Epitaph for the Race of Man

You know, what happened to Michael Brown (”Who’s he?”) and Freddie Gray happens to white guys too. It’s just that it doesn’t make national news because white people don’t have a tendency to act like “The Planet of the Apes” in response.

When did people stop caring about ALS? I bet a close examination of the timeline will show a direct correlation between that time and the time that it stopped being a trend to pour buckets of ice water on ourselves like total asses, suggesting that the only reason people did the ice bucket challenge is because it was trendy. It had nothing to do with caring, but we liked to tell ourselves that we were “raising awareness and therefore doing a good thing.”

Well why stop raising awareness? I challenge all reading this to the ice bucket challenge. Post the videos to YouTube with the hashtag #NoLongerFashionable

Darn-good article, originally posted here.

Though Stewart has often claimed he does a “fake news show,” “The Daily Show” isn’t that. It’s a real news show punctuated with puns, jokes, asides and the occasional moment of staged sanctimony.

It contains real, unstaged sound bites about the day’s events and interviews about important policy matters.

Stewart is a journalist: an irresponsible and unprofessional one.

He is especially beloved by others in the journo game. (For every 100 viewers, he generated about 10 fawning profiles in the slicks, all of them saying the same thing: The jester tells the truth!)

Any standard liberal publication was as likely to contain an unflattering thought about Stewart as L’Osservatore Romano is to run a hit piece on the pope.

The hacks have a special love for Stewart because he’s their id. They don’t just think he’s funny, they thrill to his every sarcastic quip. They wish they could get away with being so one-sided, snarky and dismissive.

They wish they could skip over all the boring phone calls and the due diligence and the pretend fairness and just blurt out to their ideological enemies in Stewart style, “What the f–k is wrong with you?”

Most other journalists aren’t allowed to swear or to slam powerful figures (lest they be denied chances to interview them in future). Their editors make them tone down their opinions and cloak them behind weasel words like “critics say.” Journalists have to dress up in neutrality drag every day, and it’s a bore.

Yet Stewart uses his funnyman status as a license to dispense with even the most minimal journalistic standards. Get both sides of the story? Hey, I’m just a comedian, man. Try to be responsible about what the real issues are? Dude, that’s too heavy, we just want to set up the next d- -k joke.

Stewart is often derided by the right as having minimal impact and low ratings. That’s not true. He and Stephen Colbert ruled the late-night ratings among 18- to 34-year-olds for most of the last five years, though Jimmy Fallon has lately surpassed both.

About 522,000 Americans in that age range watch “The Daily Show” on an average night, but that means many millions of occasional viewers, with millions more watching clips online.

To a key audience, he was a strong influence. Longtime Cooper Union history professor Fred Siegel says his students constantly came to him repeating Stewart’s talking points.

College students, of course, are both little acquainted with realities of adult existence and walled off from conservative views, so they’re the perfect audience for Stewart’s shtick, which depends on assumptions that are as unquestioned as they are false.

This week’s “Daily Show” segment in which Stewart defended [NBC’s Brian] Williams was distilled, Everclear-strength Stewart. It was as amazing as watching Barbra Streisand run through a medley of her greatest hits in only seven minutes: In this little chunk of error, cliche, preening and deception, Stewart managed to pack an example of just about everything that is unbearable about his style. It bears close study.

Stewart made some mild jokes at the anchordude’s expense, interrupted with insufferable Jerry Lewis-style mugging, baby talk, high-pitched silly voices and the inevitable reference to whether Williams was “high” (authority figures getting high: always comedy gold to the campus audience).

Stewart slipped in a line of blatant editorializing: “Being caught is punishment enough, no?” Really? Why? If so, argue it, don’t just point the sheep in the direction you want.

Williams is a news anchor. A guy whose three main skills are being good-looking, an ability to read the English language out loud and seeming credible. To put his case in Stewart-ese: “If you want to be considered a trustworthy source of facts, maybe try NOT LYING!!!”

Declaring that media coverage of Williams’ lies was “overkill,” Stewart then built a wedding cake of bullcrap, layer after layer of untruth.

His first move was to change the subject. He used a variant of the rhetorical fallacy known as the “tu quoque” argument, or calling out alleged hypocrisy. Taken to its endpoint, tu quoque (“you, too”) reasoning means no one would ever slam anyone for anything because, hey, we’re all imperfect.

Tu quoque-ism is a generally meaningless gotcha game that can, of course, be turned right around on Stewart: Hey, Jon, you really think you’re the guy to call foul on nuking media personalities who have made misstatements?

In high dudgeon, as though the thought weren’t already a cliche we’d all seen many times on Twitter and Facebook, Stewart declared sarcastically, “Finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War.”

Then came the inevitable gotcha sound bites: News figures discussing intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMD program. Why such a bizarre tangent into an unrelated matter? Because in Stewart’s mind, and those of his viewers, everything has to be the fault of an evil Republican, preferably George W. Bush.

Near the end of the segment, Stewart, with the prototypical combination of blustering self-righteousness and sarcasm that crystallizes his appeal to the college mentality, wondered whether the news shows will now start examining the “media malfeasance that led our country into the most catastrophic foreign policy decision in decades.”

Then (using comic bathos) Stewart cut to more newscasters making apparently trivial points about Williams’ lying. Stewart’s logic is this: The media can’t report negatively on anything anymore, because they dropped the ball on Iraq.

Stewart doesn’t actually believe that: It’s just a cheap gambit meant to get his buddy Williams off the hook by minimizing his serial lying. If Stewart were a public defender, he’d be even funnier than he is as a comic.

What judge or jury could fail to bust out laughing if a defense attorney said, “I have no rebuttal of any of the charges against my client, but lots of other people not in this courtroom are guilty of stuff, too!”?

I look forward to the next time a Republican assistant municipal treasurer in Dirt Falls, Idaho, says something awkward about race and Stewart says, “I forgive this guy given that the actual vice president of the United States once said of Barack Obama, ‘I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.’”

Let’s look at the media reports on Iraq that Stewart is arguing make Williams’ untruths pale in comparison. Problem: Those reports were not lies. Journalists trying to figure out whether the war was justified called up credible experts with experience in the field and passed along what they said. As a more honest version of Stewart might say, “Dude. That’s not malfeasance. That’s Re. Por. Ting.”

Stewart added that “it’s like the Bush administration hired Temple Grandin to build a machine that kills the truth.” Even the audience of devotees seemed to find this simile baffling.

The idea that “Bush lied” is itself a lazy, ill-informed and false statement.

As Judge Laurence Silberman, co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week, essentially nobody in the Washington intelligence community doubted the major report that Iraq had an active WMD program in 2002.

The National Intelligence Estimate delivered to the Senate and President Bush said there was a 90 percent certainty of WMDs. Democrat George Tenet, the Clinton CIA director who continued to serve under Bush, said the case for WMDs was a “slam dunk.”

John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Joe Biden all looked at the intelligence and voted to authorize force. Sen. Jay Rockefeller argued strongly for the war. Then, years later, when it wasn’t going so well, he published a highly politicized report ripping Bush.

There is a serious case to be made against the Iraq War, but it’s a lot more complicated than the playground taunt, “Bush lied about WMDs.” (“Hey, I’m a comic, you expect me to do serious? Please welcome our next guest, Henry Kissinger!”)

Yet another lie on top of that is the absurd implication that the news media were too soft on Bush. The only way you could possibly consider the media to be too conservative would be if you were an extremist well to their left, which Stewart is.

During the Iraq War buildup, even as overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress authorized the use of force, 59 percent of the sound bites aired by the evening newscasts were antiwar, 29 percent pro-war.

To take another of innumerable examples, in 2006 Bush had about the same approval ratings that Obama suffered in 2014. The network news both commissioned far more polls when Bush stood to suffer, and reported on the Bush results far more.

Again, this isn’t close: The score was 52 to 2, as in 52 mentions of low Bush approval ratings versus two mentions of (even lower, at times) Obama approval ratings.

In every Gallup poll this century, more Americans called the media “too liberal” than “too conservative.” The numbers were 45 to 15 in 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion. In 2008, as Obama was being elected, it was 47 to 13. Last fall it was 44 to 19.

Thanks to polemicists and clowns, the myth that “Bush lied” has caught on, and now a majority of Americans believe it. Stewart-ism won the day.

Liberal comics make things up, liberal journalists chortle and praise and internalize the lies.

Before you know it, if you point out that Bill O’Reilly’s audience is just as well informed as NPR’s (as a Pew poll found), or that Sarah Palin never said, “I can see Russia from my house” (that was “Saturday Night Live”), you’re just a buzzkill.

Brian Williams has become a joke for telling lies, but Jon Stewart is a liar for the way he told jokes.

Excerpted from this post by Bryce Laliberte. I love this.

The perpetuation of society does not occur unless people actually form families and raise children. Apart from this, civilization literally does not go on; an empty home does not become occupied when the childless couple die, it remains a tomb of forfeited genetic legacy. The breakdown of civilization is marked by increasing absence, like a complex machine in which small yet significant parts are going missing, only disturbing its operation in a way not observable to those standing outside it. But, as the machine continues operating, the absences accumulate and exacerbate the machine’s decay, until eventually something essential in the short term becomes noticeable. Such is how civilization darkens, without anyone realizing the lights are going off until all the rest of them go off at once. [….]

It isn’t normal for children to be worse off than their parents. While there will always be calamitous events which have an influence outside the control of society, in a society such as ours we have the technology and capital available to protect against all but the most catastrophic of natural events. In order to explain why the children of a society such as ours face a future worse than that of their own parents or grandparents, the explanation must be social. It wasn’t an asteroid or plague which has left us worse off; it is the burning up of social capital without replacing that so the future generations have the benefit of these institutions. We weren’t made worse off so much as our own parents, and the parents before them, did nothing to make our situation better off. They did not do what they could to strengthen their own marriages and families, instead they clamored to divert to themselves all possible resources at any expense to the future. They never sought to make sure their children would be well off, but were focused on promoting egalitarianism. They tried to rescue everyone from poverty and just assumed that everything they were afforded while growing up would be around even if they did nothing to actually make it be around.

Why do we tax cigarettes? Besides that it is a way for the government to give itself your money, the purpose is to be punitive. A higher price induces lower quantity demanded. This is very simple economics. The more something costs, the less people want of something.

And it works, to a point. There is a limit, however, to the amount of cigarette smoking that can be effectively prevented through high punitive taxes. At a sufficiently high level of taxation, it becomes feasible for those more criminally inclined to smuggle in cigarettes from regions where the tax is not so high. In some places, the punitive tax has the effect of driving most cigarette sales underground. Cigarettes are not banned or prohibited, but they practically are, with the price pushed outside of tolerability for most who would choose to smoke cigarettes in the first place.

Agree or disagree with whether cigarette smoking ought to be stigmatized, the effect must be kept in mind. The disincentivizing of a behavior through increasing the cost of it is one of the most basic principles of social organization. Whatever you increase the cost of, you get less of.

It should be apparent that the change in equilibrium rates of marriage and family formation is due to some changes in society. It is not an effect without cause. The suggestion of the neoreactionary is that the cost of marriage and family formation has been increased. It is more costly to make happen, it is more costly to undertake, and it is more costly to sustain. This explains very easily and simply why the rates of marriage and birth have declined so precipitously. It is not so much that society re-evaluated its desire for marriage so much as marriage itself was changed. It isn’t technically prohibited, but its costs have been raised substantially over the last 100 years in ways explicit and implicit. The family is essential, as it is literally the institution which perpetuates society. To make the family more costly is to make the perpetuation of society more costly.

That is, in sum, your problem right there. Entropy is always working on society, but it never succeeded at total ruin because what was taken from society by nature was replaced more than sufficiently by society. Except that now the mechanism to replace the failing parts of society is less reliable, less useful, less effective. The death of the family is the death of society.

Excerpt from this post by Bryce Laliberte.

Here’s something you need to explain. How can evil people like us [he means neoreactionaries, but let’s just call them right-wingers] exist? If Progressivism is really so obvious (hell, even you can understand it!) and good, and shaming us doesn’t suffice to bring us back to the fold, i.e. we are unrepentant heretics, then there must be something just psychologically off about us. We have to be different in a deep, disturbed, innate way. If all those years of education couldn’t beat sense into us, we’re simply not able to saved. We’re a part of the damned. It’s really quite that simple. If we were being merciful, we would let people like us be put out of our misery. We simply don’t have the right psychology to appreciate the marvels and wonders of modern living. Maybe Darwin should be allowed to work his magic, and people like us should be selected out of the gene pool. So what if it flirts with eugenics.

It’s a mercenary kind of logic, but ultimately, for the good of civilization, it may be required. If the only reason Progress doesn’t happen is because there are always some in society who hold Progress back, because they’re stupid or evil, then certainly one can justify a little systematic murder. It’s utilitarian, but if it would mean the end of homophobia, rape culture, patriarchy, pro-life, racism, sexism, and all those other classic pastimes of white male culture, the benefits outweigh the costs. If you won’t do that, you’re depriving the marginalized the justice of being restored to full integration with society sooner rather than later, when it’s too late to save those suffering now. Do you have sympathy for the oppressors? Do you want to let the micro-aggressor get away with it? Progress demands more Progress now.

“Now, hold on,” you’ll insist. “That’s a straw man. I would never advocate the wholesale slaughter of my opponents. That is not only misrepresentative of Progressivism, it is completely contrary to the spirit.” Is it? Then you are suggesting it is okay to allow people like us to take our rightful place in society? I mean, if you’re not working to stop us, then capitalism wins, right? Doesn’t evil win when good people, such as yourself, stand by and do nothing?

“If there is anything that needs to be done about people like you, it wouldn’t be that drastic.” Like losing our jobs? Being barred from employment? Facing penalties, fines, persecution? Being generally disenfranchised from wider society, being rounded up into the ghettoes, before we board the trains for… re-education camps?

“This is insane! I just said I wouldn’t advocate that!” I’m not saying you did. It’s a question of faith. If you really believe in Progress, how far are you willing to go to see it happen? Whenever Progress doesn’t happen like it’s supposed to, why is that? Is it because reality is an impediment, or is it due to sinister plots?

By the neoreactionary’s lights, if we didn’t exist, you’d have to invent us. We are your Emmanuel Goldstein, and yes, we would actually write a book with the title of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. And yes, it would be about your team, the Cathedral.

The purpose of neoreaction is not merely to stand athwart history, telling it to stop. We want to hijack history. We really are the enemy of Progressivism. Progress and our existence is not compatible. If you will not kill us, you will at least have to wait for us to die off, delaying Progress and ensuring the suffering of all who presently suffer due to injustice. If you won’t, it is only because you are a coward. You do not really believe in Progress. You only like to associate yourself with it, taking glory in the work of another party like one does when rooting for their favorite baseball team. You root for the Progressivists in the way you root for the Red Sox. You don’t actually play for the team, and couldn’t if you tried. You are as essential to Progress as a man to a woman. You are only riding the coattails of history and claiming all the credit. You bask in the privilege of being on the right side of history and exploit it against all those who are wrong.

You don’t believe in Progress, in other words, you believe in belief. If you did actually believe, you would be willing to do almost anything to see it done. As much as Progressivism is important, it is more important than anything else; that including the existence of its enemies or the moral scruples its advocates imagine themselves able to afford.

The Progressivists shall have to make a choice. In fact, they have been making this choice. When faced with the fact that Progress cannot occur without further change, it seems apparent that further change is called for. But, if the neoreactionary is right, then the vision of Progress will always be hampered, requiring further change. How much should society expend trying to equalize the gender wage gap? This is a serious question. If the gender wage gap is due to the institutionalization of sexism, then it will cost the expenditure of a certain amount of resources to root it out. How much should society be willing to give up to solve this problem? Surely more than a million, right? But precisely how much? A billion? A trillion? Several decades of lost GDP growth? The political cohesion of the Union?

“Equalizing the gender wage gap wouldn’t cost that much.” Maybe, maybe not. But you shouldn’t pretend that Progress is costless. Pretending that your goal can be achieved without giving up something else is stupid. Utopia at no cost, just add water?

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Just vote for Obama, that will save America. Okay, vote for him again, America needs more saving. Alright, we’re going to need a new version of Obama, because this is taking a little longer than we thought…

My suggestion here is that Progress will prove more expensive than it was originally sold as. It suffers from that most ancient problem of infrastructure and construction projects, cost overrun. It will cost something, at least. That money we spend on welfare so that people with insufficient means can feed themselves could be spent on other things. That’s a cost. “It’s a worthwhile cost!” That may be, but you must admit it is a cost. You cannot neglect the cost side of the cost-benefit analysis of undertaking certain social changes. It would not only be imprudent, it would be dishonest. After all, if you’re so right, you should have nothing to fear in admitting to the costs Progressivism incurs. The benefits will always be greater, right? You should have nothing to fear from an accurate and extensive summarization of the costs of Progress. Progress is for you like L’Oréal, because you’re worth it.

Come back to my question of equalizing the gender wage gap. Simple biology also plays a role in explaining the wage gap. The above cost analysis assumed that eliminating institutionalized sexism is a one time cost that, once it was eliminated, egalitarian views would perpetuate themselves. However, if biology is different between men and women, then biology poses the potential to disadvantage one sex in the market. And wouldn’t you know it, there is a very obvious disadvantage that women face when competing with men in the marketplace. Women are more likely than men to become pregnant. Actually, women are the only sex to become pregnant. Insofar as there is a cost to being pregnant, all this cost is borne by women, in the form of advances and raises given up due to lost time. Equalizing the playing field requires not only a one time cost to eliminate the ongoing effects of patriarchy, it requires ongoing costs to provide women the opportunity to enter the market without facing any disadvantages particular to being a woman.

I won’t go into particular schemes of how such equalizing will be done, I only care to point out that this cost will be borne by men. It has to be, otherwise it would remain a cost borne uniquely by women, which is antithetical to equality. It is a necessity that men be forced, whether explicitly or implicitly, to subsidize the work of  their female co-workers. It is the duty of men to work in order that women may be afforded the opportunity to work.

However it is done, you will see a value transfer payment somehow, even if it can’t be explicitly examined in terms of monetary cost. Since men are seeing less reward for their work, this disinclines them from working so much or so hard. The response of the Progressivist is to moralize, to chastise men who would work less because their pay is being implicitly cut in order to subsidize women’s wages. But this presupposes a rather interesting view of the dynamic of the sexes. If men must be forced to sacrifice for the sake of women because it is their duty to subsidize the existence of women, there is a certain inequality in play. Women do not appear to have a duty to subsidize the existence of men; it is only right and natural that men have a subordinate position to women in society. A man’s place is as the slave so that women may finally be afforded their independence. Insofar as men are disinclined from doing this in order to give women their independence, that is just because they are evil, and inasmuch as they are evil, they deserve to be unequal to women.

Maybe you don’t like this cost so much. Maybe you would like to replace this cost with something else. Maybe some other sort of tax that doesn’t tax men for being sinfully better at work. It will have to be something, at least. If Progress is so great, if it has so many benefits, how much would you be willing to pay for it? If you won’t pay anything for it, or imagine that you won’t have to pay for it, I don’t believe you’re a proponent of Progress. You don’t actually disagree with neoreaction. You just want to signal that you are holier than thou and that you should receive praise for your “enlightened opinion,” when you’re really nothing but a Puritan pretender. You pray in public and have your reward in full.