Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains the dangerous conclusion people have drawn from the "Long Peace", the period from the end of the Second World War until today which is characterized as being the longest unbroken stretch of peace in world history, namely that democracy is the cause of that peace. Or, for that matter, that humans are fundamentally more peaceful, or are becoming more peaceful with time, which is the blatant lie perpetuated by Steven Stinker.
Hoppe argues that the Long Peace is nothing more than the Pax Americana. Just as Egypt didn't go to war against Phonecia while they were both Roman colonies, wars in the modern world are kept in check by Team America. As Hoppe says:
"With the end of World War Two, all of Western Europe and Japan and Korea in the Pacific region became part of the United States Empire as is indicated by the presence of United States troops practically everywhere in these countries. Now, what the post-World War Two period of peace then proves is not that democracies do not go to war against each other, but that an imperialist power such as the United States did not let its various colonial parts go to war against each other. You also did not see, by the way, any wars breaking out between all those countries that were dominated by the Soviet Union as the Soviet Empire existed, from which we also do not draw the conclusion that communist dictatorships under Russian control do not against each other, so because of that we have to introduce something like this."
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Saturday, January 19, 2019
The Reality of Renewables
Physicist David MacKay explains that, while we should do more to increase our usage of renewable energy, at least in the short term it is impossible to get off of fossil fuels as renewable energy really just isn't that efficient. Like I talked about a decade ago (believe it or not) about the myth of corn gasoline and inflating your tires, you would need to devote the land area of a small country to growing biofuels just to replace regular gasoline.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Two Years of Winning
Despite what the nay sayers, doom sayers, fake news, and very fake news will want you to believe, Donald Trump has actually delivered on several of his campaign promises, or, at least he has taken the first step toward delivering on those promises. And while America is not yet great again, we are definitely moving along the right track, and considerable strides have been made in correcting nearly three decades of anti-American policies.
It started with those enemies who opposed Trump. Here was a man who was unbelievably rich, famous the world over, the head of a real estate empire, a reality TV star. A man who has had three beautiful wives, has rose from defeat numerous times, has his name on buildings all over the world, owns solid gold toilets, and has done more to lift New York out of depression and infamy than just about anyone. Like Augustus, he transformed New York from a city of brick to a city of marble when everyone believed it to be a den of drugs and iniquity (along with Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani). Trump could take anything and turn it into gold.
And then he ran against Clinton, and all of a sudden this 1990s New York liberal became not just an evil right-winger, but "literally Hitler".
His enemies list was tremendous, and it read as a who's who of all the worst people on the planet: Most of the party elite of both political parties (which are nothing more than two of the largest and most influential corporations on the planet), every major media outlet and figure (also corporations), the largest multinational corporations on the planet and their billionaire and trillionaire owners like first generation synth Mark Suckerface, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and that guy from Google with the huge forehead, politicians from the European Union including the oven stuffer and de facto Fourth Reich chancellor Angela Merkin and the communists in France, the leaders of communist China, communists in South and Central America, all of academia (also run by communists), the Bush crime family, the Clinton crime family, the blackshirts known as Antifa, and everyone who believes in "trigger warnings", "safe spaces", and generally ending free speech. It was as if everyone who opposes God and Western Civilization stood up and declared in a single voice that Trump was the antithesis of all that they stood for.
And when Trump adopted a slogan that I had come up with do describe my own ideal presidential platform some years earlier – America First – that just sealed the deal. Sometimes God speaks to you in a still small voice, and at other times he blasts you with a megaphone.
For those who were still unconvinced i spent the better part of 2016 deconstructing Trump's primary opponents, most notably LOLbertarian globalist Gary Johnson and Hitlery Roddamn "Hildabeast" Clinton. Especially the latter. When a political party puts a naked obese man on stage and has him dance at an official function, I think that party is pretty much dead in the water.
This culminated in a 60 hour marathon session, which toward the end began to include hallucinations due to sleep deprivation. During this time I wrote a 5,300 word treatise titled "What is at Stake in the Next Election", a 3,000 word summary, I directly debated maybe 50 people, shitposted on a dozen platforms, and (on The Urban Mystic) reached out to 3,000 people (the equivalent of 3 months of normal traffic). All this was to do my part to convince at least one extra person to vote for Trump. Or, at least to convince opponents that the world was not ending.
Far from it. The truth is we've made tremendous strides and have witnessed what can only be considered miracles. Starting with the election of Donald Trump himself. Billions of dollars were spent trying to keep Trump out of the White House, and looking at all the accomplishments that have strengthened America at the expense of multinational corporations and banks stands as testament it is easy to see why.
In two short years we've seen:
•The start of meaningful prison reform.
Tens of thousands of people stand to benefit from what is appropriately called the "First Step" toward clipping the wings of the for-profit gulag system in America that serves to ruin the lives of ordinary people who have just gotten a bad break, maybe turned to drugs for relief from the pain of a difficult life, and were thrown in a cell where they are forced to become hardened gang members just to survive. Prisons in America turn petty criminals and non-violent offenders into serious criminals. Thousands will be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society and become productive citizens again. Trump is extending Christian mercy to the masses.
•Ending the Korean War
The Korean War began 69 years ago and has still not ended. The war became a stalemate in 1953, it didn't end. In fact, the Korean peninsula stood as the most likely flashpoint for nuclear war (and, by extension, the end of the world). Trump went over there and spoke frankly with Kim Jong Un. He did the one thing none of his predecessors thought to do, negotiate, and he negotiated several monumental steps toward the end of the war. The North Korean nuclear program has been suspended, landmines and other devices of death are being removed from the border, limited movement between the two Koreas has begun. A genuine end to the war is at hand, and the entire world can breathe a lot easier because we have a negotiator in the White House instead of a man who draws meaningless red lines in the sand and then retreats every time someone crosses them.
•Pulling troops out of Syria
Trump is the first president since the end of the Cold War who has not started a new foreign war. Not only that, Trump is the first president since the end of the Cold War to actually work toward ENDING wars his predacessors have started (the Korean War and US involvement in Syria). What does America care about Syria? Assad is a secular, middle of the road guy who protects religious and ethnic minorities in Syria. The "moderate" Islamists Obama wanted to put in power in Syria (and DID put in power in Libya) would have turned the country into yet another Middle East shithole of repression of religion, freedom of speech, and human rights. ISIS has been defeated and Trump can pull the US out of Syria with dignity and allow the Syrian people to live in peace under the stable hand of Assad. All of the allegedly anti-war people who protested under Bush now, not-so-mysteriously worship war and adventurism and Team America policing the world all because Trump opposes pointless wars. "Orange man bad" is the sum total of their thinking. Trump could cure cancer and half the nation would hate him for putting doctors out of business.
•Best economy since 1999
Since the Dot Com crash America's economy has been on the down trend. It is now starting to rise up again. While the stock market is not the economy it is still a useful metric. We've seen the largest growth in the markets of all time. GDP has seen growth in excess of 3.5% and even 4% for several quarters, something that was considered impossible.
•Lowest black unemployment ever
So much for Trump the racist. If it wasn't for "minorities" disaffected by the Democrats failure to lift them out of poverty for decades Trump would not have been elected. Trump got the largest share of minority voters of any Republican ever, and he is paying dividends. Trump is listening to the plight of minority groups, and he is doing everything corrupt courts and legislatures will allow him to do to help the people who elected him.
•Lowest general unemployment since 2000
I can personally attest to this one. Real jobs are starting to replace McJobs, factories are starting to move back to America. America is on track to seeing the lowest unemployment since 1969. Workforce participation is at 63%, just under the 67% from 2000. Trump is creating an economic climate that is encouraging job growth. Wage growth is still stagnant, unfortunately, but Trump is definitely putting people back to work, and that's a good first step.
•Killing the individual mandate
The grossly illegal, immoral, unconstitutional individual mandate of Obamacare was killed by executive fiat during the first days of the Trump presidency. Now healthy individuals who may be strapped for cash in the "new" economy no longer have to buy insurance with a $5,000 deductible that no one who doesn't have Cancer or a catastrophic injury would ever use up. The only point of Obamacare's individual mandate, which illegally forced people to purchase a product from a corporation, was to line the pockets of Obama's billionaire donors and to make him look like the messiah for allegedly helping the poor by gutting the middle class. Trump saved poor and middle class people thousands of dollars every year by not forcing them at gun-point to purchase insurance they cannot use and that many of whom do not need.
•Tax cuts for lower and middle class
Need more proof that Trump loves the poor? He cut taxes. I've explained before, raising taxes doesn't work, and it certainly doesn't harm "the rich" because 1. people only want to increase income tax while rich people don't make their money through income, and 2. rich people always find loopholes so they don't pay taxes anyway. Taxes hurt the poor and middle class, and in cutting taxes Trump has helped put more money into the pockets of millions of ordinary people.
•Two Supreme Court justices, with number 3 on the way
Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have successfully been added to the bench thanks to the gross meddling of the Democrats that changed the rules of how justices are elected or selected or appointed or whatever. This has opened up the floodgates for Trump to stack the bench and control the judicial climate of America for the next 30 years. With Ruth "The Mummy" Bader Ginsburg ready to keel over any time soon Trump will get a third appointment and steps can then be taken to overturn the cultural decay that legislating from the bench has done over a generation. It will be a return to Constitutional governance.
•Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital
So much for Trump the anti-Semite, Trump as "literally Hitler" and a Nazi. Presidents of old have vowed to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but none of them have had the balls. Either that or, more likely, those promises were lies to win over the hearts of what was at the time America's religious majority. Jerusalem is without question Israel's capital. All the governing bodies have resided in Jerusalem for decades. It is asinine to assert that a nation cannot declare its own capital within the land that it rightfully possesses. It is nothing more than anti-Jewish propaganda by the surrounding Islamist nations and communists within Europe and other tin horn banana republics around the world to blame Israel or the Jews for any of the problems of the Middle East. Trump is quite literally doing God's work. As sane, rational atheist Pat Condell states "All anyone needs to know about the Middle East conflict is that the Jews want peace and the Arabs don't, because the Arabs hate Jews for religious reasons, and they want them dead."
•Killing TPP
NAFTA 2.0, which threatened to kill job growth in America permanently so the modern day robber barons could make money off of literal slave labor in China or Vietnam, was killed definitively by Trump. He has even begun to strike back against the trade imbalances imposed on the US by the likes of China and Mexico with tariffs and a re-negotiated NAFTA that have put real pressure on these mafia states. Trump did not start a trade war, he inherited the trade war that was created after the end of the Cold War when the US decided it no longer needed to compete in the world economy and could let everyone else grow rich off our spoils. And Trump is the first president in the 28 years since the fall of the USSR who has taken a decidedly pro-American stance on world trade.
Trump is far from perfect, and one can conclude that it is only by some miracle that he has accomplished all this despite all the obstacles in the world being thrown at him. It is a good start, and it gives me hope for the future for what Trump can accomplish in the next six years he has in office.
It started with those enemies who opposed Trump. Here was a man who was unbelievably rich, famous the world over, the head of a real estate empire, a reality TV star. A man who has had three beautiful wives, has rose from defeat numerous times, has his name on buildings all over the world, owns solid gold toilets, and has done more to lift New York out of depression and infamy than just about anyone. Like Augustus, he transformed New York from a city of brick to a city of marble when everyone believed it to be a den of drugs and iniquity (along with Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani). Trump could take anything and turn it into gold.
And then he ran against Clinton, and all of a sudden this 1990s New York liberal became not just an evil right-winger, but "literally Hitler".
His enemies list was tremendous, and it read as a who's who of all the worst people on the planet: Most of the party elite of both political parties (which are nothing more than two of the largest and most influential corporations on the planet), every major media outlet and figure (also corporations), the largest multinational corporations on the planet and their billionaire and trillionaire owners like first generation synth Mark Suckerface, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and that guy from Google with the huge forehead, politicians from the European Union including the oven stuffer and de facto Fourth Reich chancellor Angela Merkin and the communists in France, the leaders of communist China, communists in South and Central America, all of academia (also run by communists), the Bush crime family, the Clinton crime family, the blackshirts known as Antifa, and everyone who believes in "trigger warnings", "safe spaces", and generally ending free speech. It was as if everyone who opposes God and Western Civilization stood up and declared in a single voice that Trump was the antithesis of all that they stood for.
And when Trump adopted a slogan that I had come up with do describe my own ideal presidential platform some years earlier – America First – that just sealed the deal. Sometimes God speaks to you in a still small voice, and at other times he blasts you with a megaphone.
For those who were still unconvinced i spent the better part of 2016 deconstructing Trump's primary opponents, most notably LOLbertarian globalist Gary Johnson and Hitlery Roddamn "Hildabeast" Clinton. Especially the latter. When a political party puts a naked obese man on stage and has him dance at an official function, I think that party is pretty much dead in the water.
This culminated in a 60 hour marathon session, which toward the end began to include hallucinations due to sleep deprivation. During this time I wrote a 5,300 word treatise titled "What is at Stake in the Next Election", a 3,000 word summary, I directly debated maybe 50 people, shitposted on a dozen platforms, and (on The Urban Mystic) reached out to 3,000 people (the equivalent of 3 months of normal traffic). All this was to do my part to convince at least one extra person to vote for Trump. Or, at least to convince opponents that the world was not ending.
Far from it. The truth is we've made tremendous strides and have witnessed what can only be considered miracles. Starting with the election of Donald Trump himself. Billions of dollars were spent trying to keep Trump out of the White House, and looking at all the accomplishments that have strengthened America at the expense of multinational corporations and banks stands as testament it is easy to see why.
In two short years we've seen:
•The start of meaningful prison reform.
Tens of thousands of people stand to benefit from what is appropriately called the "First Step" toward clipping the wings of the for-profit gulag system in America that serves to ruin the lives of ordinary people who have just gotten a bad break, maybe turned to drugs for relief from the pain of a difficult life, and were thrown in a cell where they are forced to become hardened gang members just to survive. Prisons in America turn petty criminals and non-violent offenders into serious criminals. Thousands will be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society and become productive citizens again. Trump is extending Christian mercy to the masses.
•Ending the Korean War
The Korean War began 69 years ago and has still not ended. The war became a stalemate in 1953, it didn't end. In fact, the Korean peninsula stood as the most likely flashpoint for nuclear war (and, by extension, the end of the world). Trump went over there and spoke frankly with Kim Jong Un. He did the one thing none of his predecessors thought to do, negotiate, and he negotiated several monumental steps toward the end of the war. The North Korean nuclear program has been suspended, landmines and other devices of death are being removed from the border, limited movement between the two Koreas has begun. A genuine end to the war is at hand, and the entire world can breathe a lot easier because we have a negotiator in the White House instead of a man who draws meaningless red lines in the sand and then retreats every time someone crosses them.
•Pulling troops out of Syria
Trump is the first president since the end of the Cold War who has not started a new foreign war. Not only that, Trump is the first president since the end of the Cold War to actually work toward ENDING wars his predacessors have started (the Korean War and US involvement in Syria). What does America care about Syria? Assad is a secular, middle of the road guy who protects religious and ethnic minorities in Syria. The "moderate" Islamists Obama wanted to put in power in Syria (and DID put in power in Libya) would have turned the country into yet another Middle East shithole of repression of religion, freedom of speech, and human rights. ISIS has been defeated and Trump can pull the US out of Syria with dignity and allow the Syrian people to live in peace under the stable hand of Assad. All of the allegedly anti-war people who protested under Bush now, not-so-mysteriously worship war and adventurism and Team America policing the world all because Trump opposes pointless wars. "Orange man bad" is the sum total of their thinking. Trump could cure cancer and half the nation would hate him for putting doctors out of business.
•Best economy since 1999
Since the Dot Com crash America's economy has been on the down trend. It is now starting to rise up again. While the stock market is not the economy it is still a useful metric. We've seen the largest growth in the markets of all time. GDP has seen growth in excess of 3.5% and even 4% for several quarters, something that was considered impossible.
•Lowest black unemployment ever
So much for Trump the racist. If it wasn't for "minorities" disaffected by the Democrats failure to lift them out of poverty for decades Trump would not have been elected. Trump got the largest share of minority voters of any Republican ever, and he is paying dividends. Trump is listening to the plight of minority groups, and he is doing everything corrupt courts and legislatures will allow him to do to help the people who elected him.
•Lowest general unemployment since 2000
I can personally attest to this one. Real jobs are starting to replace McJobs, factories are starting to move back to America. America is on track to seeing the lowest unemployment since 1969. Workforce participation is at 63%, just under the 67% from 2000. Trump is creating an economic climate that is encouraging job growth. Wage growth is still stagnant, unfortunately, but Trump is definitely putting people back to work, and that's a good first step.
•Killing the individual mandate
The grossly illegal, immoral, unconstitutional individual mandate of Obamacare was killed by executive fiat during the first days of the Trump presidency. Now healthy individuals who may be strapped for cash in the "new" economy no longer have to buy insurance with a $5,000 deductible that no one who doesn't have Cancer or a catastrophic injury would ever use up. The only point of Obamacare's individual mandate, which illegally forced people to purchase a product from a corporation, was to line the pockets of Obama's billionaire donors and to make him look like the messiah for allegedly helping the poor by gutting the middle class. Trump saved poor and middle class people thousands of dollars every year by not forcing them at gun-point to purchase insurance they cannot use and that many of whom do not need.
•Tax cuts for lower and middle class
Need more proof that Trump loves the poor? He cut taxes. I've explained before, raising taxes doesn't work, and it certainly doesn't harm "the rich" because 1. people only want to increase income tax while rich people don't make their money through income, and 2. rich people always find loopholes so they don't pay taxes anyway. Taxes hurt the poor and middle class, and in cutting taxes Trump has helped put more money into the pockets of millions of ordinary people.
•Two Supreme Court justices, with number 3 on the way
Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have successfully been added to the bench thanks to the gross meddling of the Democrats that changed the rules of how justices are elected or selected or appointed or whatever. This has opened up the floodgates for Trump to stack the bench and control the judicial climate of America for the next 30 years. With Ruth "The Mummy" Bader Ginsburg ready to keel over any time soon Trump will get a third appointment and steps can then be taken to overturn the cultural decay that legislating from the bench has done over a generation. It will be a return to Constitutional governance.
•Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital
So much for Trump the anti-Semite, Trump as "literally Hitler" and a Nazi. Presidents of old have vowed to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but none of them have had the balls. Either that or, more likely, those promises were lies to win over the hearts of what was at the time America's religious majority. Jerusalem is without question Israel's capital. All the governing bodies have resided in Jerusalem for decades. It is asinine to assert that a nation cannot declare its own capital within the land that it rightfully possesses. It is nothing more than anti-Jewish propaganda by the surrounding Islamist nations and communists within Europe and other tin horn banana republics around the world to blame Israel or the Jews for any of the problems of the Middle East. Trump is quite literally doing God's work. As sane, rational atheist Pat Condell states "All anyone needs to know about the Middle East conflict is that the Jews want peace and the Arabs don't, because the Arabs hate Jews for religious reasons, and they want them dead."
•Killing TPP
NAFTA 2.0, which threatened to kill job growth in America permanently so the modern day robber barons could make money off of literal slave labor in China or Vietnam, was killed definitively by Trump. He has even begun to strike back against the trade imbalances imposed on the US by the likes of China and Mexico with tariffs and a re-negotiated NAFTA that have put real pressure on these mafia states. Trump did not start a trade war, he inherited the trade war that was created after the end of the Cold War when the US decided it no longer needed to compete in the world economy and could let everyone else grow rich off our spoils. And Trump is the first president in the 28 years since the fall of the USSR who has taken a decidedly pro-American stance on world trade.
Trump is far from perfect, and one can conclude that it is only by some miracle that he has accomplished all this despite all the obstacles in the world being thrown at him. It is a good start, and it gives me hope for the future for what Trump can accomplish in the next six years he has in office.
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