You need an Ambien to sleep because you bought the trappings of power instead of the real thing.

From the worthy Chris Ballas, on the US’ braindamage, based on the story of pouty-faced “writer”i Amanda Hess:

Fourth: she misunderstood/completely understood his answer about whether the magazine was particularly masculine: “It’s called The Economist.” Uh oh. If I ask, “Is Cosmo Magazine particularly feminine?” and you reply, “Duh, stupid, it’s called Cosmo, any more feminine and it would have a tailbone tattoo,” then you are implying not only that the magazine is feminine, but that I should have been able to infer that because cosmos are feminine.To him, The Economist is masculine is because economics is intrinsically masculine– and she implicitly accepts this. Now who’s the sexist? Whose theoretical daughters have a better chance of learning economics?

Amanda’s children, if she weren’t too poor to have them, which she quite evidently is or else she’d be getting on with the show by now, would no doubt be some unparented n*ggers. Putting The Economist, or anything equally pseudo-intellectual, much less anything warranting proper scholarship, on a pedestal of unapproachable splendiferousness is a sure-fire way to keep the Brahmins where they’ve always been and where they always intend to be.

Such thinking is quite the opposite of that necessary for social mobility – even granting that such a thing exists, of which I’ll say I’m somewhat skeptical – it in fact ensures that Amanda and people like her will never amount to anything of consequence, so diddled is their brainbox and so rife with spoon-fed fantasies.

Such USians, and the other socialists who ape them, well know that their best chance at tasting the fruits of the gods is to lower the barriers to entry until a slug with parkinson’s could pass for one of The Economist’s pseudonymous writers. And if you’ve picked up a copy lately, it’s not hard to see that the magazine seems to desire this direction as much as their readers. The glove fits the hand.

Of course she’d say any women can learn economics, yay women, but her daughters would be learning a masculine discipline, see also math, which I predict she’s bad at.ii The barrier is in herself, sexism is merely her projection of it.
So while she pretends that it is the male perspective she doesn’t like, it is evident that it’s the contents themselves that she objects to. They’re boring, but that can’t be related to intellectual curiosity because she’s a thinker. So it has to be the “male perspective”. But didn’t the same male perspective write the takedowns and dissections? Books, sex, relationships; those are “inclusive to women”. What happens when you don’t sign up for NATO– that’s masculine. But is it? Really? I agree that most of the articles in The Economist are boring and don’t “relate” to my lifestyle as an alcoholic, but I force myself to go through them like social studies homework, and most of the women who do the same are doing it as the same. The articles aren’t supposed to be interesting to me, they are supposed to be important and I force myself to be interested.iii

However, the point isn’t that she should read The Economist, the point here is that she saw sexism, which means she didn’t notice this:

UNWITTINGLY, perhaps, Vladimir Putin is playing Cupid to America’s Mars and Europe’s Venus. … “I have not felt this good about transatlantic relations in a long time,” whispers one senior European politician.

WTF, why would anyone whisper this? Is Putin standing right there? The Economist does this all the time, citing unnamed sources while alluding to their power and significance. Of course the easy critique to make, and even this one Hess was not allowed to formulate, is that in this way The Economist conveys the impression that it has personal access to the levers of power, the way Us Weekly recasts publicists as “sources close to Kim Kardashian”, shrinking the gap between the magazine and the sources and artificially widening the distance between Kardashian and us. She becomes more important and less accessible– except through Us Weekly.

But this critique is backwards, it assumes the magazine is trying to trick its audience, this is wrong, the audience is using the magazine to trick itself. The audience wants this distance. It wants heroes, celebrities, people with power– it wants an upper class— and it wants them inaccessible. Envy? No, that’s advertising, this is the “news.”

This is very much what all the “income inequality”iv derping is all about: people who took the wrong turn in life, or never even had the right turns made available to them, require the solace of a scapegoat to quickly wash away their dirty shame. It’s not possible for them to admit that they failed at some point, it’s not possible to admit that they’re not going to be the next King of England, so they create “1%ers” who must, it seems, have created a game they couldn’t win.

This, of course, is quite backwards as well. The 1%ers have always been there and will always be there, and at this point in the history of the crumbling empire of the colonies, they’re just trying to preserve as much of their wealth as they can. The cream of the crop didn’t create the socialist system of the 20th century, “the people” did that all on their own, and every last one of them is responsible. Now that their bed is made, and even though the Internet has made it clear just how useless and powerless they are in the grand scheme of things, they still have to lie in it.

This is what happens when a whole generation’s narcissism is threatened with injury– since everything is possible, why aren’t you enjoying everything?— the personality structure becomes overwhelmingly defensive. “If I were Kim Kardashian, then I would be able to do X!” is NOT envy, flip it over and read the redacted obverse: “Only Kim Kardsahians can do X — therefore it’s not my fault that I can’t!”

The Economist demo appears to want this same defense. The real trick of The Economist is that as a magazine of “libertarianism” [sic], its belief in “free trade and free markets” requires as axiomatic that these are not real. The Invisible Hand is actually attached to a benevolent class of gentlemen capitalists who have the money, the connections, and the information to best mold the world. You don’t know these people, but fortunately The Economist does. Their motto, inscribed in runes over a blue moongate on Jekyll Island, is, “Be content to bind them by laws of trade. You have always done it. And let this be your reason.”

Why would the The Economist‘s rich and powerful demo want to be ruled? Because they aren’t powerful, only rich, all that time getting rich did not translate to any power, only the trappings of power.

This, this, and this again! So yea, you’re rich enough to own a new Ferrari and a “$5 million showhome” in the suburbs, complete with hot tub, theatre room, and granite/stainless steel everything all over the kitchen. But can you influence the next municipal election ? Can you hop on a plane tomorrow and go wherever you want for as long as you want ? Can you even walk into a restaurant and take the table you want instead of the one the hostess provides for you ?

If not, my friend, you’ve fallen for the trappings instead of the real thing.

So they’ve postulated a fantasy power structure/NBA owners that explains why they can’t enjoy their lives as they think they should– to absolve themselves of the guilt they feel for having money/intellect/opportunities and NOT being able to do anything with it except spend it on the system-wide approved gimmicks: Trading Up, college educations, the National Bank of S&P 500.

And you say, boo hoo for the rich. That’s your media approved classism talking. Does $200k/yr have more in common with $50k/yr or $1M/yr? What do your TV commercials tell you? Don’t think about where the lines are drawn, think about who draws the lines.

Hess yells about a world of masculine power because she has the power to yell at it. But of course her power is limited only to yelling, she is impotent against a troll who yells at her. But her mistake is in thinking he has the power. No one has it, the system doesn’t allow it.

This fact that the system doesn’t allow either the poor or “the rich” to have much in the way of real power is why the most serene republic exists in the clouds high, high above.

There’s really no sense in trying to give a kidney transplant to the 90-year-old alcoholic when his estate sale will give you everything you need from him.

Even the mighty Economist demo feels impotent. Are they all delusional? This is the true critique of the system, not simply that one group reliably oppresses another; but that the entire system is based on creating a lack. This lack is not a bottomless hole that nothing could ever fill, but a tiny, strangely shaped divot in your soul into which nothing could ever fit: not money, not sex, not stuff, not relationships. Nothing “takes.” Nothing counts. Nothing is ever right. Only novelty works, until it wears off.

This unquenchable desire for novelty is the same vapid consumerism that could only have descended from the French Revolution. Yes, we’re still living on a course set over two centuries ago. And I suppose you think that every invention and every ounce of political history from before you were born isn’t relevant anymore ? “Times have changed,” you say, and yet we’re still people who want and need what people want and need.

I say you’ve been led around by the nose for long enough. Or don’t you want real power ?

This lack of power– not power to rule the world, but existential power– what is the purpose of my life? What is this all for? I get that I’m supposed to use my Visa a lot, but is that it? Shouldn’t I be able to do more than this? Everything is possible, but nothing is attainable.

This existential angst is the most significant issue with purpose-based worldviews. Yet their promotion above cause-based worldviews is awfully beneficial to sellers of prescription pills, cruise vacations, and high-end watches. Funny how that works, eh ?

Nothing tells them what is valuable; worse, everything assures them that nothing could be more valuable. That the media is the primary way the system teaches you how to want should have been obvious to Hess, she works for it, but for that same reason it was invisible to her.

Hess has no shepherd, hence, no direction, no meaning, and no morality other than what’s popular and convenient. That she sees the game as rigged is because can’t or won’t leave her cage.

You shouldn’t be surprised that the only sane response to this impotence is neurosis, for which of course the system provides a psychiatric treatment that couldn’t possibly work. “I need an Ambien, I can’t sleep.” But where did you hear that you needed to sleep?

Where did you hear that you needed eight hours per night or else your brain won’t function and you’ll end up poor and destitute on the street ? Was it from a commercial for a prescription pill that would solve the very same problem ? Was it from a study bought and paid for by the company making the “problem-solving pill” ?

Maybe you’re fine with 5 hours and a cup of coffee in the morning. I know I am.

Then again, I don’t take Ambien and I don’t settle for trappings.

___ ___ ___

  1. Amanda sorta kinda not really maintains her own blog. It’s a tumblr page. And it hasn’t been updated since November of last year. How forward-thinking!
  2. Amanda seems for all the world to be a typical ESLer, the type that computer times are set to rape over the hot coals before long.
  3. While Mr. Ballas could probably find better uses for his intellectual rigour than The Economist, such as the IRC Yeshiva, he does seem to peruse the logs at least a little. This article of his not only mentions PGP keys but also includes a Bitcoin donation address at the bottom. He hasn’t been “attracted to #bitcoin-assets” yet, but he’s not as willfully ignorant as some either.
  4. I prefer to call it “income diversity.”

18 thoughts on “You need an Ambien to sleep because you bought the trappings of power instead of the real thing.

  1. […] are. This is how deaf, dumb, and blind you are. If you were truly powerful, instead of a victim of the trappings of power and a giant asshole, you wouldn’t even need to ask me to bow down at your feet, I’d beg […]

  2. […] if you have any pretense of “putting a ding in the universe,” of meaningfully differentiating yourself from the orcs, the time isn’t tomorrow or the day […]

  3. […] we’re able to demonstrate our fertility and our wealth, that is, our superiority. Manifesting this power through art, architecture, refined manners, children, enterprises, as well as the number and […]

  4. […] two beautiful kids, and a secretary to fuck on the side, now it means being social media famous and publicly fellating corporate interests so that you starve more slowly. I dunno about you, but I can’t blame anyone for eschewing […]

  5. […] sole dominion of the learned and well-connected, the Microprocessors For All movement has put some Ambien-necessitating pretense of power in the hands of most every little twerp and every larger derp over the age of about 10.iii Ok, I […]

  6. […] than that, for it has also grown into an entire extractive industry until itself, sort of a “make money while you sleep” for kept women, sensuously seducing malcontented women with shimmering tackles of […]

  7. […] paid hard-earned money for the feeling of having an extra-marrital affair. They didn’t want the real thing – think of the risks! – so the mere act of pretending to flirt with mysterious online […]

  8. […] 1% are actually reading The Economist and slurping up its gossip with a straw. In this, they’re the same as the […]

  9. […] by what they portend to stand against. Fighting terror ? You’re a terrorist. Fighting drugs ? You’re a drug-pusher. Fighting bullying ? You’re a bully. Fighting anti-semitism ? You’re an anti-semite ! […]

  10. […] The Literary Digest. As with The Economist – which too will surely fail, unable as it is to make sense of the economic maelstrom the world has been engulfed by, which’d not coincidentally be the […]

  11. […] Adapted from TLP (Chris Ballas) and Pete D. […]

  12. […] Properly known as Alprazolam,iv Xanax was the go-to for sleep disorders before Ambien (Zolpidem)v hit the scene, though the former remains more popular. Broadly speaking, both function […]

  13. […] very large houses, and the rest of the gauche trappings of the arriviste class described by TLP and others. Where can you drive 400kph outside of Ehra-Liessen (VW’s private high-speed test […]

  14. […] the opportunity. Right now, all you have is “the recommended way” and therefore “a good night’s sleep,” all while your nest egg is being pilfered by racoons, vultures, and dorks in empty […]

  15. […] Yes, you’ll want to stay ahead of the tech curve in your careerii – be it legal services, sales, construction, or otherwise – but the idea that, say, a 30yo dentistiii should own a car wash and an interest in a retail strip mall and be financing app development is both preposterous and assuredly ruinous. The most successful professionals aren’t the ones who diversify the fastest, they’re the ones who invest in their own industries, wherein they have the deepest knowledge and therefore the sharpest market edge on Joe Q. Randomface. And that’s what success looks like in its most embryonic form : an edge. Yes, there were once oodles of money to be made in real estate in Buttfuck MI or in iOS apps, but unless you’re playing with at least tens of millions in Vancouver, London, or New York today or making yet another Candy Crush variant, you’re asking to get hit upside the head. Sure, buy the building you work in, be your own tenant, but don’t try to make money while you sleep. It’s a sucker’s bet. […]

  16. […] of the known world, they want to feel like they are – just like they want to feel like traders and online influencers regardless of whether such a thing ever manifests. Preferably while taking a […]

  17. […] We all make payments. We all finance. We all beg, borrow, and steal so that we can enjoy some modest trappings of a materialistic life in a world where materiality is increasingly incapable of keeping up with […]

  18. […] contrary to the self-important views as seen in The Economist or The New Republic about the increasingly polarised nature of politics today compared to, say, […]

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