or Germans?
Yes.
It's abundantly clear that in most of the West, we haven't hit collective bottom, yet. Of course we got Trump here in the States, but the Congress -- despite the majorities -- are beholden to or believers in noxious globalism and all the ridiculous politics outlined in your articles. Germany longs to return to the good old days of the DDR and top-down authority, whether they say so or not, while we continue to act as if the judiciary is anything but captured. I wish I spoke Hungarian.
Notably in Germany it's the people living in the former DDR who don't want a return and vote AfD in far higher numbers than in the west. Whereas the people of west Germany are racing full steam ahead into more and more green multicultural communism.
If the "working people" so overwhelmingly support AFD, who are the "nonworking" people? Bureaucrats?
I always find it so funny that "populism" has been turned into a slur. What is democracy but populism? Currently reading some Thomas Frank, who writes about this kind of thing.
non-working people are pensioners, mostly. also various people on the dole, uni students, and a smattering of other similar types.
Most government employees could be put into either category.
"They have redefined democracy, or rather redefined demos to include only Good People. Then they created the new word populism to denote what before had been called democracy.
"Progressivism is 90% word magic. The other 10% is daddy issues."
--PETER HÖNIG
Well, don't feel too bad. Idiots won't stop busting out all over. Everyone here in the commentariat: Can you find more than, say, two politicians from any party from wherever you are who isn't a complete total deranged moron? Who manages to be even half-sentient a quarter of the time?
Watching Joe Biden at that post-burial ceremony for the "Rev" Jackson may answer that question.
Whaddayamean? That was just another example of Joey at the top of his game!
Oh, we don't even count him anymore. That would be unkind. But for his entire career previously,..
I note AfD is kicking ass. Anyone not part of the Evil Fascist Hitler party might get stuck trying to rationalize the lunatic Green Party proposals.
AfD did okay, but I would've liked to see them above 20%. Not that it would make much practical difference for this cycle, but still.
A couple of years ago, during the Covid scam, you wrote an opinion that the bureaucratic reaction was not malicious, but was an emergent property of the bureaucratic imperative. Your German politics would seem to confirm this, but...
This weekend I read an article cross-posted by Jessica Rose from <escapekey.substack.com> on Maxwell. It took more than an hour but gave history over 60 years of the trail from Robert Maxwell to Jeffrey Epstein, and even back to the nineteenth century with the Rothschilds. We get to vote for whoever is selected; this has been quite evident in Canada through my lifetime.
The article synthesises the political/economic/scientific arrangements which have created the current world. I did not even dip into the links and references except for a glance at the Surgisphere hoax.
This is pretty well confirmation that the Rothschilds are driving most of the development of society over centuries. Other conspiracy theorists note the black nobility and Khazarians as important powers. I have not figured out exactly how China fits into the scheme but their contribution to the Covid plandemic was certainly important.
The importance of central banks must be considered, as well as the functions of intelligence agencies. Recall that Iraq, Libya, and Iran did not have central banks and have been attacked since 2000. As an aside I now wonder if Bitcoin is a construct of the CIA (40% odds), Mossad (30%), the Rothschild legacy (25%), or some anonymous programmer known as Satoshi (5%)
It is like an invasive "grass" weed (bermuda grass https://extension.umd.edu/resource/bermudagrass-or-wiregrass/) these stupid people.... they ruin everything they touch.
I live in Virginia and it is just the same.
I think... that Sweden, Poland, France and Norway ought to cut deliveries of power to Germany.
And then ask the German Greens and their voters, how they propose to fix this.
Reason being, none of us propping up Germany since it shuttered its nuclear plants, coal plants and decided to snub Russia by shooting itself in the face with embargos (and to let US-Ukrainian sabotage of NS go unpunished), are really able to continue to do that for much longer.
Sweden f.e. is 5-15 years from rebuilding full nuclear power, and that's on a timeline where construction starts today (which it isn't). We simply can't afford it.
The profits go into the pockets of capitalists and doesnt benefit the nation at all, while potential investments are lost because we can't supply power to new industry/businesses.
Perhaps a smaller version of that would be a good lesson for the voters of B-W?
A massive blackout might be a beneficial thing for us if it succeeded in waking people up from their stupor. However there's a good chance that the average CDU/SPD/Green party voter would promptly find a way to blame Trump/Musk/Putin/Iran for the consequences of our terrible energy policy.
Knowing from our own Greens up here, I'd say you're likely right.
Admitting being wrong or mistaken or that one of their ideas need more work to function, well... no.
One could possibly write a professorial thesis on the psychology of Green politicians.
The bitter truth is: no matter how bad the economy becomes, the vast majority of voters are living off the state. Either by being employed by it (directly or indirectly) or by receiving pensions or welfare.
These people will vote for the parties that promise to keep the state money flowing.
In the end, everyone who pays net taxes will vote for the AfD, and everyone else will vote for one of the parties of Ourdemocracy. And the latter will keep the majority, no matter how destructive they are to Germany.
But it cannot continue forever, they will run out of money to buy voters, all western countries are fast approaching that wall. Question is does it happen soon enough to make a difference.
Germans haven’t been turned into retards by prosperity, Germans have been turned into Germans by their Germanosity.
The real red/black/clear pill about Germanics is that we’re, in all our various flavours, beset by a kind of “mass formation autism”. It’s worst with the Nordics and “core Germans” – the Anglos are too mixed with Celts and the Austrians with Slavs to get it full strength. Of course it’s also best with core Germans and Nordics; the same trait makes for amazing engineering and there’s a reason why German cars used to be coveted luxury goods everywhere in the entire world and a tiny nation on the precipice of a frozen wasteland creates globally competitive fighter jets.
National character giveth, and national character taketh away.
A core symptom of this “Deutism” is that we choose a “special interest” at a time (currently climatism with firewall characteristics; could be – and has been – even worse!), and then we ride it in a straight line until we’ve crashed into some immovable object.
It is what it is.
A schoolgirl going weak at the knees in the presence of a party bureaucrat? Pass the smelling salts.
Especially not that one. The photo tells all. He looks like the kind of fellow prone to stomach upsets caused by spicy foods... such as vanilla ice cream.
Incidentally, doesn't the official de-extremelisting of the Evil Fascist Nazi Hitler Party weaken the firewall case?
many people seem to think so, including some people at FAZ. this has not yet penetrated the impermeable CDU obliviousness bunker.
How much do Germans now pay per KWH?
retail average is around 37 Euro cents right now
Impressive. Here in The Land of Hydro Power™ (western Washington State in the US) we pay the equivalent of 9.5 Euro cents
we’re being told we should be grateful it’s only 37 cents because it was much higher a few years ago and they’ve lowered various grid fees to give us this great gift.
Jeeez
In Austria, Germany’s southern neighbor — a country where far more than half of electricity is generated from hydropower — electricity costs around 12 to 17 euro cents per kWh.
Wow. IL is at about 11.5 Euro cents / kwh. Maybe IL voters would swallow 37 Euro cents, but I doubt it.
You forget to mention that the voters also elected war. The Greens are the military green party nowadays.
"I hate everything."
This is an increasingly sensible worldview.