Ryan Landry of Social Matter Weimerica Weekly – Episode 71 – All Sides Blackpilling
I agree Hillary would have been worse than Trump, but that alone is not good enough. Like saying that testicular cancer has a higher survival rather than mesothelioma, which according to the CDC it does, but politics is cancer, no matter the histology. [1] He mentions Richard Spender, Alex Jones, and others on the ‘dissent right’, but I don’t want NRx to become too inclusive…it’s not a ‘big tent’ or a re-branding of paleoconservatism; rather, it’s something different altogether that transcends politics. Go to Zerohedge (or any hype and ad-driven political website) and see how dumb the advertisements are, as well as much of the content, is. If NRx becomes like that, it’s doomed to ineffectiveness. I cannot stress this enough: if NRx dilutes itself in the hope of a bigger audience, it is doomed and its mission has failed. That’s not to say Richard Spencer is wrong; it’s just not the NRx ‘way’.
‘Blackpilling’ is similar to stoicism or fatalism. These are personal approaches/philosophies, not immutable and universal truths/facts: Blackpilling may work for some, but not for others–it depends on the person. It could mean to acknowledge that the situation, as it presently is, is impervious to change, and that rather than resisting it, which may be waste of time, one should make the best of it upon attaining understanding. Idealism sometimes means fighting an unwinnable war; Blackpilling is to surrender. I think the pill metaphor is overdone anyway. This doesn’t mean having no values. It’s just a more pragmatic, rationalist, realism-based approach that seeks to maximize signal in a society drowning in noise.
Eschatology, millennialism, collapse, and doom and gloom, IMHO, are forms of activism because they involve wishful thinking, escapism, and hope, more so than dealing with reality. When you read activist-inspired content on sites such as Zerohedge and Info Wars, you see the futility in which by spreading all this ‘awareness’ about corruption, things will change. Consider a thought experiment: let’s assume things are as bad and corrupt as they can possibly be: then what. How does your life change. Most people when confronted with such a question, don’t know. Because it’s not obvious what to do…we’re supposed to be outraged, but to what ends.
Once criticism is idealistic tendency to seek change through external factors (whether it be economic collapse, creating a new government, etc.) than the internal (self-improvement, pragmatism), possibly as a way of shifting the burden to the ‘collective’ than the ‘self’. So for example, in the podcast, regarding the opioid epidemic among white males, a ‘collective’ explanation is that the epidemic is due to society failing these people (these drug addicts are victims of society); the ‘internal’ could be ‘laziness, stupidity, genes that predispose addiction, etc.’ We need to resit the temptation to ascribe all failings and problems as having collective causes rather than internal.
[1] The problem is, politics often attracts those who are the most desirous of power, not necessarily the most competent, but democracy does an inadequate good job of maintaining and concentrating power, so politicians are compelled to pander and or advocate ‘bad’ policy for votes, in order to preserve what little power they can attain for the short time they are office and for re-election. This leaves some options: eliminate politics and democracy, strengthen the existing power of statesmen, or entrust power upon the most responsible and competent, which as the empirical evidence shows, is presently the private sector, especially in STEM and other areas of technology, not the government. The second choice means running the risk of the incompetent having too much power. As alluded by the so-called ‘Dilbert Principle’, the incompetent yet ambitious need to be sequestered in some way, to minimize the damage they can possibly inflict. As I wrote before, low-IQ countries fail because they have weak private sectors and incompetent people vying for power, resulting in economic stagnation and corruption. And this brings me to another criticism of NRx (and also some of the alt-right): rather than constantly using America as an exemplar for decay/decline, instead focus more on countries such as Brazil, Spain, Italy, which are in far worse shape than America and serve as a better blueprint for dysfunction.