Let’s call this the end of an accidental enshittification trilogy, with Part One here and Part Two here. My last on this topic was sad and pessimistic, and I kind of am too but I really don’t mean to be. I think there’s far more cause for hope than not, on a medium to long timeline, and
Power company trucks lining up on my block, and I'll be mostly offline until tomorrow. Though I may still be around for a little while before they start "maintaining infrastructure."
I bought a 3-burner propane stove for such eventualities, since I don't know if the generator my husband supposedly ordered a year ago will ever show up. They probably don't make them anymore.
Also got my little Coleman single burner stove, 6 1 lb canisters and a French press. Without coffee, nothing can be accomplished.
Oh, you mean internet? In THAT eventuality, I have a lot of books I still haven't read.
> In a cultural dark age, speak. Write, make things, look for other people who are making things and speaking with clarity.
I think your lineworkers are doing that.
Though their writing is technical, and designed to make sure complex processes go by the book and details get recorded.
And when dealing with God's own bloodplasma--electricity--speaking with clarity to one's team members is a matter of life and death. As well as creative collaboration.
But I like your idea about reflecting on what to do in a cultural dark age.
In a cultural dark age, keep the electric grid running by spending all night away from your families doing isolate/troubleshoot/repair, drawing on every skill and bit of experience you have and know, and your comrades-in-culture do. Risk your life with downed wires and hostile locals and crazy drivers and heavy equipment that hopefully works right and the risk of getting bitten or dead because some jerk backfed his genny into the grid, or the as-builts originated with someone operating in fantasyland, or the Third World manufactured components keep blowing out. This creative work keeps everyone warm, and safe, and safely fed, and able to maintain Christmas Rituals. Get the job done on time, and under budget. Get back to your motel safely. Or maybe just get your next work order in another place. Another state. Another region. Kit up to haul ass. Drive.
Or
In a cultural dark age, keep the plumbing functioning, the drinking water reasonably clean, the sewage segregated from homes and the water supply, the fire standpipes and hydrants pressurized, the instrumentation tested/calibrated. These make health and safety for all like nothing else in human technology. (Ask Substacker Roman Bystrianyk about that!)
Or
In a cultural dark age, assemble around the supper table with hundreds of massive, complex drawings you made, to discuss and reflect with your home posse on the six generations of low-voltage infrastructure (some bearing 1920s Western Electric labels) you discovered in a two-week-long, 18 hour a day, seven day a week massive-campus medical center site survey on the other side of the continent, grappling with how to build modernization plans, drawing on 20, 30 or more years of experience, to build site documentation on the fly, to get the project done on schedule/under budget (or while managing change order inflation), while ensuring continuity of operations—including mission critical and life safety systems—for the hundreds or thousands of inhabitants of the five or ten or sixteen or thirty or sixty site buildings...and not making any mistakes that can cause loss of life or property, or future contracts for your employer…
Silly corvid. Thinking such things are cultural work.
Cultural work isn't that.
It's complaining at length, like Jacob Savage does and John Carter piled on (no dig at John there, I have a reply part drafted to a thoughtful point he made to me), about how, when a man sets his sights on soft-handed occupations that are 45-60% female, it could possibly be a big surprise that "DEI" made wide paved inroads there whose toll booths exclude white men...
...where DEI has only made footpaths into the creative cultural work that requires muscle, sweat, danger, dirt, courageous focus, stamina, mind, body, and soul. Men's work (and a few women).
Cultural work is poor little Jacob lamenting his (DEI scented) sense of victimization, and how he is ENTITLED to the career trajectory he imagined--after all he "PUT IN HIS TIME" coaching SAT test takers and reselling concert tickets! And now is big mad because things didn't work out the way he expected.
Cultural work surely isn't anything done by men in the occupations occupied 95% by men:
> > Boilermakers, drillers of earth, concrete and cement workers, drillers of oil wells, roofers and slaters, bus/truck/stationary engine mechanics, HVAC mechanics, heavy and farm equipment mechanics, plumbers/pipe fitters/steamfitters, plasterers, elevator installers/repairers, masons/tilers/carpet installers, construction equipment operating engineers, automobile mechanics, carpenters, excavating and loading machine operators, forge and hammer operators, "other mining occupations," structural metal workers, electrical power installers and repairers, electricians, millwrights, small engine repairers, household appliance and power tool repairers, glaziers, drywall installers, construction laborers, paving/surfacing/tamping equipment operators, machinery maintenance occupations, construction trades, sheet-metal duct installers, industrial electrical equipment repairers, auto body repairers, construction work supervisors, miners, tool and die makers/setters, industrial machinery repairers, helpers and surveyors, plant and system operators/stationary engineers, crane/derrick/winch/hoist operators, mechanics and repairers, aircraft mechanics, machinists, power plant operators, pest control occupations, locksmith and safe repairers, firefighting/prevention/inspection, miscellaneous material moving occupations
That's from a bar graph that I can't affix here, that shows hundreds of occupations ranked by percentage of men and women in them.
That's just the 95% male ones; the up-to-90% male ones are of similar sort, and amount, but I got tired of typing them out.
You can guess what the 80-plus-percent female occupations are.
Chris, we are suffering from the fact that the essential, creative Cultural Work of this Republic was replaced from the 1970s on. Just as its population was. And its money supply. They called it "deindustralization," but it was more about this...
(Open in Substack viewer, right click in new tab to embiggen, or just follow the post number to the 4plebs archive.)
We're suffering from an epoch of erasure of what it takes to keep civilizations going, and what it takes to keep men (and a few women) sustaining the culture that transmits the skills, mindset, and memory to do that creative work.
This is precisely why Donald John Trump, at bottom, poses such a psychological threat to so many. And was such an unexpected joy for others.
I saw an interview with him, maybe in the '80s it was. The girl interviewing him had big hair. He was answering her questions when suddenly she ambushed him. "So, when you die, what do you want your epitaph to be?" He looked a bit aback but didn't lose momentum. He paused for just a beat, then said, low, and deep, and firm but quiet:
"He built good things well."
PS--on "making culture" by writing, when your electrons are flowing again, don't forget to write a note to the power company, thanking the guys for coming out in the night. The culture of thanklessness is one that infra and logistics men and women suffer constantly. "Thank you for restoring Christmas"--the culture--might sound pretty good to their ears.
Korp. Your post nearly made me weep, it is so true. And if we continue to denigrate, oppress, suppress, mock, diminish, redirect, destroy, those who can make and build and repair the foundation of the machinery of living as you delineated, there will be nothing for those who covet power to run. One personal note. The streets in my wee village were rebuilt this summer. Weeks of men, yes teams of men, breaking up the old pavement, grinding it to be recycled, making a new road bed, grading the edges for new curb and gutters, pouring the concrete, finally laying the new asphalt. Oh yes, later cleaning up the rights of way and replanting new grass in the disturbed areas. I was in awe every day. Out there rain or shine. The choreography of big lumbering machines was something to witness. I put up a sign in my front yard from day one that said "Thank you for our new road." It was like manna from heaven for those guys. I waved and said thank you to every one of them. NO ONE DOES! So if and when you see guys doing real work, thank them, even wave at the guy standing in the road to direct one lane traffic. Sorry to go on and on. No, not sorry. It was the easiest and probably the most meaningful thing I've ever done. Merry Christmas, all.
> if we continue to denigrate, oppress, suppress, mock, diminish, redirect, destroy, those who can make and build and repair the foundation of the machinery of living as you delineated, there will be nothing for those who covet power to run.
Beautifully put, Val. And just the right length.
Your post went to my heart, re: your road men, and thanking them, and the sense of appreciation and meaning at all those levels. The creative culture you described witnessing is amazing stuff...but never is valued or admired like some soft handed wanker bashing on about his opinions on The Current Thing.
It used to be that craft guilds embodied, preserved, and transmitted massive bodies of cultural memory, and were sustained, supported, and respected. Industrialization and corporatization went a long way to destroying that (automation, financialization).
I faced this head on with my business in the '90s, and ended up giving up: it was clear that the academics were taking over, and no young person trained in the traditional guild/apprenticeship system would ever be able to make a living or a life. Interestingly, in my day job I was able to apply these traditional views and models in another realm--the training of aspiring young farmers.
GEE HOW COME YOUNG MEN DON'T WANT TO WORK?????
Because they aren't offered "work," they're offered political gaming that offers them only losses and abuse.
A generally unappreciated element is that this realm of practical cultural creativity has in recent decades been a vector of accepted social abuse of white men. Man, the stories this household had about that, both in experience, witness, and others' stories. Your plumber does more to protect human health than ANY doctor, but your plumber's pants are a standing joke, while your doctor's PR-invented white coat, a high priest's raiment.
Thank you for your kind reception of my long words. They reached across.
“or dead because some jerk backfed his genny into the grid”
Is that really a thing? I was told that Darwinian evolution had weeded out those who don’t short out (to blow the fuses on said generators) the lines they are repairing before handling them.
Sparkies of my acquaintance mention it every couple years, so I have to assume it is, in fact, a thing. I don't know. I don't mess around with the Big Juice much and try to maintain a respectful distance from the tiny. But then I also talk to the Sun as an intelligent entity. :^>
Despite my superstitions, as with anything it's not so much the Big Juice that's the issue but hiccups in the systems others built, and still others' repaired/kludged, to domesticate it. Decisions get made that have unforeseen consequences in certain situations. A big part of an EE or designer's job is anticipating all that could possibly go wrong, and construction site surveys are rife with that kind of thinking, both in assessing what's there (astonishing boneheadedness, often) and figuring out how to make it right.
The bloodplasma of God--electricity--is an eager, surging thing. It wants to be, it self organizes, it follows the paths it follows. It sees possibilities we cannot, till it immanentizes them. Even then sometimes we don't survive the unveiling ("apocalypse"). Maybe you've seen the meme involving the little mouse who, with its tiny unsuspecting front paws, bridged the circuit in a high voltage service panel.
Can't recall who it was who said "Electricity arcs many times over for one reason: to return to its Source."
When I was struck by lightning at 13,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristos (NM), and could no longer wear a watch, and constantly blew up solid state components just by being near them, there was no model to think with. So how could I express the sense that I had been not whammed, not thrown...but lifted up and rather gently set down some 20 or more feet away, in a completely different posture? That simply doesn't happen!
We're being constantly lectured by midwits that have priorities other than the benefit of US citizens.
Being lectured that trans is okay for children is so obviously silly that these people should be shipped to a penal colony for advocating this bullshit.
Merry Christmas to you and yours. We appreciate your work.
Chris, is your comment regarding the heavy rainstorms predicted for SoCal and the entire west coast? I'm here now, and brought only an umbrella. Sounds like a cataclysm may be in the forecast...
Didn't listen to the forcast, but say the graphics. Looked like mid to West Texas, West, from bottom to top of the country was going to be getting messy weather. Everything East looked calm. (Saw the graphics on Utoob. Look there first.
The Cat Power song is a take off on a Black Sabbath song from their second album, Paranoid. Here's the original, complete with the stupid album cover art. https://youtu.be/DW3pZjmS3rg?si=q4aW1oRNrlJ9JgC3
Excellent piece. This sticks out... "You can go green, or you can go to war, but you cannot do both. You cannot fight a war of attrition if you have deindustrialised your economy to satisfy an environmentalist religion that treats empirical evidence as heresy.... The Green Party—once the pacifists—are now the loudest militarists, while the only people with actual military experience seem to be in the AfD. It is a total inversion of reality."
this is a strong piece. governments in france and the uk are practically at the end of their respective ropes and germany and belgium aren't far behind. the EU has reached the point of hospice care at this point. however, we need to remain alert that we are being kettled into a space where institutions across the board are so incompetent and useless that we will beg for the computer to descend from heaven and save us. there are actually people who believe this is possible and even desirable and we need to nip that in the bud when the clamor begins. and it will https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/launching-the-genesis-mission/
"It ends because everyone sees it. It ends because everything sucks, and why would everyone go on tolerating a world in which everything sucks?"
Everyone doesn't see it. The response of many is, "wow, that really sucks. So did you catch the game last night?" FYI, there are still progressive Whites in South Africa.
The above quote seems to assume that there is some line to be crossed where John Q. Normie suddenly chimps out and hoists the pirate flag. This didn't happen in the USSR, which was far worse even at it's best than we are at now. There is a lot more 'suck' to go. It also seems to imply that everything is happening naturally, that there aren't any malevolent forces pushing things along this path. There are, and they know what they are doing. Or at least have a template for what they should do, passed on to them from the previous generation of masters.
Chimpouts don't work for regime change; if they did, the genetics for it wouldn't have been bred out of us since the bronze age city state. If it worked, security services wouldn't be intentionally creating such chimpouts to crush (e.g., J6).
What works is people lining up behind a leader. Which is why those in charge make sure there are no leaders for us to line up behind. Even the slightest whiff of being such a person leads to a flurry of accusations, and even well-funded primary challengers, in the case of Steve King.
=
"Do you think you’re going to lose a culture war against Patty Murray and NPR?"
'Culture War' is the cheap way to maintain a slave state. The expensive way is brute force. Which we can't win for the above reason; we have no leaders. A related 19th century quote of questionable origin: "the great thing about poor people is you can always hire half of them to kill the other half."
My natural instinct is that Chris is right, eventually a critical mass of normies will finally look around and say “what the heck?” But then I remember Virginia just elected a man who fantasized about murdering his political opponent’s children as their chief law enforcement officer and have trouble squaring the two.
I don’t know, I think it did happen in the Eastern Bloc and it did happen in the USSR - and with no real leaders - but only when people thought they saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. One of my favorite history books is Crane Brinton’s “The Anatomy of Revolution” (sorry I occasionally can’t figure out italics) wherein he compares the English, French, and Russian (March-November 1917) revolutions. His basic point is that revolutions (aka chimpouts) happen not when things are at their bleakest, but when there is even the slightest perception of improving conditions. At that point, a cascade failure starts to occur when expectations cannot keep up with the invariably glacial pace of “reform” - glacial because a dysfunctional and sclerotic system cannot truly reform - it will shatter itself long before a revolution has the chance to do so (i.e. the first competent plumber in a sea of lazy know-nothing posers will get all the business). Yes, had the American election been successfully rigged one more time I think a chimpout would have been impossible. But miraculously that did not happen and so now the wall has been breached and trickles of water are starting to seep through (as in the now infamous Compact article about DIE). Trump or no, people can now see the little green wizard behind the curtain.
"I think it did happen in the Eastern Bloc and it did happen in the USSR"
Then they rolled in the tanks and crushed it. The USSR didn't really collapse or have a revolution, it just retrenched and reformulated itself. Pretty much the same elites with the same jobs ran it before and after. They realized the USSR was a shit-hole, even for elites.
There are lots of studies on revolutions, and they all generally agree on a few points:
-a coalition of multiple strata, elites and commoners; organizational structures
-economics and QoL is far less important than loss of culture and status
-weakness w/i the state, especially squabbling elites
-unifying ideology or narrative
There are probably a few more, but the point is we are lacking in most of them, and a successful rev requires most if not all of the factors to align.
We have people arguing on the internet, a culture that is already fragmented, and no unifying ideology or narrative. You may think we do, but we don't. Hence all the arguing on the internet. This was by design.
All of our techno bread and circuses are designed to avoid genuine hardship, because just manageable discomfort does not produce angry chimps. (It instead produces boiled frogs.) And it anyway requires VERY large numbers of angry chimps to move the needle, and all we've seen across Western Civilization are limited chimpouts, which are often fake and easily defused (e.g., US Summer of Mostly Peaceful Chimps, Canadian Trucker Chimpout, Aussie Chimpfest in the Park, White Brit Chimps vs Muslim Invader Chimps, etc.).
Even if JQ Normie were to get a giant red pill inserted at high velocity up his backside, he would immediately realize he has absolutely no tools with which to fight his technologically and financially superior enemies, and that half of his fellow citizens are shallow sociopaths who will gladly take the Master's money to kill their neighbors.
I think I need to define chimpout: a violent uprising with no leadership, just violence. No one at the top is scared of that. What they are scared of is leadership, a big part of which is defined as being able to be the Master who can hire a bunch of Normies to do the dirty work against the other Masters.
If a small group of states had strong leadership, they could do a 'quiet quitting' on the feds, simply ignoring things they don't like. While building up state military force simply as a deterrent. Then wait as the feds get weaker until quiet quitting becomes de facto secession, which becomes explicit secession.
Normie already has some big red pills inserted in their butts. Something like 25% of the public thinks the government was behind the JFK assassination, and ~70% think the government was responsible in some way for 9/11. And nothing happens. Leadership is needed. On the bright side, the public is primed for such leadership, if such a person or coalition rises up.
Sara Jacobs is my district. Absolutely cannot stand her. As dumb as a box of rocks. Very low IQ. I think her brother is a trannie. She is from a very wealthy family--her grandfather founded Qualcomm. She is Jewish but her boyfriend is a Muslim and keeps running for various offices and loses. She is so offensive that even when she tries to virtue signal by attending a Hanukah lighting or some such, they will not let her speak---she offends so many people. There is something I find so repulsive about her.
I think the "west" has reached a point where the failings and flat out inconsistencies of the prevailing orthodoxies are becoming too obvious that they can't be hidden. Not that this stops the gatekeepers and would-be great and good from trying. Unfortunately what they don't grasp is that we can see through their denials because they are becoming increasingly blatantly at odds with observable reality. At some point people really do believe their lying eyes instead of what the Internet or TV talking head tells them
The “gatekeepers and would-be great and good” who need to be taken down a few rungs at this moment are not in the media, in my opinion. They are the United States Senate. Their clear intention since January 20, 2025 has been to thwart the will of the electorate. They are using bastardized procedures to control the executive branch and kill all efforts to reform the administrative state. Democrats and Republicans have circled the wagons to protect their graft pipelines and created a situation where the electorate is irrelevant. If they can’t collect their extra tens of millions annually, they want out anyway, so they don’t care if their constituents vote for them or not. If there is a “constitutional crisis” in this country (cue one of the video montages of dullards in the media shrieking “constitutional crisis”), it is the cooperation of GOP senators with Democrat senators and “permanent Washington” to protect their extracurricular income. The multi-party system breaks down when the parties conspire jointly to thwart the will of the voters.
God Jul (and a Merry Christmas) to you and yours, mr Bray!
Be of good cheer because the death of something heralds the coming of new life, as told in the Edda, and as you point out above. The old media is writhing as did the great wyrm Fafner when the speartip of Lodbrok found its way to its heart; the beast is dead, yet still coils and spurts its venomous bile and toxic ichor.
As for free speech - in olden days when we were wiser, all deals, all brokerage, all promises and all settling of debts and scores were done public or they didn't count or could be called criminal. That is where the original now forgotten meaning of "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" comes from: be honest, live honestly, be upfront and outspoken, don't connive and conspire and spin intrigue or sow discord.
Only the deceiver, the liar and the spawn of Loke need the lie to rule and their greatest lie is that they rule by right, and by ability.
It is not so, as we all well know.
And as someone said recently in a thread of yours, paraphrasing: "Saying 'no' to them is to take their power away from them".
Thus is also the tradition embedded like a kenning in the celebration of Jul (or Yule as it has to be spelled in English):
Jul is saying no to death, for Winter is the season death. Jul is saying no to sadness and fear and worry.
It is saying yes to life, yes to joy, yes to hope.
The Sun will return, green grass will grow anew, and the heroes will gather on Idavall.
I love how Chris Bray lives in a city 30 minutes away from me, but you are reading and commenting all the way from Scandinavia, and your comments are always brilliant. Thank you for the reminders of hope and the good cheer!
John Carter's excellent essay on The Lost Generation is required reading, imo. In addition to your post, Chris, I would add Good Citizen's The Empire of Elastic Waistbands as a companion piece. https://thegoodcitizen.live/p/empire-of-elastic-waistbands The longing to return to sanity and rational life, along with all its healthy emotional expressions of culture, is bringing those dark ages to a rapid close.
The real question is, why does it take a clamp down on freedom of speech to "hold-together" a multi-cultural community??? If it cannot withstand the slings and arrows, maybe it's not a good thing for the community?
After we were hit by a freak tornado, we bought a whole house generator. The next time we lost power I realized that I missed not having power! There is something about candlelight, a warming fire and no internet that connects your soul to things that matter. Try to enjoy it Chris!
The scary part about Mr. Minns isn’t him, it’s the number of people who will go along with his crazy, justify it’s obvious inhumanity, ignore the lives destroyed, never question why you would need to silence (or disarm) people to have a successful society, or consider what happens when the people have had enough or when Mr. Minns gets his way.
The enshittification on display now was purposely birthed and nurtured -- it's like they took "The Peter Principle," which explained and natural order of incompetence, as a how-to manual.
Chris, you're a brilliant writer. Your political analysis is incisive. You hold all the sensible views that will finally allow us to emerge from this sick, mendacious, corrupt, infantile, DEI/woke hole we are currently languishing in. But your taste in music is bloody horrible.
I listened to 5 of the 6 songs (One song wasn't accessible in my backwater nation of UK). Different kettle of fish to the song I commented on. Tuneful, good musicians who can play their instruments and can really sing. I even recognised Lucinda Williams' voice from one of my Elvis Costello albums. Even so, I'd have to say that you probably have to be American to like Americana music. So, while it's not my thing it definitely is music.
Power company trucks lining up on my block, and I'll be mostly offline until tomorrow. Though I may still be around for a little while before they start "maintaining infrastructure."
Be sure to not hail a Waymo taxi then...
I bought a 3-burner propane stove for such eventualities, since I don't know if the generator my husband supposedly ordered a year ago will ever show up. They probably don't make them anymore.
Also got my little Coleman single burner stove, 6 1 lb canisters and a French press. Without coffee, nothing can be accomplished.
Oh, you mean internet? In THAT eventuality, I have a lot of books I still haven't read.
I use the same approach. Coffee, French press, Coleman stove. Even have one of those comment Ovens that sits on top of the stove. Life Goes On.
Good luck with the infrastructure bro! Chuck a can of chili on the BBQ if needed.
> In a cultural dark age, speak. Write, make things, look for other people who are making things and speaking with clarity.
I think your lineworkers are doing that.
Though their writing is technical, and designed to make sure complex processes go by the book and details get recorded.
And when dealing with God's own bloodplasma--electricity--speaking with clarity to one's team members is a matter of life and death. As well as creative collaboration.
But I like your idea about reflecting on what to do in a cultural dark age.
In a cultural dark age, keep the electric grid running by spending all night away from your families doing isolate/troubleshoot/repair, drawing on every skill and bit of experience you have and know, and your comrades-in-culture do. Risk your life with downed wires and hostile locals and crazy drivers and heavy equipment that hopefully works right and the risk of getting bitten or dead because some jerk backfed his genny into the grid, or the as-builts originated with someone operating in fantasyland, or the Third World manufactured components keep blowing out. This creative work keeps everyone warm, and safe, and safely fed, and able to maintain Christmas Rituals. Get the job done on time, and under budget. Get back to your motel safely. Or maybe just get your next work order in another place. Another state. Another region. Kit up to haul ass. Drive.
Or
In a cultural dark age, keep the plumbing functioning, the drinking water reasonably clean, the sewage segregated from homes and the water supply, the fire standpipes and hydrants pressurized, the instrumentation tested/calibrated. These make health and safety for all like nothing else in human technology. (Ask Substacker Roman Bystrianyk about that!)
Or
In a cultural dark age, assemble around the supper table with hundreds of massive, complex drawings you made, to discuss and reflect with your home posse on the six generations of low-voltage infrastructure (some bearing 1920s Western Electric labels) you discovered in a two-week-long, 18 hour a day, seven day a week massive-campus medical center site survey on the other side of the continent, grappling with how to build modernization plans, drawing on 20, 30 or more years of experience, to build site documentation on the fly, to get the project done on schedule/under budget (or while managing change order inflation), while ensuring continuity of operations—including mission critical and life safety systems—for the hundreds or thousands of inhabitants of the five or ten or sixteen or thirty or sixty site buildings...and not making any mistakes that can cause loss of life or property, or future contracts for your employer…
Silly corvid. Thinking such things are cultural work.
Cultural work isn't that.
It's complaining at length, like Jacob Savage does and John Carter piled on (no dig at John there, I have a reply part drafted to a thoughtful point he made to me), about how, when a man sets his sights on soft-handed occupations that are 45-60% female, it could possibly be a big surprise that "DEI" made wide paved inroads there whose toll booths exclude white men...
...where DEI has only made footpaths into the creative cultural work that requires muscle, sweat, danger, dirt, courageous focus, stamina, mind, body, and soul. Men's work (and a few women).
Cultural work is poor little Jacob lamenting his (DEI scented) sense of victimization, and how he is ENTITLED to the career trajectory he imagined--after all he "PUT IN HIS TIME" coaching SAT test takers and reselling concert tickets! And now is big mad because things didn't work out the way he expected.
Cultural work surely isn't anything done by men in the occupations occupied 95% by men:
> > Boilermakers, drillers of earth, concrete and cement workers, drillers of oil wells, roofers and slaters, bus/truck/stationary engine mechanics, HVAC mechanics, heavy and farm equipment mechanics, plumbers/pipe fitters/steamfitters, plasterers, elevator installers/repairers, masons/tilers/carpet installers, construction equipment operating engineers, automobile mechanics, carpenters, excavating and loading machine operators, forge and hammer operators, "other mining occupations," structural metal workers, electrical power installers and repairers, electricians, millwrights, small engine repairers, household appliance and power tool repairers, glaziers, drywall installers, construction laborers, paving/surfacing/tamping equipment operators, machinery maintenance occupations, construction trades, sheet-metal duct installers, industrial electrical equipment repairers, auto body repairers, construction work supervisors, miners, tool and die makers/setters, industrial machinery repairers, helpers and surveyors, plant and system operators/stationary engineers, crane/derrick/winch/hoist operators, mechanics and repairers, aircraft mechanics, machinists, power plant operators, pest control occupations, locksmith and safe repairers, firefighting/prevention/inspection, miscellaneous material moving occupations
That's from a bar graph that I can't affix here, that shows hundreds of occupations ranked by percentage of men and women in them.
That's just the 95% male ones; the up-to-90% male ones are of similar sort, and amount, but I got tired of typing them out.
You can guess what the 80-plus-percent female occupations are.
Chris, we are suffering from the fact that the essential, creative Cultural Work of this Republic was replaced from the 1970s on. Just as its population was. And its money supply. They called it "deindustralization," but it was more about this...
https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1540862372749.jpg
...described by this Anon thus...
https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1540865738213.png
(Open in Substack viewer, right click in new tab to embiggen, or just follow the post number to the 4plebs archive.)
We're suffering from an epoch of erasure of what it takes to keep civilizations going, and what it takes to keep men (and a few women) sustaining the culture that transmits the skills, mindset, and memory to do that creative work.
This is precisely why Donald John Trump, at bottom, poses such a psychological threat to so many. And was such an unexpected joy for others.
I saw an interview with him, maybe in the '80s it was. The girl interviewing him had big hair. He was answering her questions when suddenly she ambushed him. "So, when you die, what do you want your epitaph to be?" He looked a bit aback but didn't lose momentum. He paused for just a beat, then said, low, and deep, and firm but quiet:
"He built good things well."
PS--on "making culture" by writing, when your electrons are flowing again, don't forget to write a note to the power company, thanking the guys for coming out in the night. The culture of thanklessness is one that infra and logistics men and women suffer constantly. "Thank you for restoring Christmas"--the culture--might sound pretty good to their ears.
Korp. Your post nearly made me weep, it is so true. And if we continue to denigrate, oppress, suppress, mock, diminish, redirect, destroy, those who can make and build and repair the foundation of the machinery of living as you delineated, there will be nothing for those who covet power to run. One personal note. The streets in my wee village were rebuilt this summer. Weeks of men, yes teams of men, breaking up the old pavement, grinding it to be recycled, making a new road bed, grading the edges for new curb and gutters, pouring the concrete, finally laying the new asphalt. Oh yes, later cleaning up the rights of way and replanting new grass in the disturbed areas. I was in awe every day. Out there rain or shine. The choreography of big lumbering machines was something to witness. I put up a sign in my front yard from day one that said "Thank you for our new road." It was like manna from heaven for those guys. I waved and said thank you to every one of them. NO ONE DOES! So if and when you see guys doing real work, thank them, even wave at the guy standing in the road to direct one lane traffic. Sorry to go on and on. No, not sorry. It was the easiest and probably the most meaningful thing I've ever done. Merry Christmas, all.
> if we continue to denigrate, oppress, suppress, mock, diminish, redirect, destroy, those who can make and build and repair the foundation of the machinery of living as you delineated, there will be nothing for those who covet power to run.
Beautifully put, Val. And just the right length.
Your post went to my heart, re: your road men, and thanking them, and the sense of appreciation and meaning at all those levels. The creative culture you described witnessing is amazing stuff...but never is valued or admired like some soft handed wanker bashing on about his opinions on The Current Thing.
It used to be that craft guilds embodied, preserved, and transmitted massive bodies of cultural memory, and were sustained, supported, and respected. Industrialization and corporatization went a long way to destroying that (automation, financialization).
I faced this head on with my business in the '90s, and ended up giving up: it was clear that the academics were taking over, and no young person trained in the traditional guild/apprenticeship system would ever be able to make a living or a life. Interestingly, in my day job I was able to apply these traditional views and models in another realm--the training of aspiring young farmers.
GEE HOW COME YOUNG MEN DON'T WANT TO WORK?????
Because they aren't offered "work," they're offered political gaming that offers them only losses and abuse.
A generally unappreciated element is that this realm of practical cultural creativity has in recent decades been a vector of accepted social abuse of white men. Man, the stories this household had about that, both in experience, witness, and others' stories. Your plumber does more to protect human health than ANY doctor, but your plumber's pants are a standing joke, while your doctor's PR-invented white coat, a high priest's raiment.
Thank you for your kind reception of my long words. They reached across.
Fantastic essays on enshittification
...and what a great Cat Power song!
“or dead because some jerk backfed his genny into the grid”
Is that really a thing? I was told that Darwinian evolution had weeded out those who don’t short out (to blow the fuses on said generators) the lines they are repairing before handling them.
Nice post, by the way.
Thanks, Lon.
Sparkies of my acquaintance mention it every couple years, so I have to assume it is, in fact, a thing. I don't know. I don't mess around with the Big Juice much and try to maintain a respectful distance from the tiny. But then I also talk to the Sun as an intelligent entity. :^>
Despite my superstitions, as with anything it's not so much the Big Juice that's the issue but hiccups in the systems others built, and still others' repaired/kludged, to domesticate it. Decisions get made that have unforeseen consequences in certain situations. A big part of an EE or designer's job is anticipating all that could possibly go wrong, and construction site surveys are rife with that kind of thinking, both in assessing what's there (astonishing boneheadedness, often) and figuring out how to make it right.
The bloodplasma of God--electricity--is an eager, surging thing. It wants to be, it self organizes, it follows the paths it follows. It sees possibilities we cannot, till it immanentizes them. Even then sometimes we don't survive the unveiling ("apocalypse"). Maybe you've seen the meme involving the little mouse who, with its tiny unsuspecting front paws, bridged the circuit in a high voltage service panel.
Can't recall who it was who said "Electricity arcs many times over for one reason: to return to its Source."
When I was struck by lightning at 13,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristos (NM), and could no longer wear a watch, and constantly blew up solid state components just by being near them, there was no model to think with. So how could I express the sense that I had been not whammed, not thrown...but lifted up and rather gently set down some 20 or more feet away, in a completely different posture? That simply doesn't happen!
Except it does.
Happy New Year, bro.
Do as you say and the mediocre will fight against you tooth and nail to keep you from succeeding. They want full control so everyone fails.
I like Orania as a better.model.
Immensely well-said, Chris.
We're being constantly lectured by midwits that have priorities other than the benefit of US citizens.
Being lectured that trans is okay for children is so obviously silly that these people should be shipped to a penal colony for advocating this bullshit.
Merry Christmas to you and yours. We appreciate your work.
Chris, is your comment regarding the heavy rainstorms predicted for SoCal and the entire west coast? I'm here now, and brought only an umbrella. Sounds like a cataclysm may be in the forecast...
My guess is a couple days of moderate rain, although Los Angeles falls apart quickly with ten minutes of drizzle.
Didn't listen to the forcast, but say the graphics. Looked like mid to West Texas, West, from bottom to top of the country was going to be getting messy weather. Everything East looked calm. (Saw the graphics on Utoob. Look there first.
Bet most of those linemen are white dudes.
Bet'cha you're VERY correct.
Watch out for the enshittification of the power company.
The Cat Power song is a take off on a Black Sabbath song from their second album, Paranoid. Here's the original, complete with the stupid album cover art. https://youtu.be/DW3pZjmS3rg?si=q4aW1oRNrlJ9JgC3
Get a generator! My gosh, no home should be without these days.
Who is going to pay for it? I have one with a pull cord to start it, but I can't pull it hard enough. You gonna buy me one?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
LMAO , NO I am not lol
Buy your own
I did buy my entire family gennys over the years.
I don't have that much money.
Just make sure it’s not the Mission Impossible crew come to get you…
Hope he makes Mission Barbecue out of em
As Camille Paglia notes: Next time the power goes off look who shows up to get things up and running again. Burly white men - without complaint.
Your taxes at work!
Asshats
I think this is related. The cracks are showing all around the world.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/12/the-eu-could-be-gone-in-four-years-a-revolutionary-eruption-is-coming/
Excellent piece. This sticks out... "You can go green, or you can go to war, but you cannot do both. You cannot fight a war of attrition if you have deindustrialised your economy to satisfy an environmentalist religion that treats empirical evidence as heresy.... The Green Party—once the pacifists—are now the loudest militarists, while the only people with actual military experience seem to be in the AfD. It is a total inversion of reality."
this is a strong piece. governments in france and the uk are practically at the end of their respective ropes and germany and belgium aren't far behind. the EU has reached the point of hospice care at this point. however, we need to remain alert that we are being kettled into a space where institutions across the board are so incompetent and useless that we will beg for the computer to descend from heaven and save us. there are actually people who believe this is possible and even desirable and we need to nip that in the bud when the clamor begins. and it will https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/launching-the-genesis-mission/
The ai colossus will eventually note the step change in airport temperature records and decree o’bombya a sun god.
I hope it takes less than 4 years
Me too. In fact I'm actively praying for its collapse.
4 years won't helo me.
The elites are panicking: https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/12/the-elites-are-panicking-and-that-should-give-us-hope/
🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞 The EU has got to go!
Great. When I viewed your reply in my email your hand emojis were chinese characters. Looks fine here on Substack tho.
I probably should not keep the nuke launch codes there anymore.
😲😖 I hope my emojis didn't say anything terrible in Chinese. ....And, yeah, move those pesky codes!
Merry Christmas!
Lol
Merry Christmas!
FYI: I used to have that dog pic on my computer at work, forever ago. It always makes me smile. 🥰
"It ends because everyone sees it. It ends because everything sucks, and why would everyone go on tolerating a world in which everything sucks?"
Everyone doesn't see it. The response of many is, "wow, that really sucks. So did you catch the game last night?" FYI, there are still progressive Whites in South Africa.
The above quote seems to assume that there is some line to be crossed where John Q. Normie suddenly chimps out and hoists the pirate flag. This didn't happen in the USSR, which was far worse even at it's best than we are at now. There is a lot more 'suck' to go. It also seems to imply that everything is happening naturally, that there aren't any malevolent forces pushing things along this path. There are, and they know what they are doing. Or at least have a template for what they should do, passed on to them from the previous generation of masters.
Chimpouts don't work for regime change; if they did, the genetics for it wouldn't have been bred out of us since the bronze age city state. If it worked, security services wouldn't be intentionally creating such chimpouts to crush (e.g., J6).
What works is people lining up behind a leader. Which is why those in charge make sure there are no leaders for us to line up behind. Even the slightest whiff of being such a person leads to a flurry of accusations, and even well-funded primary challengers, in the case of Steve King.
=
"Do you think you’re going to lose a culture war against Patty Murray and NPR?"
'Culture War' is the cheap way to maintain a slave state. The expensive way is brute force. Which we can't win for the above reason; we have no leaders. A related 19th century quote of questionable origin: "the great thing about poor people is you can always hire half of them to kill the other half."
My natural instinct is that Chris is right, eventually a critical mass of normies will finally look around and say “what the heck?” But then I remember Virginia just elected a man who fantasized about murdering his political opponent’s children as their chief law enforcement officer and have trouble squaring the two.
I don’t know, I think it did happen in the Eastern Bloc and it did happen in the USSR - and with no real leaders - but only when people thought they saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. One of my favorite history books is Crane Brinton’s “The Anatomy of Revolution” (sorry I occasionally can’t figure out italics) wherein he compares the English, French, and Russian (March-November 1917) revolutions. His basic point is that revolutions (aka chimpouts) happen not when things are at their bleakest, but when there is even the slightest perception of improving conditions. At that point, a cascade failure starts to occur when expectations cannot keep up with the invariably glacial pace of “reform” - glacial because a dysfunctional and sclerotic system cannot truly reform - it will shatter itself long before a revolution has the chance to do so (i.e. the first competent plumber in a sea of lazy know-nothing posers will get all the business). Yes, had the American election been successfully rigged one more time I think a chimpout would have been impossible. But miraculously that did not happen and so now the wall has been breached and trickles of water are starting to seep through (as in the now infamous Compact article about DIE). Trump or no, people can now see the little green wizard behind the curtain.
"I think it did happen in the Eastern Bloc and it did happen in the USSR"
Then they rolled in the tanks and crushed it. The USSR didn't really collapse or have a revolution, it just retrenched and reformulated itself. Pretty much the same elites with the same jobs ran it before and after. They realized the USSR was a shit-hole, even for elites.
There are lots of studies on revolutions, and they all generally agree on a few points:
-a coalition of multiple strata, elites and commoners; organizational structures
-economics and QoL is far less important than loss of culture and status
-weakness w/i the state, especially squabbling elites
-unifying ideology or narrative
There are probably a few more, but the point is we are lacking in most of them, and a successful rev requires most if not all of the factors to align.
We have people arguing on the internet, a culture that is already fragmented, and no unifying ideology or narrative. You may think we do, but we don't. Hence all the arguing on the internet. This was by design.
All of our techno bread and circuses are designed to avoid genuine hardship, because just manageable discomfort does not produce angry chimps. (It instead produces boiled frogs.) And it anyway requires VERY large numbers of angry chimps to move the needle, and all we've seen across Western Civilization are limited chimpouts, which are often fake and easily defused (e.g., US Summer of Mostly Peaceful Chimps, Canadian Trucker Chimpout, Aussie Chimpfest in the Park, White Brit Chimps vs Muslim Invader Chimps, etc.).
Even if JQ Normie were to get a giant red pill inserted at high velocity up his backside, he would immediately realize he has absolutely no tools with which to fight his technologically and financially superior enemies, and that half of his fellow citizens are shallow sociopaths who will gladly take the Master's money to kill their neighbors.
Agreed.
I think I need to define chimpout: a violent uprising with no leadership, just violence. No one at the top is scared of that. What they are scared of is leadership, a big part of which is defined as being able to be the Master who can hire a bunch of Normies to do the dirty work against the other Masters.
If a small group of states had strong leadership, they could do a 'quiet quitting' on the feds, simply ignoring things they don't like. While building up state military force simply as a deterrent. Then wait as the feds get weaker until quiet quitting becomes de facto secession, which becomes explicit secession.
Normie already has some big red pills inserted in their butts. Something like 25% of the public thinks the government was behind the JFK assassination, and ~70% think the government was responsible in some way for 9/11. And nothing happens. Leadership is needed. On the bright side, the public is primed for such leadership, if such a person or coalition rises up.
"flurry of accusations", or an assassin's bullet, AKA Charlie Kirk. Millions were lining up behind Charlie Kirk.
Sara Jacobs is my district. Absolutely cannot stand her. As dumb as a box of rocks. Very low IQ. I think her brother is a trannie. She is from a very wealthy family--her grandfather founded Qualcomm. She is Jewish but her boyfriend is a Muslim and keeps running for various offices and loses. She is so offensive that even when she tries to virtue signal by attending a Hanukah lighting or some such, they will not let her speak---she offends so many people. There is something I find so repulsive about her.
"Demons Despise the Sound of Shaking Paper"
Is that why Rush did that in nearly every show?
I think the "west" has reached a point where the failings and flat out inconsistencies of the prevailing orthodoxies are becoming too obvious that they can't be hidden. Not that this stops the gatekeepers and would-be great and good from trying. Unfortunately what they don't grasp is that we can see through their denials because they are becoming increasingly blatantly at odds with observable reality. At some point people really do believe their lying eyes instead of what the Internet or TV talking head tells them
The “gatekeepers and would-be great and good” who need to be taken down a few rungs at this moment are not in the media, in my opinion. They are the United States Senate. Their clear intention since January 20, 2025 has been to thwart the will of the electorate. They are using bastardized procedures to control the executive branch and kill all efforts to reform the administrative state. Democrats and Republicans have circled the wagons to protect their graft pipelines and created a situation where the electorate is irrelevant. If they can’t collect their extra tens of millions annually, they want out anyway, so they don’t care if their constituents vote for them or not. If there is a “constitutional crisis” in this country (cue one of the video montages of dullards in the media shrieking “constitutional crisis”), it is the cooperation of GOP senators with Democrat senators and “permanent Washington” to protect their extracurricular income. The multi-party system breaks down when the parties conspire jointly to thwart the will of the voters.
The elites are panicking: https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/12/the-elites-are-panicking-and-that-should-give-us-hope/
God Jul (and a Merry Christmas) to you and yours, mr Bray!
Be of good cheer because the death of something heralds the coming of new life, as told in the Edda, and as you point out above. The old media is writhing as did the great wyrm Fafner when the speartip of Lodbrok found its way to its heart; the beast is dead, yet still coils and spurts its venomous bile and toxic ichor.
As for free speech - in olden days when we were wiser, all deals, all brokerage, all promises and all settling of debts and scores were done public or they didn't count or could be called criminal. That is where the original now forgotten meaning of "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" comes from: be honest, live honestly, be upfront and outspoken, don't connive and conspire and spin intrigue or sow discord.
Only the deceiver, the liar and the spawn of Loke need the lie to rule and their greatest lie is that they rule by right, and by ability.
It is not so, as we all well know.
And as someone said recently in a thread of yours, paraphrasing: "Saying 'no' to them is to take their power away from them".
Thus is also the tradition embedded like a kenning in the celebration of Jul (or Yule as it has to be spelled in English):
Jul is saying no to death, for Winter is the season death. Jul is saying no to sadness and fear and worry.
It is saying yes to life, yes to joy, yes to hope.
The Sun will return, green grass will grow anew, and the heroes will gather on Idavall.
I love how Chris Bray lives in a city 30 minutes away from me, but you are reading and commenting all the way from Scandinavia, and your comments are always brilliant. Thank you for the reminders of hope and the good cheer!
Always brilliant, he says! Look to the East and despite not having all that many teeth left, I'm sure you'll see my grin shining!
God Jul and Merry Christmas to you, Brian, and let me return the compliment!
“Which is why we have no leaders for us to line up behind”
The Soviets killed Polish officers, police and intelligentsia at Katyn in 1940 to ensure the Poles would have no leaders. No leaders, no resistance.
DEI is a similar operation, but only because they can’t commit mass murder, yet.
https://yesterdaytoday.net/2022/02/25/the-katyn-massacre-when-the-soviets-murdered-22000-polish-men-then-blamed-the-nazis/
This is brilliant commentary. Once you see it (what DEI is really doing), you can’t un-see it.
The NYT and The New Yorker and NPR are completely irrelevant, other than the fact that they are driving their readers insane.
Or perhaps only the insane still read or listen to them.
John Carter's excellent essay on The Lost Generation is required reading, imo. In addition to your post, Chris, I would add Good Citizen's The Empire of Elastic Waistbands as a companion piece. https://thegoodcitizen.live/p/empire-of-elastic-waistbands The longing to return to sanity and rational life, along with all its healthy emotional expressions of culture, is bringing those dark ages to a rapid close.
The real question is, why does it take a clamp down on freedom of speech to "hold-together" a multi-cultural community??? If it cannot withstand the slings and arrows, maybe it's not a good thing for the community?
I think he meant a multi-voter community. Or muti-sucker.
After we were hit by a freak tornado, we bought a whole house generator. The next time we lost power I realized that I missed not having power! There is something about candlelight, a warming fire and no internet that connects your soul to things that matter. Try to enjoy it Chris!
The scary part about Mr. Minns isn’t him, it’s the number of people who will go along with his crazy, justify it’s obvious inhumanity, ignore the lives destroyed, never question why you would need to silence (or disarm) people to have a successful society, or consider what happens when the people have had enough or when Mr. Minns gets his way.
Thank for the pre-Christmas message of hope for the future. Perspective is everything.
It feels as though our culture has descended into something that appeals to looting flash mobs.
The enshittification on display now was purposely birthed and nurtured -- it's like they took "The Peter Principle," which explained and natural order of incompetence, as a how-to manual.
Chris, you're a brilliant writer. Your political analysis is incisive. You hold all the sensible views that will finally allow us to emerge from this sick, mendacious, corrupt, infantile, DEI/woke hole we are currently languishing in. But your taste in music is bloody horrible.
LOL
keith before you completely give up on our host's taste in tunes, why not savor the sounds on this page? https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/holiday-pause
suspect you will be pleasantly surprised.
I listened to 5 of the 6 songs (One song wasn't accessible in my backwater nation of UK). Different kettle of fish to the song I commented on. Tuneful, good musicians who can play their instruments and can really sing. I even recognised Lucinda Williams' voice from one of my Elvis Costello albums. Even so, I'd have to say that you probably have to be American to like Americana music. So, while it's not my thing it definitely is music.
Costello is actually very adept at Americana :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbgCGpF-5bI
Yes, I know, but I prefer him in his previous incarnation, writing and playing lyrically and musically superior pop.
yeah those were the days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_YeKztCOYc
You're showing your age.
I had always sworn not to turn into my dad. And yet it turns out that my dad was right after all!