Social Matter

Michael Pillsbury is a man experienced and knowledgeable in the political sphere. His work has informed Presidents, Generals, and Congressman and determined the strength and scope of their policies. He is one of those men who hide behind the curtain, those whose words send legions of spooks into action. But all indirectly, all hands off, all through analysis. And it’s fitting. He’s got the looks for it. He’s also the mastermind behind the recent foreign policy hit, “The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower”. In it he scares the bejesus out of American bureaucrats […]

On this, an occasion of no particular significance, let us pause and revisit one of the great achievements of modern drama.  In an age when technology is demonized and environmentalism exalted, there remains at least one last shining example of Man overcoming nature.  I speak, of course, of Predator (1987). The plot is straightforward: sent into the Central American jungle to kill some generic rebels, Arnold and company succeed spectacularly only to find themselves stalked by a mysterious alien Predator.  In the end, only Arnold survives the creature’s attacks, and he defeats it by covering himself in mud and crushing […]

Last Thursday, I wrote about the ethnic dimension of politics. More specifically, I wrote about a strange phenomenon in American public discourse whereby conservatives consistently pretend, in all their official correspondence and rhetoric, that no such dimension exists. I argued that this habit puts them at a marked disadvantage against many of their competitors in the national arena, who exhibit no such compunctions and feel free to speak, protest, lobby in terms of plain ethnic interests. The conservatives have to engage in proxy arguments and byzantine circumlocutions and the occasional ritual sacrifice of one of their own on the altar […]

All politics are tribal. And so it follows that all politics are ethnic, however and at whatever scale you decide to define the ethnos. Race in part generates and delineates tribal identities. Tribal identities drive politics. Them’s the breaks. Not everyone’s willing to admit to this state of affairs, of course. But trying to play the game of politics while studiously ignoring the racial warp thereof is like trying to beat someone at Risk without acknowledging the defender’s-advantage mechanic. It’s going to be much more difficult than anticipated. Your hopes will be frustrated. Battles that you reckoned you had in the […]