First thing first:  About the socks. I bought a couple pairs of these in response to Michael Malice’s book and his delightful podcast (Promo Code: Welcome30).  They are indeed nice.  I am not going to say these socks will change your life when you buy them.  If a pair of socks changes your life, chances are pretty good you are homeless or your life otherwise sucks.  So grab a pair of these socks, and if they change your life, please consider reevaluating the choices you made to get to this point.

 

 

This is my review of Anchorage Brewing Co Easy Evil Black Raspberry Saison

As a quick primer on the author:  his Wikipedia page can be found at this link.  For those refusing I enact their labor, Malice is an anarchist is the purest sense.  He is best known for his appearances on Kennedy or his previous book, Dear Reader:  The Unauthorized Biography of Kim Jung Il.  He is has a fairly well-known presence on Twitter; essentially as a troll with a large following.  Ever wonder where the reply of “Your*” in response to the proper use of the word, “you’re” (or vice versa) came from?  That started with him, and is meant to generate an indignant response from the person who made the mistake of making a statement using the second person, is incapable of arguing the merits of the idea, and instead focuses on grammar.  That is what trolling is after all, an attempt to manipulate the emotional response of a half-wit to the troll’s delight.  His latest book The New Right:  A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics, is available here on Amazon.  It is a treatise if sorts, on how culture is derived from the fringe of society and how that fringe is made up of various factions on “the right”.

He has certain definitions and views that should first be identified before this book is further discussed.

Conservatism vs. Progressivism:  There is no functional difference between the two, aside from acceptance of the pace and direction culture moves.  He consistently defines a conservative as, “a progressive driving the speed limit”.

The New Right:

A loosely connected group of individuals united by their opposition to progressivism, which they perceive to be a thinly veiled fundamentalist religion dedicated to egalitarian principles and intent on totalitarian world domination via globalist hegemony.

The Cathedral:  An oversimplified definition may be the “Evangelical Left”; universities, the media, and expansive government.  He cites Mencius Moldbug for the concept but a more convenient quote (for me) is from Jim Goad:

[…]cultural progressivism, egalitarianism, social justice, or whatever the fuck you’re calling it these days–is simply Christianity with God removed.  Your “God”–your untouchable premise–is the naively childish and entirely unscientific notion of innate human equality.

A way to think of this book, is a comparison he makes on his interview with Michael Malice on his podcast to the classic, Dante’s Inferno.  In this book, with assistance of a Roman poet/philosopher Virgil, Dante descends into Hell to witness the eternal punishment of sinners.  One discovers with Dante, the further along the book, the further removed from grace the sin, the further he must descend into Hell, thus the harsher the punishment.  Here the further along the reader goes, he or she descends further from “safe” and “respectable” cultural and political thought.

Safe and respectable according to whom?  The Cathedral.  This choice in metaphors is not made lightly.

This book otherwise takes a long look at the intersection of various subgroups that make up the right as Malice sees it.  He begins where many at this site presently are:  the convergence of Murray Rothbard/Pat Buchannan (Anachro-capitalist/Paleo-conservative) wings that came about in the early 1990’s.  This is prescient for me, because this is several years prior to my coming of age and any explanation I was ever given to this philosophy was framed negatively.  He then presents others such as Milo Yionopo… Yoiunoppo…  He presents others such as infamous homosexual agent-provocateur Milo and how The Cathedral, with some success, attempted to take him down a few years ago.  We see this today with Steven Crowder, though his forays with the Cathedral are far too recent, and probably too blasé to be discussed by Malice in this book.  In later chapters he discusses other figures such as Mike Cernivoch, Gavin McGinnes, Anne Coulter, Jared Taylor, Pax Dickinson…and beyond.  It is thorough exposé across a wide spectrum of free thinking people, united only in their opposition to progressives.

One can look at this book, and the comparison to Dante’s Inferno and view it is as a bit of a warning.  To whom is this warning directed?  At the risk of being declared a heretic around here…you.  YES, YOU.  THE READER.

OBEY

An analogy he constantly uses, in spite of it being a cliché, is the red pill.  This of course is a reference to the 1999 movie The Matrix and essentially means one is exposed to the existence of the lie that is Wonderland, and taking the red pill means remaining in Wonderland and following the White Rabbit where it takes you.  In this case the lie is the Cathedral, and the pillars that hold it up.  Once one takes the red pill, he or she becomes acquainted with the symbols and the methods the Cathedral uses to keep the population under control.  The problem of course, is in The Matrix, Morpheus only gives Neo a single red pill.  This is important as only one is needed.  Don’t take the entire bottle.  Another way perhaps to look at this is the movie They Live.  Here it is not a red pill but a pair of sunglasses that allows the wearer to see people as they truly are.  The problem is continually wearing the sunglasses will eventually become painful to look through.

The analogy of the sunglasses however has several limitations, hence Malice chooses the red pill.  To begin, one first takes the red pill and discovers the truth:  there is no functional difference between progressivism, and conservatism; only the speed at which one is traveling on the road to serfdom.  The problem he finds, is once one discovers this, and immerse oneself in the literature, one begins to question everything.  One sees the media is not to be trusted, then then seeks news and opinion “elsewhere” (ALTERNATIVE FACTS!!).  Once others point out inconsistencies, and that the opinions one seeks “elsewhere” are also to not to be trusted, one descends further into the inferno, and finds oneself making unnecessary if/then connections, or connections that are dangerous to make.  i.e. George Stephanopoulos worked for the Clinton administration and expects to be taken seriously as an objective journalist (red pill), then Nick Gillespie is a cosmopolitan cuck that simply wants to be accepted by his establishment colleagues in the media (two pills), which becomes John Podesta being a tool of a secret society of child molesters (too many red pills), then escalates into taking “race realism” seriously because (((They))) are behind it and casually using racial slurs is okay if the context allows (empty bottle).  “Blood and soil” is all that remains, cowboy….

Slow down, and think about what you are doing.  Yes, this has occurred here in a site comprised of people that identify themselves as libertarian.  Who remembers PapayaSF?

Here is a fun example.  SpongeBob Squarepants…is gay.  No seriously, here is an article that makes a rather poor case why SpongeBob is a homosexual.  The rationalist after taking the red pill will say, “C’mon, he’s a Sponge.  Sponges reproduce asexually and its a kids show.”  Too many red pills results in coming across sites like that, and thinking there is a “gay agenda” that is putting subtle messages into children’s programing in an effort to create acceptance of homosexuality, and even make children homosexuals themselves.  After all, the show’s creators said this was certainly not the case but they said it through establishment media and they can’t be trusted…

…anyways, this beer pours in a manner that I can only describe as “Carbonated Merlot”.  If you are the type that likes sours, or saisons, there is nothing traditional about this beer to make you think it is either, so I have no idea if you will be into it.  The tartness of the black raspberries blasts its way into everything, and it immediately turned me off at first.  You have to let it warm up slightly to get anything else past that.  There is a hint of citrus fruitiness, as it is still a saison, that you might find after letting it sit for a bit.  This is not one to chug, because you probably won’t be able to from the tartness.  Sip it, and enjoy it with a book.

So the bottom line?  I highly recommend this book, but tread carefully out there, Heshi socks are quite nice, and Anchorage Brewing Co Easy Evil Black Raspberry Saison rates a very respectable  3.8/5.