The leadership of the West is desperate to avoid naming or recognizing our obvious, declared enemy: Islam. Why?
Liberalism
Is There a Second Reality?
Reality Winner, Queen of the Resistance (“Winner, winner, chicken dinner”)
Yes, her name is “really” Reality Winner. (That’s what I would name my daughter.) When this, or she, or it, is the First Reality, it automatically produces the Second Reality; the process is akin to that of a college-student on Spring Break taking a “selfie,” or rather innumerable “selfies.” The Second Reality is always in the character of a “selfie.” This is an open thread. Like, totally, way open! Comments are invited. (“On what topic are comments invited?” — “Whatever, Dude.”)
Witness another version of the Second Reality below —
The Alphabeticity of Nations
Dear Representative Pelosi:
My wife and I are stalwart Democrats seeking advice. We are planning an elaborate summer tour of several nations, some of them transatlantic, and we would like to know the correct order in which we should visit those nations. Here are some questions that we hope you can answer. –
Supposing that we planned a visit to London, should we list that on our itinerary as a trip to Britain or a trip to England? In either case, if we wished also to visit Edinburgh, in Scotland, would we need to visit either Britain or England first?
If we listed our London and Edinburgh destinations as the United Kingdom rather than Britain, England, or Scotland, would we need to visit Serbia, Slovenia, or Ukraine first? And does the Byelo in Byelorussia count, or is it the same, by your reckoning, as Russia? Again, how should we count Abkhazia, were we to visit there? Is it subsumed alphabetically by Georgia?
When visiting Finland, should we list it as Suomi, as Finns call their nation, and touch base Somalia first?
In what order might we correctly visit the different places called Georgia?
Finally, on a related topic, which bathrooms should we use when visiting the autonomous region of Trans-Dniester?
We are sincerely yours,
Mr. and Mrs. Qwerty
No Title Necessary: Res Ipsa Loquitur
Will California Follow Atlantis?
The Implacability of the Karmic Law
Lewis Spence (1874 – 1955) published his prophetic account Will Europe Follow Atlantis in 1943 at the nadir of Allied fortunes during the Second World War. Spence, beginning as a journalist and folklorist, had made an enduring reputation by the early 1920s as a major authority on myth and legend, certifying his knowledge of those subjects in numerous books on the ancient stories of the Celts, the Rhineland Germans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, and the Mesoamericans. These extremely useful compendia remain in print. In 1924, however, Spence issued a book that gained him notoriety for a different although related reason.
This book in question was The Problem of Atlantis, a study of Plato’s Atlantis Myth in its twin sources, the dialogues Timaeus and Critias, of related stories in myth and folklore, and, with a survey of geology and ethnology, of the plausibility in Plato’s account. In The Problem of Atlantis, Spence, in jazz terminology, played it cool. While arguing for a factual basis of the narrative in the Platonic texts, Spence avoided the occult vision of Atlantis as a prehistoric Utopia founded on lost sciences and technologies. He insisted on sober evaluation of the evidence, arriving at the conclusion that Atlantis had existed, as Plato wrote, in the oceanic gap between Western Europe and North America; that it was, prior to its submergence, a High Stone Age, what modern commentators would call an Upper Neolithic, society; and that, during a prolonged breakup of its landmass requiring many centuries, its inhabitants migrated via North Africa and Iberia to Europe’s Atlantic littoral areas and the British Isles. Ensconced in those new bases, they did their best to preserve their traditions and codify the knowledge of their origin. The fleeing Atlanteans, whom Spence calls Aurignacians, and whom he identifies with the Cro-Magnons, also crossed the ocean in the other direction, contributing to the cultural matrix of the emerging societies in North and South America. Spence’s argument about Atlantis was a radical version of a then-current anthropological theory known as dissemination or cultural radiation, which posited a monogenesis for human culture.
Femmesplaining in the Second Reality
“When gnostic experience is consolidated, the social raw material is ready for existential representation by a leader. [….] Such people will prefer each other’s company to that of the rest of the world, they will voluntarily accept counsel and direction from indoctrinators, they will neglect their own affairs, and they will extend generous material aid to the leaders of the movement. An especially important function in formation of such societies will have women, because they are weak in judgment, emotionally more accessible, tactically well placed to influence husbands, children, servants, and friends, more inclined than men to serve as a kind of intelligence officer concerning the state of affections in their circle, and more liberal in financial aid.
“Once a social environment of this type is organized, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to break it up by persuasion. […] They are impermeable to argument and have their answers well drilled. […] In brief: The attitude is psychologically iron-clad and beyond shaking by argument.”
For the Gnostic: “Social evils cannot be reformed by legislation; defects of government machinery cannot be repaired by changes of the constitution; differences of opinion cannot be settled by compromise. ‘This world’ is darkness that must give way to the new light. Hence coalition governments are impossible. The political figures of the old order cannot be re-elected in the new world; and the men who are not members of the movement will be deprived of their right to vote in the new order.”
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (1952), Chapter 5, “Gnostic Revolution”
Playtime is Over
When you reduce selection pressure as the West has massively done since the Industrial Revolution, you get a lot more depravity (you get r instead of K), because the relative penalties to error and vice go way, way down. And vice versa: when you increase selection pressure, the relative rewards to virtue go way, way up, so you get lots more virtue.
We have no immediate prospect of an uptick in natural selection pressure, although the handwriting is on the wall. It’s out there (it always is).
But Trump is imposing artificial selection pressure (in part because he and his ilk can comprehend the writing in flame on the wall (to the depraved at their banquet, it is gobbledygook, nonsense, mere noise: mene, mene, tekel upharsin)). His basic message is simple: Playtime is over, no more pretend, everybody out of the pool, time to get dressed and back to work.
The liberals are going crazy because this strictly artificial – i.e., merely social, rather than biological – increase in selection pressure pushes the same neural and cognitive levers as would be triggered by a sharp uptick in natural selection pressure. It feels to them like a sort of death. They are terrified of death. Trump makes them aware of their death. Like death, he just doesn’t care about their whining (as much as they are used to). So they panic, and then they turn to defensive rage. It’s a tantrum.
Faster, Pussycat — Kill! Kill!
President Trump’s betrayal of his promise to repeal Obamacare has been disconcerting, as has the GOP’s recidivism in not sending to the CEO the blanket-repeal that they sent sixty times to his precursor in office. No one objects to Obamacare relevantly. That it is piss-poor healthcare is incidental. The essential objection to the “law” is that a two-thousand-page “law” is a contradiction in terms. A two-thousand-page “law” can be nothing other than a bludgeon of tyranny, to be used against the freedom – and the discretion, and the wisdom – of the people. The Trumpmeister needs to live up to his campaign promise, the position to which he owes his election. To quote the title of the Russ Meyer’s 1965 sexploitation movie: “Faster, Pussycat – Kill! Kill!” Kill the “law” and start over. Kill it. Stomp it into the ground. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, and kill. Trump should throw away his Pussy Hat and act like a man.
Warren Farrell on Why Men Earn More
Warren Farrell’s book Why Men Earn More and What Women Can Do About It is a useful resource on the topic – a topic that surfaces most prominently on the eve of presidential elections only to disappear again afterwards. Shortly before the election, BBC America and MSNBC both ran stories on the wage gap on the same day, apropos nothing at all, seemingly as a conspiracy-theory-inducing coordinated action. The BBC made a special point of saying “for exactly the same jobs.” That is not remotely true. While individual instances of unfairness may be found, the 20% difference is due to factors like different occupational choices, choices of college majors, continuity of service, willingness to relocate, men who work full-time working more hours than women who work full-time, men commuting twice as far as women on average, and most particularly, women taking time off to raise children. Never married childless women earn more than never married men on average. Thomas Sowell points out that comparing “single” men and women is misleading because it includes divorced women who may have worked part-time or not at all while their children were young.
Last semester I had two students who insisted that the wage gap was the result of a pay differential within exactly the same jobs. When they hear such things on the supposedly reputable BBC and from politicians like Hillary Clinton it understandably sounds improbable that what they are hearing is a lie. One of the students sent some statistics to support her case which actually did no such thing.
The following is a summary of key arguments in Farrell’s book – Why Men Earn More published at The Brussels Journal, a topic Farrell started to explore when he wondered why employers would ever hire men if they could hire women to do the same job for 20% less.
Scaping Goats is Lots More Fun than Repentance
The more you can attribute blame for some bad thing to others, the less blame you need to shoulder yourself, and the less guilt you then need to suffer. And as guilt lessens, so does the costliness of the personal sacrifice adequate to its expiation.
