Tag: politics

Police for the police state

Actually, it’s rather hard to blame them:

ATHENS, MAY 11 – More than half of all police officers in Greece voted for pro-Nazi party Chrysi Avgi’ (Golden Dawn) in the elections of May 6. This is the disconcerting result of an analysis carried out by the authoritative newspaper To Vima (TheTribune) in several constituencies in Athens, where 5,000 police officers in service in the Greek capital also cast their ballot. At some polling stations Chrysi Avgi’ obtained 19 to 24% of votes.

The tragic thing isn’t that the police are supporting Golden Dawn. The tragic thing is that the Golden Dawn is, despite the very legitimate concerns about its ideology, probably the most sensible political option in Greece. In a choice between Greek Neo-Nazis and the real thing in Berlin and Brussels, you really would have to prefer the former.

President to leave First Lady

That’s the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this belated announcement:

It was a long time coming: President Obama spoke out today in favor of marriage equality. “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” he said in an interview with ABC News.

Considering what an absolute vote loser this issue is, proven by the fact that 30 states have passed anti-homogamy laws and amendments now, one can only wonder exactly how personally important it is to Obama. It’s rather remarkable, as Obama appears to be making a stronger effort to throw the election than John McCain did, and it’s only May. At this rate, he’ll be wearing women’s clothing, eating dogs, and openly calling for human sacrifice by September.

Get the race card ready

It’s hard to argue with the Reverend Jesse Lee:

“I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote,” Peterson says. “We should’ve never turned this over to women. And these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil who agrees with them who’re gonna take us down this pathway of destruction. And this probably was the reason they didn’t allow women to vote when men were men. Because men in the good old days understood the nature of the woman,” he adds. “They were not afraid to deal with it. And they understood that, you let them take over, this is what would happen.”

I would just like to remind all of the women who are preparing to get their panties in a bunch over the outrageous notion that someone might hold their sex accountable for the way they have collectively voted for the last eighty years that it is objectively racist to claim that a black man is sexist.

Mailvox: evolutionary ideology

Anonymous Conservative writes of an amusing spin on the “science says conservatives are crazy” theme:

I’ve done a ton of research into the linkage between r/K Selection Theory in Evolutionary Ecology and political ideology. The short of it is
ideology looks like it’s just an intellectual expression of the underlying psychologies motivating r/K behaviors. Obviously, this likely speaks to the mechanism by which our ideologies evolved. That ideology and r/K behaviors are both related to the same DRD4 gene, and that the brain
structures which govern these behaviors is also the same also raises interesting questions about their evolutionary linkage.

This material is pure gold, if you’ve ever wondered why our species has this psychological divide within it. It even answers where exactly
Liberals came from, given their obvious reduced ability to function in what we often call “the state of nature” (ie a K-selected, competitive
state of nature – they would thrive in an r-selected stated of nature, where competitiveness is disfavored).

I’ve run this work by liberals, and it devastating to them, on a visceral level. They do not want to be the bunny-rabbit people, embodying a prey
species psychology within a highly K-selected, competitive species. I posted for a bit at TED, very benignly on this, just to test my
presentation in a hostile, more Liberal environment. I got the feedback and insight I needed (every liberal abandoned any thread this was posted
to), and then I left for six months. When I went back every one of my postings referencing this had been quietly deleted, despite the fact I
purposely was hyper-civil and cited everything I asserted. I don’t think they’ve ever done that to anyone else. Liberals are horrified by this
work, and the implications which naturally arise from it.

Now, I tend to regard all of this evo-psych as a ludicrous joke, especially since I am a confirmed evolutionary skeptic. Because there is so little scientific evidence in support of evolution by natural selection, I conclude it is unlikely to be the mechanism distinguishing the liberal Bunny People from the conservative Wolf People. And, of course, being a libertarian and rejecting both big government ideologies, I have neither a wolf nor a rabbit in that hunt. That being said, this is certainly a potentially useful rhetorical response to the faux-scientific rhetoric so often presented by liberals in a misguided attempt to somehow shame conservatives out of their psychologically inferior ideological perspective. (The very attempt betrays both the intrinsic intellectual flexibility of liberals as well as their inability to understand the other side.) And it certainly explains the way in which liberals are constantly looking to the government as a way to rein in their more successful competitors; because the Bunny People can’t do anything to control the Wolf People themselves, they need to appeal to the Hunter… never stopping to think that the Hunter is just as pleased to shoot bunnies as wolves… and may in fact prefer eating rabbit meat.

Anyhow, if you happen to find this sort of thing interesting, you can read a related paper on it.

The fictional memoir

Obama admits to writing fiction… how long will it be before he admits to NOT writing it?

One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama’s 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called ‘New York girlfriend.’ Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail. But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the ‘New York girlfriend’ was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago.

The only real question here is if, by “multiple”, he meant “imaginary”, or if by “girlfriends”, he actually meant “boyfriends”.

The long night of nationalism is over

How can the Greeks be blamed for turning to hard-core anti-immigrant parties? They have not been given any other choice besides national suicide:

Reeling from a vicious financial crisis that has cost them pensions and jobs, Greeks have been turning away in droves from the mainstream politicians they feel have let them down. Another political force is trying to tap the void, with blunt promises to “clean up” the country….

Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods – and vowing to kick out immigrants. Greece’s borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union’s illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million. Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.

Given that the mainstream parties have sold them out to foreign banks on the one hand and African immigrants on the other, then installed an non-democratic government, Golden Dawn is now the only option left for the Greek electorate. And if the ruling mainstream parties respond by attempting to violate Greek self-determination, they’ll be responsible for the violence that will inevitably ensue. What we’re seeing here is that democracy has always been a means to the mainstream rather than an end in itself. Make no mistake, that applies to the USA every bit as much as it does to the Greeks, the only difference is that since there is no American nation, Americans have tolerated a much larger immigrant invasion, in proportional terms, than the Greeks are willing to accept.

The death of a coroner

Andrew Breitbart’s death gets curiouser and curiouser with a suspiciously convenient death:

Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate. Michael Cormier, a respected forensic technician for the Los Angeles County Coroner died under suspicious circumstances at his North Hollywood home April 20, the same day Breitbart’s cause of death was finally made public. “There are mysterious circumstances surrounding his death,” said Elizabeth Espinosa, a news reporter for KTLA-TV. “We’re told detectives are looking into the possibility that he was poisoned by arsenic.”

Now, I actively subscribe to the conspiracy theory of history, but there is one giant question about this particular purported conspiracy that I find troubling. Was Andrew Breitbart really that important? I mean, in terms of pundits, opinion leaders, and intellectuals influencing global public opinion, I don’t think I’d have had him in my top 100. It strikes me rather like trying to change the course of the NFL season by assassinating the punter for the Cleveland Browns.

This seemed apt

I thought this comment at In Mala Fide was particularly on target in light of the ongoing discussion at Wängsty’s place:

Jonathan Haidt has shown that most liberals are simply people who only care about care/harm and fairness, while discounting loyalty, respect for authority, and purity/sanctity. For liberals there are no transcendent moral values, only utility and fairness. Furthermore, other scholars have found that most people tend to rely less on those latter three moral foundations when they are comfortable and safe. Which means that liberalism is the natural and spontaneous result of living in a safe and prosperous society. Haidt has also found that liberals can’t even understand loyalty, respect for authority and purity/sanctity. So they tend to think their political opponents are just being massive dicks.

The landmark performance of the National Front in France yesterday makes it very clear that conventional left-liberalism can’t survive economic hard times. As unemployment continues to rise and economic pressure intensifies, people will quite naturally become far less indulgent of the various absurdities that the Left continues to push on the populations of the West. It’s simply not credible to argue “immigration is good for the economy” when the youth unemployment rate is north of 50 percent and 50 percent of college graduates are either unemployed or working at jobs for which their degrees are absolutely unnecessary.

History has always been cyclical and it is not different this time. I pointed out that peak atheism corresponded pretty closely with the tech boom, and I think it is safe to conclude that we have likely passed the peak of social liberalism and multiculturalism as well. The problem, of course, is that while some left-liberals will return to sanity, many more will move to the hard left, or what the Communists call “the fascist right” and all of the violence that necessarily entails.

It’s worth noting that according to Haidt, the only arguments to which liberals are likely to convincing are utility-based. You’ll note that those are the sorts of arguments upon which I tend to heavily rely when engaging in discourse with them.