Tag: media

Scott Adams endorses Donald Trump

Scott Adams demonstrates his courage and his willingness to put his life on the line for America in endorsing Donald Trump for President:

As most of you know, I had been endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, for my personal safety, because I live in California. It isn’t safe to be a Trump supporter where I live. And it’s bad for business too. But recently I switched my endorsement to Trump, and I owe you an explanation. So here it goes.

1. Things I Don’t Know: There are many things I don’t know. For example, I don’t know the best way to defeat ISIS. Neither do you. I don’t know the best way to negotiate trade policies. Neither do you. I don’t know the best tax policy to lift all boats. Neither do you. My opinion on abortion is that men should follow the lead of women on that topic because doing so produces the most credible laws. So on most political topics, I don’t know enough to make a decision. Neither do you, but you probably think you do.

Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed raising estate taxes. I understand that issue and I view it as robbery by government.

I’ll say more about that, plus some other issues I do understand, below.

2. Confiscation of Property: Clinton proposed a new top Estate Tax of 65% on people with net worth over $500 million. Her website goes to great length to obscure the actual policy details, including the fact that taxes would increase on lower value estates as well. See the total lack of transparency here, where the text simply refers to going back to 2009 rates. It is clear that the intent of the page is to mislead, not inform.

So don’t fall for the claim that Clinton has plenty of policy details on her website. She does, but it is organized to mislead, not to inform. That’s far worse than having no details.

The bottom line is that under Clinton’s plan, estate taxes would be higher for anyone with estates over $5 million(ish). I call this a confiscation tax because income taxes have already been paid on this money. In my case, a dollar I earn today will be taxed at about 50% by various government entities, collectively. With Clinton’s plan, my remaining 50 cents will be taxed again at 50% when I die. So the government would take 75% of my earnings from now on.

Yes, I can do clever things with trusts to avoid estate taxes. But that is just welfare for lawyers. If the impact of the estate tax is nothing but higher fees for my attorney, and hassle for me, that isn’t good news either.

You can argue whether an estate tax is fair or unfair, but fairness is an argument for idiots and children. Fairness isn’t an objective quality of the universe. I oppose the estate tax because I was born to modest means and worked 7-days a week for most of my life to be in my current position. (I’m working today, Sunday, as per usual.) And I don’t want to give 75% of my earnings to the government. (Would you?)

3. Party or Wake: It seems to me that Trump supporters are planning for the world’s biggest party on election night whereas Clinton supporters seem to be preparing for a funeral. I want to be invited to the event that doesn’t involve crying and moving to Canada. (This issue isn’t my biggest reason.)

4. Clinton’s Health: To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the now-famous “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead” video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn’t be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side.

5. Pacing and Leading: Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do. Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading. Trump “paces” the public – meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. He does that with his extreme responses on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc. Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to “lead,” which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency. That’s how I see him.

So brave. Thank you for this, Scott. Scott Adams is a true American hero.

What you’re missing

If you’re not on Gab.

The fundamental uselessness of genocide is best exemplified by the fact that the Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians and somehow missed BOTH the Kardashians and the Sarkeesians.

Watch out, the DREAD ILK are arriving! Stickwick is here. I thought I could feel the average IQ jump. In other good news, #RunThemDown is trending here. #YouWontSeeThatOnTwitter

Just to be clear, I’m not banned from Twitter. I just don’t see any point in providing free content to a site that not only thought-polices that content, but blocks access to my primary content. And perhaps more importantly, the guys behind Gab are smart, friendly people who aren’t SJWs.

And then, there is this:

@Spacebunny
It’s 2016 and literally everything is offensive. So what is the most offensive costume you can come up with for this Halloween?

@voxday
Milo in blackface carrying a drowned migrant child.

We’re the George and Gracie of Gab, with just a twist of artistic cruelty.

Mailvox: the Alt-Right’s big tent

A reader produces a graphic meant to illustrate the full spectrum of the broader Alt-Right. Agree with it or not, I think it is a good first start on beginning to meme the other aspects of the Alt-Right.

Your observations on the intrinsic branches, or roots, of the Alt-Right greatly helped clarify my own understanding of how the “big tent” ideology and its connected sub-identities would best interact each other. I agree with you that a forward-looking, symbiotic mutualism between the distinct Alt-White and Alt-West branches is desirable at this time. The Alt-White Scotsmen busy administering purity tests, “that person is no true Alt-Right…” have obviously missed point #12: The Alt-Right doesn’t care what you think of it. Any branch on the Alt-Right tree that doesn’t shut up and produce desirable fruit will be best ignored until it withers away.

I also concur that the implicit tension between the two current branches of the Alt-Right is actually beneficial. There should be healthy, competitive tendency for each Alt-branch to seek out the most effective tactics for its immediate survival and subsequent growth. Attempts to impose one group’s identity & tactics onto the other, or merge the two would be as effective as giving a marathon runner two right shoes and then tying his legs together.

In reading through the vigorous chiseling of the comments in the “ALTRIGHT: 16 POINTS”, I attempted to make an initial visual depiction of what I could grasp. At that time, I was primarily focused on symbolically distilling out some of the identity politics/tactics of the Alt-Right:

– Opposes the Left
– Opposes the ideas of Equality, Diversity, Tolerance, Progress, Control
– Fights on the identity/culture level
– Accepts any that are willing to fight who subscribe to some/all of its tenets
– Maintains the higher ground (what makes life better?)
– Recognizes the uphill fight requires more energy

It does have flaws, which I can recognize: seems to imply/advocate defensive or reactive tactics, much too wordy, doesn’t delineate between the Alt-branches, etc. Praise kek that it did, indeed, lead to a second, more successful attempt which is in more alignment with the clear, tactical understanding of the Alt-Right:

I. Alt-Right is forward-looking and not defensive.
II. Alt-White and Alt-West are independent and distinct branches.
III. Their success, either individually or together, results in success of the Alt-Right.
IV. Other Alt-branches can be added, as long as they share enough of the same philosophy and direction.
V. Alt-Lite can be considered allies, as long as they are not interfering with the two primary branches.
VI. Fighting between branches or internally within a branch is not constructive.
VII. Each branch can be arranged however they see fit (or add their own sub-branches, e.g. Alt-White:US and Alt-West:German).
VIII. Stronger individual branches and a broad collection of branches is ultimately beneficial to the Alt-Right
IX. No branch is more important than the others nor leads the other branches
X. The head of the Alt-Right is Pepe

This iconography does raise the question of “what other viable Alt-branches are there?” for the Alt-Right. I would not be surprised to see Alt-Masculinity be a potential ally given the success and philosophical direction of Roosh.

I would propose rather than “Alt-Lite groups”, the top six phalanxes represent intellectual strains, from Stormfront to NPI and the Dread Ilk. Or perhaps it would be more effective if six “leaders” were named, beginning with Richard Spencer, and for the lulz, Donald Trump. I leave it to the commenters to hash out which six individuals merit being named, but Jared Taylor and RamZPaul are two obvious candidates. Milo, not so much.

I also think, that for the purposes of Twitter meming, it would be best to have Alt-White on top, Alt-West in the middle, and Alt-Lite on the bottom, leaving out the word “Branch”, which is implied by the three separate groups. No meme should ever have a “fill-in-the blank” aspect to it.

A requested correction

Robert Evans of Cracked gets it all wrong.

One prominent figure in the alt-right is Vox Day. Day doesn’t directly threaten people, but he does regularly advocate for his readers to harass folks for him. Here’s how he advised his readers to treat women like Jessica Valenti, a writer for The Guardian whom he happens to dislike:


Open up your hate and let it pour over them. Don’t think for even one nanosecond that they don’t deserve it every bit of the criticism, of the contempt, of the disdainful dismissal that overwhelms them. They are trying to destroy Western civilization. They are trying to destroy marriage and civil society. They are advocates of child murder. They are advocates of a philosophy that makes National Socialism look merciful and Communism practical and Fascism coherent by comparison. Do not hold back. Speak back twice as hard. Speak back until they fall silent.

First, he left out the previous paragraph, which said:

What they call “harassment” and “abuse” is seldom anything more than free speech answering free speech. They have a right to speak their piece, and we have a right to speak right back. We have a right to speak back with all of the contempt, disdain, and loathing that we feel for their insane and societally suicidal ideas.

Second, and more disturbingly, he unwittingly denigrated the special relationship I have with my most loyal readers. I’m sure you will understand why I emailed him and requested a correction, as follows.

Dear Mr. Evans,


I would like to request a correction to your article of September 20, entitled “5 Things You Learn Being Attacked By The Alt-Right”. I do not direct my readers to harass anyone. While my Vile Faceless Minions have been known to flay my enemies, devour their bodies, and present me with their skulls to use as wine goblets, I can assure you they do so without direction and solely out of love for their Dark Lord.


With regards,


Vox Day
Supreme Dark Lord
Evil Legion of Evil

Should any of the VFM, or the Dread Ilk wish to correct Mr. Evans with regards to this unfortunate misunderstanding of our relationship, I am reliably informed he can be reached at revanswriter@gmail.com.

Twitter suspends Instapundit

If you go to the @instapundit account, this is what you see:

Account suspended
This account has been suspended. Learn more about why Twitter suspends accounts, or return to your timeline.

This is getting crazy. Twitter is blocking access to my blog, banning Milo, suspending Instapundit… it appears the thought police at Twitter are openly declaring war on the social media Right.

UPDATE: This was Twitter’s excuse:

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds responds:

Sorry, blocking the interstate is dangerous, and trapping people in their cars is a threat. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when we’ve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesn’t like me, I’m happy to stop providing them with free content.

Was just on Hugh Hewitt talking about this. Since Twitter won’t let me respond to — or even see — my critics, let me expand here.

I’ve always been a supporter of free speech and peaceful protest. I fully support people protesting police actions, and I’ve been writing in support of greater accountability for police for years.

But riots aren’t peaceful protest. And blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.

“Run them down” perhaps didn’t capture this fully, but it’s Twitter, where character limits stand in the way of nuance.

Meanwhile, regarding Twitter: I don’t even know that this is why I was suspended, as I’ve heard nothing from Twitter at all. They tell users and investors that they don’t censor, but they seem awfully quick to suspend people on one side of the debate and, as people over at Twitchy note, awfully tolerant of outright threats on the other.

Twitter can do without me, as I can certainly do without Twitter.

UPDATE: Apparently Twitter has reconsidered and unsuspended Glenn. For now.

Meanwhile, GabTechNews warns that YouTube has gone the Reddit route, almost precisely as spelled out by QuQu of GGRevolt.

Grave news: Youtube has gone the Reddit moderation path.
Volunteer-staffed mass flagging, comment removal, all that.
The internet is becoming a very coddled place.
They call it YouTube Heroes.



I think, at this point, we are going to have to assume that it is only a matter of time before Blogger is similarly converged and prepare accordingly. I’ve always had several backups running, of course, so I doubt much of an interruption will be necessary, but if Blogger goes the way of Goodreads, Wikipedia, Facebook, and now Twitter and YouTube, check in at either Gab or Castalia House to find the new location.

Milo crushes it in Houston

“This room is a vision of what America should look like in 20 years.”

What concerned members of the Alt-White branch of the Alt-Right really need to keep in mind is that attempting to criticize or control Milo is like trying to criticize or control a Category V Hurricane. It is not even wrong, or misguided, it is simply a category error. One cannot leash a force of nature.

Richard Spencer is correct to say that Milo is Alt-Lite, not Alt-Right. But that’s just fine. And keep in mind that the whole force of the mainstream media’s hatred only made him stronger, so what do you think adding your weight to the collective disapproval of him is going to accomplish. Milo listens to no one but his friends and allies. If you wish to have any influence on him at all, you had better learn to appreciate him and bring something to the table besides criticism and disapproval.

Entryism is always a legitimate concern. But the only way the Alt-Right will become irrelevant is if it succumbs to the tendency of its Alt-White spergs to purity-spiral into their own navels, in which case it will be entirely replaced by the Alt-Lite. However, I think this is unlikely because the Alt-West branch is considerably less prone to purity spirals and welcomes the training grounds offered by the Alt-Lite.

However, I am done trying to talk sense into Alt-Whites who are paranoid about those they deem “e-celebs” and determined to make neither friends nor allies of anyone who is not 100 percent white and does not buy 100 percent into whatever it is that they believe. They are irrelevant and we need not concern ourselves with them. To the extent they trouble to shoot at the Left instead of demonstrating their purity by aiming at us, they are useful, and that is sufficient reason to ignore their occasional attacks directed our way.

Increasingly desperate

Now the media is “quoting” Donald Trump saying things he did not say. CNN actually inserted the word “racial”. Because, you see, if they just insinuate that he is RACIST one more time, that will salvage Hillary Clinton’s flagging campaign.

As Scott Adams observed earlier today, “Everyone knows it’s over. But not everyone can say it yet.”

But it’s over. Trump will be the next President of the USA and it’s not even going to be close.

An interview with Decius Mus

American Greatness interviews the author of the Flight 93 article:

AG: Michael Walsh, the PJMedia columnist and author of The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, notes that the most vociferous in the conservative NeverTrump camp tend to be those under 50. Do you think there is a generation gap among conservatives and, if so, what accounts for it?

It does seem that, the younger a (nominal) conservative is, the more likely he is to be against Trump. I think this is owing to two things, at least. This will sound like an old man being cranky, so take it with due allowances.

The first is that the young are not educated. Not that I got the greatest education, but it was pretty good. Still the people who taught me were far more educated than I am now, and the oldest ones were the best educated of the bunch. And my sense is that their teachers—most of whom I never met, or were even dead before I was born—were better educated than even they were. So in terms of education and knowledge, we’re on a downward trend and have been for a while.

What that means is that young conservatives learn conservatism as a checklist. They don’t really read books, except recent “conservative” bestsellers. They read excerpts from the Federalist at a summer fellowship and think that’s an education. Not to knock summer fellowships, but they are supposed to be gateways, not complete educations. And they don’t really read anything harder or deeper than the Federalist (not to knock it, either, but the Founders read Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, Montesquieu and more).

So on the basis of a rather flimsy education, they think they know what conservatism is, but it’s just a catechism for them, a hymnal. And they compare Trump’s policy positions to their hymnal and they see discrepancies and they just default to “Heretic! Not conservative!”

Which points to the second, which is that older conservative intellectuals tend to have better educations and read more widely so they have a broader perspective. They also have the benefit of hard-won experience and an understanding that compromise, course changes, tactical adjustments and so on are sometimes necessary. They’re less “idealistic” in the sense of uncompromisingly foolish. And—speculating here—they have seen America at its best, or when it was much better, so they know we’ve fallen and they don’t want to see us fall further.

The kidlets, as I call them, were raised on a diet of racism-this and equality-that and that’s-not-who-we-are, so they can’t process anything that seems to contradict the narrative. To them “conservatism” is the 1980 campaign’s economic platform spot-welded to Millennial identity politics and sexual libertarianism. Freedom!

He’s absolutely correct. As John Red Eagle and I have demonstrated, conservatism is something very different than most self-described conservatives believe. Conservatives don’t have an ideology and they don’t even understand what it is they are supposedly trying to conserve. It’s little more than an attitude and a pose; they can’t even reasonably describe themselves as Constitutionalists because they oppose the very purpose of the U.S. Constitution, not that they are aware of that.

Anyhow, it’s a really good interview. Read the whole thing.

Chickenhawks can do flips

As evidenced by (((Ben Shapiro)))

Five weeks later….

Jack Greer explains:

Jack Greer ‏@15Midichlorians
according to @benshapiro #NeverTrump means “never Primary Trump” but Ben likes the stability and presidential-ness of General Trump


Ah, so “never” for varying values of the term. Well, rats only swarm a winning ship. This is just an early sign of the coming Trumpslide. Let’s all welcome (((Ben))) aboard the #TrumpTrain!