David Grossman is a famous Israeli writer and an extreme leftwing political activist. He is in the frontline in the ongoing war against the Jewish religion. He is not a liberal atheist like many in the West, basically indifferent to religion. He violently fights the nationalism or tribalism clearly implied in Judaism. So I was surprised to learn in the New York Times that in real life, he is ruled by personal rituals based on pure magical thinking. For example:
In a bout of magical thinking, the novel’s Ora tries to protect her son in uniform by leaving home and hiking the length of the country. The idea is that the military cannot carry out the ritual of delivering news of her son’s death if she is not there to receive it. Mr. Grossman, who began the novel when his older son, Yonatan, was in the army and before Uri started, said he too entertained the illusion that by writing in this way, he was somehow protecting his children.I know the suffering that parents go through when their sons (and daughters for the matter) are in the army during a war. I empathize with Grossman as a person. But he rejected religion because it is superstitious nonsense, yet he cannot free himself from magical thinking and performs personal secret rituals to influence destiny. If to choose between Grossman's magical thinking and the traditional rituals of an organized religion, religion is much preferible. Reading detective novels, the criminal is always compulsed to kill because of some complicated ritual he has invented to exorcise his personal demons and cure his impotence. The Jewish religion has proven methods to chase away nasty dibbuks. The Catholic Church is even stronger in this exorcising business. Pic: a Medieval Jewish exorcism formula.
54 comments:
You mean that leftist intellectuals are hypocrites who do not practice what they preach? I'm shocked, shocked to hear this. Next thing you will tell me that Al Gore the environmentalist lives in a giant mansion and flies around in private jets.
BTW, another commonality between the Chinese and the Jews is that, being literate people, we believe in the magical power of words. In China, the Emperor used to sit next to poems - two vertically beside his throne and one horizontally.
http://www.forensicgenealogy.info/images/forbidden_city_throne_room.jpg
Every Jew has a little scroll with magic words nailed to his doorpost.
K
I am for the mezuzah and against personal magic. Like not being at home during a war, so the death of a son cannot be notified. In Israel, an officer with the assistance of a nurse appears at the door of the parents to notify the death of the soldier. Only after the parents have been notified, the name can be published.
Similar procedure in US except that they do not send a nurse. Usually it is an officer accompanied by a chaplain. Many Americans are religious and resistant to psychological counseling which is reserved for the "crazy". So being counseled by a minister is more acceptable than being counseled by a medical professional - there is no stigma attached to being counseled by a religious figure. Chaplains can be ministers or rabbis or imams of any religion, not necessarily that of the family.
K
I found our chaplains (all Protestant) to be much better to talk to than any shrink. Of course, I did not engage their services professionally, just chatted with them here or there (each battalion has a chaplain, and shrinks are running around here and there,) but it struck me that they were of a higher caliber as individuals. In retrospect, reading this http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/ and this http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/01/lost-in-the-meritocracy/3672/ makes me think that the chaplains were less influenced by these corrupt processes at the root of our societies, though the shrinks may have had a higher IQ. The chaplains struck me as believing in SOMETHING-the shrinks were exactly the same as the educational bureaucrats that I used to bait as a student, believing in nothing but lining their pockets with a modest but assured salary.
Hi J,
I am a grad student in Geography the US at Univ of Arizona and I have run across your blog a few times as I search for information about Israel's water infrastructure system. I'd love to chat with you sometime about your work as a Hydraulic Engineer. Any chance you would share your email address? You can reach me at misaak@email.arizona.edu.
Best,
Marissa
It'a SMALL thing to figure out JAIM's email address. AnyONE, any YAHOO, could do it if they tried.
K
Any psychologist who is capable of getting private sector employment stays as far away from the military as possible - that's why they end up with dead end losers like Major Hasan. Ivy League types not only don't serve in the military, they don't even KNOW anyone who serves in the military.
Ministers OTOH see themselves as having a mandate to serve people in need so being a military chaplain is not considered low status - it's considered an important mission. It's also a good place to find customers - people whose lives are in danger often turn to God when they wouldn't otherwise.
So you are comparing apples and oranges - the bottom of the barrel for shrinks vs. average to above average ministers.
K
B- Regarding the linked articles, thanks for the links - they were interesting reading. However, both authors seemed impressed with themselves - they were the real thing, self educated, while all those professors and other students, etc. were all a bunch of phonies and illiterates. Only his Buddhist friend from back home, who spent his time milking cows, was the pure and true intellectual pursuing knowledge for knowledge's sake and not for grants or scholarships or promotions. My 16 yr. old daughter loves Catcher in the Rye because Holden sees the world the way she does - populated by phonies. I got over this a long time ago and I told her to get over it too. Yes, the world is full of frauds and poseurs in high places (starting with the Poseur in Chief himself). We ourselves, are frauds and phonies too on some level. Big deal, so what. Now that you know this, then what? People who are the real thing, who are pure and incorruptible and intellectually rigorous and unwilling to bend and compromise their principles, end up like Ted Kaczynski or like Grigori Perelman - regarded as nuts by everyone.
Kirn himself eventually gained the confidence to boink the daughters of the rich and famous - he married the daughter of a movie star. His children will feel themselves to be natural members of the American upper class and will have no self-doubt. It feels perfectly natural to my children that their friends are descendants of Revolutionary War generals and live in mega-mansions and so on. To me it is amazing that the grandson of an illiterate fisherman could do so, but they (for that matter I) have never seen a shtetl, never tasted poverty, so to them it is perfectly natural to regard such people as their friends and social equals and society has changed enough that these distinctions no longer mean much anyway.
K
Psychologists have no place in counselling the parents of the dead. What are they going to tell them? That grief is normal, or take them through the seven stages or put them under observation. Talk is cheap or as the Baron put it - God has given all of us the ability to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others. No, what we want is to be able to meet the child again or at least be assured that he is in a better place. The chaplains have a better handle on the ultimate questions.
So your saying what people want to hear at a time like this are lies or at least things that are unsupported by any form of proof? Why not tell them that their son is with 72 virgins while you are at it?
K
>Ivy League types not only don't serve in the military, they don't even KNOW anyone who serves in the military.
Fo' rizzle? Read Andrew Exum sometime-he's Abu Muqawama. Now, I don't like the man's political views or career progression, but...Nate Fick is another good example.
MAJ Hassan was a) a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, b) not a benchmark, but an exception, a freak, and not somebody to judge an organization by.
Glad to hear your kids are integrating nicely. I'm sure your grandkids will be upperclass and too good to serve their country with a bunch of dumb losers like me. Tell me, when they get married to their WASP upper-class peers, what will you say?
The difference is that I know that there is an afterlife. Anyway what is scientist able to offer in such a situation? Will he tell the parents that in three days maggots will eat through the dead man's guts? But we already know that.
What B. wrote is correct. In addition to Ivy Leaguers, you'll also find the occasional Rhodes Scholar in the military (e.g., John Nagl, who retired a year or two ago to join a think tank).
Also, Hasan was a hack in addition to being a jihadist loon, but he is in no way representative of military physicians. There are plenty of talented physicians serving in the military, partly because med school is so expensive and that it's a good deal to let the military cover the cost of it in return for several years of service. One of the reasons that KIA rates in Iraq have been so low (pundits anticipated we'd suffer more KIA taking Baghdad alone) is because of the skill of military physicians.
1st of all , I meant no dishonor to those in the military, only to Ivy Leaguers - the loss is theirs. That there are a few in the military does not prove much. Most avoid it like the plague. Trust me on this.
Regarding my children, what alternative did I have - to send them to Yeshiva, so they would refuse to drink a glass of water in my treyf home? If you are going to integrate with the goyim anyway, of which the chances are pretty high, might as well integrate w/ a better class of goy unlike K's childhood friends in Argentina who all married working class girls and got what we would call in the US white trash children. Better to marry Chelsea Clinton than a barmaid. BTW, its not like there aren't any Jews around the Ivy League to socialize with. All Ivy campuses have a Hillel and the Jews range from atheistic all the way up to and including frum.
I understand that religion can be a source of comfort to mourners. Note though that Israel sends a medical professional rather than a rabbi. In Israel Rabbi generally means Orthodox and the frum don't serve in the military at all so the rabbi and the bereaved might have nothing in common. The grieving parent might even be angry that the rabbi is not sending his own sons to the Army.
K
Re: Hasan - the guy gave ample warning of being a jihadist. There's a great scene in the Mel Brooks movie High Anxiety where in order to sneak thru airport security the Mel Brooks character who plays a psychiatrist decides that the best strategy not to be noticed is to make a big scene. People would be so disgusted that they would avert their eyes and pretend NOT to notice anything. Apparently this same strategy worked for Hasan - the more wild declarations and powerpoint presentations he gave about wanting to kill infidels, etc. the more the Army decided not to take him at face value. But this could have only worked in a setting that was politically correct and deeply dysfunctional.
K
BTW, I suspect that the nurse is there more to administer medical assistance than to offer talk therapy. In Sephardic culture especially it's not uncommon that the bereaved will be very demonstrative - scream, faint, threaten to kill themselves as well, etc. and the nurse can then administer smelling salts, dispense tranquilizers, etc. The American norm is to be much more quiet upon receiving bad news - you're not supposed to make a public spectacle. Stiff upper lip.
K
K,
I've met a few Ivy Leaguers-have some working for me on a project right now (hard science guys) and went to Stuy H.S. (a major incubator.) I would a MILLION times prefer to spend my time with people with a lower IQ but higher moral fiber than with most of those tapeworms. I was either smarter or a better thinker (as opposed to a human calculator) than most of the ones I've met, and if I'm hanging out with people dumber than me, they might as well be decent people-we'll have more to talk about. Now, some Ivy Leaguers are exceptions, and do contribute something rather than manipulating the system (note that here I am talking not about the hard skills, but the 75% who are in soft skill fields.) For instance, Abu Muqawama's post here talks about his FO: http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2009/11/martial-virtue-and-selling-jon-krakauers-crappy-new-book.html
Valuing marrying into the top tiers of a morally corrupt establishment is a typically Jewish mistake. All it ensures is that when the establishment goes down, so will those who joined it. See: the Soviet apparatchiks and their fate in the purges.
The nurse is to administer tranquillizers, oxygen, whatever. Some paents are not healthy to start with, bad news can kill them. A friend is an officer of the unit in charge of visitng the homes of the soldiers to bring the bad news, and he had his first heart attack at age 42 and then bypass operation. He told me that sometimes they have sex with the young widow - they need to be comforted. These things are not published. No kidding. Life is shit.
As far as the dysfunctional political correctness of the military-it's caused by the military being part of the federal govt. Who forced and continues to force this political correctness on the govt? The Ivy Leagues, that's who.
they need to be comforted.
Wow, just wow.
B, the problem is not the Ivy Leagues per se, but rather that the peoples in the US are willing to vote Democratic in the first place. Without 30-40% of the White vote going to the Democratic party the Dems would not be a viable force in American politics.
As for it being a mistake to marry into the top tiers, what do you suggest as alternative? Remaining socially isolated and sticking to our own would be good and that's what the Orthodox do, but realistically that's not a option for the non-religious - if you integrate into the larger society educationally and in the work place , you are going to end up integrating socially as well, especially in a society like the US where most goyim consider now Jews to be white and suitable dating material. Unless such matches are stigmatized by the society (and they aren't anymore) they are going to happen whether the parents like it or not. So either the Jews can marry their social equals (either Jewish or non-Jewish) or marry down. I say marrying up is better. I don't think that Mezvinsky will regret his marriage to Chelsea.
B - I sense a certain chip on your shoulder re: the Ivy Leagues. Let go of it, resentment is not a becoming emotion. Are many Ivy Leaguers obnoxious twits? Fer sure, but there are others who are terrific and amazing - focus on your own success and don't begrudge them theirs. The Ivy Leagues serve as sorting system for the best and brightest in America. Is it a perfect system? Do the most meritorious and only the meritorious end up in the Ivies and those who don't make it pathetic losers? Hell no, a thousand times no, but the system is better than random and there is a higher concentration of talent than you would find in say the average community college classroom. The American system also has the virtue of allowing for social mobility. One of my son's best friends at Penn was the son of Chinese immigrants. His mom worked in the basement of a Chinese restaurant packing orders for takeout at below minimum wage and not even a share of the tips, but her son is now an Ivy grad and on the way to med school. That's not all bad.
K
"they need to be comforted."
This is tough work but someone has to do it. Just one more sacrifice that Zahal men must make in the line of national "service".
I'm not saying that this NEVER has happened but I'm not exactly sure that it's a common occurrence. Does the nurse join in a threesome? Is the act of comfort administered before or after the funeral arrangements are finalized? Does the officer stay until breakfast or leave immediately once the widow has been comforted? I realize there is no end to human depravity but forgive me for being skeptical.
K
Re: Sex with the widow. One guy some ages ago may have scored. This sets the other fellows thinking - man, that Rachel was such a hottie and I am turned on by sad madonnas. Before long the wish morphs into a fantasy and passes for an urban legend.
"The Ivy Leagues serve as sorting system for the best and brightest in America. Is it a perfect system? Do the most meritorious and only the meritorious end up in the Ivies and those who don't make it pathetic losers? Hell no, a thousand times no, but the system is better than random and there is a higher concentration of talent than you would find in say the average community college classroom. The American system also has the virtue of allowing for social mobility."
Judging by how these Ivy League geniuses have run America into the ground, maybe it's not such a great system. There are smart people elsewhere, ones with healthier values and stronger moral fiber. Maybe we'd be better off if more if we had more Rice or UT Austin alumni in the Treasury department.
L
Mark,
The reason so many people are willing to be fooled into voting against their own self-interest is that there has been a massive apparatus in the form of the Ivy Leagues and the media which has coopted the smartest people in our society to convince them to do so since at least the 1910's. Or do you think that the 7 Days That Shook The World came out of nowhere?
K-The chip on the shoulder I have is that the smartest people in my society are corrupted by the Ivies into its destruction. It's not about me begrudging them their success-it's about me begrudging them their destruction of everything I love about this country. Or did you miss Ivy League MBAs assraping our economy for the last 10 years? Is Nicholas Nasseem Taleb an unknown name to you? Credentialism and all it brings sicken me. You seem to be unwilling to understand my point-I do not WANT a system sorting our "best and brightest." I do not want a "concentration of talent" at the top-no if it's talent that's spent its formative years being indoctrinated with its superiority over those it's got a manifest destiny to govern and the laws of morality and common sense.
As far as your son's friends' social mobility-is that supposed to give me some kind of fucking warm and fuzzy? BHO, Eric Holder and Steven Chu are great as far as social mobility are concerned. A grasp on reality, an ability to produce results beneficial to us all, keeping the hands of TSA employees off my twig'n'berries-not so much. If you don't understand the disgust I feel with the Ivies and their production, maybe you're not seeing the same America I am. I do not WANT to live in a country where the people I deal on a day-to-day basis are the leavings of a meritocratic selection process started in pre-K, and we're all administered by mandarins who couldn't fix a toilet but are eager to apply the latest and most fashionable macroeconomic theories to the rest of us retards. Professor Preobrazhensky had more humanity, and the humility to make an honest assessment of his theories' failures. These fucks just make new theories.
Miranda-oh, brave new world! That has such people in it!
Prospero-'tis new to thee.
B, 2008-2010 is the twilight of the experts. They just dont realise that they are spinning wheels. Few give a damn about what they have to say. The old professors (at least the legendary ones) were honest men and could tell you that they do not have an answer. These new ones have less by way of professional morality. It is not all their fault though. They have an infantilised population to cater to, one that cant accept no for an answer.
B - What's your point about Taleb? He's a Wharton MBA too. Is he part of the problem or the solution?
K
B- What do you propose as a realistic replacement for our current (so-called) meritocracy? A return to the system where your position in society was based on who your ancestors were? How do we restore moral order without destroying social mobility? Nobody "put" the Ivy League in charge, who is going to "unput" them and how? I understand your anger but anger is not a plan.
K
Ivan,
The old professors were a bunch of creepy Communists like Keynes, or worshipers of the gods of the shops like Friedman. They were worse-nobody questioned whether Keynes actually knew anything about the economy.
K,
Taleb is not a credentialist, and much of his value lies in exposing overcredentialled, fraudulent suits. He is definitely not part of the problem.
The hell do you mean, "nobody put the Ivy League in charge"? What do you think the New Deal was, if not the triumph of the scientocracy?
You sound like a Soviet asking somebody criticizing the system in 1988 what their proposed replacement is-a return to a feudal society where man is exploited by man? I don't need to have a "society in a box" standing by to know that this system cannot stand for much longer in its current form. When our "best and brightest" are told from the cradle that that's what they are, that their destiny is to run society, and spend their formative years isolated from said society, amassing meaningless credentials, is it any surprise that their solutions when they DO get to be in power run along the lines of, say, stopping terrorism by grabbing your grandpa by the balls? Or carbon credits? Or electing President Jesus to magically solve racism?
A system dragging such a massive and crippling load of stupidity can't succeed in the long term. When it goes down, so will most of those suits.
One last thing. If you think that the position of those suits is not based on who their ancestors were, you're smoking something. They are where they are because of inherited wealth, connections and/or IQ. Period.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/Ft-Bystanders.pdf
Read that and tell me if Taleb, with his Wharton MBA is part of the solution or the problem.
Andy Beal, a self-made billionaire banker, was right on the credit bubble and sat on his hands during the last few years of it. Federal regulators even got on his case for not lending enough during the bubble years. But when the credit bubble burst he was proved right and he has made an even bigger fortune buying distressed assets since.
Beal's no Ivy Leaguer -- he's a Michigan State dropout. But he had something going for him that most Ivy Leaguers don't have: real world experience. He got his start buying real estate during the real estate bust that followed the S&L crisis.
My father always used to quote Exodus 1:8 in his Yiddish accented Hebrew:
ויקם מלך־חדש על־מצרים אשר לא־ידע את־יוסף׃
"There came a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph" .
Or phrased another way, be careful about wishing for the overthrow of the ancient regime - the next one might be even worse. Don't like Ivy Leaguers running your country, how about Jesse Jackson or Sarah Palin , etc.?
The "man exploiting man" line always reminds me of the old joke about Communism - capitalism is man exploiting man and under Communism precisely the opposite occurs.
K
B, Keynes knew a lot more about the economy than many who followed him. He was a pragmatist who made his money by playing the markets. I am sure that Keynes himself would agree with some of your observations. Marriner Eccles, Shitler and anyone who pumped primed the economy by spending on defence or large infrastructure projects count as Keynesians. What the Kenyan Keynesian and his parachutist friend at the Fed do not seem to realise is that the US has a very advanced economy quite unlike the Depression-era one. In those days men were content to have food on the table. They were happy working for peanuts. The infrastructure projects the TVA, the levees on the Missisippi River, that they worked on eventually paid off. Now, all the infrastructure that the US ever needs has already been built, railways, airports, roads, power plants, hospitals and schools. Further spending will only be 'bridges to nowhere' and subsidies to the favoured castes. This is why countries like India and China can realise a good return on their infrastructure investment while the US cannot.
K,
I don't see how Jesse Jackson is any different that what we have in the White House, or how Sarah Palin could possibly be any worse.
Ivan,
Another word for "pragmatist" is "opportunist," which Keynes and every other leftist in power was. His and FDR's policies were not aimed at ending the Depression, but rather prolonging it and consolidating their power over the rest of America. Which they did.
There is plenty of room for successful infrastructure investment. For instance, new nuclear power plants. Or building up the road network in Seattle, where I live, so that going ten miles wouldn't take 30 minutes and 3/4 of a gallon of gas. If return on investment was the goal of the elite, they would do this; their actions suggest to me that the ROI they're interested in is political as opposed to economical, and will accrue to them as opposed to the great unwashed.
Ivan - you are wrong about infrastructure. We have a railroad between NY and Phila (and the Chinese had one between Shanghai and Hangzhou and betw. Beijing and Tianjin, etc.). It takes around 1.5 hrs to travel 100 miles on Amtrak. Now in China that distance takes 40 min on the NEW railroad. If NY-Phila were 40 min. apart (and Phila-Wash an hour) and the fare was $15 instead of the $100 that Amtrak charges it would completely revolutionize both cities - Philadelphians would take dinner and a show in NY and return home, NY'ers would live in Phila and commute and save 1/2 the cost of an aptment. etc.
But, given our current structure with unions, etc. where even a 3 mile rail tunnel was going to cost $11 BILLION , it's impossible. We've painted ourselves into a corner, but not because we have all the quality infrastructure we need, not even close.
K
B, your problem is with FDR and his power grab. Keynes was English and hardly figured in US policymaking. The so-called special relationship between the US and UK was a story of unrequited love with the UK playing the mooning lover. Chaperon FDR squeezed the British for all it was worth, pretty much every Briton including Churchill was left with a bitter taste in the mouth. The story that FDR kept the US back is a lot of hogwash coming from the Austrians ensconced in Alabama. During the Depression years, business investment in fact increased. The problem was not a lack of business investment. It was that with every dollar of investment, no jobs were being created. So, the factories became more efficient, but men had no jobs, a recipe for a Communist takeover. An early example of the unworkability of supplyside economics.
K, as you know I live in Singapore. Do you know who builds our roads and put up our buildings? Its Indians and Chinese paid about SGD700-1,200 a month. Compare that with the per capita income here, one of the highest in the world. Again, who provides the marginal demand that makes all these investments worthwhile? It is the demand from inward migration that provides the bouyancy. For a small nation of about 4million, we have a net inward migration of about 200,000 per annum. That automatically makes the transport sector more efficient and make all property owners happy as they watch the desperate chase after new developments. In fact for while a target population of 7 million was bruited about, till Old Man Lee made some noise about the deteriorating quality of life. What I am trying to get at is this; additional investment in infrastructure pays off by and large only with a burgeoning population. Where do you think your additional migrants are going to come from? Would you like them to take over your country? To that extend I agree with B, the geniuses running the show in the US now having no loyalty to the actual citizens, have no compunction about replacing the existing population with various other clienteles be they grape pickers from Mexico or software coolies from India.
If it were only a lack of compunction or ethnic loyalty, we'd be better off in most ways that matter to most people. But in fact they're just plumb crazy in this country; look at California. What the mighty are accomplishing is not merely the econo-idolatrous de-ethno-nationalization that even Ol' Man Lee recommends to Japan, but something brain-dead. Some say they're acting in their own interest but I think that is quite impossible to believe. No, they've got PC on the brain. There's too little discipline coming from reality, because we're so insulated from harm in the short run. In that situation, only a respect for history's lessons can help you, but they have no interest in that, they're dazzled by our era's amazing lasers and surprising equations, and conclude that the laws of history have been obsoleted - that everything will always turn out to be counter-intuitive, and so the teachers from all times prior to the wars no longer can be considered to apply to reality at all; they were all just palavering, super-racist believers in 'authority', phlogistic chemistry, the five humors, and ghosts. It's true that they weren't so amazing at science, but today one errs by thinking there is nothing outside science - oh, except of course for 'emotion' and 'humanity'. Our choice in life is to submit to study under the wise, or else slowly accrue the same instruction through the cosmic process of hard knocks, often enough with a side dish of horror that's suddenly served at random and can't just be sent back to the kitchen - if only.
"I don't see how Jesse Jackson is any different that what we have in the White House, or how Sarah Palin could possibly be any worse. "
This time YOU missed MY point. The whole point of that quote is what Rumsfeld used to call "unknown unknowns" - she could be worse in ways that you can't even begin to imagine and force all the Jews to make mud bricks or something.
A lot of people (including J) more or less had Obama figured before the election - you didn't have to be a rocket scientist or a water engineer to know that everything in his life had pointed him into being a leftist. But someone like Palin is a wild card in my book. She could possibly turn out great or be a nightmare.
K
B, the lack of good roads and freeways in Seattle is a local failure, not traceable to the national elite. The Phoenix metropolitan area has instituted a local sales tax to finance commuter freeway construction, resulting in one of the best urban freeway networks in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_and_freeways_in_metropolitan_Phoenix
The voters of Seattle aren't interested in good roads, so they don't get any.
"They [the people in charge] are where they are because of inherited wealth, connections and/or IQ."
Well, 1 out of 3 ain't bad. I'm not so sure I see anything wrong in people ascending due to their IQ. The Chinese Imperial civil service system, which ran along IQ lines, endured for many centuries and not only provided social mobility but ran the country well.
You say you don't need to propose a complete substitute to our current rotten system but a hint would be good. The Romanovs fell because of the rottenness of their system and no one had prepared a "society in a box" to replace it so instead the most vicious violent thugs did (and for that matter the thugs took over in post-Soviet Russia and post-Saddam Iraq - power abhors a vacuum). What makes you think the result would be different in the US once our current system is destroyed?
K
K, the current system IS being destroyed.
The elite are now a different country, and they are occupying the US and indeed large tracts of Europe.
I cannot understand why right wing politicians who support Israel, like Nixon and Palin, are hated for it whereas neocoms like Obama, who hate all forms of white nationalism including the Israeli version, are supplied with a waterfall of comfort and succour.
As you keep saying, you will get what you deserve, not what you need or want.
Anon.
Ivan-I'd say the Brits got a pretty good ROI on their romance with FDR-they were able to fight a world war with Hitler and Japan, and win (-ish.) Do you have any doubt that had they lost, Churchill would have been made to answer for bombing civilians at a Nurnberg tribunal?
I would really like to see some figures for the Great Depression showing whether investments into business as measured IN GOLD grew, and also a breakdown of the businesses that the investments were made into. If you own a factory making shoes and are assured by your political connections that your produce will be bought at the state-determined price and destroyed (to support that price, as per Comrade Keynes,) regardless of volume-it's time to make more shoes!
K-I don't foresee Sarah making anybody make mud bricks. I had a good read on O before the election, and have a good read on Sarah. Nothing will change under her-progress will just happen more slowly. Here, I'd like to point out that the entire future is an unknown unknown-aliens from Alpha Centauri could interrupt the next presidential elections and commence mass rectal probings. Nonetheless, we have to do the best we can with the info we have.
You are somebody who has attained success due to inherited IQ, lacking inherited wealth or connections; it is in your interest to believe that the best kind of system is one that rewards inherited IQ. But China's mandarin system did not keeep it from being overrun by the Mongols, Manchu or Westerners. Perhaps there is some kind of blind spot here-much like the blind spot that caused America's high-IQ academic elite to produce and support O.
The Romanovs fell because of the actions of an oikophobic high-IQ elite which felt that their intelligence and education entitled them to run the country according to rational thinking in accordance with principles like social justice and progress. In other words, the people we have running our government and Ivy Leagues today.
Today's system will be destroyed regardless of what I think, because it is its own destroyer. Every one of its actions is suicidal in the long term. What comes next depends on who's an American at the moment America collapses, the progress of technology (connectivity, microscale manufacturing) up to that point, and what's going on with China, Europe, Japan and Korea at that point, as well as on other unknown unknowns. Speculation is not likely to be fruitful here.
And as for the mass rectal probings, by the way, the TSA will be introducing them next week.
Anon.
I keep asking you for the alternative to a system based on merit (or IQ or what have you) and you don't say what that is. A system where stupidity is rewarded or propensity to violence or what? If we aren't going to put the "smart" people in charge, then who do we put in charge or who will put themselves in charge? Who will be at the top of the heap in B's imaginary future US (other than Centaurians)?
K
K,
You are asking for an algorhithmic approach to leader selection. The algorhithmic approach is THE PROBLEM. Essential leadership qualities include intelligence, the ability to adopt to new and unknown problems, intiative, courage, integrity and the ability to motivate others. There is no possible successful algorhithmic approach to selecting leaders; what we have today is the result of the failure of this kind of approach. The current educational system is a kind of Fabian socialist sifting process which processes children from age 6 through a series of tests whose purpose is to determine the best leaders and bring them to the top. The result, as could have been predicted by anybody with a brain and can be observed by anybody with eyes and ears, is a leadership stratum composed of those skilled at discerning the "right answer" sought by the makers of the test and making it their own. At manipulating their "teachers" and supervisors into giving them the grade they want. These are not leaders; they're not even good managers. They're the human equivalent of French bulldogs, bugeyed and useless, shaking, bred for esthetic qualities and incapable of doing anything for themselves. When they must deal with reality, which was not designed by the makers of standardized tests or by education majors, they fail spectacularly. Any algorhithmic approach will fail similarly-look at what happened when the algorhitmically selected mandarins fought the Manchu and Mongols, whose leaders were selected based on their leadership qualities by non-linear, non-algorhithmic processes.
The way I want our leaders to be selected is the only way that you can get Leaders-they must be selected in an evolutionary way. The same way insurgent groups select their leaders in Afghanistan. Only a Man can select another Man to be his leader. Only a Man can convince other Men to let him lead them. There is no algorhithm possible here.
Of course, this is impossible under a large, centralized system such as ours. On the other hand, this system is committing slow seppuku as we speak.
The problem is that the elite are detached from their taxpayer base and live in a bubble. Their superior intelligence, which (on average) is an undoubted fact, not only doesn't save them from this, but in fact guarantees it. Furthermore, intelligent people are as susceptible to manipulation as anyone else, if you go about it in the right way.
Sometimes their intentions are naive, but apparently benign, eg many have been indoctrinated to want to contribute "to humanity" (ie some pointless outgroup like the Third World-think Amy Biehl); and sometimes their intentions are malignant("It's all about me").
But their intentions are never, ever to help the Middle America that enables their existence, but only to insult and pour scorn on it. And this they learn from the Faculty.
"Flyover country", in the form of the Tea Party and the like, has now woken up to the fact that what was once their America is now occupied
by an enemy of sorts, since the next step after contempt is abuse.
Mass immigration,"legal" or illegal, currency debasement, outsourcing, debt creation, endless war, etc; these are all weapons aimed, and fired, at Middle America.
Anon.
>The problem is that the elite are detached from their taxpayer base and live in a bubble.
They are detached from all immediate consequences of their actions and practice a kind of Crimestop to avoid thinking about the secondary or tertiary consequences. See birth control and abortion.
>Their superior intelligence, which (on average) is an undoubted fact, not only doesn't save them from this, but in fact guarantees it.
They use it to avoid thinking about things like how simulating pregnancy at almost all times from age 15-45 may be affecting their thinking and emotions, for instance. Somebody less adept at spinning complex webs of logic may be better at noticing what's in front of their eyes.
>Furthermore, intelligent people are as susceptible to manipulation as anyone else, if you go about it in the right way.
Like, for instance, isolating them from their peers from a young age and training them to work mentally, always reaching the appropriate predetermined conclusion for an external reward (from a banana sticker to a prestigious scholarship.)
>Sometimes their intentions are naive, but apparently benign, eg many have been indoctrinated to want to contribute "to humanity" (ie some pointless outgroup like the Third World-think Amy Biehl); and sometimes their intentions are malignant("It's all about me").
They are all ultimately malignant; the great adaptive power of the modern progressive ideology they all share is that it can justify anything which is beneficial to its bearer in the short term in terms of the purest altruism.
>"Flyover country", in the form of the Tea Party and the like, has now woken up to the fact that what was once their America is now occupied
by an enemy of sorts, since the next step after contempt is abuse.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any useful changes to come from the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party is a morphine drip administered to a cancerous patient.
Amen to all of that, except the last part.
The Beast is awakening.
Anon.
"I keep asking you for the alternative to a system based on merit (or IQ or what have you) and you don't say what that is. A system where stupidity is rewarded or propensity to violence or what? If we aren't going to put the "smart" people in charge, then who do we put in charge or who will put themselves in charge?"
K,
I don't think anyone's arguing that stupid leaders would be better than smart leaders; that's a false dichotomy. But smart, as in the ability to graduate from an Ivy League law school, isn't sufficient in a national leadership class. And it can be destructive when smart leaders hold values antithetical to the best interests of the rest of their countrymen.
What I keep seeing here is this - our current leadership class is deficient and rotten - highly (mis)educated and clever in a certain way but lacking in proper moral values or vision and naive about many things. These critiques are not without validity. How is it that the most educated turn out to be overwhelmingly liberal (and yet liberal policies are so idiotic)? How can people who are supposed to be smart be so stupid (or as Orwell said, why is it that some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them)?
But, Tea Party aside, how do we replace this whole misdirected class who have steered our ship of state onto the rocks when they are so firmly entrenched? Does the whole ship have to go down, taking the people at the controls with it, so that a new vehicle can be built? Great Leaps Forward are very costly and the highest price is paid by the peasantry, not the ruling class. Is internal reform possible so that our education system no longer selects for clever drones who are good at spouting PC platitudes back at their professors and so that the professors won't be tools looking for acolytes? And again, for the millionth time, how would such a society work? How would we replace the SATs with an American loya jirga and what does a loya jirga consist of in a non-tribal society? It seems at times that ANYBODY, even an Alaskan white trash beauty queen, would be better than the bunch of preening overeducated clowns we have now, but I'm not so sure - as bad as they are, it could be even worse if our only criteria is that the next leader be "NOT Obama".
K
K, this is an entirely valid point you make and it is not easy to answer otherwise something tangible would already have been done about it.
Part of the explanation for this lies in book by Murray and Herrnstein, The Bell Curve. High IQ people simply prefer to congregate with each other, even across national boundaries, than with the hoi polloi in their own countries; and in the end, for a lot of people, loyalty is to their friends rather than to some abstract notion like 'country'. Couple this with the extra-ordinarily violent track-record of nationalism, and it is easy to see how constructive, intelligent and often well-meaning young people become so vulnerable to the neocommunist Faculty propaganda in which they are immersed; especially when the poison is honeyed by the by prospects of their own rapid enrichment.
The problem with all of this is not just that it is an immoral theft of the nation's money, but also that it is unsustainable and built on a set of premises that conflict with reality. In other words, on this course, we are going to - correct that - we are in the process of a slowmotion collision into a brick wall, and very destructively.
Internationally, for example, evil people are obtaining nuclear arms. At home, the collapse of the economy, is well under way, and the ethnic decomposition of white America is also well entrenched; California, eg, is already lost and you can see what happens when whites become a minority. It's not just a question of your kid getting beaten up in public school because he wears an American flag on his bicycle, or your daughter being murdered, it's also a question of millions of low-IQ people siphoning resources that they didn't create and never will, from people like you. How does that sound as a sustainable business model?
In the end, revolutions have an unstoppable organic character about them. You might not like Palin but she is a symptom of a deep and powerful loathing that is building up, and it is right that Middle America awakens. Whoever it turns out to be, you can be sure it will be forceful, directed but decent government that puts control back in our hands.
Middle America may prefer sports to particle physics, but you should remember who created the Industrial Revolution, who invented calculus, who split the atom and who discovered evolution; and who, ultimately, took down Hitler. We are not fascists, we are a free people, we are not stupid and once we are sufficiently motivated, we will push back.
There is nothing more dangerous than the present gang of New World Order totalitarians who are bent on our destruction; and indeed yours too, as people like J and I think you as well, are increasingly starting to appreciate. Just look at the UK and South Africa, the Jewish Exodus, and the animus towards Israel and Jews that is now de rigeur in the EU.
Anon.
>How is it that the most educated turn out to be overwhelmingly liberal (and yet liberal policies are so idiotic)? How can people who are supposed to be smart be so stupid (or as Orwell said, why is it that some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them)?
Same reason peacocks have big, stupid tails. It's adaptive in intraspecies competition.
>But, Tea Party aside, how do we replace this whole misdirected class who have steered our ship of state onto the rocks when they are so firmly entrenched?
WE don't. They will take care of themselves. We can stand aside, hedge against damage, and pick up the pieces afterwards.
>Does the whole ship have to go down, taking the people at the controls with it, so that a new vehicle can be built?
Depends what you mean by "ship." I doubt the Ivy Leagues will exist in any recognizable form when the endowments that keep them going dry up due to the fiscal policies of their graduates. Or the IRS, when everybody has switched from national currency to economy-as-a-service/gold. Or OSHA, when 85% of manufacturing takes place in people's homes.
> Is internal reform possible so that our education system no longer selects for clever drones who are good at spouting PC platitudes back at their professors and so that the professors won't be tools looking for acolytes?
No. Internal reform is impossible. As Taleb says, evolution does not teach through convincing, but rather destroying. But when you have alternate sources of advanced education available at a fraction of the price, the modern American university will disappear.
I don't want an American loya jirga. I think we might be better off going to a loose confederation of city states.
"But, Tea Party aside, how do we replace this whole misdirected class who have steered our ship of state onto the rocks when they are so firmly entrenched? Does the whole ship have to go down, taking the people at the controls with it, so that a new vehicle can be built?"
Why "Tea Party aside"? You ask if change can work through the system and then proceed to ignore a huge, grass roots, current attempt at just that. Time will tell if the Tea Party is successful, but think back to a previous example: Perot's Reform Party in '92.
Perot didn't win the election, of course, but he and his followers put the key plank in their platform, deficit reduction, on the national political agenda, and forced both major parties to make it a key plank of their platforms. And lo, by the end of the decade, the deficit was (temporarily) eliminated.
"How would we replace the SATs with an American loya jirga"
You repeat this straw man, but I'm not suggesting switching to unintelligent leaders. I'm suggesting switching to a different kind of smart leaders. E.g., instead of a Harvard Law grad with no private sector experience, how about a Carnegie Mellon engineering grad who paid for his education with an ROTC scholarship and eventually started a successful business? America has men like that, and we'd be better off if more of them served a stint in government.
The "stint" in government is the problem - the people who could fix this see government as a necessary evil or as something they can do for a brief time and then return to other pursuits (just as the founders intended), while Democrats see government as a career and themselves as pros - the result is like guys from a weekend softball league playing against the S.F. Giants.
K
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