After MAGAWeek2023 and my extended time out of town, I’ve decided to take this week to rerun some classic hits from the extensive TPP back catalog. Most of the posts are those with very high view counts, though I am presenting them in no particular order. TBT will proceed as usual, and regular posts will resume Saturday, 15 July 2023.
With that, here is 18 May 2020’s “Thalassocracy“:
It’s the last Sunday of 2020, so in keeping with last year’s tradition, today’s Lazy Sunday is dedicated to reviewing the Top Five posts (in terms of views) for 2020.
The posts below are not the top five in terms of views all-time. Instead, I’m featuring the top five published in 2020. Indeed, there were several posts from 2019 that blew these out of the water (all view totals are at the time of writing, 22 December 2020): “Tom Steyer’s Belt” (2864 views), “Napoleonic Christmas” (295 views), “Christmas and its Symbols” (212 views), and others.
So, again, these are the Top Five Posts of 2020, published in 2020. All numbers are as of 22 December 2020, so there could be some shifts:
1.) “The Cultural Consequences of the American Civil War” (254 views) – This post was adapted from a lengthy comment I made on a post at Nebraska Energy Observer, “What Do You Think?” by Audre Myers. The comment sparked some good feedback, so I made it into a post. Rachel Fulton Brown shared the post on her Telegram chat and her personal Facebook page, which really boosted the numbers. The post discusses the oft-forgotten cultural and spiritual consequences of the Confederate loss to Yankee materialist imperialism. I’m no closeted Neo-Confederate, but I tried to offer up a nuanced take on the downside to Union victory, and what was lost when the South fell.
2.) “Thalassocracy” (201 views) – This post really surprised me with its success. I wrote it mostly as an after-thought—the situation with many posts when I’m churning out daily material—but the topic interested me. Based on the limited search term information WordPress gives me, it turns out that many people were searching the unusual term for the same reason I was: the video game Stellaris. In searching for the meaning of “thalassocracy,” I stumbled upon a lengthy essay on the fragility of thalassocracies—nations and empires that build their fortunes on naval prowess, rather than substantial ground forces. It’s an interesting (and long) essay, but hopefully my humble post sums it up well enough.
3.) “You Can’t Cuck the Tuck III: Liberty in The Age of The Virus” (87 views) – As you can see from the numbers, the posts begin dropping off a bit in views from here on out, though I consider anything over fifty views pretty solid for this humble blog. This piece explored the destruction of liberties in The Age of The Virus, something that I find has occurred with shocking ease, and which continues to ever more ludicrous extremes.
4.) “Big Deal” (78 views) – This post was about Joe Rogan’s move to Spotify, and his own implicit sell-out to social justice cuckery. I can’t account for its mild popularity, other than it was a timely post that touched on a widespread sentiment on the Right.
5.) “The God Pill, Part II” (76 views) – This piece reviewed former pick-up artist Roosh V’s dramatic conversion to Orthodox Christianity (covered in “The God Pill“; read the whole series here), and his decision to unpublish his bestseller, Game. That decision has really cost him financially—he recently took a gig doing construction work in Alabama for a few weeks, and is apparently back living with his parents in Maryland—but it was the right move spiritually. Many thought Roosh was converting as a way to reinvent himself to make an extra buck, but he really seems to be putting his faith first. Kudos to him.
That’s it! It’s hard to believe another year is in the books. Thanks to everyone for reading, and for your ongoing support. It can be difficult to maintain the pace of posting at times, but your feedback and comments really keep me going.
God Bless—and Happy New Year!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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The Internet is a funny thing. Anyone that’s ever gone down a Wikipedia hole realizes that, pretty soon, that one thing you needed to look up can turn into a two-hour deep dive into barely-related topics.
It’s also weird. There’s so much content—so much that we can’t really quantify it—you’re bound to stumble upon something interesting. It is, perhaps, a sad commentary of the human condition that, given unlimited access to information and knowledge, we use the Internet primarily for mundane purposes, and frequent the same dozen websites everyday.
Of course, that’s also the problem of abundance. People can’t handle that many choices, and there are only so many spare hours to cram in unorganized knowledge.
That’s how I came to stumble upon the topic of today’s post, thalassocracy, or “rule by the sea.” I recently purchased a very nerdy space exploration strategy game called Stellaris (itself a recommendation from a member of Milo’s Telegram chat). Stellaris has a steep learning curve, so it’s a game that basically requires the player to do homework to figure out what they’re doing (my race of peaceful, space-faring platypus people has surely suffered from my ignorance).
That homework assignment (no, seriously, it’s a fun game!) sent me down a rabbit hole on the game’s wiki, and one of the in-game events involves a group called the Bemat Thalassocracy. I’d never heard the term before, and searched out its meaning. That brought me to a website called Friesian, which is apparently a site promoting the philosophy of Jakob Friederich Fries, an eighteenth-century philosopher opposed to that ponderous windbag Hegel. The website dates back to 1996, when it began as a community college website.
The Portly Politico 