Monthly Archives: April 2017

Media Blues

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My consumption of sports news is about as limited as possible for someone who still follows sports. I scan the baseball news once a week. I’ll scan ESPN and CBS Sports. I say “scan” as most of it is just made up clickbait stuff. The actual  news stories are so poorly written that they are not worth reading once you have gleaned the news nugget. Most sports “journalists” try hard to sound like hyper active teenagers, writing for an audience of semi-literates. We are a long way from Ring Lardner.

As a result, I took some pleasure in the howling and moaning from sports media as ESPN made some small cuts to their on-air talent. Of course, the media covered like it was the end of the world. ESPN cut 100 people from an 8,000 person workforce. Most people reading this have lived through layoffs where ten percent of the labor force is cut. The ESPN cutbacks are trivial, unless you are a media snowflake convinced you are part of a secular priesthood. Then it is the sign of the apocalypse.

What’s surprising is that operations like ESPN have an audience at all. Their “news” converge is mostly jock-sniffing and their created content is so out there on the Progressive fringe, it borders on madness. The people watching sports and following sporting news are men. Most normal men are uninterested in Progressive lunacy. They watch sports for a break or they simply have no interest in other subjects.

The last thing they want to have to suffer through is feminist free verse poetry celebrating lesbianism.

Beneath the bi***h of buzzer, beneath the crowd’s sputtered swear

and bellowed worship, beneath the joint gasping of sweated air as

tree trunk women hurtle fiercely from east net to west, just beneath

the rampaging pummel of their feet on the hardwood and the hurting

screech when they stop short, pivot and slingshot back, beneath

the hissed invective when the wrong swoosh happens, or doesn’t,

beneath vendors who heartlessly hawk the stupid slap of sugar, spirit

and salt, beneath the huge held breath of halftime and the rattling hips

of tambourines, beneath shouts of the beautiful tangled names of

women, beneath the bladed blasts of whistle that signal stop and start,

Poetry is defined as having meter, rhyme or a point. You have to have two of three in order to qualify as verse. What feminist poet Patricia Smith writes has none of those things. There’s no such thing as a “bitch buzzer” and the words conjure no images so the phrase is nonsensical. A “stupid slap of sugar” is supposed to mean what? Who has ever been slapped, stupidly or not, with sugar? The entire word jumble is the sort of thing you would expect from a high school girl, who thinks she is clever. It’s not even doggerel.

The rest is actually worse, if that’s possible. At some point, writing of any kind is so bad it is just terrible. There’s a bottom to terribleness and this junk is there, with all the novels that begin with “it was a dark and stormy night.” It is no surprise to anyone that poetry is dead in America and creative writing is on life support. It’s also no surprise that feminists are terrible writers in addition to being batshit crazy. The question is why is this crap on a sports site? Why would anyone consider such a dumb idea?

What’s happening at ESPN is not unique. Fox News has decided that the way to remedy their high ratings in the cable news wars is to blow up the station, install a gaggle of blue haired lesbians and become a shitty version of the worst rated cable news channels. All over the mass media, it appears the plan is to drive away as many viewers as possible, by offending some and boring the hell out of the rest. That’s thing. Most of it is just boring, not so much offensive. Feminist beat poets are not offensive. They’re stupid and dull.

It’s tempting to go for the reductionist answer and assume it is just proselytizing paid for by the billionaires who own the mass media companies. There’s some of that, but the real issue is that people making editorial decisions are strangers. They don’t know the sort of people who read the sports pages or follow their favorite team. We’re just economic units, who are “out there” on the other side of the walls, so they don’t spend much time thinking about what the typical male sports fan finds interesting about the sporting news.

The people who thought that weird feminist poetry slam was a great idea, probably thought it was a great idea. They have heads full of “theories” about female athletes and “theories” about the twenty people that bother to watch women’s basketball. They just assume everyone is sitting around agonizing about how their vagina defines them. There’s no one in the room willing or able to tell them that feminism is a mental disease and they should be getting professional help, not reading nonsense like this.

The future is female,

we hear,

but the past —

the past is also female.

 

The past is our beginning

and the future —

is also where we start,

where we come from.

 

Poetry is a new language.

It is our oldest language.

Before today’s tautology we spoke in tongues,

we painted images on our walls,

we told stories that meant less then than they mean today.

Summer Soldiers

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These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

–Some old white guy

Street protests and street theater are largely useless as political tactics in the modern age. A century ago, a gaggle of prim-faced scolds marching through the middle of town, demanding the end of alcohol, not only got people’s attention, it changed their minds about the issue. The street protests projected strength and suggested that the numbers on the side of the marchers were larger than assumed. The men in charge responded by giving women the franchise and banning alcohol. The downward spiral started soon after.

Today, people know that the street protest is a made for TV event and that the “protesters” are often paid to show up and make noise. Alternatively, it is assumed that the true believers are batshit crazy and best ignored. In other words, it’s just another TV show in an age where we are awash in TV shows. For the most part, the street protest is for weak losers desperate for attention. The only impact they have on the larger public is to confirm that the “movement” is impotent and can be ignored.

That does not mean street theater is entirely worthless. The alt-right showing up at Berkeley to beat up the Antifa losers was entertaining and it did scare the people in charge of the place. So much so they moved heaven and earth to block Ann Coulter’s speech last week. Make no mistake, the reason the school went to all this trouble is they feared a bunch of dudes in home made battle gear beating the hell out of the Potemkin Protesters the Left now hires to do their protesting for them. A replay would be embarrassing.

Berkeley is the epicenter of West Coast progressive lunacy so for the true believers at the center of the hive to feel this uncertain is suggestive. They have been in charge for so long they just take it for granted. The narrative says they are the ones in the street fighting the man. When the roles are flipped and they are suddenly the man, their go to move is to shut it all down. They have no choice, as to do otherwise would mean facing up to the reality of their situation and that’s never going to happen with true believers.

The real lesson, the one most useful to the alt-right, is seeing the controlled opposition confirm what many have been pointing out for years now. As soon as things got a little tough, the College Republicans folded their tents and blamed the “extremists” of the alt-right. The Young American Foundation, a Conservative Inc. racket to recruit college students, made a show of “defending free speech” but made sure they did not offer any material support. It was just another way to raise money for their racket.

In contrast, a handful of rednecks down south were able to force Auburn to host the notorious Richard Spencer, a guy everyone seems to think is Hitler in a cardigan. They went to court and quickly forced the school to honor its legal obligations. They were also able to rally a security force and get the cops to enforce public order. The result being a peaceful and orderly event. Conservative Inc. has tens of millions in cash at their disposal and an army of elite educated lawyers and they could not even defend Coulter.

What they could do though, is attack Ann Coulter when she correctly pointed out that the summer soldiers of Conservative Inc ran and hid as soon as things got difficult. David French is a mentally unbalanced crackpot, but he does speak for the dwindling number of Buckley Conservatives, who claim to be the vanguard of anti-Progressive forces in America. French speaks for all of the so-called conservatives when he is more upset at Coulter’s noticing than he is at black clad thugs shutting down her speech.

The whole affair is insignificant in isolation, but it is a another reminder to those who have begun the journey away from Buckley Conservatism, Libertarianism and boomer politics that those well-paid heroes of the Right never win these fights. They invest so heavily in the symbolism of conservatism because they conserve nothing but their own place at Lefty’s table. At best they are well-intentioned losers. At worst, they are willing props deployed by the ruling orthodoxy to disrupt the opposition.

The people in the dissident movements are not without their problems and many of them are certainly nuts, but that’s the nature of outsider movements. What’s increasingly clear is the fact that it is the outsider movements who are scoring the victories. They are the people changing minds and forcing the the fight onto the turf of Lefty. It’s not the dorks in blue blazers mooning over photos of Reagan. It’s the guys with home made armor decorated with sun wheels and cartoon frogs.

The other day, an old friend, who was a “happy warrior” type, mostly in the libertarian wing of the Buckley Right, quoted Mike Cernovich to me. I cautioned him to not take everything Cerno says at face value and he responded with, “Hey, no enemies on the Right.” A year ago he probably would have sided with David French or at least frowned upon the alt-right guys raising hell. When given the choice between those who are not afraid to be called a heretic and those who live in fear of it, people naturally choose the former over the latter.

Essential Knowledge: Part IX

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A liberal education has always meant a deep knowledge of cultural history, which inevitably meant art and literature. Sadly, the humanities have taken a beating from the Cult-Marx crusaders in the last half century. Critical Theory and its various off-shoots have, as one would expect from the Germans, reduced art and literature to rubble. Just look at the state of poetry. It has been reduced to displays of childish vanity at scream sessions. You find more culturally enriching rhymes on a rest room wall.

The good news is it is easy to bypass the lunatics and go right to the primary texts, which are often available for a song as ebooks. The literary canon is enormous so we’ll focus on the English portion for now. A modern educated man in the English speaking world has to have a broad knowledge of English (and American) literature, but he should also be familiar with the great works of the West in general. There are good translations of the classics from every Western language so you can read Tolstoy without knowing Russian.

Working forward from the deep dark past, the first “great works” of the English literature are Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The language is a little difficult for the modern reader, but not impenetrable. Something more difficult, and often overlooked as a result, is William Langland’s Piers Plowman. The challenge here is threefold. One is the language and the other is the Christianity. It’s also a social satire so you need to know a little about the times, but that should be a motivation.

Then we come to Shakespeare The good news here is all of his works are free as the family no longer has the copyright. There are some smart people who think The Bard is a waste of time. The important themes from the important plays are so baked into the culture that there’s no point in reading them in the original. There’s some truth to that, but the people who say this usually had a first class education. It’s not like you’re going to lose IQ points by taking the time to read some of the great works of English literature.

That said, Shakespeare had some clunkers too. From the comedies, I’d recommend The Merchant of Venice, especially for the alt-right reader, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew and Winter’s Tale. From the histories, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII and Richard III should be enough. Then read all of the tragedies. You can probably skip Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens. All, of these are available on video and it is a good idea to see an actual production, even if it is on video.

This is a good time to talk about poetry. Shakespeare’s sonnets are worth reading as an excellent introduction of English verse. And no, reading poetry will not make you gay or Mexican. Similarly, John Donne is one of the giants of English poetry, but I never found his work all that interesting. Instead, I’d read Samuel Johnson’s discussion of Donne and other prominent poets. Finally, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is a must read and it is pretty good. If you like Game of Thrones you’ll like this.

In a previous one of these posts, I recommended Utopia by Thomas Moore. Another classic from this period is New Atlantis by Francis Bacon. I won’t say it is good, but it is short. There’s also The Isle of Pines, which is similar and considered the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. You can get all three in one book! Something better from this period is Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory. This was one of my favorites as a kid. The quest for the grail is one of the most influential themes in English literature.

The first work of fiction to be considered a novel is The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. It is a Christian allegory, which probably sounds awful, but the fact that it has never been out of print since the 17th century means it is worth reading. Also in the realm of Christian literature is Paradise Lost by John Milton. Everyone has their list of essential books that an educated man should read. Every one of those lists contains Milton, because it arguably defined the English speaking world’s relationship to Christianity.

Finally, to sew up this post on literature, and yes there will be several more, I’m going to suggest something a bit odd. Integral to the English speaking world’s culture is a relationship with nature. It turns up throughout English literature and in American classics like Huckleberry Finn. The Complete Angler by Isaac Walton is a book about fishing that holds up today, but it is also a book about the peaceful enjoyment of nature. Even if you are afraid of the outdoors, an appreciation of man’s relationship to nature is essential.

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Libertarians

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In the old fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons, there was an alignment system to plot types of players and characters in terms of their moral code. For instance, a player that was lawfully good, strictly followed a moral code, even when that code worked against their self-interest. A chaotically good character was willing to junk the rules to do what they believe was the right thing. The former would deport all illegal aliens because the law required it, but the latter would let them stay as long as they promised to behave.

That always comes to mind when I read about when a serial killer is finally caught or a libertarian is pulling some crap like this.

After her family’s shiba inu died of cancer, Dawn Sabins decided to surprise her 7-year-old son with a new puppy. In March 2015, she dropped into a San Diego-area pet store looking for an English bulldog. She walked out with a golden retriever.

That wasn’t so strange, even if $2,400 was more than she’d intended to spend. (There’s a reason pet stores put puppies in the window.) The odd part came a few weeks later, when she and her husband were going over their credit reports and saw a $5,800 charge from a company they’d never heard of.

The Sabins had bought their new dog, Tucker, with financing offered at the pet store through a company called Wags Lending, which assigned the contract to an Oceanside, California-based firm that collects on consumer debt. But when Dawn tracked down a customer service rep at that firm, Monterey Financial Services Inc., she learned she didn’t own the dog after all.

“I asked them: ‘How in the heck can I owe $5,800 when I bought the dog for $2,400?’ They told me, ‘You’re not financing the dog, you’re leasing.’ ‘You mean to tell me I’m renting a dog?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Without quite realizing it, the Sabins had agreed to make 34 monthly lease payments of $165.06, after which they had the right to buy the dog for about two months’ rent. Miss a payment, and the lender could take back the dog. If Tucker ran away or chased the proverbial fire truck all the way to doggy heaven, the Sabins would be on the hook for an early repayment charge. If they saw the lease through to the end, they would have paid the equivalent of more than 70 percent in annualized interest—nearly twice what most credit card lenders charge.

Curious about the moral nullity behind this dog leasing idea, I looked up Dusty Wunderlich and found that he is not a boiler room operator living on the edge of society. He is a proud member of the new economy. He even has his own blog.The values section is the most entertaining because it is a dog’s breakfast of stuff he picked up as an undergrad, that he could use to manipulate and take advantage of people. It is a moral code, even if it leads to immoral ends, which is why the term “lawful evil” is appropriate.

That’s always the problem with libertarians. They assume that if something is allowed to be done, it should be done. Since the law allows this guy to prey on the emotionally vulnerable, in order to get them to sign off on leasing a casket for their dead granny, then there’s nothing wrong with it. Since libertarians believe the law should only enforce contracts, protect private property and provide physical protection, grifters fleecing the unwitting becomes a feature of society, rather than a defect.

That’s fine, as far as it goes, which is not very far as few people wish to live in the transactional hell-scape that is the libertarian paradise. Humans understand that what holds a society together is the collection of unwritten rules that we think of as our common morality. The law rests on the foundation of the common morality. An amoral grifter like Dusty Wunderlich may be operating within the letter of the law, but he is living outside the spirit of the law. No society will tolerate that for long and eventually the law is changed.

The Old Right has always understood this. Societies can evolve unwritten ways to deal with guys like Dusty Wunderlich. Ostracism or a Tom Doniphon are two examples. Or, they will create written ways to deal with him. The public will demand it. If the leaders fail to provide the solution, then new leaders will be found. The Right prefers organic social institutions, the unwritten rules, while the Left prefers an authoritarian custodial state, the written rules. Those are the choices and there is no third choice.

To be fair to libertarians, the old guys like Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul understood and embraced this reality. They accepted the fact that an atrophied state would leave a void to be filled by organic social institutions. The end may not be the libertarian paradise of maximum liberty. It could lead to a theocracy, like Utah or Massachusetts, but it would at least result in a set of rules in line with the dispositions and desires of the citizens. Modern libertarians reject all that and embrace a form of utopianism.

It is why the Dissident Right should treat modern libertarians like plague carrying rage zombies. Economics is down stream from culture, far down stream. The willingness of libertarians to stab the Right in the back over culture issues just so they can score some rhetorical points over economics makes them more dangerous than the Left. Every war is a culture war, even the shooting kind. It is one group aiming to prove that their gods, their ways, their culture is superior, by imposing it on others, by any means necessary.

It’s why Buckley Conservatives are a failed movement now. They embraced the transactionalism of the libertarians, over the traditionalism of the Old Right. They have spent countless hours fussing over how best to move commas around the tax code, while the Left is marching from victory to victory in the culture war. The corruption is so thorough that they can no longer muster a reason to oppose guys like Dusty Wunderlich, ravaging the economy like locusts.

The Death of You

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Try to imagine yourself alive during the early middle ages in Britain. It is not an easy thing, of course, as the world of 7th century Britain may as well have happened on another planet, compared to our age. The largest city at the time, for example, was probably Winchester. This was a city of a few thousand people, not tens or hundreds of thousands of people. By modern standards, it was a small village or what developers in America call a town center. Of course, it would have smelled like a restroom at a truck stop.

The Romans tried to recreate the cosmopolitan life they associated with civilization, but it never really took hold in Britain. After the Romans left, things quickly fell back to their natural order. People lived in rural villages. They spent most of their time working the land and tending to the things that agrarian life required. Britain was a tribal society and people lived among their kin, ruled by men who were their kin, or by men who had ruled over their kin for longer than anyone remembered.

Anyway, there you are, covered in dirt and filth, smelling like cabbage, when some weirdos show up and meet with the rulers.  Maybe you saw them come down the road or maybe you heard about them.  All you know is that foreign weirdos have shown up and the people in charge are entertaining them for some reason. Eventually, you and everyone else is rounded up and marched down to the local river where you witness the weirdos dunking the lord in the river, while making weird sounds and pointing toward the sky.

Then, the king’s men force all of the people, including you, to do the same. You are marched out into the river, you are dunked under the water by the weirdos. To your surprise, your family and neighbors seem to be OK with it. They enthusiastically go along with this strange new ritual, even though you know they have no idea what’s happening either. Their confusion is due to fear and their fear tells them to follow along, even though they have no idea what is happening. You do the same. You have been Christianized.

That’s not an unrealistic portrayal of how Britain went from being a pagan land to being a Christian one. The Church set about converting Europe by first converting the kings, nobles and tribal leaders. It could then be the duty and interest of the rulers to force the new religion on their people, which they mostly did. In Britain, Æthelberht of Kent was the first king to accept baptism, around 601. The final kingdom to join the winning team was The Isle of Wright in 686, but the death of Penda in 655 ended paganism in Britain.

Just because the king adopted this new weird religion, did not mean the people fully embraced it. In fact, the ruling class was not entirely on board with Christianity. In order to make the transition easier, the Church gave the early Christians of Britain broad authority to practice Christianity. The goal was to get them on board first and then later enforce theological discipline. The Church was playing the long game so many pagan practices were Christianized to make it easier for the people to convert to the new faith.

Another way that made the conversion smother was for the legends and stories of the old gods carried on with the peasants. That’s where we got English folklore. All of those old legends told in the pagan era were a form of entertainment for the common people. After conversion, they still told stories about magical creatures and heroes, but they left out Woden and Loki, at least as real gods on the same level as the Christian God. They became children’s stories and fairy tales, rather than foundation myths for the people.

The removal of a people’s religion, cuts them off from their past and effectively ends their identity as a people. It was so much more effective to adapt the new religion to the culture and customs of the people being converted. It allowed the people to hold onto their identity by holding onto their past. This is also why the Americans allowed the Japanese Emperor to remain in place after the war. He was more than just a political figure. He was a defining feature of the Japanese people. Liberal democracy was modified for post-imperial Japan.

The point of all this is as it relates to what we see going on in America with the slow removal of Christianity from the culture. The ruling class long ago converted to the new religion of multiculturalism. They have been slowly erasing the old religions from the public institutions and replacing it with their own. Now they have moved into private institutions by forcing Christians to worship at the altar of multiculturalism. The next step, and there are already rumblings, is to force churches to adopt gay marriage or face sanction.

Christianity is not the only religion under assault. The soft, civil religion of Americans, based on equality before the law, individual liberty and the right to be left alone is being erased. The tearing down of Confederate statues is one example. The elimination of freedom of association is another. The rule of law, of course, has been eliminated long ago when the Talmudic parsers cooked up the idea of a living Constitution. The law is now just an endless round of hairsplitting and a morality of convenience.

The toppling over of confederate statues is often seen as a final sweeping up after the Civil War. First they came for the Confederate flags and now they are coming for the statues. Next they will be digging up the graveyards. That’s all true, but it is also an effort to erase America’s past. There are calls to topple over the statue of Jefferson at the University of Virginia.  It will not be long before Washington, Franklin, and the rest of those evil pale penis people, who founded the nation, are ruled out of bounds on moral grounds.

The whole point of the exercise is to cut the people off from their past, by taking away their religion and civil institutions. It’s tempting to think of globalism in purely economic terms, but it is more than that. It is a war on the people who make up nations. It is a direct assault on the very idea of a people. If they can destroy the civil institutions and erase the past, they will destroy the identity of the people and the very rationale for countries. The post-national paradise, therefore, is the post-you world. It is the death of you.

Bring Back Smoking

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Are we getting stupider?

This is hard to know as we don’t have IQ exams from further back than last century. We have some ways to approximate IQ going back into the mists of time, but those will always get bogged down by debates over methods.Then you have the flat earth types who argue that IQ is not a real thing or that there are multiple forms of intelligence. Just sticking with the good data we have for the last 100 years or so, it does appear that the West is getting dumber. By how much and and how fast is the debate.

Why this could be happening is not much of a debate. There are three reasons related to biology. One is the Idiocracy example. The stupid are breeding like bunnies while the smart are reproducing at less than replacement levels. The high achieving man marries late and marries a high achieving women with a head full of feminist nonsense. They put off childbearing until she can only produce one child. Meanwhile, the guys that cut their grass are knocking up their girlfriends in high school and producing five kids.

Another reason is that stupid people are migrating into Western countries. This is an easy one as we just have to look at the news. The migrants flowing in from south of the equator into Western countries are bringing a mean IQ in the 80’s and sometimes, in the case of Somalis, the 70’s. They also breed like rabbits. A country full of 95-IQ white people that becomes 90% white and 10% Somali will lose almost ten IQ points. This is just an accelerated version of the above answer. It turns out that Magic Dirt is not real.

Finally, the hardest one to grasp is that something has happened to change the evolutionary pressure on the population that is now changing the rewards and punishments. Traits that in the past were punished, thus resulting in fewer children by those with those traits, are now neutral or maybe even slightly favored. We know smart people tend to live longer, so reducing the risk of death by misadventure or even death from common maladies could be lowering the over all IQ of Western populations.

If you want to read a bunch of smart people debating this, this post by Greg Cochran has a lively comment section. What you’ll note is that people focused on genetics tend not to consider environmental factors. In fact, they often veer into a form of genetic determinism that sounds a lot like astrology. The fault dear mortal is not in our stars, but in our genes, that we are just moist robots. People who tend to this sort of thinking are usually unfamiliar with 4GL programming languages or write JavaScript for a living.

That’s not to say free will is a real thing. Humans are not free to rewrite their personalities anymore than they can make themselves taller. We are the result of our wiring, plus some environmental factors like the community in which we were born, climate and serendipity. Someone born to the Amish will be raised to develop pro-Amish traits and ignore traits that are no useful to the Amish way. Environmental factors may play a small role over all, but they do play some role in what we are as people.

In specific cases, it could have an enormous role. Greg Cochran’s Gay Germ idea is a great example. Homosexuality is most certainly not genetic. Nature works against low-fitness. Males with a trait that sharply reduces their ability (or willingness) to mate will have far fewer offspring and therefore pass on this trait in low numbers. In just a few generations, the trait would die out. In the case of homosexuality, we know there were gay Roman emperors and Elton John is still with us, so this trait cannot be genetic.

Alternatively, homosexuality is either taught or the result of psychological damage done at a young by something like molestation. This is a popular idea on the Right, but it does not explain most cases. Lots of homosexuals grew up fairly normal lives and were simply attracted to the same sex once they hit sexual maturity. That’s where Cochran’s gay germ comes in. Instead of a trauma, it is a virus or parasite that triggers changes in brain chemistry, resulting homosexual behavior. That would provide an answer that fits the data.

Bringing this back to IQ, what if something like this is at work with Western IQ? Maybe not a germ, but environmental factors that are having a cascading effect on mean IQ. For example, such an idea has been posited to explain the spike in black crime. Many on the Left think the Tragic Dirt is contaminated with lead, leading to low-IQ and increased violence for the people living on the Tragic Dirt. It’s not a crazy idea, but like the Gay Germ, it is not proven idea. It’s more of a thought experiment at this stage.

Here’s soemthing else. Smoking rates began to decline in the middle of the last century, with the Baby Boomer interest in health. Nicotine is known to increase focus and increase your cognitive abilities. It’s why writers and computer programmers were all smokers. In fact, STEM fields in the 20th century were dominated by men who chain smoked at their desks. Anyone who has had to sit for hours working a math problem knows how exhausting it can be. Even a small boost in focus has enormous results.

What if the apparent uptick in Western IQ was accelerated by smoking? Tobacco was introduced to the West in the 16th century and its use increased steadily. By the 18th century, the use of tobacco was common. By the 19th century, smoking cigarettes was ubiquitous. Everyone smoked. It also corresponds with the Industrial Revolution. Once tobacco use became universal, Western technological progress took off like a rocket, culminating in a rocket literally taking off and putting men on the moon.

Once the anti-smoking crusades got a purchase in the 60’s and smoking rates declined, it does appear that the West began to decline. Perhaps that small boost to our cognitive ability had a huge impact on our intellectual achievements. Now that the crutch is gone, we’re doing idiotic things like putting minorities in charge and inviting in low-IQ barbarians from the fringes of civilization. Perhaps the lunacy that has gripped the West is simply the withdraw symptoms of kicking the habit.

Maybe we need to start smoking again.

The Olden Thymes

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I was watching this episode of the Mark Steyn Show on Sunday and they made mention of Casablanca. It occurred to me that it had been so long since I watched these old movies, I no longer remember much about them. My generation was probably the last to grow up seeing these old films on television. They would turn up on the UHF channels at night or on weekends. In the 70’s, black and white movies looked almost as good as the color television shows, so the old films seemed to hold up OK, at least to a ten year old.

I decided to fire up the Kodi and watch Casablanca, while I was catching up on some office work. I was a bit surprised at how well it holds up today. Being in black and white probably makes it work by tricking my brain into viewing it through the eyes of my youth, rather than as a jaded old man. The acting is the part that does not work as well today, as the old films were acted like stage plays, which required the audience to use their imaginations. Modern technology lets the audience drop into a coma while watching a film.

Anyway, Casablanca is a classic film for a reason. The story is well done and even 70 years on, the stars are still stars. Maybe it was how they made the movies back then, but Bogart fills the screen in his scenes. Of course, Ingrid Bergman was a stunningly gorgeous women, but even the lesser stars seemed to have a presence. Peter Lorre has a small role early in the film, but you remember it. It’s probably due to how they made movies back then, but the stars don’t have the same screen presence today.

The funny thing about this movie is the plot is very simple and the imagery is a bit heavy handed. In fact, everything about it is simple and rough-hewn, but there’s a moving depth to it. Watching it, I could easily imagine a 1940’s audience, sitting in the dark theater as the movie ends. The women would be teary eyes, maybe squeezing their man’s arm a little harder than normal. The men would be sitting stiff-backed and stony-faced, enjoying their date getting close, while imagining themselves as the honorable Rick Blaine.

Of course, Hollywood in that age made movies that celebrated the higher values of their intended audience. There were some commie writers trying to work their message into films, but by and large the industry liked its customers and sought to appeal to their better natures by celebrating America and American values. The point of movie making in those days was to get people to the theater. That meant making movies that appealed to the majority population, which meant the native stock. No one bothered with virtue signaling.

There was also a degree of respect for the audience. It was assumed that the people in the theater could use their imagination. They did not need a 20-minute sex scene to know that Bogart and Bergman were having a physical relationship. The audience was treated like adults, rather than teenagers. Hollywood often relied on high-brow culture in their films, even though their audience was mostly working class. People read more and they were expected to know about classic stories and characters from Western culture.

Today, the people making movies largely despise the native stock of the country and they really hate the white men. A remake of Casablanca would most likely have the story set at Ellen’s Place, rather than Rick’s Café Américain. The proprietor would have to be a gender fluid lesbian of color, hounded by white males trying to oppress her. The whole thing would be a carnival of degeneracy intended to rub the nose of viewers in a steaming pile of cultural Marxism, as a reminder of who is in charge now.

The world view of the people in charge of movie making is different too. When they made Casablanca, they knew those honkies taking their dates to see Bogie were going to be relied upon to save Western civilization from itself. The people running Hollywood today are convinced they would be better off if the honkies would hurry up and die off. It’s not just that foreign audiences are so important either. There’s a real visceral hatred that screams through the product pumped out by Hollywood today. They hate us a lot.

What I’m always struck by in the old movies is the maturity of the male leads. Bogart was in his 40’s when he made Casablanca and he looked like it. His character was supposed to be middle-aged. He was an adult. Today, the male leads are cartoons, often literally cartoons. The real flesh and blood male leads are steroidal freaks, who look like float decorations at a gay pride parade. More important, they lack maturity. Instead of playing characters that anchor society, they are emotional wrecks who need saving.

I hate this age.

The Pervgeld

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A strange example of how not to deal with fanatics is here in this posting I saw on the twitter machine the other day. It is a tantrum about the alleged lack of diversity in the video game rackets. It is comedy gold.

BioWare’s attempt to depict a trans woman character in Mass Effect: Andromeda was a disaster. From a report that emerged about BioWare’s apparent failure to consult with actual trans people, to the developer’s unsubstantiated claim about its “diverse” workforce, its mishandling of the issue is highlighting a massive issue in the gaming industry: We don’t really know anything about the people who make the games we play.

I don’t know about this particular game, but many games have unicorns and elves in them. I doubt that the game makers consult with unicorns and elves about how they depict those characters. So-called “trans people” are just as mythical as elves. A man pretending to be a woman is no different than someone walking around thinking they are a hobbit from the shire. Are game makers required to consult with the people pretending to be hobbits?

To its credit, BioWare is updating the character, Hainly Abrams, to be a more sensitive, realistic depiction of a trans person’s lived experience. But the whole kerfuffle has made one thing clear: If game developers want to show they’re taking representation seriously, they should stop being so secretive about whom they hire.

Why this ridiculous weirdo thinks it is any of his business would make for an interesting interview, but neo-fascists like Tim Mulkerin tend to avoid these questions. They just take it for granted that they have the whip hand as cultural commissars.

Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough pressure on game developers to hire more marginalized folks at the moment — and that’s something diversity reports might kick-start. Right now, it’s easier to just maintain the status quo, to maintain employment devoid of actual diversity — because nobody will ever know the difference. Publishing diversity reports would be a great first step to shaking things up.

Maybe banks and law firms should do the same or perhaps Tim should demand diversity on the Supreme Court of the United States. After all, three lesbians and just one WASP male suggests a strong bias against the majority of the population. How about some diversity in the NBA? Not a lot of the majority population there either. Oh right. Never mind.

And it’s not as though the value of having a diverse staff is up for debate. It’s clear that diverse workforces improve companies and the economy at large. In fact, the benefits of a diverse workplace are evident when it comes to the writing of BioWare’s last game, Dragon Age: Inquisition.

There you go. The fact that there is no evidence that so-called diversity has any value is unimportant. What’s important is it is not up for debate you bigots. The fact that diversity is actually terrible for tech companies is besides the point.

What game companies like BioWare are about to learn is that the only response to the diversity lunatics is a hearty and enthusiastic “Go fuck yourself!” when they show up at the door. BioWare would make more money by having a character modeled after David Duke than they would by catering to mentally disturbed men in sundresses, who also like gaming. There’s zero benefit in paying the pervgeld to the trannies. You just end up with a bunch of perverts and deviants in your ranks.

Or worse. BioWare invested in diversity rather than producing a quality product and the result was a shit product they cannot give away. Lunatics like Tim Mulkerin will claim the reason is the game failed to include enough blue-haired lesbians on the development team or some such nonsense, because that is how the mind of a fanatic works. They can’t change their mind and they won’t change the subject. The reality is there is no market for this stuff. Gamers want to have fun, not be lectured by a lunatic.

 

Consensus and Crisis

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In popular forms of government, politics tends to coalesce around a set of issues that are debated in the public and in front of the public. There’s a framework within which these topics are debated and the political factions represent the positions on those topics. This framework is the consensus. A range of answers has been deemed acceptable and anything the lies outside that range is considered fringe or heretical. This is the natural response to the challenges faced by democratic political systems.

In the West, the political parties tended to coalesce around economic schools, like communists, various flavors of socialism and flavors of market socialism. These were in the range of the political consensus. Libertarianism has always been fringe in Europe and in America, communism was always a fringe position. The result is the main points of contention in political fights were over economic policy. So much so that social policy and foreign policy have often been framed in economic terms.

Globalism, which the political elites have long saw as a way to sew up political divides, not just within countries, but between countries, has actually fractured the political consensus in the West. Once the factions within the elite settled on an agreed upon economic policy, they needed something else to decorate their respective flags in order to distinguish one faction from the other. After all, if everyone in the political class agrees on the main topics, there’s no need for parties. Politics becomes a beauty pageant.

This reality appears to be something the political elites in the West never bothered to contemplate. When the Cold War ended, the raison d’être for the political fight over economics ended with it. Globalism, with financialization, credit money, open borders and privatized trade policy, became the narrow political consensus within the political class. In Europe this meant post-national continental integration. In the US, this quickly curdled into invade the world/invite the world. In the West, it is rule by rootless cosmopolitan now.

The trouble is, the public has not signed off on that consensus and we still maintain the customs of popular government. In order to have elections, you need conflict and debate. That means issues to distinguish one faction from the other. The first effort to keep the plates spinning was lots of shouting and hair splitting. Politics has turned nasty mostly because name calling is all they have. When two candidates agree on all the big stuff and most of the small stuff, they have to create drama out of the small differences.

This eventually transitions to a new phase, where the public, after a few rounds of elections in which nothing changes, figures out they need new issues. If there’s no longer going to be a debate over the economic arrangements, then maybe we should talk about these Bantu spear-men who suddenly appeared in town. Perhaps it is time to talk about the fact the ringing of church bells has been replaced by the call to prayer. Of course, there is the fact that swarthy sons of Allah keep exploding in pizza parlors.

Outsider issues inevitably result in outsider parties getting traction with the public. The good thinkers who refuse to discuss immigration or the reality of Muslim culture get pushed aside by those coarse barbarians from the fringe who are willing to talk about the taboo subjects. The result is the legitimate parties begin to move closer together in response to the threat from the fringe. We’re seeing that in Europe as the main parties rally to thwart the challenge from the patriotic right. This is the crisis phase.

As we saw with Greece, this is a transition phase. The Greek “middle” collapsed and was replaced by a far left party. At some point, as the crisis continues, an organized and effective far right party will emerge as the challenger. The result will be increasing polarization in politics and eventually society. If some resolution to the problems plaguing Greece are not found, that political divide becomes irreconcilable. That either results in civil war or it results in one faction permanently sidelining the other faction.

A similar process may be unfolding in France. The political elite in France has always been highly chauvinistic, but generally in favor of the post-national, global socialism of Europe. They just blindly accepted the sterilizing effects of globalization, without much thought as to how that would play out in their domestic politics. They just assumed that Europe was a done deal, so elections really did not matter anymore. That’s not how things are unfolding and the French political consensus is beginning to crack.

There’s no much chance for Le Pen to win, but the recent attacks by Muslims could churn that silent majority that exists in every western country. The fact that the communists are wildly over performing is the big news, as it suggests the disgust with the status quo is widespread. Voting for Le Pen is a protest by outsiders. A vote for Melenchon is a protest by insiders, the people who see themselves as part of the elite. The middle of French politics is losing its purchase on the voters.

Something similar is happening in America. Donald Trump is not an ideologue. He is a reactionary who sees the political consensus in Washington as an unworkable jumble of policies cooked up by academics. His vote, however, was symbolically and tactically a rejection of the prevailing consensus. Voters wanted to hear about migrants and trade, not tax cuts and flag waving. He was the coarse, crude man from outside willing to talk about the things the people want discussed.

The Left is experiencing something similar with Bernie Sanders, and to a lesser degree Tulsi Gabbard. Democrats think inviting Team Sanders in to put an outsider face on their ruling class politics will prevent a revolt from the fringe. Gabbard is getting attention from the fringe because she talks about issues like the endless warmongering and economic equality.  Hers is a decidedly non-white take on these issues, but the fact that she is willing to forthrightly discuss these taboo subjects is another crack in the consensus.

Those prone to unrealistic bouts of optimism should look at these developments as a good sign that maybe the tide is turning. The whole point of consensus is for the insiders to control the debate by pushing uncomfortable truths into the void, making them off-limits in political debates. As these issues seep back into the public debate, the debate has to change. For the alt-right and economic populists, having an fight over these topics is 90% of the battle. They cannot win the argument unless there is an actual argument.

The West is heading for a very big argument.

The Demise of Fox News

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News brings word that the SJW’s have bagged their biggest trophy to date. Bill O’Reilly is the most popular cable news talker in the business and he was just fired for making the girls cry. It is all part of what is looking like a well orchestrated effort to break Fox News on the wheel of political correctness. The screeching harpies knocked out Roger Ailes and now they have taken out the top star, all via the same method – powerskirts claiming to have been done wrong by the knuckle-dragging misogynists running the network.

The claim will be that the advertisers demanded Fox fire O’Reilly, but that is complete nonsense. Cable channels, like Fox News, exist on subscription revenues, not advertising dollars. FNC gets $1.50 from every cable home each month. That’s roughly $1.8 billion a year whether people watch or not. Their ad revenue is less than a third of that number. In the case of ESPN, for example, ad revenue is around one billion, and they have an audience about ten times the size of a cable news operation, even Fox News.

An advertiser boycott could certainly harm the bottom line for Fox, but there is another reality to the cable business. Those companies demanding their ads be pulled from the O’Reilly show would still be running ads on other Fox programs. The reason they choose to run ads on Fox News is they believe there are people watching Fox News who will also buy crap they see advertised. Bill O’Reilly could be strangling kittens on his show. If he gets a valuable audience to watch, advertisers will want to get their name on his show.

The reality is Fox could weather the storm and ride out this thing if they wanted to do it, but they probably have another agenda. It’s tempting to assume that Fox is stuffed to the rafters with right-wing ideologues, but that’s not the case. Fox is just as Prog infested as every other media company.This could very well be part of an effort to make the channel more Prog friendly. It could also be the dream-child of someone in management, to remake the network to appeal to younger, gayer viewers.

Logic says that languishing networks like CNN would jump at the chance to land a huge fish like O’Reilly. Put the Big Mic on CNN in his old time slot and CNN would soon pass Fox in the ratings. In fact, they could put some other popular names around him and dominate the cable news wars. People like tabloid news shows and guys like O’Reilly are good at being just outrageous enough to get your attention, but not so crazy as to make you feel bad for liking tabloid news.

That’s not going to happen, of course. CNN has the same economics as Fox News. They can fully engage in whatever politics they choose, because they get paid even if no one bothers watching. They are tax farmers, relying on an oligopoly to enforce their right to skim a buck a month from your cable bill. It’s why cable bills are over $100 per month and it is also why cord cutting is the new thing. If people could pick the channels they buy through their cable subscription, all of the cable news guys would go away.

As an aside, it is one of the ironies of socialism. The economic philosophy that claims to favor equality of outcomes always turns into a vehicle for self-dealing by the advocates of socialism. American media is universally liberal, and financed by the socialism of cable television. Colleges and universities are madhouses of Progressive jackassery, financed by the socialized student debt system.  American health care is looking like a cynical bust-out because of socialist economics championed by the Left.

As a further aside, the companies pulling their ads from O’Reilly were not doing it for economic reasons. The ratings were through the roof and few Americans care about who is playing grab ass with whom at the TV station. These companies were pulling their ads in order to curry favor with the Cult. In many cases, their management teams are infested with Progs and powerskirts too. It’s like a virus for which there is no known cure. It controls the host and will bring about its demise in order to promote the cause.

Anyway, a good lesson to recall in all of this is the story of Time Magazine. Henry Luce founded the magazine, as well as Life, Sports Illustrated and other famous publications. He was also involved in radio, newsreels and eventually television. His company was the first multimedia corporation. In his heyday, he was considered the most influential private citizen in the country. The reason for that is his publications reached almost every American. He was an arbiter of the news.

Luce was also rabidly anti-communist and regularly used his media outlets to do battle with the Progs of his day. He opposed most of what FDR tried to do in office. It was Luce who came to the rescue of Whittaker Chambers, when the the Progs had him at the top of their enemies list. Chambers worked for Luce, not only earning a paycheck, but writing for his publications. Luce helped Bill Buckley get started, thus helping the post-war conservative movement come to life. Henry Luce’s media empire was anti-Left.

It was not, however, explicitly right-wing. After Luce died, his media company was slowly infiltrated by lunatics. By the 60’s it was unrecognizable. By the 70’s it was fully refashioned into a weapon of the Left. Even though its over the top Progressive bias slowly killed its circulation, the people running it did not care. What mattered was promoting the one true faith, even if it destroyed the institution from which it was broadcast. Time Magazine is gone now and the Luce company exists in name only.

That’s the fate of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch was never a man of the Right. He was just a guy who loved tabloid news and was a genius at making money on modern media properties. His kids are Kool-Aid drinking Prog loonies, who will piss away the family fortune trying to buy status within the Cult of Modern Liberalism. As a result, Fox News will slowly be converted into a megaphone for the one true faith. We’ll sooner see a trans gender-fluid lesbian of color in prime time than another Bill O’Reilly type.