Monthly Archives: July 2016

Low IQ in the Information Age

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Watching the cable news channels Thursday night as they covered the attack on the Dallas police by the George Soros funded Black Live Matter, I was fascinated by some of the “man on the street” segments. The blacks they interviewed were not angry ghetto rats ready to break out with chants of “kill the pigs!” Instead, they were articulate, middle-class blacks more concerned with posting their selfie on Faceberg than the shootings. They went to the riot because it was the cool thing to do and all of a sudden it was really cool so they captured the moment with a selfie.

That is the thing you cannot help but notice about this black anger spasm is that it is almost exclusively among middle-class blacks. In fact, it is among the blacks who are the greatest beneficiaries of the Civil Rights movement. The angry black guy today is most likely to be a mulatto at an Ivy League college, or in a government position, by the magic of affirmative action. Barak Obama, instead of being thankful for having not been born in Africa, walks around with a chip on his shoulder about race. He and the Mulatto Mafia that surrounds him are largely responsible for BLM.

This is not just a black thing. One of the distinguishing features of “homegrown” Muslim terrorism is that it is usually perpetrated by second and even third generation Muslims. The parents came here, got jobs and were grateful to be able to give their kids a better life. Those kids, on the other hand, are filled with resentment at their “fellow citizens.” They embrace radical Islam because they are filled with hate toward the society into which they were born. Islam does not make them crazy. They went bonkers on their own and found radical Islam to be a convenient vehicle.

One possible explanation may be IQ. Being the smartest guy in the black family means you are about as smart as the average white guy. Similarly, being the smartest guy in the immigrant Afghan household puts you somewhere around the IQ of a tow truck operator or office clerk. Being the smartest guy in the Chinese family means you teach computer engineering at the local university. Being the smartest guy in a Jewish family means you win a Nobel Prize in physics. This is a deliberate exaggeration, but the gaps are well defined and documented.

These Black Lives Matter types grew up in middle-class homes and did well in school. Because they scored at the top-10% of their race, they were eagerly recruited by the better colleges, where they suddenly found themselves struggling to keep up with their fellow students. The Chinese kid sitting next to them in chemistry is a full standard deviation smarter and can breeze through his course work, while Yolanda needs endless hours of tutoring just to clear the freshmen requirements. That results in a lot of resentment and high dropout rates among affirmative action beneficiaries.

People like Michelle Obama and Loretta Lynch have found themselves struggling to compete with their coevals their entire adult lives, which is why they have a chip on their shoulder. Their credentials are meaningless and at some level, they know it and they know everyone else knows it. Instead of being grateful for the opportunities, they are resentful of the daily reminders that they are where they are because someone decided to put them there as a trophy. High achieving blacks often feel like pets, because they often are the pets of sanctimonious white liberals.

Muslims have a similar dilemma. Their parents come here happy to have indoor toilets. They left squalor and violence to live in relative comfort. They may harbor their own resentments, but their life in the West has largely met their expectations. The kids, on the other hand, come in with the same expectations as the Italians, Irish, Asians, etc., but they are not equipped with the same cognitive toolkit. The average IQ in Iraq is just under ninety, which places them in the “uphill battle” portion of the bell curve. They are looking at a top of being a security guard or warehouse worker.

This is not just a problem for blacks and Muslims, of course. There are plenty of stupid Italians and Irish. Townies in Boston are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their social standing because the world no longer rewards a work ethic. America, like most of the West, is a technological society and raw IQ is a required ingredient for success. There is also the social component. Increasingly, you need a narrow set of social skills to succeed and these are cultivated in private schools and upper middle-class neighborhoods.

President Obama is a good example. He is top-5% for his race in IQ, maybe even top-2%, but that was only good enough to get him through the affirmative action door of elite colleges. His upbringing gave him the exotic, international charm that is highly valued among our national elites. No matter what you think of his politics, Obama is a very charming guy in a way that is appealing to the sort of people running Western governments and institutions. Needless to say, most blacks and immigrants lack the social skills and they have no way to attain them.

Uncharted Territory

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Historical analogies seem like useful tools for understanding current events. Everyone has heard, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” a bazillion times. Of course, our analogies are always to past disasters. Most people reading this can probably name a dozen people that have been compared to Hitler and another dozen examples of Western leaders being compared to Neville Chamberlain. For the most part, our analogies to the past are always warnings of pending doom. No one ever compares the present to some tranquil time in the past.
Humans have limited information processing capacity so nature devised ways for us to quickly process information. Pattern matching is one fast way to locate danger in a very crowded scene. If a current event resembles a past event in some way, then maybe they have other things in common. The logical shorthand is AX:BX::AY:BY, with X being the commonality we know and Y being the commonality we inferred. This sort of reasoning is really only useful in avoiding danger, thus the salience of the Santayana quote. Otherwise, he would have said “blessed” rather than “doomed.”
The thing about Hitler, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and so on is that they had no obvious analog in the past. The events in Germany after the Great War were incredibly unique. In fact, there is no good example from the past to which they compare. Similarly, the world had never seen the likes of Genghis Khan, which is why the Mongols had so much success. One big reason Attila was so scary to the Romans was that he was clearly a different breed of Hun. Because he was not like his predecessors, he was unpredictable and therefore a very frightening figure to the Romans.
Of course, this is why comparing every petty dictator to Hitler is silly. Saddam was not Hitler. Qaddafi was not Hitler either. Obama cutting a deal with the Iranians may be stupid, but that does not make him Chamberlain. In other words, our attempts to understand the present by finding scary analogs in the past has led to one blunder after another in the Middle East. Our pathological need to remember the lessons of Vietnam made success in Afghanistan an impossibility. Because we remembered the past, we made entirely new and avoidable mistakes.
The point of this is that the upcoming election is being compared to 1980, 1968, 1932 (you know who) and Trump has been compared to everyone from Hitler to Andrew Jackson. Everyone is groping around for a useful historical analogy in order to make sense of this highly improbably election. The most important political office on the planet will either be filled by the wife of a former President or filled by a billionaire real estate developer. It is not exactly Henry Tudor versus Richard III, but the consequences are probably going to be much more important.
This election is looking like an extreme outlier. Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate to have been accused of violating espionage laws. She may have beat the rap but name another candidate that had even a whiff of traitorous intent. Trump is the first novice to run as a major party candidate since Wendell Willkie in 1940 and that is not a great comparison as Willkie was involved in politics his whole life. Other than stroking checks to candidates for favors, Trump has not been very political.
Then there is the fact that both parties are a mess at the moment. The Democrats have a collection of geezers at the top and no bench. Their “young guns” are still in college. No one really wanted Clinton, but there was no one else so she is the nominee. On the GOP side, Trump is hated by the party and some segments of the GOP voters. He is the nominee primarily because the rest of the party is a dog’s breakfast of globalist fantasies and 1980’s romanticism. The sense of betrayal among conservative voters is at revolutionary levels.
What is most incredible about all of it is the extreme disconnect between the party elites and their voters. Most Democrat voters would prefer less immigration and better polices for the middle-class and working class. Similarly, most Republican voters would respond to similar appeals, with an emphasis on the more business friendly stuff. Yet, neither party is offering much of anything on these issues. Instead, they are obsessed with weird fads like transvestites or globalist esoterica that no one outside the global elites finds interesting.
We do seem to be in uncharted territory, which may not be a terrible thing. Historical analogies are often wildly mistaken, resulting is disasters like the endless wars in the Muslim lands. The battles of the Great War were mostly due to the generals clinging to lessons of the past, despite the carnage they were witnessing. Much of what plagues American politics today is a layer of Baby Boomer politicians who cannot stop reliving the 1960’s. A break from the past could be the palate cleanser society needs. Or we may be rocketing over a cliff.

Thug-ocracy

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Yesterday the FBI Director detailed the many crimes perpetrated by the Hillary Clinton Gang at the State Department. My expectation has always been that this investigation would peter out over the summer, as that would be best for Team Clinton and Team Obama. The press could then bury it and be counted on to marginalize anyone who dared mention it. This is a familiar pattern in American politics. Plus there is the whole “Arkancide” issue where opponents of the Clintons die under mysterious circumstances.

Instead of watching it on television, I went to twitter and followed along as media people tweeted their impressions. The interesting thing was that the first wave of tweets were all about the hundreds of rather clear violations of the law that had been in the press for months. Then there was a wave of tweets along the lines of “my goodness, I think the FBI is going to announce an indictment.” Even liberals were struck by the weight of the evidence and the tone of the presentation.

Then there was a wave of gasps when he said he would not be calling for Clinton to be charged with the crimes he just listed. Even over twitter, you could feel the disconnect as people tried to wrap their heads around the bizarre contradictions. The man just detailed a mountain of crimes and then pivots around and says that no one would ever be indicted for these crimes. Yesterday was one of those times when even the most grizzled cynic was astonished at the craven cynicism on display.

History is full of events we look back upon as turning points. In some cases, the people involved in the events were unaware of their significance. The Marian Reforms changed the course of Roman history, but the people at the time had no idea what was coming as a result. They seemed like much needed reforms in response to previous military disasters. Having politicians raise volunteer armies and then lead them against enemies was simply not working. No one imagined that these reforms would result in Sulla’s march on Rome.

The events of the last week or so, around Independence Day no less, feel like a big moment, like something has changed in the country. It started with Bill Clinton showing up for a private meeting with the Attorney General. That was followed by a long weekend interrogation of Hillary Clinton by the FBI. Then we have the Attorney General hinting that Clinton would not be charged and the President suddenly deciding to campaign with her. Yesterday the FBI detailed a long list of crimes and then says they will not seek charges.

At one level, it seems like the people in charge are rubbing our noses in the fact they are beyond the reach of the public. They are no longer going to pretend to be citizens of a republic, beholden to the voters. They are above the law and the proof of that is one of their own has committed hundreds of crimes and will not be required to step aside, much less be prosecuted. The law is for the Dirt People and it will be enforced by the Cloud People, but the Cloud People will do as they please.

There is another way to look at it. That is, the ruling class has lost control of the reigns and they can no longer police themselves. Hillary Clinton has no business being president. It is absurd even without the massive corruption and criminality. Hillary’s crowning achievement was marrying Bill Clinton 50 years ago. Even a deeply corrupt and incompetent ruling class should be able to filter out the likes of Hillary Clinton. The fact that they cannot bring themselves to flush her from the system when they have an iron clad criminal case against her is ominous.

There is another angle here. The whole “Arkanside” thing is a fun gag, but it does appear that the ruling class is playing much tougher with one another. Judge Roberts was either blackmailed or threatened into reversing his opinion on ObamaCare. That is incandescently obvious. FBI Director Comey’s erratic performance yesterday suggests there is more here than just a man suddenly changing his mind about law enforcement. He has prosecuted many others for these exact same crimes.

A lesson of history is that when ruling elites become unstable, they become thuggish. Rivals are no longer content to play by the agreed upon rules with the winners and losers showing grace to the other. Instead, politics becomes a blood-sport, where there are no limits on what one can do to win. The men who assassinated Julius Caesar probably did not think murder was a great idea. It is just that it was better than all the others. They convinced themselves they had no choice because that was the only way to win.

There is a byproduct to this. The ruling class loses the moral authority to rule. Once the ruling elite stops abiding by the laws, their only reason to rule is force. That is not just an internal reality within the ruling elite; it is a reality within society as a whole. If Hillary Clinton were to become President, only fools would continue to abide by the laws. It would be a war of all against all within the ruling class and eventually, within society. The last few centuries of the Roman Empire featured endless warfare and revolts for this reason.

America is not the Roman Empire and this is not the Iron Age. It is entirely possible that yesterday will be the point at which the American ruling class recoils at the madness they face. There has not been the series of victory laps in the liberal media we tend to see when Democrats pull a fast one on the public. The old school liberals have been down on Clinton for a long time and this only confirms their opinions. The ship does not always slam into the iceberg. A Thug-ocracy is not inevitable.

That is not the way to bet, however.

The Corporate State

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Independence Day always leads to an outbreak of stories about the glories of democracy from the usual suspects in the media. One of the stranger things in my lifetime is the fact that when I was young, democracy was a fetish of the Left, while the Right scoffed at the wisdom of the masses. Today, it is a fetish of the Right and the Left is making ominous noises about the foolishness of elections and democracy. The result is the so-called conservative media turns July 4th into a saccharine celebration of democracy.

Most everyone reading this is bright enough to know that America was never intended to be a democracy and it is not a democracy today. The Founders imagined a republic composed of sovereign states that would do the bulk of the governing. The Civil War obliterated the sovereignty of the states, thus allowing the Federal government to assume most of the governing. Our state governments perform administrative tasks on behalf of the Federal government, often financed by Federal tax dollars.

It is tempting to think America is on a long path toward Caesarism, where the institutions of republican government are hollowed out as power is transferred into the hands of an authoritarian. The trouble with that is the modern nation state is too complicated for that sort of autocratic rule. The nation state is a vast bureaucracy today with a semi-permanent staff loyal only to the bureaucracy. They take direction from the executive, but the scope of the government is too massive to control in a fine detail way.

Consider some numbers from the US government. Health and Human Services has about 150 employees who report directly to the president. These are appointees usually brought in the by the Secretary of HHS. The department has 78,000 employees that are civil servants. Most of what HHS does on a daily basis is unknown to the White House staff. Most of it is unknown to bureaucracy itself. An organization of that scale and permanence takes on a life of its own. It is a giant blob that absorbs what it touches.

This is why we have elections and not much changes. The rhetoric changes and maybe the way the bureaucracy is sold to the public changes a bit. Otherwise, the only thing that changes is the overall size of the state. It always gets bigger. Fifty years ago, the Feds spent about $4500 per citizen and today they spend close to three times that. This is in inflation adjusted dollars. That is a lot of elections with nothing ever changing, suggesting something else determines the size and scope of the state.

A better way to think of the modern nation state is as a corporation. The modern publicly traded corporation is setup to profit the owners, who are the stockholders. The people running the corporation, the CEO, the CFO, the senior managers and so forth, are put in place to run the enterprise in the interests of the owners. You, as a stockholder in Apple, want to see the company make money so your stock goes up in value. You do not get to set company policy, but you have a vote at a shareholder meeting.

Now, the major stockholders have some say in the management of the firm. These are the people who sit on the board and decide who is put in as a CEO or push for a shakeup of the management team when necessary. They are not running the daily operations, but they get to decide who is running the daily operations. Like the small stockholders, they want to see profit so presumably they have the same interests as those small shareholders. Sometimes they have other motives, which are at odds with the shareholders.

The modern state is similarly arranged. The super rich are not bound by the state any more than a major shareholder is bound to the company. They sit on the board as major political donors and fixers, but they may perform this function for many countries, just as a rich guy sits on the boards of many firms. Sheldon Adelson is just as involved in Israeli politics as he is US politics. George Soros is involved in the politics of a dozen countries, including countries that are in competition with one another.

The voters of countries are the small shareholders. They have some say in things, but only at the fringes. When the board puts up two candidates for the CEO position, the voters get some input on which one gets the job, but usually both choices are offering the same thing. Whenever there is a shareholder revolt and an alternative option is presented, the members of the board close ranks to fight it. They do this to protect their prerogatives as major shareholders. Even if the people are right, they cannot be allowed to dictate policy to management, much less the board. After all, the corporation is not a democracy.

That is the state of the West. The nation states are now just corporate states, run by a relatively small number of global billionaires. The small shareholders get to show up at shareholder meetings and pretend to have a say in things, but the management is not beholden to them. The managers in the corporate state are the politicians and their accessories in the political class. These people answer to the board that put them in their positions. It is why no matter who wins an election, the results are always the same.

It is also why we are seeing attempts at merging the nations of Europe into a single conglomerate. Consolidation is the natural dynamic in the corporate world. It is why we are down to three PC makers when 25 years ago there were dozens. It is why there are two mobile phone players when there used to be a dozen. Corporations must always grow to survive so when growth is no longer possible, they merge with others or acquire smaller firms. Global governance is really just Google streamlining the corporate states to make them more efficient for the purposes of the major shareholders.

It is tempting to say this has always been the arrangement, but it was not always thus. Within living memory, it was impossible for a guy like George Soros to play in domestic politics across borders. Countries were like family business and the owners were covetous of them. The credit age has allowed every nation in the West to go public and turn themselves into formless corporate blobs, slowly loosing their original identity. The planned merger of Europe into one big soap ball is intended to cleanse national identity.

How this ends up is anyone’s guess. The history of the equities markets is the story of bubbles and busts so the credit money era will do to nations what it has done to many businesses and industries. Of course, every corporate entity goes through tough times and must downsize. That usually means layoffs and terminations. The application of that to the corporate state should be interesting. Maybe that’s why both parties in Washington suddenly want to take away all the guns.

Drama-ocracy?

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One of my favorite periods in history is the 17th century. You have The Thirty Years War and the English Civil War just in the first half of the century. The second half was not quite as exciting, but you have the founding and flourishing of the American colonies, the Glorious Revolution, the Battle of Vienna and the Salem Witch Trials. Then you have the laundry list of men in arts and letters that continue to cast a shadow over civilization. The 17th century was an exciting time to be alive.

The thing that always jumps out to me, particularly with regards to the evolution of the colonies in this period, is how much merit counted to the people of the age. We tend to think of this as being the age of royalty and inherited position, but merit was critical within the ruling class and within general society. Prince Rupert was on the wrong side of the English Civil War, but he was a talented general and outlived pretty much everyone. It mattered to his contemporaries, his peers and the people that he was a talented man.

Of course, when the American colonies split off, merit became the coin of the realm. A man could not have a career in politics without first having a career in something useful. Even the sons of the elite were expected to go into the military or the law before starting a life in politics. The result was that rich guys were common in government. The super rich of the 19th century ran for office, were governors and Congressman and participated directly in party politics. The rule was, you got rich so you could go into politics.

That is not the way things work today. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This story about Marco Rubio’s opponent for his Senate seat is a good example of the modern politician.

For Murphy, the newfound role as the Democrat’s Most Eligible Candidate is extraordinary; and not just because he’s only been a Democrat since 2011.

Murphy’s rise is extraordinary because of how little he seems to have accomplished to get here.

A child of divorce, Murphy spent his formative years living with his father, Thomas P. Murphy, Jr., who built a multimillion dollar construction empire from scratch. Thomas Murphy made sure his son attended private schools including an elite prep academy in the Northeast, The Lawrenceville School. The school’s alumni include five Governors, three Congressmen, a Senator, two Pulitzer Prize winners and a Nobel Laureate. The school has also produced an array of business titans in its storied history.

Patrick Erin Murphy circa 2010, however, did not seem destined to join their ranks.

A star athlete in high school and college, injuries kept him from pursuing that further, opting instead for a more functional degree in business administration from the University of Miami. His time at UM was marred by a drunken brawl at a South Beach night club that left him with a mugshot and a black eye. After graduating in 2006, he joined Deloitte & Touche as an audit assistant. He did not meet the minimum requirements to become a Certified Public Accountant in Florida, opting instead to apply for a license in Colorado, even though he did not live or work there. He applied in Colorado because the requirements were lower.

Before gaining approval in Colorado, Murphy took the licensing exam multiple times before passing it. Even with a CPA license in Colorado, his opportunities in Florida were limited because his license was not valid in the Sunshine State.

In other words, Patrick Murphy is a moron without a single accomplishment to his name, other than having won the lucky sperm contest. If his father had not been rich, Patrick Murphy would probably be wearing a blue vest down at the local Walmart. Of course, his opponent, Marco Rubio, is a feckless airhead as well. He has never had a job that did not come with a government check. The race for one of Florida’s two Senate seats will be a battle between pretty boy morons sponsored by billionaires.

This is not particularly unusual. The second in command for the Democrats in the House has never worked a day outside of government. Another House Democrat leader, Chris Van Hollen, went into politics right out of college. Like Patrick Murphy, Van Hollen is as dumb as a plank. If not for the family connections, he would be running a kiosk at the mall. That is the story all over the House and the Senate. Massachusetts has a Senator, who drove an ice cream truck, before getting into politics. His nickname is Mr. Frosty.

It is tempting to dismiss it all as the inevitable degeneracy of democracy. The word “kakistocracy” is common on the dissident right. That is not really what is happening. Instead, these nitwits we see in politics are basically actors hired by billionaires and corporate interests to stand in for them in the House and Senate. Chuck Schumer is a genius, but everyone in DC knows he is the Senator of Goldman Sachs. Marco Rubio is owned by Norman Brahman, the Florida billionaire. Paul Ryan is in his job because the money men behind the GOP know he will do what he is told.

The most obvious example is Barak Obama. He was stumbling around jobless until rich liberals in Chicago found him wandering the streets as a race hustler. Like casting directors or Hollywood agents, they discovered a talent they could make into a star. He was given the right back story, trained to play the role and taught how to read his lines from the teleprompter. Obama is a nice enough person and not the dumbest guy to occupy the White House, but he does not have a thought in his head. He does what he is told, like any other actor.

Our politics have become a play. We see the actors and hear some of the stage directions, but we never see the writers or the directors. The producers who fund these things are known, but no one really knows much about them. All the attention is on the stars and the supporting actors. If you have the right look and you can learn to say your lines convincingly, you can get rich being an actor playing a politician. Even the B-actors become millionaires. If you cannot do anything useful and you want to get rich, go into politics.

Dealing With Con-Men

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One of the few benefits of growing up poor is that you are exposed at an early age to hustlers, grifters and criminals. Everyone has someone in the family who is working an angle. It could be as simple as a disability fraud or as complicated as running drugs. Maybe it is just turning people’s virtues into vices in order to con them out of a few bucks. At the bottom of the economic scale the paydays are small, but the stakes are always high. That brings out the best in a hustler. They trust no one and they are always working some angle.

The thing you learn early on is that there is no beating these people at their game. You can be the smartest guy in the world, but you do not think like a hustler. The grifter has a different mind. They are motivated by different desires. More important, they are always working some angle, looking for a flaw, a weakness they can exploit. It is not what they do, it is who they are. Lying is as natural to them as breathing. The best thing to do is put as much distance between yourself and them.

That is a lesson, I suspect, the people around Barak Obama wish they had known back in 2008 when they decided to have Hillary Clinton as their Secretary of State. They thought they had found a clever way to keep the Clintons in a box after the election. They did not want them running around criticizing Obama to their friends in the press, so they put her in a job that would keep her inside the tent, but outside the country most of the time. After all, the action was going to be on the domestic side. What harm could she do?

That would keep Hillary from running against them in 2012 and it would make it impossible for Team Clinton to criticize Obama. They also had the issue of campaign debt. Team Obama promised to help Team Clinton pay off the debt so she could have a chance to run again once Obama left office. This looked like a great way to sideline the greatest threat to Obama’s position in the party and within the Cult of Modern Liberalism. It looked like a modern way of having the defeated king join a monastery.

The Clintons, being what they are, immediately looked for how they could exploit this new appointment. The news tells us that before she set foot in the place, she had her people working on the secret e-mail server. I would not be surprised to learn that when Team Obama was negotiating the surrender of Team Clinton, it was the Clinton side who suggested the job at State. They hit the ground running with their grift as soon as she got the job, suggesting they were a step ahead of Team Obama.

The reason you never try do business with a grifter is, in the end, they always find ways to compromise you. They keep working you and anyone around you so that at some point, you are left with two choices. One is you help them. The other is you hurt yourself. People being what they are, the default is to help, hoping that will be enough to be free of the problem, but that just gets you in deeper. It is why victims of con-men often refuse to go to the police. They either feel like morons or they fear they are compromised.

In this case, Herself was allowed to run this secret e-mail system, which the White House had to know about, but they looked the other way and now they are compromised. If they let the justice system take its course, Team Obama gets their dirty laundry exposed in the process, so they have to make all sorts of compromises to stymie the legal process. By looking past the server in the first place, they left themselves exposed and as a result, they have no choice but to help Clinton stay out of jail.

The meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch the other day is bringing out all the conspiracy theories, but all of them miss the mark. The point of it, from the perspective of Team Clinton, was to let everyone know that no one is without sin in this matter. My guess is Lynch was flattered to be invited to meet with her old boss and foolishly took the meeting. Clinton knows she is not terribly bright so he played on her vanity and used her to remind Team Obama of their exposure.

The lesson, once again, is that you never do business with con-men. Whatever choice presented, always take the one that gets as much distance between them and you. Team Obama should have left the Clintons out in the cold back in 2008, but they let themselves get talked into what they thought was a clever solution. Instead, they invited a cancer into their administration. Having Bill Clinton say bad things about Obama looks fairly good in comparison to years of blackmail from Team Clinton.