Open Thread, 10/31/2016
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I’m reading Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain. Not as well paced as his previous After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, but pretty good nonetheless.
Politics exhausts me. This is an exhausting time for me mentally as I’m overwhelmed by the din of political chatter and fixation. I’m very excited for November 8th to come and go.
There’s lots of stuff in science I want to write about, but the combination of lack of time, and politics saturation all over the place, has been demotivating me. So as the month proceeds I’ll probably get my energy back.
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you got any recommendations for a readable introduction/philosophy of mathematics? more of a sort of cultural development history, sort of in line with the thrust of this blog
Golden Rice could be released commercially in Bangladesh as early as 2018
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/vitamin-rice-now-reality-1305439
Re-examination suggests Paul Kammerer’s scientific ‘fraud’ was a genuine discovery of epigenetic inheritance
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-re-examination-paul-kammerer-scientific-fraud.html
‘Arctic gene’ that poses risks when fasting is found in many more infants now that DNA testing has begun
https://www.adn.com/arctic/2016/10/29/arctic-gene-that-poses-risks-when-fasting-is-found-in-many-more-infants-now-that-dna-testing-has-begun/
‘Hippie’ apes seen eating their own dead children
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161026-hippie-apes-seen-eating-their-own-dead-children
Razib, you gotta quit dat job, bro. ur twitter production is low – i’m getting bored at work!
RE: 11/8 – you and pretty much everyone else (though I did see a tweet suggesting that Nate Silver is getting ready to roll out Fifty.com on 11/9)
We spent the last two weeks in Italy. Spend some time in the Ara Pacis, the Forum, the Baths of Diocletian, you can see how Empire became a positive vision of peace, prosperity, and progress.
I am reading Mark G. Hanna’s Pirate Nest and the Rise of the British Empire. Very granular with excellent sourcing. Not really its point, but it does go a long way toward illustrating that the British were without a real plan and a bit out of control.
I just recently got, Sam White’s Climate of Rebellion in the Early Ottoman Empire. Also very granular and with a lot of the sourcing coming from primary Turkish documents. You could call it Secular Cycles meet weather oscillations.
Related to the British empire theme, I liked “The East India Company: The World’s Most Powerful Corporation” by Tirthankar Roy and Gurcharan Das. It is a business-school grads history of the EIC, and pays little or no attention to standard Indian nationalist (or British Left-revisionist) talking points about the company. On the other hand, I have not read any of the standard histories of the EIC and have had the thought that there are better histories out there. Any recommendations (for books about the history of the EIC)?
Razib, a few months back you said you contacted Rushton numerous times to cut his shit. Can you go a bit in depth on that?
he kept messing up basic stuff about genetic relationships between population groups. i corrected him. he said that he was relying on cavalli-sforza, and i said that (at the time) that work was 15 years old. he acted like he was a simple psychologist, what was he to know?
later he wrote the exact same stuff using the exact same false relationships.
rushton put a lot of controversial stuff out there. to have any credibility you have to dot your i’s. his obfuscation and lack of correction after i explained in detail strikes me as lying to the audience. but perhaps his audience wanted to be lied to.
Thanks for the response.Replies: @Razib Khan
How was he messing up basic stuff about genetic relationships between population groups? Been a while since I’ve read Race, Evolution and Behavior.
Thanks for the response.
Thanks for the response.Replies: @Razib Khan
no, in stuff he wrote after that.
example: roma have lower IQs than s. asians. he makes some reference to their indian origin explain their lower IQs. i point out to him it’s pretty clear that roma are mixed s. asian, european (and some mid eastern) origin. so their IQ should be btwn europeans and s. asians, no even lower than s. asians. he expresses ignorance of this genetic result, despite engaging in speculation based on ancestry.
a year later, he repeats himself without ever acknowledging that i pointed him to papers that correct his speculations.
there are other examples. for example, he speculated extensively about skin color and IQ, without knowing that we know the genes for skin color, and how many there are that explain 90% of the btwn pop variance. i told him that there were only a few skin color genes, so the association btwn the two unlikely to be causal. he expresses ignorance, and continues to write articles about this association and how it might be causal.
people find genomics inconvenient because it illuminates areas which have previously been subject to speculation. this includes self-described ‘realists’.
Is there an explanation for this? I vaguely recall there's a theory Roma are descended from Indian untouchables, how do their IQs compare?
(sorry if that's a stupid question).
Sorry if my question is stupid, but isn´t J. Philippe Rushton dead? Or you´re talking about another Rushton? Because Wikipedia tells me he passed in 2012.
Mind you, I do have some regard for their courage in attempting to attract attention to their less-than-mainstream views (which are usually a mishmash of the good, the bad, and the ugly). Indeed I share some of their goals - the restoration of some elements of the traditional America - though obviously white nationalism is a bridge much too far for me.
On the other hand, for some of them, the whole Alt-Right thing seems to a racket, a way to earn a living. To be sure, there are those who are perfectly capable of earning a good living otherwise (e.g. Jared Taylor via writing about computers/Japanese translation/consulting). But several of the young leaders of the movement (e.g. Richard Spencer, Kevin Deanna, and Matthew Heimbach) seem just like other red book-toting political agitators and activists, regardless of ideological stripe - people who are incapable of earning a good living doing "normal" things and for whom activism is a profession that fulfills material and psychic needs* rather than a passion/sacrifice in search of the true and the good.
*There is a lot of "will to power" feel to their antics, and white nationalism appears to be mostly a cover for their power-longing. They are often hypocritical in that they give themselves the power to decide who is in and who is out (and give themselves the freedom of action they would deny others). So we end up with a situation, for example, in which a Korean-Jew (Marcus Epstein) gets to be an honorary white so long as he has Jared Taylor's blessing and Richard Spencer - he of "fashy" haircut - turns out to have a thing for Asian women. I hate to go all reductio ad hitlerum here, but there is more than a whiff of the Nazis denouncing the decadence of the Weimar culture in public all the while attending risque private cabarets at night.Replies: @Razib Khan, @German_reader, @Sean
“roma have lower IQs than s. asians. ”
Is there an explanation for this? I vaguely recall there’s a theory Roma are descended from Indian untouchables, how do their IQs compare?
(sorry if that’s a stupid question).
“continues to write articles about this association and how it might be causal”
Sorry if my question is stupid, but isn´t J. Philippe Rushton dead? Or you´re talking about another Rushton? Because Wikipedia tells me he passed in 2012.
The sense I get from reading the so-called Alt-Right writers and leaders in general is that most are propagandists and story-tellers – even those who fancy themselves truth-tellers, scientists, historians or intellectuals. In other words, they cater their products to the particular desires of their clientele.
Mind you, I do have some regard for their courage in attempting to attract attention to their less-than-mainstream views (which are usually a mishmash of the good, the bad, and the ugly). Indeed I share some of their goals – the restoration of some elements of the traditional America – though obviously white nationalism is a bridge much too far for me.
On the other hand, for some of them, the whole Alt-Right thing seems to a racket, a way to earn a living. To be sure, there are those who are perfectly capable of earning a good living otherwise (e.g. Jared Taylor via writing about computers/Japanese translation/consulting). But several of the young leaders of the movement (e.g. Richard Spencer, Kevin Deanna, and Matthew Heimbach) seem just like other red book-toting political agitators and activists, regardless of ideological stripe – people who are incapable of earning a good living doing “normal” things and for whom activism is a profession that fulfills material and psychic needs* rather than a passion/sacrifice in search of the true and the good.
*There is a lot of “will to power” feel to their antics, and white nationalism appears to be mostly a cover for their power-longing. They are often hypocritical in that they give themselves the power to decide who is in and who is out (and give themselves the freedom of action they would deny others). So we end up with a situation, for example, in which a Korean-Jew (Marcus Epstein) gets to be an honorary white so long as he has Jared Taylor’s blessing and Richard Spencer – he of “fashy” haircut – turns out to have a thing for Asian women. I hate to go all reductio ad hitlerum here, but there is more than a whiff of the Nazis denouncing the decadence of the Weimar culture in public all the while attending risque private cabarets at night.
One can certainly get that impression from Spencer's Twitter account. I'm actually not unsympathetic to some of his views, but quite a few of his statements (e.g. he wants "a white empire in the northern hemisphere with global power projection capabilities", he loves "empire and success") are pure power worship...pretty unhinged stuff.
Mind you, I do have some regard for their courage in attempting to attract attention to their less-than-mainstream views (which are usually a mishmash of the good, the bad, and the ugly). Indeed I share some of their goals - the restoration of some elements of the traditional America - though obviously white nationalism is a bridge much too far for me.
On the other hand, for some of them, the whole Alt-Right thing seems to a racket, a way to earn a living. To be sure, there are those who are perfectly capable of earning a good living otherwise (e.g. Jared Taylor via writing about computers/Japanese translation/consulting). But several of the young leaders of the movement (e.g. Richard Spencer, Kevin Deanna, and Matthew Heimbach) seem just like other red book-toting political agitators and activists, regardless of ideological stripe - people who are incapable of earning a good living doing "normal" things and for whom activism is a profession that fulfills material and psychic needs* rather than a passion/sacrifice in search of the true and the good.
*There is a lot of "will to power" feel to their antics, and white nationalism appears to be mostly a cover for their power-longing. They are often hypocritical in that they give themselves the power to decide who is in and who is out (and give themselves the freedom of action they would deny others). So we end up with a situation, for example, in which a Korean-Jew (Marcus Epstein) gets to be an honorary white so long as he has Jared Taylor's blessing and Richard Spencer - he of "fashy" haircut - turns out to have a thing for Asian women. I hate to go all reductio ad hitlerum here, but there is more than a whiff of the Nazis denouncing the decadence of the Weimar culture in public all the while attending risque private cabarets at night.Replies: @Razib Khan, @German_reader, @Sean
richard is from the lower upper class.
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward "Asian girls" in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his "comrades" and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
The following observation is not particular to him, but to political activists and agitators in general: they usually come from middle to upper middle class families (some from what you term lower upper class). They usually went to schools that are decently ranked, but not at the very top. They hate to be "ordinary" and abhor "normal" jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills - they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power. They usually chant some ideological pieties, but in reality care more about proximity to power than any real principles. And unsurprisingly they are very disconnected, alienated even, from real communities they purport to represent, be they the military, small towns, poor blacks, poor whites, what have you.
When I worked in DC for some years, I saw legions of young people of this type, all hustling to make themselves players in town. It was at once a terrifying and comedic combination of "House of Cards" and "Veep" - naked, ugly ambition married to utter, often hilarious, incompetence and foibles.Replies: @iffen, @Razib Khan, @Talha, @benjaminl
That seems apparent from 1) his pretensions to tweedy apparel and appearance despite young age and 2) his bio and current living arrangements (something about living in a Montana house paid for by his mother, who is also building something in the town where lives). If I had to guess, I don’t think he’s earning enough from his chosen profession to support his desired lifestyle, so I would assume family is helping out.
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward “Asian girls” in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his “comrades” and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
The following observation is not particular to him, but to political activists and agitators in general: they usually come from middle to upper middle class families (some from what you term lower upper class). They usually went to schools that are decently ranked, but not at the very top. They hate to be “ordinary” and abhor “normal” jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills – they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power. They usually chant some ideological pieties, but in reality care more about proximity to power than any real principles. And unsurprisingly they are very disconnected, alienated even, from real communities they purport to represent, be they the military, small towns, poor blacks, poor whites, what have you.
When I worked in DC for some years, I saw legions of young people of this type, all hustling to make themselves players in town. It was at once a terrifying and comedic combination of “House of Cards” and “Veep” – naked, ugly ambition married to utter, often hilarious, incompetence and foibles.
that relationship was not a great secret. ppl in DC had to have known since it dates from that era. i know his ex- personally. she's a normal/nice person.Replies: @Twinkie
Peace.Replies: @iffen, @Twinkie
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward "Asian girls" in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his "comrades" and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
The following observation is not particular to him, but to political activists and agitators in general: they usually come from middle to upper middle class families (some from what you term lower upper class). They usually went to schools that are decently ranked, but not at the very top. They hate to be "ordinary" and abhor "normal" jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills - they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power. They usually chant some ideological pieties, but in reality care more about proximity to power than any real principles. And unsurprisingly they are very disconnected, alienated even, from real communities they purport to represent, be they the military, small towns, poor blacks, poor whites, what have you.
When I worked in DC for some years, I saw legions of young people of this type, all hustling to make themselves players in town. It was at once a terrifying and comedic combination of "House of Cards" and "Veep" - naked, ugly ambition married to utter, often hilarious, incompetence and foibles.Replies: @iffen, @Razib Khan, @Talha, @benjaminl
They hate to be “ordinary” and abhor “normal” jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills – they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power.
Reserve army of the bourgeoisie. 🙂
Lacking the ability to stay in or gain entry into the ruling elite they nonetheless have the ability to enter and be successful in the scrum for devotees and dollars coming from among the proles.
Young "fashies" such as Spencer and Deanna haven't run a business (or even held private sector jobs), fought in a war (or worked the streets as a cop if averse to overseas adventures) or raised a family. Do they have any productive life skills besides political agitation? They don't seem to know much about building real, tangible things in life. Indeed I don't think they have a concrete idea of what ordinary life is like, nor do I think they care. Despite purportedly advocating for "dispossessed whites" I don't think they know much about lives of ordinary white people below middle- to upper middle-class circumstances, and I see no evidence that they have lifted a finger to help such people in the real world. Charity (in the Christian sense) is not something I see in them. For people who disparage the propositional framing of the American polity for something more tangible, i.e. blood and soil, they seem to lack utterly organic connections to the reality of the latter. Try running a small town council before proposing grandiose ideas about building a new ethno-state and ethnic-cleansing.
Most of their antics and utterances strike me as adolescent power-worship and extreme statements for attention-getting. They seem to want to destroy that which exists today, but have no clue what a broken society actually looks like. In that regard, it's so much First World bellyaching and fantasy-tripping.Replies: @iffen
Mind you, I do have some regard for their courage in attempting to attract attention to their less-than-mainstream views (which are usually a mishmash of the good, the bad, and the ugly). Indeed I share some of their goals - the restoration of some elements of the traditional America - though obviously white nationalism is a bridge much too far for me.
On the other hand, for some of them, the whole Alt-Right thing seems to a racket, a way to earn a living. To be sure, there are those who are perfectly capable of earning a good living otherwise (e.g. Jared Taylor via writing about computers/Japanese translation/consulting). But several of the young leaders of the movement (e.g. Richard Spencer, Kevin Deanna, and Matthew Heimbach) seem just like other red book-toting political agitators and activists, regardless of ideological stripe - people who are incapable of earning a good living doing "normal" things and for whom activism is a profession that fulfills material and psychic needs* rather than a passion/sacrifice in search of the true and the good.
*There is a lot of "will to power" feel to their antics, and white nationalism appears to be mostly a cover for their power-longing. They are often hypocritical in that they give themselves the power to decide who is in and who is out (and give themselves the freedom of action they would deny others). So we end up with a situation, for example, in which a Korean-Jew (Marcus Epstein) gets to be an honorary white so long as he has Jared Taylor's blessing and Richard Spencer - he of "fashy" haircut - turns out to have a thing for Asian women. I hate to go all reductio ad hitlerum here, but there is more than a whiff of the Nazis denouncing the decadence of the Weimar culture in public all the while attending risque private cabarets at night.Replies: @Razib Khan, @German_reader, @Sean
“There is a lot of “will to power” feel to their antics, and white nationalism appears to be mostly a cover for their power-longing. ”
One can certainly get that impression from Spencer’s Twitter account. I’m actually not unsympathetic to some of his views, but quite a few of his statements (e.g. he wants “a white empire in the northern hemisphere with global power projection capabilities”, he loves “empire and success”) are pure power worship…pretty unhinged stuff.
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward "Asian girls" in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his "comrades" and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
The following observation is not particular to him, but to political activists and agitators in general: they usually come from middle to upper middle class families (some from what you term lower upper class). They usually went to schools that are decently ranked, but not at the very top. They hate to be "ordinary" and abhor "normal" jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills - they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power. They usually chant some ideological pieties, but in reality care more about proximity to power than any real principles. And unsurprisingly they are very disconnected, alienated even, from real communities they purport to represent, be they the military, small towns, poor blacks, poor whites, what have you.
When I worked in DC for some years, I saw legions of young people of this type, all hustling to make themselves players in town. It was at once a terrifying and comedic combination of "House of Cards" and "Veep" - naked, ugly ambition married to utter, often hilarious, incompetence and foibles.Replies: @iffen, @Razib Khan, @Talha, @benjaminl
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward “Asian girls” in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his “comrades” and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
that relationship was not a great secret. ppl in DC had to have known since it dates from that era. i know his ex- personally. she’s a normal/nice person.
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward "Asian girls" in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his "comrades" and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
The following observation is not particular to him, but to political activists and agitators in general: they usually come from middle to upper middle class families (some from what you term lower upper class). They usually went to schools that are decently ranked, but not at the very top. They hate to be "ordinary" and abhor "normal" jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills - they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power. They usually chant some ideological pieties, but in reality care more about proximity to power than any real principles. And unsurprisingly they are very disconnected, alienated even, from real communities they purport to represent, be they the military, small towns, poor blacks, poor whites, what have you.
When I worked in DC for some years, I saw legions of young people of this type, all hustling to make themselves players in town. It was at once a terrifying and comedic combination of "House of Cards" and "Veep" - naked, ugly ambition married to utter, often hilarious, incompetence and foibles.Replies: @iffen, @Razib Khan, @Talha, @benjaminl
Dang bro – that paragraph sounds a lot like the guys that sign up for Daesh in all seriousness.
Peace.
Peace.Replies: @iffen, @Twinkie
The “essence” of belief in the righteousness of a particular ideology is interchangeable as to race, ethnicity, theology, etc. A distinction can come from where one’s opinion falls on the continuum of actions and behavior that are considered justified.
Razib, you’re voting for Trump, right? I’m gonna take no response as a yes.
no.
Mind you, I do have some regard for their courage in attempting to attract attention to their less-than-mainstream views (which are usually a mishmash of the good, the bad, and the ugly). Indeed I share some of their goals - the restoration of some elements of the traditional America - though obviously white nationalism is a bridge much too far for me.
On the other hand, for some of them, the whole Alt-Right thing seems to a racket, a way to earn a living. To be sure, there are those who are perfectly capable of earning a good living otherwise (e.g. Jared Taylor via writing about computers/Japanese translation/consulting). But several of the young leaders of the movement (e.g. Richard Spencer, Kevin Deanna, and Matthew Heimbach) seem just like other red book-toting political agitators and activists, regardless of ideological stripe - people who are incapable of earning a good living doing "normal" things and for whom activism is a profession that fulfills material and psychic needs* rather than a passion/sacrifice in search of the true and the good.
*There is a lot of "will to power" feel to their antics, and white nationalism appears to be mostly a cover for their power-longing. They are often hypocritical in that they give themselves the power to decide who is in and who is out (and give themselves the freedom of action they would deny others). So we end up with a situation, for example, in which a Korean-Jew (Marcus Epstein) gets to be an honorary white so long as he has Jared Taylor's blessing and Richard Spencer - he of "fashy" haircut - turns out to have a thing for Asian women. I hate to go all reductio ad hitlerum here, but there is more than a whiff of the Nazis denouncing the decadence of the Weimar culture in public all the while attending risque private cabarets at night.Replies: @Razib Khan, @German_reader, @Sean
Reductio ad hitlerum? According to August Kubizek, a boyhood friend and roommate the 19 year old Hitler didn’t even masturbate, he was probably well into his thirties before he had sex.
The revelations about his past Asian girlfriends as well as his feelings toward "Asian girls" in general were amusing to me, but probably not to his "comrades" and followers. I am guessing they choose not to hear about it.
The following observation is not particular to him, but to political activists and agitators in general: they usually come from middle to upper middle class families (some from what you term lower upper class). They usually went to schools that are decently ranked, but not at the very top. They hate to be "ordinary" and abhor "normal" jobs and rarely acquire useful professional skills - they think they are better than ordinary folks and should therefore have power. They usually chant some ideological pieties, but in reality care more about proximity to power than any real principles. And unsurprisingly they are very disconnected, alienated even, from real communities they purport to represent, be they the military, small towns, poor blacks, poor whites, what have you.
When I worked in DC for some years, I saw legions of young people of this type, all hustling to make themselves players in town. It was at once a terrifying and comedic combination of "House of Cards" and "Veep" - naked, ugly ambition married to utter, often hilarious, incompetence and foibles.Replies: @iffen, @Razib Khan, @Talha, @benjaminl
The article said he went to St. Mark’s prep school in Dallas. That school is both very expensive and very academically competitive and difficult to get into. So I agree, that fact implies a certain minimum level of smarts or family money or both.
that relationship was not a great secret. ppl in DC had to have known since it dates from that era. i know his ex- personally. she's a normal/nice person.Replies: @Twinkie
My mild amusement, as such, is not about having had one Asian girlfriend for a short stretch. It’s from what appears to be (a continuing though denied) fetish. Asian girlfriends, plural, and “cute… smart… a thing.”
For that matter, I think Jared Taylor had a Japanese companion once, but then again he grew up in Japan.
And of course John Derbyshire is married to a daughter of a Chinese communist party member… though in his defense he seems to be for love over white nationalism as was displayed in their mutually testy online exchanges between him and Taylor.
None of this is of any consequence, except I don’t like hyprocrisy. Or making up ideologies to which the said makers don’t subscribe in private.
Peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
Peace.Replies: @iffen, @Twinkie
Happy, content people with a healthy sense of connection to their communities and a sense of purpose in their everyday lives usually don’t become political agitators… or Jihadis.
It’s not about the ruling elite. It’s about ordinary life experiences that builds some sense of moderation in the Aristotelian sense and, ultimately, wisdom.
Young “fashies” such as Spencer and Deanna haven’t run a business (or even held private sector jobs), fought in a war (or worked the streets as a cop if averse to overseas adventures) or raised a family. Do they have any productive life skills besides political agitation? They don’t seem to know much about building real, tangible things in life. Indeed I don’t think they have a concrete idea of what ordinary life is like, nor do I think they care. Despite purportedly advocating for “dispossessed whites” I don’t think they know much about lives of ordinary white people below middle- to upper middle-class circumstances, and I see no evidence that they have lifted a finger to help such people in the real world. Charity (in the Christian sense) is not something I see in them. For people who disparage the propositional framing of the American polity for something more tangible, i.e. blood and soil, they seem to lack utterly organic connections to the reality of the latter. Try running a small town council before proposing grandiose ideas about building a new ethno-state and ethnic-cleansing.
Most of their antics and utterances strike me as adolescent power-worship and extreme statements for attention-getting. They seem to want to destroy that which exists today, but have no clue what a broken society actually looks like. In that regard, it’s so much First World bellyaching and fantasy-tripping.
This is where we part; this applies to you.Replies: @Twinkie
Hey Twinkie,
You said it bro. Condemnation of hypocrisy is universal in every moral code and religion that I can think of. I am constantly amazed by the level of incoherence and cognitive dissonance in so many ‘agitators’ from all sides.
Peace.
Young "fashies" such as Spencer and Deanna haven't run a business (or even held private sector jobs), fought in a war (or worked the streets as a cop if averse to overseas adventures) or raised a family. Do they have any productive life skills besides political agitation? They don't seem to know much about building real, tangible things in life. Indeed I don't think they have a concrete idea of what ordinary life is like, nor do I think they care. Despite purportedly advocating for "dispossessed whites" I don't think they know much about lives of ordinary white people below middle- to upper middle-class circumstances, and I see no evidence that they have lifted a finger to help such people in the real world. Charity (in the Christian sense) is not something I see in them. For people who disparage the propositional framing of the American polity for something more tangible, i.e. blood and soil, they seem to lack utterly organic connections to the reality of the latter. Try running a small town council before proposing grandiose ideas about building a new ethno-state and ethnic-cleansing.
Most of their antics and utterances strike me as adolescent power-worship and extreme statements for attention-getting. They seem to want to destroy that which exists today, but have no clue what a broken society actually looks like. In that regard, it's so much First World bellyaching and fantasy-tripping.Replies: @iffen
but have no clue what a broken society actually looks like
This is where we part; this applies to you.
I doubt you will find new information in them but intriguing interpretations are found in the very brief discussion contained in Chomsky’s Year 501, and Harman’s Imaterialism
Holland and Britain were the rogue states of their day, both looted the Hapsburgs. Sir Walter Raleigh’s piracy and the Dutch seizure of the Santa Catarina got them off to a flying start. They needed to outmatch the power of the Hapsbug’s vast realm to survive as Jan Pieterszoon Coen’s proposal for unlimited expansion of the VoC explicitly said. The VoC was successful but Dutch commercial organisation was no match for the British once they used state power (via Navigation acts) to build a global naval supremacy that smashed all monopolies, except their own.
The Darien scheme was a laughably inept attempt at empire, but revealing as to the motives for it. Like the successful empires of the British and Dutch it aimed at national survival against a vastly more powerful neighboring rival.
This is where we part; this applies to you.Replies: @Twinkie
Please elaborate.
“a white empire in the northern hemisphere with global power projection capabilities”
We already have that.
It’s called NATO.
Have you read Charles Murray’s Coming Apart?
If you have and you discount what he has written, I doubt that I can cite anything that will get your attention.
Also - he reports that alcohol (far more than any other drug) is involved in almost every single case that comes in through the doors in some way shape or form; from the beat up wife to the old guy that fell off a ladder. He did his residency in an inner-city hospital's ER - there it was 99% involved.
People are hurting out there - may God help them.
Peace.Replies: @iffen
I still don't get this:Perhaps you simply did not understand my critique of the likes of Richard Spencer who advocates for a white ethno-state and non-white ethnic cleansing. You see, I worked overseas in a number of failed states. I've seen societies that are actually - physically - broken - where government does not control much of the nominally sovereign territory, where infrastructure is run-down, looted, and crumbling, where tribes and ethno-religious groups war with each other, and so forth. And that's what's going to happen here if the grand vision of the likes of Spencer were to come to fruition. Either that or we are going to have a massive Leviathan going from door-to-door and "weeding out" people with non-white ancestry (apparently Spencer has a tiny bit of African - so he's blacker than I am) - you know, the Day of the Rope fantasy. Either way, there would be a horrendous amount of bloodshed and destruction. That's something I've witnessed with my own eyes. People like Spencer have no clue what breaking a society really looks like. It's just beyond the ken of alienated, over-grown adolescents living in mom's basement spouting "will to power" nonsense, even if they had degrees from UVA and U Chicago.
I have a friend who is an attending ER physician in a very nice posh Chicagoland suburb. He sees the stuff we don’t see – there is much pain below the surface even in the well-to-do communities. They had to resuscitate their own anesthesiologist who tried to kill himself by overdosing because he bought his daughter a new car and she is still ungrateful and he saw no more reason to keep up the charade of success.
Also – he reports that alcohol (far more than any other drug) is involved in almost every single case that comes in through the doors in some way shape or form; from the beat up wife to the old guy that fell off a ladder. He did his residency in an inner-city hospital’s ER – there it was 99% involved.
People are hurting out there – may God help them.
Peace.
Also - he reports that alcohol (far more than any other drug) is involved in almost every single case that comes in through the doors in some way shape or form; from the beat up wife to the old guy that fell off a ladder. He did his residency in an inner-city hospital's ER - there it was 99% involved.
People are hurting out there - may God help them.
Peace.Replies: @iffen
the stuff we don’t see – there is much pain below the surface even in the well-to-do communities.
No argument from me. The difference that I see is that the upper middle and upper class have more resources to recover from adversity or stupid decisions. One stupid mistake can pretty much wipe out the chances for a lower class individual. Even for the small % that recover, they are more likely to make more bad decisions until they fail completely. Educated upper middle and upper class can sometimes survive multiple bad decisions. A few can make it “out” of the lower class, just like a few of the upper class will crash and burn.
My complaint is that the elites could restructure our economic system to greatly reduce the number of “failures” in the lower class and ameliorate the conditions for the ones who can’t make it on their own.
If we have a competitive dog-eat-dog system and we “know” that a certain % can’t compete, then their condition is willful on the part of the ruling elites.
We already have that.
It's called NATO.Replies: @German_reader
I think you speak in jest, but from what I’ve read Spencer might even agree…he’s skeptical of Brexit because he thinks the EU could be the foundation for the ethno-imperium he desires if its institutions are taken over by people like him. In any case it’s pretty obvious there really is a strong element of naked power worship in his thought.
Yes, but I did not need to read it to understand the dissolution of the downscale whites in this country. I live part-time in rural West Virginia. And as a part of my parish mission, my older children and I build homes for poor people in West Virginia, the vast majority of who are whites. We’ve seen some appalling poverty and dysfunction. That’s a part of the reason why I am an immigration-restrictionist.
I still don’t get this:
Perhaps you simply did not understand my critique of the likes of Richard Spencer who advocates for a white ethno-state and non-white ethnic cleansing. You see, I worked overseas in a number of failed states. I’ve seen societies that are actually – physically – broken – where government does not control much of the nominally sovereign territory, where infrastructure is run-down, looted, and crumbling, where tribes and ethno-religious groups war with each other, and so forth. And that’s what’s going to happen here if the grand vision of the likes of Spencer were to come to fruition. Either that or we are going to have a massive Leviathan going from door-to-door and “weeding out” people with non-white ancestry (apparently Spencer has a tiny bit of African – so he’s blacker than I am) – you know, the Day of the Rope fantasy. Either way, there would be a horrendous amount of bloodshed and destruction. That’s something I’ve witnessed with my own eyes. People like Spencer have no clue what breaking a society really looks like. It’s just beyond the ken of alienated, over-grown adolescents living in mom’s basement spouting “will to power” nonsense, even if they had degrees from UVA and U Chicago.
That’s actually 17 percent of “Asians-Pacific Islanders.” And even in that rather heterogeneous category, the immigrant cohort has a considerably lower rate. That’s the paradox of assimilation, by the way. American-born Asians have higher crime and illegitimacy rates than their foreign-born couterparts do. Of course, both their starting base and assimilation penalty multiple are lower than those of Hispanic immigrants (for example, foreign-born Mexicans have slightly lower incarceration rates than native-born whites, but the assmilation penalty multiple is something like 7x for the American-born Mexicans whose incarceration rate is therefore considerably higher than that of American whites). Ron Unz and I went around a few rounds on this topic some time back.
If our country is devolving into strict racial and ethnic identity politics, with very little possibility of returning to our propositional ideal, and I am fearful that it is, politics and ideologies like Spencer’s are rational for whites. This is not a defense of Spencer, I actually haven’t read anything of his and likely won’t. The WN stuff that I have read is extremely shallow and incomplete. My parting with you is not that I support someone like Spencer or White Nationalism; it is that I think the American Dream is broken; it is failing, and will continue to fail. We are coming undone.
Yes, but I did not need to read it to understand the dissolution of the downscale whites in this country.
I have a different view than yours, these are my peeps. :)
Our society is failing them; it is broken; apparently Spencer can see it and I can see it.
That’s the paradox of assimilation, by the way. American-born Asians have higher crime and illegitimacy rates than their foreign-born couterparts do…the American-born Mexicans whose incarceration rate is therefore considerably higher than that of American whites)…
Not a paradox, Twinkie, it is evidence that something is broken here, in our society.Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie
People like Spencer have no clue what breaking a society really looks like.
If our country is devolving into strict racial and ethnic identity politics, with very little possibility of returning to our propositional ideal, and I am fearful that it is, politics and ideologies like Spencer’s are rational for whites. This is not a defense of Spencer, I actually haven’t read anything of his and likely won’t. The WN stuff that I have read is extremely shallow and incomplete. My parting with you is not that I support someone like Spencer or White Nationalism; it is that I think the American Dream is broken; it is failing, and will continue to fail. We are coming undone.
Yes, but I did not need to read it to understand the dissolution of the downscale whites in this country.
I have a different view than yours, these are my peeps. 🙂
Our society is failing them; it is broken; apparently Spencer can see it and I can see it.
That’s the paradox of assimilation, by the way. American-born Asians have higher crime and illegitimacy rates than their foreign-born couterparts do…the American-born Mexicans whose incarceration rate is therefore considerably higher than that of American whites)…
Not a paradox, Twinkie, it is evidence that something is broken here, in our society.
No, they are busy giving talks while wearing a fashionable haircut and a tweed jacket or feigning a half-baked Oxbridge accent or pretending to be a Ph.D. in history. I don't see any of them picking up a hammer to build a house for a poverty-stricken white family or running a food drive for them on Thanksgiving. And of course, it's just par for the course that some of them live in affluent enclaves (e.g. an area with 75% whites, 15% Asians, with a median annual household income over $200,000) where they munch on Sushi and Thai noodles while blaming all ills on mud people. Call it the Alt-Right equivalent of "limousine liberals."Again, I don't follow what different view you have. I may not be white (or black), but I am deeply concerned about the plight of my fellow citizens, including blacks, even though most of my interactions with blacks growing up were less-than-cordial and usually violent. I believe in the shared, larger community of the entire citizenry, and I believe - even on the basis of self-interest alone (but of course it's not just that, by far) - that it's incumbent upon those who are better-to-do to help those who are less well-off. After all, black underclass pathologies don't stay black... if unchecked and unreformed, they eventually affect citizens of other hues... as clearly have the white underclass (though I note also that the white underclass continues to be considerably less violent than the black one).
My critique of Spencer's call for the creation of a white ethno-state and ethnic cleansing of non-whites* (which he claims can be done non-violently) is that this is the talk of an over-grown, attention-seeking adolescent who has no idea what kind of destruction in lives and infrastructure the breaking of a hitherto stable polity entails. If he is actually aware of the consequences of such a plan enacted into real life, then he is a power-hungry psychopath who believes in murder and mayhem to achieve his goals. I am inclined to believe the former even though I do not know the man - it's less monstrous.
*Except may be "cute," "smart," "Asians girls" who "are a thing" in his own words in the recently published interview.
In many ways, I share Claire Wolfe's view that "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." But having experienced the savage conditions of several failed states and civil wars overseas, I'd like to make sure we completely exhaust the "working within the system" option before the shooting starts, because I know firsthand what that looks like... because, dear God, if the shooting were to start, high illegitimacy and opiate addiction rates would be the least of the concerns of ordinary people.Replies: @iffen
I don’t see why the British or the Dutch were any more “rogue” than the Spanish or the French (or the Ottomans for that matter). I know there is broad and deep support for such characterization among all sorts of people (from Leftists and liberals trying to feel good to all non-British and non-Dutch Europeans trying to feel good?) but I don’t find this idea very convincing… not because the British were not “rogues” but because who was not?
If our country is devolving into strict racial and ethnic identity politics, with very little possibility of returning to our propositional ideal, and I am fearful that it is, politics and ideologies like Spencer’s are rational for whites. This is not a defense of Spencer, I actually haven’t read anything of his and likely won’t. The WN stuff that I have read is extremely shallow and incomplete. My parting with you is not that I support someone like Spencer or White Nationalism; it is that I think the American Dream is broken; it is failing, and will continue to fail. We are coming undone.
Yes, but I did not need to read it to understand the dissolution of the downscale whites in this country.
I have a different view than yours, these are my peeps. :)
Our society is failing them; it is broken; apparently Spencer can see it and I can see it.
That’s the paradox of assimilation, by the way. American-born Asians have higher crime and illegitimacy rates than their foreign-born couterparts do…the American-born Mexicans whose incarceration rate is therefore considerably higher than that of American whites)…
Not a paradox, Twinkie, it is evidence that something is broken here, in our society.Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie
That’s a straw man. I am more aware than most whites, especially affluent whites, the dire straits in which the white underclass exists today. Charity is not a competition, and I have no desire to be patted on the head for mine by strangers on the internet, but I nonetheless note the utter lack of call for charity (even for just the white poor) among the cyber leaders of white nationalists or Alt-Right thought-leaders or white advocates or whatever they fancy themselves.
No, they are busy giving talks while wearing a fashionable haircut and a tweed jacket or feigning a half-baked Oxbridge accent or pretending to be a Ph.D. in history. I don’t see any of them picking up a hammer to build a house for a poverty-stricken white family or running a food drive for them on Thanksgiving. And of course, it’s just par for the course that some of them live in affluent enclaves (e.g. an area with 75% whites, 15% Asians, with a median annual household income over $200,000) where they munch on Sushi and Thai noodles while blaming all ills on mud people. Call it the Alt-Right equivalent of “limousine liberals.”
Again, I don’t follow what different view you have. I may not be white (or black), but I am deeply concerned about the plight of my fellow citizens, including blacks, even though most of my interactions with blacks growing up were less-than-cordial and usually violent. I believe in the shared, larger community of the entire citizenry, and I believe – even on the basis of self-interest alone (but of course it’s not just that, by far) – that it’s incumbent upon those who are better-to-do to help those who are less well-off. After all, black underclass pathologies don’t stay black… if unchecked and unreformed, they eventually affect citizens of other hues… as clearly have the white underclass (though I note also that the white underclass continues to be considerably less violent than the black one).
My critique of Spencer’s call for the creation of a white ethno-state and ethnic cleansing of non-whites* (which he claims can be done non-violently) is that this is the talk of an over-grown, attention-seeking adolescent who has no idea what kind of destruction in lives and infrastructure the breaking of a hitherto stable polity entails. If he is actually aware of the consequences of such a plan enacted into real life, then he is a power-hungry psychopath who believes in murder and mayhem to achieve his goals. I am inclined to believe the former even though I do not know the man – it’s less monstrous.
*Except may be “cute,” “smart,” “Asians girls” who “are a thing” in his own words in the recently published interview.
In many ways, I share Claire Wolfe’s view that “America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” But having experienced the savage conditions of several failed states and civil wars overseas, I’d like to make sure we completely exhaust the “working within the system” option before the shooting starts, because I know firsthand what that looks like… because, dear God, if the shooting were to start, high illegitimacy and opiate addiction rates would be the least of the concerns of ordinary people.
You are using the straw man, not me. I very clearly stated that I do not support White Nationalism and yet you keep writing your critique (and an excellent one) of Spencer-type White Nationalism like I am a supporter. All I said was that the politics of the US is coming to be overwhelmingly identity based and I don’t see any likelihood of a change in direction. If (note the bold) the situation becomes unequivocal and sides are to be chosen based upon race, then I will chose the white side. I have class based values and I reject the right and the alt-right. The only item that I share with the alt-right is their rejection of the current establishment right.
I have never criticized your charitable work or your religious values nor anyone else’s. My opinion is that it is amelioration and is not "the solution” to current problems and will be completely unable to move us forward and will be inadequate to deal with future political and economic problems.
In many ways, I share Claire Wolfe’s view that “America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
I can agree with this, but, just in case, it is not too early to start buying ammunition (by the case).Replies: @Twinkie
If our country is devolving into strict racial and ethnic identity politics, with very little possibility of returning to our propositional ideal, and I am fearful that it is, politics and ideologies like Spencer’s are rational for whites. This is not a defense of Spencer, I actually haven’t read anything of his and likely won’t. The WN stuff that I have read is extremely shallow and incomplete. My parting with you is not that I support someone like Spencer or White Nationalism; it is that I think the American Dream is broken; it is failing, and will continue to fail. We are coming undone.
Yes, but I did not need to read it to understand the dissolution of the downscale whites in this country.
I have a different view than yours, these are my peeps. :)
Our society is failing them; it is broken; apparently Spencer can see it and I can see it.
That’s the paradox of assimilation, by the way. American-born Asians have higher crime and illegitimacy rates than their foreign-born couterparts do…the American-born Mexicans whose incarceration rate is therefore considerably higher than that of American whites)…
Not a paradox, Twinkie, it is evidence that something is broken here, in our society.Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie
Didn’t you write that God-based religions were no longer necessary today? If so, you are a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution.
Didn’t you write that God-based religions were no longer necessary today? If so, you are a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution.
We part again.
I do not consider you part of the problem. People like you have gotten us to this point. People like you are the gold standard for what it means to be an American.
I will respond to your lengthy comment after thinking through some issues and thoughts.
No, they are busy giving talks while wearing a fashionable haircut and a tweed jacket or feigning a half-baked Oxbridge accent or pretending to be a Ph.D. in history. I don't see any of them picking up a hammer to build a house for a poverty-stricken white family or running a food drive for them on Thanksgiving. And of course, it's just par for the course that some of them live in affluent enclaves (e.g. an area with 75% whites, 15% Asians, with a median annual household income over $200,000) where they munch on Sushi and Thai noodles while blaming all ills on mud people. Call it the Alt-Right equivalent of "limousine liberals."Again, I don't follow what different view you have. I may not be white (or black), but I am deeply concerned about the plight of my fellow citizens, including blacks, even though most of my interactions with blacks growing up were less-than-cordial and usually violent. I believe in the shared, larger community of the entire citizenry, and I believe - even on the basis of self-interest alone (but of course it's not just that, by far) - that it's incumbent upon those who are better-to-do to help those who are less well-off. After all, black underclass pathologies don't stay black... if unchecked and unreformed, they eventually affect citizens of other hues... as clearly have the white underclass (though I note also that the white underclass continues to be considerably less violent than the black one).
My critique of Spencer's call for the creation of a white ethno-state and ethnic cleansing of non-whites* (which he claims can be done non-violently) is that this is the talk of an over-grown, attention-seeking adolescent who has no idea what kind of destruction in lives and infrastructure the breaking of a hitherto stable polity entails. If he is actually aware of the consequences of such a plan enacted into real life, then he is a power-hungry psychopath who believes in murder and mayhem to achieve his goals. I am inclined to believe the former even though I do not know the man - it's less monstrous.
*Except may be "cute," "smart," "Asians girls" who "are a thing" in his own words in the recently published interview.
In many ways, I share Claire Wolfe's view that "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." But having experienced the savage conditions of several failed states and civil wars overseas, I'd like to make sure we completely exhaust the "working within the system" option before the shooting starts, because I know firsthand what that looks like... because, dear God, if the shooting were to start, high illegitimacy and opiate addiction rates would be the least of the concerns of ordinary people.Replies: @iffen
That’s a straw man.
You are using the straw man, not me. I very clearly stated that I do not support White Nationalism and yet you keep writing your critique (and an excellent one) of Spencer-type White Nationalism like I am a supporter. All I said was that the politics of the US is coming to be overwhelmingly identity based and I don’t see any likelihood of a change in direction. If (note the bold) the situation becomes unequivocal and sides are to be chosen based upon race, then I will chose the white side. I have class based values and I reject the right and the alt-right. The only item that I share with the alt-right is their rejection of the current establishment right.
I have never criticized your charitable work or your religious values nor anyone else’s. My opinion is that it is amelioration and is not “the solution” to current problems and will be completely unable to move us forward and will be inadequate to deal with future political and economic problems.
In many ways, I share Claire Wolfe’s view that “America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
I can agree with this, but, just in case, it is not too early to start buying ammunition (by the case).
In any case, your prediction has not come to bear yet. Not this election anyway. Trump actually won a lower percentage of the white vote* (-1%) than Romney did while picking up +2% on blacks, +2% on Hispanics, and +3% on Asians over the latter, at least according to a preliminary set of numbers.
*Obviously the white voter composition for Trump was different than that for Romney, i.e. more blue collar/no college degree whites. In other words, as with previous elections, this one too has been a white political civil war with nonwhites as supporting cast.
I lose the faith and I am “the problem.” Think about this idea some more.
When HBD folks first gathered steam on the internet, they were fighting against the environmentarian purism of the establishment (hereditarians were not purists - they believed BOTH heredity and environment contributed human outcomes). Now, there seems to be a strong subset of the HBD/Alt-Right folks for whom Die Rasse ist über alles.Replies: @iffen
You are using the straw man, not me. I very clearly stated that I do not support White Nationalism and yet you keep writing your critique (and an excellent one) of Spencer-type White Nationalism like I am a supporter. All I said was that the politics of the US is coming to be overwhelmingly identity based and I don’t see any likelihood of a change in direction. If (note the bold) the situation becomes unequivocal and sides are to be chosen based upon race, then I will chose the white side. I have class based values and I reject the right and the alt-right. The only item that I share with the alt-right is their rejection of the current establishment right.
I have never criticized your charitable work or your religious values nor anyone else’s. My opinion is that it is amelioration and is not "the solution” to current problems and will be completely unable to move us forward and will be inadequate to deal with future political and economic problems.
In many ways, I share Claire Wolfe’s view that “America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
I can agree with this, but, just in case, it is not too early to start buying ammunition (by the case).Replies: @Twinkie
Let’s rewind the tape. This is what you wrote earlier:
That sounds awful lot like a aroundabout endorsement of “Spencer-type White Nationalism” which, by the way, includes a white ethn0-state and ethnic cleaning of nonwhites. You either don’t know white voters well (the vast majority of whom do not advocate a white ethno-state or ethnic cleaning of nonwhites) or pretend not to know Spencer’s views.
In any case, your prediction has not come to bear yet. Not this election anyway. Trump actually won a lower percentage of the white vote* (-1%) than Romney did while picking up +2% on blacks, +2% on Hispanics, and +3% on Asians over the latter, at least according to a preliminary set of numbers.
*Obviously the white voter composition for Trump was different than that for Romney, i.e. more blue collar/no college degree whites. In other words, as with previous elections, this one too has been a white political civil war with nonwhites as supporting cast.
If you think the rising white (and nonwhite) illegitimacy is an indication of a broken society, you ought to acknowledge that the destruction of the Christian norms of marriage and family is not something that can be ignored. It’s not all race, you know.
When HBD folks first gathered steam on the internet, they were fighting against the environmentarian purism of the establishment (hereditarians were not purists – they believed BOTH heredity and environment contributed human outcomes). Now, there seems to be a strong subset of the HBD/Alt-Right folks for whom Die Rasse ist über alles.
I try to be aware of all the symptoms.
It’s not all race, you know.
Never said anything like this. I am tired of repeatedly denying attributions where I have explicitly stated my opposition, so I will stop.
When HBD folks first gathered steam on the internet, they were fighting against the environmentarian purism of the establishment (hereditarians were not purists - they believed BOTH heredity and environment contributed human outcomes). Now, there seems to be a strong subset of the HBD/Alt-Right folks for whom Die Rasse ist über alles.Replies: @iffen
destruction of the Christian norms of marriage and family is not something that can be ignored
I try to be aware of all the symptoms.
It’s not all race, you know.
Never said anything like this. I am tired of repeatedly denying attributions where I have explicitly stated my opposition, so I will stop.