Avoiding Squalor
Isolation almost invariably means poverty and backwardness. You’re not aware of how the basic things of life are done differently in other parts of the world, and so people who are isolated will keep doing things the same way for centuries or thousands of years. For example, when the British landed in Australia, they found the Australian aborigines living at a Stone Age level. The aborigines had no idea of iron. Australia is one of the great sources of iron ore in the world.
Thomas Sowell discusses retrogressive culture, the importance of geography, and leftism versus success:
Previously. And before that. And Sowell’s book The Vision of the Anointed is pretty much a must-have.
leftism versus success
Ha. As I read that I had these tabs open in my browser:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/220766/
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/220836/
As I read that I had these tabs open in my browser
Serendipity, she is kind. I did once use the term radically bourgeois, though I had just polished off a very large glass of a very good red.
But it does, I think, touch on something important. Leftist posturing is often antithetical to practical success and practical happiness. To take a vivid and familiar example, imagine if your children, nieces and nephews took to heart the operatic blatherings of Laurie Penny, who tells her readers to “Fuck social mobility… Fuck money. Fuck rising above your class… Fuck marriage, mortgage, monogamy, and every other small, ugly ambition.” These, she says, are things “we should have abandoned.”
Well, okay. But where exactly does that leave a young person, or a person not-so-young? Once you’ve declared “war” on bourgeois values, once you’ve abandoned the conventional foundations of material and emotional reward, where do you go? How will that radicalism serve you later in life, when you’re no longer a stroppy teenager or a twenty-something poseur? Is a mix of contrarianism, hypocrisy, resentment and a colossal sense of entitlement a sound footing for an adult life? After all, those “small, ugly ambitions” are what gave Laurie her own comfortable upbringing and advantages in life, such that she can now flit around the world tweeting about how oppressed she is.
As noted before, it’s one of the classic problems for self-imagined radicals. In denouncing bourgeois habits (usually while enjoying the benefits of such behaviour, at least residually), they have little of practical use to offer their followers. If you do away with marriage, monogamy, responsibility, deferred gratification, personal territory, etc., you’re basically left with a recipe for failure, dependency and unhappiness. Though of course the resentment that follows can be very useful to would-be prophets of the left. If encouraging needless misery, and then exploiting it, is your thing.
Though of course the resentment that follows can be very useful to would-be prophets of the left. If encouraging needless misery, and then exploiting it, is your thing.
Why do you think these people do it if not for the control it potentially offers them. Once you have ripped the floor out from under everyone’s beliefs and culture you can fill their head with any rubbish you like and they’ll follow you. Then you have a nice group of useful idiots you can just point at the people who resist you and they’ll happily destroy them for you without you having to get your hands dirty.
You can see it happening in real time with Corbyn and his mob…hell he doesn’t even have to say anything or even point, they’ll just attack anything they see as a threat to him regardless of the consequences.
They do have to be careful doing this though. If you’re not pure enough you could end being eaten by those useful idiots. You know just like every fucking time this shit has been tried before. Lefties are not a learning creature…
Of course you also have the problem of other people pouring rubbish into the freshly cleansed minds of the young before you get there first…see Islam.
imagine if your children…took to heart the operatic blatherings of Laurie Penny, who tells her readers to “Fuck social mobility… Fuck money. Fuck rising above your class… Fuck marriage, mortgage, monogamy, and every other small, ugly ambition.” These, she says, are things “we should have abandoned.”
That’s been done often and rather successfully, but not, I suspect, in the manner which Miss Penny imagines. Such communities, to be successful in terms of continuing to exist without imploding, must be enclaves within a larger, bourgeois society which can support and protect them. Nests within the State as it were.
Somehow I don’t see the Penny-thing embracing the essential ascetic lifestyle, though I’m sure her Mother Superior would correct her misconceptions rather quickly.
After all, those “small, ugly ambitions” are what gave Laurie her own comfortable upbringing and advantages in life. . .
For the Left’s posturing and evangelistic egalitarianism, it does seem intent upon limiting access to the benefits of the modern world for the hoi polloi. One hundred years ago, black families couldn’t live in certain neighborhoods because land use regulations prevented sales of property to non-Caucasians. Today, the same families and more are precluded from living where they wish because Leftist environmental regulations artificially inflate the cost of housing beyond the means of all but the super rich. The former was bad, because of “racism,” while the latter is praiseworthy because of Mother Gaia. Either way, the wrong sorts of people are kept out of your neighborhood, it’s just that one method is guilt-free.
“Fuck rising above your class…and every other small, ugly ambition.”
In a different form Ta-Nehisi Coates has been peddling that attitude here in America: If black people are poor it’s the fault of white people. If black people commit crimes at a far higher rate this also is the fault of white people. On no account should critical attention be paid to the social pathologies of the black underclass (which is also embraced by many in the black middle class.) What’s more, it is racial treason to “act white” and succeed in life through hard work, prudence, thrift, honesty, etc. One must be “authentically” black. And damn whitey.
… when the British landed in Australia, they found the Australian aborigines living at a Stone Age level.
It’s not just the Aborigines in Australia. It’s pretty well accepted that American Indians came to North America from Asia about 40,000 years ago over the then existing land bridge between the two continents. As they spread throughout North America, the amount of land available to them and the ensuing low density of population meant that they did not have to evolve to compete with each other, and so they stayed at the level of a Stone Age population. Which is exactly what the European colonists found when they arrived. The ensuing clash, most brutally between the Comanches and the settlers moving west, was in some sense foreordained – two cultures separated by 40,000 years of evolution have a hard time accommodating themselves to each other. And the end was also foreordained, even though it still took 150 years to get there, with unfathomable cruelty on both sides of the fight.
Interestingly, the Meso-American civilizations were much further developed than their putative cousins to the North. If they all had the same origin, meaning they were the descendants of the same population that crossed over from Asia 40,000 years earlier, what explains the advanced civilisations of Mexico and Guatemala and Peru? My hunch is that it is the geography of that part of the continent, with the isthmus driving populations into closer contact and forcing them to evolve means of social organization that allowed them to survive.
I’ll take that one step further. I believe that the superiority of Western civilization (I’m pretty unabashed about my opinion in that respect, but I’ll report to the correction booth once I’m done with my comment) was conditioned in large part by the opportunities provided by the geography of Europe. Europe is sort of a peninsula off the body of the Asian continent, surrounded by ocean and sea on three sides and crisscrossed by an extremely dense network of rivers. This has facilitated transportation, communication, and trade in a way that was impossible in much of the rest of the world – look at Africa, a vast continent in which the movement of populations and of goods is difficult, and even most of the landmass of Asia. There is archaeological evidence that continent-wide trade and cultural exchange have existed across all of prehistorical Europe for something like 9,000 years, with commodities from discrete sources nevertheless distributed and used over wide areas, with artefacts that were clearly manufactured elsewhere and used in trade, and even evidence of cultural changes sweeping the continent in a short span of time, undoubtedly because of communications between populations that found themselves adopting cultural mores developed elsewhere.
Then of course there is the skin color (or lack thereof) of these populations. White skin (and red hair in the case of the Irish) seem to be an adaptation to climatic conditions that put a premium on the ability to process sunlight in an area where there is less of it. So white privilege does indeed exist. It is a signifier that a given individual is descended from a population that has, through an accident of history and of geography, benefited from a set of conditions that have allowed for, and have caused, a more advanced development of the capabilities inherent in any human being.
Yes, yes, I know. Which way to the correction booth?
One more thing. Somewhat OT, but every time I use the word civilization I somehow find myself spelling it with an s, even though where I reside it is spelled with a z (and the text editor reminds me of that with that annoying wiggly line). I assume it is an example of adaptation, of cultural exchange. With many of the commenters here being obviously from the non-US Anglosphere, I find myself adopting the general usage without even being fully aware of it. Interesting that.
“How do you *know* all this?”
“Because of my research assistants.”
😀
For the Left’s posturing and evangelistic egalitarianism, it does seem intent upon limiting access to the benefits of the modern world for the hoi polloi.
Well, in Laurie’s case, she does seem to want her young readers to embrace suboptimal behaviour that very often leads to failure, dependency and resentment. I sometimes wonder what Laurie’s family make of her vehement denunciation of their values (and by extension all that her family did for her because of those values). All while using every social, educational and material advantage that those values made possible, and while tacitly counting on the fact that many of us have more sense than to take her at her word.
It’s not just the Aborigines in Australia.
I’m reminded of the Guardian’s Emer O’Toole, a “postcolonial theorist” and assistant professor of Irish Performance Studies, for whom all cultures past and present are equally vibrant and noble, except of course the culture in which she currently flourishes, on which opprobrium must be heaped ostentatiously and often.
Ms O’Toole bemoaned the colonial propagation of Shakespeare, whose works she denounced as “full of classism, sexism, racism and defunct social mores.” And worse, “a powerful tool of empire, transported to foreign climes along with the doctrine of European cultural superiority.” The possibility that at any given time one set of values and insights might be preferable to another, even objectively better and markedly so, is apparently something one mustn’t think about.
Her article was accompanied by a photograph of New Zealand’s Ngakau Toa theatre company performing Troilus and Cressida in a distinctively Maori style. To me, it looked fun and worth the price of a ticket. But this cross-cultural fusion offended Ms O’Toole, who dismissed notions of the Bard’s universality as “uncomfortably colonial.” She then presumed to take umbrage on behalf of all past colonial subjects, whose own views on Shakespeare and literature she chose not to relate. She did, however, get quite upset about “our sense of cultural superiority” – a sense of superiority that, she insisted, has long been “disavowed by all but the crazies.”
With that in mind, I can’t help wondering how Ms O’Toole might have felt had she been among the 19th century English colonists who encountered a Maori culture that was all but prehistoric, with no discernible literature or science, and no enlightened gender politics, and in which cannibalism was not unknown. Faced with such things, I’m sure Ms O’Toole would have resisted the wicked urge to think herself a little more culturally advanced.
Of course one Emer O’Toole is easy enough to mock. A classroom full of them is more of a problem. A generation schooled in the same kind of thinking, or rather unthinking, is culturally corrosive.
“Is a mix of contrarianism, hypocrisy, resentment and a colossal sense of entitlement a sound footing for an adult life?”
Pretty much describes a relation (by marriage) of mine, who lived with his parents until they finally threw him out when he was 65 years old; the parents (in their nineties) still bankroll him so he doesn’t sleep in a Dumpster.
That mix didn’t work out all that well for him.
OT: Signs of the apocalypse #9:
http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2015-angela-merkel/?xid=homepage
Signs of the apocalypse #9
Oh dear. I suddenly feel the gulf between little me and our self-imagined betters.
I can’t share your enthusiasm for Sowell’s books, David. Last year, I read his ‘Intellectuals & Society’, and I found it dull and repetitive, even though I agreed with his argument. He said nothing in the book that could not have been said in an essay. Or am I missing something?
Or am I missing something?
[ Tilts head, raises eyebrow, affects air of mystery. ]
Here is another extract, with my emphases, from Miss Dreadful’s shrill and overwrought article Rootless and Ruthless that David posted up here:
As the political classes impose austerity across the developed world, the facts of inequality and human need and the determination to do something about them are gradually becoming weaponized. […] It has to be war. Occupy is the latest declaration of it: The clue is in the name. Over the past two years, I’ve seen organizing, occupying, squatting, resisting; I’ve seen swarms of students and activists storming the palaces of power in Whitehall, young people fighting the police at the doors of the Wall Street Stock Exchange; alternative communities were being built in the dead spaces hoarded by the propertied elite to accumulate capital as millions turn chill and go hungry. The cracks in capitalism are getting wider, and if we are smart enough and brave enough we can force those cracks open until the whole thing shakes.
I find the language interesting, given that only this afternoon, the SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh has just asked in Westminster whether or not Donald Trump ought to be barred from entering the UK as number 85 in the list of all those barred for “hate-preaching”.
Now please don’t get wrong, I personally think of Trump as a world-class buffoon, but even – even – given the content of his rather absurd suggestion for banning all Muslims from entering the US, he is surely not a hate preacher, is he?
Others banned under the label hate-preacher are banned because they are: “[c]onsidered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence”.
Quite apart from the fact there is a chance that Ahmed-Sheikh is asking the government whether or not they should bar a possibly future POTUS from entering the UK as a hate preacher no less – I mean, just how dumb is this woman? – consider how well the passage from Laurie Penny’s article above fits the description of someone who is “engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence”.
The Maori are more interesting than that David.
Stuck in a country which doesn’t even have good stone (no flint etc) or any decent sources of protein they managed to build quite a vibrant culture. When the Europeans came along they adapted (and resisted sometimes) with ease. They weren’t a closed-minded society at all.
Unfortunately for the ‘noble savage’ types they were extremely violent, had a non-egalitarian society and even managed the greatest sin of all, wiped out several species (notably the moa). The cannabilism is really the least of it — generally they only ate those killed in (their frequent) battles.
They still cause the sjw types grief because they insist on strict gender roles in their traditional cultural practices. Oddly it is conservative Whites who take up the cudgels and object to the lower status of women.
One sad thing is that if Sowell had made those comments about Aboriginals here in Australia, he could well have been prosecuted under the notorious Section 18C of our Racial Discrimination Act.
Off topic, but this one needs to be shared:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/06/americas-stasi-nydn-applauds-jihad-slaughter-in-san-bernardino/
the colonial propagation of Shakespeare, whose works she denounced as “full of classism, sexism, racism and defunct social mores.”
Because stories from other ancient, traditional societies?
TOTES devoid of that stuff. Not an archetypal hero’s journey, princess narrative, or gendered pronoun in sight.
This is just too damn good. The comments in the previous post are now too long, so I’ll post this here. I’m splitting my sides, I swear to god.
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/52-year-old-father-lives-6-year-old-girl
There’s a picture of the guy — excuse me, of the 6-year old girl — in the article. Part of me hopes its a joke but part of me hopes its not.
Dom, don’t know if this will disappoint but you are aware the trans-age thing has been done? This story got some runs a few years ago but I recall seeing similar a couple decades ago.
http://www.wbli.com/weblogs/stuff-you-heard/2011/may/04/adult-baby-man-who-sleeps-crib-bottle-fed/
“But I’ve moved forward now and I’ve gone back to being a child.”
leftism versus success
For those who missed it, here’s another example of a leftist giving the proles some really bad advice. According to Salon’s Scott Eric Kaufman, young black males “shouldn’t have to” comply with lawful instructions from the police. Mr Kaufman dismisses cooperation with the police as being “servile.” Presumably on grounds that being combative and physically resisting detainment or arrest will improve the situation no end. As someone who’s watched quite a few episodes of the reality show Cops, it amazes me just how often a routine stop for a minor infraction can escalate alarmingly precisely because of the gratuitously chippy attitude that Mr Kaufman, a former academic, seems all too happy to endorse.
Signs of the apocalypse #9
Merkel’s utopia. “Nearly two-thirds of Syrian refugees are illiterate, which leaves hundreds of thousands of new arrivals without the ability to get a job.”
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/08/65-percent-of-syrian-refugees-cant-read-and-write-join-workforce/
young black males “shouldn’t have to” comply with lawful instructions from the police
Chris Rock gave some advice to young, black men in regards to their dealings with police. I think his is more likely to lead to a survivable outcome.
Chris Rock gave some advice to young, black men in regards to their dealings with police
Quite. It’s hard to see Mr Kaufman’s position as enlightened or benign, as the most likely outcome of following his advice is lots of people getting hurt and imprisoned, and possibly killed. He offers no practical alternative to what he calls “servile” cooperation, just an indignant sneer. One might almost think he was more interested in showing the world how down he is with young black males.
Being so hip an’ all.
Nikw211,
“Now please don’t get wrong, I personally think of Trump as a world-class buffoon,”
Thanks for the social signaling. (eye roll).
“his rather absurd suggestion for banning all Muslims from entering the US”
Absurd? Why? I fail to see the problem with a country allowing or disallowing whomever they see fit to enter their country. There is no right of entrance. There never has been. Was it absurd when the US ceased all immigration for four decades?
“his rather absurd suggestion for banning all Muslims from entering the US”
Well, taken literally, not sure how you ban someone based on their religion. That is absurd. They can always lie. But disallowing whomever you see fit, no problem. Or shouldn’t be. But there’s a gross ignorance in this country, and beyond, that the US Constitutions applies equally to all who set foot on US soil. Which kind of has become the defacto law. So we must redefine “ignorance”…and down the rabbit hole we go…
Deborah,
I’m slightly bemused that you should zero in on my calling Trump “a world-class buffoon” as an aside in a post whose main point was to defend his right to make such comments and to point out the breathtaking stupidity of trying to have him banned from the UK as a “hate preacher” – I mean I assume that you would at least agree with me that Scottish Nationalist MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh’s comments in Parliament were utterly preposterous?
Thanks for the social signaling. (eye roll).
Interesting.
I consider Trump to be a collosal ass-hat.
I get that such an opinion is not to your liking and you are of course free to roll your eyes as much as you like, but I’m curious to know how you think one might be able to express dislike of a politician – any politician at all that is – if the criteria you are going to use to describe something as “social signaling” is going to be so incredibly vague and elastic.
Absurd? Why?
Because it’s not in the best interests of the United States for a potential future POTUS to make such a statement – although we should note he is only a candidate and not actually the president (yet).
Do you know how many American jobs depend on investments from individuals and companies from the Muslim world? (Or failing that, do you remember the impact the 1973 oil embargo had? True, something like that would be unlikely to be a response to Trump’s comments had he been the actual President, but it is still hardly diplomatic to make such a sweeping statement.)
Speaking personally, I have absolutely no idea what the investment actually is, but I rather suspect that it is highly unlikely to be small beer.
Money isn’t everything of course, but it would seem to be a rather ill-thought out strategy to bar any and all non-American Muslims from entering the US until the security services “know what the hell is going on” – I mean, how long is that going to take for a start?
I understand how Americans must be shocked and distressed right now in the wake of the San Bernadino shootings – it is much how I (together with most Europeans) felt following Paris. But to put a blanket ban on all, all, Muslims entering the US as Trump is alleged to have said? You’re saying that’s not an absurd response?
But let me put it another way.
Earlier this year, almost 350 lecturers from over 20 different UK universities became signatories to “A commitment by UK scholars to the rights of Palestinians” which publicly declared that they would:
not accept invitations to visit Israeli academic institutions, act as referees for them, or take part in events organised or funded by them
on account of their being from Israel and in specific response to the Israeli government’s policies towards and actions in/against Palestine.
Now I can’t speak for you, Deborah, but I consider this boycotting of Israeli academics by British academics to be not only wholly reprehensible, but actually a betrayal of what I believe are some of the core the values of academic research and the university system.
I consider that letter absurd and its signatories to be pompous buffoons. I also consider it to be the case that in essence there is not a great deal of difference between that letter and Trump’s statement.
It’s hard to see Mr Kaufman’s position as enlightened or benign
I have actually had the pleasure of hearing a cop shout “FREEZE” as his flashlight blinded me.
My white friends and I had been mistaken for burglars, the cops had been called, and the next thing we knew two cops were bearing down on us in the way cops do.
We three were EXTREMELY white (not street at all) and yet we knew that until the cops had assessed the situation, they had to assume that we were hostiles and react accordingly.
Our only job was to give them NO reason to think we were a threat, and so we obeyed every order given, slowly and calmly, mouths tightly shut until spoken to; hotly prosting that we were innocent or jeering them would have been provocative.
And nobody got beaten, arrested, or otherwise injured. Within 20 minutes they drove off and we resumed our sheepish apologies for scaring the people who’d called the cops.
Chris Rock is right: when a cop approaches you without knowing the situation, just do what he says until it’s over.
Unless the cops are wholly corrupt, of course.
Which, they weren’t in our case.
Thank you for posting the videos you have lately David. I’d not actually heard Thomas Sowell speak ever before. My review of this interview follows: “Man dispenses knowledge in pleasing baritone.”
Truly a pleasure to listen to this interview. I instantly feel a kindred spirit in someone who declares that both Obama and Trump are narcissist egomaniacs.
One very personally interesting thing to me, my family is quite wealthy (not billionaires, but wealthy). I moved out with my girlfriend a few years ago. She studies full time, and suffers an anxiety disorder, so is only able to work sporadically. I work full time in a decent job. We receive no government assistance and don’t actually qualify for any. Yet unlike some of the poverty stricken in the U.S, my girlfriend and I don’t even come close to being able to afford a second car. It’s part of a growing trend where people seem to consider luxury as necessity. No, you don’t need an HD flat screen T.V and a new Iphone, so why are we subsidising them?
“OT: Signs of the apocalypse #9:
http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2015-angela-merkel/?xid=homepage“
I wouldn’t take much notice of this. After all (cutting & pasting from Wikipedia to save time), Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) were all Man (or Person) Of The Year.
“Unless the cops are wholly corrupt, of course.”
But isn’t the point of most race identitarian political activism to convince the unconvinced that “cops are in fact wholly corrupt”?
How does reacting aggressively to corrupt cops help black men? it just gives them an excuse to over-react back.
I despair at how badly trained US cops are (it’s incompetence not corruption that is the real issue) but not many actively set out to shoot people in cold blood.
Your only bet is to comply and record them trying to goad you. The media love publicising that shit.
The “don’t co-operate” crowd are using the lives of black men to sell a political message.
“his rather absurd suggestion for banning all Muslims from entering the US”
Absurd? Why? I fail to see the problem with a country allowing or disallowing whomever they see fit to enter their country.
Ah, no, the idea is absurd. As WTP absolutely effortlessly points out;
Well, taken literally, not sure how you ban someone based on their religion. That is absurd. They can always lie.
In very, very simple terms, we’re back to that short discussion from a bit back of In what century does your faith take place? With wild assed fantasies of faith based spasms of I fail to see the problem with a country allowing or disallowing whomever they see fit to enter their country., such takes us right back to the era and environment that created priest holes, and other assorted cultural festivities.
And in fact, speaking of In what century, Etc., I present headlines of the most recent 24 hours or so;
Muslim-Turned-Protestants Disrupt Catholic Masses, Tell Faithful to Repent
Muslim-Turned-Christian Protesters Disrupt Catholic Masses in Las Vegas
From the latter,
Sooo, granting much room for shifting details and histories . . . . The Las Vegas Catholics appear to be in the 21st century, the Protestant converts appear to be right out of the 1500s, Daesh is clearly operating in the 1500s, whether Islamic year or Common Era year . . . . And rather a number of Muslims are also very clearly also in the 21st century . . . . . .
. . . . and the overall issue remains that what country some practice takes place in really doesn’t matter, does it. What continues to matter is what practice are you doing in some country.
I personally think of Trump as a world-class buffoon, but even – even – given the content of his rather absurd suggestion for banning all Muslims from entering the US, he is surely not a hate preacher, is he?
Now; that general area, and observations and commentary, have become and will remain for quite some time a very interesting discussion . . .
And at this point in time, for any sorts of screams from anyone of OhMiGhod, Trump In The White House?!?!?!?!!!!!, that happens to be totally and completely moot at this moment. The reason why is the utterly undeniable and ain’t gonna go away fact of the moment that I am currently typing in December of 2015, and The Actual Election Will Not Occur Until November of 2016.
The particularly interesting issue with Trump is extremely different from his having an open mouth that is often near a microphone. As has been noted on other occasions for at least fifty years, “British women can’t cook.” and . . . dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.
The very interesting matter is that Trump basically does indeed have so much money that he can fund his own campaign. Therefore he is independent of any of the alleged usual political parameters that usual politicians are subject to.
Sooo . . . At this moment the loudest screams about Trump are occurring because of a Trump statement calling for a ban on Muslims entering the US. In response to that statement, there have been some howls of outrage already, and other people and organizations give the impression that they’re still trying to figure out what response to make that hopefully will make them look good. The main attention that this statement is getting is that it allegedly is in the context of Trump being the president of the US.
Weeelll, let us have a look at exactly the same sort of White House related statement; Read my lips, no new taxes. And, in fact, that was stated by someone who also was not even in the White House yet.
There is a very basic assumption in that reference which I’ll get back to. At the same time, there is another Loud and Noticed statement by Trump that also got shot to pieces, but also got shot to pieces in equally interesting circumstances; There is a widely reported twitter comment claiming certain rates of deaths in the US for whites, blacks, by whites, blacks, by police. The claimed numbers were very quickly shown to be extremely inaccurate, but the only way to show them as being inaccurate was to very pointedly go digging for the correct numbers. Furthermore, for anyone wanting to prove Trump as inaccurate, any such responding numbers were required to completely match any other responding numbers—Each writer could choose any phrasing or focus when responding, but the correct numbers all had to be identical, or the response would also be shown as fake, and could be ignored as such.
Therefore, while Trump made a statement and got shown to be totally wrong, as a result of his making that statement, the actual reality got very prominently stated all over the place.
Now, consider the recent statement demanding that Muslims get blocked from entering the US, at a time that conservative Muslims are regularly making clear their absolute opposition to the extremist wannabe Muslims who are slaughtering people, and consider that we still have about ten entire months before the actual presidential election, and consider the definite and ongoing demand for a solution to the extremists . . . . .
And, back to that basic assumption, a recurring basic assumption that keeps turning up is to treat Trump as someone who has already won the election. So far, in actuality, just like everyone else loudly discussing the election, he is not even a formal candidate.
Scott Adams—yes, the guy who creates Dilbert—has been discussing Donald Trump and how Trump rather seems to be managing these assumptions, and how Trump rather seems to be managing them extremely well . . . and better than any of the other wannabe candidates..
For one particular example written back in August . . . .
Soooo . . . my assessment at this point is that continuing to watch the ramp up to the 2016, remember, 2016 presidential election is going to continue be extremely interesting . . . . . .
But isn’t the point of most race identitarian political activism to convince the unconvinced that “cops are in fact wholly corrupt”?
The problem is, the police are wholly corrupt. But we have a chattering class that thinks you’re only allowed to discuss it through the lens of race.
Would the cops hug any non-cop who murdered his wife in cold blood? Would they let him reload?
It too far too long for the Andrew Sadek case to receive national attention. Encaged and led to his death for wanting to alter his brain chemistry in a way the State doesn’t approve of.
Asset forfeiture has been horribly misused by the legal system, to the point where inanimate objects are defendants in legal cases. Fuck mens rea.
Don’t get me started on Bou Bou Phonesavanh, who was clearly innocent but doesn’t get the attention he deserved because he’s not the right minority.
It’s recently come out that at least four of the murdered in the Waco biker shootout were shot by police-caliber guns (can you imagine bikers bring long guns to such a situation on their bikes?).
The police love to say, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide,” but hate the idea of their actions being recorded.
And yet there are all too many people who think, “Oh, it’s just those race hustlers talking, so we can ignore it and continue to fellate police overlordism.” Sadly, that’s the way Team Red and Team Blue both largely want it.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Trump these things remain:
a) The U.S. as with all nations, has every right to decide who to let in, who not to, and who to deport. A nation without control of it’s borders is no nation at all.
b) Jimahh Cartahh not only closed the U.S. to Iranians after the embassy invasion but recalled *ALL* people with visas of * ALL* types from Iran to report within 30 days…
c) Subsequently deported 15,000 of them, to the applause of even the Democrats.
d) We all know what that sainted FDR did to the Japanese, again to the applause of even the Democrats.
e) The sainted (and openly racist) Woodrow Wilson halted German visas *and imprisoned* many Germans just for being so.
f) Trump has called for a TEMPORARY halt to moslum immigration and visas “until we sort this all out”, that last part seemingly always left out.
Any why is it that wherever moslums seem to tread thereafter follows backwardness, strife, death and destruction? Since 9/11 there have been more than 26,000 deaths on this planet due to moslum terrorism
Since ol’ Mo began his reign of terror 14 centuries ago there have been an estimated 200-250 million deaths due to jihad (some put that number closer to 300 million.
Communism about 1/2 that.
And Trump is an ass-hat and a buffoon? Get a grip.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Trump these things remain:
Lesseee . . .
A) Border control is border control and brings up the matters of citizens, and remains utterly separate from any faith claimed by one citizen or another.
B, C) Iranian citizens with Iranian visas, could have been Xtian Iranians, Moslem Iranians, Buddhist Iranian, wouldn’t have mattered.
D) Japanese citizens, again.
E) German citizens, again.
F) . . . . I’m not entirely certain what a “moslum” is, but Islam is a faith, just like Christianity, just like lots of other faiths, and is not related to citizenship.
Therefore yes, banning based on faith or lack of faith will remain absurd . . . but is certainly a very interesting prod to the discussion of the definite differences between perfectly normal conservative Muslims vs right wing loony tunes such as Daesh.
Isolation almost invariably means poverty and backwardness.
Mrs. Oil and I are currently travelling in East Africa.. Yesterday we paid a visit to an island off the coast of Mozambique, Ibo, which was once both a significant harbour and an important hub for the slave trade. It was a Portugese colony until 1975; the Portugese probably came second only to the Belgians in the stupid and brutal way they went about matters but over more than two centuries they developed an infrastructure and left a legacy of some superb buildings.
Today, some of the buildings have been bought by white South Africans and Europeans and turned into comfortable lodges and guest houses that cater to divers, sea anglers and backpackers etc. One or two are being used by the local police and government (Our guide advised me that under no circumstances whatsoever should I take a photograph of anything flying the Mozambiquean flag) but the majority are roofless and in a state of near collapse. Some of the pictures I took look for all the world like a scene from a hotly defended village in Normandy in 1944- streets filled with rubble, tottering gables and roofless villas abound.
The local people are now subsistence farmers and fishermen. The power station lies abandoned, but there is intermittent electricity from a tidal power source (our guide was a bit vague on this) but I noticed that the white-run businesses had generators. The streets were full of rubbish- everything seems to be discarded once the contents have been used or consumed. Graffiti was everywhere, and any amenities were either broken or disused or decrepit. The football pitch had broken glass and shit on the playing surface, and the surrounding wall was on the point of falling down.
It made me want to despair. I can understand that the colonisers were hateful and were resented and that resentment may linger even 40 years after independence; but nobody has done anything. I simply cannot comprehend why they don’t either demolish entirely, or maintain and rebuild, especially now that the long-running civil war has ceased (not that it touched these parts anyway).
Even if they don’t do that, and are content for their community to decline into picturesque bucolic squalor, like Paul Theroux I found myself asking “Why don’t they at least pick the f…..g litter up?”.
“Interestingly, the Meso-American civilizations were much further developed than their putative cousins to the North.”
I’ve seen it theorised that there was a much earlier migration into the American continent. The later wave wiped out the earlier settlers on the northern landmass.
What? Thomas Sowell dissed our indigneous peoples?
Well, that’s it for him. Better not be planning a holiday here, Mr Sowell. Your chances of getting a visa are now lower than David Irving’s.
Late comment, but Hal, I notice that you so clearly avoided your very significant mistake that Fuel Filter pointed out. Trump has not called for a ban on moslum (sic) immigration, but a TEMPORARY ban until some form of suitable screening can be implemented. Puts rather a different “slant” on the matter, doesn’t it ? Blows holes in a lot of your arguments for a start, but don’t let that slow you down…