Leo D.M.J. Aurini - February 10, 2013


＂Enjoy the Decline＂ by Aaron Clarey


Episode Stats

Length

18 minutes

Words per Minute

111.260056

Word Count

2,075

Sentence Count

145

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

Enjoy the Decline by Aaron Clary and Clovecigs is a book about living through the decline, and how to deal with it, by an economist who happens to be a friend of the alt-right manosphere.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Enjoy the Decline by Aaron Clary.
00:00:05.000 You know, I was trying to figure out the best way to start this book review,
00:00:11.000 and I figured that I should tell you about the man behind the book first.
00:00:16.000 So, with that in mind, I have my Weasel Whiskey.
00:00:22.000 And on top of that, some lovely Clove Cigars that he forgot over here.
00:00:39.000 Aaron Clary.
00:00:46.000 Ah, these things are nice when you haven't had one for a while.
00:00:52.000 Aaron Clary is Tocqueville's American.
00:00:58.000 One moment he's saying he's a complete selfish free market capitalist,
00:01:04.000 and the next moment he's shouting to the skies how we're doing God's work.
00:01:09.000 He enjoys high art while being as casual and friendly as a day laborer.
00:01:16.000 The man's an absolute genius, who I feel privileged to call a friend,
00:01:21.000 and has been putting out the most brilliant economic work I've seen into the alt-right manosphere for years now.
00:01:34.000 And Enjoy the Decline, named after his catchphrase, is his best book to date.
00:01:47.000 So, Enjoy the Decline.
00:01:49.000 And Clove Cigarettes.
00:01:55.000 We're living during a dark time.
00:01:58.000 And this is a dark subject matter.
00:02:01.000 And despite his...
00:02:04.000 His entertainment...
00:02:05.000 Like, he is such a good writer.
00:02:07.000 Okay?
00:02:08.000 I mean, he has terrible grammar, but he's an amazing, amazing writer.
00:02:12.000 And he is so light-hearted about the whole thing.
00:02:14.000 But he doesn't shy away from the darkness.
00:02:17.000 The very first chapter, the introduction, starts out with a story from war-torn Germany.
00:02:29.000 Friends and neighbors having one last party, one last time to drink it up and roll in the hay before committing mass suicide.
00:02:40.000 This isn't the first time our species has been through a very dark time.
00:02:50.000 And, God willing, it won't be the last.
00:02:53.000 Remember, our species survived the Ice Age.
00:02:56.000 Our population was reduced to 10,000 human beings.
00:03:00.000 And we survived that.
00:03:01.000 But it doesn't change the fact that we are living in dark times.
00:03:13.000 It's one thing to be pessimistic and obsess over the negative.
00:03:17.000 It's just as bad, though, to live and deny and pretend that we're not living in this era of history.
00:03:26.000 To not confront and deal with the problems that we encounter.
00:03:34.000 And that's why he wrote this book.
00:03:36.000 I hear so many questions.
00:03:37.000 If we are in the decline, if things are this bad, what the hell are we supposed to do with ourselves?
00:03:42.000 And that's precisely why he wrote it.
00:03:45.000 But he starts off justifying the claim that we're in the decline.
00:03:52.000 That dark times do lie ahead of us.
00:03:57.000 And certainly he mentions culture.
00:04:00.000 If you can't see that culture is declining, I don't know what to say to you.
00:04:07.000 It's clearly in decline.
00:04:09.000 But you can't measure it.
00:04:10.000 You can't put it in numbers.
00:04:11.000 And Aaron is an economist.
00:04:16.000 And a damned, damned good one.
00:04:19.000 He knows how to read numbers.
00:04:20.000 He knows how to find them.
00:04:22.000 He can guess at the number before he goes and researches it.
00:04:27.000 He's a very honest statistician.
00:04:29.000 And he's very, very good at it.
00:04:33.000 So he starts off by justifying his claim about the decline.
00:04:38.000 If you read his blog as regularly as I do, none of this will be new to you.
00:04:45.000 This is almost entirely stuff that he's researched before, that he's posted about before.
00:04:50.000 But he puts it together, all in a single chapter, interrelates it, explains it, takes these esoteric numbers and tells you what they mean for you on the ground.
00:05:03.000 And it's a dire picture, my brothers.
00:05:12.000 There's no bones about this.
00:05:14.000 We are in a very bad situation.
00:05:17.000 And so the book is about how to live through it.
00:05:28.000 How to enjoy the decline.
00:05:32.000 Because we are all in this world.
00:05:36.000 This is the era of history we find ourselves in.
00:05:39.000 Either we become great during it, either we enjoy ourselves, or we try and double down.
00:05:48.000 We try and follow the myths of past generations, of living in denial, of not accepting reality.
00:05:57.000 In the fourth turning, the authors talk about how, to somebody living in the 1920s, the 1950s would have seemed very stifling.
00:06:14.000 Until they experienced ten years of Great Depression.
00:06:22.000 Until they experienced another, further, decade of war.
00:06:27.000 At that point, boring old suburbia starts to look interesting.
00:06:35.000 About how we all live in our own historical era.
00:06:38.000 How we all have to confront the problems of our time.
00:06:41.000 And living during the decline.
00:06:47.000 Living in the years coming up to the decline.
00:06:51.000 We need to find sane, psychological coping strategies.
00:06:59.000 He goes into all of this.
00:07:01.000 Talking about what matters in life.
00:07:05.000 Psychologically, what really matters.
00:07:08.000 There's hints of the four-hour work week.
00:07:13.000 Where, in that book, the author says that,
00:07:17.000 Don't try and be a millionaire.
00:07:19.000 Try and live like a millionaire.
00:07:22.000 And it's a great book, despite a few flaws.
00:07:26.000 The four-hour work week.
00:07:28.000 But, during the decline, we don't quite have that.
00:07:37.000 Aaron's a man that makes no bones about it.
00:07:42.000 The odds of working a career, busting your hump,
00:07:51.000 of earning a position with the company,
00:07:53.000 and then finally being able to afford the sports car,
00:07:56.000 those odds are not very good for any of us.
00:07:59.000 You'd be better off finding a stable, reliable form of self-employment,
00:08:06.000 that you'll never own the sports car,
00:08:10.000 but, as Aaron did recently,
00:08:12.000 you can rent the sports car for a week,
00:08:14.000 and have just as much fun in the damn thing,
00:08:16.000 without worrying about expensive oil filters or car repairs.
00:08:20.000 The whole book is a life hack for enjoying the decline,
00:08:29.000 for making the most of it,
00:08:31.000 for valuing what matters.
00:08:33.000 Your friends, your family, your loved ones.
00:08:37.000 There's an excellent portion in it
00:08:40.000 on what matters in romantic relationships,
00:08:43.000 and what, at the very basic level,
00:08:46.000 you should be doing to find somebody to sleep next to you,
00:08:52.000 and hug you, and share meals with.
00:08:58.000 This book is a hack on just about everything that would matter to a millennial nowadays.
00:09:07.000 How to do investment, how to find a sane career.
00:09:11.000 It doesn't go as in-depth about the university bubble as his last book.
00:09:17.000 Quite frankly, the mainstream media has caught on to that,
00:09:21.000 so he doesn't really need to say anything there.
00:09:24.000 But it does talk about the things that matter.
00:09:28.000 Your employment, your investment, your friends, your family,
00:09:33.000 all of these things.
00:09:35.000 How to make the most of them,
00:09:36.000 and even if we're in a decline,
00:09:41.000 maybe you don't get the same opulent lifestyle as a baby boomer got to have,
00:09:49.000 but you can actually have a better life than them.
00:09:51.000 And an interesting part of this whole book, from my perspective,
00:10:03.000 this is something I noticed talking with Aaron,
00:10:06.000 but it really just comes through in the book,
00:10:10.000 is that there's a very fundamental debate going on.
00:10:15.000 Now there's a blog, The Observer Watches,
00:10:21.000 and I ran into him because he quoted one of my videos.
00:10:25.000 The link below is the one that quotes the video.
00:10:28.000 And he's pointing out that between the two sides,
00:10:33.000 the Manosphere and the MRAs,
00:10:34.000 there's this very major debate that the MRA wants to work within the system
00:10:40.000 to try and get some anti-misandric legal things in place.
00:10:47.000 Whereas us in the Manosphere would point out that
00:10:52.000 the MRAs are falling prey to cultural Marxism,
00:10:57.000 that they're becoming the replacement group of useful idiots for the feminists.
00:11:02.000 That fundamentally these MRA laws that get passed are just going to serve the state.
00:11:12.000 Rather than guaranteeing father custody of children,
00:11:18.000 as was the norm 150 years ago,
00:11:21.000 instead we're going to have professional bureaucrats monitoring who gets to keep the children,
00:11:27.000 and intervening constantly in your private family affairs to make sure that you're a good parent.
00:11:33.000 So this debate, work within the system or give up on the system?
00:11:39.000 And on the alt-right, we say that the system is so compromised by this point,
00:11:49.000 that there is no solution within the system.
00:11:52.000 Any solution within the system only strengthens the system and makes things worse.
00:12:01.000 Now I don't know if Aaron has a stance on this,
00:12:06.000 but there are some very major implications from this book.
00:12:11.000 So here I am arguing that the system needs to collapse before we can rebuild it.
00:12:22.000 We're the junkie that needs to hit rock bottom.
00:12:25.000 And in one of his chapters, Aaron talks about how if everybody followed his advice,
00:12:35.000 the system would collapse.
00:12:36.000 One of the statistics he mentions is that essentially every person supporting themselves with an income
00:12:48.000 has to support a second person with welfare.
00:12:51.000 It's, what, 58 to 42.
00:12:56.000 So if you earn an income and you pay taxes,
00:13:00.000 you're supporting one person for yourself,
00:13:04.000 just by virtue of the fact that you're paying taxes.
00:13:06.000 that the American voter has made their preference known,
00:13:11.000 that they prefer Barack Obama, they prefer socialism,
00:13:14.000 to freedom and independence and free market capitalism.
00:13:23.000 The system's compromised,
00:13:25.000 and if you try and work within the system,
00:13:29.000 if you try and be part of the system,
00:13:31.000 you are going to be one of the ones feeding into the whole damn thing,
00:13:34.000 making it worse,
00:13:37.000 being exploited for your labor.
00:13:41.000 You spend 30 years training yourself to get an education.
00:13:47.000 Then you work for another 30 years to spend the next 20 years in retirement.
00:13:57.000 This is not sustainable.
00:13:59.000 And if you're one of the people working for all of that,
00:14:01.000 you, sir, are a chump.
00:14:09.000 See, if you work and pay taxes and bust your hump and climb the corporate ladder,
00:14:13.000 you are going to be absolutely miserable,
00:14:16.000 as opposed to finding that minimalist lifestyle,
00:14:20.000 to focusing on what really matters.
00:14:23.000 a McMansion doesn't matter.
00:14:27.000 A brand new sports car,
00:14:30.000 is it really that different from a 20-year-old sports car?
00:14:36.000 I shall tell you that my 20-year-old sports car is a hell of a lot sexier than the stuff on the road today.
00:14:42.000 If you live this minimalist lifestyle,
00:14:52.000 you're actually accelerating the decline.
00:14:56.000 You're accelerating the collapse because you are not paying net taxes.
00:15:05.000 You, if you're smart...
00:15:07.000 And by the way, he has an Ayn Rand quote backing this up and justifying it.
00:15:13.000 A smart man in a socialist system, no matter how noble their spirit,
00:15:23.000 doesn't break their spine to support the socialist system.
00:15:27.000 If they insist on handing out government cheese,
00:15:30.000 take some!
00:15:32.000 Eat it!
00:15:33.000 It still cheats!
00:15:38.000 So you are accelerating the decline,
00:15:41.000 but
00:15:43.000 us reactionaries happen to be of the opinion
00:15:47.000 that we need to hit rock bottom the sooner the better.
00:15:58.000 And I know Aaron would say this much,
00:15:59.000 that if we hadn't bailed out the corrupt bankers,
00:16:04.000 if we hadn't bailed out the failed auto companies,
00:16:07.000 if we'd let them declare bankruptcy,
00:16:09.000 sell off what assets they have to somebody more competent to manage it,
00:16:13.000 if we'd had a brief two-year depression instead of these eight years of recession,
00:16:21.000 that would be a hell of a lot better off right now.
00:16:25.000 But,
00:16:28.000 the American voter has made their preference known.
00:16:32.000 They want socialism, they want equality,
00:16:35.000 they want all of us down at the same level.
00:16:40.000 As I said, these are dark times, my brothers.
00:16:43.000 On the plus side, it is darkest right before the dawn.
00:16:47.000 But we still have to live through the next few hours.
00:16:56.000 If you're going to live,
00:16:58.000 you might as well live in style.
00:17:01.000 And if you want the advice of an extremely intelligent economist,
00:17:06.000 who has analyzed, analyzed, what is he? An investment?
00:17:13.000 He basically looks at people's portfolios and sees what they can realistically do with their money.
00:17:22.000 I forgot if that's an analyst or what that is.
00:17:28.000 But he knows personal finances.
00:17:31.000 He knows global finances.
00:17:35.000 He knows macroeconomics.
00:17:38.000 And this book is absolutely chock full of advice on how to hack the system and live an awesome life,
00:17:50.000 despite how bad everything's going.
00:17:53.000 And if you follow this advice,
00:17:58.000 that minority of you,
00:18:00.000 maybe not the minority of my viewers,
00:18:02.000 but that minority of millennials that will actually listen to somebody that knows what they're talking about,
00:18:09.000 you'll have a better life than the baby boomers did,
00:18:13.000 born into a generation of opulence.
00:18:19.000 Enjoy the decline.
00:18:20.000 Available in print and on Kindle.
00:18:26.000 Yes, it's available on Kindle.
00:18:27.000 Everybody always asks him if his books are on Kindle.
00:18:31.000 Link to both below.
00:18:33.000 And you're supporting a very awesome and good man that your country should be proud of.
00:18:38.000 Irini out.