Month: January 2024

Sour Fisking in the Arena

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I was reading a recent essay by Curtis Yarvin called, “Heroin Liberals and Cocaine Conservatives.”  Yarvin is a clever writer and he made some entertaining comparisons between what liberals get out of believing in their narrative (anesthesia) versus what conservatives get from their narrative (hope).  Clever stuff.

But later the essay focuses on one particular conservative story.  He fisks an article that Chris Rufo wrote in the aftermath of his part in the recent ousting of Harvard president Claudine Gay called, “The New Right Activism.”  This was a manifesto announcing the counterrevolution that Rufo declares as having already begun and he talks about what it must be, “The Right doesn’t need a white paper. What it needs is a spirited new activism with the courage and resolve to win back the language, recapture institutions, and reorient the state toward rightful ends.”

Later on, he says, “Rather, the New Right needs to move from the politics of pamphlets to the governance of the institutions.    …   We must recruit, recapture, and replace existing leadership. We must produce knowledge and culture at a sufficient scale and standard to shift the balance of ideological power. Conservative thought has to move out of the ghetto and into the mainstream.”

This is all very general stuff.  And Yarvin is very unconvinced about all aspects of what Rufo says in his manifesto.  And he’s quite snide about the fact that Rufo has one of his degrees from Harvard Extension.  And he portrays the manifesto and by extension Rufo’s writing in general as merely salesmanship for his books and career.

Yarvin is a good writer and he is clever and some of his points about tactics may be true.  Perhaps replacing institutions is smarter than trying to reconquer them.  Maybe.

But I detect a certain aroma of sour grapes in this article.  Sure, upending Claudine Gay isn’t going to change the world.  It may not even make the next president of Harvard less beholden to the DEI orthodoxy.  But the point is Rufo has been involved in direct action in several cases.  Down in Florida he’s been involved in purging a state college; New College of Florida, of DEI, critical race theory, LGBTQ orthodoxy and all the other ills that infect modern colleges.  He’s accomplishing something that hasn’t happened before.  He’s taking back an institution from the Left.

Of course, it is necessary to see how this experiment proceeds.  Will a new board make New College of Florida a successful learning environment?  If it does, I can see how other states will learn from this effort.  And if he fails, there will be things learned too.

I always liked Teddy Roosevelt’s essay on the “Man in the Arena.”

“Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

This is not to say that intellectual ability is nothing.  But as things currently stand, what we are lacking is not ideas, it’s results.  DeSantis and Rufo and some others are actually trying to change things for the better.  I’m more than willing to hope they’ll succeed.  As far as manifestos, I’ll check back on his progress from time to time.  If he continues to score winds, I’ll begin to believe in the revolution.  Maybe I’ll join him on the barricades.  Maybe.

TikTok Socrates

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Our current awful culture is still western culture.  Of course, it’s been dumbed down so that any idiot can sing along.  And it now includes a whole preface that tells everyone that Westen Culture is a terrible thing that destroyed the rest of the world and the people that invented it are monsters.

But essentially, the whole world is adopting this impoverished version of western culture.  And the stupidest people will fit in perfectly with it.  While waiting for my car’s oil changes, I’ve been forced to see some of the programming that exists out there.  Words cannot express the level of stupidity I witnessed.  These are people who must have to be told to start and stop chewing their food while they eat.  Vapid can’t begin to describe them.  It was physically painful to have to hear their conversation.  Chickens clucking around a farmyard pecking at droppings would tower as mental giants above these “tv celebrities.”

That’s the base line that our culture has established.  And I’m sure that setting the bar so low is doing incalculable damage to our civilization.  Children mimic what they see on screens.  That has been going on since the invention of moving pictures.  And with our high-definition video and ubiquitous internet connectivity young people spend countless hours watching idiots on TikTok and all the other venues for this mindless stuff.

But I think it’s a mistake to think that the lowest common denominator will define the complete spectrum of what our culture will consist of.  On the contrary, I think there will be a reaction to the lobotomizing of our society.  People will search out information and entertainment wherever they can find it.  And as much as social media tries to restrict everything to content that conforms to the narrative, reality will find a way to break through.  In fact, the taboo nature of the truth will make it that much more fascinating.  All it needs is the right packaging to make it seem more forbidden.

Of course, there is a bell curve that defines the distribution of intelligence and that creates a distribution of various types of content; from the example of the television morons I described above on the left side of the x-axis to complex mathematical course work at the far right.  People will search out the information they need and are interested in.

Without a doubt the “narrative” has done a lot of damage to the younger generations.  The millennials and those who came after them have been gaslit by their teachers into believing a lot of the political propaganda about western civilization and the environment.  And there will be a price paid for this indoctrination.  I think a larger than normal percentage of these kids will fail to marry and have children.  And this is regrettable but at this point I think it is inevitable.  This will be a bottleneck for our culture.  And this was intentional.  Adding this to the policy of encouraging millions of third world migrants to move here produces an environment where western culture will be weakened and attenuated.

But this is still a partial change.  The more gullible people will remove themselves from the gene pool and those who produce children will look for a culture that encourages human survival and excellence instead of the Greta Thunberg version.

Currently there is an effort being put forth by right-wing activists to cleanse some of the colleges of the leftist propagandists.  Notably Chris Rufo has been appointed a New College of Florida board member and has broken ground on how woke colleges can be purged of woke ideology and practices like DEI, critical race theory and all of the LGBTQ agenda.  I think this process is the best way to improve the state of our culture going forward.  Eliminating all of these dangerous concepts and practices like affirmative action will be necessary to repairing the damage done by the Left.

Of course, the question remains whether the Left will allow themselves to be displaced.  At the federal level they are in charge.  We should have an answer in 2024.  If the federal government remains in the hands of the Left, then only a partial geographical reversal of the dumbing down of western culture will be possible.  What will be interesting is what the Left’s areas; the east and west coasts, will look like after the areas have a chance to follow their differing philosophies.  Let’s say after a century of DEI will the people in California still be able to walk upright and use fire?  We’ll have to wait and see.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 06JAN2024 – The AWFL Bubble

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war pig

Yes, the bubble, the echochamber. “It must be true because we all say it is true”. Then they employ the device they created, Bureaucracy, to wear down any dissent. As Stanislaw Lem wrote in “The Cyberiad”, the Steelypips found out that the Big B can defeat almost anything.

That is why they so fear and despise Trump. He is not of the system. He hates the Big B and its inherent evil. He slashes through it to get work done. He knows what paralysis and evil is hidden in reams of ill-used and sometimes arcane regulations with the force of law and which were not voted upon by public or congress.

She is right, of course about some things. Why buy Bucks’ noxious fluids full of arcane ingredients for 7 bucks when, with a Mr Coffee and a can of Folgers or Maxwellhouse, you can make your own caffeine drink at home for a few pennies a cup? Why, outside of need when busy, buy a breakfast sandwich of a toasted English muffin, a fried egg and a sausage patty for $4 when you can make it at home for about 60 cents?

But she is wrong about most Americans not changing their spending habits. Most of us, including old, widowed farts with adequate income streams, are changing spending priorities. I don’t fly to Europe unless it is in the back of a C-17 or other military jet. Then only when tasked. I eschew fast food dining except when on the run around the first of the month when I get most of the monthly chores accomplished. I do admit Five Guys burgers are rather good, but don’t ask for a large fry as I did my first time.

Liberal WASP women, especially those who are lesbians or cannot attract and keep a man, have a very skewed viewpoint. Personally I believe boxed wine makers are diluting their already useless product with various hormones to ensure addiction and with hallucinogens to prevent them from seeing reality.

The Fisking of Stewart 123

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The on-line magazine Vox employs someone named Emily Stewart.  She describes herself as a “millennial” from a “solid working-class background.”  She wrote an article called “You don’t need everything you want.  Our expectations around money are all out of whack.”

This is one of a number of articles I’ve seen that are meant to make people think that runaway inflation is perfectly normal and nothing to get upset about or vote a president out of office for.  Well, anyway that is the hope.  Let’s see how she does.

“I am tired of talking about money. I recognize how that sounds, given that I talk about money for a living. Still, it feels like an inordinate number of conversations I’m involved in lately end up about how much more expensive everything is now (which is true) and how much the economy sucks (which is false)   …  It’s not that these issues aren’t painful, it’s just that they’re also exhausting. Some of them have simple solutions, too, just not fun ones. You can cook at home. A fancy wedding is not compulsory. Tips are optional, and if you’re that upset over giving the barista a dollar or two, there are cheaper alternatives for your morning coffee.”

So, she “covers business and economics for Vox and writes the newsletter The Big Squeeze, examining the ways ordinary people are being squeezed under capitalism,” but she’s tired of talking about money?  What would she prefer to talk about, her horoscope?  If we need any clearer indication that the facts don’t support her thesis in this article, I don’t know what that would be.

“Part of the issue is that we seem to have blurred the distinction between a want and a need. Child care and a place to live and a tank of gas to get to work are necessities. The latest iPhone, not so much. On this, some people — and I include myself here — have lost the plot. If you took a European vacation this year, what a delight. Also, it was a privilege, not a right. It’s a choice, too, and one that might make your financial goals later down the line harder to attain.”

Okay so here is the explicit distinction; want and need.  European vacation and tank of gas.  And that is very clear.  What she doesn’t admit is that for the great, great majority of people in this country it’s the “child care and a place to live and a tank of gas” money that has become unattainable.  The average person picking this up and reading it will be mumbling curses under his breath and thinking what a clueless prima-donna.  She’s taking European vacations and quibbling about how she should feel about it.

“The American economy remains one of abundance. Said abundance isn’t equally distributed, of course, and lots of people really are struggling. But as angry as consumers say they are about the economy, they’re not, on aggregate, changing their spending habits. For many people in the country, life is pretty good. And yet, they often don’t feel that way. No matter how much we’ve attained, we always want more.”

Now this is a crock.  I guess under her definition Venezuela is a land of abundance because there are several billionaires living there.  Even though the average citizen is trapping sewer rats for his dinner, it’s a land of plenty because there are still plenty of sewer rats.  This woman is delusional.  They don’t change their spending habits because they spend their money on rent and food and gas.  Unless they commit suicide they still need those things.

“I say all of this recognizing that I am in a bubble — I am a millennial living in New York City and surrounded largely by middle- and upper-middle-class people, though many of them don’t see themselves that way. I also say this as someone who is upwardly mobile from a solidly working-class background. If I could tell the child version of myself how things were going to turn out — that I’d be living in a big city, be able to afford to rent an apartment in said city, and have the chance to regularly take trips that involve a plane — she would not believe it. I am aware this is not the case for everyone in my generation or those before or after me. Still, I sometimes catch myself feeling like it’s not enough.”

She got part of it right.  She is living in a bubble, an opaque bubble.  Apparently, New York City is filled with middle- and upper-middle-class people.  I guess I must be missing something when I see the headlines about the illegal immigrant hotels and the homeless encampments.  Eric Adams, their mayor, looks pretty shook up about the fiscal meltdown the city is currently going through but apparently La Stewart hasn’t heard about it yet.

“It all feeds into the hedonic treadmill, where we’re constantly chasing down the next dopamine hit but ultimately return to our baseline level of happiness, whatever happens. The pursuit of constant pleasure or fulfillment is enticing, but it’s also not wise — eventually, that Big New Thing just doesn’t have the same kick. Even if we can buy that $40 bottle of wine to have with dinner, it’s genuinely often better to stick to the $15 bottle and keep the pricier option for special occasions. Really good and special experiences in life should be rare, Schwartz said, so they don’t become commonplace and can still deliver satisfaction. (He joked that as far as he knows, “no one on Earth” has ever taken this advice.)”

Ah, so this is her target audience.  Affluent White Female Liberals (AWFLs).  She is writing to the single middle-aged childless urban cat ladies who need that $40 bottle of wine and “want to see Taylor Swift and Beyoncé live.”  She is consoling them about having to vote for Joe Biden despite the fact that that means they will only be able to see “Taylor and Bey” in the movie version of their concerts.

It’s stunning how myopic and self-centered Stewart and her cohort are.  Someone who writes on business and economics could look up just how many people are living paycheck to paycheck, at best.  People are taking out loans to buy food and pay the rent.  These are not times of great abundance, unless you’re an AWFL with a sinecure at one of the New York media properties.  Then it’s pretty good.

But there is an audience for this article.  And she eventually staked it out pretty clearly.  It’s just not people that anyone normal would want to talk to.