China Is Failing, Not Ascending

I'm going to be out for a week. I'm traveling to a wedding. While, I'm going, I will leave you with this...

Throughout my life, there has always been a boogieman. There was always one before I was born too. Nazi Germany, the Soviets, Japan Inc., China. People in the US pushed the idea that these societies were better organized than us, had a longer-term outlook, outworked us, out-thought us, out-bred us, and would eventually beat us. It was never true. In fact, to believe these things, these people had to ignore so much evidence.

In the case of China, I've been telling you all this since the beginning of the blog. China is a paper tiger. And now, people are finally starting to catch on. What has tipped them off? LINK

(1) China's demographics are terrible. They may (or may not) have reached a billion people but they are now crashing fast. The reason is they don't produce enough kids, their population is aging, and they have 40 million "extra" men (or missing girls) who will never have families. I've always understood China will fall from a billion people to around 750 million, but now the Chinese themselves are estimating it's going to be 587 million. Think about that. Their population is going to halve over the next fifty-sixty years. Imagine if half the people in your town vanished. Think about the economic, societal and psychological effects. Think about the effect on property values, the business environment if half the consumers are gone, and long-term development with half the number of scientists, businessmen and thinkers. Demographics has tripped them up... it always would.

Making this worse, it turns out their lower officials are lying to their central government and their population figures might be overstated very badly. Some estimates say by as much as 25%. That has led to a worst case estimate of just over 400 million. That's the size of the US in about 10 years. So much for world dominance.

(2) For years, we've been treated to article after article about the Chinese economy passing ours. Some pretended to gnash their teeth and then gloatingly claimed they might even have already done it. In the early 2000s, some group tried to sell this idea by re-figuring the Chinese currency based on hocus pocus to add a hidden 25% to their economic value -- and then recommended we better get humble. Yet, somehow China never caught up. Imagine that. And now many are saying they never may. Why? Well, demographics is a killer. But even more, as their currency has gained in value, their economic growth stalled. Why? Because China made its money being a cheap place to put factories. But as wages and the currency went up, it stopped being cheap. It's now cheaper to put a factory in Mexico than China... never mind Bangladesh and Vietnam. So that is where the factories are going. This was inevitable if you understand even basic economics.

Third, China wastes its resources very badly. This is the controlled economy problem. This is why the Soviets could build a decent fightercraft but couldn't produce enough food to feed their people... and why it cost so much to build. The world is just too complex for one person to run it. It takes billions of people making decisions every day to balance an economy. China has tried to do it the totalitarian way which has resulted in ugly, unmanageable cities, civic projects that destroyed more than they helped, fraud, failed economic kickstarts over and over, and a massive debtload. How large of a debtload? There's a really good article that explains everything I'm saying here. Here's the LINK. In it, the author explains how US debt has basically doubled since 2007 whereas China's has gone up 50 times. That's insane, and it's not slowing down. China is trying to buy a perfect future and is bleeding money on boondoggles in the process.

(3) China has no friends either. China has tried for years to buy friends through something called the Belt and Road Initiative. It's like US foreign aid only more direct. The idea is to build infrastructure in foreign countries to bind them to China. Africa in particular has been a recipient of this. The problem is, the Chinese are arrogant. They bring Chinese workers and (abusive) managers, preventing any economic benefits from hitting these countries. They remain secretive, angering these places. And they drive hard bargains for these projects, killing any goodwill. The end result is that China has poured billions into foreign countries with precious little to show for it. Even their plan to hand out Covid vaccines to buy friends turned into a disaster because China's vaccines really didn't work.

(4) China's military is crap too. We hear talk of China's military build up every day. The problem is, they have based their military on building their own versions of Russian garbage. The same stuff getting smoooshed in Ukraine right now is the stuff China is building. The pride of their navy is their third (but really first to work) aircraft carrier. It's based on a Russian design from the 1980s. Keep in mind, the Russians were not known for their naval expertise or their carriers and the ship this is modeled on is so terrible that tugboats accompany it overseas in case it breaks down and sinks. Not joking. The Chinese bought its scrapped sister ship and then built their own two based on its hulk. The new one is the first that's really seaworthy.

The Chinese are building volume. That is true. And they are excellent spies. True. But they have no ability to project their military outward and, even if they did, it would get crushed in a real battle... just like the Russians in Ukraine.

I'm not saying China's not a threat to start a war, but keep all of this in mind the next time some professor or stockpicker tells you about China's inevitability. The only thing inevitable about China is its collapse. The US remains the preeminent economic and military power and we are pulling ahead every day. The reason is economic freedom, individuality allowing creativity, and our cultural mix of seeing ourselves as problem solvers and dreamers. That is what we must defend.

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The Points...

I want to clarify the points I am trying to make in the last article because I don't want them to be lost in the details. What you should take out of the last article about Barbie is the following:

(1) Feminists know they must hide their beliefs from the public, because the public does not accept them. Basically, they have to trick people into being exposed to their views. This also means the public is not lost to them.

(2) Feminists lie to promote their propaganda, including lying about it being political and lying about its success (or lack there of), and their fellow travelers in the media do the lying for them.

(3) Feminism, at its core, is anti-woman. Feminism denigrates women and all things feminine that do not conform to their singular view of acceptable womanhood.

(4) Feminists use things like this movie to claim a mandate for societal change. The battle for the future is being fought here, not on Capital Hill.

I could give you more, but those are the vital points.

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Lessons from Barbie

I watch a lot of different things to understand what is really happening in our world because people give themselves away in many ways and they do so more honestly through their actions than their words. One thing I watch is movies. Movies tell us what is happening in society because left and right fight propaganda wars over them and the public votes with its dollars. With that in mind, let's talk about some rather interesting lessons we can learn from the movie Barbie.

Lesson 1: Feminists Know They Must Hide Their Beliefs.

Hollywood, like corporate America generally, has learned to lie as a matter of policy. They lie about everything to do with film, particularly when they think something will offend. This is why actresses in sleazy roles talk about how they only took the role because it was a "strong woman," why actors and directors scream about how faithful they are to books they adapt even as they gut everything the story was, why they hide budget numbers, why they cut trailers deceptively, why everyone praises moron actors for their intelligence, why actors always seem to save drowning children when right before a premier, and so forth. When a film does something Hollywood knows will not fly with the public, they simply lie about it: we aren't doing that at all!

From the get go, Barbie was obviously a feminist movie. It was written by feminists, directed by a woman who has only done feminist films, and premised on attacking a feminist boogieman... the evil Barbie doll, corrupter of little girls. The scenes they've released address feminist talking points. The film even uses the word "patriarchy" many times -- the zenith of recent feminist dogma. Yet, from the first day of production until only about two days before the film's release, everyone associated with the film denied that it was a feminist movie. No, no, no, we're doing this to love and honor Barbie! There's no feminism in this! Only in the last two days before the release, once they figured they had hooked little girls everywhere, did interviews appear admitting that the film is actually a feminist rant and explaining why the film is "significant" for that reason. So basically... they lied. They lied because they knew feminism doesn't sell with the public so they lied to hide what this film was so people would come see it.

The lesson: feminists know they must hide their views if they are to attract the public, and lying to do so is not beneath them.

Lesson 2: Feminists Lie To Claim Successes They Did Not Earn.

With this film becoming a massive feminist propaganda push, it became vital that it be seen to be a success. Not only does 'success breed success' because of the herd instinct (i.e. people want to do what they are told everyone else is doing) but with them finally admitting this was a feminist sermon, they could not be seen to fail. Failure would equal rejection and would expose their lack of support. They could not allow that. So we have been told...

This movie is historic! It's opening is the biggest opening ever for a female directed film! (Our time has come!) It's opening is the biggest movie ever for a film with a female lead. (Society wants women leads!) This was the biggest opening of the year! It had the biggest preview night ever! It blew away the initial estimates of $40 million to score an incredible $167 million ($300 million depending on the article).

But is any of this true? Well, no.

First, the actual original estimate for Barbie was "it will save theaters." This was turned into a range between $85 million and $155 million, which will not save theaters. That was before the marketing campaign began. About a month ago, this was suddenly lowered to "$120 or more." A week ago, it was strangely lowered again to "$55 million to $85 million" even with pre-sales being in line with $155 million. Two days later, it was reset to $155 million or more. It scored $167 million. That does exceed $155 million, but it's not such a huge exceed that it would draw headlines for any non-ideological films. Indeed, if it had been a Marvel film, it would have been described as "in line with estimates." Instead, hundreds of articles were written gloatingly declaring a victory for this film (and films "headed by women") with most comparing the $167 to the "original estimate" of $55 million (some have claimed $40 million, which seems to be entirely made up and others compare the worldwide opening to the domestic estimate), even though $55 million was never the original estimate and seems to have been a lie meant to let them claim a smashing success.

There's more too. Barbie did not have the biggest opening of the year as all these articles claim. Super Mario Brothers opened to $170 million. That's close though, right? Eeeeeexcept, Barbie lumped in Thursday presales into Friday to boost its opening. In other words, Barbie counted its first 4 days to get to the $167 million opening (a fact dutifully scrubbed from news articles and even Box Office Mojo). If you look at the first four days of Super Mario Brothers instead of the three commonly used to decide an "opening", it actually scored $205 million, blowing Barbie away. Barbie didn't have the biggest preview night either, as they claimed. Its $22 million lost to the $32 million of Mario Brothers.

So all these claims of being the number one film etc. etc. are provably false. So why are they repeated? Because they serve the narrative. They also serve the studio, which knows about herd instinct. In fact, to make sure things didn't go wrong, Warner Brothers only reported "estimated" ticket sales for the first three days so it made sure to beat out the highest grossing female directed film (Wonder Woman) and other recent films. By controlling the data, they prevented any nasty surprises. Racist-left Little Mermaid did that too so they could claim to be the number one film the weekend when they came out. The problem was, Disney overstated the Little Mermaid's first day opening by 25%. That size mistake is called a lie, not an error. Warner Brothers at least was able to back up the estimates after the weekend, but it shows you they were uncertain enough to lie just in case.

Again, why lie? Because these articles are not promoting a film, they are promoting a feminist sermon and it is vital to these people that it be seen as a success, the more smashing the better. "It's historic!" Indeed, there are already articles saying "hey, Barbie was such a success, it showed the public wants feminist films, films directed by women and films led by women... Hollywood needs to accept this change in society." And the fact they are willing to lie to make that case is the lesson. This is the basis of propaganda.

Lesson 3: The Public Is Not Buying Leftism.

But so here's the question, did all of this help? Did the film reach "the public"? We won't know until we see how well this movie does long term, but right now I would say no.

Here's the thing, for an ideological piece to be successful in affecting society, it must reach beyond the true believers. Did Barbie do that? Based on average ticket prices, I would estimate that around 12 million people have seen the film so far. That's less than half the number who watch any generic regional NFL Sunday game (games of the week can get as high as 40 million). That's only 3.1% of the population. That's still in true believer territory. For this thing to "win" ideologically, it needs to get to little girls and their moms, and that has not happened yet. And looking at audience pictures, it seems to have captured exactly what you would expect: Barbie-hating feminists and gay men. Indeed, the film was marketed on floats at Pride parades and almost every woman who has reviewed the film (and repeated the false claims above) goes out of her way to mention her disdain for Barbie as a child. I saw no evidence of moms with kids or straight males.

Moreover, the film has produced zero iconic moments that catch on with the public: go ahead, make my day... use the force... squeal like a pig boy... I'll be back... the boy who lived. These are moments that capture the public's attention and become part of public discourse. People know what these mean and where they come from, even if they haven't seen the film. They take on meaning. Barbie hasn't offered a single image or quote yet that has done this.

So far, there is simply no evidence Barbie, like other leftist attempts, has influenced the public. The only caveat I put on this is that because 'conservatives' are so awful right now, there is no one offering a reasonable alternative.

Lesson 4: Feminists Hate Women.

Finally, we come to something that's been clear for a long time and which this film highlights: feminists hate women. Like all leftist ideas, feminism cloaks itself in talk of equality and tolerance but it seeks power, not equality, and it is highly intolerant to those who don't toe the line. This is why feminists have for years mocked housewives, disdained childbirth, and have undermined "female" values and femininity itself. Like all obsessives, this devolved into the most sniveling, personal types of attacks too. Hence, Hillary Clinton stepping in it when she mocked cookie baking.

Barbie has long been a feminist boogiewoman. Feminists accuse Barbie of causing all kinds of issues. Basically, they have dumped all their insecurities on the doll and blamed it for all of them. She made me feel ugly! She wasn't inclusive. She undermined my career potential! Nonsense. So here comes the film, and it's message is that attractive and femininely dressed women who like men are shallow and stupid and secretly unhappy. This is sour grapes as ideology. Of course, the film also hates men, but men are barely relevant to them. The real target is women. If you are attractive, you are shallow and stupid. If you like "girly things" instead of thinking about death and depression, you are shallow and stupid. If you like men, you are shallow and stupid. That's the real meaning at the heart of this film. The lesson is that feminism really is about unhappy women looking for ways to make themselves feel better at the expense of women who are well adjusted, and they are rather petty about it.

That's the dirty secret of feminism: feminists hate other women and seek to destroy them. There is a ton of evidence to support this, from lying about the psychological impact of abortion and being single to forcing girls into sports for which they are not suited to making them judge themselves by standards they don't want to denigrating the very things girls like... feminism is about destroying other women.

Thoughts?

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The Problem: The Outrage Machine

Probably the biggest problem with politics is the outrage machine. It has killed conservatism and liberalism and replaced it with irrelevant outrage, a mob mentality, rumor acting as fact and conspiracy acting as wisdom. How did this happen? Well, interestingly, sports explains it.

I don't know how many of you follow sports, but it provides some fascinating parallels to politics. This is one instance. If you look back at the sports media (writers, newscasters, game announcers) from a couple decades ago, what you would find is people who learned the craft of sports analysis. That involved gaining a solid understanding of the sports which they covered and then applying that knowledge to what happened on the field. But that's no longer true. Today, sports analysis is a wasteland of hate, rumor and idiocy.

What happened is that with the advent of talk radio, ratings became the biggest driver of analysis. The meant the value of shock and hype rose and the value of thoughtful analysis fell. After all, it's a lot easier to get ratings when you say obnoxious things that play on people's negative emotional needs than it is to entertain people with a treatise-like discussion of formations and skills. "If it bleeds, it leads," they used to say; today they just say "scream it."

Naturally, those who could shock better did better, whether they knew anything about the sport or not, and those who could not shock floundered. Making this worse, shock is like an addiction: it requires constant feeding to maintain its appeal and it requires greater shocks every time for the same effect. Thus, things devolved to the point everyone is just spending the day trying to shock people with the most outrageous opinions and going off the deep end about rumors. Actual analysis no longer matters. Basically, they replaced the sports William F. Buckleys with drunks arguing at the bar.

The media, acting rationally in the pursuit of ratings, started giving bigger contracts to the shockiest, whether they knew anything or not -- in fact, it's better if they didn't because facts usually get in the way of outrage. So they slowly dropped the guys who knew what they were talking about because people weren't listening to them anymore and they replaced them with the loudest hate-mongers they could find. And the most successful were promoted from radio to television, given their own shows, and moved up to sports shows like ESPN Sports Center. Soon, they were all that was left.

The perfect example of this is Skip Bayless. Bayless is a human turd who specializes in sports talk. He got famous suggesting that Dallas Hall of Fame Quarterback Troy Aikman was a homosexual. He was essentially a rumor monger. This drew a huge audience, so eventually Fox (which employed Aikman at the time) actually hired him to bring his garbage to their television. Once there, he got show after show, started appearing on sports recap shows, and was soon considered one of the top sports analysts. The joke is, he doesn't know anything about sports. He just knows how to attack people! A team lost? Well, it wasn't because of a bad strategy, it was because the coach is a moron who needs to be fired because he "lost the locker room!" The quarterback is too told! The running back is after a new contract! Etc. His most recent "outrage" is that LeBron James is switching to No. 23. He literally used the word outrage. Nevermind that LeBron has switched between 6 and 23 several times before. This time, "it's an outrage!"

Guys like Bayless and Stephen A. Smith and a dozen others turned sports into a hate-filled world of sheer idiocy. All they know is anger. And that has filtered down to all levels. You no longer need to know sports to write about it, you just need to know how to gossip and scream.

How bad is it? Let me give you an example. As I watched the NBA finals, the Miami Heat made a decision in one of the games to shoot three point shots instead of twos. I recognized this because I saw the pattern where they managed to easily get the ball to a player under the net over and over, but he never tapped the ball in - an easy 2 point shot. He forswore the easy two point shot and instead passed it out to the three point line. Based on that, I knew they would lose. Why? Because the odds of shooting threes is so much lower that they could not compete with the Nuggest who were simply putting in two point shots every time (around 40% versus 90+%). Thus, I realized that the Nuggets would score 4 points on every two possessions (shooting 2 of 2) whereas Miami would score only 3 points on their two possessions (shooting 1 of 2). The Nuggets knew this too and moved their guys away from the net to try to block the three point shots, basically leaving the player under the net free to score if he wanted... because they knew he didn't want to. The result was that Miami got killed and had to change strategies at halftime.

That's really good analysis (sorry for the lack of modesty). It was predictive of play after play, it explained what each team's strategy was and why Miami's wasn't working, and the final result. It even explained why certain players were acting the way they did.

Do you know what though? No one mentioned it. Not the announcers. Not the post-game analysts. None of the writers the next day. None of the talk radio guys. They all hammered away with tropes ("The Nuggets are too tall for the Heat!" or "the home crowd gave the Nuggets energy") and then went on the outrage bandwagon: Miami's Jimmy Butler "disappeared!" He's washed up! He was never good enough! Trade him for picks and start over!! They drafted wrong!!

Do you understand the problem here? These people are the people who tell the public what to think. None of them understood what had really happened. Miami chose a risky strategy and it failed. That was all. Miami knew it, they changed at the half. Denver knew it, they practically dared Miami to do it. But the paid announcers (the supposed cream of their crop of basketball knowledge) didn't recognize it. The half-time analysts, all former players and coaches, didn't recognize it. The talk radio guys who claim to live and breathe this stuff and talk for three hours a day about it didn't get it either. All we heard was personal attacks on coaches and players, conspiracy theories about the refs, and pie in the sky garbage about fantasy player swaps and messiah-like demands for draft picks ("he's the next LeBron").

Think about that. That is why sports analysis is utter garbage today. It offers zero actual analysis. Instead, it involves outrage, hyperbole, misdirection to gossip all hidden under the thin veneer of meaningless statistics to make opinion sound supported. They've even invented a conspiracy-theory style of thinking called the "hot take" to excuse being wrong time and time again and stepping over lines: "That was just a 'hot take', you can't hold that against me!"

Politics has gone the same route.

Talk radio learned that selling outrage, rumors and conspiracy is the key to getting listeners. It feeds people's anger and frustration, and that sells. So the same thing has happened. These people don't care about the ideology and wouldn't understand it if they did, all they know is that outrage sells... so sell outrage. This trickled out to places like Fox and MSNBC and then print and finally politicians themselves. The end result is that liberalism has gone from "problem solving through government" to hate-filled identity politics that borders on Nazism. Conservatism has gone from "encouraging the responsible use of freedom and the value of traditional values" to lunatic conspiracy and hating whatever they don't like.

Think about this sentence above:

All we heard was personal attacks on coaches and players, conspiracy theories about the refs, pie in the sky garbage about fantasy player swaps and messiah-like demands for draft picks ("he's the next LeBron").

Now ask yourself if that sounds familiar with a few changes

All we heard was personal attacks on political opponents, conspiracy theories about government and the powers that be, pie in the sky garbage about having sufficiently pure party leaders, and messiah-like demands for a political savior ("he's the next Reagan").

It's the same thing. This is what has happened. Talk radio, media and our politicians have destroyed conservatism and liberalism and replaced them with hate, rumor and conspiracy. Remember that the next time some "conservative" tries to whip you into a frenzy over some irrelevance like Biden not acknowledging his illegitimate grand daughter, or the government's up-coming attempt to take your riiiights, or he attacks an ally for lack of purity, or tells you that only the messiah can save conservatism, even as he represents nothing even close to conservatism. Liberals have the same problem, but it doesn't make it better. And sadly, there is nothing we can do about this. We are surrounded by idiots and suckers now and they are only getting worse. To borrow a quote, they are f-ing up fast and picking up speed. But you can at least keep your sanity by understanding this and learning to see through it.

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I Shall Return...

All right. I am going to keep writing. I think someone has to. Someone has to talk sense. You certainly aren't hearing it on talk radio. Who knows... maybe we can bring conservatism back from the dead? And yes, it is dead.

Before we start again, here are some quick thoughts on recent events:

• The founder of Qanon died. Yup. Got a dirt bike shoved up his ass. Naturally, his followers think he's not really dead. That made me chuckle. So true to form.

• Issues affecting America:

Inflation, destruction of middle class jobs, crime, drug addicts, violent-narcissistic public mentality, out-of-control corporations, AI risks, supply chain fragility, risk of nuclear war, the destruction of American medical system

• Issues Republicans are Outraging On:

Map in Barbie movie, who ain't loyal enough to Our Lord Trump, gas stoves, who's sellin' queer stuff, commie ice cream maker said stupid shit, and some dopehead left coke at the White House

• Issues Democrats are Outraging On:

that's racist!, you used the wrong pronoun, erasure of women (particularly in sports), protecting criminals from people trying to defend themselves

Anybody see a problem there? Or is it just me?

• Affirmative action won't be as easy to kill as people hope, but its death will be the first step in ending the cult of black victimhood in this country

• Biden is looking to kill free trade. That's fine, no one wants to stop him. But just to be clear, free trade is what brought the world its incredible prosperity over the past thirty years.

• The public is rejecting woke. I'll prove it in an upcoming article. Too bad no one's offering an alternative.

• Anyone notice that the left has become a religion? I'll prove that too.

• Finally, do you know what's triggered the anti-trans backlash? Pedophiles.

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