Book review of Unsqualified Preservations by Mencius Moldbugman.

Frequently confused with his near-namesake, Moldbugman was for some time a noted Twitter shitposter who poured scorn on gaping photos, collectors of bobbleheads and those who would arrange their bookshelves by colour.

Unsqualified Preservations, rather than a dry and wordy account of why Curtis Yarvin should be appointed God Emperor of the Universe, is a collection of funny and macabre short stories.

The first, ‘Rickadoodle Applestrudel,’ is a vivid and creepily realistic depiction of too-online madness that turned out to be even more autobiographical than Moldbugman expected, although I don’t think he quite ended up with a Pinoy cock in his mouth.

Book review of The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer.

Over the last few years, I have been compelled to curiosity about the nature of mass hysteria. I previously reviewed Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.

The True Believer focuses on who gets involved in movements before they become established institutions – Bolsheviks in 1920, Nazis in 1925, Christians before Constantine and so on.

That’s a motley collection of mass movements, so I must add that Eric claims he does not see mass movements as necessarily bad. This book is mostly read as a warning about how extremist movements get started but it could equally be read as a how-to guide for getting a noble cause off the ground. Keep that in mind as we continue.

Eric’s main assertion is that true believers are, for the most part, unsuccessful and unhappy people:

. . . people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.

Discontent is not enough. There must also be a sense of power to change things. An extremely poor peasant with no rights is unlikely to join a mass movement unless something convinces him it may succeed, perhaps a charismatic leader who seems infallible or firm belief in a doctrine.

The true believer seeks to join a movement primarily as a way of escaping himself.

Book review of Welcome to Hell by “Bad” Billy Pratt

I’ve been reading Bad Billy’s blog Kill to Party for many years. In a sphere of game and neoreaction, his site is more a mix of personal dating horror stories and thwarted romantic dreams presented through the lens of pop culture as he attempts to pull apart what the hell happened to GenX.

Welcome to Hell is a collection of these blog posts but it also holds together as a book because the themes develop throughout.

Rather than blame everything on Boomers, his attention is focused inward:

Despite all the nihilistic postering, it’s important to remember that Generation X wasn’t the one with all the school shootings. The murky attitude was as shallow as the cuts on their wrists; it was a fashion accessory, it was an act, it was total bullshit. Even if they didn’t become noteworthy go-getters, GenX eventually had to grow up into lame adults.

Though carefully outside the mainstream Manosphere, Billy gets drawn into the last decade’s Manofads. One of the most interesting chapters is about his addiction to kratom, which he describes alongside the self-destruction of the Stone Temple Pilot’s lead singer:

Review of McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War by Hamilton Gregory, 2015

It is an eternal fallacy to imagine that we live in uniquely corrupted times. Reading any good history book reminds us that we’ve always been this bad, but then we put the book down, check social media and go back to thinking we are in the End Times.

In America, the 1960-70s hosted an evil that I’m unaware of in any other time or place: forcibly recruiting mentally disabled men to fight in the Vietnam War.

Men who could not learn how to independently load or maintain a rifle. Men whose disability affected their physical coordination, meaning they could not pass the required tests.

The demand for warm bodies was so great that they deployed them anyway.

Previously: Literally Hitler

Book review of Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick J. Buchanan, 2008.

Executive summary: Churchill and friends ruined Britain by blundering into both world wars.

The claim about the First World War is much less controversial than the Second. In fact, I considered skipping the section on the lead-up to WWI because I’d read a lot about it already. A few pages in, I changed my mind.

Book review of The Fables of Aesop.

Thousands of years later, these stories still have relevance.

To wit:

The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail

An ugly feminist was unconsciously so disgusted with herself that she tried to convince all the other girls to cut their hair short and dye it blue, get out of shape and get tattoos.  She said it was much more convenient that way and that they would receive much praise for their changes on Instagram.

The other girls said to her, “If you were not so repulsive yourself, you would not thus counsel us.”

The Old Man and Death

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