A brilliant mind and a fragile heart
Last week, like thousands of his fans, I was shocked to learn that political blogger and podcaster Zman died suddenly, apparently from natural causes, at age 59. “Gutted” was the word that many of his followers used. When you read someone’s thoughts every weekday morning, and listen to his voice for an hour or two every weekend, you know him intimately, even if you’ve never met. You actually spend more time with an individual in this way than with the members of your own family, and the discussion is certainly more sophisticated.
On Twitter, and in the comments section on his blog, you can see the Zman’s fans working through the five stages of grief. One reader insisted the Zman couldn’t be dead because a blog post appeared on the Zman’s website the morning after the announcement of his death. Subscribers researched whether the Zman’s blogging platform allowed scheduled posts, or if he had secretly given access to an assistant to post for him on social media.
One commenter remembering Zman compared his intellect to Good Will Hunting. In my opinion, the most impressive thing about Zman wasn’t just his buff-level knowledge of every significant event of the last 2,000 years, but that he had been able to consume so much information in the first place.
The Zman’s content was truly original. He explained the weirdness of our current age by noting how the Western World’s ruling class lacks second order thinking — they forget that their adversary gets a chance to respond. “We have seen this for over two years in the Ukraine war,” he wrote. “Every move by the [West] is just assumed to be a game changer and there is never any thought given to how the Russians will react or what will happen after this game changer.”
Zman also wrote at length about why our ruling class let Trump win re-election in 2024. In the Zman’s opinion, the country was disintegrating so fast under the Biden autopen regime that even our billionaires — especially our billionaires — feared the approach of a revolutionary moment. Whatever their politics, our oligarchs preferred stability more.
The one thing Zman rarely wrote about was health and our broken health care system. He did post an interesting essay about six months ago about the sham of organic food. I researched this topic further after reading his article, and it’s true that most farmers set up their organic fields right next to their conventionally grown farmland. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the organic fields get sprayed with poison too.
It’s human nature to try and produce an explanation for random tragedies, like the death of an apparently healthy middle-aged man. Because of his politics, some of the Zman’s followers are demanding an investigation into foul play. Alternatively, the Zman did say a few years ago that he would probably get the jab so that he could travel. Of all people, it seems the Zman didn’t understand the motivations and controversies surrounding the pharmaceutical companies. Personally, one of my favorite general conspiracy theories is that the Chinese didn’t release the coronavirus as a form of biological warfare, but rather counted on a compromised Western vaccine to act as the true bioweapon.
More likely, the Zman just didn’t prioritize his health, and his heart gave out. There is some chatter in the comments on his blog that Zman complained of exhaustion from doing yard work in the heat the weekend before his death. One of the Zman’s colleagues noted that the Zman’s brother’s obituary from several years ago mentions a similar sudden and unexpected demise at age 60. All of us wish that if the Zman in fact had a family history of heart problems, he would have done more to address his risks. It’s a good reminder to even the most brilliant minds of our age that they need to be smart about their health, too.