Ushering in the new era, Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister-designate, announced that he would not be sworn in, as tradition dictates, in the presence of Archbishop Iernonymos but would instead take the oath of office in a civil ceremony. At 40, he becomes the country’s youngest premier in modern times. […] The leftist, who surprised Greeks by speedily agreeing to share power with the populist rightwing Independent Greeks party, Anel, is expected to be handed a mandate by president Karolos Papoulias to form a government later on Monday. Earlier, Panos Kammenos, Anel’s rumbustious leader, emerged from talks with Tsipras lasting an hour saying the two politicians had successfully formed a coalition. […] “I want to say, simply, that from this moment, there is a government,” Kammenos told reporters gathered outside Syriza’s headquarters. […] “The Independent Greeks party will give a vote of confidence to the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras. The prime minister will go to the president and … the cabinet makeup will be announced by the prime minister. The aim for all Greeks is to embark on a new day, with full sovereignty.”

Anyone who thinks it odd that Marine Le Pen and Slavoj Žižek are both firm supporters is missing the picture entirely. As Žižek remarks:

This is our position today with regard to Europe: only a new “heresy” (represented at this moment by Syriza), a split from the European Union by Greece, can save what is worth saving in the European legacy: democracy, trust in people, egalitarian solidarity.

That’s what the Left means. Construct your ideological spectrum accordingly.

Mainstream, but sane:

Of course, politics is about emotion as much as reality. And here, socialism has one advantage in its favor: easy populism.

Socialism has one huge advantage: People are idiots.

… and while I’m slumming it at NRO, here‘s Andrew Stuttaford:

Fun fact No. 1: One of the two sons of Syriza’s leader was given the middle name “Ernesto” in honor of the murderer better known as Ernesto “Che” Guevara. […] Fun fact No. 2: The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn probably came in third with 6 percent or so. […] I, for one, continue to be grateful that the single currency has proved to be such a bulwark against extremism.

ADDED: Childish incomprehension from the Left (of which we will be seeing a great deal): “… Last but not least, while Mr. Kammenos and his sovereigntyist right-wing ANEL party [Independent Greeks] are certainly a lesser evil compared to formations like To Potami (whose stated goal was to force Syriza to stay within the narrow boundaries set by the EU and the Memorandums), they are nonetheless an evil. Their participation in the government, even with just one minister, would symbolise the end of the idea of an ‘anti-austerity government of the Left’. Moreover, this is a party of the Right, one that is particularly concerned to protect the ‘hard core’ of the state apparatus (it will be important to keep a watchful eye over whatever cabinet portfolio it might get). It will be no surprise if its first demands are for the ministry of defence or public order, though it seems that it will not get them.” (Relevant predictions from Jim.)

NRx doesn’t vulgarize to a denunciation of Cultural Marxism (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 …). Yes, ‘Duh!’, but well worth making explicit. Widening perspectives in time and space. “[T]he Reactosphere [is] an Illiberal University System.” Against critical thinking (and response). On the holiness problem. A thoughtful appraisal of Neoreaction (1, 2), but I’m reserving judgment on this. Terminal-phase feminism. Fragged Friday. Mitrailleuse off-blog channels. Meta-masters (1, 2, 3).

“Things without boundaries rapidly become unthings.” (This is also good.)

A few of the more notable aftershocks following the Paris massacre, from two generations of Le Pens (this is better), Malcolm Pollack, and the Anarcho-Papist. No go zones? A wide-angle view. Our interesting times are getting more interesting. The Saudi king is dead. The interim successor “has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and at many times cannot remember his own name.” ISIS made its move just in time. (Chaos, right?) An analysis of Saudi oil politics. Then back to France (sort of). Auster holds up well.

Venezuela, don’t laugh (related).

The Duck at Chateau Heartiste. Before Yarvin was Moldbug (from 1995). A Scott Alexander no-like list. The long culture war (and a more conventionally humanistic account). Broken democracy. The value of independent corroboration.

Unamused at work. Gregory Hood on MLK. Bookishness is over-rated. On Guillaume Faye on sex. The Economist tip-toes towards reality. Hope for Wikipedia?

(The metric there is American school grade levels.)

(Via (Via))

But don’t worry:

“It’s tempting to read this as a dumbing down of the bully pulpit,” [former Clinton speechwriter Jeff] Shesol said. “But it’s actually a sign of democratization. In the early Republic, presidents could assume that they were speaking to audiences made up mostly of men like themselves: educated, civic-minded landowners. These, of course, were the only Americans with the right to vote. But over time, the franchise expanded and presidential appeals had to reach a broader audience.”

It just looks like escalating cretinization. Really it’s Democracy®! Yay!

This has to be in some way related:

Romney 2016: Reform conservative. Romney 2020: Buchananite. Romney 2024: Rothbardian. Romney 2028: Neo-reactionary.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 13, 2015

Does anyone seriously doubt the West is going to die ugly?

China’s rise has been psychologically disquieting to many in America and the West generally, because in China, capitalism flourishes without liberal democracy. This is regarded as somehow unnatural and illegitimate because it punctures the Western myth of the universality of certain political values and of the inevitability of the development of certain political forms. And unlike, say, Japan or India, China only wants to be China and not an honorary member of the West.

It is ahistorical because it ignores the inconvenient fact that every Western country was capitalist long before it was either liberal or democratic as those terms are today understood …

… much sanity follows.

… just because the administration hides the risk from conflict using cutouts and proxies doesn’t actually mean the risk goes away. It only means the risk is hidden “off the books”. It only means you can’t easily measure it.

There’s a conservation law at work here, which is always a positive sign of realist seriousness. To publicly promote a political profile of peculiarly self-congratulating moral earnestness it is simultaneously necessary to feed the shadows. What happens unseen is essential to the purification of the image. The Obama Administration is only significant here insofar as it grasps the deep political logic of democracy — and its subordination to sovereign PR — with such exceptional practical clarity. Better by far to indiscriminately drone potential enemies to death on the unmonitored periphery than to rough up a demonstrated terrorist in front of a TV camera. It’s the future you wanted (Xenosystems readers excepted). To imagine anything fundamentally different working under democratic conditions is sheer delusion.

Adam Garfinkle has a thoughtful commentary on the US Senate torture report that wanders into the same territory.

Everyone seems to take for granted now that this was a “natural” CIA assignment of some sort, but it is passing strange that this should be the case. Not to belabor the background with a primer, but for those who have been watching too much crappy, self-righteous fiction on TV and in the movies, the CIA — before 911 at least — was a pretty small organization with a very minor percentage of its budget, personnel, and activity devoted to “operations” — dirty tricks, false-flagging, whacking people, and so forth. The Agency did wander off the reservation back in the day, which is what the Church Committee hearings and subsequent reforms were meant to set right. The vast bulk of CIA activity before and certainly after the mid-1970s concerned what is called collections and analysis, some of which falls under the rubric of (human) spying, but much of which is just fancified library work. As the morning of September 12, 2001 dawned, did the CIA have any significant experience with interrogating Islamist insurgents and terrorists? No. Did it have any experience with interrogating bad guys of any kind? Some; for example in Central America back in the 1980s, but nearly all of those involved in that business — and there were only a few — had long since departed the Agency. […] … So … why was the CIA anointed for the task after 911 …?

In its essentials, his answer is the same Fernandez gives. Rumsfeld’s DoD simply refused to accept it. US Mil. is a public institution, and there was no way they were going to handle people outside Geneva Convention protections, with the responsibility to extract critical intelligence from them. That would all have to happen off the books. The CIA picked up the tar baby.

As the Cathedral becomes ever more holier than Jesus, it produces — through systematic administrative necessity — a dark twin. This is a basic structure of social reality that NRx is uniquely positioned to acknowledge (although it is far more widely recognized). As democracy ‘matures’, reality is processed increasingly in secret. That, at least, we understand.

Jim’s ‘Death of Christianity’ post is the latest installment in a series defending Restoration England. It seems to me that people are being unusually cagey about arguing this out — perhaps a little scared? The religious topic, in particular, tends to draw a high level of interest, which is significant in itself. This might the place to stir the hornets nest with the latest from Pope Francis: The Koran is a prophetic book of peace. It’s not so much the appeasement, moral equivalence, or other red-rags to the right issues that intrigue me most about this — and not even the accommodation of ‘prophecy’ to an outcome that brings it close to sarcasm — but the sheer oddity of the theology behind the remark. To be trolled by the Pope is really something (but what?). (Patheos places the quote in context — which suggests the quality of the trolling is even higher than initially evident.)

Sensible strategic advice. Law and violence. Paleo-humanism. Don’t count on the robocops. 4GW lessons. Anissimov on Brin. Supplementing this link assortment, there’s a whole bunch more from ‘|||||’ here.

The ripples of Ferguson have turned all my bubbles into 24/7 carnivals of racial chaos — only fitfully interrupted by anything else. That’s even before noting the return of Unamused (plus). Black-on-Bosnian action (‘clarified‘), against the natives, and versus Hispanics. Sympathy is less than universal (last from September). Complication from The New Republic. In other animosities, Heartiste derides rice farmers (background from Peter Frost, 1, 2), and on the other side of the ledger, Slate does Watson, and the full communists do the New Atheists. This podcast discussion on Asia is recommended (directly accessible here).

Dysgenics update. The peculiar hereditarian fixation of animal breeders. Darwin’s notebooks go digital. Ridley on the (important) Dawkins-Wilson spat. HBD tweets of the week.

Cosmic and techno-apocalypse update. (More on Bostrom, 1, 2, 3, 4.) Perhaps tech-collapse will get us first.

This link (from Amerika) went is going completely berserk on my UF Facebook page.

Notable chant pieces: “We can’t do anything.” “Burn it to the ground.”

Bubble trouble. Bad plumbing.

Gaming heuristics.

My blog discovery of the week has masses of thoughtful commentary on NRx — critical in the best sense of the term.

This is a nonlinear point, from my perspective, since the rapid development of telepresence is of obvious internal consequence to the recent intensification of Exit-oriented and neo-secessionist discussion. (Balaji S. Srinivasan brought this out very clearly in his October 2013 talk on the subject, from which this event takes its title.) Exit in depth — i.e. into the crypto-thickened ‘Net — is at the very least an important complement to more traditional notions of territorial flight. It also sustains a better purchase on the commercial principle which provides Exit with its fundamentalal model, and which can easily get lost among secessionist excitement and visions of technologically re-sculpted geographical space.

Some background to the event (and hints of choppy waters). Argument is, of course, the other side of the nonlinearity (a micro-enactment of the inclusive Democratic ideal), so it will be interesting to see whether on this occasion the controversy can remain productive in its own terms, rather than ‘merely’ stacking up the incentives to get Out.