Group Pressure and My View on Druggies

I don't think any judicious appraisal of the human psyche would characterize humans as rational beings. It appears that prehistoric conditions explicitly chose for the opposite of such traits. We don't do something because it's evidently reasonable; we do something because some inherited hardwiring compels us. And often, we act in a way that contradicts the reasonable, such as driving 1000 miles wearing a diaper.

As any self-conscious teenager will tell you, we mostly just want to fit in. So we conform to the behaviors of a selected group, with acceptance in the group a sufficient justification for acting in a particular manner. In sum, peer pressure does not die out after high school, it merely manifests in adults seeking social approval via cohort-specific status indicators. As I'm sure most people are thinking, SWPLs are the most obvious example of this phenomena. They make a show of certain behaviors, such as studying abroad, wearing ironic t-shirts, or eating sushi, in order to message to other members of their group. No matter that getting a moustache tattooed on one's finger is absolutely retarded, that sushi tastes like crap, or that marathons actually kill people - none of that matters because social status, a primary means of propagating one's genes, supersedes reason.

We do stuff so that other people will like us and we have certain opinions so that other people will like us. If you read this blog, you probably understand that I really don't care about ingratiating myself to others. I care about what maybe 20 people think of me and everyone else is largely meaningless. I don't seek animus from others, but neither do I define my happiness on external opinion. Fittingly, the commensurate social memes associated with various behaviors or beliefs largely do not matter to me. In a post entitled I Don't Care about Class and Politics, I wrote:

...the "anonymous" commenter then implies that a divide in culture must create a divide in politics. As if, hand holding must extend from the boardroom, to the voting booths, to the bar. The left's amusing coalition of disparate group undermines this supposition, with upper class, secular, class elitist Jews voting for the same inane policies as the church-going, uneducated, ghetto blacks...If two groups share a common political vision despite holding different positions within that future nation, then so be it.

But, as stated above, I can easily separate the man from his political opinions. If an uneducated hillbilly wants to vote for the same thing I do, then who cares about his snaggle tooth or the fact that we couldn't converse for more than 3 minutes? Just don't bother me for cigarettes at 3 in the morning or try to hit on my daughter.

Sometimes though, I can't help it. I reject something not because I disagree on principle, but because I can't stand the individuals who practice or believe something. In this vein, Mangan posts on his reticence in "buying local":

most of the people doing the encouraging as well as many if not most of the businesses involved are the usual gang of hipsters, SWPLs, left-liberals, environmentalist goofballs, AGW promoters, anti-racists, and people who want to control every aspect of everyone's life in the name of "sustainability" or whatever other faddish nonsense is the latest to come down the pike. In short, I can't see any good reason for allying myself with these people. Most of them will be against everything I believe in, and the few that aren't are too cowered to do anything but go along.

Not exactly the same thing, but note that Mangan considers the sum of a phenomenon in rejecting something with which he sympathizes.

(OK that was an extremely long introduction to get to the intended point.) Basically, this is how I feel about potheads and other drug users. I don't see anything particularly wrong with drug use, even the heavy stuff like meth or heroin. There's nothing intrinsically immoral about doing drugs, especially if one can do so sporadically and maintain a productive way of life, as in cokehead corporate types. In principle, I support drug use because I think people should have the freedom to do whatever they want. Does drug use lead to degeneracy? Sure, but that's oblique to the discussion.

Yet I absolutely hate the wider drug culture and it colors my support of drugs independent of its actual use in a real-world context. I can't stand the kinds of people who actually do drugs, even though I don't think they're doing anything wrong. I hate the listlessness, the pseudo-enlightenment, the niche culture, and the general anti-establishment, soft-anarchy mindset of drug users. I hate how they speak, dress, and act. I hate their sanctimony and their attitude. I hate their passion for something of no value. I hate the general behavior and personality traits of drug users.

So while I sympathize with their position, albeit one motivated by self-interest and not justice, I still celebrate their political and social failings.

Liberals Admit HBD in Context of Diet and Health

The only consistent thing about liberalism is their inconsistency. It's hard work keeping together the various sorts of anti-reality notions that underlie modern liberalism. Of course, actually presenting a cohesive worldview is unnecessary when invective suffices in responding to challenges.

Diet is one of the more subtle pillars of leftism. As with all liberal beliefs, the low-fat diet is grounded in both academic spuriousness and social support amongst adherents. We expect defense of the low-fat paradigm to rest on shoddy evidence, as almost all anti-meat studies do not control for differences in general health conscientiousness between groups. But something interesting happens when the vegetarian mafia encounters evidence undermining their religion; they sometimes commit unbelievable errors relevant to their other beliefs.

Here's Amanda Marcotte admitting to the notion that racial groups differ, i.e. HBD (seriously):

This was heavily criticized, not just by vegans but by lactose intolerant people and equality-advocacy groups that pointed out, rightly, that the assumption of lactose tolerance is casually white dominated, since European-descended people tend to digest lactose on average better than everyone else.

In other words, "equality-advocacy groups" criticize the food pyramid's implied importance of dairy, arguing that this advice only applies to white people and thus illustrates yet another incidence of anti-minority bias. Of course, Ms. Marcotte (a vegan - shocking!) also thinks that believing in racial differences (which she admits to above) is the epitome of bigotry, so once again, it's a lose/lose in her mind.

In an article from Time magazine, the anti-paleo author makes the same exact case:

For one thing, there was no single Paleolithic "lifestyle." Survival in Ice Age Europe, for instance, was vastly different from life on the African savannah, requiring different diets, behaviors and genetic adaptations.

That's the most basic premise of HBD, yet I can't imagine Time racing to hire Steve Sailer any time soon. Unless Time has embraced bioconservatism, this naked appeal to racial differences contradicts the general leftism of their magazine. For example, here's a video celebrating the Harlem's Children Zone and its founder Geoffrey Canada, a video interview with Teach for America's founder, and an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates defending Henry Gates following his 2009 arrest. I can't imagine Time champions anything except liberal creationism, so the quoted statement surely contradicts one of their central premises. Fittingly, the article attempts to maintain the credibility of anti-male and anti-white diet and exercise, whereby foreign foods and testosterone-draining workouts find favor amongst the SWPL class.

Curiously, liberals never really notice the apparent contradictions. Getting their ideas pushed matters far more than anything else.

Intellectual Wiggers

I'm always amused when I encounter post-adolescent wiggers. While most white suburbanites adopt some form of wiggerism in their youth (myself included), almost all of them grow out of it in college while listening to classic rock and wearing frat letters. By undergoing this maturation, most white middle-class kids largely disavow or at least forget about their adolescent idolization of blacks. They forgot their glorification of black culture as uniquely vibrant. They forgot how they tried to emulate the ghetto's shameless bravado, now viewing such displays as unfitting of mature adults. Baggy pants and desperate slang appropriation give way to collared shirts and ironic use of rap slang. Even the most dedicated of adolescent wiggers don't make it out the other end of college acting like this - perhaps the greatest wigger alive, also Tommy Hilfiger's son.

Guys like those profiled in the link are an easier, and obvious, target. Their put-on "swagger" screams phony. So what then of the more furtive wigger - the "intellectual wigger" who dons not the clothes and mannerisms of the black underclass, but instead their paranoid complaints and unbridled hatred of the "White Man."

In one of his more contentious articles, Steve Sailer referred to then-candidate Barack Obama as follows:

The brutal truth: Obama is a "wigger". He's a remarkably exotic variety of the faux African-American, but a wigger nonetheless. He has no ancestors who were slaves in the U.S. Moreover, his upbringing by his white mother and Indonesian stepfather in Indonesia and by his white grandparents in Hawaii, where mixed-race children are close to the norm, was almost wholly divorced from African-American life … except for what he could see and aspire to on TV.

Sailer does not expand on this idea though, as he assumes the reader has familiarity with Obama's tortured quest for black authenticity. In sum, Obama's heritage and upbringing precluded any reasonable attempt at "acting black." Further, his general probity and intellectualism likely made conspicuous displays of "blackness" largely unattractive, exempting his 2007 campaign speech to Southern black clergy. He couldn't go the full-on wigger route because it just doesn't suit him nor did it fit into his various peer groups at Columbia, Harvard, and big Law.

And so here's the conundrum of post-adolescent, intellectually-minded wiggers - how to fashion oneself an passionate admirer of blacks without undermining one's respectability in white society. How does the intellectual wigger adopt blackness, in their view the only means of garnering cultural vibrancy, yet maintain their credibility in a status-conscious middle-class? Of course, this problem depends largely on the assumption that gold teeth and blasting Rick Ross don't find favor amongst middle-class 30-somethings.

As we see for Obama and the other two most prominent intellectual wiggers, Bill Ayers and (the odious) Tim Wise, they present a highly intellectual version of black paranoia and race hatred. Instead of couching their wiggerism in the context of bling and rap, they present it in the context of academia. The attendant respect given to academia provides a buffer against criticism as in this post. Bill Ayers named his son Malik and Zayd after Malcolm X and a murdered Black Panther, yet frames this as a struggle for equality. (The odious) Tim Wise speaks like an out-of-work Southern black preacher, yet presents himself as a "leading anti-racist" with lots of abstruse discourse to befuddle just about anyone who listens to him rant. Their PhD's and flowerly Ivory Tower speak obscures what's basically just standard ideas out of the black ghetto.

So instead of co-opting black constructs associated with the lower-class and youth, these intellectual wiggers adopt, then varnish ghetto black racialism. Same immaturity, same underlying motivations, but presented in a glossier package.

Coming Home from School: Then and Now

I dislike modern liberalism's cynicism in regards to being "merely" a housewife; as if a woman can find something more gratifying than nurturing her own children and keeping the house for the man she loves. In sum, I believe the exodus of women into the job market, in such gravely important fields like interior design, human resources, and public relations, has negatively affected our communities as much as any other social phenomenon. The "archaic" gender roles of yesteryear provided a suitable balance between social and practical life, with the former buttressed by stay-at-home moms more concerned with their own families and neighborhoods than the trivialities of secretarial work. As the family has declined, the entirety of our social framework has gone with it.

Imagine the following scenario and note how families require a grounded household, largely provided by a stay-at-home mom - child comes home very distraught after something bad happened at school.

Then:

Oh honey, what happened? Here's a small cookie and a fresh glass of milk. Let's talk about it for a little bit. After that, you can mope around for a few hours or go play with your friends outside, but when your Dad comes home I want you to get some advice from him on how to resolve the problem. Then you can make sure to do that tomorrow in school. And tonight I'll make your favorite meal from scratch.

Now:

What the fuck happened? Oh wait, I don't have any time. I have to finish up these reports, then I'm meeting my live-in boyfriend for a motorcycle ride. We might be back tonight. In the meantime, here's a cookie, soda, Dorritos, and some potato chips. Don't be too messy eating while on your Playstation. If you get hungry, heat up some mac and cheese or a microwave dinner. If you're still feeling really bad, call your Dad. I know he lives on the other side of the country, contacts you twice a year, and provides child support which I use on Botox treatments, but maybe he'll have something to say. Tomorrow when I get back, we'll figure out who to sue, then call a press conference in order to shake down the school district. Then in 20 years, you can blame all your failures on them.

Companion post: The Liberal Version of "Try Your Best"

Plugging In

Saturday Audience Participation

I took a train last week and luckily got a seat by myself. In front of me sat two college-age kids with a laptop on the entire trip. Behind me was an elderly couple with an iPhone. To my right was a hipster who read from his Kindle the entire trip. And behind him was a 30-something woman who had a cell phone, a Blackberry, and an iPad. I had my three year-old cell phone and my six year-old iPod.

You can probably tell me I'm not into technology. In fact, I find it quite a nuisance. I generally don't even keep my cell phone turned on as to discourage people from bothering me. I've had Facebook for a long time, but I don't update it regularly. I use technological gadgets until they literally fall apart. I don't even really know what an iPhone is (as opposed to Droid, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc..) nor do I really care. I've never bought an app.

Yet it appears everyone else makes a concerted effort to stay "plugged in." All the people on my train couldn't spend any time out of the loop.

Today's questions: Are you really into technology? How many gadgets do you own? Do you make an effort to stay plugged in and feel uneasy if you've been away from technology for awhile? Or do you make an effort to unplug for awhile? Has technology impacted your social life in some profound way?

The "Occupy" Movement is Disgusting

BigJournalism has compiled a continually updated list of over 300 incidents of assault, violence, and general lawlessness amongst the Occupy protest. The Daily Mail shows pictures depicting Occupy mimicking the idealistic debauchery of their 1960's forefathers. In sum, one notes the real goal of Occupy - to dismantle political, social, legal, and cultural societal structure because we live in a racist, sexist, privileged, evil nation where the Man keeps everyone down.

While I agree with some of the absolute most basic ideas of the Occupy movement, primarily that an insulated elite exists, I diverge on why we should oppose this elite and what solutions we should seek. Specifically, I believe the elites, which includes the Big government, media, and academic types largely supported by leftist Occupiers, espouse and impose values at odds with those of the majority. I do not blame the Man for young people's debt and unemployment; I instead blame the real culprits - an HBD-denying government and job marketplace and their cronies in Big academia. I also vehemently oppose leftist social engineering. And relevant to this post, I oppose the "free love/anything goes" romanticism popular amongst Occupiers.

On Sunday, I posted a video on "police brutality" at UC-Davis. Feminsting on the incident:

I don’t give a shit what your political affiliation is or what your beef might be with the global #OWS protests–if we claim to be a democracy, we have to protect the rights of everyone to assemble in public peaceful without being brutalized by the police.

The Occupiers like to hide behind "democracy" and "freedom", using purposefully opaque terms to garner sympathy for their cause. But from my perspective, their "freedom" equates with defecating on cop cars and being a public nuisance without consequence; though I can't imagine many Occupiers will defend the "God Hates Fags" Phelps family. This hostility towards law and order expands into the cultural sphere. Ann Coulter dubbed them the "Flea Party" and we can see why - bunch of dirty hippies who think that any (even implicit) criticism on behavior amounts to oppression.

They seem to think that any sort of structure, like that of a company which demands individuals rise in the ranks as the means of gaining respect, is also oppression. Or at the very least, an unfair demand rejected by these entitled SWPLs, who have, to hilarious effect, encountered the real underclass, not those that proffer these anti-establishment ideas for social approval. This basic notion of structure, in government, law, business, and academia, is something not too often discussed amongst conservatives even though it does underlie why traditionalism and society actually works.

Instead of actually discussing this idea further, I'll finish with a video I just saw on YouTube. Awhile back, I posted on atheist blogger Hemant Mehta allowing his students to throw a pie in his face. I also posted on Gloria Bunker syndrome, whereby children think they've found a better alternative to their parents' archaic ideas. The following video sort of connects the two, along with the astounding baseness of the Occupy generation. Video entitled: "Funniest grandma reaction to 2 girls 1 cup" (If you are unfamiliar with "2 girls, 1 cup", please do NOT Google it; though the lesson of the video below will not be apparent.)

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Thoughts on Thanksgiving:

-It is Turkey Day: suck it vegetarians.

-Your second cousin with garish tattoos, those disgusting stretch earrings, and a degree from Hampshire College will probably mention something about the "White Man" and his evident evil. After all, Thanksgiving is not a time to spend with family and understand the blessings of living in America; instead, it is a time to remind everyone about European colonialism and their singular ability to propagate evil. Leftists view Thanksgiving in the context of evil white people crusading around the world, enslaving Africans, killing Native Americans, and colonizing places they didn't (do not) belong. In sum, racial leftists view the "White Man" as wholly unique in his propensity for evil. My argument:

Whites have usually been at the forefront of technological and societal progress. Europe has pioneered or perfected a wide variety of technological developments as well as pushing forth some innovative ways of organizing society, e.g. democratic republic. Is it any surprise then that in clashes of civilization whites almost always come out on top? While leftists view early colonialists as perpetrating genocide, one could more accurately view it as whites just plain winning. They had the better weapons, the better strategy, and the better organization. European settlers took over because the South Americans, Africans, and Native Americans could not stop them.

If nature had imbued these groups with abilities above that of the European, perhaps the hypothetically "oppressed" whites would interpret military skill as genocide. In this vein, consider that Africans, Asians, Arabs, and South Americans have all committed large scale murder campaigns as well. The notion that only Europe does so perhaps derives from the fact that when they do commit rare genocide, e.g. WWII, they just do it better. It sounds horrible saying it, but greater European efficiency manifests here as well. When Germans or the English want to kill a bunch of people, they do it way better than Saddam Hussein or an African Big Man does it; primarily because they do everything better - running an economy, producing goods, and erecting an educational system. Basically, even if we accept that whites have killed more people, they have done so not as a reflection of their unparalleled evil, but as a result of their inherent ability to produce and organize.

Current American crime statistics, South Africa's post-apartheid rape and murder, the Colombian drug trade, nonchalant violence in the Arab world, and firsthand accounts prior to Civil Rights also paint a far different picture of racial crime and aggression. And if America's "bad" neighborhoods don't suffice in informing us who does most "raping and killing", then how about Africa - where they still harvest albinos for their magic powers.

-Advice: Don't argue with her or any other "hate whitey" liberal. It can go on for hours and you'll either falter in extemporaneous debate or engage with someone who refuses any reasonable premise, i.e. "'cultural precedence' means you can never compare different countries." Let me give you an example of an actual conversation I had recently:

"America is great because of white people, especially the genius of the Founding Fathers and the courage of early settlers."
"Blacks were just as important as European settlers in making America great because they did all the physical labor."
"But that's not a sufficient condition, as there's plenty of physical labor in Africa yet they starve."
"Yea but everyone matters together, so you can't ignore their contribution."
"But we're discussing high civilization, physical labor is not sufficient for that, thus we should laud only the necessary condition - those that knew where to plant the crops, organize the workers, erect an economy, etc. And even then, there were just as many white indentured servants as black slaves, if not more. Plus, advances in agriculture later made physical labor much less important."
"Doesn't matter. Where would America be without blacks' work."
"You keep saying they're an integral aspect of America hegemony, yet they've completely failed in erecting society independently."
"What's so bad about Africa? I don't think Africans think it's that bad."

And so it goes. Just don't argue with liberals; there's no real point. Despite lots of football on TV, the only goalposts moving today are the standards of a liberal argument.

-Dark meat will tire you out less than will light meat.

-Do not go shopping tomorrow. They call it "Black Friday" for a reason.

-Don't rake in the leaves until tomorrow. Let the fall season really show today.

-Let the kids put up those cheesy Turkey drawings from school.

-Enjoy.

Recent History of PC Events from an Anti-PC Perspective

When I discovered race realism, all the puzzle pieces suddenly fit together. About a year later, when I started reading Roissy regularly, so much mystifying female behavior I had encountered all of a sudden made sense. Leftist propaganda sort of puts the populace in a fog, whereby we observe so many perceived oddities incongruent with the prevailing narrative. Those with a natural, yet inchoate realist bent are sort of confused. We wonder why no one else sees the emperor without clothes, though we then question our own observations simply because others don't appear to share them. Most of us probably had momentary glimpses of truth, but existed in a social and political environment that squelched such apostasy. So we sort of went along, all the while not quite understanding why we were actually wrong.

According to commenter PA (can you please start a blog already), the alt-right sphere is dominated by young people and so most of us have likely come to biorealism somewhat recently. Because of this, it might be interesting to look at a few past stories in the context of our present biorealism. I know that with the following stories, I just couldn't quite understand what everyone else was saying. The offender sounded plausible to me, so why did everyone else seem so outraged?

Back in 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized popular TV program Murphy Brown's positive characterization of single motherhood, arguing that popular culture should promote healthier moral values:

It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown — a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman — mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.

Quayle was incessantly mocked by popular media, with even the writers of the show making jokes about Quayle thinking Brown was a real person. He was criticized for attacking single mothers, the apparent backbone of our society. I recall asking, with adolescent naivety, what's so bad - doesn't every kid deserve a caring father and a mom and dad who love each other? Ironically, the star of the show, Candace Bergen, came out in favor of Quayle years later. Too late I suppose.

Next is the classic description of New York City from former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker in 1999:

It's the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing... The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?

That needs no explanation.

Next up is Tom Cruise, during his admittedly crazy tour of 2005 (the infamous couch jumping incident). Cruise appears on the Today Show and argues against Big Pharma's cradle to the grave plan.



I've covered Big Pharma before, so look at the Nutrition and Health catalog on my sidebar. Cruise does not articulate a good argument, but he takes the correct position. Of course, he got called crazy for opposing the Big Pharma approach to life: formula for toddlers, ritalin at 10, anti-depressants at 30, statins at 50, and Viagra at 65.

Finally, recall Magic Johnson's retirement from the NBA after contracting HIV. I can't find a direct quote, but when fans voted Magic to play in the 1992 All-Star Game, a number of players, including teammate Byron Scott, objected to Magic suiting up, fearing that a simple gash could spread the disease. By that time, AIDS had become not merely a medical problem, but a sort of means of martyrdom for gays, blacks, and drug users. To show a "lack of sensitivity" to an AIDS sufferer was evidence of bigotry and thus Scott and others were heavily criticized in the media for their horrible lack of tolerance. Once again, with naive confusion I thought, "if Magic has something so horrible, it makes sense that players would be afraid of catching what he's got. After all, I hate getting sneezed on or sitting on a public toilet seat. And this is way worse." But nothing in the liberal world is that simple; the political narrative must never cease.

I hope that was an enlightening journey through recent PC history. Sometimes it's interesting to look back, know that you had it right all along, and wonder what the hell everyone else was thinking.

Restricting Voting Rights, Race, and Future Time Orientation

The left may actually have a grasp of race and politics than conservatives. In an article at NYTimes.com entitled The White Party, Columbia journalism professor Thomas Edsall writes the millionth article I've read summarizing racial voting trends. Seriously, I read this same article about once a week, basically just a list of statistics on what race votes for what party. Here's an excerpt to show what I'm talking about:

Another way of looking at it is this: fully 88.8 percent of all ballots cast in 2010 for House Republicans were cast by whites, compared to 63.9 percent for Democrats.

The degree to which the Republican Party has become a white party is also reflected in the composition of primary voters. For example, on March 4, 2008, in Ohio — where non-Hispanic whites are 81.1 percent of the population, blacks 12.2 percent, and Hispanics 3.1 percent — the Republican primary turnout was 97 percent white. Hispanics were 2 percent and the black turnout was so low it was zero percent, statistically speaking. One percent was described as “other.”

In the Jan. 19, 2008, South Carolina primary, 96 percent of the Republican turnout was white, 2 percent black, 1 percent Latino and 1 percent other. The population of the state is 64.1 percent white, 27.9 percent black and 5.1 percent Hispanic.

Oh wait, I forgot the other part of this formulaic sort of article - castigate Republicans as racist merely on the basis of support amongst whites.

Now, moving toward what has all the markings of a historic ideological and demographic collision on Nov. 6, 2012, Republicans are doubling down on this racially fraught strategy.

But even Dr. Edsall admits Republican never make any explicit appeals to white voters, with this presumably the most basic justification of his characterization above:

While the subject of race and of the overwhelmingly white Republican primary electorate are never explicitly discussed by Republican candidates, the issue is subsumed in blatant anti-immigration rhetoric.

Ahh once again, the liberal mind-reading ability arises. Funny that liberals can so adeptly parse the hidden motivations of conservatives, including those of racist whites, institutionally racist businesses, women-hating men, and so on. Right after the above, Dr. Edsall notes a parallel strategy amongst Democrats, though the accusations of bias are conspicuously absent:

The major threat to the Republican “white” strategy is a revival of the high turnout among minorities that carried Democrats to victory in 2008.

But our intrepid Dr. Edsall does not stop there - he notes how those evil Republicans have enacted laws with the specific (though unstated) intention of reducing minority turnout:

Republicans, however, are taking advantage of their newly won control of state governments across the country to enact laws designed to suppress minority turnout. Republican legislators and governors are reversing decades of liberalized access to the ballot by passing laws restricting or eliminating election day registration, early voting, the broader use of absentee ballots and voting by mail...Liberal groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, estimate that as many as five million men and women will be unable to vote because of these laws, which disproportionately affect minority voters.

OK, maybe we're not supposed to question the premises of leftist academics writing for the NYbetaT. But may I ask why exactly, in the liberal paradigm of racial behavioral egalitarianism, would "restricting election day registration and early voting" disproportionately affect minority voters? I presume it does (see next paragraph), but these laws don't disenfranchise felons, a class whose racial disparities liberals can at least blame on our racist society. These laws merely demand that people put a little effort into voting, undoubtedly an act of great importance and one that should be granted to those who can exhibit the most trivial amount of responsibility. What exactly about racist judges, racist schools, and racist police officers would make minorities less able to register ahead of time? One presumes that someone who has the ability and information to vote on voting day also has the ability to register prior to that day. Liberals can't resolve this "conundrum" and it's why articles such as Dr. Edsall's rely on invective rather than analysis.

So why do blacks and Hispanics suffer disproportionately from these measures? (Let me just add that I love these laws.) They lack "future time orientation," a concept well known amongst the HBD-osphere but surprisingly absent from academic discourse on intelligence. Two of the top Google results are from HalfSigma and Mangan. HalfSigma provides a great definition:

What is “future time orientation”? Presumably this refers to planning for a better future and placing future benefits over immediate gratification...The prisons are full of people lacking in “future time orientation,” because committing a crime to get some quick cash or get revenge at someone who pissed you off is an example of enjoying immediate gratification at the expense of one’s future.

One of the most well-known stereotypes about blacks, one that can't be blamed on racist whites, is that they never show up on time. "Future time orientation" largely explains this as blacks lack the ability to analyze how present decisions will manifest as consequences for future situations. Blacks and Hispanics, due to their lower intelligence, have difficulty in planning, delaying gratification, and, most fundamentally, foreseeing future outcomes based on a perhaps complicated set of current data. Clearly then, blacks and Hispanics want to vote right when they're able to, they don't want to wait or plan ahead for something that won't occur until a later date. Children think this way too, as evinced by the famous marshmallow study - they can't temper their impulses in order to make rational decisions. As HalfSigma says, "the black man would rather hang out" than get off the stoop to do something for something else that won't even occur for awhile later. (Do liberals get around this by having ACORN and other community organizers round up NAMs in the ghetto on voting day?)

However, even if this didn't have the fortunate consequence of reducing minority turnout, I'd still support the measures. While I view democracy as an OK system, I still don't want the listless classes having their say. I also don't want a monopolized system of power, one largely confined to elitists living in the social Ivory Tower. I want a happy medium where the productive masses vote because they know what's best and fair, not because they want a piece of the pie without working for it. By requiring a little bit of foresight in gaining voting rights, we ensure that the proper class of individual, non-criminal, mature, informed, and responsible, comprises the largest portion of the voting public. How can Dr. Edsall disagree with that? Oh wait, that's waayyyccist.

Leftist, Despite a Crisis of Faith

There's nothing funnier than an ideological zealot whose hindbrain's impulses contradict the pillars of modern liberalism. Last week, Heartiste/Roissy posted on Amanda Marcotte's hilariously weak arguments against evolutionary psychology:

The whole edifice of feminism teeters on the shaky proposition that sex differences feminists find unpalatable are amenable to change (i.e., “improvement”) via government and societal intervention. If it is found that sex differences are instead hard-wired into the brain architecture through the process of millions of years of natural and sexual selection and are resistant to social reengineering schemes, then feminism as a practical ideology is utterly discredited.

Feminism and race liberalism assert that all personal, cultural, and societal phenomena depend on socially constructed ideas, invariably proposed by evil, racist, white men. Blank slatist liberals consider any observed psychological pattern, even patterns associated with a clear evolutionary imperative (anti-slut because 9 months + 18 years is a big commitment), the result of conditioning from an insidious class of white men. This idea leads to never-ending political schemes intended to undermine increasingly clandestine (read: non-existent) efforts at keeping down women, blacks, and other pet groups.

Yet what happens when a diehard liberal, despite her degree in Women's Studies and an obdurate refusal to shave her armpits, falls victim to these evolutionary based impulses? What happens when the real social conditioning, that of the brainwashing left who tells us what we can and can't experience or express, does not work? A feminist writes into Salon.com's "Am I Normal?" asking about this conundrum:

I am a feminist, and part of me loves porn. More specifically, the kind of porn that is created to be viewed by men. I’m not a man, though. I’m the kind of woman who will make others uncomfortable by pointing out a sexist joke in a commercial or by forwarding something from a sociological blog to my friends. And yet, I cannot escape the fact that I find male-oriented porn extremely arousing. But I am turned on sexually (not intellectually) by the most demeaning smut. I’ve tried watching more “women friendly” porn, and the same effect isn’t there. What is wrong with me?

So an annoying feminist who whines about the evil male patriarchy can't help but be aroused by the dominant male. What is wrong with her? Nothing, evolution made her that way. I read the answer, but I could barely make it through that rationalization hamster. It was some Freudian psychobabble that amounted to: "you're dealing with the big, bad, evil patriarchy by sexualizing it." Basically, none of it made much sense, unless one accepts "people are weird" as a viable explanation.

Don't worry though, this crisis of faith will likely have no effect on our intrepid feminist. Notice the term I use here, "crisis of faith", as flimsy Ivory Tower ideas persist only via the willful blindness of its adherents. Feminists like her will simply ignore what their own brains are telling them about inherent evolutionary hardwiring. Like Amy Biehl's parents or Emily Guendelsberger, racial liberals will ignore blacks killing or attacking them. But should we really find the evidently religious nature of liberalism surprising? Related to this question, commenters over at Auster's discuss Paul Kersey's thoughts on college football fandom in the South and the corresponding loss of national identity. In essence, these unbelievably passionate football fans have replaced one collective loyalty, patriotism, with a proxy "belief" system, college football pride.

Humans likely have a "faith instinct", a term atheist Nicholas Wade uses in arguing for religiosity as a human inevitability. We are an irrational species, seemingly more concerned with our faith-based beliefs than what we can see in front of our faces. I suppose this is a somewhat odd circumstance, given that our primary objectives, eating and fornicating, depend precisely on what we can see in front of our faces. But one also notes that we can better accomplish these goals in the context of a psychologically hopeful paradigm.

And this faith is strong even in the presence of contradictory evidence, the kind of crisis of faith that spurs a minister to muse on an omnipotent, yet unfalsifiable spiritual evil-doer. Liberals have white men, religions have the devil. Or in the NFL, even when instant replay clearly shows the ball hitting the ground from five different angles, the home crowd will still boo and blame the refs. We persist in belief systems that make us feel good and lash out at those that challenge our spiritual comfort.

Though, I don't want to sound too accepting; I propose "faith" merely as an explanation, not an excuse. I'll end by noting how the decline of largely adaptive faith-based institutions, like folk tradition, nationalism, and socially conservative religion, has coincided with a rise in romantic leftism. People clearly need something to fulfill their need for transcendence and it will be college football, feminism, the PC, and racial liberalism if traditional constructs are washed away.

Police "Brutality" at Occupy Protest

A new video from "Occupy" at UC-Davis shows a campus police officer nonchalantly using pepper spray on protesters:



Is it bad that I laughed when watching that? We need more people like that police officer. He gave them a warning, they didn't listen, and then they paid the price.

The incident shown proceeded these witty chants:

Some students shouted "Thugs on campus!" and "From Davis to Greece, fuck the police!"

Students responded to the macing by repeating, "Shame on You." A common liberal canard contends that conservatives should hate the police because they desire a smaller government. Yet this ignores the consistent dichotomy of (at least my) conservatism - big on crime, small on everything else. I like a militaristic police force primarily because it gives people like those students their just comeuppance.

I imagine most of the enmity directed at the police arises from a general anger at the "system" and the "Man." In other words, these soft-anarchists reject the police because they reject the underlying structure of society. They oppose the organization of modern society either as a result of their own failing or from the leftist propaganda spread at places like UC campuses. The police represent the means by which structure is maintained and thus to undermine the police means to undermine society's forceful backbone.

We can investigate this issue further by considering a parallel group that expresses a similar antipathy towards the police. The phrase, "Fuck the police" used by these idealistic protesters comes from the ignominious Ice-T. Oh wait that was "Cop Killer." "Fuck the Police" was from NWA, the infamous Compton rap group that did much to embed West coast gangsta rap in white suburbs. We know why blacks and Hispanics hate police officers - they don't like getting caught. But do naive middle-class college kids have anything in common with "snitches lie in ditches" gangbangers? Not really, as this should be viewed as a sort of intellectual wiggerism whereby middle-class whites adopt the unjustified antagonism of the minority underlcass.

In the end, I root for police officers because they've never done anything but good for me. I honestly can not recall one event connected to my entire personal life where the police were anything but a force for stability and good. All the tripe about "paramilitary" police force and impinging on our rights comes almost exclusively from people doing bad things or individuals with tin foil on their heads. Further, "police brutality" is largely a fabrication by the same individuals complaining about racial disparities in crime and racial profiling. They hate the police force because, basically, it works. Finally, I'd love to see where all these anti-police SWPLs (and libertarians) would be without the threat of police and the justice system. Utopic thinking reigns amongst the ideologically blind.

Emotional Response to Pop Culture

Saturday Audience Participation

The fourth installment of the Twilight movie series was released last night. I've already written on this phenomenon, detailing the underlying sociosexual reasons why so many women love these movies. Ulysses at Hidden Leaves wrote a similar post. Believe me when I say they really love this stuff - insane screaming, crying, fainting, and general passion is commonplace amongst "Twi-hards." The lust amongst these women and girls is incredibly palpable, reflecting the intense emotion women can experience when imbibing popular culture.

In addition to swooning over vampires and werewolves, women also love to cry. Pop superstar Katy Perry just put out a new video entitled The One that Got Away where her ostensibly deep hipster artist boyfriend dies in a car crash. She plays an old version of herself distraught over a love lost. A few comments: "is a sad story but i love ur music!!!!", "The ending made me cry :c", "wow i luv this song its so sad and sweet you go girl!!", "My friends say I'm heartless, yet this song made me cry :'(".

I admit that I do occasionally get goosebumps watching a really good movie (the music is always what gets me). But I don't recall ever getting worked up over any movie, TV show, dance, play, or music video. I've never balled watching something or had an insatiable urge to yell excitedly. But I guess a lot of people do.

Today's questions: Ever seen Twilight? Thoughts? Does any pop culture "get" to you emotionally? If so, give examples and explain how/why. Is it acceptable for men to cry watching a movie? (Yes, but only watching Rudy or Brian's Song.)

The (Im)Possibility of Cultural Change

I check the New York Times op-ed page almost every day, but I generally leave disappointed. It's full of leftist screeds (Krugman), saccharine tripe (Friedman/Kristof), or tepid "conservatism" (Douhat). But today, NYT's most self-aware intellectual, David Brooks, puts forth an astounding argument against the EU and in favor of genuine conservatism. He basically argues that a unified Europe can never succeed because historical precedence and culture will not allow it. Seriously, he says this:

The European leaders would come together for a summit and issue a joint communiqué. But then if you sampled the coverage in each of the national medias, you felt as though you were reading about 12 entirely different events. Europe was unifying legalistically and economically, but there was no common language or common conversation. Then there was the elitism. Off the record, Europe’s technocrats would say the most blatantly condescending things: History had taught them that Europe’s peoples were not to be trusted and government should be run from the top by people like themselves.

The nations of Europe have been running different kinds of economies and different kinds of democracies, reflecting their diverse histories, values and cultures. If you jam diverse economic cultures into a single currency, you’re bound to get an explosion.

[T]hat shared identity doesn’t exist between Germans and Greeks, or even between French and Germans.

Mr. Brooks argues that disparate peoples will never fully come together because they do not share a common cultural language. He then criticizes the smug technocratic elite for audaciously trying to engineer society independent of tradition:

But the real problems emerge from the technocratic mind-set, from the arrogant gray men who believe they can engineer society, oblivious to history, language, culture, values and place.

I sincerely applaud Mr. Brooks for defending the general notion of conservatism, even if he offers a fig leaf to American leftists by implying, "but..but..but America's totally different, diversity is our strength!":

Americans in Oregon are barely aware when their tax dollars go to Americans in Arizona. We are one people with one shared destiny. West Germans were willing to pay enormous subsidies to build the former East Germany. They, too, are one people.

I spend a lot of time discussing the liberal assault on culture; yet I've unfortunately rarely articulated how culture unites us. While I'll admit that culture will always remain a nebulous construct, pliable with time and under changing social fads, it still underpins our basic core set of values. Culture still defines how we speak to each other, though not just in the context of language. Culture gives us a shared narrative that while undoubtedly ambiguous still makes us feel a part of something bigger. An ironic example: Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates celebrating the idiosyncrasies of life in a black neighborhood.

Can culture change? Of course, but as Mr. Brooks notes, our technocratic elite falsely envisions a wholesale reconstruction of society. They've surely done due diligence in seeking this goal - DADT in the armed forces, gay marriage, abortion in defining life, popular media aggressive towards the majority, our elite universities overcome by leftism, and religion increasingly mocked. Yet will they ever prove successful?

I think not. Take this recent poll showing that 79% of Americans see political correctness as a serious problem. In essence, leftism can never fully extirpate traditional society precisely due to the ambiguity of culture. Culture lives amongst the people, with no particular center to attack. Leftists have tried to pinpoint certain institutions, such as the university, government, and media. But a top down approach, as in Europe, will not work because culture is not centralized in some insulated cabal, as in elitist power. It resides amongst the people; they control it, surely affected by the widespread social landscape, yet still maintaining some independence in what they teach and pass onto their children. For example, despite the backlash against white Southerners and the hick accent, the Southern accent persists. Reflected further by the fact that Brits will never "get" our comedy and we'll never "get" theirs, nations appear stubbornly opposed to adopting new ways of social communication.

The elite can't win because, as I've said before, the people own the nation. An overweening elite pursues an impossible goal if they seek social change on the micro-scale, the scale on which culture and a common social language dominate, as insidious leftism can only penetrate so deep.

Random Links: 12 Year-old Techie, Mapping Stereotypes, Feminists for Islam, and Black Feminist

A few random links because I don't have any substantive thoughts for today:

A sixth grader presents on developing iPhone apps at ultimate SWPL conference, TED. At 1:35, he mentions "programming in multiple...other programming languages just to get the basics down, such as python, C, JAVA, etc."



Obviously we should applaud such an industrious and extremely intelligent young man, seemingly a quirky type of smart person but not a nerd loser. I imagine that he genuinely likes programming and that helicopter parents aren't the real impetus for his work. But shouldn't we encourage kids, especially boys, to spend their adolescent afternoons getting their clothes dirty, not fiddling around with computer code? They're got an entire life to work in an office; I'd prefer children spend their youth being kids, even if a given child may actually enjoy solely intellectual pursuits.

The following picture calendar entitled "Mapping Stereotypes: The Ultimate Bigot's Calendar to the World." (Click for larger image.)
I needn't note the "bigot" label here as leftists apparently consider parochial knowledge tantamount to bigotry. I admit though that I do sort of see the world as above. Simply, I just don't really care about what's happening outside America. Maybe I should, but there's so much happening here that I don't bother to look elsewhere. Further, I have a good deal of trouble emotionally connecting with anything foreign, even seemingly related content like British comedy (which I abhor).

Is there anything worse than a black feminist?

However, there were places in the film where race and racism could be mentioned, and it would have taken about 30 seconds. For example, a young Black woman talks about her hair and how media images make her feel about it. The narrator could easily say something like, “Far too many images we see in the media are of white women swinging long, flowing hair. Imagine how that would make a woman of color, whose hair may not do that, feel?”

I also demand that tall men stop going out in public because it makes all smaller men feel bad!

I gradually veered away from the atheist blogosphere because American atheists focused so much on a trumped up chimera known as the "religious Right." After awhile, I just couldn't figure out why Christian political influence was so bad - I mean, I'm against abortion, gay marriage, and sexualized popular culture. But then I came to understand the inconsistency of leftist atheism - it's largely a reaction against Western traditionalism. Feminism works in the same way, as illustrated by their support of Islam.

In Fencer’s Hijab—Struggle and Inspiration:

This was a great article, and I commend Ibtihaj on her goals. As a fencing mother, I’ve noticed several up and coming female Muslim fencers wearing hijab at regional and national tournaments. I would also like to mention that when Muslims travel during Ramadan, they are exempt from fasting, and may make it up later in the year. The 2012 Olympics will be in London.

Saber kit is hot enough as it is without adding extra layers, but if Ms Muhammad really wants to do this then more power to her.

Hot Female Celebrities and the Nerds Who Love Them

I've written before about hot female celebrities casting themselves as nerds and how male nerds actually fall for it. This pandering to a consumer base is so obviously disingenuous that even the dullards over at Salon.com mocked it. It's amazing though how so many male nerds, or soft-nerd betas, actually buy into the nerd princess fantasy put forth by entrepreneurial celebrities. These "men" actually think the hottest, most sought after women on the planet differ from all the other hottest, most sought after women.

Perhaps the most obsessed over female "nerd" celebrity is half-Asian Olivia Munn. Ms. Munn had a four year run on G4's Attack of the Show and now acts in various capacities while doing occasional segments for The Daily Show. I watched maybe one episode of Attack of the Show when Munn's star began rising; basically she was cast to wear skimpy outfits, look hot, and engage in sexual innuendo. I got this from watching about five minutes of her show as I have absolutely no interest in techie stuff; my iPod is six years old and my three year-old cell phone only makes phone calls.

And the male nerd masses absolutely love her. She, of course, understands her role and plays to her base by dressing up in iconic nerd costumes like Chun Li from Street Fighter and Princess Leia from Star Wars (full disclosure: I have never seen any Star Wars movie.) They love her because they actually buy into the fantasy that their nerd pursuits will garner them positive social capitol. Here's a website proclaiming her "every nerd's fantasy"(LSFW) and an interview where a nerd expresses a sincere belief that "she's attracted to nerds" (0:19).

But let's not be too skeptical here. Maybe all the talk about video games, sci-fi, and tech gadgets really does reflect Mrs. Munn's affinity for nerds. After all, don't most women really just want a nice guy who shares their interests. To test that hypothesis, here's a rundown of Mrs. Munn's recent dating history:

She dated Star Trek star Chris Pine.
She was rumored to have had a fling with uber-alpha popstar/actor Justin Timberlake.
Earlier this year, she briefly dated Glee (non-gay word for "heartthrob") Matthew Morrison.
She is currently dating New York Rangers hockey star Brad Richards.

See any nerds in there? I see apex alphas, which would make sense because Mrs. Munn is one of the most widely regarded beauties in Hollywood. In dog bites man news, a woman has lied and men have believed her, many of them hopelessly entranced by her feminine wiles. Unfortunately, this propensity for men to willfully deceive themselves in overlooking female speciousness can manifest in ugly situations such as this link from Roissy (sexual content warning). Seriously, it does not get any worse than that.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not necessarily criticizing women like Munn who take advantage of gullible nerds. If anything, I'm more inclined to look down on easily fooled nerdy men who have constructed a low status male parallel to fantastical romance novels, e.g. buff computer scientists and the women they love/rape.

Race Realists Hiding in Plain Sight

Commenter 'Revisionary' notes the lack of truly reactionary media outlets:

But the question remains, what is the transmission medium for reminding (or teaching) whites that they have a great heritage? The Left owns virtually all the mass media. There are no genuinely conservative TV networks or news sources, and even talk radio -- when it's supposedly conservative -- is mainly about party politics, not culture. Patriotic and HBD-aware whites need their own mass media. Without those, they are reduced to clusters talking to each other.

Note that when I think of "white-supporting" I consider this merely a celebration of American and European accomplishment and the corresponding heritage passed through the ages. This coincides with my oft-cited notion of a collective narrative, which exists as a potent cultural meme in places such as Israel, China, and 19th century America with the Manifest Destiny.

As many have noted on the alt-right, a small leftist elite owns the media which one presumes should provide a means of transmitting cultural heritage. Media should also provide a means of disseminating truth, but with the conspicuous lack of coverage on black flash mobs this past summer, we know they fail in that regard. Undoubtedly, we should continue criticizing the clear slant of modern media. But many in the alt-right make the logical leap that because explicit race realism does not exist in the mainstream this means that no "undercover" HBDers are pulling any strings.

At the borderline criminal NYT, the op-ed page offers yet another screed against those hick nativists who want to defend their traditional society - the horror!

Alabama’s ruling class has dug in against the storm it caused with the nation’s most oppressive immigration law. The law was written to deny immigrants without papers the ability to work or travel, to own or rent a home, to enter contracts of any kind. Fear is causing an exodus as Latinos abandon homes and jobs and crops in the fields. Alabama is far from alone in passing a law whose express aim is misery and panic.

I know it's an opinion piece, but good god that's some over the top rhetoric. Predictably, the article continues by averring a racial component to the laws:

States are expanding their power to hasten racial exclusion and family disintegration, to make a particular ethnic group of poor people disappear. The new laws come cloaked in talk of law and order; the bigotry beneath them is never acknowledged.

“It is a fear of folks who are not like us,” said Judge U. W. Clemon, a former state senator and Alabama’s first black federal judge, now retired. “Although the Hispanic population of the state is less than 5 percent, the leaders of the state were hell-bent on removing as much of that 4 percent as possible.”

While leftists tend to call anyone racist who does not agree with them, even the deracinated Tea Party, they actually might have a point here. I agree that the Alabama, Arizona, and other similar laws are passed by semi-secret race realists who maintain a bit of mainstream credibility by disavowing explicit race-based policies. They accomplish what we support, but they do so by working within the system. Same achievement, but without the baggage. For evidence, take a look at this quote on blacks from a sponsor of the Alabama legislation, State Senator Scott Beason:

A sponsor of the legislation, State Senator Scott Beason, chairman of the Rules Committee, was secretly taped by the F.B.I. talking about black residents of Greene County. “They’re aborigines,” he said. He is the lawmaker who urged fellow Republicans to “empty the clip” to stop illegal immigrants.

Awhile back, another Alabama Republican said this about racial disparities in school suspensions:

Hugh McInnish, a member of the Madison County Republican Executive Committee who also sits on the state Republican Executive Committee, offered a litany of bizarre “proof” that racial disparity isn’t “manmade,” claiming “blacks misbehave on average more frequently than whites do,” and that black students are unable to perform as well as white students...McInnish went so far as to include in his letter a chart that purports to show the “black crime rate as (a) multiple of (the) white crime rate.” The chart indicates that black people commit more than six times the violent crime of white people overall; it has them committing about eight times as many murders as white people and more than 14 times as many robberies.

ThinkProgress reports that Mr. McInnish has written editorials for VDare and most of his letter's data comes from AmRen's Color of Crime. I think we can confidently assert that this entrenched GOPer is a race realist. Another example is of two state Supreme Court justices in Washington who "stunned" everyone by stating what everyone knows to be true:

State Supreme Court justices Richard Sanders and James Johnson stunned some participants at a recent court meeting when they said African Americans are overrepresented in the prison population because they commit a disproportionate number of crimes. Both justices disputed the view held by some that racial discrimination plays a significant role in the disparity. Johnson also used the term "poverty pimp," an apparent reference to people who purportedly exploit the poor in the legal system, say those who attended the meeting. Sanders later confirmed his remarks about imprisoned African Americans, saying "certain minority groups" are "disproportionally represented in prison because they have a crime problem." "That's right," he told The Seattle Times this week. "I think that's obvious."

Even more in the mainstream, Mr. "Nappy-Headed Ho" himself, Don Imus, clearly understands racial pathology, asking, unprovoked, about notorious criminal/athlete Pacman Jones' race for an obvious reason. Michael Savage, author of "Death of the White Male", all but outright agrees with James Watson back in 2007. Pat Buchanan, who still somehow has a job at MSNBC, is obviously a race realist. Nicholas Wade, one of the chief science writers for the NYT, wrote an astoundingly transparent article explaining the divergent evolution of human groups, i.e. biological race exists, and the notion of cognitive differences, i.e. HBD.

These people don't necessarily champion explicit race realism or pro-European cultural ideals independent of neocon colorblind romanticism. Some of them try to keep a foot in the mainstream by engaging in public displays of their "openness", like Glenn Beck fellating MLK in that bizarre rally last year. Yet these people do exist in all areas of media and government, though mostly local for the latter. We lament the lack of professional race realists, those like Sailer, Auster, and Jared Taylor, amongst the mainstream, but we do overlook the large number of people making things happen without divulging their anti-PC beliefs.

I'll finish though by qualifying my argument somewhat. I'm not so sure how much can be done regarding culture if we are satisfied with individuals working behind the scenes. As noted in yesterday's post on another anti-white commercial, our culture is failing in the sense that it does not celebrate the majority American. A passive, implicit race realism does not fix this extremely important problem as a healthy culture must be unapologetic and obvious.

Car Commercial, Minority Culture Vibrancy, and White America

Today, I bring you yet another commercial reflecting the leftist, anti-white social landscape. Jennifer Lopez stars in this one, the ultimate "big-ass" icon who many predicted would usher in an era of "curvier" women hitting the mainstream (read: obese black women on billboards). Shockingly, it hasn't happened, though Ms. JLo maintains her place amongst the A-List as she's now a judge on American Idol. In the following commercial, Ms. JLo builds off the theme of her biggest music hit, "Jenny from tha Block", whereby she asserts her authenticity despite an opulent lifestyle away from "the streets":



The commercial has her driving through New York's ghettos with almost all black and Hispanic faces shown. The commercial however presents something far more illustrative than a "diverse" New York City; Ms. Lopez's voiceover in conjunction with the scenes depicted reflect the cultural narrative of anti-white leftism.

This place inspires me..to be tougher, to stay sharper (black police officer!), to think faster. They may be just streets to you (lets her hair down), but to me, they're a playground. Song: Cuz I'm alive, I can breathe, I can feel, I believe...

She speaks these words over dynamic scenes of expression, joy, and art. In sum, the commercial clearly asserts that cultural vibrancy, the kind that "inspires" such deep expression and spiritual fulfillment, resides almost exclusively within black and Hispanic New York. This implicitly contrasts the apparently white mainstream America in which JLo has made her fortune, though her heart remains forever a part of this minority utopia.

This narrative contends that white America must look outside itself for cultural meaning, evidenced by white suburban teens idolizing rappers and professional athletes and disparagement of NASCAR and country as the domain of inbred hicks (well...). In suburbia, "being white" or "whitebread" is now an insult and black mannerisms are glorified as epitomizing cool. The leftist narrative defines whiteness as bland and champions minority culture as spiritually deep and vibrant. We have Eastern mysticism, black soul, and Native American spirituality, with white, European culture presented as out of touch, insidious, or just plain boring.

However, we also may consider alternative explanations to the anti-white campaigns of modern leftism. Or perhaps we should try to understand why their campaigns have proven so successful. American whites do come from a wide variety of ethnic genetic and folk backgrounds, many of which got lost in the journey stateside. We also have a highly class-based structure to society that makes Southerners view Northerners as pretentious Yankees and Northerners look at Southerners as uncouth hicks. In essence, we should have expected some fracturing of American whites in an increasingly non-white nation with such a potent propaganda machine.

How then do we heal this rift - defined for these purposes as reinvigorating the idea that American whites can have a meaningful ethnic culture too? While somewhat unpopular amongst the overly pessimistic alt-right, I see American patriotism or nationalism as the appropriate strategy. America needs to be depicted as the daughter of Europe and her peoples. That way, white Americans understand the historical importance of this nation and non-white and liberal Americans are reminded from where this great nation arose. Popularizing America's connection to a European heritage provides a common narrative for its citizens. This idea will then help undermine those that think America only came to its prominence when it imported minority culture.

Pensive Politics

Slate.com shows this picture to commemorate Veterans Day:


The attached summary wonderfully captures the moment:

The image above—quiet, almost elegiac—perfectly captures the flipside of the breathless, exuberant national response to the long-sought victory over Japan. The stillness of the pair here, the absence of the revelry depicted in his iconic V-J Day image, allowed Eisenstaedt to present the other, equally powerful face of the Allied conquest: the somber gaze that commemorates the profound cost of victory.

Note that words used here: quiet, elegiac (I had to look that one up), stillness, and somber. This more subdued and pensive response contrasts with the "exuberant" celebrations that occurred earlier this year after the killing of bin Laden.

The technocratic elite, mostly liberal, often lament emotion entering the political arena. Whether due to our own enlightened hubris or an American notion that laws dictate over the capriciousness of man, political discourse tends to steer clear of emotion. One doesn't turn on MSNBC or CNN to witness talking heads pursuing an entirely emotional argument, though they often do so in more subtle ways. Nonetheless, we're told to vote with our minds, not our hearts; with ostentatious displays of sadness (John Boehner) or joy (Howard Dean) undermining one's political respect.

Yet isn't emotion ultimately the driving force of all political movements? From "who you would most want to have a beer with" folksy campaigns such as that of George Bush, to nationalist regimes that champion collective superiority and folk traditionalism, to socialist safety nets that allay our fears, all these movements play on our unavoidable human reactions. We can't do anything but vote with our hearts.

To finish, look at the picture once more that depicts a sort of melancholy understanding instead of unbridled passion or anger which often motivates politics. It's perhaps an unfortunate reality of man that political blowhards play to our worst instincts to make people act - riling up our base desires such as enmity and greed in pursuit of power. But it doesn't work for me as I'm far more likely to be motivated by something subdued, the kind of presentation that gives one gossebumps as opposed to a racing heartbeat. I guess that's what INTJ's are all about, right? We are privy to emotion like everyone else, but we revel in the staid rather than the bombastic. We cogitate and muse instead of cavort and move. I guess though I'm mostly alone in this regard, as collective movements often rely on collective jubilation, spurred by each others' energies as much as the justification of their cause.

Penn State and Our Moral Priorities

Saturday Audience Participation

At OneSTDV and related blogs, we speak a lot about culture and the moral priorities both reflected in and encouraged by culture. Admittedly, culture is an amorphous sort of thing characterized only by considering contemporary social trends together. But we can all get a sense of the current social landscape even if we can't quite articulate a concise definition of culture itself. In sum, the general conservative commenteriat, including groups such as GOP diehards, neocons, alt-righters, and religious righters, doesn't much like the moral priorities of modern society. While this pessimism often devolves into despair, a general cultural malaise seems apparent in this day.

This past week's Penn State scandal has illustrated that reality perhaps better than anything. I offered an apolitical explanation, asserting that this vile monster did what he did because evil, simply, exists. Yet across all platforms of media, basic compassion for the actual victims seems far less important than other, far more trivial concerns. The drunk frat-boy riots at PSU on Wednesday night in support of beloved coach JoePa illustrates the unbelievably misguided anger and morality of the students. The university community, which seemingly cares more about the football team than violated little boys, has even begun mocking the incident via the local neologism, "getting Sandusky-ied." On the left, race and gender liberals care more about hypothetical blacks and girls than the real victims. They've also interpreted the Penn State riots as exclusively the result of white men not liking accountability. At The Spearhead, W.F. Price blames it on feminist rape hysteria, what else. The Penn State administrators appeared to care more for profiting from football and the glow of their team than seeking moral justice (IMO: obviously, the real reason for the coverup). And even in the alt-right sphere, commenters have tried to blame gays and liberals for the evil actions of one man.

Clearly, our society has no moral compass. What other conclusion can one draw when scant focus goes towards the victims and their struggles. Everyone is too busy pushing their own agenda to express sympathy with these young men imposed upon by a monster. But how can we right the ship? How can culture erect or reconstruct a value system not benighted by leftist perversion, status mongering, and hysterical antagonism.

Today's questions: Where did we go wrong in regards to societal morality? How do we get back to a proper set of moral priorities? Many would say religion - is religion the answer? Is there a secular answer? A political answer? How widespread is moral deviancy? Who do you blame and why?

[FWIW: I blame modern liberalism for our perverse set of values. Channeling one of my more "eccentric" commenters, liberalism champions autonomy and personal gratification above all else, perhaps even excluding all other moral or practical objectives. Thus, we have a society of individuals who want nothing but materialistic satisfaction and social status via consumerism. As leftism undermines collective traditionalism, any sort of overarching societal goal, such as nationalism, "spiritual" enlightenment, or a soft-manifest destiny, gets discouraged as well. People can't formulate or express a proper morality because they never engage with such questions in daily life.]

The Ragtag Leftist Coalition of Identity Groups

Leftist blowhard Michael Moore has used the Occupy "movement" as a means of promoting his own agenda, one largely consistent with that of OWS. On Tuesday, Mr. Moore gave a 90 minute speech at CU-Denver (is that a real school?) summarizing the problems we face as a country. He covers a number of topics, but I want to focus on one particular comment. First though, let me digress by pointing to this statement:

Today, he said the wealthiest 400 Americans control more wealth than the bottom 150 million people combined. “Does that look like a democracy? Does that look fair?” he asked to thunderous applause.

Fine, so start throwing out hundreds to the crowds and the people who really need it. Why aren't Warren Buffet, Michael Moore, and other celebrity leftists just giving away their money? And doing so anonymously so as to not rouse suspicion about ulterior motives concerning status-mongering. I'm actually serious here. Michael Moore has plenty of money, so start giving it away, preferably to the individuals with whom you so publicly sympathize.

Now onto the main topic:

Moore said young people and people of color put Obama in office, but he keeps trying to please the white male voter. “Why is he so focused on white male voters?”

Moore pointed out that Clinton won twice without winning the white male vote.

And of course, Moore ends with a dig at white men, who likely comprised a large portion of his audience. Is Moore correct in asserting that white men don't matter? Well, let's start with the Occupy movement. From what I have seen, OWS is white male dominated and thus "people of color" appear unable to organize or articulate their "concerns" without the purportedly dispensable class helping them. While liberals love to disparage white men, it's still white men who lead their ideology, a conundrum arising in feminist circles where "women of color" often grouse jealously about their lower status.

But what about voting patterns. Moore is correct that white men matter less than before, though the Democrats better be careful as their stridency has turned off white voters. Moore alludes to a coalition of young voters, people of color, and women as leading a cultural resistance against ossified conservative whitey (apparently, he didn't read Prop 8 voting statistics). As is commonly noted amongst alt-right blogs, this ragtag team of blacks, Jews, gays, Hispanics, SWPLs, union members, and other idiots needs to stick together to combat the evil, moderately conservative WASPs. I believe the Left understands this as their histrionics concerning discussion of the Sailer/Southern Strategy implies as much. The constant mentioning of these groups together, such as Obama's candid "slip" last year, shows that the Left's leaders are pursuing this as a voting strategy. And more importantly, that anyone getting out of line will be disciplined harshly.

As to this last point, let me briefly mention a popular yet misguided idea repeated in the alt-right: that there exists a hierarchy of leftist pet groups. Basically, alt-righters argue that a black guy can get away with saying something a white guy can't or that a gay, black woman will be forgiven for the same thing a straight, black women does. This is completely wrong, as illustrated by numerous incidents over the past year, such as Jewish director Brett Ratner getting fired from the Oscars over anti-gay comments, black comedian Katt Williams getting lambasted over anti-Mexican comedy routines, black comedian Tracy Morgan heavily criticized for anti-gay comments, the amount of hate directed at uber-gay commentator and originator of the "It Gets Better" campaign Dan Savage for his purported racism and transphobia, and black singer Chris Brown being ostracized due to his domestic abuse. We note that, in fact, transgressions by individuals within protected groups are largely condemned in a manner one would expect.

But the distinction here is that in every case, the individual transgressed against another leftist pet group - black vs. Mexican, Jew vs. gay, black male vs. black female, gay vs. black. The left wholly accepts, even encourages, outright animus directed at whites or men because it propels the narrative and invigorates the voting base as a collective. Yet antagonism directed within the tenuous leftist coalition would undermine the collective, a mishmash of peoples that must work together to undermine the evil white patriarchy. If blacks hate gays and then realize the Party line is extremely pro-gay, they might flip on that one issue. Or if Mexicans and blacks can't get along, then they won't vote together and the left won't have the requisite numbers to beat whitey. The hypocrisy concerning acceptable discourse only exists as a means of discouraging candor from white men; the Left only invokes "togetherness" when the "togetherness" of their voting bloc is in jeopardy.

Penn State Scandal: Institutional Corruption and the Existence of Evil

As everyone knows, Penn State has been rocked amid allegations that a long time football coach and friend of the program sexually assaulted boys as young as ten, including alleged acts such as anal rape. In Happy Valley, nothing is more important than football, a notion unfortunately substantiated by the purported cover-up of this disgusting case. The people who did nothing to stop this act deserve the public shame they will receive and I hope the boys affected can someone find the strength to overcome.

It's obviously sad when a legendary institution, such as that built by JoePa at Penn State, is sullied by such a reprehensible type of scandal. As individuals and as a people, we look to these traditional structures of society for guidance. Not necessarily for how to live our day to day lives, but for a sense of stability in a largely intimidating world. We connect to these sorts of places and in America, especially in the South, college football does much to bring people together. And when this type of evil manifests, it shakes our collective faith in the romanticized institutions that comprise our society's structure.

Of course, we always look for answers. We look for a way to rationalize evil, to ensure we never have to encounter it again, to somehow, some way explain why something so bad has happened. In doing so, we look to blame the oblique actors who didn't live up to our expectations of morality. We seek all sorts of explanations - the biological, cultural, environmental, legal, and social. The endless discussion over these sorts of stories will no doubt broach just about every theory possible. Maybe we'll fall asleep at night feeling just a little better that someone has an answer to these unconscionable acts of evil.

But I prefer a much simpler (and ironically more elucidating) answer - evil exists, period. We can apply all sorts of modern sociological and psychological tools to every situation. Yet in the end, we simply must accept that bad things will happen no matter our subsequent diligence in explaining the problem. In rejecting this postgame analysis perspective, I express some sympathy with an archaic conception of religious philosophy - the omniscient and omnipotent God who ordains, with us mortal humans accepting God's will without question. God decided, we endured. We understood evil as an inexorable aspect of God's plan (or nature for us materialists). We wish to avoid it, but when it arises, we don't react confused that something bad could ever happen.

In sum, all the hysteria afterwards ignores the fact that evil is out there, simple as that. We can offer all sorts of convoluted logic as to why it arises and how to stop it. Or we can accept its existence, condemn it forthrightly, and hope to persevere.

Blacks: The Retarded Children of America

In an event of extreme patronization, current WNBA star Candace Parker won the 2004 Boys Slam Dunk competition. Now legendary ESPN sportswriter Bill Simmons said it reminded him of his family picnics when they'd let the youngest child score in wiffleball even though he couldn't really swing the bat. Well, America clearly regards blacks as that little kid. Or maybe a more appropriate analogy is that America regards blacks as a retarded child that accomplishes something by counting to three and not defecating on himself.

We have such low expectations for blacks functioning within civilized society that the most mundane of circumstances become cause for excitement. Here is a HuffPo article about members of the notorious Bloods and Crips gangs "coming together", which on the scale of black dysfunction means not shooting each other for a day or so.

Gang affiliations are oftentimes set in stone, with members choosing sides and vowing to remain loyal to their selected group. But two members of the infamously rival gangs the Bloods and the Crips, have put aside their differences in favor of one common cause: Occupy Atlanta..."I saw him in the park, saw his colors.," Guillory told Franzen. "There was no mean mug or rivalry because we realized that what's happening here is so much bigger then gang rivalry.".."I stayed for the common cause, speaking for the people," Britton said. "I feel strongly that we have the right to jobs, health care, and affordable higher education."

(OT: I guess it's been asked before, but do any of these Occupy protesters actually have responsibilities, like working?) An embedded video shows the individuals musing on police brutality and white oppression. I know, who would have guessed? The article ends with an ironically, or not, saccharine appeal to togetherness:

Now these two members have forgotten their differences in support of a cause that has swept the nation. At one point favoring violence bloodshed for rivals who crossed into enemy turf, Britton said the two now share a tent at the Occupy Atlanta base. "We are connected through music, faith, and Occupy Atlanta." [And hating whitey.]

It's hilarious that HuffPo and the liberal media in which HuffPo resides would consider this newsworthy. Do the authors even realize how absurd they sound in glorifying this as a commendable act? We shouldn't be surprised though, as the most admirable black accomplishment appears to be getting killed by white people, illustrated by the ongoing honors for Sean Bell mentioned in the linked article. You even hear this type of unjustified bravado from blacks themselves, like, "I take care of my kids", "I got my GED (in prison)", "I barely use welfare", and "I've only been to jail once." Blacks celebrate actions that whites assume all regular citizens must do, like paying taxes, showing up on time, ordering at McDonald's without incident, and not shooting people.

Thoughts on OWS Anarchism and Elite Fascism

The OWS protests continue in basically every region of the country. I wrote a few posts on the "movement" a couple weeks ago, but the whole phenomenon really doesn't interest me. Ann Coulter's apt characterization of the "flea party" holds, a cohort of dirty, spiritually empty hippie SWPLs looking for solace in idealistic liberalism. The "movement" only warrants attention because the members think of themselves as crusading iconoclasts and not woefully uninformed leftists attacking a partially meritocratic America that sort of rejects entitlement. I even wrote about these people way before the OWS protests started, characterizing their anger as an "entitlement paradigm":

So we have what I've deemed the "entitlement paradigm" - college graduates simply will not settle for blue collar work. Given this elitist denunciation and the parallel idea that not having a degree is tantamount to failure, no one wants blue collar positions. And this leads to an entire stratum of the economic hierarchy vacated by potential employees.

...this reflects the prevailing egalitarian ethos where paying your dues or collecting social capital over a long period of time is considered an unfair demand. The entitlement paradigm, an irrational desire common amongst low-level college graduates, seems to manifest in all aspects of life.

But the protests have taken on a mildly different flavor than common SWPL progressivism. There's an antagonism extant amongst these individuals that has spurred some violence and more extreme rhetoric like "hang the bankers." In this vein, many OWS protestors appear supportive of anarchism, as illustrated by the popularity of Guy Fawkes masks.

To the 20-year-old from Keyport, New Jersey, the Fawkes mask "is about being against The Man – the power that keeps you down."

"The origins of this mask comes from the idea of rising up against the government," he said. "Guy Fawkes represents the fact that the people have the real power."

Ironic that people so forthright in their support of anarchism wear the mask as a rather transparent reflection of their fear. Traditionally, anarchy doesn't really reside on either side of the political aisle, with leftists railing against corporations and "the Man" and rightists arguing against government intrusion. I think in this instance, many OWS protestors like anarchy because it represents the end goal of liberalism - the complete dismantling of traditional society. I can't imagine any of them want to return to our hunter-gatherer roots, as a degree from Oberlin in English literature doesn't matter much when hunting a deer (not to mention one can't exactly be a hunter-gatherer vegan). In essence, they don't really want anarchy as much as a fully egalitarian system absent of stratified classes that reflect general notions of success. They want to destroy traditional structures of society - the company man who has earned respect, the elite institutions with traditional authority from actual achievement, the admiration for how things were done as opposed to blind progressivism.

But can the small-government Right find sympathy with anarchists? Well, many of the soft-anarchist OWS protestors actually want more government, so let's focus on big corporations and an insulated elite. Maybe the alt-right can sympathize, as we at OneSTDV have surely done our part in criticizing the corporate, government, and media elite.

However, I'll admit that I've always sort of romanticized mild fascism - defined for this discussion as a strong nationalist system and concentrated power amongst corporations, government, and media. I like the bombasticism of these societies. They celebrate themselves without restraint. They have a concept of nationalism and cultural traditionalism absent from the modern West. They celebrate their own strength without apologizing for it. And when people mess up, punishment is handed out swiftly. Of course, we all know the associated problems - it's near impossible to keep everyone in line without going to extremes. So while I sympathize with some fascist ideals, I still passionately believe that social conservatism must motivate behavior on the small scale and healthy nationalism should dictate action on a larger scale.

One asks though how I can reconcile my professed small-government conservatism with fascist sympathies. Simple - our elite have abandoned the people and thus, the elite/government invariably imposes policies antagonistic to what I consider politically good. We need government out of our lives and an undermining of elite authority because our current societal leaders no longer speak for the people. An elite leadership that does not have the people's interests at heart, reflected in their rejection of Western conservatism and in their own greed (e.g. not really Wall Street, more like Big Pharma and Big Education), does not deserve to lead. Unfortunately though, we have neither official nor social oversight on behavior and the modern hedonistic, feminist, liberal current state of affairs arises as a result.