The main lesson I hope our distant descendants draw from the Orange Man Era is: The rage heads ye have always with you, so ye must find a way to channel them into something as non-destructive as possible. The story of modern politics can be written in a sentence: The weaponization of rage heads, combined with the inability of any society to properly dispose of said WMDs.
Set the Wayback Machine to the turn of the 20th century. Lenin’s great insight is that “the masses” will never achieve the proper revolutionary consciousness without a dedicated cadre of hardcore, professional revolutionaries to lead the way. Lenin recognized the prevalence of incipient rage heads in his society — how could he not? — but realized that, absent some guiding hand, they’d flounder around incoherently. At best (from the “furthering the Revolution” point of view), they’d do what his, Lenin’s, idiot brother did: Try to knock off the tsar, and get himself hung for it. Thus, the Bolsheviks.
The problem, though, is that rage heads by definition suffer from poor impulse control. The tiny subset of them that are pure sociopaths (like Lenin), and thus have the icy-veined self-control to hold their fire, have to maintain the very tightest discipline over the Party, or all hell breaks loose. See, for example, the massive street battles in Weimar Germany between the KPD (German Commies) and the SD. Hitler, like Lenin, had to get his rage heads on a tight leash, so he channeled the disciplined sociopaths from the SD into the SS, cooled out the coolable in the SD by buying them off, and shanked the incorrigible remainder. See also the almost-exactly-contemporary Moscow Show Trials.
Note please that this is your best-case scenario for a purely ideological revolution. From Robespierre to Kim Il Sung, the first step in consolidating the Revolution is killing off a large fraction of the original revolutionaries.
The worst-case scenario (again, from the “furthering the Revolution” standpoint) is what the American wannabe-bolshies did / are currently doing. Knowing that you can’t shank or show-trial the dreadlocked poetry majors that make up your goon squad, you try to channel them into academia, the Media, the “arts.” Which fails egregiously, because whatever tenuous contact with reality they once had gets completely severed by those institutions’ social bubbles. They never were very good at holding fire, and now they can’t, literally can’t, see any reason to — life is great here on campus, so why can’t it be that way everywhere?
Severian, “Living in End Times”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-02-28.
May 29, 2020
QotD: Historical ways to deal with your “rage heads”
May 27, 2020
QotD: “Hate speech” is the new secular heresy
Brendan O’Neill, “Why we must win the fight for free speech”, Spiked, 2020-02-26.
May 25, 2020
QotD: Sociopaths and politicians
The key thing about the modern sociopath is the ambivalence toward the truth. They think saying something is the same as doing something. What matters is if the words get the listener to do what the sociopath wants them to do. Standing in front of crowd, making false claims, is fine if it causes people to buy product. If the truth sells more product, then the truth is better. From the perspective of the modern sociopath, the difference is about the results, not the accuracy of the statements. The truth or a lie, whichever works.
Now replace “sociopath” with “politician” and “product” with “votes” and you have the modern managerial democracy. It’s not that our politicians lie. It’s that for them, a lie is indistinguishable from the truth. That’s why they seem so utterly shameless. Shame requires a sense of right and wrong, a knowledge that what you said or did is intrinsically wrong. For the people who rule over us, right and wrong only exist in the context of their own ambitions. Something is “right” if it benefits the person in the moment.
“The Z Man”, “Rule by Sociopath”, The Z Blog, 2018-02-21.
May 24, 2020
Zuby on why Joe Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment is one of the most racist things said by any US politician recently
I’d embed all the tweets here, but the page loading speed would be monumentally slow, so here’s the initial tweet and I’ve scraped the text from the rest and put it in blockquotes:
I'm seeing a lot of people trying to pass off Joe Biden's #YouAintBlack comment as merely a 'gaffe' or 'joke'…
But it wasn't.
It revealed a deeply rooted and pernicious form of racism that is extremely pervasive in left-wing politics. Let me explain… (1/14)
— ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) May 23, 2020
Every black person is aware of the power and pain of being considered an ‘outsider’ within one’s own ‘race’.
This happens everywhere, but it is a common phenomenon particularly amongst Black Americans, due to history and culture. (2/14)
—
You are probably familiar with terms like ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘coon’, ‘house n*gga’, ‘coconut’, ‘Bounty’ and ‘race traitor’.
These slurs are used to demean black people by stripping them of their ‘Blackness’. (3/14)
—
ALL black conservatives, libertarians, centrists, or even moderate liberals have been on the receiving end of at least one of these slurs.
Usually levied by another black person, but occasionally by a particularly bold ‘woke white progressive’ type. (4/14)
—
This form of ostracisation is particularly painful for Black Americans. Who are largely disconnected from their African roots due to the horrors of slavery.
As a substitute, many cling to a fuzzy concept of ‘Blackness’. For the sake of identity and community. (5/14)
—
So, to be considered ‘not black’ is like being an outcast of a community that often already feels alienated… (6/14)
—
I am not American and I do not speak on behalf of anybody but myself. These are my own thoughts.
My name is Nzubechukwu and my heritage is of the Igbo tribe in Anambra state in Nigeria 🇳🇬
So NOBODY can take my ‘Blackness’ from me! They will look foolish trying! (7/14)
—
Most Black Americans don’t have this SOLID sense of heritage.
People (of all colours) know this and weaponise it against them to prevent individuals from stepping out of the ‘groupthink’.
Anyone who is perceived to go ‘against’ ‘The Black Community’ must be punished. (8/14)
—
Left-wing politicians, activists and professional race hustlers have used this psychological warfare to keep black people ‘in check’ and voting for them for many decades.
It’s demeaning, discriminatory, and it strips black people of our agency. (9/14)
—
So, when Biden suggested that ‘you ain’t Black’ if you consider voting for Trump instead of him, he exposed a much deeper form of racism.
The sense of ‘ownership’ of Black people. Unearned allegiance and entitlement.
It was a vile statement… (10/14)
—
But it was also honest. Because that’s how a lot of these politicians and ‘progressives’ really feel about black people.
Like they own us. (11/14)
—
If you were born black, then you will die black. There is no such thing as being ‘politically black’. This is nonsense designed to CONTROL you and keep you needy.
NOBODY can take away your ‘Blackness’. Your ‘Black Card’ is your birthright. Regardless of who you vote for. (12/14)
—
I would never dream of telling anyone who they must vote for, based on their skin colour nor genitalia.
That would be extremely arrogant, condescending and discriminatory.
Be VERY suspicious of anybody who talks like that. They want to control your mind. (13/14)
—
That is all. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.
Much love. 👊🏾
Zuby
#ImStillBlack
H/T to Darleen for posting the link to David Thompson’s blog.
Justin Trudeau explains why Canada is still ferociously invested in getting that temporary UN Security Council seat
Chris Selley strives manfully to avoid directly calling the Prime Minstrel of Canada an utter moron:
The United Nations Security Council Chamber in New York, also known as the Norwegian Room.
Photo by Patrick Gruban via Wikimedia Commons.
“We are doing well managing the economy in the COVID era while keeping to the principles and values that we hold dear,” said Trudeau.
There are times when the prime minister opens his mouth and I genuinely wonder how he doesn’t burst into flame. This was one of those times.
Which principles and values exactly?
Not our international obligations to asylum-seekers, certainly. Until very recently the Liberals would shift into maximum dudgeon at the very suggestion that tens of thousands of people crossing the border “irregularly” — let no one say “illegally”! — at Roxham Road constituted any sort of problem.
“FACT: Providing asylum claimants due process is not a choice. It is the law,” then Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen tweeted in July 2018. Trudeau was dispatched to Queen’s Park to educate Premier Doug Ford, who wasn’t being welcoming enough. “It didn’t seem to me that the premier was quite as aware of our international obligations to the UN convention on refugees, as he might have been,” Trudeau faux-lamented. “So I spent a little time explaining.”
And then in March, it all got chucked into the incinerator. Try to cross the border illegally — we can say it now! — and you’ll get turned back into American custody.
Plus the sardonic amusement that Canada, whose educational and cultural organizations make such a big deal about our critical role in UN peacekeeping over the years, currently has a massive force deployed on such missions … thirty five in total … that’s not 35 missions, that’s 35 people.
May 21, 2020
The Milk Dud’s (final?) flip-flop
Walking political liability Andrew “The Milk Dud” Scheer managed to bring himself to the attention of the media yet again for his decision to backtrack on renouncing his American citizenship … did Justin need him to take the heat off for another Trudeau blunder?
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy and dual citizen of Canada and the United States, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
I don’t suppose Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s flip-flop on renouncing his U.S. citizenship will be of interest very long, but I have parting shots to take about it. In backtracking on his original intention to give up the United States of America, Scheer showed an awareness that there is at least one position in Canadian government, that of prime minister, which requires going the extra mile to avoid the appearance of divided or compromised allegiance. I am being careful not to say “loyalty,” which, unlike allegiance, might be regarded as a purely private matter.
It is a good thing that Scheer recognizes the importance of these issues. But he made a big deal about the disavowal being a “personal decision” during the 2019 election. What’s changed now, he says, is that he will never be prime minister. So he is now free to be an American, which, by definition, is the freest goldurn thing you can be.
But: “I’ll never be prime minister” seems like a hell of a thing for the leader of the Opposition, which Scheer still is until August at the earliest, to say. Our House of Commons is in a hung state. No party commands a majority. The Conservatives (who would want us to remember that they led in the 2019 popular vote) chose not to have an interim leader in Scheer’s place while permanent successors were sized up. The Liberals don’t have anything like a binding supply-and-confidence agreement with any other party. The country is in the grip of epidemic disease.
When the behind-the-scenes Liberal-friendly Quebec dairy folks selected Scheer as their preferred patsy to “lead” the “Conservative” party, they chose very well indeed. Scheer might as well be wearing a Washington Generals jersey from now on.
May 18, 2020
QotD: Science, evidence and “cognitive creationism”
What can we do about this problem? First, we must acknowledge that for most issues most conservatives and liberals are pro-science. Recent surveys show that over 90 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., for example, agreed that “science and technology give more opportunities” and that “science makes our lives better.” In other words, anti-science attitudes are formed in very narrow cognitive windows — those in which science appears to oppose certain political or religious views. Knowledge of a subject helps a little. For example, those who know more about climate science are slightly more likely to accept that global warming is real and human-caused than those who know less on the subject. But that modest effect is not only erased when political ideology is factored in, it has an opposite effect on one end of the political spectrum. For Republicans, the more knowledge they have about climate science the less likely they are to accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming (while Democrats’ confidence goes up).
In another Scientific American column I wrote about this “backfire” effect, in which the more information you give someone that contradicts a cherished belief, the less likely they are to change their mind; in fact, they double-down on the belief. But this only applies to important political, religious, or ideological beliefs.
If you don’t have a dog in the fight then the facts can change your mind. But the cognitive dissonance created by facts counter to beliefs by which you define yourself will almost always be resolved by spin-doctoring the facts, not by changing your mind. Thus, when I engage in debate or conversation with creationists, for example, I don’t give them the choice between Darwin and Jesus, because I know who’s going to lose that one. Instead, I try to convince them that evolution was God’s way of creation, just like people in Newton’s time and after came to believe that gravity was God’s way of creating solar systems. I don’t believe that myself, of course, but the point is to get people to embrace science, not to win an argument. With climate deniers, I know from research and personal experience that when they hear “global warming” they think “anti-capitalism,” “anti-freedom,” “anti-American way of life.” So I take that off the table by showing them how investing in green technology is going to be one of the most lucrative enterprises in the history of capitalism. I call this the Elon Musk Model.
Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.
May 17, 2020
QotD: The egalitarian model of bias
Bo Winegard, “‘Equalitarianism’ and Progressive Bias”, Quillette, 2018-02-07.
May 15, 2020
Canada’s weird election laws
Chris Selley points out some of the oddities of the federal Elections Act:
“2019 Canadian federal election – VOTE” by Indrid__Cold is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
It seems like about a hundred years ago, but one of the disquieting revelations of last year’s federal election campaign was that the Elections Act’s rules covering third-party spending are completely bananas.
Readers may recall Elections Canada warning environmental groups that they couldn’t just go on spending money in the fight against climate change without registering as third parties, with all the paperwork and bureaucracy that entails, all because People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier had supposedly made it a “partisan issue.” Now we have another bunch of overripe bananas on our hands: As the National Post first reported, the Commissioner of Canada Elections is investigating an anti-abortion organization called RightNow for having allegedly “recruited, trained and coordinated volunteers that were directed to over 50 campaigns” during the 2019 campaign.
RightNow’s mission is to identify pro-life candidates with a chance of winning, and connect them with volunteers eager to help them with their nomination and election campaigns. Readers may not find this particularly controversial. Members and supporters of all manner of groups, most famously and numerously labour unions, campaign alongside political candidates all the time. A quick rummage around Facebook from last year’s campaign finds both Toronto NDP MP Andrew Cash (who was eventually defeated) and Nova Scotia Liberal candidate Bernadette Jordan (who is now federal fisheries minister) thanking Unifor members wearing “Unifor Votes” t-shirts for their canvassing help. Photos on Unifor’s own Facebook page chronicle an October 5th event in Winnipeg called “Politics and Pancakes event plus canvassing for (NDP MP) Daniel Blaikie.”
[…]
At first blush, there doesn’t seem to be anything legally untoward with this — or indeed what RightNow was doing on a much smaller scale. (USW claimed $1.1 million in third-party expenses, PSAC $345,000, CUPE $161,000. RightNow splashed out a whopping $8,255.71.) “Volunteer labour” is explicitly exempt from the Elections Act prohibition against third parties donating to political parties or candidates, either in cash or in kind. But in an April 22nd letter to Albertos Polizogopoulos, RightNow’s legal counsel, the commissioner’s director of investigations, Mylène Gigou, argued that “the recruiting, training and coordinating of volunteers are core political activities of a political campaign” — and in performing those activities, RightNow may have “circumvented” the third-party donation prohibition.
This is, of course, preposterous. On what principle would we allow members or supporters of third parties to volunteer in election campaigns — as any healthy democracy ought to — while prohibiting spending so much as a dime to recruit said volunteers? “Training” or “coordinating” could be defined as narrowly as telling people what sorts of things to say on people’s doorsteps and what sorts of things not to. You don’t just turn people loose with your campaign materials, like sheep on a grassy meadow, and hope for the best.
May 10, 2020
QotD: “Shirtstorm” and other forms of systematic patriarchal oppression of women
Which totally justified making a rocket scientist cry on the day of his greatest triumph. After all, people like him had ruined her life, right?
But it gets worse than that – there was an entire campus filled with supposedly educated (ah!) women terrorized by the statue of a sleep walking man.
And then there’s the ever-elastic definition of “sexual assault” which – I’m not making this up – can now be ratcheted down to “Looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable” or, for that matter “failed to sexually assault me.” Oh, sorry, that last was the definition of racism. Some Palestinian woman looked at rape statistics and found that Israeli women are raped by Palestinian men in much higher numbers than Palestinian women are raped by Israeli men, and immediately concluded this is because Israelis are racist. It beggars the mind.
Another thing that beggars the mind is the progressive image of women as great warriors. You know, in all the movies and half the books (often without supernatural explanation) a 90 lb chick can beat 300 lb men. And women were always great fighters throughout the ages. And, and, and …
And yet, women are peaceful – peaceful, d*mn it. This is why “peaceful planet of women” is a trope on TV tropes. Not just a trope, but a dead horse one.
Attempts to square that circle have included the explanation that women are only violent because patriarchy. There needs be nothing else said because in this context, and with apologies to the ponies, Patriarchy Is Magic. Honorable mention on trying to square the circle must go to Law and Order‘s attempted episode on Gamer Gate where the game the woman designer had written was about Peaceful Amazon Warriors.
Sarah Hoyt, “Give Me My Smelling Salts, Ho! A Blast From The Past From April 2015”, According to Hoyt, 2020-01-22.
May 7, 2020
“When it’s over we can shave the heads of a few easy victims and vilify a few who enjoyed it too much. But I collaborated too.”
The mandatory shutdown of most of the world’s economy is inducing some introspection:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.
I looked again at the decisions of the Johnson government. Should they have followed my instincts? No lockdown. Shield the elderly and the vulnerable, like my elder daughters immuno-deficient boyfriend, but let all normal life continue. Let the virus rip. Let the football league play out its conclusion and more to the point let out beloved Dundee Stars Elite Ice Hockey Club break our hearts and miss the playoffs. Such a government would probably have fallen within days, battered by the broadcast media, backbench rebellion and a nation that preferred to be kept safe from the unknown that they feared. Had they survived the month, then the elderly who by choice refused to be shielded would have pitched up in their thousands at A&E, to be faced with experienced nurses like my wife who triaged them on the doorstep and sent many of them home to die, to preserve the ICU beds for those who could be saved. Instead of admitting them so that they could die with every bit as much certainty. Had he survived the first month, Johnson would have fallen regardless and nation would be traumatised by the memory of grandparents sent home to die
Had I been in his shoes, I too would have sued for peace. My nation demanded it of me. I would have convinced myself it was the right thing and when the chest pain and cough arrived, I would have felt relief that I had made the correct call. I would have looked at the Malice of Piers Morgan and convinced myself that I was still moderate. I would have dismissed the feeble objections of lunatic libertarians.
When it’s over we can shave the heads of a few easy victims and vilify a few who enjoyed it too much. But I collaborated too.
May 6, 2020
What’s on your bookshelf?
The self-appointed censors of righteousness demand to know!
Plenty of people like to be filmed against the backdrop of their bookshelves to convey the message or at least create the impression that they are smart. This has become even more common during the current extraordinary conditions of self-isolation, where virtually all the media interviews are conducted from home rather than in studio. Ditto for all the Zoom and other teleconferences. This, in turn, has given some people the opportunity to nose around and check out just what exactly others have on their shelves – presumably having read it and not just for decoration. It should be a fun exercise, but these days of perpetual outrage no fun goes unpunished.
By contrast, the picture of a bookshelf belonging to a Tory minister Michael Gove and his wife Sarah Vine was unsolicited, which probably adds to the regret right about now.
[…]
Books, like other human artifacts, are historical records and documents of our past. You might not like the course that the history took, but it’s important to know it and remember it.
And hypocrisy, because of the double standards.
Sure, Nazis, Nazi sympathisers, Holocaust deniers and assorted other apologists are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But what about communists? How many of those having a go at Gove and his wife for owning an Irving book have on their own shelves works by Marx, if not Lenin, Mao, Che and numerous related others? Those who have been inspired by and followed Marx’s idea (whether you think correctly or not) have been responsible for some 100 million premature deaths in the 20th century and other untold misery and devastation. Mao, the author of the little Red Book, accounts for up to 60 million of those (I happen to have a copy; does that make me a Maoist and a genocide fan?). But socialism is cool and you can’t blame Marx because to do so would be to delegitimise the whole socialist project. And of course the socialist ideals are all beautiful – equality! solidarity! community! dignity! – and, in any case, everyone has had good intentions. So all good, guys.
Read and own whatever the damn you like – and don’t let the fascists of any kind dictate your bookshelf. Except for 50 Shades of Grey. We’ll all judge you for that.
The main picture: some of my shelves – feel free to judge me.
I thought to take a picture of my own shelves, but Arthur Chrenkoff appears to have a broadly similar selection of books (more heavily weighted to British politics than mine), so I just nicked his photo to save the effort. (Thanks, Arthur! Hope you don’t mind!)
QotD: The French philosophes and the “lower orders”
The French philosophes thought the social classes were divided by the chasm not only of poverty but, more crucially, of superstition and ignorance. They despised the lower orders because they were in thrall to Christianity. The editor of the Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot, declared that the common people had no role in the Age of Reason: “The general mass of men are not so made that they can either promote or understand this forward march of the human spirit.” Indeed, “the common people are incredibly stupid,” he said, and were little more than animals: “too idiotic — bestial — too miserable, and too busy” to enlighten themselves. Voltaire agreed. The lower orders lacked the intellect required to reason and so must be left to wallow in superstition. They could be controlled and pacified only by the sanctions and strictures of religion which, Voltaire proclaimed, “must be destroyed among respectable people and left to the canaille large and small, for whom it was made.”
Keith Windschuttle, “Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Enlightenment”, New Criterion, 2020-02.
May 5, 2020
QotD: Social media encourages autistic behaviour
The genetic fallacy, you’ll recall, is the inability to separate the idea from the speaker. Or, if you’re under age 40, it’s simply “communication,” as our public discourse nowadays proceeds in very little other than genetic fallacies. Try it for yourself. We all know what kind of reaction you’ll get in respectable circles if you say “You know, Donald Trump has a point about …”, but you can do it on “our side” of the fence, too. Watch: Obama was right about Race to the Top. No, really: Compared to W’s No Child Left Behind bullshit, pretty much anything short of letting kids be raised by wolves would’ve been better (and hey, even being raised by wolves worked out ok for Romulus and Remus). Even with the qualifier attached, almost everyone on “our side” instinctively bristles — we’ve been so conditioned by the words “Obama” and “race,” especially in close proximity, that we can’t help ourselves. Even I do it.
It’s especially bad for the younger generations who, as I keep arguing, have been effectively autismized (it’s a word) by social media. Twitter, especially, is so constructed that “replies” can come in hours, days, months, years later. Blogs too for that matter — one of the reasons we close the comments here after a few weeks is to prevent drive-by commenters clogging things up trying to re-litigate something from years ago. Modern “communication” must take place in discrete, contextless utterances. That being the case, understanding a statement in context is impossible — I repeat, impossible. So Lenin (or Hitler, or Mao, or William F. Buckley, or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man) didn’t have a point about ___; because that requires understanding how his point fit into the larger context of his thought, his times, his culture, his world. None of that shit fits into a tweet, so we’re trained to respond to the name — Lenin (etc.) is either a good guy or a bad guy, full stop, so anything he says about anything must be good or bad, automatically.
I hardly need to elaborate on the effect this has on our public culture. If Our Thing really wants to get serious, the first thing any “organization,” no matter how loose, must do is: Ban social media.
Severian, “Education, the Genetic Fallacy, and the Spectrum”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-27.
May 4, 2020
QotD: The eternal “now” of Progressive stasis
None of that matters to the cultural marxist, though. How could it? As I wrote yesterday, to the fanatic, the past is one long catalog of freely chosen error. Nor is there any meaningful future to a fanatic. That seems wrong, I realize, but consider that time passes through contrast. People will be born and die in the Communist Utopia, but since everyone will always have everything, human activity will be exquisitely pointless …
Ignore what Leftists say. Watch what they do, and it’ll soon be obvious that what they long for above all things is stasis. They want everyone and everything to be one way, and one way only, forever. Homosexuals are the most flamboyant example. Imagine that — having your entire life defined by your sexual attraction. I like blondes, but you know, if the right brunette came along I’d go for her. Heck, I’d even go for a ginger (I know, I know, I’m a monster). But according to the Left, that’s not allowed. I like blondes, and therefore I’m only allowed to like blondes. Oh, and I can only vote for Bernie Sanders, because he’s the attracted-to-blondes candidate, and I must support abortion, and use the word “cisgendered,” and …
Thus, to the Leftist there’s no past, and no future either. There’s only now, and the only thing that matters now is power. How could it be otherwise?
Severian, “The Endless Now”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-23.
