The Inevitable End of Lunacy

One of the least discussed big stories in American politics has been the transformation of one party into a purely ideological party. Anglo-Saxon politics has generally resisted ideological parties entirely. The few that have turned up have been short lived. The pattern has been coalition parties with an ideological wing.

We tend to focus on the ideological wing of parties and define them as such, but the people running the parties have always sought to broaden their appeal. The result has been that the major parties differ very little ideologically. That’s not to say there is no difference. It’s just that the difference are much smaller than the hooting and hollering would suggest.

The most obvious example of this is in Britain. Up until the last election, the Tories, supposedly an extreme right-wing party of the most right-wing kind were in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, allegedly a collection of Marxist hippies. If the things said about these parties were anything resembling the truth, there’s no way they could cooperate on anything.

In the US, the two-party system has always been between two coalition parties with just a blush of ideology. Democrats were the home of Progressives, but included blacks, Jews, urban ethnics and rural whites. Up into the 80’s there were plenty of pro-life Democrats, socially conservative hawks, along with the liberal urban voters. I’m fond of pointing out that Ted Cruz would have been a typical Democrat in the 1980’s.

The Republicans have always been the party of business, traditional Americans and monied interests. Even today there are very liberal Republicans who are pro-abortion and homosexual marriage. Despite the rhetoric, Mitch McConnell has done more in six months to advance Obama’s legislative items than Harry Reid has done in six years.

That changed in the 1990’s. One of those quirks of history, where attempts to stem a great sea change ended up advancing it, was the election of Bill Clinton. He was heralded by Progressives as their generations JFK, but he was also the leader of the DLC, a group trying the free the party from the ideologues.

Instead of re-centering the party, the Clinton years saw the Progressive wing take full control of the party and transform it into an ideological party. The election of 1994 wiped out the moderates from the South and Midwest. That left the field clear for howling fanatics like Pelosi, Reid, Schumer et al. Inevitably, anyone not fully committed to the one true faith was purged making the Democrats the first purely ideological party in American history.

I guess because the American media is universally Progressive this transformation has not been noticed. Instead it was cast as a triumph of the light over the darkness. It’s easy to forget that Obama said at his inauguration that physical reality would be altered now that he was on the throne. The natural world, according to him, would suddenly change in response to the triumph of the one true faith.

Ideological parties have a problem, which is why they tend not to have long lives. That problem is narrowness. Piety is defined relatively speaking. One is pious in relation to others. Imagine a herd of zebra all competing to be in the center. Those at the fringe are sloughed off after every reshuffling. Before long, you run out of zebra.

That’s what happens to ideological parties and what appears to be happening with the Democrats.

One of the most underappreciated stories in recent years is the deterioration of the Democratic bench under President Obama’s tenure in office. The party has become much more ideologically homogenous, losing most of its moderate wing as a result of the last two disastrous midterm elections. By one new catch-all measure, a party-strength index introduced by RealClearPolitics analysts Sean Trende and David Byler, Democrats are in their worst position since 1928. That dynamic has manifested itself in the Democratic presidential contest, where the bench is so barren that a flawed Hillary Clinton is barreling to an uncontested nomination.

The trend, of course, dates back much further but 1994 was like so long ago and stuff. The ’94 election wiped out most of the Southern Democrats. The 2000 election solidified the Democrats as the party of coastal urban areas. The 2006 election was one last attempt by Rahm Emmanuel to bring authentic populists back into the party, but that collapsed in 2010 and 2014.

But less attention has been paid to how the shrinking number of Democratic officeholders in the House and in statewide offices is affecting the party’s Senate races. It’s awfully unusual to see how dependent Democrats are in relying on former losing candidates as their standard-bearers in 2016. Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, Pennsylvania’s Joe Sestak, Indiana’s Baron Hill, and Ohio’s Ted Strickland all ran underwhelming campaigns in losing office in 2010—and are looking to return to politics six years later. Party officials are courting former Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina to make a comeback bid, despite mediocre favorability ratings and the fact that she lost a race just months ago that most had expected her to win. All told, more than half of the Democrats’ Senate challengers in 2016 are comeback candidates.

The irony missed here is that Progressives like to pitch themselves as the young hip party fighting the old squares, but take a look at the presidential candidates. The favorite is an old white dinosaur from the 60’s and the dream candidate is an old white dinosaur from the 70’s.

The rest of the piece is worth reading. What is not discussed is that demographic collapse is what looms around the corner for Progressives if they don’t quickly arrest this trend. A lack of qualified candidates means a surplus of unqualified candidates. The result is an increasing number of people representing the one true faith who are viewed as crazy or stupid.

I’m fond of comparing Progressives with Islamists, but in this regard they are opposites. Islam is surging because they have a surplus of young people. The Cult of Modern Liberalism has a dearth of young people and as a result is hollowing out as the boomers begin to age off.

Nothing lasts forever so even if this version of the one true faith fades, something will replace it. Most likely the Democrats revert back to being a coalition party of some sort once the GOP detonates itself in the coming decade. The new religion will evolve once again into something less toxic. What seems to be clear is this Great Progressive Awakening is reaching its end and a return to normalcy is upon us.

Nazi Art Racket

I suspect if I live for a thousand years, I will see Nazi stories right up until my demise. No man has had a greater impact on the Western world than you know who. Even though his youngest followers are now well into decrepitude, governments are still putting them on trial for the gratification of the usual suspects. None of it has anything to do with justice. It is all propaganda at this point.

I wondered the other day what happens when we run out of Nazis to hunt. The actuarial tables tell us that day is coming soon. Even anti-racist loons will have a tough time putting an old guy on trial, who was enrolled in the Hitler Youth when he was five by his parents at the end of the war. With the youngest former Nazis in their 80’s now, the only living example left in a few years will be those who were children in the 40’s.

I think I have the answer and that will be the centuries long hunt to find the Nazi art and return it to the “rightful owners”, as long as they are Jewish, by returning it to their decedents. There’s no expiry date on that game as almost all European art was touched by the Nazis at some point. That means the provenance of just about every piece can be disputed if you try hard enough.

What got me thinking about it is this story about Nazi art from last week.

A Dutch art sleuth best known for identifying works looted from Jewish owners by the Nazis said he helped German police recover two massive bronze horse sculptures crafted for Adolf Hitler, as more details emerged Friday about an amazing trove of Nazi-era art seized by authorities this week.

Arthur Brand provided tips to German detectives who made the stunning discovery in a series of coordinated raids, capping a long investigation into illegal art trafficking. Berlin police spokesman Michael Gassen, who confirmed authorities worked with Brand, said so far some 100 tons of art has been loaded onto trucks in the southwestern spa town of Bad Duerkheim where they were found in warehouses.

Eight suspects, whose identities have not been released by police, are under investigation on suspicion of dealing in stolen goods and fraud, Gassen said.

But Attorney Andreas Hiemsch, who represents the Bad Duerkheim man who was in possession of the art, denied the allegations, telling The Associated Press that his client had rightfully obtained the pieces from the Russian army more than 25 years ago.

Apparently, possessing art created by or for the Nazis is against German law. Given that the Nazi were nuts about creating display items, all of which could be construed as art, that means hunting for Nazi art is a never ending racket. There can never be a time when all of it has been recovered.

The real selling point here to the fascist loons in charge of the West is that they can also rewrite history in the process of “righting those historical wrongs.” That means taking the gaudy display items like these horses in the story and hiding them away from public sight. Before long it will be extended to books and personal items in private collections. The real Nazis will be erased and replaced with the mythological ones.

Robot Medicine

I had my annual physical this week. That means two hours of my life wasted staring at the wall wearing an apron. I should not complain as the process for me is efficient compared to what others must endure. I get to the facility 15 minutes before my appointment and I’m sitting in a room somewhere within 30 minutes. In that time, I have submitted my urine sample and filled out some forms.

A pleasant black girl with neck tattoos took my blood pressure and had me strip and put on one of those ridiculous hospital gowns. I’ve always wondered why someone has not come up with a better hospital gown, but there’s zero motivation on the part of the medical profession to demand it. The medical business is not a business in the normal sense, where the suppliers compete with one another for customers.

I don’t actually see a doctor. Instead it is a nurse practitioner. Allegedly there is a doctor in charge of her and the other nurses, but I’ve never met him. I’ve never seen him. I’m sure he exists, but if not I would not be surprised either. The woman I see is nice, but a typical clock puncher. She comes to work for a check, not because she enjoys her work. To her, I’m just another meat stick on the schedule.

After twenty minutes of waiting, she arrived and commenced with the examination. That means taking my blood pressure, looking at my eyes and ears and feeling around for something weird. Most of the time she is in the room is spent asking me questions as she typed the answers into the computer system. Most of the questions seemed like they were for marketing purposes rather than anything to do with my health.

The point of this boring recitation of my annual physical is that very little of it requires me to interact with a human. Taking blood pressure can be done by a machine. I have one at home. Blood work is done by a machine. The clinic I use does their own blood work, allegedly, but there are huge national chains that do blood work for humans and animals.

As far as interpreting the results, the nurse I see is not bringing much to the table. She thinks my cholesterol is getting a little high, but Dr. Google and everyone I know has much higher LDL levels. I suspect there is a commission check in it for them when they prescribe these popular medications for cholesterol. Regardless, interpreting blood work is better done by a robot anyway. The same is true of the urine sample.

It seems to me that one place where the robot future should be a reality is in basic medical care. Instead of paying an arm and a leg for disinterested humans to act as a go between, let the patients talk to the robots direct. A mall kiosk could be used for blood pressure, urine and blood work. While you’re there you answer questions on a touchscreen. A week later the robot e-mails you the results and any recommendations.

Of course, the robot would also have access to your DNA. As we march into the humanless future, DNA will become the touchstone of medical science. Connecting the dots between genes and a wide range of diseases is a data problem, in most cases. Cheap collection devices in public places means masses of data to sort of collate.

Robot care would inevitably be cheaper and that means more people would get regular checkups by their local neighborhood robot doctor. If this sort of service were $50 a shot, most people would do it twice a year. Extend the services to things like flu shots, and nuisance things like colds and allergies and most of your basic care could be done on the cheap by the machines.

Another benefit is the payola schemes run by the pharmaceutical companies would be tamped down as robots are not easily bribed. During my visit, two sets of sharpies arrived peddling their wares. They were dressed in the best Men’s Warehouse has to offer and had arms full of freebies for the nurses.

It’s the same payola game the music industry used to play in the old days. It’s not technically bribery, but give a doctor free stuff and he is probably going to move your product. The medical profession denies it, but big pharma is not giving away tens of millions in trips, gifts and schmoozing because they are stupid. They do it because it works.

Of course, none of this is going to happen because the medical rackets are neatly aligned with the ruling liberal democrats. America does not have a government run system like Britain; it’s more of a partnership between the industry and the state. That way, we get the worst of both worlds. On the one hand there’s the avaricious private suppliers and on the other the mindless idiocy of government.

I’m fond of pointing out that we have all around us one of the greatest health care system on earth. American veterinarian medicine is better than what most humans enjoy on earth. It’s also cheap and plentiful. That’s because it is largely government free and parasitic lawyer free. Maybe when the robots take over, they can just kill all the lawyers and bureaucrats. Then maybe medicine will because a normal business again.

Death to the Old Farts!

We are heading into the end phase of the most recent Great Progressive Awakening. This awakening started in the early 1990’s and was in full bloom in the 2000’s. The peak would be 2008 and it has been losing air ever since. Barak Obama in the White House probably kept it going longer than it should, but history is full of accidents. As Obama heads for the final turn, the movement that buoyed him is reaching its denouement.

For those unfamiliar with my oeuvre, I have a lot of new readers of late, the term Great Progressive Awakening is a play on The Great Awakening. The New Religion of America we call Progressivism or Liberalism has inherited the spiritual rhythms of main line Protestantism. Periods of activity where the faith is ascendent are followed by periods where it is dormant and going through a reordering.

The transition from main line Protestantism began in the 19th century with the Civil War. Read contemporaneous works by abolitionists and it is impossible to miss the spiritual fervor of the people in the movement. By killing the Southerners and breaking up slavery, God’s chosen were doing his work on earth.

Another awakening began at the end of the 19th century, eventually giving us Wilson, genuine socialism, internationalism, eugenics and Prohibition. These waves of religiosity are just as prone to world events as any other movement. Hitler and the war pumped a lot of air into the New Deal and largely collapsed the old traditional American conservatism that should have been a break on socialism.

The result has been an increasingly Progressive country as the Cult transformed from an economic movement with cultural overtones to a purely cultural phenomenon with some residual economic policies from the old days. Elizabeth Warren ranting about TPP is just a way to light some candles to the ancestors of the One True Faith. Warren got rich working for a giant hedge fund that runs an elite training facility. She likes corporatism as much as everyone else.

Warren’s rise is properly viewed as a lagging indicator of the current Progressive wave. The backlash started in 2010 and has continued every since, which has been evident in the three elections since this wave peaked in 2008. The ascendance of a weak and not altogether coherent poser like Warren says the movement is struggling with dis-conformation. The anointing of Obama, it turns out, did not bring about the rapture.

There are other signs that this wave is flagging. The most obvious being the whistling past the graveyard stuff like this article from Politco, the moonbat site for Blue Team fanatics.

It turns out that one of the Grand Old Party’s biggest—and least discussed—challenges going into 2016 is lying in plain sight, written right into the party’s own nickname. The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older, and as the adage goes, there are two certainties in life: Death and taxes. Right now, both are enemies of the GOP and they might want to worry more about the former than the latter.

There’s been much written about how millennials are becoming a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, but there’s been much less attention paid to one of the biggest get-out-the-vote challenges for the Republican Party heading into the next presidential election: Hundreds of thousands of their traditional core supporters won’t be able to turn out to vote at all.

The party’s core is dying off by the day.

Death cults like American Liberalism are fond of these sorts of fantasies. Faced with disconfirming reality, they have two choices. One is to accept that there is no heaven on earth and there’s no way to arrange things to attain it. That means abandoning the one true faith. The other option is to blame enemies of the revolution, spies and saboteurs. Shockingly, every Rousseau-ist cult goes for door number two.

To the great consternation of Progressives everywhere, murdering the enemies of the revolution is not an option in America. Instead they have to sate this urge with revenge fantasies involving the natural death of those they believe are holding them back. Five years ago, they claimed the people voting against Obama’s party were old farts ready for the grave. Now, those same old farts are in the way, but time is on the side of the anointed!

Reality, that thing that confounds mass movements everywhere, is something different. Young people are always the ones most likely to fall for nonsense like communism, Fabian socialism, Nazism, and now The New Religion. As we get older, we get wiser and are less inclined to be swept up in goofy fads like anti-racism or feminism. While the GOP is not of much use as a political party, it does provide a home of those who have outgrown the childish ideas of Cultural Marxism, socialism and the like.

Those old farts in the GOP may be headed for the grave, but there are more old farts where they came from.

Dennett, Dawkins and other Atheist Crackpots

Right after Penn Jillette went bonkers and took up atheism as his cause, he was on Red Eye making the case for his new religion. Like all converts, he was proselytizing because he was full of doubt. Logically, the reason people try to recruit is for confirmation. If scads of other sensible people are signing up for the cause, the cause must be a good thing. So, he was trying to get the others on the panel with him to go along with his new cause.

He also employed a little trick I suppose has become popular with the atheist movement. It works like this. If you cannot or will not fully embrace the belief in a living god, then you are an atheist. This is an attempt to widen the pool and normalize atheism by declaring it the default position.

In other words, left to their own devices, humans will not believe in the supernatural and instead will embrace the pure reason of atheism. I guess that means wearing dildos on their head and fighting otters. Or maybe it means dating transexuals. Regardless, the implication is that religion is a made up thing with out any basis in the natural world. The fact that this is provably false does not factor into the equation.

Penn Jillette is a fine entertainer and a lot smarter than most people in the entertainment rackets, but he is full of baloney. Indifference to religion and the supernatural is exactly that, indifference. I don’t believe in God, but I don’t disbelieve either. Logically, I can never know if there is or there is not a God or gods or some other supernatural force at the heart of existence. I know I can’t know and have no strong beliefs about the matter.

Atheists are certain or at least they claim to be certain. I doubt that, but even taking them at face value, they claim to know that which cannot be known, which means they believe. Atheism is just another mass movement with its own set of beliefs. One of those beliefs is that the pious atheist must make war on the Christians. Like those annoying people giving away copies of The Watchtower, atheists make being a public nuisance the highest calling.

Anyway, this showed up in my twitter feed the other day.

The link goes to this Salon interview the atheist crackpot Daniel Dennet and the alleged end of religion. Dennett is a great example of how someone can be brilliant in one area and a total loon in most others. Noam Chomsky is (was?) a great linguist, but he is otherwise nutty as a fruitcake, indulging in all sorts of deranged theories.

That Dennett interview reads like the sort of stuff you find from survivalist websites. The final reckoning is coming and you better be prepared!!! He so desperately wants to be right that any scrap of data that can be interpreted as proof is waved around like the missing link. In the end, he just comes off like a madman struggling to keep it together.

For the most part, eccentric old coots like Dennett are harmless and often entertaining. His lectures are probably great fun, even when he slips into his crazy talk. In my student years, the best teachers were those mad old guys who no longer cared about convention and simply said what was on their minds. They made the material interesting.

The trouble is these crackpots are not always harmless. Dawkins and Dennett have argued for banning religion by force. Dennett argued in his book Breaking the Spell for removing children from parents who are religious, which is most parents. Specifically he advocates the end of privacy laws and religious liberty so the state can raise children free from religion.

Dawkins, of course, thinks it is OK for the state to gather up the unfit and exterminate them so none of this should be surprising. Celebrity atheists seem to care as much for being offensive as they do about atheism. There’s reason to believe that the attraction of atheism is it lets these guys be an ass in public.

Over 50 years ago Whittaker Chambers exposed the reality of Utopians like Dawkins and Dennett in his great take down of Ayn Rand. In the end, all of these theories end up in a bloodbath.That’s because the Utopians hate humanity. Humans are irrational and messy, which means human society will be irrational and messy. Utopians hate that so they inevitably conclude that the way to paradise is to kill the humans.

 

Moonbat Child Abuse

I’m not a big fan of rounding people and shooting them, but I can understand the temptation. This story about a demented parent torturing her child and then demanding everyone else indulge her is sickening. This is how indulging lunacy ends up as something much worse.

Bobby Montoya wanted to join the Girl Scouts, setting off a national debate.

The Girl Scout cookie can’t seem to catch a break.

Under fire in years past for including trans fats, high fructose corn syrup and palm oil in its cookies, the Girl Scouts‘ current cookie selling season is under fire because of policies that have nothing to do with the actual composition of the cookies.

A group calling itself HonestGirlScouts.com has posted a YouTube video calling for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies in response to a Colorado troop’s decision to allow a 7-year-old transgender child into its troop. Gay rights and transgender rights groups have reported a grassroots LGBT movement of supporters buying Girl Scout cookies in response to the video.

“I’ve decided to purchase as many boxes as my modest budget will allow and donate them to the local LGBTQ community center,” says Mara Morken, a lesbian stay-at-home mom in Fargo, North Dakota. “I want to show support for GSUSA in their honorable decision to allow all girls to participate in their programs. However I do not want that support to show itself on my thighs, so I will donate the entire cookie order!”

After an initial burst of publicity around the nearly 8-minute video featuring a teen Girl Scout wearing a Girl Scout sash, the video has been made private on YouTube. However, it’s still available for viewing elsewhere on the Internet.

“I ask all fellow Girl Scouts who want a true, all-girl experience not to sell any Girl Scouts cookies until GSUSA (Girl Scouts of the USA) addresses our concerns,” says the girl, identified as a teen named Taylor, a troop member from California, in some news reports. “I ask all parents who want their girls to be in a safe environment to tell their leaders why you will not allow your girls to make any more money for GSUSA.”

The video was prompted by the case of Bobby Montoya, whose mother told a CNN affiliate in October that a troop leader initially told her that Bobby couldn’t join the troop because Bobby “has boy parts,” even though her child identifies as a girl.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado blamed the initial decision to exclude the child on ignorance of the scouts’ policy. The state scouts said Bobby was welcome to join Girl Scouts. “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout,” said the Colorado Girl Scouts, in a statement to a CNN affiliate.

The Honest Girl Scouts website says that the Girl Scouts use cookie income to promote “abortion and LGBT agendas,” introduces Girl Scouts to “the concept of sexual rights for children without parent consent” and is rewriting badge books to include “radical activists and gay role models.”

On its website, HonestGirlScouts.com states that the group is comprised of current and former Girl Scouts, leaders, parents, volunteers and lifetime members. When contacted via its listed Gmail account to comment, someone replied that the group’s “legal counsel has advised us not to comment or do interviews until further notice.”

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, dismissed the video as an attempt by conservative activists to raise funds. “This issue not withstanding, the Girl Scouts is a really good organization,” says Keisling. “It’s been a really good place for kids to learn things. (This controversy) will die down. We as a society are progressing and the outdated reactionary attitude that poor girl was put up to in that video, those attitudes are dying out.”

Other LGBT groups are taking a tongue-in-check approach to the debate, encouraging people to eat more Girl Scout cookies. “Girl Scout cookies may not be so great for your waistline but they are great for being inclusive,” says Liz Owen, spokeswoman for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG). Owen reports hearing from people who decided to break their New Year’s resolutions to go on a diet with a Girl Scout cookies purchase.

It’s one thing for adults to play dress up, pretending they are the other sex. That’s weird and slightly disgusting, but it is a free country. When they demand the rest of us go along with the lunacy, a line has been crossed. Humans come in one of two sexes, male and female. Yes, there are defects where humans posses both a Y-chromosome and two X-chromosomes, but that is rare and not the case with “transgendered.”

When adults begin to subject children to this lunacy, we’re talking about child abuse. The demented woman claiming her boy child is female is just trying to get attention for herself at the expense of her child. The poor kid will end up needing years of therapy to overcome what his mother has done to him, in addition to having to deal with the bad genes he inherited from this nut.

Pundits Under Glass

Way back in the olden thymes, I had an exchange with Jonah Goldberg about someone who was writing for VDare or associated with the site. I no longer recall who it was exactly. I want to say it was Peter Brimelow, but it it is not important. What is important is the reaction from Goldberg. He scolded me like I was child about how I should never read that site or anyone associated with it. “trust me, you should stay away from them.”

I can’t say I’m a big fan of VDare or Peter Brimelow, but it is a big world and you can’t be a fan of all of it. I’ll read Derbyshire’s pieces for VDare and Sailer, but that’s about it. I’ve said many times that I find white nationalism to be a bit silly. These are not guys on my side, regardless of skin tone and cultural affiliations. Even so, VDare seems mostly harmless to me.

The point of the story is just how frightened people in the chattering classes are of the morality police. Guys like Jonah Goldberg have one fear and that’s being accused of racism by the Cult. It may not destroy a career, but it knocks you off the regular television gigs. At best you can kick around as a guest for weekend news shows that no one watches.

I don’t blame them. Chattering skulls like money as much as anyone else and being an A-list skull on TV is a well paying job that requires surprising little talent. That means there’s a long line of equally skilled skulls just waiting for the A-list skull to screw up so they can take his spot. Suddenly you can go from living the good life in New York or Washington to being a guy who writes for, well, VDare, hoping readers will donate money to you.

The other day some of the chattering skulls were passing this around the twitter, obviously thankful for a potential way out of the skins game trap of political punditry.

He’s right. Too often, and mostly on the left, opinion readers are privy not to profound argumentation, clever prose, and a depth of insight, but to the establishment of genetic legitimacy and the facile condemnation of obscurities. As though the opinion journalism sphere were little more than a small claims court, modern opinion bloggers occupy their time tilting at windmills of minor empirical value. What’s more, this process often mandates that the writer inflate the gravity of their subject to absurd proportions if only to retroactively validate holding such a strong opinion on matters so trifling. And you know what? This is a wildly successful approach to opinion journalism.

It’s entry-level political opinion. One need not have a profound historical understanding or a background in the social sciences to have a fully-formed outlook on why a particular shirt or a Marvel Comics film adaptation could be construed as offensive. Nor would anyone care if that were merely a subjective objection. Those grievances must be framed as oppressive in the extreme, and objectively so. People enjoy consuming this form of “political opinion” for the same reason some like to write about it; there is no barrier to entry in order to read, understand, and draw your own absolute and self-righteous conclusion on the banal transgression at issue.

Steve Sailer has been arguing that the Tribe is getting a bit worried about the skins game and maybe rethinking its utility to the Tribe. I’m not inclined to psychological reductionism so I think he’s barking at shadows on this one. But, it is easy to see why, given that the guys fretting over the skins game have names like Noah and Jonah.

Further, the line of attack is not to confront the skins game head on, but instead to discredit it as not living up to some mythological standard of opinion writing. Rothman is basically arguing that name calling is a disqualification, which is not going to mean a whole lot to the people in the name and shame business. To the hive mind, name calling is the whole point. It’s how you point out the bogeyman.

I found this a bit amusing:

While this manner of commentary is all nonsense, it stimulates a particularly dull-witted readership that cares little for arcane and often tedious aspects of genuine political commentary like crosstabs analysis, coalition dynamics, monetary policy, economic theory, and international affairs. All of these subjects require the reader have some basic grasp on a variety of assumptions before they can fully comprehend the author’s point. The average identity crusader thrust into an analytical post by John Sides would be as at sea as college freshman compelled to attend a fourth-year Chinese language course. Rather than elevate the reader, however, the country’s aspiring opinion makers have determined to talk down to their audiences.

Noah Rothman may be a peach of a fellow, but I really don’t care what a Russian Studies major has to say about social science statistics. He’s going to find out that the people in the skins game, those entry level opinion writers, don’t care about fake nerds and their charts either.

The skins game folks generally have biology on their side. A black guy ranting about the blue-eyed devil is at least right about the biology. He is black and the blue-eyed devil is white. The same can be said for the womyn’s rights people, ethnic grievance clubs and so forth. It’s only when you get into the weird sex cults that things stray from reality. The truth of the matter is the ethnic grievance industry is just pissed about reality.

The fake nerd with his spreadsheets and splatter charts is more often than not at odds with reality. The boys at Vox are fond of conjuring statistics that prove! their cult is the one true way to happiness because science! The phrase “studies show” has become  a marker for identifying bravo sierra. Like climate science, bad math has become a tool of the lunatic.

If there’s any doubt about that, just consider the plight of Sailer, Richwine, Lott and Murray. All of whom know their statistics, but arrive at heretical conclusions and face the wrath of the morality police. It does not matter that they are right and often brilliant. The truth is no defense against the charge of heresy.

In the game of chattering skulls, what matters is being the prettiest flower in the hot house. If you want to stay inside the hot house, you better not upset the people in charge of the hot house. The people in charge are all in the Cult of Modern Liberalism. If you’re taking a paycheck from them, you just have to suck it up and play the game by their rules.

Standing Heads

In the newspaper business, a standing head is a special label for any regularly appearing section, page or story. The typesetters would put the letters together in a block and keep them as a set because they would use them frequently. It’s also a snarky way to indicate that a recurring story has something to do with long held stereotypes. For instance, “Rapper Killed in Drive By” would be a standing head.

So it is with Lionel Pickens, aka “Chinx.”

A Queens rapper who was part of French Montana’s group, Coke Boys, has been killed in an early morning shooting.

Lionel Pickens died at a Queens hospital, police said. The 31-year-old, who performed as Chinx, had been shot multiple times in the chest around 4 a.m. Sunday at Queens Boulevard and 84th Drive in Briarwood.

Another man was also shot. He was in the hospital in critical condition

The two men were in a Porsche when another car pulled up alongside, and multiple shots were fired, police said.

Pickens’ management team issued a statement on Instagram saying his “dedication, humor and vision will always be remembered.”

“It is with a heavy heart that The Legion Media Group and 4 Kings Management announce the passing of Lionel “Chinx’ Pickens this morning,” it wrote.

No arrests have been made. An investigation is underway.

As CBS2’s Steve Langford reported, Pickens grew up in Far Rockaway, his roots were often featured in his music videos.

Pickens had played a show in Brooklyn on Saturday night, before he was ambushed.

“It was a black Mercedes that came right next to that car and they let off shots,” witness Raymond Rivera said.

River said he saw the shooting from up the block and watched Pickens fall to the pavement.

“Police came. They put a blanket over him. They came took him in the ambulance,” Rivera said.

Just hours after the shooting there was a major show of force by the NYPD in Far Rockaway.

Police took at least two men into custody and were questioning in connection with the murder.

At the crime scene a sobbing woman declined to speak, while friends and fans watched in stunned silence.

“Those were young kids. Young kids that I watched grow up. Man this is like sad right,” Vasco Alder said.

Alex, a fan of Chinx’s music, wonders if perhaps someone was jealous.

“He was headed to the top,” he told 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria. “He was with the right team. And some people didn’t like that.”

Pickens did have a rap sheet, with arrests for attempted murder, robbery and drugs, D’Auria reported. He spent more than three years in prison.

The image white people get from TV is that gang bangers are killing each other for drug turf. Libertarians imagine that the hoppers are just off-the-grid entrepreneurs, marketing, selling and defending a product. Liberals imagine they are victims thrust into this life because honest work is not available.

Reality is something different. Most of the killing is over respect. One banger looks at the other the wrong way and someone starts shooting. Sometimes they shoot one another for sport because they have nothing better to do with their time. “I don’t know. Because I felt like it” is the most common answer for why someone shot someone in the ghetto.

Whether or not it is nature or nurture can be debated, but what’s not debatable is whether there is any hope of fixing these people. It’s the thing no one wants to discuss because there can only be answers that no one wants to face. A population of violent morons must be isolated and set apart from the rest of society.

Maintaining urban reservations let’s everyone pretend we doing something other than isolating and controlling a trouble population. It is largely out of sight and therefore out of mind. Maybe that’s as good as it gets, but it is that lie that gives liberals and lunatics a lever to use against civil society.

A Peak Inside The Hive

Every cult has defense mechanism. It is the nature of all organic things to have some way to protect themselves from assault by predators and competitors. Religions are organic things, even the ones cooked up by bored science fiction writers. They quickly evolve into something that has a nature different from the sum of its parts. Secrets, rituals and practices that define who is in and who is out of the group are an essential defense mechanism.

Because Progressives lack consecrated buildings in which to meet and spread the good word, they have developed an elaborate way to signal to one another their membership in the cult. These change over time as the Cult of Modern Liberalism is occasionalist. In the 80’s, male adherents wore linen collars and had floppy JFK hairdos. Today they have 90’s dance club beards and wear fake glasses.

The preferred defense mechanism of the Cult of Modern Liberalism is the shifting of focus from it to some conjured bogeyman. Defining that bogeyman, therefore, is an important part of the daily life of the true believer. For the lesser lights, the “what to do about Grendel” becomes their reason to exist. The bogeyman becomes the all-consuming issue.

This floating about on twitter is a good example.Elizabeth Grattan as far as I can tell, is a low watt social justice warrior desperate to gain attention for herself by trying to our-crazy everyone else in the Cult of Modern Liberalism. Her website is unintentional self-parody. Reading her LinedIn CV, it seems she is a low-level nuisance in Chicago’s crazy scene. That and a stalker.

As to the post in question, it’s a good example of a common feature with moonbats. They have a lot of words for “other” that they liberally employ as epithets. The word “racist” has magical qualities because it can be applied to anyone they don’t like at the moment. This quiz is basically just a list of things this poor deranged women thinks are bad at the moment.

The other thing that you see here and with all moonbats is the use of insider language to suggest they hold a special place in the cult. Ms. Grattan used “WoC” not because it is explanatory, but to indicate she is inside while you are outside. No doubt other moonbat women in her coven congratulated her for the use of “WoC” in her post. This whole effort, after all, was just a public act of piety. Getting the pat on the head is the point.

The thing about wackos like Grattan is she invests a lot of her time blocking people on social media and shouting down people who hold opinions she does not like. Her test is not about testing your degree of racism. It is about closing off any discussion of the topic. It’s settled and unless you agree it is settled, you’re a bad person.

The strangest thing about people like Grattan is she is a colossal hypocrite. She rails about racism, but lives in an all-white neighborhood. When she was arrested for stalking her boyfriend, it was in one of the richest and best guarded and most white parts of Chicago. If she wanted to be down with the cause, she could move to any of the city’s ghettos, but that’s not going to happen.

A Quick Follow Up On Africa

It is the nature of Westerners to doubt just how quickly a place like Africa can become a savage nightmare. After all, even the worst calamities in Europe have not set off an end-of-times zombie apocalypse. Two world wars in which tens of millions were killed and whole cities demolished did not tip the Continent into barbarism.

It’s easy to think that from the comfort of a high smart fraction society. In societies with tiny smart fractions and enormous numbers of violent stupid people, things can turn quickly.

A Nigerian restaurant has reportedly been shut down for cooking human flesh and serving it to customers.

The police were tipped off by locals who suspected something horrific was taking place inside the kitchen.

They raided the hotel restaurant to discover human heads which were still dripping with blood in plastic bags.

A local priest who ate at the restaurant – in the south-eastern province of Anambra – was alarmed at the price of meals there, let alone where the meat came from,BBC Swahili reported.

He was presented with a bill of 700 Naira – around £2.20 – when the daily wage for tens of millions of Nigerians is approximately 60p.

The priest said: ‘The attendant noticed my reaction and told me it was the small piece of meat I had eaten that made the bill scale that high.

‘I did not know I had been served with human meat, and that it was that expensive.’

The police also found a terrifying arsenal of weapons which included grenades when they raided the restaurant. Ten people were arrested in connection to the crimes.

One resident said: ‘I am not surprised at the shocking revelation… Every time I went to the market, I observed strange activities going on in the hotel.

‘People who were never cleanly dressed and who looked a bit strange made their way in and out of the hotel, making me very suspicious of their activities.’

In addition to the occasional trips to the witch doctor to address the effects of cannibalism or bat eating, these are people who are concerned about penis snatching.

Africa is not a place that will muster a well-organized response to their spiraling fertility rate and growing food shortage.