Gyroscopic Investing

http://www.unz.com/isteve/two-reviews-o ... ubmission/

Once the political deal is concluded, the French political establishment rallies around Ben Abbes and he goes on to easily defeat the Front National, and becomes the new French President.

French society starts changing soon after the election; women stop working, unemployment goes down, and the economy gets better. Public school is now only offered up until sixth grade, afterwards, all secondary and university education is non-mandatory and private. The incessant violence and criminality in France’s immigrant dominated suburbs called banlieues suddenly drops by a factor of ten. Women start wearing much more modest clothing; the budget is balanced following huge cuts in welfare and education.

But why would the right-wing nativist indentitaires want to help push Muslim overlords into power in their country? Jacques searches the internet and finds a very interesting article written by none other than Roger Rediger:

The whole article was an appeal to his former identitaire and traditionalist comrades. It’s tragic, he pleaded fervently, that irrational hostility towards Islam prevents them from recognizing the obvious: they were for the most part in perfect agreement with the Muslims. On the rejection of atheism and humanism, on the need for the subordination of women, on the return to patriarchy: their struggles from any point of view were exactly the same. But this fight to establish a new and natural phase of civilization could not now be conducted in the name of Christianity. No, it’s only with Christianity’s newer, simpler, and truer sister religion Islam that this battle could be waged.

Therefore it was Islam which now had to carry the torch. Because of all the dainty rhetoric, cajoling, and shameful stroking by progressives, the Catholic Church could no longer resist moral decadence. It was now unable to clearly and vigorously resist gay marriage, abortion rights and women moving into the workforce. We had to face the facts: the church had reached a repugnant degree of decline. Western Europe was no longer in any condition to save itself – just as ancient Rome had not been able to so the 5th century. The influx of massive numbers of immigrants — who were still under the influence of traditional cultures which not only accepted natural hierarchies, but also obliged both the submission of and respect due to women — was an historic opportunity for a moral and familial realignment of Europe. In fact this opened the prospect for a new golden age on the old continent. While these new immigrant populations were sometimes Christian; but we must admit they were mostly Muslim.

Roger Rediger was the first to admit that medieval Christianity was a great civilization whose artistic achievements remain forever alive in the memory of men. But little by little it lost ground, medieval Christianity was forced to compromise with rationalism and submit to secular power, and by degrees, was doomed. And as to why? Basically, according to Rediger, it was a mystery; God had simply decided it would be so.

[...]

But for the current bout of inverse colonialism, there are three possible conclusions to the inevitable civil wars that will soon arise in Europe. The first, and most simple conceptually, is to send the unassimilated immigrant masses back to where they came from just as the original anti-colonial movements did to their colonial masters. The second is the gradual Kosovarization of Europe where Muslim minorities gain political control of their no-go banlieues which becomes a sort of “oil-spot”? strategy, but for insurgents. And the third is for the entire society to reject the Enlightenment and accept a form of reverse-assimilation in which the prevailing culture slides backwards and accepts immigrant cultural hegemony. Houellebecq demonstrates in Submission that this might not be as bad an option as previously thought — at least for intelligent, right-leaning males of native stock. Just how serious he is about all this is another matter.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/two-reviews-o ... ent-861495

I wonder whether Houllebecq had the Persians in mind. Islam was originally not only a religion, but a political revolution complete with its own constitution. Muhammad was not only the Arabs’ prophet, but their George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well. He was also an Arab nationalist, a sentiment that pervades the Koran.

When I see people who don’t know a thing about the religion denigrating Islam, I’m not sure whether they understand this about Muhammad, or can imagine how beloved he is by the Arab people not only as a religious figure, but a real, human leader, lawgiver and champion of the people.

However, this is also the problem with Islam for non-Arab peoples. The religion isn’t a great fit for non-Arabs. Christianity, at least, drew a clear line between temporal and spiritual power and duties, allowing people to arrange their societies according to their nature.

So, if I remember correctly, Razib Khan was writing recently about the shift in influence in Islam from the Arab to Persianate peoples. What happened was that the Persians, having “submitted”? to Islam, set about coopting it, and did so quite effectively. The divide between these two major factions remains to this day.

If there were a European mass conversion to Islam, you’d expect there to be another divide and internal Islamic power struggle, especially if Islam were adopted by “identitaire”? Europeans. The idea of resurrecting the Roman empire under Islamic auspices makes this seem plausible, but then again Islam tends to take over existing empires and carve them up – e.g. Persia and Roman Africa – not create new ones. It just doesn’t strike me as a realistic means for creating a new European Imperium. But Houllebecq probably knows this, and is using Islam more as a means to make a point rather than creating a realistic scenario.

Personally, I think he’s right about Christianity, unfortunately. The religion has become chained by its own myths, which are untenable in the modern age. Not to say that myths are absent from the secualr world – they practically define contemporary secular thought – but rather that when an institution changes its primary mission from pursuit of the truth to defending old stories – like pagan Rome – it loses the initiative and will remain on the defensive.

What we forget is that the Christian Church in the West was the main source of both spiritual and intellectual truth and innovation for a very long time. As Houllebecq suggests, the Enlightenment ruined that. But now the Enlightenment ideology has itself taken on the role of defending myths and prosecuting heretics (read the opening chapters of Pinker’s Blank Slate for some background on that — that sly Pinker is one of the most subversive thinkers of our age). What will come to challenge it? Islam? I doubt it, but there has to be something else to take its place, and it has to be a spiritual as well as intellectual movement.

Pointedstick wrote: — that sly Pinker is one of the most subversive thinkers of our age). What will come to challenge it? Islam? I doubt it, but there has to be something else to take its place, and it has to be a spiritual as well as intellectual movement.

A few “lone wolf”? supporters of the Islamic State have attacked Western targets, and more attacks will come. But most of the attackers have been frustrated amateurs, unable to immigrate to the caliphate because of confiscated passports or other problems. Even if the Islamic State cheers these attacks—and it does in its propaganda—it hasn’t yet planned and financed one. (The Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in January was principally an al?Qaeda operation.) During his visit to Mosul in December, Jürgen Todenhöfer interviewed a portly German jihadist and asked whether any of his comrades had returned to Europe to carry out attacks. The jihadist seemed to regard returnees not as soldiers but as dropouts. “The fact is that the returnees from the Islamic State should repent from their return,”? he said. “I hope they review their religion.”?

Pointedstick wrote: Unorthodox solution to end Islamic terrorism in the Western world: Let them emigrate to the middle east and then kill them there!

TennPaGa wrote: Or perhaps, just let them emigrate to the Middle East.

I Shrugged wrote: At some point I have to conclude that the military industrial complex is real, it simply wants wars.  Say they are at the top of a pyramid labeled "we want war".  As you move down the pyramid, the motivations change.  You find the Zionists, the neocons (do I repeat myself), and other aggressive world improvers.  You have the McCain-ite political class.  Then you come to their media lapdogs, the Rush Limbaughs, National Review, etc.  Then you get the listeners, readers, well-intentioned citizens all, who are convinced that the USA needs to take care of Bad People.  That if we don't, BP will come and invade us.  Or whatever.  At every level of this pyramid are people and entities who are being manipulated by the levels above.

We did not beat the Viet Cong.
We did not beat the North Koreans.
Arguably, we did not beat the Iraqis.  We beat their government.  The replacement Bad People there waited for us to leave, and then newer Badder People formed up.  Same for Libya.
We have not beaten the Taliban.  Neither did the Soviets.

OTOH, we have made all of the levels of the pyramid above the base level wealthy and powerful.  The wars have been quite successful in their minds.  Follow the money.

In all of the above wars, we did heap a lot of destruction on the Bad People.  But we didn't beat them.  Not any of them.  NONE.  So now, people think we should go fight ISIS.  What could possibly go wrong?

Simonjester wrote: maybe its not so much an argument for "not doing whats right" but for doing whats right the right way (IE winning). the military industrial complex has no vested interest in winning it hurts their bottom line, endless wars are a win for them. Micro managing politicians have no interest in winning, wining involves killing the enemy and risking american lives, they want to make each minutia decision based on optics and how it will play in the media or how it will effect the next election...

Moussaoui testified at his trial that key members of the Saudi royal family continued to fund al-Qaida in the late 1990s, even after the organization had declared war on the House of Saud. He also described plotting with an employee of the Saudi Embassy in Washington to shoot down Air Force One.

I Shrugged wrote: At some point I have to conclude that the military industrial complex is real, it simply wants wars.  Say they are at the top of a pyramid labeled "we want war".  As you move down the pyramid, the motivations change.  You find the Zionists, the neocons (do I repeat myself), and other aggressive world improvers.  You have the McCain-ite political class.  Then you come to their media lapdogs, the Rush Limbaughs, National Review, etc.  Then you get the listeners, readers, well-intentioned citizens all, who are convinced that the USA needs to take care of Bad People.  That if we don't, BP will come and invade us.  Or whatever.  At every level of this pyramid are people and entities who are being manipulated by the levels above.

We did not beat the Viet Cong.
We did not beat the North Koreans.
Arguably, we did not beat the Iraqis.  We beat their government.  The replacement Bad People there waited for us to leave, and then newer Badder People formed up.  Same for Libya.
We have not beaten the Taliban.  Neither did the Soviets.

OTOH, we have made all of the levels of the pyramid above the base level wealthy and powerful.  The wars have been quite successful in their minds.  Follow the money.

In all of the above wars, we did heap a lot of destruction on the Bad People.  But we didn't beat them.  Not any of them.  NONE.  So now, people think we should go fight ISIS.  What could possibly go wrong?