Pennywise banned

The commenter Pennywise has been banned for being caught lying on more than one occasion. Do not respond to her under that or any other name, as the moderators will spam any comments she attempts to make in the future.

UPDATE: Jason Yungbluth is also banned, under his various names including Vox Diabolus and Death Ray, also for repeated lying.

#VotaSI

Twin proto-independence referendums in Italy today:

ITALY is facing its own referendum crisis as two regions, Lombardy and Veneto, engage in a bid for more power from Rome, buoyed by the Catalonia independence campaign in Spain. The wealthy Italian regions account for at least 30 per cent of the country’s GDP and they will ask voters to take to the polls today to gain greater autonomy from Rome.

Analysts have likened the Italian referendum vote as being similar to that of Scotland’s independence vote from Britain, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, and Catalonia’s quest for independence from Spain.

The votes were called by the two regional leaders, Roberto Maroni of Lombardy and Luca Zaia of Veneto. In Italy, the twin referendums are non-binding, but a resounding “yes” vote would give the presidents of the neighbouring regions more powers.

Forza la Lega Nord! And let’s bring back La Serenissima while we’re at it.

Trump stands by the truth

There is no legitimate reason the JFK assassination files should not be released to the public. None at all.

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he will allow long blocked secret files on the assassination of John F Kennedy to be opened to the public for the first time.

The November 22, 1963 assassination — an epochal event in modern US history — has spawned multiple theories challenging the official version that Kennedy was killed a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.

So the release of all the secret documents has been eagerly anticipated by historians and conspiracy theorists alike. Trump’s announcement followed reports that not all the files would be released, possibly to protect still relevant intelligence sources and methods.

But Trump appears to have decided otherwise.

“Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” he said in a tweet.

Translation: Sayonara, Deep State. Dire and nebulous warnings of cats and dogs living together are no longer sufficient to compel presidential obedience. Everyone understands now that they protect no one’s interests but their own.

Drain the Swamp + Build the Wall = Trumpslide 2020.

Alt★Hero site

Since there is a fair amount of interest in an Alt★Hero site, I’m considering moving down the goal to 135k and adding a new goal at 150k. To increase the chances the campaign gets there, I’m also thinking of adding a site-related Reward for those specifically backing a site.

What should the amount be and what are some of the possible site-related rewards we could give that would be of interest?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

So much for civic Christianity

Evangelicals are discovering that racial identity trumps religious identity:

It is critical to note that the issues for which they left the immigrant churches weren’t doctrinal or theological, but cultural.

Today, it seems like a “Reverse Exodus” is taking place for very similar reasons. Like Lecrae, people of color are finding that white evangelical churches and institutions fail to truly embrace them. After doing their best to carve out a space for themselves within white evangelicalism, give it a fair shot (or multiple shots), and even endure through the challenges for decades, there is a growing number of people of color who are seeking places where they can finally feel at home, while still yearning for the greater eternal home….

Well, the solutions are actually quite simple. This does not mean the solutions aren’t costly or difficult, but they are simple: at every layer of evangelical leadership, allow for a solid concentration of evangelicals of color to occupy culture-shaping positions of authority. Again, the problem wasn’t theology, but culture.

We need to be aware of how we bring unconscious biases to our own litmus tests of whether people of color are theologically correct enough based on their emphasis on justice issues. Often times, people of color are viewed with greater scrutiny simply because of their skin tone. We need to be concerned with the ways our political commitments co-opt our faith commitments. The fact that people equate Christians with a particular political party is problematic, especially if we consider how both parties are deeply flawed. We need to redefine our understanding of organizational fit. This means we need to reconsider what it means to be equipped. For example, is someone equipped for the pastorate if they have racist tendencies or beliefs? And who gets to decide if they do, white people or the people they disparage?

Isn’t it remarkable that the solution is always More Magic People of Color no matter whether the problem concerns football coaches, technology companies, or Christianity? I wonder what the common factor might possibly be?

SJWs Always Double Down addresses what is happening here. This is exhortation by an infiltrator, appealing to an extremely amenable authority.

Superconvergence

How converged does a commenting service have to be to refuse service to modestly controversial site anyway?

On Monday evening, I received an email from tos@disqus.com stating that they are suspending all Disqus services to Return Of Kings starting on October 20, 2017. Here is the full email:

Hi there,

We wanted to reach out to inform you that your site has been found to be in conflict with the terms of use of Disqus. Because of this, Disqus is unable to offer your site continued discussion services past the end of this week.

I replied asking what specific terms were violated but have not yet received a response. I’m guessing we were terminated because of their vague “hate speech” clause, which really means “speech our liberal employees disagree with.”

The amazing thing here is that without some disagreement, people have literally nothing to discuss. Disqus isn’t just elevating social justice above its primary purpose, it is actually eliminating its primary purpose for existing in the first place.

Smart people are crazy

In fairness, it may be that it is only having to be around stupid people that makes us that way:

The stereotype of a tortured genius may have a basis in reality after a new study found that people with higher IQs are more at risk of developing mental illness.

A team of US researchers surveyed 3,715 members of American Mensa with an IQ higher than 130. An “average IQ score” or “normal IQ score” can be defined as a score between 85 and 115.

The team asked the Mensa members to report whether they had been diagnoses with mental illnesses, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

They were also asked to report mood and anxiety disorders, or whether the suspected they suffered from any mental illnesses that had yet to be diagnosed, as well as physiological diseases, like food allergies and asthma. After comparing this with the statistical national average for each illness they found that those in the Mensa community had considerably higher rates of varying disorders.

In my experience, the more highly intelligent people are, the more unstable they tend to be, particularly if they are women. The problem, I suspect, is that smart people are more able to rationalize their aberrant behaviors and justify their departures from observable reality, thereby leading to a vicious circle where their disorders are reinforced.

I find narcissists of the non-malignant variety to be some of the most stable smart people I know, presumably because their lack of interest in other people tends to render their social interactions less confusing and angst-inducing. The more sensitive and insecure an intelligent person is, the more likely that he is going to find himself regularly buffeted by social pressures that he simply cannot understand.

Everyone knew

Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg admits that everyone in Hollywood knew about Harvey Weinstein:

Let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:

Everybody-fucking-knew.

Not that he was raping.
No, that we never heard.
But we were aware of a certain pattern of overly-aggressive behavior that was rather dreadful.
We knew about the man’s hunger; his fervor; his appetite.
There was nothing secret about this voracious rapacity; like a gluttonous ogre out of the Brothers Grimm.
All couched in vague promises of potential movie roles.
(and, it should be noted: there were many who actually succumbed to his bulky charms. Willingly. Which surely must have only impelled him to cast his fetid net even wider).

But like I said: everybody-fucking-knew.

And to me, if Harvey’s behavior is the most reprehensible thing one can imagine, a not-so-distant second is the current flood of sanctimonious denial and condemnation that now crashes upon these shores of rectitude in gloppy tides of bullshit righteousness.

Because everybody-fucking-knew.

And do you know how I am sure this is true?
Because I was there.
And I saw you.
And I talked about it with you.
You, the big producers; you, the big directors; you, the big agents; you, the big financiers.
And you, the big rival studio chiefs; you, the big actors; you, the big actresses; you, the big models.
You, the big journalists; you, the big screenwriters; you, the big rock stars; you, the big restaurateurs; you, the big politicians.

I saw you.
All of you.
God help me, I was there with you.

There is one problem with condemning the Scott Rosenberg’s of the world. If the women didn’t speak up, and if so many of them were willing to make that trade, why was anyone else obligated to do so? It’s not as if Harvey Weinstein had any less power over the careers of the Rosenbergs of the world.

Liberalism: the dying faith

Pat Buchanan rightly observes that Europe is awakening to fact that liberalism is a societally suicidal lie:

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic — and the model for mankind’s future.

Equality, diversity, democracy — this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

To traditionalist Europeans, our heaven looks like their hell.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer… Europe is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from “diversity,” the multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual future that, say U.S. elites, is America’s preordained mission to bring about for all mankind.

This is the dilemma facing conservatives now. For sixty years, their tango with liberals was a simple matter of saying “yes, but not so fast”. Now, like the liberals, they are being forced to confront the ugly reality that the end game of their ideology is the end of their society and their civilization. Not only has conservatism conserved nothing, it has aided and abetted the destruction of that which it purported to be defending.