I assume many of you are familiar with the NYT’s (rumor has it it’s Cade Metz) insistence/threat on doxing Scott Alexander in an upcoming article on the Slate Star Codex/LessWrong rationalist community.
As a result, Scott Alexander has just deleted his blog [threads at /r/slatestarcodex, /r/TheMotte; see also Steve Sailer’s roundup on The Unz Review]. He says it is likely to stay deleted unless the NYT goes back on the doxing threat.
Needless to say, this is very sad – the SCS community is one of the biggest “coffee salon” (high IQ, garrulous) societies on the Internet, hosting some of the most sophisticated discussions possible on nerdy topics from political theory to AI risk away from the ideological strictures of the media/academic establishment. This is enabled by Scott Alexander’s consistent adherence to the principles of classical liberalism, which has attracted a diverse range of political outlooks broadly ranging from Socialism and Social Democracy to Neo-Reaction, with 7% even identifying as Alt Right. Following Scott’s own schema, we may classify this heterodox community as a “Gray Tribe”, in contradistinction to the “Blue Tribe” (e.g. driving Priuses, blank slatism, #BLM cult) and “Red Tribe” (e.g. AGW denial, country music, #MAGA cult) that define the great mass of normies/NPCs. This space is also ~90% white and ~90% male, which may well have served as a major additional source of subconscious ressentiment.
Coupled with his skeptical views towards idpol (from both Left and Right) and high focus on conflict-avoidance, this has made Scott Alexander a target to psychopathic SJWs. Unfortunately, this is a proclivity that Scott himself very likely de facto indulged, rendering a soft ban on HBD discussions on his blog and spinning off more politically controversial discussions to the /r/TheMotte subreddit.
It is my dour suspicion that the message was received that he was an easy mark, hence the bullying now coming from the NYT’s pulpits. As I said, these people are psychopaths. Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
This brings us to another issue, is Scott’s maximalist response (“No, you can’t cancel me! I cancel myself!”) optimal?
On the plus side, I suppose, he is taking the initiative and preempting what may well be more of a hit piece than the largely positive depiction that Scott Alexander at least publicly supposes it will be (“by all indications, this was just going to be a nice piece saying I got some things about coronavirus right early on“). This channels the fury of his not inconsiderable and highly erudite following against the NYT – there have already been strong statements of support from Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen, and some other heavy hitters.
Tragedy in the blogosphere: One of the best is being taken down. Scott Alexander (not his real name) explains: NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog | Slate Star Codex https://t.co/TKI4fjUSpV
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) June 23, 2020
This raises the probability that they cancel the dox, though perhaps not by that much, if the pessimistic takes that it is a hit job that has already been decided upon are correct.
FWIW, the Metaculus prediction market already has a question on whether the NYT is going to dox Scott Alexander by July 8. (As of the time of writing it stands at 40%).
On the minus side, so far, Scott has “punished” his own people more than anybody else. And it’s not clear how he expects to “win” either way. If the dox goes ahead, he’d have ended up “canceling” his own blog, which the SJW outrage mob wanted to do anyway; meanwhile, backtracking on the decision would be bad optics and a further display of weakness (if still the superior choice – after all, we certainly don’t want what is an immense store of value to simply vanish). Even in the good scenario that the dox is canceled, Scott will still look like a bit of a histrionic.
Regardless of how it panned out, this apotheosis of a socially liberal Jewish psychiatrist with a fondness for deli sandwiches potentially getting unpersoned from handshakeworthy society contains an extra element of irony in that it fulfills a prediction that Scott Alexander made on the eve of Trump’s election victory:
One more warning for conservatives who still aren’t convinced. If the next generation is radicalized by Trump being a bad president, they’re not just going to lean left. They’re going to lean regressive, totalitarian, super-social-justice left.
Everyone has already constructed the narrative: Trump is the anti-PC, anti-social-justice candidate. If he wins, he’s going to be the anti-PC, anti-social-justice President. And he will fail. First of all, because he doesn’t really show much sign of knowing what he’s doing. Second of all, because all presidents fail in a sense – 80% of Americans consistently believe the country is headed the wrong direction and the president is the natural fall guy for this trend. And third of all, because even if by some miracle Trump avoids the first two failure modes, the media will say he failed and people will believe them. And when the anti-PC, anti-social-justice President fails, the reaction will be a giant “we told you so” from the social justice movement, and a giant shift of all the disillusioned young people right into their fold.
Trump is all set to be the biggest gift to the social justice movement in history. They thrive on claims of persecution, claims that they’re the ones fighting a stupid hateful regressive culture that controls everything. And people think that bringing their straw man to life and putting him in the Oval Office is going to help?
I am skeptical that this can be ascribed to Trump – the seeds of the Great Awokening predate him.
Nonetheless, this makes it no less true that, as Scott Alexander himself might say, the Gray Lady ensures there is no country for the Gray Tribesman in the America of the Current Year.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
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I’ve never even heard of this guy. He sounds like an epic wimp. Also not particularly bright, talking to NYT in 2020 – what did he think was going to happen?
How it feels:
Scott Alexander is sailing off across the grey sea to the Undying Lands, and leaving the rest of us to deal with the Eye of Sauron and the Orcish hordes of Mordor.
Can’t say I’m not sad and disappointed, even if I totally understand. I wish him well.
I’m always suspicious of people describing themselves as “capitalists”, they’re the sorts who say you must be anti-capitalist/anti-private ownership to oppose social media sites censoring right wing political views.
The term “capitalism” doesn’t really mean anything when applied to most big corporations, which is what most people mean by that term. So called “capitalist” organisations like Twitter and Facebook could easily be state-owned enterprises or even government ministries under a different economic/political system and still operate in much the same way.
Just like some jews were sent to the gulags in the Soviet Union, it being a jewish creation, this is no different. The Awokening is a total jewish creation, I am not going to feel sorry for some jew being the victim of it especially when white people are by far bearing the brunt of the onslaught.
There is no more tolerance for eccentrics.
I think the shift happened around 2015. At least that’s when I noticed it.
I have always been an eccentric and a dissident, and my survival strategy was to outwardly respect the mainstream value system to avoid pointless conflict while living my life my own way.
This stopped working around 2015, when I noticed people started insisting I enthusiastically embrace their values, not just passively assent, and proactively manifest these values and make lifestyle changes in accordance with them.
At a certain point, it went from people leaving you alone as long you didn’t publicly challenge the mainstream, to wanting to control your private thoughts and life.
I guess that’s the natural trend of control – eventually it gets to your private life. This is what they mean when they say the personal is political.
I am also discovering that everything today has a moral dimension – another example of everything becoming politicized.
I think today eccentrics can still survive, but only on the margins of society. You will not be able to have a high paying or prestigious job. Eccentrics will have to live out of their car and work at McDonald’s, or be a part of the gig economy. That way you can be an eccentric and dissident and they will leave you alone.
I actually don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Modern people are incredibly spoiled, and don’t realize how little they need to live a perfectly reasonable and comfortable life. You can live just fine doing odd jobs in the gig economy, and you could have a ton of free time. It would take a completely different philosophy. The other night I was lying in my tent staring at the stars and I thought – this is all I need. I don’t need anything more than this.
But I do think in the future if you want to be an eccentric or dissident you will have to concede the “commanding cultural heights” and accept a position as a marginal figure – perhaps even learn to embrace it and revel in it, as Zen monks did.
The highest civilizations always promote eccentricity – England in the last century abounded with the most delightful eccentrics, and Japan is also famous for producing eccentrics.
I consider Twitter and Facebook state owned enterprises, more accurately just state enterprises. They already have more power than the rubber stamp de jure congress, and it is they make more rules that impact the every day man than the US government does.
It is easy to be a tough guy sitting in Russia far removed and doling out armchair 20/20 hindsight opinions. Scott lives in California, likely in a high-income and very liberal area. He has much more to lose than you.
Furthermore, your characterisation that he has ‘punished his own people more than anyone’ is bizarre. His people aren’t the HBD crowd and he has no reason to placate them. I also find it weird that you’d try to blame him for the hatchet attack of the NYT because he wasn’t doing idpol and insisted on civility. That’s essentially knifing him in the back and then blaming him for it, instead of providing solidarity.
He is a gentle old-school liberal, the type that is nearly extinct by now. I hope he brings his blog back whatever happens. Many of his readers would support him financially if he went full-time blogging, including myself.
As bad as it is becoming for eccentrics and dissidents here, its not – despite Ron Unz’s best efforts – as bad as it is in China.
I do think we are heading there though. Maybe in 15 years the United States and China will be the least free places on earth.
But I don’t think we will actually reach the Chinese level, despite the best efforts of authoritarians like Ron Unz.
OTOH, I think interesting alternative trends are developing in America. The current unrest, crazy as it is, shows vast discontent with the system, which is a positive sign. And there is a surge in interest in wilderness activities which perhaps indicates a slight turn away from materialism.
How are we punished? We know what SA already wrote, there are plenty of backups for those and if he writes under another pen name we will know. Going dark was the most powerful signal he could send.
.
He already gained plenty of sympathy even before the article was published. Winning is not possible but he played his hand the best he could.
The NYT reporter was asking about SA on rationalist discords. People told SA. SA and the reporter got in touch and the reporter told him the NYT will dox him, so he got his story out first.
How can Trump be a bad President when he hasn’t been given more than a few minutes to be Presidential owing to the Herculean efforts from day zero by those Alexander suggested would be driven mad by a Trump Presidency of a length greater than zero days? Trump’s Presidency is actually more tragic than Nixon’s.
The only person obsessed with HBD is you (just like neutral is obsessed with Jews, etc). By “his people”, I was clearly referred to his readers and commenters. Anybody reasonably objective reaction to my piece would acknowledge that its a positive take on Scott Alexander that expresses reservations about whether his response was the correct one.
Anyhow, I am not sure why you still insist on trolling my blog, given your steady “transition” into some vegan SJW type.
“Modern people are incredibly spoiled, and don’t realize how little they need to live a perfectly reasonable and comfortable life. You can live just fine doing odd jobs in the gig economy, and you could have a ton of free time. It would take a completely different philosophy. The other night I was lying in my tent staring at the stars and I thought – this is all I need. I don’t need anything more than this.”
But this only works when nobody is dependent on you, no small children or old people who need your help and as much support as possible.
Your title is literally about jews, so lets keep it on topic by not talking about jews, makes sense.
Since this seems not to be obvious to several commenters, you are obviously punished by the blog disappearing. From your viewpoint, could an NYT article do more than that? Perhaps also kill the Reddit pages? Don’t worry about that.
Lol, Star Wars. But given that he first and foremost wants to keep his job and career, I basically agree, in the sense that it probably was his best available choice. Not really powerful in an absolute sense, of course.
I’m not sure that’s true.
Kids will make it more expensive, but your wife can work as well.
I think the issue is, how much “stuff” do you really need. If you learn to cook, you can make fantastic and tasty meals – from any world cuisine – very inexpensively. If you eat in a healthy manner and sane portions, you will be eating around 70% less food than the average American.
What exactly does one need? Food, shelter, and then some luxuries like a Netflix subscription, TVs or tablets to watch it on, phones, maybe a bicycle, if you don’t live in a big city than an old car. Kids or other dependents add to it, but by how much?
This stuff isn’t expensive and can easily be supported by almost any minimum wage job ($1,500/month. A two earner household = $3,000/month).
I think people have to realize they are not financially fragile – and if they can’t take away your job, you’re free.
In addition, they can’t “cancel” plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. These guys will always have work – they also don’t care about these types of people.
The battle is only for the “commanding heights of culture” – you can be free if you accept marginal status.
SA is a psychiatrist and works with crazy people. He says that he doesn’t want his patients to associate their therapist with an online blog, as they may be triggered by something he wrote and get literally mad. I see his point.
SA sounds like a person who very much cares about the welfare of his patients. I believe that he is mostly motivated by this sort of IRL stuff, and find it notable that Karlin doesn’t even mention it.
Going dark is military lingo. I hate Star Wars.
Quite, it just reminded me of Obi-Wan’s famous line. So I guess the Star Wars is on me this time.
You seem to have very strange ideas about the purpose of this post.
If anybody wants to read SA’s own arguments for closing his blog, they can go read his own article, which I prominently linked to.
This is a short introduction to who Scott is, what he writes about, and a brief discussion of the pros and minuses of blog deletion as a response.
That said, it seems pretty unlikely that mentally ill people will be minutely reading non front page NYT articles, putting two and two together about their quack, and proceeding to browse through SA’s blog until they manage to find something that triggers them.
Here is what “Gray Tribesmen” was referring to:
You clearly read “Tribesman” in the title and rushed off to comment your Jew obsessions without reading anything else.
Your words not mine.
The Revenge of the Phantom Jew, now playing on repeat on your head.
The chad anti-Semite vs. the virgin nuanced thinker
Yes, it’s a relevant datapoint to the sort of demographic that the woke commentariat is now willing to cancel.
I don’t understand this. Doesn’t NYT publish ‘anonymous sources’ in approximately every other article? What would be wrong with a simple ‘Scott Alexander, operator of Slate Star Codex blog’? It would be a far better introduction than “officials in the intelligence community “. His blog was pretty good, it would be sad for it to go.
What did he do to piss off SJWs? He seemed like a fairly liberal person. I guess in tribal wars heretics are punished more severely than nonbelievers.
PoundMeToo scored Weinstein, Lauer, and Ansari. Two jews wrecked, one brown kid mauled, but he survived.
If neutral put on a pink pussy hat, he could really cleanse Hollywood, i bet.
A shame; I thought it referred to Gray Lensman.
Mentally ill people can do a Google search for his full name though. Any NYT article would be near the top of the list.
But you are right they would have a hard time reading through his blog. I am not mentally ill and I have never read more than 50% of one of his posts. They are like the Energizer Bunny.
They keep their friends anonymous.
Scott is not their friend. To them, he is just a sort-of-libertarian nerd who unaccountably writes for free.
Not to dox him myself, but searching Scott Alexander’s IRL name “doxes” him (his Internet postings) just as surely.
A NYT article at the top will just provide a more convenient “summary.” (Which, of course, may be problematic if it’s highly negative).
“There is no more tolerance for eccentrics.”
In real life, true. But what about here? Ron Unz has lamented many times that this website has attracted many “unhinged” (or “deranged”) commenters. My response has been that the “unhinged” have occupied an important and esteemed place in Western thought, beginning with Don Quijote and Hamlet and going forward to the present. I regard the participation of highly eccentric or “unhinged” thinkers on this website as a feature, not a bug (to use a cliche). I admire and benefit from the creativity, insight, wisdom, perspective, and humor of their oblique viewpoints; and that includes not just commenters but also essayists.
Never heard. Or maybe I did, but didn’t find it interesting. Unfortunate, now I have no chance to see for myself and to participate.
But, ya said yourself man, “never cuck”. And he cucked out, so he’s fucked now either way. Not something I’d do, but on the other hand I live in a vastly different culture…
This could be interesting.
https://i.imgur.com/KYyufNx.png
Social controls have broken down in the West.
Eccentrics of the past were in some ways forced to socialize within mainstream society.
Now we have “shut ins”.
I agree that this perfectly possible and you could lead a very satisfactory life but for most people the first step would be getting rid of debts. I personally know people who make $150k+ but are broke and live paycheck to paycheck. So for most Westerners the first step would be a long journey (typically several years) of Dave Ramsey-style rice and beans life to pay off your loans, credit card debt, student loans and ideally your mortgage.
On the other hand, having kids and other dependents doesn’t prevent you from living on that sort of money but it does put severe restrictions on what you can do in terms of leading an itinerant, no attachments life. Unless you make them go eccentric as well and live a nomadic, home-schooled life.
Your lifestyle idea is in any case suited to America and some other Anglo countries (at least in a pre-Covid world) but much more difficult to implement in most continental European countries, where jobs are much more scarce and salaries lower. Not to mention the rest of world.
But patients wouldn’t search “Scott Alexander” they’d search “Dr. Scott Jones” or whatever. I wouldn’t characterize much of anything he could have done as ‘winning’ but his response seems pretty reasonable to me.
Lol, so do I. And it goes to show.
Debt can be an obstacle, I agree, but not an insurmountable one. It just makes it more difficult. And the only debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy is college debt.
I am not so familiar with European conditions – my sense is that northern European countries are wealthy and their social net makes living the lifestyle I’m describing even easier, but you may be right about southern European countries.
However, Spain just implemented guaranteed basic income, so its probably even easier to be a dissident or eccentric there.
Dependents definitely complicate things, but again I think these are obstacles that can be overcome.
There used to be a family that lived in a converted school bus next to Mcarren Park in Brooklyn (very upscale area). The dad worked in IT so I’m not even sure he was that broke.
I guess the point I am making is that with a very different philosophy of life, one can live reasonably even in a marginal position. Depending on ones situation, it can be somewhat more difficult, but doable. I don’t think people realize this – they have this fear of the “bottom”. But I think there has been a revolution in human affairs that has not been widely recognized. The “bottom” no longer means what it did in Victorian times, but our fear level is as if it did.
And once you don’t fear the “bottom” – you can relax and be much freer. While I currently make much more than minimum wage, it is comforting to know I have nothing to truly fear if I’m ever in that situation. By choice, the way I live now is very inexpensive anyways.
George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, describes the psychological effect of hitting rock bottom as being a liberation from fear.
I also think that a guaranteed basic income is inevitable and not too far off everywhere in the West – and this will free people even more. In a sense we may soon be seeing a paradise for eccentrics.
I don’t think a UBI would depend on ones social credit – I think the elites are fighting for the right to be the Establishment, for the cultural heights, and aren’t really concerned with poor or marginal people.
But it would require a change in philosophy.
In the past, people who didn’t want to be part of mainstream society could become hermits, beggars (an accepted way of making a living), or monks.
There were escape valves.
In Asia, both India and China had social institutions that encouraged people to free themselves from their social roles. For Hindus, after age 50 you were expected to pass on your social position to your son and wander the land in search of moksha, and for Chinese, high level scholars after a few decades of government service would abandon their social roles for Taoist retreated in the mountains.
A highly ordered Confucian society could not have survived without the escape valve of Taoism – and nearly every high level scholar-official was a Taoist.
An eccentric is just someone who does not accept the social role assigned to him but remains freely himself. In reality we are all eccentrics underneath – and as India and China show, even the well adjusted – especially the well adjusted – need an opportunity to cast off their artificial social roles.
Literally blaming him for being targeted by this witch-hunt and whining about his soft HBD ban to boot. You should give unqualified solidarity with him, like his true supporters, not handicapping his response from the sidelines. He is not to blame for anything. And his insistence on kindness is all too rare on the internet. He needs our unqualified support, not treacherous backstabbing from the likes of you.
“He needs our unqualified support” – Our? Are you trying to say you are on par with A. Karlin? You are delusional. As anonymous you and your support do not count. You can stick your support up your ass.
These statements are laughably low resolution, and thus meaningless. The domain here is highly relevant wrt judging whether the US or China is more free.
Where would I rather be if I want to bad mouth Xi Jinping, and the oppressive Chinese surveillance state to some friends? The US no questions asked.
Now how about discussing innately high violent crime rates and low competence of blacks? Shit, you bring that up to 9 out of 10 random Chinese person on the street and they’d be looking at you like why you’re wasting their time explaining that water is wet. Good luck doing that anywhere in the West without fearing for your job at best, or getting clobbered by some BLM or Antifa thug, or end up behind some bars for “hate speech” at worst.
In America, you will lose your job if you say the wrong thing. In China, you will be imprisoned in harsh conditions and possibly beaten and assaulted, or even killed.
In China, with their Social Credit system, you may lose the ability to take trains or buses or airplanes, and engage in a range of ordinary activities, if you say the wrong thing.
We are not there yet.
Neither the American nor the Chinese system can last long term, and will eventually implode under their own weight, like the Soviet Union did. But it can take decades.
I’m not worried long term – everything goes in cycles. In the meantime the task is to figure out how to live well in the current system.
In “diverse” countries people need money to mitigate the consequences of vibrancy – housing, schools, et cetera..
Plus, even if one has a mechanic job (by the way, these can be licensed, and who controls licenses?), we have seen examples of normies who said something that was acceptable a few years ago and made PNG as a result.
In addition, the regime pushes people to cut off friends and family members who have deviated from the party line.
To secede from society requires a tight clannish community, either pre-existing or created, that has strict discipline to maintain itself and not crack under pressure – thus defeating the point of this left libertarian idea you have.
As my final note, while there are plenty of discussions of how intellectuals and elites suffered under communist purges, it bears mentioned that common people were just as vulnerable to being swept up as their high-class counters.
Holy cow, do you get these dumb tidbits of info from, like, anime?
Sure, some people will face greater obstacles, and some places this may not be an option at all.
I imagine in Khmer Rouge Cambodia, what I am proposing was not an option.
But if what we are facing is “merely” soft totalitarianism, and not the full blown kind, then I think a huge chunk of people across the West really have less to fear than they might think, if they are prepared to change their perspectives. And that is good news. There may be considerably more freedom than we realize if we are willing to have the right attitude towards life, and developments like UBI may even enhance our freedom.
Sure, this doesn’t work for everyone, and if it develops into full blown totalitarianism, all bets are off. The Legalist regime in ancient China had such tight controls that no escape was possible. But that regime only lasted like 16 years iirc, and was replaced by an explicitly Taoist regime.
In a way a soft totalitarianism is worse, because it will probably limp along much longer, but while it lasts, there are still lots of opportunities to opt out.
Also, I’m not sure I’d call yourselves normies – rather, you are the eccentrics now. And calling yourself normie is contesting the cultural heights, trying to be the Establishment – which is fine, if you’re prepared for the consequences. But people whose values differ radically from your own will often not persecute you if you pretend to be “crazy”. But if you still are interested in fighting for the cultural heights and think you can win, rather than just remain unmolested, then continue calling your self normie. It’s a choice, either way is fine.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ulf-karlsson.png
I always like how you preach poverty while not giving your material goods to our host here.
Aren’t you maybe just a little bit hard on Thulean Friend? I mean you don’t have to agree with anything that he writes, but you do have to admit that he’s an articulate, intelligent type? 🙂
I wouldn’t call it poverty, but the liberating realization that what used to be called poverty has largely been eliminated from modern Western countries.
There has been a revolution, but there is a lag in perceiving it.
The level of fear people have is more appropriate to centuries ago, where falling down the economic ladder might mean actual starvation.
And they control you through fear.
You wouldn’t know articulate if it slapped you across the face with its balls dipped in a dictionary. His writing is serviceable at best, he’s not out of the ESL trap by any margin. While yours struggles at passing as human. So if anything, you’re the one who should be getting complimented for managing to use a keyboard with your mental faculties.
I don’t consider myself a normie I learnt that life lesson a long time ago.
However, I feel it it is important to highlight that if even people believe MLK was a good race-blind American liberal/conservative and Churchill fought for the rights of improbably eloquent blacks in 1940s London or even people who were on the spearhead of liberalism three years ago can suffer from repercussions then it will be even harder for radicals.
But I am not even against “withdrawing” from the system, I merely think that to survive as a distinct cultural/ideological/ethnic entity totalitarianism from the top cannot be replaced with libertarianism but must be replaced with a sub-state collective mentality.
Though some of your proposals like, don’t develop unnecessary debt, eat less, live more frugally are not baseless.
neutral, Don’t forget Google/Alphabet, Amazon and the various other Bezos initiatives, Microsoft, all the telcoms, all the banks, soon all that is left of domestic energy producers, all the big media…. I really wish the list were not so long, but this is just the beginning.
I’m more and more convinced that Boris Johnson is crypto-pro-Chinese. He has so far shown no signs of backing down on the Huawei 5G deal even under a lot of pressure from the US, and has strongly indicated that he plans to contract the Chinese state railway company to build HS2, which sounds a lot like joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative to be honest. He has also just approved a huge Huawei R&D centre in the UK, which the Trump administration is apparently “furious” about.
He’s subtle about it because a lot of Tory MPs and Tory voters are pro-America, anti-China types who venerate the so called “special relationship” (that is only ever one way), so he has to maintain an illusion of being pro-American while really pursuing closer ties with China, I suspect that is his real Brexit vision.
Another example of the center not holding.
Alexander sounds like a decent guy but the Woke do not respect decency.
It’s going to take a lot harder line of dissent and activism than HBD to push them back.
Politics in this sort of environment is a matter of brinksmanship and the Antifa-Left styles itself as boundlessly determined on power even through widespread street violence and black-bloc tactics.
We all know this is leading to a sharply-polarized hard Right vs. hard Left struggle.
The guys still occupying the fast-eroding center need consider which of the extremist camps is going to be a better fit for them – or they’re just going to get squeezed like Alexander – and by the NYT, no less.
Grey Lady 1 – Grey Tribesmen 0.
Without solidarity there is no defense against this kind of bullying. Pick a side while you still have something to fight for.
“They” control you through actual silencing and harm to yourself and people you love. Frankly, it is all quite ridiculous on so many levels, though I like to mercifully allow that your brain has been adequately fried by LSD as to be intentionally obtuse(right up until it involves Israel, whereupon you become rapidly lucid).
The simple truth is that destroying the status of others is not only a powerful method interpersonally but also internationally, which is why nations attempt to subvert the economic status of each other. And amusing as it is to ask the population to embrace poverty as nobility, it is a self-evident losing game.
Its particularly annoying when someone who has no children at all offers completely vapid ideas or feelings of having your family suffer.
I’m definitely not against collectives breaking away from the mainstream. What I say is compatible with that.
In history, there are times when dissident groups have to break away and live apart, until the mainstream changes. This is no real tragedy, but a totally normal thing. History goes in cycles. The experience of living this way also tends to create certain skills and personality assets that at a later date may help propel the group back towards the center. In time.
The dissident groups that get persecuted and slaughtered are the ones that challenge the mainstream for control of the Establishment, like the Cathars, when they are weak. They has an exceptionally benevolent and benign philosophy – indeed, they were more Christian than the Christians – but they began to vie for mainstream control.
The Jewish experience in Europe is also instructive. In the early Middle Ages, they had not yet figured out how to survive in their new surroundings. They were constantly being expelled and massacred. They couldn’t work out a modus vivendi.
But over time, they figured out they couls offer their services in an alliance with the elite class. By making themselves indispensable to kings and nobles, they could survive as a dissident group – although this was risky as well, because kings would deflect popular anger towards them, and their fortunes would fall with that of the elite class.
While it would fascinating to see an alt-right dissident collective specialize in some financial skill and make themselves indispensable to the elite class, and despite being despised un-woke peons become a protected group whose hated way of life was nevertheless tolerated and allowed to flourish, this isn’t the only – or necessarily the best – template to follow.
Its just one example of a creative solution to the problem of being a despised dissident group living amid a hostile majority who see your values as literally Satanic, and how one can even thrive under such conditions.
Another example would be monasteries, much more along the lines of embracing marginal status and not integrating into the power structure not not threatening it either.
Of course, when monasteries start becoming an alternative power structure as they did in England under Henry VIII, they too get eliminated.
But most importantly, my advice is meant for the individual free spirit, perhaps of a somehat Taoist bent. For such individuals, and I suspect they are growing in number, things may not be so bad at all.
You are correct, but I don’t think you understand what my strategy is meant to address.
My strategy is not to win over the heavily contested public space of the Establishment – I regard that as completely lost. Their ability to eliminate your voice from the mainstream I do not contest.
Rather, I regard the task at hand as to maintain ones identity and values, either as part of a collective or as an individual, until times change. Not to win – to survive, perhaps to fight another day. This is the kind of control I am addressing – over your thoughts.
Winning I no longer see as possible for now.
You are quote correct that for many people, status is a primary concern, the loss of which may even lead to suicide, even if all their physical needs are being comfortably met.
And it is true that few people will be able to truly adopt the attitude I am proposing of smiling indifference to status. I am happy if I can help along anyone who is innately capable of this, if I can provide any philosophical perspective to help them develop that side of their personality.
But the majority will always be devastated by a loss of status – what I am saying can help remove the added layer of fear of poverty-starvation, which is no longer a genuine threat but I think still lurks in our hindbrain. And that’s a good thing.
And even the average person for whom status is of primary importance, will be somewhat comforted by being exposed to an attitude of smiling indifference towards status, though he cannot fully embrace it. The mere existence of monks and hermits had a tonic effect on society.
What I seek to do is as far as possible eliminate fear – not to minimize difficulties, but to show that different perspectives are possible, and much of the problem may be merely psychological.
Not everyone can follow me in this, and I accept that.
As for family, again, we are not taking about genuine physical deprivation, but of loss of status – and with parents providing the right perspective, if they are capable of it, the sting of this may be reduced or eliminated.
Finally, a sense of status can be maintained in a persecuted despised dissident minority through adoption of the correct attitude. There are many examples. Jews never despised themselves even at their lowest ebb.
In the end ones psychological attitude is the determining factor, and I am trying to shed more light on this.
As for Israel, it is in a completely different situation today, so a completely different set of advice is appropriate. We must deal with realities as we find them. I certainly do think Jews have faced despised minority dissident status, and my advice here is partially derived from their example.
You know how to hurt a Swede. 😀
I find Thulean Friend nearly always a great poster, and when he does go off the deep end, I like to think of it as willful contrarianism.
There is never going to be UBI. The prosperity you talk about is not going to last, because it is based on having a steady supply of white men, with the right combination of intelligence, integrity, and altruism.
The entire modern world was built on that steady supply, which has been failing for the last few decades, and is now nearing exhaustion. The turmoil we see now is the Jew and Subcon vultures fighting to get on top of the heap before we get any farther into our precipitous descent.
Being at the top of the heap is awesome because it means you get the biggest share of the value-transference from the mostly white, male workers (some Asians in there, but it’s the white labor that is really valuable). As the total value available shrinks, the struggle to get on top and stay there becomes more earnest, in the same measure.
Never read him except for the occasional burble quoted by iSteve. Seems like a nice guy. Of course, that has its drawbacks as we all know.
I think he was naive to talk to the NYT, and to use his real first names if he wanted to remain anonymous.
Doesn’t seem to have written anything extreme, but then again, to the media now if you don’t want Black Jewish trannies sharing the bathroom with your children, or you don’t want your country overrun with Africans you’re “extreme”.
I think its more about technology, and barring some worldwide catastrophe, increased productivity is here to stay. It takes like 3% of the population to feed the entire nation.
As automation increases, UBI will be necessary to keep the economy going.
It will just be more of a game than ever – rich people will compete with each other on who can get most people to spend free government money on their product or service, even as that money is generated solely from taxes on the rich.
So it will essentially be a game played by the rich to siphon other rich peoples money into their pockets.
Its actually a beautiful system – ambitious people will still have an outlet for their ambitions, while everyone else will be able to live reasonable comfortably.
The true relationship between the rich and the poor, the ambitious and the content, ought to be symbiotic and copacetic, not predatory.
I have no desire to abolish the rich or make the ambitious “see” the error if their ways – all types must exist, and w hood system satisfies everyone.
Are they his real first names? What sort of Jew is called ‘Scott’?
a small loss. i never rated him nearly as highly as other people seemed to rate him. way, WAY too wordy. took FOREVER to get to any point, and the points he did get to were…were they that great or insightful? what were his greatest insights or contributions exactly? basically his role was being a host for internet spergs who loved to overthink things to the nth degree.
if anybody can point to one important conclusion he made that some other internet thinker had not already made years ago, i’m open to hearing it. has a single idea from SSC been exported to a larger community and become a ‘duh, obviously’ point adopted by lots of people, the way HBD stuff has?
and clearly, he was a high intelligence idiot, who thought talking to NYT was a good idea. the very high intelligence, low tactical intelligence guys lose every time to the average, cunning guys, who are legion throughout human society.
Hey Mr. ESL, shouldn’t this read:
? to make any sense and to be grammatically correct? Just saying, but thanks for the compliment anyway! 🙂
i’m surprised Steven Pinker had the nerve to pop his head out. here’s a guy who should be laying low with his stupid ‘everything is getting better’ shtick.
hey Pinker, is everything still getting better? is the world still just automatically getting better on it’s own? or is something…kind of changing all of a sudden.
“Doesn’t NYT publish ‘anonymous sources’ in approximately every other article?”
https://twitter.com/AlanMCole/status/1275446136375898114
Forgot to mention the need to keep your fingers crossed so you don’t get sick or have some accident… A health insurance safety net is a fundamental thing, the biggest equalizer and the biggest transfer of wealth in any society.
No wonder is so resented in the US, where the health sector is also seen as a wealth extractor and profit making.
So his proposed transfer of three million Hong Kong Chinese to Britain is for the benefit of the People’s Republic? He will be removing a thorn in its body politic? Does he think that these HKers will vote Tory out of gratitude or self-interest? They will not agitate against PRC from British exile?
I was thinking more akin to pillarisation, though it would of course be abolished after the Kampfzeit is over.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Pillarisation
While the best hope for America is probably that the federal government simply paralyses itself, in West Europe there are several countries that are politically “wobbly” or could become so under crisis situations. The closest one now, for example, is probably Italy when they next have elections.
Lol, I guess poor Scott truly is the enemy outgroup to the NYT rather than ISIS. Just like he predicted.
With respect to paragraph three, Anatoly, I BOTH drive a Prius AND enjoy country music. Must be in the Grey Tribe.
Another fine column.
Can’t reject EUrope and the PRC at the same time, especially if the USA, the other pole of the world economy won’t help you much.
As to statutes, a fair point.
As to executive orders, though:
Are Trump’s arm and hand paralyzed?
Nothing prevented him from issuing executive orders on a slew of topics, placing the opposition on the defensive and taking his chances in the courts. There are still many judges who would uphold his authority to issue those orders at the district-court level, and a good chance of getting a sympathetic three-judge panel in the US Court of Appeals in many circuits, too. This is especially true in the past year, with so many Trump nominees on the federal bench.
Trump could and should have issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship for people who cannot prove that both parents were US Citizens or Legal Permanent Residents at the time of their child’s birth. (not here on an education, work, or tourist visa, e.g. chinese birth tourism). Didn’t he promise to issue that executive order on “day one”?
Trump could and should have ordered a couple hundred thousand troops (and contracted mercenaries) to come home from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and elsewhere and actually, you know, made it happen — firing and prosecuting anyone refusing to need the lawful order re troop placement.
Then where is even his active public support for a big repair and expansion of our infrastructure as repeatedly promised? Not even passing it, just consistent active public pushing to move it forward.
I mean, I don’t this his thesis has been invalidated. (Yet, anyway). He could very easily argue that Twitter lynch mobs are an upgrade from IRL lynch mobs.
Anyhow, it’s not the first time he’s expressed support for victims of the SJW mob, I don’t think there’s any great need to signal against him.
What about the gay tribesmen?
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/844437301459607552/aucDes-4_400x400.jpg
Wasn’t the French Revolution a product of the Enlightenment?
Technology is nothing. Machines don’t run themselves.
People are everything. The West is running out of people who can work machines. Every place is, but the West is fastest.
Material prosperity doesn’t manifest from the economy, as if out of a running water tap. It has to be made. There is not going to be UBI, and if you think what is coming is going to be a “beautiful system,” you need to wake up.
They are tied, albeit with silly string, by the Judiciary. If Trump ever realised the Judiciary need the Executive Branch and/or the deference of the majority of the people to enforce their edicts, and if he could utter a semi-lucent legal argument why what the Judiciary has emitted in any given case might in fact be ultra vires and therefore a nullity that the Executive was not going to follow as it would not be following the black letter law in many cases, you might see a lot of absurdities like single federal district judges in outlying islands stopping the business of America on the slimmest pretences simply fall away. Instead, Trump curls up under his desk in a foetal position while squealing, “Oh yeah! We’ll see what a higher court says.”
This seems are very bizarre remark. Ron Unz is running a website for a wide range opinions that cannot get into the mainstream media. Are you saying that Ron Unz is pro-Chinese govt or that he is trying to stamp out independent thought in the USA or both ???
He’s just running his own little tirade against Unz.
No.
You need fewer and fewer people to run the machines. Commonly cited is agriculture where we went from 80% employment to 3% employment, but it is a universal principle. Same in manufacturing and services, exact same process applies. Always had.
We do not have jobs anymore. Just make work busy work (like grooming next generation of woke terrorists) for status competition. Humans only matter as consumers, hence we print $trillions in debt and give it away to enable consumption. UBI will merely eliminate fake status chasing, prining $trillions to enable consumption will be nothing new.
Ron Unz has many times expressed warm admiration and support for the Communist Party of China, and has supported and defended Godfree Roberts, who is generally acknowledged even by people who like the CCP as an insane, blind propagandist for it.
This alone should be an indication of what Ron’s actual values are.
Ron regularly abuses and insults people on this site for the crime of disagreeing with him and tells them to get off “his” site (when he just provides the platform), and heavily restricts posters like my self who defend and support Israel and Jews (for instance, after defending Jews Ron restricted my commenting to 2 comments per hour rather than 3 and took me off the pre-approved commenting list for both Karlin and Audacious Epigone, and many of my comments defending Israel and Jews don’t get published on other threads. Since my comments on AE get published around 8 hours after I submit then, I am effectively soft banned there and no longer comment).
Many commenters here have complained of not getting their comments published for disagreeing with Ron.
Ron Unz is trying to attract commenters of a certain type to this site, so he has a limited interest in giving relatively wide latitude for the time being – but in his heart he is an authoritarian.
That’s why I sat there are no real “good guts” today.
Yes, but it takes few people to run the machines. Machines by definition are labor saving devices.
Machines made it possible that we went from 95% of the populace needing to work to feed the nation to 3%!
I don’t think we will run out of that 3%, barring a catastrophe.
I am not a fan of machines and would happily live in a pre technological age, but since we have them, we might as well realize that they have freed us from certain things.
You say we won’t get UBI – Spain already has it. We already got the 8 hour work day and 5 day week, a massive reduction in work time.
Individual bloggers have their own moderation policies. I am the only one who doesn’t premoderate by default, though I do ban Anons and a couple dozen unpleasant submorons.
However, your wider point is still BS.
What makes censorship on Google, Facebook, etc. bad is that they are de facto monopolists. Imagine I was to ban you from my blog right now, and you were to huff off, make your own blog, where you detail all the ways in which Karlin is wrong and bad, and publicize your posts on Facebook and Twitter. You enjoy rapidly growing success, gathering a large crowd of Karlin unappreciators. Then my bestest friend PUTLER kicks you off all social media, makes you impossible to find on Google, takes away your hosting and domain relegating you to the dark web, and blacklists you from AirBnb to Uber for good measure.
That is censorship Western-style.
I agree that what Ron does is not comparable to the crackdowns mainstream social media engaged in. Its not even close to that level.
But I don’t think he has a principled commitment to free speech and has strong authoritarian tendencies – just, right now in his weaker position, it makes strategic sense to allow more latitude.
Remember, the Left also talked about free speech until they had power.
The mere fact that he is a strong admirer of the CCP – without qualifying that with reservations about its repressions of free speech or authoritarian behavior (in other words he does not merely admire its economic policies or something ) – to me is enough to show what his actual values are.
Aaron B, doesn’t Unz give a platform to John Derbyshire who is strongly against the CCP ?
I suspect that I am a lot closer to your opinions than Unzs, I think that a lot of the posters on his site have “Jews on the brain” and are automatically supportive of anyone, China, Russia, Iran who seems opposed to the west. What is impressive about this site though is Unz’s commitment to making sure that opinions that cannot get into the media have a voice here.
Sad. I wouldn’t have guessed these specific circumstances, but SA has long been nonconfrontational to a fault. He was inevitably going to fall to some predatory psychopath.
This story should be a cautionary tale to the loveable nerds who just want to build gardens of truth and valuable discourse–you need guards to keep the wild animals out.
When are YOU and others going to realize that Trump is enriching himself at YOUR expense, and that he does not give a damn about Flyover Country/The Deplorables?
Wake up!
Da Jooooozzzzz.
These crazy jew-hating types are fated to be unhappy everywhere and forever. Does anybody think that under a nazi regime a freak like “neutral” would live long enough to enjoy watching his boogeymen being exterminated?
Jew-obsessives are the saddest people in the world. I wish nobody were sad, including them. Heck, if they were happier people living happier lives they’d probably hate me less anyway. Not that it matters. Antisems are the least productive or dangerous people alive. Having a jewish enemy is scary, but an antisem? What’s he fonna do? Hate me in his dark room?
I’m still a koombaya sort of fella who likes everyone who isn’t an immediate danger to me so I wish everyone, antisems too, happiness and health.
“PoundMeToo” awesome!
How can it be employed in written and oral communication for fun and profit though? The pun crosses the language/symbol divide and has a fine point to it as well. Any examples of how to use it?