Category Archives: Technology

UPDATED (1/16/021): NEW COLUMN: Locked Down And Locked Out: First By The State, Then By Silicon Valley

Argument, Capitalism, Ethics, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Natural Law, Private Property, Technology, The State

NEW COLUMN, “Locked Down And Locked Out: First By The State, Then By Silicon Valley,” is featured on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com. “Locked Down And Locked Out” is now a feature on American Greatness.

An excerpt:

… STRUCTURED LIKE A PETROSTATE

When Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon were growing up, they wanted to be government. Now they are!

Think about this: These are “businesses” whose political plank dwarfs their economic and technological raison dêtre: Work for them and you’ll quickly learn that it’s about minorities before merit, foreign over native born, women above everybody and everything, and white men who’re made to go to the back of the org, although, given their legendary facility with engineering—honky is made to do double duty for all the deadwood hired.

And, everything in deeply ignorant Deep Tech is done by the book—the White Fragility book, a favorite “teaching” resource of the barely-literate, Human Resources personnel.

The profit-structure, moreover, within many a Deep Tech company is reminiscent of that of a Petrostate. Billions flow top down, from these sheik-dominated organization—Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos—to their pet political fiefdoms, within each of their respective companies. There, navigating politics is more valuable than making products.

Dissident Americans take comfort in the fact that our lepper-like ouster—de-platforming, financial and other—is executed by private companies. Discrimination, aver the libertarian-minded among us, is the prerogative of private property. Or, so we console ourselves. We’re safe, for aggression for the sake of aggression, as we libertarians have long maintained, is the modus operandi of the state, not of free enterprise.

Yet, here we are! In more effectively banishing people and their products from market, private multinationals are posing a serious competition to the State.

And therein lies the rub. Fresh theoretical thinking about the meaning of Deep Tech begins with an understanding that we live and labor under tyrannical corporate statism, or tech-dominated statism. Free-market capitalism remains the “unknown ideal.”

Parler’s sudden (temporary, we hope), financial demise was no natural death; it came not by dint of economic failure, but due to untoward, unwarranted financial force—economic aggression of the most cowardly kind, wielded by economic enemies, and rooted in political enmity.

In defending Deep Tech’s prerogative to visit economic and social violence on innocent individuals and businesses by tossing them off their enormous, irreplaceable platforms, for speech not to their liking—not to mention throttling our speech, and confining us to a leper-like, tenuous status while on the platform—you are not defending the rights of private property to merely conduct itself as it wishes.

Rather, you are marching down the pirate’s plank, on a ship of state commandeered by pirates, who’re in competition with the state.

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Locked Down And Locked Out: First By The State, Then By Silicon Valley,” is was featured on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com. “Locked Down And Locked Out,” is now a feature on American Greatness.

Ta-Ta To The Totalitarian Twitter And To Facefuck

Business, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Technology

… Twitter will sink into the black hole of intellectual conformity and banality it truly is.

I’m going to be going dormant on Twitter’s pathetic, Follower-throttling, shadow-banning forum, posting only my columns or other related notices.

Likewise on the lowbrow Facef-ck, which has long since banned the content from my highbrow sites.

My blog—you’re on it—sports a Comments section and will continue to hum. When patriots all do the same, Twitter will sink into the black hole of intellectual conformity and banality it truly is.

I’m on Parler, as are very many other patriots, but—what do you know?—Parler is nowhere to be found in the land of life, liberty, private property and endless opportunity, having been dealt a financial knee-capping by the evil aggressors of Deep Tech.

You know how bad it is in America when countries who have anti-free-speech legislation and attendant tribunals and show-trials (coming here soon) express alarm at the US speech-related purges. These are statements that other, relatively liberal leaders—Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron—in other liberal countries, made in defense of free speech in the US. Our own “leaders” are silent, ineffectual, worried about their own book deals (should be illegal for a political parasite, whose fame is a function of the office, to publish books while in office. It’s unethical and constitutes a conflict of interest).

So, until complete freedom is restored—and if our intellectual products survive—it’sFUCK YOU. WAR.”

NEW COLUMN: MAGA Patriots: The Best Of People In the Worst Of Times

Democrats, Donald Trump, Government, Politics, Republicans, Technology, The State

NEW COLUMN, “MAGA Patriots: The Best of People in the Worst of Times, ” is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review and American Greatness.

ABOUT “MAGA Patriots: The Best of People in the Worst of Times,” Patriot caliber .357×6 writes:

“Finally, someone has the guts and the brains in the media to put forth the proper perspective. All the whining and propaganda is morphing into actual threats in a matter of hours against the patriot; go ahead, make our day.”

Excerpts:

Why repeat hackneyed phrases about annus horribilis 2020?

Recall the opening paragraph of “A Tale of Two Cities,” a classic by Charles Dickens? Interspersed in that epical introduction are countervailing, sweetness-and-light words. Excise these—and you get 2020:

“… it was the worst of times…it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch…of incredulity, it was…the season of darkness… it was the winter of despair. … we had nothing before us.”

MAGA men and women are just that: The best of people in the worst of times.

These good people converged on D.C., Jan. 6, to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote.

They, who have “nothing before them,” had come to demand that something be done by those who had “brought [them] forth into this wilderness,” yet sit “by the fleshpots [on the Potomac] and [eat] bread to the full.” (My adaptation of Exodus 16:3.)

Cassandra Fairbanks, of the Gateway Pundit web-hub, framed her report about the protest that ensued just right: “Patriots Have Stormed the Capitol Building — Masses Breaching Federal Barriers — Cops Losing Control.”

Yes, patriots. Rage that had been simmering over an election whose results lacked constitutional credibility had finally come to a boil. …

…  The thread that runs through fatuous TV debates, among Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt and his ilk, is the failure of the Grand Old Party (GOP) to stand up to Donald Trump.

Unmentioned are the 74 million people who prop President Trump up. These solipsistic, vain TV degenerates—Bush-era operative Nicolle Wallace, the gaseous Ana Navaro, celebutante Margaret Hoover, and many more—have simply “disappeared” or cancelled 74 million Americans. …

… READ On. NEW COLUMN, “MAGA Patriots: The Best of People in the Worst of Times, ” is  on WND.COM, The Unz Review and American Greatness.

THE GOOD LIFE According To Tucker Carlson

Conservatism, Culture, Education, Family, Technology

Most YouTube offerings are not worth watching. The speakers drone on forever, when the substantive essence of their words could be distilled in a single unoriginal paragraph. Moreover, YouTube consumes time. Reading text is so much quicker and thus more efficient.

Trust me, then, when I say that not one words is superfluous in Tucker Carlson’s address, now on YouTube, delivered to the youth of Turning Point USA.

I found myself uncharacteristically listening to it all, disagreeing only with his blind worship of the family, per se. The emphasis, rather, ought to be on happy, adaptive, loving and reciprocal relationships. Sometimes the loved ones you choose are more of a family than the loved ones you were born to.

Carlson’s message to his youthful audience was an extension of the wisdom shared on the Tucker Carlson Show (I paraphrase):

“There is more to life than just preserving it—life must be lived to the fullest.”

Life is short. Don’t waste time, reiterated Tucker, participate in it to the fullest. Do it now. Jump face first into the pool of life. Meaning comes from other people.

Carlson warned of digitally induced dullness, in the context of things that blunt the imperative to experience life to the fullest; in the context of the need to eschew anything that causes one to miss out on life, or prevents one from engaging with [worthy] people to the fullest.

Digital distractions steal your life, he stressed. [I would add that, to the extent you have precious and worthy people in your life, you need to get as close as you can to them in a world defined by distance. Don’t type to them; talk to them and travel to see them.]

You don’t want to wake up to life in the third act, cautioned Tucker. You don’t want to be dulled to the people who love you. Rather, take stock of those who love you and focus on them.

In a chat I recently had with Buck Johnson, I advised especially talented techies (who have options by virtue of their brilliance) to stay out of the corporate world. It will dull and deform your spirit, and devour the rest of you. If you can, pursue work as an independent contractor.

Likewise, Tucker encouraged conservative kids to opt out of popular society. In particular, if you believe that the system is a joke—don’t partake. Above all, do the thing to which you are naturally suited.

MORE.