This is a fun essay. It’s cryptic and funny now. In ten years it’s going to be indecipherable, like an Athenian play - “we know what all the words mean, but we have no idea who or what he’s talking about”.
Years back, I put forward the idea of the Hitler Hut, Fascist Fast Food Fast, a fast food chain borrowing from Axis power motifs. In the Hitler Hut, one could buy Fash Fries and a Blitzkrieg Burger and a litre-sized, er, I mean Austrian-Gefreiter-sized, soda all in a meal-deal for cheap.
My wife said that was a dumb idea and killed it, naysayer that she is.
Looks like some folks in India saw the utility in burning Adolf's brand to make a quick buck.
I'm still wondering why your mudsill theory is controversial. Seems quite evident to me.
As for your sludge theory, I am the only one I know who grows, hunts and fishes for the bulk of my food, regularly walks on uneven ground and reads old books.
Thank you. Always planned on a moose hunt, but Minnesota outlawed it, as deer carry some sort of brain parasite that does not kill them but kills moose, so the population here has collapsed. We used to have caribou back in the day. Now I stick mostly to venison, pheasant and fish.
Of course they do. And most of them say to me, "I know who I am checking in with if TSHTF." To which I reply, don't bother unless you have some skills to offer.
I was trying to surface "breaking news" yesterday and stopped in at foxnews.com, and although I did not find the news I was looking for, I did find a homepage packed with stories on offer to keep boomers comfortably in a specific geopolitical worldview.
It was like Ensure -- smooth, with so much protein and so many nutrients that you really don't need to eat anything else to remain alive in a worldview born in 1946. America is the indispendable, exceptional nation, and Trump will make it great again. Women with long, blonde hair interview men with short, gray crewcuts. Red, white, and blue stories.
It seems like it takes thirty or forty years for a critical mass of people to overcome the sludgepeddlers and perceive reality. That's pretty rough. What are we missing now that will come to hurt us over the next thirty years? The internet is helping us to perceive what was started forty years ago, is it facilitating something else even worse, like transhumanism? I guess we can always just turn off the electricity (who could have seen that Edison and Westinghouse would get us to where we are now?). Boycott the sludgeasts!
Perhaps it take up to 40s years to lived the paradigm that you were raised in only to discover it’s suitability. As a Gen Xer, there was this duality of “yeah, we know that there is a system, and it can be rigged, but you know, if you keep your head down you’ll make your way by being recognized as being production and outstanding”. And by the time you’re 40, if you have kids then you have other considerations and the ability to whether a big shift in paradigm is not as easily obtained.
Home schooling in one way is cleansing the diet, but the snacks in form of the phone and internet can subvert those attempts to have your kids “eat healthily”.
I enjoyed the extended soda metaphor and will be purchasing a bottle of Moxie. Your characterization of Sludge as "always needing to be consumed" was poignant.
This is good and well written. Unfortunately, I thought the first paragraph or two were taking the post in an entirely different (and unwanted / not interested) direction, and almost skipped reading it. I then skimmed the rest and suspected it was deeper than I originally thought, and reread the post. Well done!
Sometimes you read because the material is compelling and sometimes you read because the author is compelling. The piece works, but you have to think, and sludged brains don't do that. It was a test.
This was so much better than “The Mudsill Theory Revisted,” which was a downer. Not a fan of making fun of literal imbeciles, but the point was made and I agree with it—the managerial state thrives on these unfortunates.
That said, “Liberal sludge flows freely on Substack…” missed the Gully Dwarf himself, Robert Reich. (Oops, I just made fun of an imbecile.)
When I woke up, I didn't know I wanted Ellul's discussion on Agi-prop and integration-prop described to me in an extended soda war metaphor juxtaposed with recent US political history, but by God I'm here for it.
Has it ever occurred to you that if you were a foreigner with zero knowledge of English, and were to hear the word, "autopsy," you would be misled by its sound into assuming that whatever it meant, it was something quite pleasant?
Think about it. "Autopsy." It sounds like a soft, rolling meadow on a day in early Spring, with low humidity, a light breeze, and you and your true love lying on a hill and wondering aloud what the future held for the two of you.
This piece was so well written and entertaining I could've restacked the whole thing. So I guess I've entered the sludge proof part of substack. Thanks for a entertaining read!
I wonder if you can build resistant people who can see sludge for what it is if you actually have a lot to do in your life, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of complexities, a lot of interests, and a lot of friends who are in the same busy boat. Busy people don't have a lot of time for trivialities, in my experience. And when they do indulge in them, they see them for what they are.
Sludge happens. Gargle, wipe your boots and keep on truckin'.
These days I find myself anarcho-capitalist, not so much a politic , more philosofic. Ignoring the woke & the broke, hanging with my friends, both of them, trading moose for salmon, let others worry about Mammon, getting by, sometimes in plain sight sometimes maybe on the sly.
Cyraxx et al? Wouldn't know about them 'cept for you introducing them L'C'eno. Have enough local & extended family crazies, but yours also entertain.
Mud, sludge? I think we always have a choice, how much we let in our space. More and more I can quite truthfully say, shucky darn Bubba, that done affect me none.
Sage advice, follow this and guaranteed, you can't go wrong; don't trust anyone under 85 and then only of you've known them for at least 70 years. ;-)
This is a fun essay. It’s cryptic and funny now. In ten years it’s going to be indecipherable, like an Athenian play - “we know what all the words mean, but we have no idea who or what he’s talking about”.
But poor Aristophanes didn’t have hyperlinks.
Years back, I put forward the idea of the Hitler Hut, Fascist Fast Food Fast, a fast food chain borrowing from Axis power motifs. In the Hitler Hut, one could buy Fash Fries and a Blitzkrieg Burger and a litre-sized, er, I mean Austrian-Gefreiter-sized, soda all in a meal-deal for cheap.
My wife said that was a dumb idea and killed it, naysayer that she is.
Looks like some folks in India saw the utility in burning Adolf's brand to make a quick buck.
I AM VINDICATED.
Someone tell my wife.
Someone beat you to it.
https://www.banderasnews.com/0608/nw-hitlerscrossredux.htm
Nope. My idea is most of a decade old. They just had supportive wives, that’s all.
I don’t think Fascist Fritters has been taken yet. Goering’s Gioza and SS Sushi platter. I’m too lazy to register the domain name so go for it.
I'm still wondering why your mudsill theory is controversial. Seems quite evident to me.
As for your sludge theory, I am the only one I know who grows, hunts and fishes for the bulk of my food, regularly walks on uneven ground and reads old books.
You're a freaking hero then, moose meat trumps all other meat out there!
Moose is great but I find woodland caribou even better. Both a major part of my kids diet while they were growing up.
Makes sense
Thank you. Always planned on a moose hunt, but Minnesota outlawed it, as deer carry some sort of brain parasite that does not kill them but kills moose, so the population here has collapsed. We used to have caribou back in the day. Now I stick mostly to venison, pheasant and fish.
Makes sense and didn’t know
You need to meet better people. ;-)
:} I know some good people. But most of them still think I am strange...
I know the feeling. Been homesteading since 1983. Most of my friends think I'm strange too, although they do like my homemade goat cheese. :-)
Of course they do. And most of them say to me, "I know who I am checking in with if TSHTF." To which I reply, don't bother unless you have some skills to offer.
Skills and guns. Good knives too.
They are all like, I can shoot. But the ones who really can aren't looking to me as their lifeline.
I was trying to surface "breaking news" yesterday and stopped in at foxnews.com, and although I did not find the news I was looking for, I did find a homepage packed with stories on offer to keep boomers comfortably in a specific geopolitical worldview.
It was like Ensure -- smooth, with so much protein and so many nutrients that you really don't need to eat anything else to remain alive in a worldview born in 1946. America is the indispendable, exceptional nation, and Trump will make it great again. Women with long, blonde hair interview men with short, gray crewcuts. Red, white, and blue stories.
It seems like it takes thirty or forty years for a critical mass of people to overcome the sludgepeddlers and perceive reality. That's pretty rough. What are we missing now that will come to hurt us over the next thirty years? The internet is helping us to perceive what was started forty years ago, is it facilitating something else even worse, like transhumanism? I guess we can always just turn off the electricity (who could have seen that Edison and Westinghouse would get us to where we are now?). Boycott the sludgeasts!
Perhaps it take up to 40s years to lived the paradigm that you were raised in only to discover it’s suitability. As a Gen Xer, there was this duality of “yeah, we know that there is a system, and it can be rigged, but you know, if you keep your head down you’ll make your way by being recognized as being production and outstanding”. And by the time you’re 40, if you have kids then you have other considerations and the ability to whether a big shift in paradigm is not as easily obtained.
Home schooling in one way is cleansing the diet, but the snacks in form of the phone and internet can subvert those attempts to have your kids “eat healthily”.
I enjoyed the extended soda metaphor and will be purchasing a bottle of Moxie. Your characterization of Sludge as "always needing to be consumed" was poignant.
This is good and well written. Unfortunately, I thought the first paragraph or two were taking the post in an entirely different (and unwanted / not interested) direction, and almost skipped reading it. I then skimmed the rest and suspected it was deeper than I originally thought, and reread the post. Well done!
Same, starting with ad hominem attacks on a nobody was unappealing. Even though it eventually worked its way into a great metaphor.
We had to wait for the chaser!
Sometimes you read because the material is compelling and sometimes you read because the author is compelling. The piece works, but you have to think, and sludged brains don't do that. It was a test.
This was so much better than “The Mudsill Theory Revisted,” which was a downer. Not a fan of making fun of literal imbeciles, but the point was made and I agree with it—the managerial state thrives on these unfortunates.
That said, “Liberal sludge flows freely on Substack…” missed the Gully Dwarf himself, Robert Reich. (Oops, I just made fun of an imbecile.)
When I woke up, I didn't know I wanted Ellul's discussion on Agi-prop and integration-prop described to me in an extended soda war metaphor juxtaposed with recent US political history, but by God I'm here for it.
“Torpor” would be a good soda brand name.
Has it ever occurred to you that if you were a foreigner with zero knowledge of English, and were to hear the word, "autopsy," you would be misled by its sound into assuming that whatever it meant, it was something quite pleasant?
Think about it. "Autopsy." It sounds like a soft, rolling meadow on a day in early Spring, with low humidity, a light breeze, and you and your true love lying on a hill and wondering aloud what the future held for the two of you.
AutoPoPsy!
A new name for a soda that kills you?
Or drinks itself?
Or is a substitute for formaldehyde?
It’s a rather peculiar leap from the etymology to the current meaning but you’re right—you’d never suspect anything ghastly.
Just like if you didn’t know the specifics, “Waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay” sounds like a nice vacation.
This piece was so well written and entertaining I could've restacked the whole thing. So I guess I've entered the sludge proof part of substack. Thanks for a entertaining read!
Oh man, I miss Moxie. We had a specialty store that sold it for years until they went out of business. Now it’s hard to find here.
Quidam ex nobis iam vivimus in inferno.
I was pretty sure I knew who "cringe edgy" was going to link to and I was not disappointed to be proven right.
I wonder if you can build resistant people who can see sludge for what it is if you actually have a lot to do in your life, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of complexities, a lot of interests, and a lot of friends who are in the same busy boat. Busy people don't have a lot of time for trivialities, in my experience. And when they do indulge in them, they see them for what they are.
I could be wrong, of course.
Sludge happens. Gargle, wipe your boots and keep on truckin'.
These days I find myself anarcho-capitalist, not so much a politic , more philosofic. Ignoring the woke & the broke, hanging with my friends, both of them, trading moose for salmon, let others worry about Mammon, getting by, sometimes in plain sight sometimes maybe on the sly.
Cyraxx et al? Wouldn't know about them 'cept for you introducing them L'C'eno. Have enough local & extended family crazies, but yours also entertain.
Mud, sludge? I think we always have a choice, how much we let in our space. More and more I can quite truthfully say, shucky darn Bubba, that done affect me none.
Sage advice, follow this and guaranteed, you can't go wrong; don't trust anyone under 85 and then only of you've known them for at least 70 years. ;-)