OneSTDV

Can American Liberals be Populists?

2012-01-27T05:05:00.004-05:00

One generally regards populism as a right-wing leaning political phenomenon, with the "masses" rising up as a collective unit against an antagonistic, globalist elite. But Salon.com writer Steve Kornacki curiously categorizes Obama's State of the Union speech and his attendant campaign narrative as "populist" and "combative":

But if you put aside all of the platitudes, mushy rhetoric and feel-good proposals, the heart of Obama’s remarks demonstrated that he’s intent on pursuing a far more combative and populist path to a second term than the one Clinton followed.

But his central message stressed a sharp and basic philosophical contrast with his partisan opponents – one he clearly plans to make the centerpiece of his reelection effort.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” Obama said early in his speech, “or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Essentially, Obama's purported "populism" reduces to economics, as the plasma-owning masses apparently can't feed their families. Obama is clearly positioning himself as a voice for the 99%, casting avaricious millionaires as the primary enemy. And in doing so, by casting a tiny portion of the population as unfairly hurting the masses, one could maybe interpret this as populism.

Yet, can economics, i.e. class warfare, really undergird a populist movement, especially in the context of Decmorat's general liberalism? Can a movement of "the people" succeed if all that binds "the people" is a shared envy and resentment towards the greedy class? I'd argue that populism can not exist as a solely economic movement, an insight implicit to the ultimate class warriors of 20th century Communism. These regimes understood that mass-based movements need to be cleansed of their cultural, religious, and social differences - with any line of demarcation leading to a fragmentation of the pitchfork mob.

In sum, populism can not be based on merely the fact that my neighbor does not have what I do not have. Populism must be supported by an overarching cultural and social narrative from which people ultimately bond. I admit that this ultimately comes down to psychology - do people only care about the bottomline in coming together? Or are all social and political movements ultimately defined by an incredibly complicated confluence of factors? The recent election successes of the homogeneous Tea Party versus the aimless and conflict-filled Occupy Movement should answer that. People just can't seem to ignore their differences, whether racial, religious, or cultural, in forming coalitions. It's ironic then that a Democrat, the party of The Other, the party that champions multiculturalism and population replacement of natives, would go the populist route.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

2012-01-26T05:00:00.000-05:00

No new post today either. I've been simultaneously very busy and sort of not in the mood to post this week. Talk amongst yourselves - preferably with horribly racist, sexist, bigoted, idiotic, and close-minded rhetoric.

Evolutionary Pschology Study on Men and Its General Implications

2012-01-24T06:05:00.003-05:00

Evolutionary pscyhology study from Oxford University’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology: "When men go to war, blame their sex drive"

The review of psychological research concludes that men evolved to be aggressive towards ‘outsiders’, a tendency at the root of inter-tribal violence.

It emerged through natural selection as a result of competition for mates, territory and status, and is seen in conflicts between nations as well as clashes involving rival gangs, football fans or religious groups, say the researchers.

In contrast, they add, women evolved to resolve conflicts peacefully. They are said to have been programmed by natural selection to ‘tend and befriend’ to protect their children.
‘We see similar behaviour in chimpanzees,’ said Prof van Vugt. ‘For example, the males continuously monitor the borders of their territory.

‘If a female from another group comes along, she may be persuaded to emigrate to his group. When a male strays too far, however, he is likely to be brutally beaten and possibly killed.’

I'm reminded of this oft-cited quote in the Manosphere:

Men created civilization to impress women.

Some have criticized evo-psych for reducing man to an automaton. I don't disagree, but nonetheless this biological reductionism is undoubtedly true. We evolved just like any other animal and thus are privy to the same environmental pressures just as are butterflies and finches. But if we do accept this view, do we lose something intrinsically valuable about man and his "spiritual" transcendence?

Well, if I told the desire to play with a doe-eyed baby was merely the result of an evolutionary strategy to assure children were protected by their elders - would it make the baby any less cute? Would you not feel the same sort of ethereal connection to that baby? Explaining social experiences in rational terms does not undermine the complicated neurological states we undergo; it may take away some of the mystery, but the potency remains.

Blacks will Save White America?

2012-01-23T04:30:00.000-05:00

Amongst the larger right-wing commentariat, there's perpetual talk of conservative white America finally throwing their weight around politically. While the punditry sometimes overstates their optimism (or opposition) in this regard, the 1980's Moral Majority, the 2000's evangelical Religious Right, and the continued popularity of right-wing talk radio implies that the majority still holds some amount of power. But I ask a rather heretical sort of question - what if blacks can actually save conservatism? And I don't mean their impact on social issues like gay marriage in California. I mean that blacks can actually singlehandedly keep America a race-based European nation with white people still strongly in command.

Admittedly I present the argument as above to be purposefully incendiary, so let me fill in the context below:

-The Left has power only as a coalition of minority groups, namely immigrants, blacks, gays, Hispanics, and Jews (for their money).
-The Left can only have enough votes if they maintain this rather tenuous multicultural bloc.
-One primary reason the Left maintains this group is due to Hispanic fecundity, weak deportation efforts of illegals, and lax immigration restriction, both legal and illegal.
-Thus, the Left must ensure Hispanics and immigrants in general continue their relative population growth as a means of populating the next generation of Democrat voters.

So what if any of the above Leftist groups decide it no longer likes the Democrat message, it no longer sees one particular aspect of the Democrat plan as beneficial for their own group? Just from the numbers, especially as white Americans grow increasingly frustrated with liberalism, Democrats absolutely need every minority group voting as much as possible. It's why they've championed felon voting, absentee ballots, and same-day registration, amongst other initiatives, some nefarious, to expand the vote as much as possible. If any one group drops out of their ragtag collection, they just don't have the raw numbers to pass anything.

So I ask - what if blacks drop out? What if blacks suddenly realize that immigration, one of the pillars of modern liberalism, actually affects them very badly? What if blacks realize that unskilled Hispanic laborers have replaced them in the lower-class, while Asian groups like Arabs, Vietnamese, and Indian groups set up businesses in their neighborhoods? Blacks may realize that sticking it to whitey simply isn't that important anymore; it's far better to fight so much imported competition in the job market. And in making this decision, blacks actually help whites maintain their demographic hegemony, as immigration and subsequent anchor baby births are the primary means of racial displacement.

So have blacks woken up to the fact that modern liberalism might pay them off with welfare, but all the while steal jobs from those in black communities who actually want to work? Take a look at this video:

We've seen this before - fat black bitch goes crazy in public. And she does begin with the expected appeal to slavery and reparations. But listen to her rant - she actually doesn't primarily blame black economic problems on evil whitey. She blames it on immigrants taking jobs and getting loans to build businesses in black neighborhoods. She also alludes to multi-generational Americans as having a sort of birthright - "we built the pipes...". Here's some quotes:

And [immigrants] own the industry. They own the hotels and they own these. But I'm asking you why is there an industry for you, who has opened the market to you? If you go back, go all the way back, at one point in time it was us that owned it in our own communities.

We don't want you owning shit in our community; we want to you to go back to where you live. Because where I live don't none of you live, but you come to our communities and take our money. And where you at - you in a black community.

When I go to to try to own a hair store, who owns the industry - the Chinese. And they have to sell it to us and they don't want to sell it to us.

Go back to your country, make your money there...let us own our own shit.

Now I'm not going to bash immigrants who come here to live the American Dream. In fact, I applaud those that still believe in America as the land of opportunity (hint hint: despair porn alt-right). And the woman is wrong in not understanding why banks don't loan to blacks; simply, blacks are irresponsible or many do not have the proper credit. Further, blacks have shown themselves largely incapable of running organized, stable business (see athlete bankruptcy), especially with the incentives of the welfare state and the cultural/family problems of black America.

Yet, while this woman ignores some other variables, she does understand how much immigration has hurt black America. Prior to the double whammy of Civil Rights and Latino immigration, blacks did get along decently, so one could argue that blacks aren't entirely hopeless.

I'll end by noting the transparency of "on-the-ground" experience. While detached elites continue to push large-scale societal changes without an understanding of local repercussions, the "unwashed masses" are the ones who must endure whatever the elite imposes on them. The HuffPo may censure black comedian Kat Williams for his anti-Mexican rant in order to maintain their voting bloc, but some of the plebians might very well dissent anyway. And wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if the favorite pet group of liberals, the blacks, were the first to do so?

[I'll concede that blacks may very well prefer the hush money offered by welfare-supporting Democrats, but I also think this woman does reflect a large portion of the black community.]

Musings on Sports Fandom

2012-01-22T05:45:00.001-05:00

Today, entire stadiums full of grown men will cheer on other grown men playing a game. There will be fights amongst fans of opposing teams comprised of vagabond players, perhaps the most laughable form of tribalism mankind has ever witnessed. These men will yell as loud as they can for other men to hurt other men. And in the end, there will be blood and tears, more yelling, and a victor. Many of these men will proudly wear on their backs the name of these other men, apparently unaware of the emasculation of such a display. These men will feel a connection to these other men, using the first-person plural pronoun "we" to describe a team full of players who could not care less about them. And in these drunken moments, these men will actually measure their own personal worth consistent with their favorite team, apparently unaware of how pathetic their own lives have become to do so.

But to those that watch to merely enjoy, to those that understand the farce of modern sports fandom, to those that understand it's just a game, to those that can enjoy sports as a momentary means of nostalgia for the trappings of youth, to those that root but don't cry, to those that view sports as a microcosm of our larger social landscape, to those that think about sports as fun not "Breaking News from our Bristol headquarters!! - sit-ups in the driveway", even to those that get really excited when their favorite team wins and really pissed when their favorite team loses, just within reason - have fun today. I know I can't wait. (For the record, I'm still a huge NFL fan - it's sort of my one irrational vice.)

Rooting interests: Pats and Giants: Come on, everyone wants to see this game again in the Super Bowl. Plus, these are easily the two best and most exciting teams left, with two elite QBs (Eli may make mistakes, but he's even better than Brady in the clutch) at the top of their game. And I just like Eli for some reason.
Picks: Pats and Giants: Going with the favorites, though I'd give even odds on Niners.

Intelligence and Depression

2012-01-21T03:30:00.001-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

There's some controversy over whether higher intelligence and depression correspond. From reading the "intellectual" sphere, generally defined as people who engage in self-analysis, one would surely conclude that such a correlation exists. Bloggers like Robert Lindsay write about their depression and/or OCD on a regular basis and it always appears that their ability to provide insight into the problem exacerbates it. However, Wikipedia claims that no such correspondence exists and then mentions something I was thinking before reading the Wiki article:

With the exception of creatively gifted adolescents who are talented in writing or the visual arts, studies do not confirm that gifted individuals manifest significantly higher or lower rates or severity of depression than those for the general population...Also, no research points to suicide rates being higher in gifted adolescents than other adolescents.

However, a number of people have noted a higher incidence of existential depression, which is depression due to seemingly highly abstract concerns such as the finality of death, the ultimate unimportance of individual people, and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life. Gifted individuals are also more likely to feel existential anxiety.

So smart people may not suffer more from regular "cloudy skies" depression, but they do suffer from thinking too damn much about the big questions of life. For me personally, there's nothing more simultaneously uplifting and depressing than thinking about the relative scale of humanity in the context of our universe. After awhile though I just couldn't handle the depressing side, so that's why I started a culture/politics blog rather than a science/religion blog; the former at least gives me some semblance of importance in a world where none of us really truly matter (besides perhaps historically evil people, ironically enough). In general, smart people just think too much and it weighs on one's emotions.

But depression is also one of these 'fad' diseases, buttressed by Big Pharma, lazy psychiatrists, and claimed by every Chicken Little SWPL woman getting over a breakup or not landing that PR dream job. Same with other mental ailments too, the number of which has increased beyond reason. Plus, depression is just such an odd disease - it has no objective test or physical manifestation. I believe it exists, but it's still very hard to define.

Today's questions: Are smart people more depressed? If so, is it because they 'think' instead of 'live'? Can cogitation on the "big questions", especially if the answers lead to materialism, cause depression? Have you suffered from depression and/or anxiety? When, why, what? And how did/do you deal with it? What exactly does depression feel like? Do some people self-diagnosis depression when it's not warranted?

Responding to a Liberal Critic

2012-01-19T05:00:00.002-05:00

I Google myself quite often. (You do too, admit it.) So whenever someone mentions 'OneSTDV' on the Internet, I usually find out about it and go see what overflowing praise they have directed my way. But shockingly, not everyone regards yours truly as a man of unimpeachable wisdom. I've got 'hatas' in many parts of the Internet, though sarcastically referring to me as 'OneSTD' doesn't really constitute criticism. However a few days ago, a liberal whose blog I've never encountered focused an entire post on me, yes me! I respond below.

It is an odd thing, to read the thoughts of your opposite. In my readings of conservative blogs, I have come across a blogger who calls himself "OneSTDV"...On every political issue that I have ever seen him address, his views appear to be the complete and total opposite of mine.

I don't know how many liberal readers come here, but I don't really get it. I spend a lot of time perusing various liberal sites, but I do so in low doses as to avoid going crazy. It's laudable that someone could actively engage with their political polar opposite on a regular basis.

...with his belief that blacks are inherently inferior to whites intellectually. He calls this idea "Human BioDiversity" or "HBD". I call it "racism" myself, and I believe it to be false.

OneSTDV is also quite anti-feminist. While I would call him a misogynist, he himself would probably claim he is not, so we'll compromise and say he is openly and extremely sexist.

I am a vegetarian, OneSTDV is a carnivore, and quite proud of it--and more than that, he is openly hostile to vegetarians.

Well, didn't see any of that coming. Mr. "Mysterious Man" then explains why he puts himself through the intellectual torture of reading my blog, i.e. ideas people prior to the 1960's considered axiomatically normal and true. And then he expounds upon why he finds me so detestable:

I tried for some time to analyze my visceral dislike for his ideas, to comprehend what it was that made us different. I believe I found it when OneSTDV wrote in:

"In the end, we just can't escape biology."

But there is a way in which OneSTDV seems to revel in this fact, as if he is perfectly content with seeing everyone as just "moist robots", as Scott Adams would say. It is perfectly true that we cannot escape biology--but it is my contention that this doesn't mean we ought not to try. For in trying, we become more than just biological entities--we achieve something more meaningful. It is this desire, I think, which underlies all Art and Literature.

Liberalism means freeing the mind to do mental work, Conservatism means freeing the body to do physical work.

And that, I think, is what OneSTDV is striving for. He wants to obey his herd instincts--not a bad thing necessarily, as they got to be instincts for a reason--and this is what most of his ideas are directed towards. The vegetarian issue is a perfect example: as I recently noted, I am a vegetarian because I want to be different, OneSTDV is not a vegetarian because he vehemently does not want to be different.

Funny that I've always considered this a rather pensive, even bordering on sentimental, blog; others appear to not share this opinion, oh well.

As to his other point - in essence, Mr. "Mysterious" reduces my paradigm to biological reductionism, a sentiment with which I don't necessarily disagree. However, and this is how I'd define conservatism, I'd say society must understand that a certain structure, to both our personal lives and to our social connections, exists and that tradition has been a trial and error process by which successful mores have persisted through practical vetting. In other words, innate biology, the motivations of group pressure, and the traditional constructs of society should guide us in how to live. It's not that I abide only by "herd instincts"; rather it's that I understand how biology and tradition should inform us on how to live. (Digression: I abhor vegetarianism because it is an extremely unhealthy diet pushed by anti-white, anti-male, New Age-lite liberals and money-hungry Big Food/FDA/Big Pharma.)

And in doing so, by structuring our own lives and that of our social communities in concert with previously successful ways of living, we are free of the practical and emotional burdens that the liberal revolution has given us, free to pursue our own ends, whether that be "mental work", literature, art, or science. Yet if we ignore the guide of tradition and biology, by encouraging female licentiousness, by demanding racial de-segregation, by dissolving national, tribal borders, we will see a society and the people within it suffer.

One of the commenters then gives this tired condemnation:

The most glaring difference between you and One STDV is that you want to examine your life and to do that you compare it to an opposite to challenge your beliefs. You have an open mind. Those that I've encountered like this guy have closed minds and the last thing they would do is seriously consider anything you have to say as valid and attack everything you stand for. They believe in a closed set, not an open set, and they are much the more intellectually poor for such a mind set.

Ahh the "closed-minded" shaming tactic. I have informed myself of differing worldviews and come to a thoughtful decision based on the information I have gathered - how is that "close-minded"? In essence, "open-minded" does not really even mean anything; it's a specious liberal phrase meaning, "believe what we believe or we'll call you an idiot." I'd argue that liberals have a worldview as well and while we disagree, I wouldn't necessarily call them close-minded in all aspects of their perspective. More like naive, idealistic, evil, and just plain wrong.

I also take issue with the notion that I cut myself off from differing opinions. The very fact that I regularly challenge mainstream dogma, on race, gender, and diet, points to my ostensible open-mindedness. Note we're not talking Truthers here, as one must distinguish between open-mindedness and plain crazy. I was raised in the leftist American education system; my current beliefs relative to that of the liberal establishment provide enough evidence of open-mindedness. I've also defended teacher's unions and sympathized with fat feminists. But I will not apologize for having a strong opinion based on my own thoughtful consideration of a given issue. Liberals throw around terms like "open-minded" and "tolerance", yet they don't mean the absence of criticism or animus; they really want abjectly positive reenforcement and agreement. Only then can one avoid the labeling of "close-minded."

I will applaud Mr. "Mysterious" though for his even-keeled appraisal of my work. And shockingly, his post didn't devolve into Daily Show sarcasm so popular amongst the smarmy Left.

Female Sexuality in Pop Culture and the Implicit Assault on Men

2012-01-18T05:45:00.006-05:00

In The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Steve Carrell's character gets frustrated and resolves to quit women altogether. He decides to stop masturbating, stop chasing after women, and stop thinking about how to attract women. He wants to "go his own way", divorcing himself from the fairer sex as a means of retaining his sanity. Yet the character has a rough go at it; immediately after a hysterical rant venting his frustration, he turns around and sees a half-naked woman on a bus. He looks up and sees a half-naked woman on a billboard. Then three beautiful, scantily-clad, young college-age women brush by him on the sidewalk. Exasperated, he puts his head down and walks home quickly.

In other words, men literally can not escape sexual images in popular culture. While some have described the Internet as merely a repository for porn, the real social trend is that softcore porn has gone mainstream. Pop stars present themselves as sex symbols first and foremost. Actresses do nude scenes for "authenticity." Maxim and FHM have a half-naked celebrity on their cover every month. Many female celebrities are "professionally hot", such as Kim Kardashian and Stacy Keibler. In sum, men are literally "assaulted" by hot women wherever they look. For instance, look at this banner that ran at the top and side of SI.com, a sports site, the last few days (click for full-size image):
The sexual/feminist revolution didn't really free women from the restraints of the patriarchy. Instead, it allowed them to attain power via the primary means they have of attaining power - carnal sexuality. The sexual revolution mostly de-stigmatized female sexual openness, encouraging women to rather forthrightly present themselves as sexual objects in order to gain the attention (and goodies from) men. Feminists consider this as reflecting the persistence of the patriarchy in which society forces women to sell themselves. However, it is actually the autonomous, wily female who understands her primary source of social capital that independently engages in this behavior. These women have it and they gladly flaunt it - then marry Donald Trump.

And what has this done to men, especially beta men (yes, you Internet Male who is not a millionaire or George Clooney) who will never "have" anyone close to Yvonne Strahovski or Mila Kunis. Just like 20-something women have gone crazy by avoiding family and motherhood, 20-something men have gone crazy with a parallel de-stabilizing of their sexuality. Society gives them a little taste of something that they want so badly, but will never ever have. How cruel a tease. Of course, dangling a carrot in front of a horse does not turn out well.

Now I'm not necessarily complaining about this implicit assault on men nor do I think it affects all men. I'm merely pointing out a fact of modern society and the implications on how it affects a segment of the population. Admittedly I've avoided describing what exactly "gone crazy" means in regards to men, but if we are ultimately sexual beings, then this ubiquitous and unhealthy tease cannot have positive consequences.

New York Times Hates White Men Merely for being White Men

2012-01-17T05:05:00.007-05:00

The New York Times, and the coastal elites to whom it speaks, has gone off the deep end. In an article from this weekend, Lee Seigel (yes, we all notice it too) illustrates how "whiteness" has become a sin. I've discussed this before by noting that modern liberalism has imbued white men with Racial Original Sin:

But liberals also believe in "original sin", the notion that we all inherit a corrupt soul and that we can only absolve ourselves through faith and its attendant demands. Thus, as a proxy for salvation through Christ, liberals demand adherence to the leftist racial doctrine that necessitates complete racial integration and views whites as a pernicious collective in both modern and historic times.

Leftists then argue that one can exonerate himself of "original sin" through deeds like forced desegregation, support of unlimited immigration, support of affirmative action, and advancement of the basic hate-whitey ideals. Only then, when a white person has fully accepted his inherent depravity and rejected his presumed white privilege through deeds can he be considered a moral individual.

Yet in this post-racial era, modern leftism has taken it even further. Besides whites being collectively responsible for the (relatively benign) sins of their forefathers, merely being white or evoking "whiteness" is now seen as morally wrong. The article begins with a picture of Romney's large, smiling, well-dressed, fit family. God forbid, an entire family of good-looking white people!

But the horror continues (\sarcasm). Mr. Seigel notes the surreptitious ways Romney messages to potential voters. In doing so, Mr. Seigel's argument reduces to him complaining, basically, that upstanding white people even exist. Seriously, just read this below and ask yourself what the heck Romney is doing wrong?!

It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.

Contrast that with Mr. Romney’s meticulously cultivated whiteness. He is nearly always in immaculate white shirt sleeves. He is implacably polite, tossing off phrases like “oh gosh” with Stepford bonhomie. He has mastered Benjamin Franklin’s honesty as the “best policy”: a practiced insincerity, an instant sunniness that, though evidently inauthentic, provides a bland bass note that keeps everyone calm. This is the bygone world of Babbitt, of small-town Rotarians.

He speaks of the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence as phases of national creativity that we are destined to live through again. He frequently accompanies his recitative with verses from “America the Beautiful.”

Allow me to summarize: Romney dresses well, is exceedingly polite, and has a genuine respect for the founding traditions of this country. And Mr. Seigel complains!? I don't say this with exaggeration - this might be the most insanely hateful article I've ever read. It's borderline genocidal - as in wishing those of a particular ethnic or racial background would stop existing as such. Mr. Seigel presents Romney's probity, even his mere existence as a stable white man, as something immoral and worthy of moral censure.

We see here the endgame of liberalism - they don't even want conservative white people to exist. They view the "bygone world of...small-town Rotarians" as somehow wrong, evidently because these insulated social environments do not possess all the diversity of New York private schools and Mr. Seigel's synagogue. No longer does the left abide by "live and let live". Whiteness, and the edifying personality traits consistent with whiteness, opens one up to criticism from the ruling class.

I can't stress this enough. Mr. Seigel bashes Mitt Romney for merely existing as a venerable white man, nothing more. How sick.

I am a Liberal

2012-01-16T04:29:00.002-05:00

Only Jesus and MLK get official holidays celebrating their birthdays. I guess it makes sense since MLK has been deified by modern American leftism and thus deserves the trappings of divine status. But we needn't rehash the obvious implications of MLK's place in the American social and political landscape; the fawning over him makes even the apathetic cringe. Only Harriet Tubman receives an equally disproportionate amount of "love", as they say.

Wikipedia refers to MLK as "a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism." I ask though - what exactly is a "liberal"? Sure we know the limp-wristed, Pruis driving, sanctimonious American liberal well, but should this class justifiably call themselves "liberal"? Of course not, as the American version of liberalism does not uphold their own principles, imbuing white men with original sin and downplaying their accomplishments via insidious notions such as privilege. While MLK didn't champion this left-liberal race hatred explicitly, he sure seemed open to it and it likely did underlie his wealth redistribution initiatives.

On occasion, I have referred to myself as the "ultimate liberal", in that I afford everyone the same rights independent of their class, their background, or their race. The above statement would likely be classified as classical liberalism or libertarianism in the modern political climate, yet I diverge from these doctrines by extending the idea to collective groups. In sum, any group, Jews, American whites, French, Mexicans, Japanese, even nigs (I use it ironically here :) has the moral autonomy to choose their own collective fate. Sort of libertarian individualism, writ large.

Axiomatically, we should have the freedom to associate with whomever we please, the freedom to decide one's own life trajectory, and the freedom of independent groups to decide their own fate. If all those freedoms are God-given, both as individuals and as collectives, then HBD, immigration restriction, and race or ethnic-based traditionalism, is justified. Groups can decide who they permit into their own lands, an extension of the freedom to associate. In international law, these principles are called "right to self-determination" and the citizenry of a nation should have the freedom to put that right into practice as a collective.

Does this then make me a "liberal", as I apply these ideals equally to every group, even ones that are odds with each other such as Palestinians and Israelis? Is liberalism really about equality and blind justice or is it about imposed egalitarianism and white guilt? I'd say that liberalism has been co-opted by the American Left as the latter, though my conception above does not contradict the notion of "equal rights" and "liberty". In fact, it gives everyone "equal rights" while maintaining a respect for borders and national cohesion.

It appears that the Left has taken a healthy liberalism, one with which I would agree, and perverted it to meet their own ends of flagellating whites and propping up their pet minority groups. I'm afraid though that any pursuit of reclaiming the term "liberalism" by the Right will inevitably go the way of Glenn Beck's odd display back in 2010. He basically just started spouting leftist bromides, convinced that somehow he was combating leftism despite playing by their rules. In essence, the term "liberalism" may be beyond repair, so perhaps we should stick to "freedom" and "equality" as more potent and less sullied alternatives.

Big Government Breaking Down My Door?

2012-01-15T05:00:00.000-05:00

Today is a great day. The government has caught a rogue criminal who will no longer be able to terrorize innocent people:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) apparent war on Amish raw dairy farmers increased on December 6 when they filed a “motion for summary judgment,” with Pennsylvania judge Lawrence Stengler asking for a permanent injunction against dairy farmer Dan Allgyer to forbid him from selling fresh milk out of state.

After a two year expensive, exhaustive undercover operation, including multiple armed raids on Allgyer’s farm, FDA agents and a team of ten federal lawyers amassed over two hundred and seventy-six pages of evidence allegedly proving what Allgyer openly admits, that he is raw, unpasteurized milk to customers who knowingly carry the milk across state lines.

The people of Kinzers, PA can sleep safe at night knowing a vile criminal mastermind like Amish dairy farmer Dan Allgyer has found government resistance at his front door, literally. (\End sarcasm)

A few commenters have criticized me for not defending "freedom" enough or at least not understanding the grave danger inherent to official power. I don't necessarily disagree as I focus far more on the noxiousness of culture than that of government, though the two are undoubtedly linked in America. In sum, I guess I just have essentially no personal experience with government imposition. Maybe a long line awaits me at the DMV or some beaurocratic nonsense annoys me in a professional context, but I can't ever say the government or an official body has thwarted my freedoms or punished me for doing something they unjustifiably consider wrong. For me 1984 is an imaginative dystopian novel written by a dead Englishman, not a dishearteningly realistic account of an evil Communist government or the prescient thoughts of a man seeing the West's future.

I basically just don't get the often shrill hysteria about government gone wild. I basically think, "well, there's absolutely no way it's ever going to happen to me." "First, they came for..." someone else and never got around to coming for me or mine.

Maybe it's due to my relatively insulated life as an American, privileged in a sense that we have a historical stubbornness against big government. Given my lack of personal experience, it's difficult to even fathom how government can go off the deep end, even as Britain actually jails people for thoughtcrimes and Russia is dominated by closed-door leaders. Yet I just can't imagine that coming to America; heck, I can't even imagine that happening in Britain or Russia despite reading the articles myself.

Is this how government gradually embeds itself - by either convincing people that everything's just fine or by relying on the masses to not notice or not believe what goes on behind the scenes? Maybe I'm being naive here or putting too much faith in an elite that I ironically lambast almost every day. Or maybe I'm justifiably more concerned with the dominance of harmful culture, believing that culture can negatively drive our social and personal actions in a way government can never do. Or finally, maybe I just like badass leaders such as Putin - my right-wing parallel of liberalism in which government makes you feel safe at night despite stealing your tooth fairy money while you sleep.

Working Out

2012-01-14T04:09:00.014-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

Like most desk jockeys, I basically need to work out to avoid the stiffness associated with sitting all day. I surmise that the vast majority of back and neck pain plaguing America does not require more doctors and chiropractors, but merely doing 25 minutes of light exercise three times a week.

When I was younger, I got quite obsessed with working out, going to the gym for about 1.5 hours a day for six days a week. That lasted about a year until I realized that I had plateaued for about six months and got frustrated with seeing relatively little gains in musculature. I worked out two or three times a week for years after that and then quit for a couple years, and then went a couple years going once a week.

This past year I decided to start lifting again, going to the gym twice a week (standard push/pull split) and once a week doing a P90-X style workout at home for about thirty minutes. Just so you don't reject that home workout as nothing, I can barely stand by the time I'm done. For lifting, I do almost all free weights with machines for supersets, as you should. I focus on compound exercises like bench, incline bench, shoulder press, bent-over rows, upright rows, side raises, and others, though these do get somewhat boring after having done them for almost half my life. Note that I don't do lower body; I know, I know, criticize me all you want. It just plain doesn't feel good; that's the only way I can describe lower body workouts and some full-body exercises like clean and jerk, which I think should only be done after extensive coaching.

Unfortunately though, I honestly don't really look like I've worked out for so long - at least with my shirt on. With my shirt off, I have the classic upside down triangle shape and obvious musculature (note I do not have particularly low body fat), but my arms just don't look good in sleeves for some reason. This distinction between how I look with a shirt on and with one off was crystallized when a girl who saw me in a wife beater for the first time asked, seriously, if I had done steroids over summer break. This sort of gawking happens quite often when people first see me without a shirt or in a wife beater (I wear wife beaters everyday during summer). I've sort of come to terms with my inability to gain very noticeable muscle with a shirt on and it has largely spurred my discouragement over the years regarding lifting. I know the only thing that will help is going on an absolutely strict diet, but I tried it for three months and it was absolute hell. Like a full-time job basically.

Today's questions: Do you workout? What kind of workouts do you do? What are your goals for working out? What is your body type and has working out changed it? How do you feel after a good workout? What kind of gym do you go to? Hopefully not one like Chuck's. Does anyone else suffer from the same shirt-on/shirt-off distinction I do?

The Abridged (and More Accurate) News

2012-01-13T04:50:00.004-05:00

The news media has become essentially useless. Take these recent BIG stories that the talking heads have yapped about endlessly. I can sum them up succinctly (and sarcastically) as follows:

Troops Piss on Dead Taliban:

“I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” Panetta said. “This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards or values our armed forces are sworn to uphold.”

Let's treat those that resolve to destroy America with the utmost dignity and respect. Next, us "enlightened" folk will shake the hands of our daughter's killers and give mass murderers a respectful burial consistent with his religious wishes...oh wait.

Girl Scouts rejects Boy Dressed as Girl:

The whole debacle began in October, when Bobby Montoya, a 7-year-old who was born with male genitalia but has identified as female since age 2, asked to join the local Girl Scouts. In a panic, they rejected Bobby, which brought national attention. The Girl Scouts of Colorado responded by changing their minds and giving GLAAD a press release that stated, “If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

So gender is not only a construct, but it is so malleable as to change merely on one's own statement. In other words, you can change your sex just by saying out loud, "I am a woman."

Men and Woman are Different, Study Claims:

Men and women are "basically different species," says a new study published Wednesday on the Public Library of Science website that seems determined to validate every Men Are From Mars, Women Cry At AT&T Commercials book ever written.

And the Sun is hot.

GOP's Latino Problem Gets Worse:

Democrats dominate among non-white groups, winning among African-Americans and Asian Americans as well as Latinos. In 2008 Obama carried 67 percent of the Latino vote, and even won the Cuban-American subset previously loyal to Republicans. For GOP presidential candidates, the party’s struggle to attract Latino voters is particularly troubling for two reasons.

Latinos like the Democrat plantation too. And getting uncle Jose over the border more easily.

Is Romney too liberal for being the face of conservatism?

Looking at Mitt Romney's political ideology, one in ten Americans (8%) say he is too liberal, compared to 15% of Republicans and one in five Conservatives (20%).

Doesn't matter - they'll call him racist anyway.

What if Tim Tebow were Muslim?

So I ask, what if Tim Tebow were Muslim? How would our society react if during every interview, Tebow said “Insha’Allah” or “Allāhu Akbar” rather than thank his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Or instead of falling to one knee and praying, Tebow pulled out a prayer rug and faced Mecca?

What if he had one leg?

The posthumous fawning over Christopher Hitchens:

Slate today has 26 articles on the late Christopher Hitchens. For an "iconoclast," he seems awfully popular with everybody who is anybody.

Bashing religion, when the elite think of it as a marker of the bucolic underclass, does not make one an "iconoclast."

(Extremely good-looking) Actress and singer Ariana Grande - "Even Performers Like Me Get Bullied":

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it's so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them. But we shouldn't let them make us unhappy. If anything, we should feel sorry for the people who want us to feel bad about ourselves, because they are the ones struggling for approval...Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are...And it's true. :] We're all fabulous.

Sorry kids, if another kid in school is making fun of you, it's almost definitely not because you're "special", at least not "special" in a good way.

----------------------------------------------------------

In real life, I've put forth the idea that America is OVER-employed rather than under-employed. For the most part, people do nothing besides creating problems which they themselves fix. The news media, along with non-producing jobs like sociology professors, history teachers, and interior designers, champion the importance of something merely so that they have something to do. Then the idea gets entrenched and the talking heads or the party planners can justify their jobs. I mean how did someone actually get funding to study the social differences between men and women? I could get the same insight from asking a first grader about who has cooties. And yet we imbue this class, the technocratic, insulted, self-perpetuating elite, with such undue authority merely because we can't escape listening to their pontifications. After all, if they're always saying something it must be right, right?!

Tranny Weirdos and So Many Gays

2012-01-12T05:55:00.002-05:00

I never bought into the childhood maxim that we should "just accept people for who they are." I've never really tried to understand the abnormal class' oddities; I mostly just gawk at them for being so damn weird. Sure, I do regularly try to sympathize with others, such as fatties who find ways to allay their insecurity, but I largely do not try to "walk a mile" in the shoes of society's unrepentant weirdos. I'm much more interested in staring at them than forging some sort of compassionate bond.

The first class of individuals I intellectually "stared at" was transsexuals, or whatever overly inclusive name they've adopted. Basically, I refer to guys who get their member chopped off and women who grow beards. If there is a stranger phenomenon than that, I can't imagine it. I always enjoy watching documentaries about these people because they sort of fascinate me. This gender confusion likely resides in the brain, so we do have a rational explanation for this odd behavior. But still, it's just so strange to me. It's not exactly wrong, but seeing it gives me a visceral reaction.

Fortunately though, I've never actually met a tranny. Never in my entire life have I encountered someone of this sort. Seriously, out of the tens of thousands of people I've met in various locations, not one person was a transgender loon. Yet if one closely follows leftist media, one would think that trannies are everywhere - how else can we explain the perpetual grousing about "insensitivity"? A recent controversy involved the New York Times discussing tranny anger over the new ABC comedy Work It:

The series "Work It" that debuted last week portrays two men who dress as women to land jobs in a tough economy. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said it was offensive to transgenders because it makes fun of the idea of men wearing women's clothes.

Feministing then got mad because NYT referred to them as "transgenders" instead of "transgendered persons." Seriously. Anyone else thinking that all these complaints come from third-party rabble-rousers looking to use transgenderism as a proxy cause to normalize their own degeneracy?

Related, the liberal media assuredly grossly overestimates the number of trannies, not to mention gays and lesbians, that even exist. Think about it - LGBT comprise maybe 5% of the population; yet we're to believe, as the "gay homophobe" cultural archetype implies, that gays are in every family, every circle of friends, every church, every school, and every community. But based on the likely accurate 5% figure, there just aren't enough gays to go around.

Gays have equal numbers to comparative populations such as Asians and Jews and one notes there are plenty of families, communities, circles of friends, churches, schools, and communities with absolutely zero Asian and Jewish people. Granted these groups do congregate in certain regions of the country, but even spread out, they still wouldn't comprise more than a token few in almost entirely homogeneous communities. So why then does media champion the notion that gays, multiple gays to be exact, inexorably reside in every military unit, football team, and small rural town? Given their relatively low numbers, it's simply inconceivable that anything more than one gay person, on average, would live in a given town or fight in a large section of the military. Yet if you turn on The Real World or Glee, gays seemingly abound in all facets of life. Once more, media presents a decidedly specious conception of society.

[Disclaimer: I don't really care about gays - as Lady Gaga said, "they're born that way." But don't shove it down my throat or harangue me for finding gayness mildly disgusting.]

The Tim Tebow Phenomenon and Making Fun of Whitey

2012-01-11T04:30:00.005-05:00

While framed as humor, one of the most racially evocative cultural displays in recent years came from Weird Al Yankovic's White and Nerdy. As with all of his songs, Weird Al bases this ditty off rapper Chamillionaire's ode to racial profiling entitled "Ridin' Dirty." The song is a moderately funny enumeration of nerd habits, like watching Star Trek and doing math. It's not so much the song's lyrics that make it so illustrative, it's the title. Notice how he connects "nerdy", an undeniably negative character trait associated with society's social outcasts and squares, to "whiteness", a racial demarcation. He can of course do this because the zeitgeist holds whites as inherently uncool and even "unreal", especially relative to "vibrant diverse" populations, especially blacks.

But in today's society, being evidently white is cause for ridicule. Eschewing the now entrenched cultural memes of black and brown America attracts mocking from those that consider white traits like a respectful demeanor and social grace as reflective of "uncoolness". Add in a dash of America's new favorite pasttime - irony and you get the embedded video below.

Background: Brian Scalabrine is a backup power forward originally from 95% white Enumclaw, Washington who has played in the NBA for ten years. He has red hair and he's rather oafish. In other words, he's really "white." What to look for - the sarcastic cheering from the crowd and his fellow players at 0:07 , 0:37-0:42, and 0:53 and the mocking condescension offered by the clearly black announcer, from 0:45 to 0:57. Oh and his nickname - "White Mamba", likely a play off superstar Kobe Bryant's nickname "Black Mamba."

I know some may not see this as race-based and admittedly one has to appeal to commonsense interpretation for that argument. But to those who can see, it's rather obvious. I'll sum the video up as follows, "Haha, look at whitey!"

But despite the above video, occurring at a sporting event that white America increasingly dislikes, the same class of individuals seemingly gravitates towards Mr. Football Jesus - Tim Tebow. In other words, whites passively accept the entrenched notion of multicultural vibrancy, but will reject it wholeheartedly if given the proper outlet, i.e. a venerable white icon in sports or popular culture. Tebow mania continues another week with Tebow and the Broncos meeting Tom Brady's New England Patriots this Saturday night (can't wait). The NFL is now the ultimate sports behemoth, perhaps as a result of helmets and pads covering up black superstars and whites still dominating the marquee positions of QB and head coach. Yet, we've never really seen something like the current Tebow phenomenon.

Much is said about his unabashedly professed Christianity, but plenty of players display a similar faith. While no one will actually admit it, the unparalleled support Tebow receives derives from him epitomizing conservative white Christian America, especially being a good-hearted guy who competes successfully in a black dominated sport. But how can we make such a definitive claim if no one will actually admit it? Well, let's take a look at some statements from Tebow detractors (H/T: SBPDL). Here's a sports radio host:

“‘Toucher,’ as he is known to his listeners on 98.5 The Sports Hub, had this observation on Tebow’s draft-night gathering. ‘It looked like some kind of Nazi rally … so lily-white is what I’m trying to say. Yeah, Stepford Wives.’ Come to think of it, I didn’t see much diversity at the Tebow house. Maybe all that missionary stuff is just a cover, and his family has really spent years setting up a skinhead movement in the Philippines.

And here's former NBA player and ESPN analyst Jalen Rose, who we last saw discussing racial issues when he criticized Grant Hill for coming from a middle-class two-family home, making a rather evident connection:

“The popularity of Tim Tebow is bigger than the game,” said analyst Jalen Rose on the NFL Network. “If he ran for president, he’d get Sarah Palin’s vote. He’s that popular.”

A black gossip site ran a recent article entitled: Tim Tebow is the Republican's Last Great White Hope. The laughably named blog "We are Respectable Negroes" writes of Tebow fandom:

his popularity is a function of Christian Dominionist born again shtick and the "novelty" of a white quarterback with a "black" style of play. In many ways, Tebow is the Eminem of the NFL.

Despite the negative frame, they are correct as I made the same argument back in October.

So if we can conclude that Tebow hate derives from his typifying whiteness, with even a writer at HuffPo noticing a parallel phenomenon concerning Duke hate, then we can surely conclude that white America likes him because he represents them. And that they're hungry to root for someone who looks like them (well, minus the obesity) and shares their values.

[Disclaimer: I still don't think Tebow can keep this up. Despite the win last week, he is wildly inconsistent and I do think much of the football-based criticism of him is justified. Additionally, his in-your-face Christianity can get a little tiresome, but in the grand scheme of cultural icons and Tebow's person in general, that's a rather nitpicky criticism.]

"Shit Girls Say...": Who It's Really About

2012-01-10T05:20:00.003-05:00

There's a recent viral Internet meme called "Shit Girls Say..." The initial web series was performed by men in drag repeating, well, "shit girls say." As with all Internet creations, it has spawned a myriad of spinoffs, but let me mention two popular videos that extend the (unstated) objective of the original content. The first one is "Shit Girls say to Gay Guys" and the second one is "Shit White Girls say to Black Girls" , the latter embedded below.

Despite the generic titles referring to "girls", "white girls" and "single girls", don't naively think these are actually targeted at all women. Note the locations used for background, the mannerisms and tone, and the princess demeanor implied by the scenes.

In sum, these videos mock the ditzy end of the urbanite, SWPL female class. The kind with a liberal arts degree from UC-Davis or NYU who move to New York/LA on their parents' money, get a job at a temp agency until they land their dream position in PR or publishing or party planning. The girls who carry around a token black and their gay best friend as accessories to illustrate their evident open-mindedness. The Carrie Bradshaw acolytes whose materialism and vapidity inevitably comes out when they cry for computer help or complain about looking fat. The kind that go clubbing on Thursday night in a huge pack of similarly dressed girlfriends.

I wonder though what impact this may have, if any. Along with shows like Portlandia and the (abruptly canceled) The Goode Family, it appears that this class has become fodder for mainstream needling. In other words, everyone is starting to notice and in status-driven America, nothing discourages like the acerbic quips offered by disapproving society (it's how Jon Stewart makes a living, right?). But who am I kidding? Nothing will change primarily because, and excuse the sexual reductionism here, men will continue to prostrate themselves in hopes of scoring. As comedian Bill Burr notes, "women are constantly patting themselves on the back about how difficult their lives are...and no one corrects them cuz they want to fuck them."

While half-fag women hater MRAs will use the obnoxious SWPL urbanite as justification for courting robots and pillows, this unfortunate umm "personality crisis (?)" reflects the harm caused by feminism and modern culture. Again, excuse the reductionism, but 20-something women are in a crisis because they've abdicated family and motherhood for shallow careerism. Their hormones are screaming for the real meaning that only motherhood can provide; yet they instead buy purses to show off and dogs with big eyes to dote on. (I'm serious with this last point: women use little dogs as a replacement for children.)

Arizona Racist White Ladies Video: Not "Racist" Enough

2012-01-09T03:40:00.000-05:00

The following video went viral this week, with the Internet rushing to condemn two teen "racists" from Amercia's hub of racism, the state of Arizona. In an American, valley-girl version of the Epic Tram Lady, two youngish looking teen girls inveigh against Mexican illegals. (NSFW: language warning)

Allow me to summarize:

Fucking illegals. Fuck them, motherfuckers. Get those fuckers fucking out of this fucking country.

Despite their apparent boorishness, the girls are clearly amongst "those that can see." From the video, they diagnose the following problems:

-Mexican immigrant crime (though it's moreso their children)
-High relative fecundity of Mexican-Americans
-Refusal to assimilate as reflected in language barrier
-Mexican children underperforming their American peers in school
-Anti-traditionalist nature of multiculturalism; "Los Suns" as example.
-That "our" country is not an arbitrary construct

Given the almost standard tone of YouTube comment sections, the video has gotten a surprisingly high portion of "down" votes. As I've said before, "if it's true, it's racist" and the general response to this video fits that. Hopefully these girls won't have to enter re-education camps or get charged with a crime, ala Ms. Tram Lady.

You guys know the deal here - I almost always defend the "racist." Nothing really to speak of in this instance though, except that young people no longer have the freedom to play along with the multicultural ruse. With all the (somewhat justified) doom and gloom scenarios dominating media, a desperate generation aided by the anonymous Internet may finally wake America up from its leftist slumber. The girls say nothing we haven't heard before, so other than their age, there's nothing new here.

But before you accept these girls as extremely "racist white ladies", let's take a closer listen to the video. Despite their candor and evident shamelessness, their opposition to the PC is incomplete. In fact, their implicit acceptance of one particular tenet of right-liberalism shows just how entrenched the ideas of "polite" right-liberalism really are. At 1:25, the brunette on the right exclaims:

Go back to fucking Mexico, get your fucking green card like everybody else and then come back you fucking morons...It's not that hard.

At 2:52, she makes it clear at whom she directs her rage:

Mexicans..oh sorry, I'll just say illegal Mexicans can go fuck themselves in the ass.

Despite their ability to see the problems of Mexicans' Southwest invasion, they still can't go all the way. They still try to maintain their credibility with respectful society, or at least, can't imagine going against the specious "illegal/legal" notion of immigration that has become the rallying cry of mainstream "conservatives." I guess that's a nitpicky criticism, but it's telling that two utterly angry and candid girls still can't fully break out from the liberal zeitgeist.

Santorum Stillborn Baby Controversy

2012-01-07T05:50:00.002-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

Update: The child was not stillborn. He died a few hours after a live birth. I have updated the post to reflect this error.

There's another controversy with Rick Santorum. He took home his short-lived child, which liberals finds "weird". Both Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson have given their dismissive take on the issue. Both rather heartlessly mocked Santorum over what he did, which the American Pregnancy Association actually advises:

With the loss of your baby, your family members will also grieve. Your baby is someone’s granddaughter, brother, cousin, nephew or sister. It is important for your family members to spend time with the baby. They suggest bathing the baby, taking photos as a keepsake, or even singing it a lullaby. Go figure that, knowing they’ll have only a precious few hours to share with a lost child, some people want to do what they can to capture the moment.

I'm pro-life so I tend to side with the pro-lifers on this issue, but I have to admit it still seems a little strange. Nonetheless, the kind of sarcastic vitriol the left has expressed in this story just shows how debased they really are.

Today's questions: Is taking home and playing with your short-lived or stillborn child "weird" or "crazy"? Should we look at this as normal? Is it strange, but you'll give grieving parents a pass because of their emotional state? Can the left sink any lower than mocking someone who has lost a child?

Big Pharma Corruption and Calling out the Lies

2012-01-06T05:04:00.003-05:00

Political dissidents, on the left or the right, consistently complain about elite treason - as in the elite have no loyalty to the authority positions which they hold. Dissidents contend that the elite engage in backroom dealings in order to buttress their own wealth or standing, largely at the expense of a credulous public. In other words, we can't trust anything the elite says, so we view all their pronouncements, even those ideas backed by considerable institutional support, with skepticism.

The elite, which I generally define as the institutions putatively viewed as protecting the public's interests, have done well in discouraging apostasy. They paint any "heretic" as an Alex Jones type with tin foil on his head and black helicopters buzzing above his house. I suppose even amongst the unjustified smears of racist, misogynist, and idiot, the "crazy-person" label might be the most socially damaging. And thus the lies persist...

Perhaps the biggest and most harmful lie, backed by a coalition of government (FDA), media, academia, and the medical field, is the Big Pharma Life Trajectory. An article at AlterNet wonderfully summarizes how our over-medicated population got suckered into this horrible health crisis. Before I excerpt the article, let me present what I consider the Big Pharma Life Trajectory:

Age 5: Is your child hard to handle? Does he not fall asleep fast enough? Does he cry a lot? Then pump him full of Ritalin!

Age 15: Don't like how your face looks with all those bumps? Don't worry, Accutane is perfectly safe (besides liver damage, birth defects, and deadly allergic reactions).

Age 30: Feeling a little blue? Having trouble falling asleep? Don't like your job? Boyfriend getting on your nerves? Here's a little pill called Prozac that will fix everything.

Age 50: High cholesterol? Holy crap, you're going to get a heart attack anytime now, so take this. And don't worry about those crazy people suffering from hallucinated side effects like joint stiffness, cataracts, or muscle nerve damage.

Age 75: Can't get it up? Everyone needs an active sex life in their 70's, so take this magic pill too.

Now onto the article. A clinical psychologist, Bruce Levine, breaks down the problem as follows:

Big Pharma Corruption: Follow the money, especially when it leads to government.

Not only does the drug industry have influential psychiatrists such as Biederman in their pocket, virtually every major mental health institution is financially interconnected with Big Pharma. Congressional hearings also exposed the American Psychiatric Association psychiatry’s premier professional organization, as being on the take from drug companies. In 2006, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the APA’s $62.5 million in financing. Most relevant here, the APA is the publisher of the psychiatric diagnostic bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and thus the APA is the institution responsible for creating mental illnesses and disorders.

They make stuff up: This is especially profitable when done to children, as now childhood rambunctiousness, not to mention general bratiness, has become pathologized. Fancy names sure help, right? Who could argue with erudite sounding terms like "Oppositional Defiant Disorder", which was originally called, "being an annoying little punk."

While psychiatry lost homosexuality as a mental illness in the 1980 DSM-III, the APA found other groups it could pathologize, groups that could not mobilize and resist, most notably children, who are now routinely given psychiatric diagnoses for behaviors that many of us view as normal for their ages.

Unreliable Diagnoses: None of the practicing "experts" ever agree. And believe me, parental pressure motivates the diagnosis much more than any verifiable facts, such as rich parents who want their kid to get extra time on testing.

What this study demonstrated was that even when experienced clinicians with special training and supervision are asked to use DSM and make a diagnosis, they frequently disagree, even though the standards for defining agreement are very generous

Biochemical Imbalance Mumbo Jumbo: Ever read a psychiatry text? It makes post-modernism appear lucid.

depressed Americans became far more receptive to serotonin-enhancing drugs such as the “selective-serotonin-reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft...

SSRIs can make some depressed people feel better; however, alcohol makes some shy people less shy, but that’s not enough evidence to say that shyness is caused by an alcohol imbalance. The truth is—and scientists have known this for quite some time—that serotonin levels are not associated with depression.

Pseudoscientific Drug Effectiveness Research: They lie about drug research and Big Pharma has all the top researchers in their pockets. If you know about the speciousness of academic research, you need no further explanation here.

In 2000, a Psychiatric Times article concluded: “In fact, when antidepressants are compared with active placebos, there appear to be no differences in clinical effectiveness.”

He missed some stuff that contribute to problems like depression and childhood irascibility (such as single motherhood, the low-fat diet craze, 'Bowling Alone' syndrome) and pandered a little bit to leftist interests, but overall Dr. Levine does a great job of showing the corruption of the entire medical drug industry. This problem persists because there's no accountability; all the groups are in the scam together. Yet their credibility does not diminish, even as the FDA advises eight year olds go on statins and anti-psychotic drugs be given to toddlers. And those that speak out against this scam get branded as conspiracy theorists and quacks.

Obscene Liberal Anger

2012-01-05T05:00:00.001-05:00

On just about every partisan website, you'll find something along the lines of, "those guys on the other side are so horrible. They swear at us, yell mean things, offer all sorts of lewd and offensive insults, and are just plain reprehensible people." Yet I don't particularly like generalizing the overall disposition of the left. Note here that I specify the left's "disposition", not their motivations or their beliefs. I hesitate to make sweeping statements about the character of an entire political category, especially since the given characterization is often couched in a relative frame. As in, "liberals do this horrible thing, but conservatives never do this horrible thing." I know both sides of the spectrum attracts nutty people, the kind who write in all CAPS, refuse to make a coherent or relevant point, and spew vitriolic insults to anyone who opposes them.

The difference: liberal uncouthness exists at the very top levels of organized leftism, not merely evident in the rantings of a crazy online commenter. And liberals don't condemn the nutcases in their midst, they sometimes even deify them. With that said, I'll engage in a little partisanship here by bringing back on an old story made anew via Rick Santorum's surprising second place finish in Iowa.

Back in 2003, Rick Santorum made some "anti-gay" statements which the histrionic gay mafia interpreted as him comparing homosexuality to beastility and incest:

Santorum then brought up the then-pending U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which challenged a Texas sodomy law, and went on to declare that:

* he did not have a problem with homosexuals, but "a problem with homosexual acts"
* the right to privacy "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution"
* and that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts which "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family"

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

"Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family."

I vehemently disagree with Santorum here, as I believe we must have a right to privacy in our own homes, even if we engage in societally maladaptive acts. But Santorum makes a valid point in arguing that there are limits to American law in regards to what we do in our own homes, analogous to freedom of speech not applying to yelling "Fire" in a crowded movie theater. I think here we must make a distinction between bestiality and homo-sex by the obvious notion that the latter relates to two consenting adults. Nonetheless, he does correctly argue, with appeal to analogy, that not all private acts are necessarily protected. (Polygamy should be in the same category as homosexuality though, if using the "consenting adults" justification.)

Yet the gay mafia got really annoyed, with the ignominious gay pundit Dan Savage leading the charge. He decided to punish Santorum for giving his opinion. Now contrary to what the hatas may think, I do genuinely try to look at all sides of an issue. So in this case I ask - does Santorum deserve the despicable campaign (described below) successfully promoted by the aptly named Savage? Perhaps his comparison may have been overboard, but he did relate his opposition primarily to the health of society. And whether they like it or not, gays can not form biological, nuclear families which Santorum regards as the bedrock of modern society, an exclusive but not intolerant opinion. In brief, I'll say that Savage and his gay acolytes did something far worse than what would have been justified.

So what did Savage do? It's called a Google Bomb and up until yesterday I believe, it was the number one result when searching "Rick Santorum." Savage started a website giving a new definition for the term "Santorum" (Trigger Warning - disgusting):

The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

I know the political arena gets quite testy, especially when political ideas encroach on that which we personally consider sacred, e.g. the freedom to sodomize. But why do liberals always engage in such indecency. They go straight for the jugular and express their opposition in the most bawdy terms imaginable. Here's another example from Ann Coulter-lite S.E. Cupp's hate mail:

why is it obama fault. david lettermen comments on palin. u white slut. u need some n****r d*ck in ur mouth. Always blaming blacks for yall folks problem. U dizzle little white whore. U need to be f*ck by a n****r, thats what u reall want. SHUT YOUR MOUTH SLUT.

Again, I don't believe that conservatism has none of these sorts of individuals in its ranks. But liberalism really seems to thrive on this sort of disgusting invective.

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I searched awhile to find examples of right-wing hate mail directed at well-known pundits or sites like Feministing, but almost all the hate mail shown on the Internet is from liberals. Here's some relatively tame hate mail sent to Alan Colmes and admittedly a few bad ones sent to Amanda Marcotte. But nothing compares to the hate mail directed at Michelle Malkin:

You are such a mean bitter old bitch, it’s a shame the Japs didn’t murder your parents before they came to the U.S.

fuck off and die you worthless lying cunt

You aren’t even an American so get the fuck out of my country you ugly fuckin cunt. Go back to bumfuck chink town and masturbate cuz no man would want you. Fucking whore.

In sum, liberals use either one of two strategies: making a sexual comment or calling the conservative "stupid." The ubiquitousness of the latter, especially on forum debates, approaches that of Godwin's Law.

In Praise of Piano Playing

2012-01-04T05:20:00.008-05:00

I've noted before that I just don't "get" music. I don't get how the notes just appear in someone's head or how a melody forms that actually sounds good. But music affects me nonetheless; music can give me goosebumps or make me feel a certain way.

I've recently begun watching and listening to piano playing on YouTube. Its sort of hypnotizing to watch their fingers move quickly. And since I prefer to listen to artistic renditions of popular songs, I like hearing something largely bereft of musical sophistication turned into something of impeachable substance. The very best YouTube piano player I've encountered is Sonny Choi. I will put a video of hers below, but I hesitate to do so because showing just one of her videos does not do her talent justice:

The rest of her collection can be found at this link. Classical piano music, with a slight modern edge, appears to be catching on in Europe with an article on another attractive Asian female, Alice Sara Ott, recently appearing in England's The Telegraph.

Perhaps I could muse here on Western tradition or Anglo-Asians adopting high culture increasingly abandoned by Western natives in favor of the crass tastes of their "diverse" brethren (feel free to do so in the comments). But sometimes we should just sit back and enjoy something without needlessly cogitating on social or political ideas. This piano playing just makes me feel good inside and that's what art is supposed to do. It's supposed to make us feel something independent of a consciously intellectual rationalization. Her music, based on pop songs but altered to an extreme degree, provides that sort of satisfaction. Art should be transcendent, as opposed to merely comprised of the self-important pronouncements of its creator. We need more classic art like Ms. Choi gives us. So bravo.

Update: I respond to comments here. General response - this has nothing to do with her looks and I've never been into Asian chicks anyway. Once in awhile, it's good to just accept something at face value (like my admiration of her talent) instead of trying to look for some hidden motivation.

Taking Pride in Mediocrity

2012-01-03T04:50:00.000-05:00

Minnesota Vikings fullback Jim Kleinsasser retired yesterday after fourteen, largely anonymous, years in the NFL. He plays perhaps the least heralded and most violent position, as there are essentially no stats for what he does - collide with other huge men running at full speed. He summed up his career as such:

Now, you've got to understand. I came from North Dakota. Here I am in the Vikings locker room. That was the team. Randy Moss to the left of me, Cris Carter to the right, John Randle across the locker room. I'm like, 'Holy crap! What planet am I on? What am I doing here?' But soon you realize how everyone's got a job to do, and if you do your job, you belong.'

So here he is, some absolutely unknown guy from North Dakota lining up next to legendary Hall of Famers Randy Moss and Cris Carter. As he notes, Kleinsasser didn't seek the kind of fame and acclaim afforded to those men, a pursuit that would have undoubtedly ended in failure. Instead, he took pride in his thankless job, understanding that even those low on the totem pole served an important purpose. He understood that the workers like him can garner satisfaction from persistence and a job well done, no matter that the given job does not set off fireworks or make headlines.

I think this is a very healthy way to view our own lives, especially in the context of the modern rat race. We live in a society in which all our basic needs are met and thus we have the leisure to engage in unnecessary status mongering. So we spend too much on a fancy college degree, postpone starting a family in order to scale the career ladder, sacrifice relationships for long hours on the job, view people as means not ends, and always look to get ahead, no matter who or what we subvert. Part of it comes from this obsessive focus on status and part comes from the entitlement paradigm we've discussed here frequently. A generation raised on "you're all winners" and within a zeitgeist that sees every child as a potential Ivy Leaguer can not fathom that they don't rise to the top of the adulthood food chain.

In sum, modern society does not take pride in the thankless, anonymous work or respect someone in that stratum because so much, our self-esteem, our exceptions, our social capital, depends on our ascension to the top. We openly disparage the "mediocre" class, refusing to give respect to those that have made the most of their ability or those that have abdicated themselves from status hoarding. Not everyone can be a superstar, yet we hold everyone to the highest standard of accomplishment. We don't look reverently at the bruising fullback who went to work every day and did his job well. And in doing so, we not only unjustifiably diminish his work, but we disregard how society functions as the sum of its parts.

I'll finish by extending this analysis further, arguing that, in fact, we are all the "middle-management" worker bee. Unless your name is LeBron James, J.K. Rowling, or Steve Jobs, your employer can get rid of you without missing a beat. Yes, you with the fancy degree, the years of experience, the window office and your own secretary. You really think that Google will crash without one of its admittedly fantastic programmers? Think that Yale will really miss Dr. Big-Name Academic if he switches schools? Think Goldman Sachs will stop making money if hotshot finance grad takes a job elsewhere? In other words, you don't really matter that much. You are undoubtedly a worker bee. But don't look down on yourself. Have pride in doing a good job. Have pride in going to work and gaining the trust of your peers. Have pride in providing for your loved ones. Have pride in being part of a team. Have pride in an honest day's work, your work ethic, and your diligent training. But don't fall victim to your own hubris in thinking that you matter so much more than everyone else.

Libertarian Creationists

2012-01-02T05:30:00.007-05:00

We often discuss liberal creationists here at OneSTDV - liberals who believe evolution magically stopped at the neck when humans left Africa. These liberals believe that they can impose egalitarianism onto nature as they have resolved to do with society. In sum, liberal creationists can not conceive that nature has made distinct races with distinct proclivities, instead preferring an "evil white man" narrative for explaining the evident differences in behavior, wealth, life outcomes, and overall societal progress.

We have yet to deal with an equally deluded form of politically-based creationism - libertarian creationism. While he may be pandering to the electorate or trying to distance himself from those "horrible" newsletters, alt-right savior Ron Paul had this to say on race differences:

Paul explained that while he supports the fact that the legislation repealed the notorious Jim Crow laws, which forced racial segregation, he believes it is the government, not the people, that causes racial tensions by passing overreaching laws that institutionalize slavery and segregation. Today's race problems, he said, result from the war on drugs, the flawed U.S. court system and the military.

"The real problem we face today is the discrimination in our court system, the war on drugs. Just think of how biased that is against the minorities," he said. "They go into prison much way out of proportion to their numbers. They get the death penalty out of proportion with their numbers. And if you look at what minorities suffer in ordinary wars, whether there's a draft or no draft, they suffer much out of proposition. So those are the kind of discrimination that have to be dealt with, but you don't ever want to undermine the principle of private property and private choices in order to solve some of these problems."

That could have come straight from Racialicious. I mean, blacks go to jail more often because of discrimination in the court system?! Just get the state out of the way and blacks and whites will create a kumbaya utopia, huh? Dare I say he sounds extremely neocon-ish here, as well as utterly leftist.

We shouldn't find this surprising though. I've been saying for weeks now that Paul's ideological loyalty to (utterly despondent and anti-American) libertarianism is largely orthogonal to the race realism espoused by so many of his fans on the alt-right. While most libertarians support a meritocracy, they do in opposition to the state, not due to any notion of fairness or as a reflection of differences in inherent capability. To libertarians, there is only one evil - the state. Fittingly, they consider anything derived from the state or independent of the state largely inconsequential to their political aims.

In doing so, libertarians countenance a rather subtle form of creationism. They view the state as omnipotent, an ironic parallel to liberals who believe the state can do any miracle. Libertarians sort of agree with this sentiment, but they view the state as infinitely capable of malevolent action. In formulating this narrative, they ignore the notion that Man himself is ultimately the source of evil, not the institutions which he creates. It is Man, with a hindbrain far more suited to tribal living and practical action than life within civilized society, that finds his carnal desires spurring him towards avarice, wrath, and gluttony.

Libertarians ignore that civilization exists as a means of dampening these desires, forcing Man to enter into an implicit social contract in which he moderates his baseness in order to enjoy modern comfort. We have organizations in place, such as the state, to ensure he keeps his end of the bargain. Traditional constructs, such as the police, religion, the career ladder, and cultural shame, largely understood how society worked in this regard. Most notably, the Church couched this idea in a spiritual context by imbuing every man with an Original Sin. We can of course ignore the spiritual foundation and note the Church's understanding that civilization, partly in the form of religion, exists to abate Man's inherent carnality.

Yet libertardians would have you believe that the state corrupts Man instead of merely allowing some morally repugnant men the context in which to propagate their evil. I agree with the idea that institutions of centralized power allow corruption to spread far more easily. However, the American government is dangerous primarily because of what it has become - an anti-white, anti-male, leftist, elitist, technocratic institution. Of course our government is bad; look at the kind of politics it enforces. Libertarians can't understand this distinction though, viewing any formulation of state as wrong and fully responsible for Man's evil. Overall, they get the arrow of causation wrong, censuring the state when a more fundamental building of block of society, Man himself, should be blamed.

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Update: Some clarifications and response to "You're a Jew" comments, especially ironic since I reject the notion that Paul is a Jew-hater. I wrote this post primarily in opposition to libertarianism, which Paul embodies. But I also wrote it in the context of why Paul is (unjustifiably) so popular with the alt-right/HBD crowd. He appears to explicitly reject the underlying premise of HBD conservatism and yet a good portion of race conscious traditionalists think he's the greatest politician ever. This makes absolutely no sense unless the alt-right prefers hating "neocons" to supporting anything positive. FWIW, here is Paul Kersey criticizing Paul's libertarian creationism and paleocon Roach calling Paul a "crackpot" and explaining his "visceral dislike of Paul."

Beta Males in Hollywood Understand Women

2012-01-01T05:35:00.002-05:00

I just recently saw the movie No Strings Attached starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. It's about this generation's "friends with benefits" fad, whereby friends have a platonic relationship augmented by frequent coitus. Upon entering this sort of pact, the two friends generally agree to avoid emotional attachment and common relationship issues, such as jealously. The movie was a standard, though slightly raunchy, romantic comedy where (spoiler alert!) the two leads end up together.

Surprisingly though, the movie reflected a Roissy-esque understanding of female sexual attraction. Kutcher's character, Adam, is largely a beta SWPL who gets dumped by his hot girlfriend. She later starts going out with his alpha-celebrity father, leaving him distraught over her betrayal. In trying to get over his ex, Adam begins having emotionless sex with Natalie Portman's character, Emma. Emma is certain to define the relationship as merely for sex and Adam obliges her. About halfway through the movie, he goes off the beta deep-end, getting clingy, showing her affection (makes her a mix CD), and ultimately causing their "break-up" by professing his love for Emma. After six weeks of not speaking, Emma contacts Adam again, who brusquely conveys his lack of interest. He has a fling with another girl, witnessed by Emma. After Adam continues his aloof behavior, Emma can't help but love him back. Classic Roissy doctrine here - women hate clingy betas and they love aloof, womanizing alphas.

While Hollywood's propaganda machine often presents a specious narrative, it does largely get women right. From high school queen bees to aging women with ticking biological clocks, many Hollywood movies display an understanding of what women want and how different classes of men react to that. Take another Hollywood movie written by men - The 40 Year-Old Virgin. The main character is a classic, nice-guy herb who "puts the pussy on a pedestal." He gets involved with an aging 40-something woman who describes herself as such on their first date (paraphrased):

I need to start dating nice guys like you. I've dated all kinds of assholes before. But you're different...I have three children, but their father isn't around.

In a post from 2010, Roissy/Heartiste dissects the wide array of Game techniques evident in a pickup scene from Vicky Christina Barcelona. Another post from Roissy/Heartiste describes the utterly obvious Game-relevant themes of the 2009 film 500 Days of Summer. On YouTube, Asian filmmakers KevJumba and Ryan Higa put out an ode to nice guys in which they describe the "nice-guy/douchebag" dichotomy.

Notice a pattern in who creates the content? Well, for a different take on women, Candace Bushnell wrote the Sex and the City books and Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love. While we still have "butt-kicking babes" shows like Buffy and the upcoming Haywire, many pop culture offerings do illustrate the reality of female sexual attraction. And in general, the people creating this realistic content are betas and omegas like Woody Allen and the Apatow crew.

It's interesting to realize this - that the men who suffer from failure with women often display the best understanding of female idiosyncrasies. I suppose this happens because those that fail, especially those of an intellectual bent, are spurred to understand their failure. The desire to rationalize rejection from women becomes even stronger when these rejections occur as a result of doing exactly what women say they want - "a nice guy who will treat me right." So Hollywood attracts a certain sort of aggrieved beta male whose history of unrequited affection manifests in cutting tales of female frivolity and shallowness. Perhaps these men create the content above as a means of working through their anger/sadness, getting laughs from something that once caused them pain.

New Year's Gameplan

2011-12-31T05:00:00.001-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

Last year, we asked the readership: "Are you hungover?" This year, we ask the readership, will you be hungover? What are your plans for tonight? If you're going out, any social pattern you're looking forward to noting? Will you actually watch the TV when the ball drops and that New Year's song plays (last year they barely played any of it before switching to Sinatra's New York, New York)? Do you wish Dick Clark would call it a career or do you ignore his stroke-induced speech and enjoy the legend ushering us into yet another year? Do you get into the spirit of it being a "brand New Year!"? Or is that just for chicks and fat people? Are the people in Times Square just a little too excited? Do you want to punch every single person wearing those year-glasses? What's your favorite part of the New Year's celebration?

Sometimes Big Law and Order Screws People Over

2011-12-30T06:15:00.003-05:00

At OneSTDV, we don't often defend ghetto black football players charged with statutory rape, but there's a first time for everything. Leftist sports rag Sports Illustrated gets all teary-eyed about a very talented black, college football player currently in prison. But in perhaps the most surprising news, he basically didn't do anything wrong. Long story short:

Big black football player at age seventeen gets drunk at a party and has sex with an uber-slut girl who claims to be sixteen. That same night, she also has sex with another football player and a 27 year-old man. Turns out, she was a few months shy of thirteen years-old. He loses his scholarship to play at Texas, but still gets admitted to Oklahoma State. While at OK State, he pleads guilty to the charges and subsequently gets kicked off the team after two promising seasons.

The kid made a mistake, but how was he to know that she wasn't even thirteen? Sometimes a justified Big Law and Order system reaches too far in order to engage in moral posturing. And sometimes that same system which keeps us safe ruins lives, as is the case for Mr. Collins. He caught on with another football program at Texas Southern, but then got careless with the terms of his probation. For example:

He blew off his weekly sex offender class, and when he did show up he "exhibited a narcissistic attitude and failed to take the program seriously," according to a probation report.

In April 2009 Collins failed a drug test for marijuana, violating his probation. He was sentenced to 30 days in county jail. After his release, his probation officer discovered nude photos of Collins and his 20-year-old girlfriend on his cellphone -- a violation of the order that he avoid all material portraying "nudity of a child or adult."

Six weeks into his employment at Pilgrims Pride, Collins skipped three straight days of work without calling in and was terminated. He didn't tell his P.O. about it, which was another probation violation. He also failed, for the umpteenth time, to show up and pay for a state-administered lie detector test. Collins tried to explain during a recent phone interview. "I got two kids," he said. "I don't have $200 to give someone to give me a polygraph test. I don't have that money to waste."

In April 2011, Collins admitted to drinking a beer on two occasions. (Collins is barred from drinking alcohol.)

That day, police responded to a domestic dispute call from Collins' girlfriend, who they found alone and bearing no evidence of injury or an altercation...The police were already going to take Collins in for an outstanding traffic citation, but tossing the phone earned him a disorderly conduct charge..

Yes, he should have done everything necessary for his probation, but come on. The guy didn't really commit a crime in the first place and now he sits in jail for smoking pot, drinking beer, looking at personal porn pics, and skipping a few unnecessary meetings. The guy is clearly benign, with absolutely no history of dysfunctional or violent behavior. And he will sit in jail as a prisoner for the next couple of years.

I'm a huge proponent of the Prison Industrial Complex, but sometimes the law overreaches. I guess this is what Sam Francis deemed the "tyranny" aspect of "anarcho-tyranny." Should we then reconsider our stance on harshly punishing criminals? I still don't think so, as no system can work perfectly nor should the absence of perfection justify dismantling a particular institution. We can however note when government, in this case overweening district attorneys who will make work for themselves no matter what, oversteps boundaries.

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Clarification: Let me be clear: I think it's abhorrent that he had sex with a 12 year-old. I assuredly do not want 12 year-olds having sex, period. But there are a small portion of 12/13 year-old girls, especially with puberty starting so early these days, that legitimately look like they are in their late teens. If a girl who has a fully developed body and exudes sexual confidence tells a man she is sixteen, then he has no reason not to believe her. I just don't see how you can punish someone for believing a very believable lie.

More Thoughts on Ron Paul: Jews and Explicit Racial Conservatism

2011-12-29T06:20:00.009-05:00

I've been meaning to write a Ron Paul post for a few days now, but then I realized just how many different issues arise in this discussion. I don't have time to go over all of them, such as Paul's vile, naive, and historically ignorant castigation of America for Islamic animosity, so I'll just cover the two topics below.

It's the Jews, stupid: For the last week or so, HalfSigma has been beating the drum that Ron Paul really hates Jews. Do I think Paul hates Jews? Well, let me say that I do not believe Dr. Paul is motivated merely by basic Jewish hatred. Instead, I believe Paul is, as he says he is, a strict libertarian Constitutionalist and that these principles dictate his often times ideologically rigid positions. But I believe this ideological loyalty has led him to harbor a slight animosity towards Jews, as he collectively blames Jews for their disproportionate membership amongst neocons and banksters.

In his series of posts on this topic, HalfSigma rejects Paul's close association with Murray Rothbard as evidence that Paul is not a Jew-hater, calling Rothbard a "self-hating Jew" and thus apparently disqualified from membership in the tribe. But, as I've noted before, a proper definition of anti-semitism should include solely ethnic-based animosity and thus even a "self-hating" Jew would find a similar fate as Edith Stein. That Paul can disregard both Rothbard's and von Mises' ethnic heritage implies that he is assuredly not a Jew-hater.

But Paul's Jewish problem goes beyond his own presumed biases, especially as it relates to his popularity amongst the anti-PC right. For example, take a look at this comment thread at Mangan's where my reticence regarding Paul's lack of explicitly race conscious nationalistic fervor is met with questions about my motives. One commenter notes that I have "the same dislikes of Paul that the Jewish HBD or Paleo bloggers have", another calls me "useless", and more than a few offered the inexorable "neocon" characterization. Funny that I criticize Paul for not celebrating white Christian America and all the Paul-bots can do is respond that I'm a Jewish neocon. In doing so, the Paul-bots expose their only real reason for liking Paul - he pisses off all the Jews, even the "conservative" ones, and won't genuflect before Israel (I like the latter though).

The alt-right Paul-bots ignore the fact that Paul has said essentially nothing positive about white America, thinks vague liberty is more important than traditionalist culture, opposes federal efforts for finding illegals, opposes a border fence, and has a pretty bad record on immigration, including an F from NumbersUSA. Sure, Paul pisses off the media and wonderfully articulates the problems of an insulated elite, but so does Sarah Palin, who reflects the heartland much better than politician lifer and doctor Paul. But then again, Paul's popularity lies in his singular ability to antagonize Jews, so none of these other things matter. Once again, the negative frame of reflexive alt-right pessimism manifests. (FWIW, I don't mind that he angers AIPAC Jews due to his lack of support for Israel because members of those kinds of groups have no loyalty to America, but his corresponding dhimmitude absolutely sickens me.)

Sterile conception of America and spurring a conservative renaissance: The Paul supporters will respond something along the lines of Chuck Rudd:

First and foremost, the modern Western tradition – and American culture – is based upon a strong rule of law, property rights, and the ability of families, communities and other small bodies (read: not centralized governments) to congeal in a natural and unimpeded way. Families and communities prosper because local support is a necessity. When distant support from a centralized authority enters the picture, those local ties begin to fray because they are less necessary.

Basically, alt-right Paul supporters believe that "liberty" is both a necessary and sufficient condition for a return to a racially conscious white America. Before I argue against this, let me show how this sterile view of America leads to, ironically enough, a neocon paradigm as illustrated by this comment thread:

Moreover, if you don't believe that states rights IS American culture, and local control of decision-making IS American culture, then you are a liberal, and neocon, full stop.

Paul is anti-collectivist as he believes that economic and personal freedom are axiomatic - that the power and the essence of a society and nation follows from that. to Paul, that freedom defines the United States - not an adherence to a certain culture, creed, or religion.

"Economic and personal freedom" and "states rights" - that's America, huh? No "apple pie, baseball, and Chevrolet"? No southern hospitality and northern Yankees? No pre-colonial Ivy League colleges? No Bible belt football? No Paul Revere's midnight ride, Pilgrims landing at Plymouth rock, Washington's cherry tree or crossing the Delaware, or Franklin's kite? No Boston Tea Party, California Gold Rush, or Pony Express? No Whitman, Twain, Hemingway, or Fitzgerald? No Leave it to Beaver, the quiet suburbs, the close small towns of the Midwest?

This sounds an awful lot like the neocons who think anyone can become an American, just as long as they buy into our "freedoms." The libertarian viewpoint says nothing about how a nation, built upon laws but not defined by them, ultimately arises from the genetic lineage of the people. If one defines nations merely by its Constitution, what separates America from the presidential republic of Central African Republic, the democratic republic of Zaire, and the constitutional republic of Mexico. I also aver that the Founders would never have supported this viewpoint, as they understood racial differences and how America, a land on a hill, owed itself in part to an intellectual inheritance from Europe.

As for the notion that culture will once again rise organically from political freedom, I'll cite Steve Sailer here. Note that I quote this in regards to how whites will or will not view themselves as a collective, not in regards to whites engaging racial nepotism.

Over the last millennium, something perhaps unique in world history occurred in Europe, especially in its northwestern quadrant (and, in later years, in its offshoots like America): a movement away from the fractiousness of clan and tribe, but without the usual congealment into despotism.

white Americans don’t want to act like the rest of the world, as the white nationalists advise them to, they want to act like white Americans. They don’t want to submit their individual freedom to their extended families, they want to marry whom they want to marry and then focus on their nuclear families.

In other words, whites don't appear particularly likely to "come together." I agree with Sailer here that whites will not just stand up and shake off 50 years of cultural programming from media, academia, and the elites. This assuredly will not happen in a "freer" society either. Especially if one considers Paul's hypothetical leadership being antagonistic towards the Republic (common man does not distinguish between his neighbors and the federal government) and reluctant to actually say anything good about American culture.

While I've argued quite often that conservative America lies dormant, they need social sanction to express their views. Right now, only the anonymity of the Internet provides that. What we need is a socially acceptable, widescale institution to give our ideas social merit. Then someone in the Ivory Tower or polite suburban society can point to a national figure with the proper credentials as evidence that not only hicks from Alabama have these conservative viewpoints. For example, note how many times Phil Donahue mentions Jared Taylor is a Yalie. We are social animals and until some break occurs in our overriding culture, propagated by the elites in government, academia, and media, people will be too scared to say anything anti-PC.

Admittedly, one could argue I've just championed an impossible task - changing the elites' minds. Maybe I have or maybe I unjustifiably reject the idea that a mass uprising could occur by itself; OWS does not count, as it was totally abetted by widespread cultural leftism. Possibly, but I still think that a catalyst needs to come. The people are definitely ready, but they need a spark. And Paul, in regards to conservative consciousness and race realism, will assuredly not provide it. Another better alternative - transparent media and elite hatred of a conservative white Christian may be the best "spark", as evinced by recent rallying around Tim Tebow and Sarah Palin.

Other issues amongst tons of others: libertarians are blank slatists; Paul is a little too Alex Jones; Paul sure seems to like Muslims; states may be sovereign, but America is still a cohesive nation and culture; best of a bad lot? - No, I like Bachmann more, but ultimately I can't really support any candidates unless Tom Tancredo or Sheriff Joe Arpaio run. Admittedly though, those old "racist" newsletters make him look GOOD and there are some things I like about Dr. Paul, especially his understanding of elite collusion.

Mall of America Brawl and What's Next?

2011-12-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

[OK sorry, no Ron Paul post today. Hopefully for tomorrow.]

Punchline: blacks.

Oh those "young people", when will they ever learn? In the race realist sphere, we post these types of stories almost daily. I guess we do so as a way of saying, "hey MSM, everyone sees the pattern so start paying attention." Yet I've largely grown tired of noting single examples of black pathology or even the widespread relative dysfunction of blacks and Hispanics. As I remarked during the recent The Atlantic race-intelligence controversy, "[a]rguing about...racial differences in intelligence is like arguing about whether gravity exists or if the sun rises in the east." Basically, my answer to these unending incidents of NAMs actin' a fool is - so?

At his aggregator site, Ferdinand has dubbed these stories "flash mob porn." Of course, porn offers nothing substantial; and I don't need convincing that blacks get into fights and ignore the most basic decorum. After all, I went to some heavily black public schools. I think almost everyone except the most deluded of liberals don't need convincing either. So is it time to move on? Should we just presume the masses have already rejected the leftist media's narrative regarding black dysfunction? Take a look at essentially every single YouTube comment - my favorite "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." Maybe the war has already been won or, in fact, it never existed in the first place. No one seems to actually think we're at war with Eurasia, so we waste our energies in dismantling a social narrative whose only adherents insulate themselves in the Ivory Tower and liberal urban enclaves.

Of course, to the "genteel racists" (how Phil Donahue once characterized Jared Taylor), the question of "what's next" is a sticky subject. Who wants to be the first "respectable racist" to countenance a return to Jim Crow or South Africa style apartheid? I can't imagine many HBDers will gladly go that route, but if blacks can not live within a civilized society (a sentiment repeated constantly on blogs on my blogroll), then what other options exist? To now illustrate the coward point myself, I will of course refrain from offering an answer to "what's next", but I won't ignore the fact that an answer needs to be given.

The Oddity of Apathy

2011-12-27T05:30:00.000-05:00

Every social commentator has a preferred enemy. These targeted groups include liberals, the 1%, the banksters, the neocons, the "extremist" Right and so forth. A particular ideological group will blame another particular ideological group for almost all the problems of society. I won't begrudge the narrative here, as I engage in this sort of rhetoric myself, attacking the overweening leftist elite as the primary cause of society's failings. This aggressive group is surely a problem, but one could justifiably argue that a concentrated elite are merely a necessary, not sufficient condition for a liberal downfall; for it is only in a society full of the complacent that an antagonistic elite can attain power and enact their noxious politics.

Take what the Manosphere has dubbed "divorce rape." This past week Mel Gibson had about $450 million stolen from him and basketball star Kobe Bryant will undoubtedly lose tens of millions to his soon-to-be ex-wife. This follows a general trend of successful male celebrities getting ripped off by their gold-digger ex-wives, such as Paul McCartney almost giving half his Beatles fortune to a one-legged prostitute.

I've had a few conversations in real life about these stories and I just couldn't understand the apathy of my friends and family members. While I don't care that Mel Gibson or Kobe Bryant lose a dime, I have a passionate loyalty to justice and this rather transparent theft really gets to me. Here we have men that put their lives into a certain craft and sacrifice tremendously to rise to the top of their professions. Yet the court ignores their struggle, coming in to steal their money and their hard work. The court transfers this wealth to an individual who has done essentially nothing to deserve that fortune. But even worse, if a man is ultimately defined by his passion and pugnacity, then "divorce rape" is the foremost rejection of his value as a person.

Yet so many simply do not care. They shrug their shoulders. They ask why the man didn't have a prenup. They offer a tepid condemnation of the problem. I just don't get it, how can people feel nothing when encountering such a perversion of justice and morality? Do most people have no concept of morality? Do most live selfish lives where gross notions of fairness have no meaning? Are most simply unable to connect, both intellectually and emotionally, to these larger ideals? Or maybe I'm the odd one, preferring the transcendent to the personal.

Christmas, Religion, and the Elites

2011-12-25T03:30:00.005-05:00

A Gallup poll just in time for Christmas shows that Americans are still overwhelmingly religious and Christian.

The United States remains a predominantly Christian nation, with 78% of all adults identifying with a Christian faith, and more than 9 in 10 of those who have a religious identity identifying as Christians. [M]ore than 9 in 10 Americans say they believe in God, and … 8 in 10 say religion is a very or fairly important part of their lives.

I don't know about the accuracy of the above numbers, as most "Christmas and Easter" Christians would probably count themselves amongst religionists. Many of these people go to church maybe twice a year, believe in a sort of New Age "spiritual" perversion of their religion, and yet classify themselves as believers. They repudiate explicit concepts like Hell and the Resurrection, instead viewing God as both a big self-help guru in the sky and an exceedingly forgiving parent. Add their implicit acceptance of other faiths as equal paths to Truth to the heretical ideas above and one gets a version of "Christianity" wholly inconsistent with doctrine.

But even then, the masses do still see religion as an important part of their lives. While Europe's embrace of secularism grows, America remains a decidedly religious nation. However, as with almost all social phenomena, the elite disparage the masses' purportedly limited worldview. After all, the elite either champion a logically absurd amalgam of religions or "spiritual" claptrap like New Age Buddhism and Kabbalah (Mozilla does not recognize this word). Additionally, given the unabashed gushing over Christopher Hitchens last week, one presumes that a healthy animosity towards religion (Christianity) also dominates amongst the elite. For the reasons stated, I refuse to mock religion with "anti-religious" elites because they mostly just hate Christianity, yet think that other religions (primarily Judaism, Buddhism, or Hinduism) don't have all that crazy stuff present in backwards Christianity.

So anyway, enjoy the day. I do always get a little sad on Christmas because the holiday season is basically over. Maybe I don't much like Christmas music or the commercialization of December, but everyone just seems happier and nicer this time of year. I'll end with a pet peeve: take down your lights after New Year's, it just feels so wrong seeing a decorated house in February.

Turning off the TV?

2011-12-24T04:30:00.004-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

Mangan responded to my Ron Paul post yesterday. I don't want to discuss that, though I may write another Paul post soon. Instead, I want to point to a comment Mr. Mangan makes in responding to a criticism leveled at me:

I don't want to make this an attack on OneSTDV, but I have to agree with the commenter who said that there's little evidence that he's read serious books while there's abundant evidence that he's steeped in pop culture. Seems almost daily he features some pop phenomenon that I've never heard of (though I am out of touch that way). He really needs to turn off the TV.

Admittedly, I am quite steeped in popular culture, but I don't really spend that much time watching the idiot box. I watch some TV daily and I peruse the Entertainment page at HuffPo, but that's about it. Mangan clearly doesn't do either of these things, a testament to his intellectual maturity and/or his mature animosity towards decadent culture. I won't begrudge Mangan here as there's not much to defend about the frivolity of modern American culture; just a few days ago, I watched 15 minutes of a cupcake baking competition on TLC ("The Learning Channel").

Few reactionary bloggers even cover popular culture, with Paul Kersey and myself the two most prominent. (I know Chuck Ross is familiar with pop culture, but does not write about it as often. Fine, Whiskey too, but his incisive analysis often gets lost in "HATE HATE HATE" screeds.) While I could argue that one needs to understand the zeitgeist to thwart it, I won't. I don't imbibe vapid pop culture for anthropological reasons.

Quite simply, I watch crappy reality TV and know about celebrity gossip primarily to rest my mind. I couldn't care less about the stupid Kardashians or what idiots are on The Real World this season. But I like my culture easy to digest. Plus, none of it affects me; I turn off the TV and that's the end of it. For example, despite years of cultural indoctrination from The Real World, my view of gays hasn't changed for the positive. I also somewhat enjoy the vicarious experience of dysfunction. My life has very little "drama" (that's what the kids call it these days) and reality TV gives me a tiny sense of it.

Today's questions: Do you keep up to date with empty pop culture? Do you think reactionaries "should turn off the TV"? Is there something to be learned from keeping up with vapid pop culture? Is current American culture really that bad?

And Merry Christmas.

Ron Paul's Antagonism and Anti-Conservatism

2011-12-23T03:44:00.006-05:00

Ron Paul put out anti-PC newsletters back in the 90's that made "offensive" statements about blacks. Yawn. As I said recently:

If something is true, it's racist.

The center-right and liberaltarians have largely come out against Dr. Paul, their implicit acceptance of leftism quite transparent. Additionally, the establishment Right who profit from their position as "respectable" conservatives, the kind of milquetoasts invited to high society dinner parties but then softly chided for their backwards viewpoints, seeks to undermine Paul's candidacy with this controversy. I have nothing to say on this matter really; it's just boring and predictable.

However, even with this recent problem, Dr. Paul continues his surprisingly strong candidacy. He has a good chance of taking Iowa, though perhaps Mike Huckabee will caution against putting too much weight on that result. Nonetheless, Paul's latest bid for Presidency may be his best shot yet or at least allows him an impact outside wide-eyed readers of Lew Rockwell and von Mises.

Paul's popularity rests on two primary ideas: his anti-establishment rhetoric and his non-interventionism. The former appeals to perhaps everyone, as the 99/1% frame finds favor amongst almost all groups, the masses eager to lament inequality if it gives them a larger piece of the pie. The notion that a shady cabal runs our society finds little favor outside Internet kooks, but enmity towards an insulated elite with too much concentrated power exists amongst liberals, conservatives, and every racial group. While Paul's almost 40 year on and off run as a politician makes him an odd figurehead for this cause, his criticism of the Federal Reserve and a war-mongering government has put him at the forefront.

Paul does seem to be very popular amongst the reactionary Right, though I do not share this enthusiasm. While I have decidedly anti-PC positions on race, gender, and society, I also support a corresponding cultural conservatism that seems wholly absent from Dr. Paul's paradigm. Take perhaps the central theme of his politics - non-interventionism. For comparison, history's most famous non-interventionist Charles Lindbergh (unfairly smeared as a Jew-hater) was spokesman for the anti-war outfit America First Committee. Note the title of the organization - "American First." Can you imagine Paul and his fellow libertarians couching their foreign policy ideas in such a framework? Instead, we get Paul inveighing against "Islamophobia":

When asked about conservative opposition to the “Ground Zero mosque,” Paul suggested Islamophobia was at the root of the controversy: “They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill-conceived preventative wars. . . . This is all about hate and Islamophobia.”

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul responded to a question about Michele Bachmann by saying, “She doesn’t like Muslims. She hates Muslims. She wants to go get ’em.” This wasn’t the first time Paul has accused another conservative of Islamophobia — over the years he has repeatedly maligned Republicans for their views on Muslims, suggesting that bigotry is either a natural motivation or a necessary justification for the U.S.’s interventionist foreign policy.

Perhaps the foremost reason I dislike Paul is his soft-exoneration of Muslims. He has also blamed American foreign policy for the unbridled and historically persistent hatred of Islamic terrorists:

“But, very clearly — it was so tragic — but I just point out that a different foreign policy might have diminished the incentive. I don’t believe people are going to come over here and commit suicide to prove that we’re rich and free. They don’t do that. They come because they’re angry at us.”

He then explicitly references the reflexive nature of his foreign policy:

He added that America should have the “golden rule of foreign policy." "When we do something to someone else we should stop and think would we like it if they did it to us?”

I don't begrudge Paul's non-interventionist stance. I don't speak on foreign policy because I don't follow it very closely; but I surely reject our violent exportation of American ideals. Nonetheless, Dr. Paul adopts a wholly un-conservative frame in championing non-interventionism. He rarely if ever says something like, "I oppose intervention because America is more important than other countries. And we can not go around policing the world because it will cost America too much." Perhaps he makes occasional appeals to this idea, but his reflexive antipathy towards neocons is the primary motivation of his foreign policy.

This reticence in actually formulating a conservative perspective coincides with libertarian philosophy. As one notes when reading sites like Lew Rockwell, the vague promise of "freedom" and the aggressive, angry histrionics regarding government intervention dominate libertarian discourse. Never do we see something positive about protecting culture, heritage, or traditionalism from Paul and his ilk. Note that a curmudgeonly, paleo-libertarian ideology can incorporate traditionalism (roughly defined as traditional gender roles, race consciousness, and nationalism), as illustrated by Pat Buchanan's infamous "Culture War" speech from 1992:

In addition to criticizing "environmental extremists" and "radical feminism," he said public morality was a defining issue:

The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America — abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat — that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country.

Why then does Dr. Paul rarely ever speak fondly of American tradition? Because libertarians, given their indiscriminate hatred of the state, refuse to intellectually acknowledge a nation and the attendant cultural trends within them. To libertarians, collective social movements do not exist as such a conception would undermine the notion of the radically autonomous individual. I support the free individual, but the libertarian ignores how individuals comprise society and believe that personal actions manifest in a vacuum. Paul can not support his political positions by appeal to national heritage because to do so would imply that a national, cohesive unit even exists in the first place. And if a nation and national community exist, then one would presume top-down political policies would at least occasionally be justified, a concession at odds with anti-state libertarianism.

But if Paul ultimately supports the same ideas I do, then who cares? Well I'd argue he does not, as Paul has some interesting positions on illegals and immigration. But Paul also cares nothing for traditional America. He only cares about antagonizing the elite. When I turn on the TV in Paul-run America, I'll still see the same dumb white male commercials. When I go to a college classroom, I'll still hear how women are trapped in the home. And when I look up over the football stadium prior to a game, I'll see an advertisement for Brawndo instead of an ostentatious display of national strength. Paul's America is that of the free individual, whatever that means, not the satisfied individual living amongst his cultural peers.

Related post: A Central Failing of Ron Paul and Libertarianism

Infinite Delusion of the Human Brain

2011-12-22T02:10:00.006-05:00

I don't know if these types of shows still exist, but the 90's was a veritable golden age for sleazy daytime talk shows. Give a nonthreatening personality a mic, persuade society's most reprehensible members to appear on the show and thus give viewers a means of feeling good about by themselves in watching. I did occasionally watch, primarily because I found the individuals fascinating in a morbid, WTF kind of way. Fortunately, I believe these shows have largely gone away; I guess we have the Internet and reality TV now for our safe voyeurism of the uber-lower class.

But today, we'll return to an episode of the Phil Donahue show about extremely obese women. Sorry "fit and fat" women who are "large-sized." Trigger warning for massive fatties (especially at 0:26):

The whole thing is unbelievable, but here's some quotes:

I can honestly say I'm a large-size woman, but I try and take care of myself.
I probably don't eat anywhere in the neighborhood of what someone would think I eat.
I'm trying to do my fruits and vegetables, what is it 5 a day?
No actually I'm not a sweet eater at all.
Given a choice between a chocolate cake and a small sandwich, I'd go for the sandwich anytime.

Can one legitimately classify these women as insane? I presume these women grossly exaggerate the audience's credulity as well as suffer from an astounding case of self-delusion. The community of "fit and fat" peers these women have erected likely exacerbates this pathological case of delusion. This group of enablers has unfortunately increased in membership as "fat acceptance" feminism and the obesity epidemic gain ground. The Internet also has allowed men with fat fetishes to support this community financially, as well as falsely inflating the fatties' esteem.

I imagine some readers will take issue with the notion that these women actually believe what they say. However, I will evoke Dalrock's "rationalization hamster" - people will willfully delude themselves to protect a fragile ego. The more erudite sociological scholars would include this in the larger framework of cognitive dissonance, with most individuals aware of their own failings, but refusing to consciously accept their inadequacies. In essence, these women "get" how everyone else looks at them, but somehow manage to never fully accept that as legitimate fact.

One can actually marvel at the potency of the human brain here. How can the human brain erect such a reality so removed from the verifiable? How can the human brain divorce itself from the real and measurable so as to believe the entirely opposite? If you still question that such a phenomenon exists, think of all the rejects on American Idol who seemingly believe in their own talent. And if you don't watch American Idol, then watch the video below and wonder why someone would ever post it for the world to see. That's not rhetorical; because while we've been to the Moon and composed elaborate symphonies, is the human brain really strong enough to produce this sort of delusion? (I do feel a little bad posting the video below, but...)

And for God's sake, FUPA, cankles, and flabby arm blubber are not "curves" nor do those nauseating physical attributes make you a "real" woman. For reference, this is a "curvy" woman (LSFW).

False Notions of Heroism and Bravery

2011-12-21T04:10:00.001-05:00

In comments here and at other sites, this site has been criticized as a bit saccharine. I don't deny the charge though, as I do sometimes revel in the sappy and romantic. While the sorts of obvious displays of patriotism and conservatism, such as airplanes flying over a football game, do "get" to me, my decided positivity is partially in opposition to the overall blogosphere's negativity. Or using PA's fantastic neologism - "despair porn."

Ironically though, I've had a deliberately contrarian streak for as long as I can remember. In real life, I revel in saying things merely for affect, simply to antagonize polite society and those that feel comfortable within it. On the Internet however, everyone is a self-styled and often over-the-top heretic. Thus online notoriety rarely comes from blaspheming the PC; and those that try come off as immature children starving for attention. Yet I don't want to lose my edge entirely, even as I write a blog that takes on the most hallowed of "truths." Here goes...

Shooting victim Gabby Giffords appears in basically all the year end lists. Here CNN celebrates her as a "hero". The Examiner wonders why Mrs. Giffords was not featured on Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating List. Mrs. Giffords was nominated for a "community hero" award back in September. NPR lauds her "herosim" back in August. Quite clearly, America considers Mrs. Giffords a hero. Now I obviously have no intention of criticizing Mrs. Giffords nor is this post even directed at her in particular.

To put this bluntly, getting shot in the head is not a heroic act. Neither is waking up from a coma or having doctors perform surgeries on you and save your life. Voting on the House floor is also not a heroic act. And neither is doing a TV interview. None of these acts constitute heroism, yet Mrs. Giffords has been universally lionized as a modern-day symbol of strength.

Victims of terrible disease receive similar fawning, with terms like "battle", "bravery", and "determination" often accompanying the undue veneration. Of course, I don't downplay the struggle or the pain experienced by Mrs. Giffords or cancer patients. But none of these individuals have done anything to warrant the respect given to them. Instead, we should praise the doctors who find cures and those that get their hands dirty saving lives every day. Merely deciding to get out of bed in the morning, while perhaps a difficult task for the seriously ill, does not require bravery. It does not require much perseverance either, unless we consider abstaining from suicide an esteemable accomplishment.

I suppose that we offer this unjustified praise as a means of emotional support. And in the end, I don't argue with the beneficial nature of such an odd practice, though I'd prefer we keep it personal and not parade around individuals like Mrs. Giffords as public examples of strength. A guy cutting off his arm to survive? A blind man running a marathon? A soldier saving the lives on the battlefield? A firefighter running into a burning building? All worthy of this measure of respect, but not those that merely have to endure misfortune. Such hardship should surely be cause for sympathy, but not a respect that should be earned through unique deed.

[YouTube's best (only?) alt-right vlogger and a reader of this site, Ramzpaul, sort of inspired this post. Check out of his videos for the sort of alt-right guy you'd want in your neighborhood.]

Nihilism and Marriage: Responding to Ferdinand Bardamu

2011-12-20T02:30:00.004-05:00

So my Saturday post criticizing male travel bloggers set off a little bit of a comment firestorm. Ferdinand Bardamu (Ferd), editor of the Manosphere's central hub chastised me in the comments then linked to my post at In Bona Fide under the title "Arguing with 'Christian' Conservative Manginas." Ferd then followed that up yesterday morning with a full length post at In Mala Fide entitled Why Marriage Makes Men Stupid. Below are my thoughts on the primary motivation of male travel bloggers and the cultural milieu in which they reside:

Oh yea, add the eXiled to that list as perhaps they best illustrate this juvenile abdication of adulthood and responsibility. In essence, all of these "man travel" bloggers lash out at society indiscriminately, bashing all women, everything about Amerika, and everyone who seeks value in middle-class responsibility and family. According to travel bloggers, these "boring" individuals are drones imposed upon by our horrible society, while a foreign land full of underage hookers, loads of drugs, and other uppity expats apparently has something better to offer. Basically, these people believe finding love and raising a family is less spiritually uplifting than whatever else is out there.

A number of issues were raised in the comments. Ferd repeats the popular notion that Christian and pseudo-Christian shaming will force us to marry fat, entitled, bitchy, feminist American princesses:

Over the top at times, but a needed response to the willful naivete of "Christian" "conservatives" (in quotes because if Jesus were alive today, he'd be busy burning churches) who maliciously try to shame men into "manning up" and marrying some fat sow to save Christianity/the white race/insert cause of the month here.

Stop slumming around the Capital District, Ferd. Fatness is almost exclusively a lower class phenomenon. And for all the Manosphere's talk about "being a man", they have a woefully ignorant notion of gender relations. Women fall in line when a man asserts himself. As Roissy consistently shows, an entitled bitch with a degree from Oberlin melts when imposed upon by a stern, strong male figure.

In his article, Ferd then presents his main argument - marriage spiritually enervates men. He points to a number of luminaries who eschewed marriage or "CONservative" monogamy, such as Feynman, Chopin, and Schrödinger.

No matter who you are, having a girlfriend, wife, fuck-buddy or any relationship with a woman requires mental exertion. Women are inherently uncreative and unimaginative creatures — having to listen to their nattering day in and day out kills brain cells.

Note Ferdinand's predictable denunciation of all women as tiresome harpies. As I alluded to above, a viable patriarchy, both in a personal and societal sense, will undermine this unfortunate inclination of the Sex and the City generation. Donna Reed may not be coming back, but surely the insufferable caricature presented by the women-hating Manosphere needn't persist indefinitely. Further, and excuse my mawkishness here, many men do find genuine love offered by a kind, feminine woman. In sum, I simply do not agree with the Mansophere's (no doubt full of extreme nerds and in-the-closest homos) hysterical antipathy towards women nor their sterile conception of women as semen receptacles.

However, Ferd's argument does not fail primarily for this reason. Ferd's argument fails because he implicitly founds it upon nihilism. Now I won't begrudge Ferd's nihilism, as despite my blogging content, no one can outdo my own intellectual support of this basic philosophy. Yet, I have successfully compartmentalized nihilism from social pragmatism, understanding that we needn't always follow logic in our actions. By espousing a dubious argument based on an exceedingly small number of men's professional accomplishments, Ferd ignores the far more important societal level notion of marriage. While marriage may dampen intellectual output, a concern outweighed by the fact that long-term married people (not the shogun, lower-class version) are happier, we should not view it in the context of the personal.

Ferdinand appears to revel in his own brand of contrarian nihilism and refuses to understand that nihilism and egoism manifested as political and social policy leads to destruction. And that destruction leads to generally defined pain, a state of being that equally affects the materialist and the believer. In this context, we note the distinction between our two positions. Ferdinand takes nihilism too far, believing that a hedonistic lifestyle will have no ramifications down the line. While I agree with Ferd on the logical and intellectual justification of hedonism, as engaged in by male travel bloggers and anti-marriage supporters, I disagree with the premise that civilization can incorporate the radically autonomous.

For those now thoroughly lost - basically, I philosophically agree with Ferd that man should seek his own pleasure, yet I believe that Ferd carelessly overlooks the consequences of a society that condones such behavior. Further, I believe that the crusading conservatives who envision a cultural renaissance seek something far more valuable than hooker sex and getting high; they seek a healthy and just society that provides a collective, spiritual benefit to those that erected it.

Marriage and married men are ultimately the bedrock of any healthy society. A society that accepts Ferd's nihilism by not shaming men to "man up" welcomes its own suicide. By allowing men the complete freedom to seek their base desires, society undermines why it exists in the first place. By demanding that men find a woman to love and raise a family (oh the horror!), society ensures its survival and its leadership by a stable group. These married men raise their children in a loving home, coach their kids' friends in sports, pass down values and culture, engage in communal bonding, and act as social authority figures. Only married men, given the sanction of marriage and the genetic bond of fatherhood, can provide such stability. And from the nuclear family, everything else is built.

Ferd's ideological loyalty to nihilism also arises in his tacit support of soft-anarchy, a position famously championed by the nauseating folks at the eXiled. Ferd wants the same radical autonomy popular amongst liberals, even chiding us "CONservatives" for not going along with his plans. Logically, Ferd sees traditional organizations as the primary roadblock to a society that allows men total freedom. And chief among these traditional means of organization is marriage. By undermining marriage, Ferd can undermine the whole of society and seek pleasure without anyone or anything stopping him.

Now coming full circle, how will this naively individualistic conception of man and his social relations end? I confidently predict that a society without organization, without means to dampen man's carnality, without a fundamental social building block like the nuclear family will collapse. And when it collapses, this rundown, depressed society of the radical hedonist will offer him nothing. The pleasure he seeks will not outweigh the problems imposed by the wretched state of his society. He may "tan poolside", but what if there's no pool?

[Disclaimer: Ferd is still one of the only Manosphere blogger I actually really like. He often irks me, but he does scathing pessimism like very few others.]

Mormons Go Race Liberal

2011-12-19T02:55:00.003-05:00

As we saw in Friday's post, Mormons are sort of the Germanic version of Jews - a well-behaved, smart, and insulated ethno-religious community. Fittingly, Mormons exist as a vestige of America's real-life, 1950's Pleasantvilles, a time period that progressive society now views with mocking contempt. Given the mainstream's caustic jabs, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Mormons are overwhelmingly white. Yet the easily scorned, relatively dysfunctional "wrong kind" of white do not comprise the Mormon church. Instead, Mormons are really the picture of stability and success. They have stable families, a solid communal bond, and Utah thrives despite the recession.

Unfortunately though, Mormonism has "progressed" consistent with a maxim of modern society:

That which is not sufficiently conservative will eventually become liberal.

As with most religions, the spiritual mandate to evangelize takes precedence over practical matters like race and nation. Mormons have unsurprisingly fall in line as our global society demands adherence to the leftist creed above all else. A series of videos on YouTube entitled "I'm a Mormon" presents the religion as a hip, multicultural belief system. The following video showcases a Mexican anchor baby who converted after gang and prison stints:

Another video shows a black Southerner who converted after dropping of high school and going to prison. Other videos showcase a black urban schoolteacher, a black social worker for the homeless, an interracial couple, and a "husband, rocker, Mormon." Wow, they're totally not a bunch of squares - sign me up! (Note that I am not criticizing any of the individuals shown as most appear to be respectable people.)

Mormonism has a sensitive history with regards to race, as the Church did not allow a black priest until the 70s. While the Church gave a number of different opinions on slavery and the supposed curse of black skin, the isolated community of Mormonism made it segregated by default. In the leftist narrative of history, this passive segregation and the persistent "whiteness" of Mormons today justifies charges of racism.

In searching for what motivates this risible campaign, we can look at how the mainstream currently portrays Mormonism. Two recent examples suffice. First, the BYU basketball team suspended black player Brandon Davies for breaking university policy by having premarital sex. The mainstream came down hard on BYU, censuring them for anachronistic policies and, of course, racism. Second, the award-winning Broadway play by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Book of Mormon, depicts two Mormon missionaries as square and naively earnest (a negative disposition in post-sincerity America). One notes a stark contrast between this "too white" caricature, an intention confirmed from one glance at the poster, and that of modern commercials which show brown/black multiculturalism as the sole means of vibrancy. And here's a random comment from a YouTube video describing Mormons as "an intolerant, white supremacist, inbred and inflexible subgroup." In sum, haughty mainstream elites and their foot soldier SWPLs look down on Mormons for characteristics a healthy society would celebrate.

And yet the official Mormon church has bowed to leftist cultural pressure by softly rejecting what makes them great in the first place. We see here how leftism undermines yet another pillar of traditionalism - religion. And the religious are mostly willing to go along, perhaps more concerned with the transcendent than the here and now.

Being Lied To

2011-12-18T04:55:00.001-05:00

I grew up in an extremely religious, basically fundamentalist household. To this day, my parents have maintained their passionate faith, with this often a topic of contention between us. I began rebelling early on, demanding my own freedom from the family's faith-based zeal. My parents viewed this as a passing fad, vacillating between stern denunciation and begrudging acceptance. This adulthood apostasy from my childhood faith is often expressed with anger and resentment. I am the passionate heretic today because of the lies I learned as a youth, my dissent just as intellectual as emotional. I absolutely hate my parents' faith, as opposed to merely understanding its failings, primarily because I had to endure the lies as a child.

Of course, I speak of my mother's ardent vegetarianism which she unsuccessfully tried to impose upon me as a child. At about age eight I began incessantly begging for meat and have refused, to this day, to eat any of the vegetarian/vegan dishes she prepares, like quinoa, miso soup, and kous kous. Unlike a lot of other paleo-diet bloggers, I've analyzed this modern pseudo-religion in the context of social phenomena, perhaps as a result of my emotional anger at the doctrine of vegetarianism. While my mother adopted vegetarianism long before it became fashionable and did so almost entirely for health reasons, my rejection has a foundation outside the ostensible truths of biology. Much like the angry atheist born into a Mormon or Orthodox home, I am extremely angry that the supposedly reliable authority structure could lie to me for all those years.

I think the many of the most passionate adulthood voices stem from childhood resentment. PA has a theory on the genesis of the current alt-right that mirrors the oft-repeated notion of the "red pill":

In short, you can refer to alt-Righters as righties who lost confidence in traditional American institutions — business, military, the GOP, churches — as compromised beyond salvaging. In essence, alt-Right is the Old Right, resurrected for and by the Millennian/GenY.

In essence, alt-right contrarians need a cathartic forum primarily as a means of maintaining "red pill" lucidity. The popular zeitgeist isn't merely wrong; it's deceitful in propagating their message to a naive generation who subsequently resent the farce in which they were unwilling participants. From this, perhaps we learn something - the most fervent ideologues are spurred not by intellectual reason, but by antagonistic anger. Reason can convert a man, yet anger compels a man to express himself, providing a boon to whatever paradigm he champions. And very little angers a man more than do lies.

Thoughts on Male Travel Blogs

2011-12-17T04:15:00.005-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

The "Man"-osphere includes men who have decided to travel abroad as a means of escaping quarterlife crisis. For example, some guy writing for the site SingleDudeTravel often posts at In Mala Fide and the patron saint of this genre, Roosh V, still relays his anecdotes from a youth hostel in whatever third-world shithole he's sleeping in this week. The basic justification for this vagabond lifestyle follows:

-Dude, I just watched Fight Club.
-Fuck this.
-American girls are fat.
-I'm moving to South America to bang drunk, underage whores, drink all day, and frame my immature laziness as enlightened self-discovery.

Oh yea, add the eXiled to that list as perhaps they best illustrate this juvenile abdication of adulthood and responsibility. In essence, all of these "man travel" bloggers lash out at society indiscriminately, bashing all women, everything about Amerika, and everyone who seeks value in middle-class responsibility and family. According to travel bloggers, these "boring" individuals are drones imposed upon by our horrible society, while a foreign land full of underage hookers, loads of drugs, and other uppity expats apparently has something better to offer. Basically, these people believe finding love and raising a family is less spiritually uplifting than whatever else is out there. I present the dichotomy as such because it's really the truth of it - these "male travelers" seek anything but here, without consideration that "here" can offer something worthwhile if one looks properly.

Independent of the above characterization, I don't like travel in general. And if I did travel, it would be to the natural wonders of the United States, particularly anything mountain-y. I love the serenity of the mountains and that sort of clean, unadulterated air. America has plenty to offer in regards to travel, but of course one can't then impress the SWPL class with tales of a superficially edifying experience. If I had to go to another country, I sure wouldn't pick the South American destinations, land of huge asses and gangs of street thieves (or worse), popular amongst the "male travel" class. Japan, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands/Belgium/Holland would probably be at the top of my list.

Today's questions: What do you think of these "male travel" blogs and bloggers? What do you think of their abject pessimism regarding America and American women? Are they chasing something just as superficial as what they criticize? They all seem to abhor family life, thoughts? Have you traveled? If yes, to where and what did you get from it?

[Note: I do sincerely admire their courage though.]

Bizzaro Asperger's Syndrome

2011-12-16T05:20:00.004-05:00

A viral video this week comes from Utah State where a number of co-eds are asked about platonic relationships between men and women:

Highlight at 2:13: girl's apparent displeasure reacting to beta lust. The summary: all the girls initially state that men and women can be "just friends", but the interviewer prods a little further and the girls change their answer. In essence, these co-eds have a peer group of individuals Roissy/Heartiste has dubbed "beta orbiters", the milquetoasts who provide emotional support for attractive girls while they pursue "unavailable men."

The video is funny not only because it showcases how women can nonchalantly ignore the evident desires of unattractive men. But also because it shows the general ignorance that most people have towards their own behavior and the social phenomena present in their surroundings. While readers of this blog have that rare ability to discern social motivations and patterns, most people just live their lives without concern for such matters. Of course, everyone sort of notices how others act, but the vast majority of people would find notions of the "sexual marketplace", "selfish gene", and "social capital" incredibly odd.

People like to live without a conscious understanding of social minutiae, perhaps as a means of maintaining life's spiritual mysteries and because such a sterile conception of man contradicts the whimsical way in which people prefer to interact. This codified approach to human behavior has spurred some to label even a social genius like Roissy/Heartiste an "aspie." In doing so, they imply that only a socially awkward pariah would present a reductionist conception of man, down to the manner in which individuals hold their drinks and what angle to place one's feet. I agree that it seems odd at first, but people follow observable patterns and some others can't help but notice these patterns.

In sum, us social anthropologists suffer from a sort of bizzaro Asperger's syndrome. Unlike the traditional version, we have an intimate understanding of how and why people act the way they do. But similar to aspies, we have a decidedly unemotional, slightly perplexed response to others' idiosyncrasies, preferring analysis to comfortable ignorance. Regular people like the girls profiled in the video generally just sort of live their lives. They cry, laugh, and smile, never once stopping to think how those emotions manifest. If given a choice, I'd probably prefer this.

[Anyone else regretting not looking at Utah State in choosing a school? Seems to be lots of pretty girls there, not Arizona State uber-hot sluts, but the girly, cute, nice type.]

Jewish Attitudes in Politics and Culture

2011-12-15T05:15:00.004-05:00

Generally, I just stay away from writing about the Jews. This isn't from lack of interest as I actually find HBD-osphere (somewhat distinct from the alt-right sphere) discussion of Jews quite fascinating. Unfortunately though, whenever I write a post about Jews, a small minority of "eccentric" individuals show up and take over the comment threads. It just gets tiresome. But today, I felt like writing a Jew post. Here goes.

Mangan posts a video of Daily Show host Jon Stewart mocking Republican presidential candidates pandering to Jews. Mangan presents a very simple, yet exactly correct argument against this kind of servitude:

Not exactly a huge fan of Jon Stewart, but he exactly nails the absurdity of a slew of presidential candidates vying to be winner in the "I Put Another Country Ahead of my Own" sweepstakes.

He then alludes to Ron Paul, the one nominee conspicuously absent from this event. I've written of my dislike for libertarianism before, but haven't spoken much on Paul's vile foreign policy position. While I share his isolationist stance, Dr. Paul does not justify it in the context that Mr. Mangan presents. Instead of merely saying "our interests supersede those of other countries", he comports with the radical left in downplaying Arab hatred of the West and censuring America as the prime motivator for Muslim animosity. In keeping with their general paradigm, paleo-libertarian isolationists adopt a negative conception of America as opposed to championing this nation as a valuable moral entity unto itself.

While Dr. Paul opposes all American escapades abroad, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) does just the opposite. Let me repeat their name just in case you missed it - "Republican Jewish Coalition." I presume that this is an American outfit of "conservative"-leaning Jews. So why then do all the speakers go on and on about Israel? Why do they speak of their passion and experience with respect to Israel? Why do the candidates present political ideas and strategies relevant to Israeli's future? Why do they celebrate another nation in the midst of their running for America's presidency?

It appears then that the Republican Jewish Coalition doesn't much care for their own country. They will vote for the candidate who does the most for a foreign nation instead of the candidate who will do the most for this nation. I ask how can these Americans so blatantly express a divided loyalty, even advertising their soft-treason by hosting such an event. We know the candidates play along just to get donations, but the farcically named "Republican" Jewish Coalition will clearly only give their support to a candidate who speaks to their interests. And from the video, those interests have nothing to do with the economic, cultural, and social calamity currently occurring here.

The lack of patriotism extant amongst even "conservative" Jews reflects what I've seen as general ingratitude displayed by Jewish-Americans. Take University of Iowa professor Stephen Bloom who denigrates rural Iowans for their friendly inquiries about his presumed hunting activities:

And here's the point: I can't tell you how often over the years I'd be walking Hannah in our neighborhood and someone in a pickup would pull over and shout some variation of the following:

"Bet she hunts well."

"Do much hunting with the bitch?"

"Where you hunt her?"

To me, it summed up Iowa. You'd never get a dog because you might just want to walk with the dog or to throw a ball for her to fetch. No, that's not a reason to own a dog in Iowa. You get a dog to track and bag animals that you want to stuff, mount, or eat. That's the place that may very well determine the next U.S. president.

And god forbid they cordially wish strangers "Merry Christmas":

After years and years of in-your-face religion, I decided to give what has become an annual lecture, in which I urge my students not to bid strangers "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Easter," "Have you gotten all your Christmas shopping done?" or "Are you going to the Easter egg hunt?" Such well-wishes are not appropriate for everyone, I tell my charges gently. A cheery "Happy holidays!" will suffice. Small potatoes, I know, but did everyone have to proclaim their Christianity so loud and clear?

Here's his general description juxtaposed with some other awful (\sarcasm) observations below:

Whether a schizophrenic, economically-depressed, and some say, culturally-challenged state like Iowa should host the first grassroots referendum to determine who will be the next president isn't at issue. It's been this way since 1972, and there are no signs that it's going to change. In a perfect world, no way would Iowa ever be considered representative of America, or even a small part of it. Iowa's not representative of much. There are few minorities, no sizable cities...

----------

Driving through these throwback towns, a stranger might receive a slight nod from a farmer on the side of the road, or a two-finger driver's greeting from knobby fingers atop a pick-up's steering wheel. Strangers are rare in these parts...where car alarms are as unheard of as home burglar alarms? Locals don't bother to put on their turn signals because everyone knows where everyone else is going...And while it's changing fast, rural Iowa is still a place where homes sell for $40,000, serious crime is tee-peeing a high-school senior's front yard, and traffic is getting caught behind a tractor on Main Street. If rural Iowans ever drive on the highway, they welcome other vehicles accelerating on the entrance ramp, smiling, often motioning with their hand to move on over, as though gently patting the butt of a newborn.

In another article making the rounds this week, a rabbi fears Tim Tebow might spur an uprising of conservative white Christians (seriously):

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

Yet for all their disdain towards middle-America, what nation has allowed the Jews to prosper? What nation ushered in the creation of the Jewish state? What nation has more freely allowed Jews entry into their founding stock elite? What nation has allowed Jews to incorporate their ethnic culture into the mainstream? And most of all, what nation risked their most virile young men, many coming from those same small midwestern towns, sending them all the way across the world to save the Jews from extinction? And how do these ingrate coastal Jews repay them - by depicting flyover country as America's caste of untouchables?

Now, I don't claim to find much in common with the sorts of individuals who drive pickup trucks, watch NASCAR, hunt, or listen to country music. I surely wouldn't feel comfortable in the social circles of rural Iowa. But if someone pays their taxes, doesn't play loud music, and gives me a friendly wave at the supermarket, then what have they done to deserve my derision? I don't have to be friends with someone for them to earn respect and to refrain from condescendingly mocking their way of life. I respect good people with good values, that's all. (I will say though that rural America increasingly diverges from the venerable "Then" people in this post.)

I wonder if Jews will ever understand this far more real idea of tolerance, outside that of smarmy coastal liberalism, and realize the benedictions conferred upon them in this great nation.

The Real Motivation of Occupy Wall Street

2011-12-14T05:30:00.003-05:00

Every time I walk into a large library, I feel a little overwhelmed. Imagine how much scholarship exists in just that one library. Think of all those books, filled with so much knowledge, written by all those people. Think of all the pages within those books, each one filled with arcane facts of history, impressive philosophical insights, and advanced math and science. A library overwhelms me because it makes me feel small, it makes me feel unaccomplished and, most of all, no matter my persistence, the scale of the information present is ultimately beyond my grasp. No one can comprehend the sum total of human knowledge; it can not be done. We can only hope, via long-term study, to attain mastery in a niche field.

Perhaps the most brilliant man to ever live, Issac Newton once said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." While some dispute the intent of the claim, I interpret the quote to mean that Newton understood the sum chain that culminated with his work. He understood that worthwhile achievement does not come easily or hastily. Achievement is a process whereby we build on those that came before us and hope that, in time, our own contributions will be praised in the context of this continuing development.

* * *

Time magazine (justifiably) named Occupy Wall Street its top story of the year:

On Sept. 17, a couple hundred protesters demonstrating against the excesses of corporate execs and the pervasive influence of high finance in U.S. politics set up camp in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park and refused to leave.

To some, Occupy Wall Street is the left-wing iteration of the Tea Party, directing their rage not at big government but at the big banks that gutted the world economy and took billions in bailouts from the U.S. government while awarding themselves hefty bonuses.

The common narrative about OWS is parroted above: antagonism towards corporate greed. This central message has expanded into standard leftist complaints about government redistributing more wealth, student loan costs, and an insulated elite. The OWS presents itself as moral dissidents, arguing that government must do something about wealth inequality and a generation hamstrung by rising college tuition. The movement had people go online to advertise their own hardships (read: poor choices) and garner sympathy because they're broke, pregnant out of wedlock, and their History degree from For-Profit U doesn't impress anyone.

I've criticized these individuals as the "entitled class" and I stand by that characterization. They whine about government redistribution not due to some transcendent sense of justice, but primarily because they want a free piece of the pie. The OWS crowd, of course, rejects such an unflattering depiction; preferring to cast corporate elites as the antagonists in an admittedly potent leftist, SWPL narrative. In sum, OWS discourages focus on themselves, their own bad choices, their own fears and instead castigates a faceless external cause for all their problems.

And while OWS does put on their best puppy dog faces sometimes, they rarely speak of their fear. Not fear about paying mortgages or caring for their bastard children, but rather an apprehension similar to the one I experience stepping into a library. A fear that consumes a BigLaw lawyer about to start studying for his bar exam. A fear of the new stockbroker that he won't measure up. The pre-game jitters of a rookie QB, nervousness of a 15 year-old technical apprentice, and the misgivings of a first-year engineering student. Notice what all these people have in common: they're at the bottom of the totem pole looking up at everyone else.

That fear comes from the hard work that awaits these neophytes as they resolve to climb the ladder. Every pursuit in life demands that we learn. We learn the "tricks of the trade", listen to our elders, and slowly climb as we gain skills and the commensurate respect. Almost everyone starts at the bottom and that "big library" I spoke of can feel daunting to the callow beginners.

Yet the OWS crowd, eager to rip apart occupational and societal structure and content in whining about the lack of comfy middle-class jobs ("...but I went to Dartmouth!"), don't want to "climb the ladder". They don't want to put in the work to rise the ranks. They want the comfort of middle-class life without the effort. They want the nice apartment and the money via political agitation rather than through hard work.

Should we find this surprising though? America raised a generation of princesses who got a sticker for trying and a celebration for mediocrity. They've been told that everyone is equal and have been praised for everything they do. How then should these kids react when the real world presents a much harsher reality, where status is gained via acts not existence, via merit not mere good behavior.

But I don't want to express too much sympathy in this regard. I sympathize with their anxiety, yet at some point, one has to man up. One has to accept struggle as part of life, simple as that. The OWS crowd, the tents gone but the entitlement remains, would do well to understand this simple truism.

Multicultural Crayons - Seriously

2011-12-13T04:35:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, I think maybe we should just allow liberals to sink their own ship:

Accomplishments of White Society and Her People

2011-12-12T04:50:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, I had a discussion with a liberal creationist that included these gems:

If it weren't for Native Americans, none of those dumb Europeans would have figured out how to grow crops in North America. And how did the settlers repay them? By giving the Indians smallpox.

America was built on the labor of black slaves and Asian immigrants. So to say white people made America is absolutely wrong - it would be nothing without non-whites working because white people didn't want to do so.

This idea that whites are basically dispensable has persisted, with the apparent necessity of Latino laborers and Asian hi-tech workers (though I do sincerely respect Asian society) now an entrenched idea. One can also add the leftist notion that whitey ain't so special as blacks and Hispanics would dominate Ivy league schools and Silicon Valley if just given the chance. And of course, whitey has no rhythm, game, or swag in regards to cultural vibrancy, so he doesn't provide much in that realm either.

While leftists pontificate on the importance of Mexican laborers (is that really something to brag about - "our race can tend to gardens and fold bedsheets!"), white people quietly make the country run smoothly. They provide the backbone of the productive middle class, from the medical professionals to the technicians and essentially everyone in between. America can not exist, either in a practical or transcendent sense, independent of white people. I don't say that as a means of conjuring up feelings of (irrational, but adaptive) racial pride; it's just the truth. White people do stuff and they do it well.

Note here how I present whites as a positive collective, instead of merely an exclusionary group that does not include non-whites. I've often championed a more inclusive, optimistic conception of race and society, as opposed to the "despair porn" and incessant bitching present in some corners of race conscious discussion. Some people just like to moan; that's not what I'm looking for though.

And to showcase that more explicitly, I present frequent commenter Doug1's "A Celebration of Whites", a brief summary of why white society and the people that comprise it are so great. Enjoy:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
White men created the modern world, from soup to nuts. The best any other race (the Japanese) has managed to do in the modern world is do some tweaking improvements. White men created the first mass production printing press, which unlike the non mass production Chinese ones, immediately created a rapidly transformational mass circulation of comparatively low priced pamphlets, books, and journals. White men created the first systematic and interconnected institution of Science, which was greatly facilitated by written communication from one end of Western and Central Europe to the other, with this connection of scholars aided by Gutenberg’s mass production printing press. They created the first truly advanced Mathematics heavily used in their science and the first precise mechanical timepieces.

They created the steam engine and the industrial revolution. They created the first industrial mass production, beginning with steam engine powered textile mills. They created the internal combustion engine and the automobile that utilized it. They created the diesel engine and the rail locomotives and large passenger and freight ships made of steel that used it. They were the first to drill for petroleum and build refineries that could turn it into not only gasoline and diesel fuel but also plastics and many other materials. They created the telegraph and the first nearly instantaneous trans continental and trans oceanic communications systems built on it. They created the telephone and the wireless radio and after that television and video cameras. They created photography and then motion pictures. They created electric lights, electric generators, record players and recording devices. They created aeroplanes and jet planes.

Whites then used their scientific and practical foundations to create rockets which they used to launch into earth orbit satellites for global communications, globally monitoring weather and climate, photographing the geography and developments, and then a multiple satellite global positioning system free for everyone of every race and nation to use. They invented rockets and guidance systems and computers and communications which took white men to the moon, and safely back to earth. They invented rocket launched satellites to the near and outer solar system to explore those planets and other mysteries of the origins of our world, plus the Hubble deep space exploring orbital telescope to explore the origins of the universe for the knowledge of all mankind.

White men created nuclear power and will create nuclear fusion power. They created computers and integrated circuits which powered more advanced and much smaller ones, and then the Internet. They created solar cells and electricity generating windmills. Hell, they even created electricity (at least of the man made and harnessed variety), electric motors, and all the myriad uses we make of electricity. They created scientific effective medicine and virtually all pharmaceuticals. They created virtually all chemistry and the endless products made from systematic scientific knowledge of it.

It’s damn hard to think of anything of great significance in the modern world that wasn’t created by white men, from useful products to communications to computations to all sciences to entertainment. The most beautiful art and the most sublime music are all created by white men, beginning in the Renaissance, though Greek statues and architecture were pretty damn impressive, and so was the art of the European high middle ages. Even the availability of ethnic culture has to do with the white man, as he created globalization and benevolently allowed or invited foreign virtuosos into his nations. White men created opera, symphonies and chamber music. Though, sadly, they did not invent rap.

White men created democracy and then the first republican representative democracies in large nations. White men didn’t invent slavery, but they did end it. White men lead the world in the first ever international consensus that aggressor territory grabbing war should be prohibited, with the founding of the UN. It only was more or less prohibited because of the enforcement of those UN principals primarily by predominantly white America, and to some extent the white nations of Britain and France. White men were the first in the world to develop our modern concept of human rights and spread it worldwide. White men were the first to end the routine use of torture as a criminal punishment.

The Industrial Revolution, preceded by the Scientific revolution, both entirely and exclusively the creation of white men, absolutely transformed the world and made it the modern entity it is today. The industrial revolution is on par in importance, or perhaps more important and transformational, with the agricultural revolution. For the first time in history those developed nations which have successfully adopted the industrial revolution have escaped mass Malthusian misery and their whole populations live relatively rich and comfortable lives. That was the work of white men, though many people of other races are now also similarly benefiting, beginning with the Japanese, but now fast on the Koreans and Chinese, and others around the world.

A Central Failing of Ron Paul and Libertarianism

2011-12-11T04:40:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to write on libertarianism's blind adherence to ideology over just about everything else. So I'd like to thank Ron Paul for gift-wrapping this post for me. In an effort to court conservative Christians, Paul has made the connection between his faith and his politics a more central theme of campaigning. While I applaud Paul's refreshing defense of capitalism as a moral issue, he still subordinates social and moral concerns to his political aims/boogeymen:

Paul sides with social conservatives on most issues: He believes that marriage should be defined as being between only one man and one woman and he does not think the federal government should guarantee women the right to have an abortion, a position influenced by his decades as an obstetrician who delivered thousands of babies.

So Paul is against gay marriage and abortion. One presumes that the gravity of these moral concerns, especially the latter, should be the most important consideration in enacting law. Yet, this isn't the case for Paul due to his opposition towards federal government:

"I don't want the federal government dictating marriage definitions nor a position on right to life. It should be done locally. It'll be imperfect, probably, because every state won't be the same, but what is really bad is when you allow the federal government to define marriage and put the pressure and make the states follow those laws."

In other words, abortion is murder, but only if it's done in a given state. For a man that casts himself a Biblical conservative, this reeks of moral relativism. An actual conservative sums it up wonderfully:

To us this is a morality issue. So the reason you don't have slavery in Alabama and not slavery in Iowa is because slavery is wrong. And we believe abortion is wrong. We don't believe it should be left up to the states. And the same way with marriage.

Right is right, wrong is wrong. Who cares where the sins occur? Law should reflect our morality, not exist as sort of an independent construct. In sum, Paul and other libertarians consider even life itself less important than a nebulous concept of "freedom." This is what libertarianism always comes down to, "freedom", a purposefully vague concept that somehow supersedes all others yet defies concise definition. Of course, I too support freedom, but I believe that some things are clearly more important - like life, traditional culture, and family.

I don't know if Paul is motivated more by fear (hysteria) over federal government or an ideological obstinacy that knows no bounds. But in the end, libertarians' sterile formulation of society manifests in a paradigm which gladly sacrifices sacred aspects of humanity and society for an ill-defined promise of "freedom."

Update: Response to opposing arguments.

Everyone Does It

2011-12-10T04:25:00.002-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

On tomorrow night's episode of "Kourtney and Kim Take New York" (I swear, I was channel surfing), Kourtney Kardashian finds some salacious content on baby-daddy/boyfriend Scott Disick's computer. Upon discovering what seems to be hardcore porn videos, she shows her sister the content and they needle him about it while Kourtney laughingly deems it "disgusting." From the short clip, Scott appears slightly embarrassed, but then takes it as motivation to suggest some dirty stuff to Kourtney.

At this blog, we actively try to steer away from indecent content, avoiding superfluous cursing and graphic discussion. I hesitated before posting about this because porn is surely not a subject in line with those aims. But then I recall reading last year about the utter ubiquity of porn, with a Canandian researcher unable to find even one adult male who had not viewed porn and the industry itself worth more than all three major sports league combined. In short, porn is everywhere and essentially everyone (men, at least) "watches" it.

Back to Scott's reaction: as has happened to essentially everyone, no matter how much one tries to cover his tracks, someone will discover that you "watch" it. And that someone will likely be a woman who reacts negatively, considering your little habit quite disgusting and "creepy." In a rather obvious bit of contradiction, I actually agree that porn is viscerally off-putting. It just feels very very wrong and dirty and that has nothing to do with societal pressure or the common characterization of male porn watchers as skeevy losers.

For this reason or another, almost no one actually openly discusses their porn habit. As with this infamous clip from Roseanne, everyone does it but no one, besides immature college students, actually talks about it, ever. Think about that - everyone does it, but no one admits to it. It's quite unbelievable when you consider how completely underground porn is despite being such an enormous social institution.

Today's questions: Are you embarrassed that you've watched or regularly watch porn? Someone ever found out about your habit that you didn't want to find out? Why do woman always react so negatively to male porn habits? Do you find porn disgusting and how does this affect your watching of it? Do you or did you in the past discuss your habit with anyone?

Begrudging Defense of "Epic Tram Lady"

2011-12-09T04:45:00.003-05:00

A woman on public transport in London (public transportation = "People of Walmart" in motion) went on a rant about "her England" dying from mass immigration. The Internet has dubbed her "Epic Tram Lady":

Despite many on the alt-right celebrating such a brazen defender of ethnically homogeneous Britain, I side with Andy Nowicki at Alternative Right:

I'm sure that many Alt-Right readers will hold me guilty of snobbery for declining to back the not-so-epic tram lady on principle. But again, I don't object to Miss West for being an unlettered prole. Some of my best friends are unlettered proles. (Well, not really, but you see my larger rhetorical point.) Rather, I dislike the fact that she acted like a mean, bitchy tramp. Graceless behavior is hardly the staple of the working classes; we all succumb to it, on occasion. Yet we all must, and can, do better.

Even though she correctly opposes mass immigration and notes the cultural implications of Muslim and black (not to mention Polish) demographic changes, this woman is clearly an unhinged crazy person.

But should we defend her? Should we defend someone who clearly shares some of our principles, even though she presents them in a manner that confirms all the stereotypes leftists offer about nativists? Should we defend someone who champions a more exclusive, negative version of ethno-nationalism, as compared to my preferred notions of "ethnic self-determination" and "racial moral autonomy"? This same conundrum arose during the Duke Lacrosse rape witchhunt, in which race conscious conservatives had to consider defending a bunch of pompous lax douchebags.

In both cases though, I say we absolutely must defend them. Admittedly, optimistic visions of ethnically homogeneous European states do not include such obstreperous individuals. When most traditionalists envision a cultural upswing, they tend to ignore underclass louts like Ms. Tram Lady. Nonetheless, we must defend her, though not as an individual as this would require an implicit approval of her behavior. Instead, we must defend her primarily in a reflexive manner as the left rushes to socially and politically lynch Duke Lax and Ms. Tram Lady.

In essence, we don't specifically defend lax douchebags and ranting lumpenproles; we defend the general white male and the general British nativist from character assassination. The specific individuals do not matter as much as the leftist attacks which they attract; we must protect less than honorable individuals in sort of a "first they came for..." manner. If leftists will use these incidents to impugn the general classes, such as bashing all middle-class college students as "privileged racists", then we must respond. Sure, we'd rather lionize someone worthy of our moral white-knighting, like Tim Tebow or Officer Crowley, but when leftists seek cultural change based on these "teachable moments", someone has to push back.

Blagojevich gets 14 years, Seriously?!

2011-12-08T04:50:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, disgraced ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich got 14 years in prison, primarily for trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat.

Judge James Zagel gave Blagojevich some credit for taking responsibility for his actions, but said that didn't mitigate his crimes. The judge also said Blagojevich did good things for people as governor, but was more concerned about using his powers for himself.

"When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired," Zagel said.

The twice-elected Democrat received by far the harshest sentence among the four Illinois governors sent to prison in the last four decades.

Is anyone else very much disturbed by this? FOURTEEN YEARS?! Our governing elite has already disowned the public, engaging in all sorts of back-door deals for their own benefit. Just look at the leading Republican candidate, Newt Gingrich, who got paid millions of dollars from Big Pharma and Freddie Mac to peddle their tripe. And we can even go to the source on that one - FDA, Big Agriculture, and Big Pharma colluding together to literally kill the public as a way of getting rich.

Yet Mr. Blagojevich gets 14 years for what I see as sort of just a political favor. OK, I'm not informed on the details, but whatever he did, 14 years seems outlandishly harsh. Maybe my jadedness comes through with this issue as I see an instance of elite corruption as rather mundane, an issue that deserves aggressive policing, but not something that surprises me. I figured Blagojevich would get a slap on the wrist and then resurface years later as an ignominious, yet respected public figure, ala Spitzer and Bill Clinton. Now he goes to the slammer while bankers and Big Pharma executives can legally profit off the masses.

Lesson here: take advantage of one's authority, but don't do so in such an explicitly underhanded manner.

How the Left Reports: NYPD on West Indian Parade

2011-12-07T04:45:00.005-05:00

Yet another reason to support the police: NYPD police officers go online to complain about blacks behaving badly. On Facebook, perhaps the second largest collection of race realist observations behind YouTube, over 100 NYPD officers accurately describe behavior occurring at the NYC West Indian parade:

-"Let them kill each other."
-One commenter referred to working the parade detail as "ghetto training," while another recommended relocating the parade "to the zoo."
-The safety of cops should be more important that the safety of "the animals," said one.
-"It's not racist if it's true," declared another.
-"Welcome to the Liberal NYC Gale, where if the cops sneeze too loud they get investigated for excessive force but the ‘civilians’ can run around like savages and there are no repercussions," one person opined.
-"Why is everyone calling this a parade," a group member asked. "It’s a scheduled riot."
-Another suggested, "I say have the parade one more year, and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out."

On another message board, a police officer sums it up:

"For the record, most of the participants at the West Indies Day Parade are fvcking savages who walked out from the jungle 2 minutes ago," one commenter wrote.

A little harsh, but have you seen video and pictures of that particular parade. And oh yea, the trivial murders that occur there every year. In a candid moment, the linked article ends like this:

It's really a shame this year's West Indian-American Day Parade had to end on this sour note; despite the random gunfire, the police seemed to be having such a fun time!

Yes the big shame is racist whitey, not the "random" (read: when black people congregate) gunfire and corresponding deaths. Reminds me of this infamous Marion Barry quote:

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

There's not much to say about this story - direct observers of NAM dysfunction comment on it with disgust, leftists react horrified, leftists counter with "racist", "bigot", and "hateful", HR brings down the hammer on racist whitey. We can sum up this predictable sequence by inverting one of the police officer's statements ("It's not racist if it's true."):

If it's true, it's racist.

Hey, I kind of like that. I will offer a brief observation on how leftist media presents stories like these. Almost every day I look at Media Matters for a story on which to write. Media Matters compiles all remotely un-PC statement from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan and reports it without commentary. Here's an article on Dick Morris claiming Rick Santorum's "white maleness" hurts him as he competes against "more interesting" options such as a "black" (Cain) and a "woman" (Bachmann). Instead of actually arguing against his supposition or even condemning him as a sexist racist, they merely show the clip without any commentary whatsoever. In other words, Media Matters believes the germane "-ism" is self-evident.

In general, as in the West Indian controversy, leftists have sort of stopped even arguing their points. They believe their cultural and political hegemony to be so great that they can showcase something, throw around an unjustified insult or two, then tacitly declare themselves the winners. Note that none of the articles on the West Indian comments actually make an argument as to justify their accusations of racism, not even something like, "the shootings were perpetrated by only a select few" or "dry humping in the street is totally cool in my book." They don't even really try anymore.

One may presume the left is getting complacent and overconfident. If so, I welcome it, as I believe a conservative America lays dormant amongst the politically apathetic. I hope the left views their positions as axiomatic and thinks the masses will come to lefty conclusions without anti-reality prodding from Ivory Tower intellectuals. I assure them it won't happen. Leftism only maintains itself by persistent inculcation and it appears the left's insularity may be backfiring.

Mean Girls and Early Puberty

2011-12-06T04:55:00.004-05:00

Girls do seem a lot meaner these days. A Daily Mail article presents Chuck Ross' BFF Hugo Schwyzer's hypothesis on why girls are so mean:

Hugo Schwyzer, a professor of gender studies and history at Pasadena City College, says women are being forced to be more competitive with each other than ever. He explains that this is particularly true in the dating pool - with fewer 'good' men with marriage potential, women must compromise, while the guys hold all the cards. This means, he wrote on Jezebel.com, that there is far more female rivalry. Even women's success over men in education and the job market is fuelling the Mean Girls trend.

But the biggest player of all, Professor Schwyzer claims, is the media, which is breeding a culture of women feeling imperfect.

OK that's enough. "Mr." Schwyzer blames the evil patriarchy for girls acting bitchy towards each other. I will offer some qualified praise though, as "Mr." Schwyzer does allude to the sexual marketplace, predictably blaming the lack of good men, but nonetheless accurately couching female rivalry in a sexual context.

Much like the gay suicide trend, some of us view the "mean girl" trend with justified skepticism, but my intuition tells me something is actually happening. The obvious - we should partly blame technology which allows social memes to spread far more alacrity and gives people, mostly girls, another outlet to antagonize sexual rivals. (Side note: mean girls almost always reside within the second highest caste of attractiveness; their looks alone do not garner enough attention, so they engage in intimidation to appropriate social capital.)

But I propose something else motivates this increasingly aggressive behavior from school-age girls: early puberty. Due to the horrible standard American diet full of processed foods, carbs, and other crap, girls reach puberty earlier than ever before, with some girls doing so as early as eight years old. As girls reach puberty, their biological clock starts running and their pursuit of a proper mating partner begins. The "mean girl" trend we've witnessed merely reflects the increasingly potent biological motivations spurred by early puberty.

The average 14 year-old girl began her sexual maturity (read: ability to reproduce) much sooner than the average 14 year-old girl 20 years ago and, thus, she is much further along (read: impatient) in finding a breeding partner. Puberty means a girl is ready to have babies and she understandably seeks to undermine rivals for alpha male attention, the preferred target of her aggression often younger, nicer, and prettier. Young girls' relatively immature intellectual and emotional foundation, as compared to their physical development, magnifies the aggressive behavior. Schools' highly confined social environments then further exacerbates female combativeness.

In the end, we just can't escape biology.

[To my knowledge, I am the first person to come up with this idea.]

Race Pandering Fails

2011-12-05T03:45:00.001-05:00

I was once more of a "colorblind" conservative, even during my nascent race realist phase. I had many of the same ideas, but I also supported a colorblind, meritocratic society. I still see this as the best and most moral organization of society, but I no longer believe a colorblind approach to race, whereby we're all just "Americans", can manifest or solve our racial problems. Quite simply, blacks and other minorities will never go along with it, preferring race hatred of whites and unending complaints about discrimination to peaceful coexistence.

With this in mind comes more unsurprising news, race pandering does not work. Newt Gingrich, who epitomizes the unctuous Washington lifer, went on a "We are the World" anti-HBD educational reform tour two years ago with Al Sharpton. How does Sharpton now view Mr. Gingrich after his transparent attempt of racial servitude - he basically calls Gingrich a racist:

This is like when we saw the welfare queen imagery used in another Presidential Campaign, or saw the whole question of Willie Horton.

And this is now where we are getting into this cheap kind of race baiting kind of poor ah ah criminals kind of behavior and we need to call it out. There’s no one better to cal it out than me cause I went on the tour, risked ah people criticize, I’m glad I went now. Cause I can say I know he (Newt Gingrich) knows better. Y’all are playing poverty and race politics.

...that a strategy that works for the far right of that Party is to bait people. And that is something that we need to address early and often, because if not we going to have an ugly campaign season against this President.

It appears that Newt's peace and love tour didn't really do anything; Sharpton still characterizes him as a tricky race-baiting, far-right-winger when it fits the narrative. This isn't exactly new though. No matter how much whites pander or prostrate themselves towards blacks and other minorities, nothing is ever good enough.

Here's another offering from Dr. Reverend Mr. Al Sharpton, Jr. the Third where he complains about the shrinking black middle class:

And as a result, not only has Black wealth diminished, but so too has the existence of much of this nation's Black middle class itself. An entire Black middle class emerged via civil service jobs, and we are now tragically close to witnessing the greatest stumbling block to progress that will literally set us back decades. But we can - and we must - do something to halt this injustice that so clearly threatens our immediate future.

Blah, blah, whitey keeps us down by taking away our cushy government jobs. Sharpton clearly does not realize that the black middle class, almost exclusively hired by government for "diversity" purposes, epitomizes the concept of Black Run America. The black middle class is almost entirely a creation of crusading white liberals and post-60s liberalism. This class wouldn't exist if not for America's (dying) excess wealth and leftist initiatives to uplift blacks as a whole. Now that we don't have so much money to waste on government bureaucrats, HR harpies, and other unnecessary employees, we have to stop pretending that most black government workers actually do anything.

Yet another example comes from SWPL Indian-American comic Hari Kondabolu in a video entitled "Racism vs. White Guilt." After mocking his liberal white friends who loudly express guilt about "racism", he sums it up (apparently unaware of well Indians do in this country):

By any chance there are white liberals watching this video, remember this: your white guilt is a part of your white privilege.

In other words, no matter what you do, it will never be enough. In making the above statement, Hari even implicitly denies whites exoneration from what I've deemed "racial original sin" - the notion that all whites inherit the racial sins of their forefathers and can only find salvation through race leftism:

Because liberals consider whites as inherently corrupt beings, even benign predilections become fodder for censure. Only then, when a white person has fully accepted his inherent depravity and rejected his presumed white privilege through deeds can he be considered a moral individual.

In the end, it all comes down to power (well, blind hatred too). NAMs understand that their power comes almost entirely from complaining and intellectually whipping whites for more handouts. By turning on former allies and casting all whites as inherently sinful, then setting an unreachable standard (Sharpton) or offering no means at all for forgiveness (Kondabolu), NAMs maintain their cultural, social, and political power.

Irony vs. Sincerity and Tim Tebow

2011-12-04T05:05:00.004-05:00

Obviously I view liberalism as a singularly dangerous force, but there's a group I actually dislike more than crusading leftists. I'll deem these people "above-it-all moderates", a collection that comprised smarmy liberal Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity last October. Stewart's rally of SWPLs championed the idea that passionate opinion, implicitly targeting those of a conservative bent, is so uncool man. The "rational", "reasonable" center has it right and those that argue with "incivility" (read: standing for something) should stop doing so. Ignoring the misleading pleas for civility, the Rally celebrated the ironic moderate who eschews passionate debate, rejects any political fervency, and suppresses his frustration at all costs. You see why I have deemed them "above-it-all moderates", as this cohort finds concern for our nation far less viable a position than self-aware irony. These people reject everything so as to (unjustifiably) cast themselves as detached observers of the quaint plebeians.

As in Stephen Colbert's conservative character and ironic T-Shirts, this celebration of self-aware "irony" over authentic expression now permeates our popular culture. Personally, I can't stand it. I get irony, but it very much annoys me. Turns out I'm not alone. Writing at The Atlantic, Kevin Craft tries to explain the Tim Tebow phenomenon in this context:

We live in world saturated with irony and post-irony, and this affects how we consume mass culture—including sports. It's refreshing, then, when someone serious comes along and refuses to partake in the ritual. This is one reason Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is fascinating to die-hard football fans and casual viewers alike, despite his questionable skills as a professional quarterback. Tebow is a serious young man in a silly adult world. He is an irony-free individual who seems uninterested in developing an athletic persona based upon rehearsed machismo or wink-wink self awareness. He's content to be himself and to give answers that are more straightforward than his downfield passes.

In sum, Tebow is serious and makes no qualms about being that way. He acts in stark contrast to the conspicuous showmanship of not just sports, but our entire status conscious society in which individuals now seek the ability to mock as a means of social capital:

Cultural critic Lee Siegel's recent book Are You Serious: How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly explores the fact that irony and self-referential humor have saturated modern culture to such a degree that many people are now unable to discern who is serious and who is joking. Siegel's book identifies serious people as those who pursue a calling rather than a career and go about their work with attention, purpose, and continuity.

This is what makes Tebow so appealing. He's unafraid to be vulnerable and serious in a world so full of jokes that it's often hard to discern the punch line from the set-up. And his serious approach to football makes it easier for fans to listen when he talks about the other things he cares about, such as being a good role model or building hospitals in the Philippines.

Some fantastic thoughts here. Craft perspicaciously connects the phenomenon of detached irony to vulnerability. It's clear that irony appeals so much because it gives individuals protection from mockery; if one does not ever commit to anything, then one can never be needled for his passions. If one does not stand for anything, then others have nothing to criticize. In essence, the irony position is pursued by individuals too afraid to defend something valuable, too insecure to take a principled position, too fearful about what others may think to actually express an affinity directly. So they persist as self-conscious arbiters of others' passions, seeking social strength via their own ostentatiously stated indifference.

Of course the Tebow phenomenon, perhaps the most polarizing pop culture figure since Sarah Palin, expands beyond this idea and involves race, conservatism, and religion. No doubt the level of animus directed at Tebow (who I still think can't win long-term in the NFL) derives from a leftist media that does not want an unabashedly conservative, white Christian to succeed, especially one that looks so jock-y and who genuinely seems to be a good person. Is there anything worse in the minds of the media than that?

I don't really have an opinion either way on Tebow, but I do enjoy watching him. And this article has crystallized something about Tebow that I like - he's sort of an old-time straight shooter. He kneels before games as a sign of humility and engages in spontaneous celebrations after touchdowns. As Craft notes, Tebow is "unusually earnest" and has a "refreshing seriousness in a silly world." I like that and I wish more people would act with what amounts to sincere honesty.

[Also explains much of why I despise individuals like Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi who run the eXiled.]

ACLU Defends NAMBLA

2011-12-03T05:00:00.003-05:00

Saturday Audience Participation

I've recently read up on the ACLU and the liberal court system's wily behind-the-scenes tactics to getting their ideology backed by law. For example, leftists fund legal initiatives in more liberal foreign countries, then point to their own doings as judicial precedence. The Right has a sort of odd relationship with the ACLU, as the group does nominally advocate for limited government. Yet, for the most part, the ACLU basically just tries to undermine Christianity and traditionalism, their efforts primarily grounded in "civil liberalism" as opposed to "civil libertarianism."

In a notorious case, the ACLU defended NAMBLA, the North America Man-Boy Love Association, after the pedophilia group was implicated in the murder and rape of a boy perpetrated by two members. Yes, the ACLU defended the free speech of a group that unabashedly champions pedophilia and molestation of children as healthy sexuality. The case was so controversial that the ACLU even includes an explanation in their FAQs:

The ACLU of Massachusetts' represented members of NAMBLA because, while the ACLU does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children, we do advocate robust freedom of speech. This lawsuit struck at the heart of the First Amendment. It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something people find reasonable. The defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people reject.

What the ACLU does advocate is robust freedom of speech for everyone.

In other words, the ACLU puts ideology over any other concern, without question. They have defended not just these sick pedophiles, but everyone from the far-left to the far-right. They make no judgment on the specifics of the defendant's opinions; they merely want to ensure that any speech, no matter what, is allowed in our nation.

Admittedly, I admire their passionate defense of equality. I've called myself the "ultimate liberal" before because I ultimately treat everyone the same and afford every collective the same freedoms and respect. But I could never espouse such a reductionist, sterile conception of law and society. We have principles that dictate how our society runs, but such principles ultimately derive from a collective moral framework, contentiously an invention of Christian Europe. In other words, the laws should reflect our morality, not exist oblique to our morality or, worse yet, define our morality.

While I do support free speech (in spite of my nationalist sympathies), I would never support the right of pedophiles to spread their evil. Note that I don't blame the writers of the material for the actions of the murderers who read it, as this would contradict the notion that we're responsible only for our own behavior. But I would not defend the right of NAMBLA to spread their message with absolute freedom. If NAMBLA were to sue for their freedom of speech, I'd tell them to fuck off.

Many though would agree with the ACLU in that we must preserve freedom of speech for all, as this is the only way to maintain a free society. They argue that restricting any speech at all is a slippery slope to fascism (ooooh, political boogeyman!) or a system that does not allow us our natural right to express ourselves. With the ACLU, there exists no line to cross; but for me, there definitely is one and NAMBLA crosses it. The slippery slope hysteria is moot because a modern society has the ability to demarcate a moral standard, even a decidedly "liberal" one. But whatever "line" of morality it chooses, even one where essentially anything goes, NAMBLA would assuredly be on the wrong side.

Specifically, I don't see anything wrong with freedom of speech/expression except for a ban on manuals regarding getting away with rape, material calling for mass genocide or terrorism, and defense of pedophilia.

Today's question: Do you think the ACLU did the right thing in defending NAMBLA? Is the defense of free speech an "all-or-nothing" principle? Should we fear those who wish to restrict our speech, even if it's only in cases of like NAMBLA or those who advocate extreme violence? Does there come a point where a basic, visceral sense of morality outweighs cherished principles of law?

Having Goals and the Means of Pleasure

2011-12-02T04:01:00.022-05:00

A fat, destitute virgin writes into Roissy/Heartiste asking for advice. Roissy/Heartiste tells him to lose weight and start learning Game by reading the archives:

Do these two things and I guarantee you will see improvement in your interactions with girls. If you can’t, or won’t, follow these recommendations, then get comfortable living out your years in grinding celibacy. Your willpower depends a lot on how much you truly value getting your dick wet. You’d be surprised how many men value food, sloth, laziness and self-pitying despair more than sexual pleasure with cute chicks.

I bolded the last sentence to point out a sort of soft-heretical position of mine. Roissy clearly looks down on the men who choose the easy pleasures of life, masturbation, sugar, and video games, over what I imagine he considers the more difficult, but more worthwhile gifts - sex, love, and physical robustness. Manosphere blogger Frost has the same perspective and even wrote a book with all sorts of ambiguous cheerleading about men absconding from lives of mediocrity.

Most importantly, I realized that I had almost completely lost the sense of purpose and drive that had once animated my life. Several half-finished novels lingered on my hard drive. A box of business cards and promo material from a failed entrepreneurial venture collected dust in my closet. Waking up in the morning and falling asleep at night became difficult. I caught myself making excuses to avoid life – friends, girls, new experiences and challenges – so I could sit at home and watch my limited hours in this world slip away.

In the past few years, I've vacillated between obsessive self-improvement (lifting 1.5 hours per day, 6 days a week) and genuine satisfaction with with what many would consider a boring life. While Roissy and Frost seem to tout the "purpose-driven life" as not only valuable, but worthy of the effort, I'm not so sure. As they say - there's no such thing as a free lunch. One doesn't wake up able to bench 300, get the hottest girl, or swim in money. It takes time and it takes, above all else, sacrifice.

One has to sacrifice the easy pleasures of life that just feel so damn good. Admittedly, I've struggled with the paleo diet because I like sugary snacks so much. And I really miss pasta. One also has to sacrifice one's own emotional stability - the stresses of accomplishment often becoming all-consuming for those of a more brittle nature. It's this long-term sense of constant apprehension that breaks down most men. In the end, the hard-won successes are dishearteningly fleeting, with the necessary preparation and stress imposing themselves without respite.

Yet the easy pleasures of life, while destructive as in obesity and spiritual emptiness, are always available. One doesn't need willpower to enjoy a good cheesecake or spend days on the couch watching reruns of reality TV. It's great pleasure without any work; and even the consciously pugnacious can see the value in that. Of course, here too one notes the trade-off, as being a fat loser with no money and no spiritual objective isn't exactly ideal.

I ask though what distinguishes the men who seek physical, professional, and sexual perfection from those that eschew hard work altogether. Aren't both ultimately seeking "pleasure", purposefully ill-defined, and isn't the means to that end inconsequential? From the most reductionist perspective, why should we seek putatively valuable accomplishments like physical health and occupational prestige when we really just want "pleasure"? What makes ribbed abs more objectively valuable than a beer gut reflecting the enjoyment of hundreds of beers? I don't really have an answer to that.

My final thought and advice: don't over-analyze everything like I do.

Thoughts on Race and Intelligence Debate

2011-12-01T05:00:00.008-05:00

Sigh...the race-intelligence debate has flared up as a widespread blogosphere issue for the first time since James Watson's infamous (and accurate) statements back in 2007. I won't deluge you with a whole bunch of links, so see Chuck's listing, along with thoughts from HBDers Sailer and Roissy/Heartiste. There's nothing new here - media personality (Andrew Sullivan) supports racial differences in intelligence and liberals go hysterical, offering arguments almost entirely comprised of insults interspersed with discounted work by Stephen Jay Gould and other dishonest liberal creationists.

I guess I'm obliged to comment on this blogosphere hubbub as my blog does deal with race differences, though as readers have noticed, the blog views group disparities as axiomatic. In general, I find this debate incredibly boring and predictable. We've all spent our time in the trenches of liberal forums. We've seen the leftist histrionics when confronted with a fact that undermines their entire platform. We've argued against unbelievably flawed nonsense, like David Shenk's Genius in Us All. This is no different, except these liberals have fancy positions at top sites like Gawker and The Atlantic. I applaud the people who have the energy to take on the challenge, but I will abstain from direct engagement; it's just mentally unhealthy and exhausting. My general thoughts follow:

1) "OneSTDV" originally meant "One Standard Deviation" after the fundamental constant of sociology. I began this blog primarily to champion HBD and to consider the political implications of inherited differences, both racial and personal. Around that time, I had become absolutely enamored with HBD and devoured Sailer's archives as a result. I had then cut my teeth on leftist forums and blogs and felt that starting my own site would give me the opportunity to spread knowledge in this regard. But I slowly expanded my focus and for some time, "OneSTDV" has been merely a brand name with no particular meaning. I have thought also about adopting a proper pseudonym to reflect this.

2) I wrote a large number of posts early on regarding the most common liberal creationist arguments. I'll link some of them below as they are relevant here (the first one is probably the most important):

Basic Argument for Biological Race and Differences in Intelligence
Parallels between Liberal and Religious Creationism
Is Belief in Racial Intelligence Differences Racist?
Genes Linked to Intelligence
Emotional Basis of "Acting White"
Within Group Variation vs Between Group Variation
Dumbest Way to Account for Achievement Gap: Baby Doll Test
The "Cultural Bias" of Standardized Tests

There's so much data out there too. To keep it brief, let me just point to La Griffe du Lion's most comprehensive article.

3) Primarily, I just find the whole race-intelligence debate unbelievably stupid because it's so damn obvious. Arguing about the existence of inherited cognitive ability and racial differences in intelligence is like arguing about whether gravity exists or if the sun rises in the east. I know it's important to debate this issue because liberal creationism underpins so much (all?) of our current political, academic and economic landscape, but for the well informed and convinced amongst us, the debate is just mind-numbing.

4) I've expanded my focus beyond HBD because I've begun to view politics in a different light. I had begun my conscious conservatism on the basis of the practical, as in restricted immigration due to low-skilled immigrants. Yet I've progressed into viewing politics as a moral matter, especially in regards to the moral autonomy of racial and ethnic groups. In sum, I believe all racial and ethnic groups have the collective moral freedom to define their own nations and thus my conservatism is grounded in this principle as opposed to viewing nations as large-scale corporations. While I undoubtedly regard intelligence and personality as inexorably important aspects of society ("demography is destiny"), I prefer to focus on more transcendent notions like ethnic self-determination and cultural health. I basically just assume race differences, as in whites and Asians have sufficient cognitive capital to produce stable societies, while other races can not do so independently. This is a given; the more interesting idea is how we proceed and on what moral grounds do we justify our actions.

And finally, yes - I am a fat loser living in my mother's basement.

Group Pressure and My View on Druggies

2011-11-30T04:50:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-29T05:35:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-28T04:11:00.021-05:00

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

2011-11-27T05:05:00.005-05:00

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

2011-11-26T00:55:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-25T03:40:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-24T03:40:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-23T04:15:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-22T03:15:00.001-05:00

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

2011-11-21T03:30:00.007-05:00

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

2011-11-20T04:00:00.005-05:00

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

2011-11-19T05:05:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-18T04:25:00.004-05:00

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

2011-11-17T05:00:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-16T05:00:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-15T05:35:00.005-05:00

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

2011-11-14T04:25:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-13T05:45:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-12T04:40:00.005-05:00

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

2011-11-11T05:00:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-09T05:35:00.001-05:00

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

2011-11-08T04:55:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-07T04:55:00.005-05:00

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.

Game vs. MRA: Thoughts on MRA's Arguments, Motivations, and Conception of Women

2011-11-06T05:35:00.006-05:00

So a blog war has flared up between MRA (Men's Rights Activists) and Game. I've read Chuck's stuff so I'll link to his most recent post, which comes via a guest poster named Novaseeker. In one of his first posts, Chuck classifies me as "Switzerland", but I'm assuredly not neutral in this debate. While I share with MRA's a virulent hatred of feminism, I view them as sore loser types who express the same sort of shrill hysteria present amongst their female counterparts. Let me give you an example of the kind of rhetoric coming from this camp. From Paul Elam, here's how MRAs view women:

I have to note at this point that the male black widow can almost always be seen feverishly trying to escape his looming cannibalization when sex with the female is complete. He frequently fails, but even with a brain that has less mass than a grain of sand, he is aware of risks and attempts to reduce them with a quick flight. He does not eschew sex, but he knows the possibilities that comes with it and acts accordingly.

We have a cultural zeitgeist now…where the connection that men have with women can literally kill them.

He characterizes risk associated with pursuing women with this analogy: No, it’s like saying one should not drive on the highway with one eye closed while jerking off.

So basically, women have a vagina covering a ticking time bomb ready to perpetrate false rape accusations and cuckoldry. Does he have a point? Yes, as modern feminism seeks to undermine male success, including stealing his money, his happiness, and even his ability to raise his own family. But good god, Elam acts like everyone women is Lorena Bobbit in training. Chuck tries to defend Game as means of mitigating this risk, but one could merely argue that women aren't really that bad. More on this point later.

Since Elam and company display the same cutting emotionality of feminists, one must consider their underlying motivations. We know feminists muse on "beauty standards", "fat acceptance", "women of color", and normalization of homosexuality because the vast majority of them are ugly, fat, minority lesbians. Status-seeking underlies almost every political movement, no matter if the disappointed obscure their motivations underneath academic camouflage. So what can we parse from MRA rants. I'll leave that to frequent commenter PA:

WTF? Why would anyone want to move away from every woman? This is exactly the disingenuous, faggoty strain of MRA I oppose. Disingenuous, because it often comes from non-white commenters who have ulterior motives. Or faggoty — not exactly homosexual, but mote of a misogyny — because if sincere, it shows a clinical fear and hatred of women.

As PA alludes to, MRA does lean towards the political left, especially when one notes the leftist anti-racism and anti-white racism often expressed by commenters. I've long suspected that many MRAs are motivated primarily by a pathological hatred of white women and not women in general. For example, one MRA who I will not name gave a sperm sample and listed his race as Caucasian despite being East Indian - and then bragged about getting back at some white feminist when a brown baby comes out. This might be one of the sickest things I've read on the Internet, but it fits well into the pathological hatred of white women. Further, blaming (white) women for our troubles partially absolves "people of color".

PA also comments about being called a "white knight":

Dude – what if you ENJOY running game on women, and they clearly enjoy it by rewarding you with horny bright eyes and sometimes sex and love? LOL, I guess that makes me a pedestalizer. I actively bait certain MRAs to call me a White Knight and Mangina, because it cracks me up.

In the mind of the MRA, no woman can never offer anything of value (and one wonders why I call them half-fags) and thus any praise given to a woman must be unwarranted. To seek or revel in experiencing female idiosyncrasy is to "white knight", a hilarious standard only a full-on social failure or homosexual could champion. I expanded upon this in a post:

Because after all, many MRAs exist as feminist doppelgangers, eager to shame and insult anyone who doesn't agree with their gender hatred. This largely explains why many have turned away from The Spearhead. But as with the perennially unsatisfied anti-racists, MRAs accept nothing less than full acceptance of their creed. Unless one is ideologically pure, a standard that they move capriciously and frequently, you're a despicable "white knight".

Finally, let me conclude by offering a potential solution to the "gender wars." After all, isn't that what the debate reduces to - how can we undermine feminism and the problems caused by this ideology fostering hatred of men? In the previous post, I said:

These men, in a position that should stupefy any reasonable individual, don't see men and women as two necessary components of a stable society; they actually think "going their own way" will somehow work. Or the really funny ones that think robots can replace real women. I wonder how many of them have Real Dolls already.

MRA, the segment that thinks men should go their own way, countenance a completely absurd solution that reflects a gross ignorance of basic female psychology. In sum, women follow when men lead. As feminism has spread, men have accepted the notion that women, en masse, prefer a reversal of gender roles. The MRAs see both female hegemony and female stubborness/"evil" as irreversible and thus support a movement of victory-by-absenteeism. One could argue that many MRAs seek the dismantling of a value system in which they have failed, as our culture celebrates male sexual prowess. It makes sense then; why would they support Game that forces men to do something that scares most of us - putting oneself out there to face inevitable rejection? Much easier to just say "screw it" and rail against an external system instead of dealing with one's own apprehensions.

Owing to the psychological foundations of Game, the solution is a return to male leadership. Quite simply - when men lead, women follow, happily. We all know women really do like to follow, as illustrated by essentially every single woman in the world expressing attraction towards relatively dominant men. Here's an anecdote from former vegetarian Peggy Lipton, the beautiful, butt-kicking babe of The Mod Squad, showing how women simply fall in line:

...what Peggy Lipton says she went through with meeting Quincy Jones. In her autobiography “Breathing Out” Lipton recounts how Quincy cooked lamb chops for her on their first date. Lipton hadn’t eaten meat for six years, and she said she knew with that first dinner that it was “going to be a truly carnivorous event,” that all her dietary decisions up to that point were about to go out the door. "I fell madly in love," she said in a People magazine interview. "I saw him cooking meat and thought, 'If I'm going to be with him, I'm going to have to change.'

If men act like men, then women just can't help themselves. Women want a dominant man above all else and only Game, along with a cultural traditionalist patriarchy, can restore the modern Western man.

[Note: When I speak of 'Game', I mean a basic version where men market themselves as possessing equal sexual capital and avoid pandering to female whim. All the minutiae of Game is irrelevant for this discussion.]

SWPL Self-Awareness

2011-11-05T04:30:00.003-04:00

Saturday Audience Participation

I have a very good friend who qualifies as the posterchild of SWPLdom. Seriously, the site is basically written about him. Whenever we see each other, he's wearing a pea coat with an ironic T-shirt underneath and New Balance on his feet. Our conversation starts off with him recalling a funny segment on the Daily Show and chiding me for ordering bacon and steak as everyone knows meat is so disgusting ("you need to read Skinny Bitch!"). Then he'll speak of his time living in Berkeley and Manhattan, his "girls with bangs" ex- girlfriend, his new snowboard, and a great Death Cab song, all while enjoying a microbrew and hummus. I didn't make any of that up - it all applies to my friend. (He actually is a really cool guy though as we do share a lot of interests and a unique sense of humor.)

About eight years ago, I first realized that he was a SWPL when he showed up wearing a pea coat. At that time, I didn't have a full understanding of SWPLdom or have such a concise moniker for it, but I knew it when I saw it. So while I couldn't quite articulate it, the pea coat turned a light bulb on immediately and then years later when reading the SWPL site, it just all made so much sense - like a puzzle that you've finished but have to rotate around to see the correct picture.

I needled him about it, "oh, is that what all the fancy-pants New Yorkers wear these days?", "I have no idea who Death Cab for Cutie is but they sound really gay," and "hummus - that looks regurgitated." He took it well, as men should expect some friendly ribbing from their peers. But now thinking about it, I wonder if he got the joke. And further, if he's not familiar with the SWPL acronym, what more widespread term is used to classify these individuals? Once, he did refer to himself as a "one of us yuppies at the farmer's market", so maybe "yuppie" would suffice here. Though when I think of yuppie, I think preppy Wall Streeter and not the purposeful anti-mainstream antagonism of the average SWPL.

Today's questions: Do SWPLs actually realize they're SWPLs? Do they understand the uniformity of their behavior, how so many of their choices fit into a clearly identifiable pattern? Personal experiences with SWPL friends or family members? Do they understand that their primary motivation is status-seeking and not some enlightened pursuit of esoterica? Can they take being made fun of (maybe, as evinced by Portlandia and The Goode Family)? What's a more widely known term, such as yuppies, to describe SWPLs?

Gays in the Military and the Liberal Value System

2011-11-04T05:05:00.001-04:00

For some reason, the Carter Strange beating this past summer, perpetrated by a group of subhuman blacks, really set me over the edge on liberals. In a post on the subject, I cautiously condemned the professional left as "evil", a characterization exemplified by Matt Lauer's unbelievable question to Mr. Strange in a "Today" show interview:

The modern left no longer cares about human dignity. They no longer care about protecting individuals from harm. They no longer care about happiness, safety, or general well-being. The modern left cares about their narrative above all else, a narrative that dictates their beliefs, their self-aggrandizing moral posturing, and their nauseating reaction to violent acts like this.

Lauer: It seems to me the defense so far is saying, 'Look these kids who are between the ages of 13 and 19 are basically good kids who did a very bad thing and made very bad judgments.' Do you feel that way? Carter, your dad has already said he finds it hard to find forgiveness in his heart, what about you?

The left's evil derives from their loyalty to the "liberal narrative" above even the sanctity of human life. They abide by a value system that places anti-racism and anti-sexism as the paramount virtues. Preserving life, as in protecting people from harm or allowing them the freedom to live without fear of harm, means little in the context of modern liberalism. One notes the zealotry of belief in this moral order, with individuals like Amy Biehl, this rape victim in Haiti, and the relatively common victims of black man-on-white woman violence literally giving themselves to the cause.

Keeping this in mind, here's a story from HuffPo about outreach and acceptance of gay cadets at the service academies, with quotes below showing how "the powers that be" will fix any obdurate homophobes:

Officials at West Point, the Naval Academy and Air Force said they would be open to requests for support groups, and there are efforts underway at Coast Guard to launch a peer support group.

Cmdr. William Marks, the Naval Academy Public Affairs officer, said that no formal complaints or reports have been lodged. But "any off-color comment would be inappropriate," he said. "It's not in-line with an environment of respect that we have here."

Col. Stella Renner, the vice commandant of the Air Force Academy, echoed Stafford's praise for the "positive" climate. She called the post-DADT transition a routine part of "norming [cadets] to what is expected of them as Air Force officers and what we tolerate and what we don't, so this is just one more area where we do that."

A West Point freshman, speaking anonymously, said that his leaders made it clear that "in any professional interactions, any type of remarks that would seem derogatory ... are not going to be tolerated. And as far as dealing with cadets, I've noticed that they've changed in that sense."

Take a look at the bolded statement. In other words, authority figures at the service academies have prioritized policing anti-gay statements. They will spend time and energy ensuring that no gay person feels unwelcome due to an insensitive quip or caustic remark. And thus, we see the glorification of minority offense above all other values. Putting our sanity caps on - a gay marine should not care at all about a "hurry the fuck up, fag" comment on the front lines. He has more important tasks on the battlefield, liking trying to stay alive and keeping all his limbs.

Yet, in modern liberal America, policing any situation where a minority might be "offended" now takes precedence over all other objectives, including defending oneself from murder. Our leadership considers the placation of minorities a needed lesson for army personnel, similar to their insistence that firefighting and police work depends on racial diversity. Our military can no longer focus on just fighting and protecting each other; they must also focus on adhering to the liberal zeitgeist, their own safety seemingly only at the same level of importance.