Musk and Ramaswampy aren't our guys. They're Fake Americans.

During my ~11 years as a hiring manager [for one of the largest Silicon Valley tech giants], I talked to probably over a thousand candidates from tens of thousands of resumes. Looking back, my all-male team was quite “diverse” although everyone was probably INTJ, now that I think about it. I talked at many dozens of Indians, and quickly learned a few things that are invariant: they are helpfully accommodating to the point of obsequiousness, and this holds regardless of whether they have any clue what they’re talking about. This is crucial to understand.

When you are speaking with an Indian, you are not communicating. You are engaging in a choreographed dance where they are exclusively tasked with mirroring your moves, and leaving you to walk away thinking that your needs will be satisfied. And that is all that has happened. If you don’t know which follow-up questions to ask, you’ll have no idea that you’ve just been handled by an entity that understands how to “close,” but not how to deliver anything promised. The idea of the latter is never even part of the equation. Utterly alien minds to us.

One of Britain’s greatest crimes was teaching them to speak with that hackneyed, goobledygook accent, because it simply fries the brains of most Americans. It is scamouflage for the fact that they will lie, lie, lie as easily as you or I draw breath. It’s indescribable. Thankfully, I became good enough at technical interviewing that a couple simple questions would break their lies wide open, & I could simply nope out in good conscience. After a while, a glance at such resumes told me how the conversations would go, optimizing away the rest.

During this time, in other parts of SWE & IS&T, I watched as a couple Indian hires within 18 months turned into an almost wholesale replacement of any other race in the blighted departments. The degree of their apparently illegal hiring practices cannot be overstated. But of course, who is going to complain, and to whom? One of my last cross-functional meetings at the company, myself & one or two other guys from our org met with one of the terraformed orgs. There were 25 of them packed into a room for a meeting that required 5 people tops.

Regardless of context, every American needs to understand that they will lie under any circumstances for any reason or no apparent reason whatsoever. It is “cultural,” so get over your Christendom-centric notions of morality; those exist nowhere else on Earth.

We don't need more Indians. We don't need any Indians. Their culture is not superior to ours. That's why India itself is one of the worst places on the planet and most Indians are desperate to escape it. 

Musk and Ramaswampy are not "our guys". They're members of the Establishment who are gatekeeping on the right wing end to try and keep nationalism, anti-globalism, anti-corporatism and Christianity from re-establishing themselves as key components of Americanism. Just because you agree with and like some of the things that they say and do, don't get fooled. Fake Right Fake Americans have been running this routine for decades, but reliably their loyalty is not to America or Americans and they will throw us under the bus for their real agenda without hesitation. 

This is a little new, though. Mostly in the past this routine has been done by Jews and their Yankee neocon orbiters, partners and groupies. But regardless of who's doing it, it's the same song and dance. Once you learn to recognize it, you can't miss it. 

UPDATE: Spotted on X

I am not an American and I have never crossed the Atlantic – but, as a general point, any line of reasoning that assumes:

• First, that a country with a population the size and quality of America (or Russia, France, Germany, etc) cannot produce its own highly-skilled IT, research, engineering, etc. professionals;
• second, that it is normal and acceptable to brain drain the entire world using economic incentives and globalist ideological propaganda;
• and third, that it is normal and acceptable to deprive your own population of socioeconomic opportunities to save a few bucks by claiming the former and engaging in the latter;

...is not only morally reprehensible and psychotic, but also the sort of self-serving, hypocritical lie that incites homicidal rage in the people who are being damaged by it, and permanently erodes the social fabric on every level.

Indeed, not that I condone or approve, but I do think it's inevitable; this is how "elites" find themselves Luigi'ed in the street someday. As much as we've romanticized the French Revolution; for normal people fascinated by it's horror and for Marxists for its supposed revolutionary fervor, we sure seem determined not to understand it or spot the same types of trends playing out in our own society. And it's hardly like the French Revolution stands alone as the only example of that kind of thing.

Next steps; blogging and vlogging

OK, time to take a step back. I haven't done any of my plans for the last month or so with regards to blogging or vlogging, so let's reiterate the next things that I want to do and see if there's a time that I'll get them done in the next week or two or not. I have family showing up at the end of the week, so I'm unlikely to sequester myself somewhere in the house to record a video or type up a blog post while they're here, but maybe during the work day, if work slows down, I can do so, for at least some of it.

But here's what I wanted to do. In vague terms.

1. Cult of Undeath Fronts 2-5. I've done the work for the first front, mostly, but I have only a very vague handwavey outline for the other fronts. They need for me to spend some time to make sure that they're fleshed out.

2. Shadows Over Garenport Front #1 Video. This was supposed to be the next video I made, and I haven't made one in at least a month.

3. Supervillains of Dark Fantasy X Video. I had a pretty brief blog post about this, but I'd like to flesh it out slightly and redo it as a video. Another one that I announced some time ago and haven't worked on.

4. Development of Nizrekh, Porhomok and the Corsair Coast. I've also made some brief rumblings about these "new" areas, but there's not much there yet. Although it's not urgent, at least one of the two new areas, maybe two of them, will also feature as an expansion "travel" region for Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes, which was originally scheduled to follow Cult of Undeath. 

5. Sort out exactly what I'm doing for future campaigns. But I've also talked about adding at least one if not more campaigns, as well as some shorter "mini-campaigns". I need to at least decide what the high level plan is.

Here's a picture so this post isn't a complete waste. A village on a river into Porhomok inland from the Corsair Coast most likely. 

DEI and the New Right

I still haven't blogged about almost any of the topics that I promised to blog about before the year ended. Sigh. And even now, I'm punting and simply annotating another Z-man post. 

It's important to not oversell what is happening. He makes this point with the collapse of DEI, while pointing out that nothing really substantial is changing; it's just going a bit underground and more quiet. People really don't want conflict. They want people to agree to be sensible and fair without having to tear down the artifacts of society that have been corrupted to prop up the nonsense and unfairness, but it isn't very likely to actually happen, and it very, very rarely has ever happened historically. When a ruling caste has become so hostile to the people that it rules that every aspect of the system that props them up is rooted in that hostility, the only solution is to destroy that system and rebuild a new one.

People sometimes call Trump a wrecking ball rather than a "regular" political figure, and in some ways that's true. But in most substantial ways, it's not. He's really not all that radical, and he wants to reform the system while somehow still preserving it. I think it's a bit more shrewd and has had his eyes opened, or has been red-pilled, to some extent, since his first term, but in reality, he's just a warm-up to what must inevitably come, unless he's shockingly and astronomically improbably successful in reforming the system. What must come is either a hard reboot of the American system back to it's install version in the late 1700s, or more likely just a complete collapse of the American system and the building of something else to replace it. We should hope that Trump will be successful, because the alternative is either a Napoleon or Pinochet to clean up the mess, or just a bigger mess; a complete collapse into anarchy and a destruction of the current system entirely.

A lot of people think that the collapse is a prelude to the Second Coming and therefore we don't need to solve our problems. I think that may be somewhat hubristic. Maybe the American Empire is important enough that its collapse corresponds to the End Times prophecies, but clearly that's been thought many, many times before in Christendom, obviously in vain. There have been many large societal collapses before, and what usually happens is that it's followed by a Dark Age before someone else rebuilds a new system. The Bronze Age collapse of an interlinked "global" system turning into centuries of Dark Ages until the Classical Greeks, Celts, and Iron Age Fertile Crescent societies rebuilt a completely new system in their place is a good example. 

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=33193

One of the things that got the “new right” buzzing in the closing months of the election was the sudden pullback by corporations on the DEI front. A bunch of large companies announced they were terminating these programs. This led to the online wing of the “new right” to confidently say “we are winning!” It was part of a wave of pro-Trump confidence that kicked in during the final six weeks of the election. After the election, the same forces sense they can clear the field of DEI.

That is the subtext to this post by Christopher Rufo, who has made a lucrative career out of opposing the DEI machine. It is a letter to the Trump transition team urging them to reverse the various executive orders creating the DEI bureaucracy within the federal bureaucracy and replacing it with a “colorblind” evaluation system. By acting quickly, Rufo thinks, the new administration can deal a death blow to the DEI movement, while momentum is on their side.

Rufo is smart to point out that public sentiment has shifted strongly against DEI, so Trump would not be battling with a hornet’s nest if he does this. Rufo frames his approach as low hanging fruit that would make Trump’s voters happy without spending too much political capital. On the other hand, the closest thing to eternal life is a government program, regardless of origin. Every president has dreamed of killing at least one government program. None have succeeded.

To his credit, Rufo seems to get this reality. Merely rescinding these executive orders would change nothing, as these race operations are now enshrined in the budgets of the main government agencies. More important, the workforce inside these agencies are committed to defending them because of the iron law of bureaucracy. The people actually running these agencies are solely committed to defending every paperclip that exists inside their agency.

There is something else missing and that is any thought as to why private corporations have made a big deal out of killing these programs. The main reason is they have proven to be bad public relations. It is not the existence that is bad public relations, but the over-the-top embrace of these race programs. Execs were sold on these being a great way to built favor with the diverse public. It turned out that they had no impact on sale, despite claims to the contrary.

In other words, the marketing campaign in favor of these programs became a pointless hassle for the companies doing it. Anyone who has spent time in a corporation understands that management is always ready to eliminate a pointless hassle, especially one that has no revenue stream. Like the company that puts up a sign that reads, “Under New Management”, these companies are hoping to turn a bad marketing scheme into a second chance with their customers.

The programs themselves, however, have not changed much as all. Again, anyone familiar with corporate life knows that “diversity” has been a part of the system for decades, long before Mr. Rufo noticed them. The DEI department will simply be renamed and folded back into human resources. The reason for that is these are a necessary defense against lawsuits. Diversity programs are a defense against lawfare, which is as permanent as a government program.

No matter what the public might think about any of this, the lawfare will continue, which means diversity pogroms will continue. The reason the lawfare will continue is, in part, to keep the diversity rackets going. There has always been a lot of coordination between the diversity pogroms and the lawfare. The main reason, however, is the law requires the diversity lawfare to continue. The civil rights revolution created a legal framework to impose what cannot happen naturally.

The point of the Brown case was not simply to overturn the Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, but to lay the foundation for a new moral order within the law that future cases and future legislation could build upon. This is exactly what happened over the following decades. Katzenbach v. McClung, for example, gave Congress a broad, extra-Constitutional mandate to address discrimination. In that case, they found a way to ban discrimination, despite having no jurisdiction.

This is what the “new right” fails to grasp about their calls for “colorblind” policies and the dismantling of DEI. What they want is not just impractical, but legally impossible, as a result generations of jurisprudence. The courts have repeatedly affirmed the two truths of our current legal framework. Discrimination is always bad and therefore always assumed to be illegal. Inclusion is always good and therefore should be the outcome of constitutionally defendable policies.

That means a “colorblind admission policy” at Harvard would be discriminatory if the result is a tiny number of black undergrads. It sounds insane, but by the logic of the law, it is perfectly reasonable. Our legal framework is not just eliminating observable discrimination, but also fostering inclusion. This is why the DEI people say it is not enough to be not racist. You must be anti-racist, by which they mean creating an inclusive racial environment everywhere.

This is why the war against DEI is nothing more than hacking at the leaves. The roots of the problem go back much further than the current racial fads and they have sunk deep into the psyche of the managerial class. It is why the word “inclusion” and variations on it salt the language of the ruling class. They are all about openness, because openness is the highest moral good according to the civil right ideology. This is not a front brain thing for them. It is a part of their internal logic.

It is not all bad news, however. The “new right” campaign against DEI has had the unintended side effect of delegitimizing the civil rights ideology. People have grown used to mocking this stuff, which is a small step from rejecting the primary goal of civil rights ideology, which is the open society. This was the motivation behind the censorship campaigns. The ideologues understand that if you can mock any part of the regime, you can mock all of it.

In this regard, Christopher Rufo and the “color blind new right” are a rearguard action, defending what they can of a regime that is losing legitimacy. It is an attempt to meet the public halfway. They get rid of the more odious parts of the regime but keep the parts that make the regime possible. That is the play of a loser, so the rise and prominence of the “color blind new right” is a positive. The generations old racial regime is in retreat in the face of an increasingly skeptical populace.

The CEO Assassination

My first thought was that people don't really care that much about the CEO assassination, because of a general sense that even if it was a murder, the guy probably deserved it at some level. Our sense of outrage at a social order motivated crime like this against a person who probably has contributed in general to our lives being worse just can't be raised. Even though the guy was a big figure in a quiet way on the national scene, it was really just a local murder story, no more worthy of being the target of national news that any other random murder story. The Z-man had a similar take, but took the analysis of what it might mean further. His thoughts on the matter are kind of interesting, as is often true.

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=33176

An interesting bit of subtext to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO is how the reactions to it reflects the shifting politics in America. Twenty years ago, the general reaction online would have been what you see in television police dramas. The vast majority of the public would have been cheering on the police as they searched for the killer, while his family was paraded in front of the cameras. The dead guy would have been the unquestionable victim of a terrible crime.

On top of that, the people we call conservatives would have been waddling about in their comfort fit chinos, beating their chests about crime and the demonization of capitalism by the people we call the left. As soon as it was clear that the perpetrator was a white male, the people we call the left would have been tub-thumping about the need for gun control and maybe white male violence. Both sides would have done their act in front of predictably adoring audience.

Both sides have tried their normal act, but the world has changed and that means the audience is not as interested in the old shows. The people we call the left got this right away and stuck to giggling about the victim being the head of one of those evil health insurance companies they have been demonizing for decades. They were sure the killer was one of their own, due to his wearing a dark hoodie. In fact, a lot of people in the dissident camp assumed [he] was Antifa too.

Based on the news reports, we can eliminate Antifa from the story. The guy they arrested has “pepe” in his social media profiles and is a fan of Uncle Ted, the avuncular character knowns as the Unabomber. While it is unlikely that he is “our guy”, he is clearly a young man who escaped the old political paradigm. He does not fit the left’s version of a hero or the right’s version of a villain. He has become a bit of a folk hero for many of the people who voted for Trump.

That last bit is what is vexing to the right-wing influencers. Their script does not have a section for this sort of character. The main job of conservatives is to celebrate and defend corporate power, but the bulk of their audience has long ago become fed-up by the abuses of corporate America. It was not the government banning them from the internet or cancelling their bank accounts. It is not the government race-swapping cultural content or running ads in favor of buggery.

There you see the big change in attitudes that is vexing legacy politics. For the last decade or so, it is the people we call the left who have been cheering on corporate America as they made war against our rights. The people we call conservatives sat silently as this went on. The CEO of United Healthcare could have been an anarcho-capitalist for anyone knows, but for the general public, he is the faceless symbol of corporate greed and avarice. People have had enough of it.

This case also reveals that the old American love of the outlaw is still there, buried under the piles of corporate slop. As the great Southern bard observed, outlaws touch the ladies somewhere deep down in their soul. America is a woman, so she has always had a love for the outlaw. The reason for that is the old frontier sensibility tells us that sometimes, you need the outlaw, because sometimes, a man needs killing and you cannot do that within the law.

That ties in neatly with the whiff of revolution in the air. The election of Donald Trump and the apparent acceptance of it by the political class has people thinking about more than just “owning the libs” in an election. To a lot of people, the bad guys look scared right now and this event feels like a nice reminder to them that there are worse things than losing an election. If the 2016 election was a warning to the ruling class, then the 2024 election is the final warning.

There is another angle here. The people we call the left have been demonizing health insurance companies for a long time. In typical bougie fashion, the rhetoric has gone well beyond factual criticism. Since Hillary Clinton waddled onto the stage, the left has been calling healthcare companies parasites that must be destroyed. Logically, it means the people running them are evil parasites who must be destroyed. Inside the real halls of power, people are making the obvious connection.

What the 2024 election revealed is there has been a shift in the economic elite. Some members have figured out that there is real danger for them, and they backed Donald Trump and continue to back him as he prepares to take power. Elon Musk is not bunkmates with Trump by accident. This will not be a repeat of the first administration. Some members of the economic elite want reform because they do not want to be on the wrong end of the next viral assassination video.

In other words, it is not just the change in public attitudes that has the chattering classes vexed, but also the change in the economic elite. The killing of that CEO kicked over more than just the rock of public opinion. It revealed the growing angst of the economic elite in response to changing public opinion. Even though it was just one young man on a mission, it is a reminder that history has often pivoted on one man or one event, setting off a chain of events.

When the desires of the economic elite align with the desires of the populace, things can start happening in a hurry. That is the conclusion of this big study on how policy is formed in America. A decade ago, researchers discovered what has been obviously true since the dawn of time. Every society has an elite and they generally get what they want, despite public attitudes, but they always get what they want when they are on the side of the people.

This is why the chattering classes are struggling with this story. It is why they will put the whole thing on ignore now that the killer has been caught. They have been selected and trained to play particular roles in an old show, but now the curtain is falling on that show, so they must scramble for parts in the next show. The reason for that is the audience has changed and now the producers are changing along with them. Luigi Mangione put a bullet in all the old acts.

Southern Utah

I've spent most of the last two weeks out of town, although I am now back, back at work chugging through all of the missed emails (and finding out that I'll likely go back to El Paso/Juarez for a quick work trip next week; right before Christmas. Sigh.)

That said, I love the American West, and I'm not averse to spending some time when the weather's relatively nice in El Paso. I spent most of last week in Southern Utah. I saw a number of sites, and the pictures below are only a small sampling of the places I visited, including:

• Little Wild Horse slot canyon
• Valley of the Goblins
• Canyonlands Island in the Sky Unit
• Factory Butte
• the "Long Dong Silver" geologic feature
• Swing City
• Moonscape Overlook
• Arches National Park
• Natural Bridges National Monument
• Bears Ears National Monument

I'll make a more detailed set of posts on my hiking blog later. For now, this'll have to do.

Looking at a pass out of the moonscape region

Hiking towards the absolutely barren "Long Dong Silver" feature, also called the Dark Spire. But not by anyone online.

One of the views from the Moonscape Overlook

Another Moonscape Overlook picture

From behind the Dark Spire. It's not really a spire; from the side angle it looks more like a shark fin

The cliffs of Moonscape Overlook with Factory Butte looming in the background

"Presidential" natural bridge, the largest of the three. I hiked to the bottom of all three and stood underneath them

On the trail down to Sipapu Bridge

The Bear's Ears themselves

I didn't realize I had another view of the same bridge. I do have more pictures of the others, but they'll have to wait for another post.

A kiva on the way down to Sipapu bridge

Petroglyphs near Wolfe Ranch in Arches National Park

Me standing under Delicate Arch, the most iconic scenic formation in the entire state

Some Anasazi ruins in Bear's Ears. Yes, I know they don't like to say Anasazi anymore. I don't care

The whole place was crawling with ravens. I got this close up of one of them