Who Is More Privileged: Trump, Stephens, or Zakaria?

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Fareed Zakaria was the son of the number 2 person behind only Indira Gandhi in the ruling Congress Party of India. A friend who worked with Fareed recalls him as a Princeling of Privilege in personal behavior. But, Zakaria is officially Asian in the U.S., so the concept of privilege can’t possibly apply to him.

* Fareed Zakaria has repeatedly gotten away with plagiarism. Zakaria and Brett Stevens were also dead wrong about Iraq, but their careers were never impacted. Some would say that’s privilege.

* “It’s basically increasingly a vision of the privileges of a white ethnic bloc who he is speaking to,” Stephens said of the Trump campaign. “If the Republican party essentially becomes the white party, it is going to be the death of it.”

Sean Hannity Bludgeons Wall Street Journal Editor Bret Stephens As ‘Arrogant Elitist’

Sean Hannity is ripping into Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens.

Iraq War artifact Stephens, who staunchly defends George W. Bush and Bill Kristol’s nation-building experiment, is a pillar of the exiled Republican Establishment.

“Fox News’ dumbest anchor had a message for y’all,” Stephens tweeted, slamming Hannity for saying he was “sick and tired” of Republicans for going on and on about how upset they are over Donald Trump’s feud with Saudi-connected DNC speaker Khizr Khan.

Hannity is punching back at Stephens and it’s one of his most scathing comebacks since he went after Alec Baldwin’s divorce on radio many years ago. But Hannity’s punches at Stephens are much more significant, because they represent something very real that is happening in the Republican Party right now.

“He is a typical arrogant elitist who is incapable of understanding the plight of millions upon millions of Americans in poverty, on food stamps and out of the labor force,” Hannity told Breitbart News, referring to Stephens.

“He is incapable of recognizing the danger of record debt and deficits and unfunded liabilities. He is incapable of recognizing the danger of open borders and refugees that are not properly vetted,” Hannity continued.

With Roger Ailes out at Fox News, and Megyn Kelly and the Murdoch kids still in, the situation over there kind of resembles the Battle of Gallipoli.

Hannity’s career transcended that of his onetime sparring partner Alan Colmes when he scored the 9 pm hour by himself in 2009. He was one of Ailes’ favorite dependable anchors. As Fox News went hard in the #NeverTrump direction this election cycle, Hannity kept the pro-Trump audience from completely abandoning Fox in primetime.

Now, Hannity is defining his place in the new Republican Party, where the Drudge Report, Breitbart News, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh were placed on Conservative Movement blacklists during the darkest days of the Great Trump-Cruz War.

Since Cleveland, where Trump supporters overthrew the corrupting forces of globalist special interests, the #NeverTrump operatives have been in retreat. Trump humiliated Cruz in Cleveland, prompting black merchants on Cleveland’s Fourth Avenue to start hawking “Ted Cruz Sucks…Hillary Swallows” T-shirts.

The new Republican style has been called “populism through vulgarity.” Maybe that’s fitting in some cases, like the term “cucking,” which is now used casually and publicly by the likes of Edward Snowden over in Russia. But the vulgarity, while fun, masks the deeper importance of this stage of the GOP Civil War.

Some like Bill Kristol are hoping for a Hillary win so that those globalist special interests can come back and re-corrupt the party after November. Bill, son of Irving, was caught leaning up against a wall at the Cleveland Ritz-Carlton pretending to talk on his cell phone so he could spy on Matthew Boyle, Patrick Howley, and Milo Yiannopoulos at our convention.

Hannity is making it known that he stands with the Populist Nationalist Champions of the New and Better Republican Party Borne in Cleveland That Will Reign Supreme For Years To Come.

“He is incapable of understanding the danger of electing a president who refuses to say the words ‘radical Islam,’ who supports the Iranian deal that gives the number one state sponsor of terrorism $150 billion and the right to move forward with its nuclear program,” Hannity pressed on in conversation with Breitbart News, referring to Stephens.

“He is an elitist who refuses to recognize that weak, spineless, feckless, visionless Republicans who abandoned every promise they ever made, and every principle they ever espoused, helped facilitate the entire Obama agenda,” Hannity stated for the record.

“He deserves Hillary’s Supreme Court selections. He deserves the unvetted refugees living next door to him. He deserves the economy in decline that will continue, and he deserves the consequences of a foreign policy predicated on appeasement.”

* I have it on reasonably good authority that Stephens was recently heard to boast of an income of $800,ooo/year. That’s not elite, no!

I would bet that no more–and possibly even less–than $200,000 of that comes from the Journal. The rest, according to Stephens’ boast, is steered to him by various neocon financiers in the form of speaking engagements and such.

Stephens’ claim that he wishes he had been born into Trump’s wealth is nonsense. To maintain that wealth and build it up, as Trump did, he would have had to learn a real business and work very hard. Instead, for $800K, he writes a once/week column and gives speeches. I’d rather have that than get rich working hard in real estate. And so would Stephens.

* Stephens has engaged in a twitter conflict with Sean Hannity for the last week. And it’s kind of typical of the split between goodwhites and badwhites; a rich Manhattan prep school elitist looking down his nose at a middle class Irish kid from Long Island.

* Stephens said he wished he was born into a rich family entrenched in New York real estate and the privileges that comes along with that. Instead, he said, he “started at the bottom” and any achievements he has made were based on merit.

* Anyone who has been in a large successful business knows this is a specious claim. I’m sure many readers know of someone who inherited money and/or a successful business, and promptly lost it all. If Walt Disney had handed the keys to Disney to his nephew Roy, Disney Enterprises would be gone by now.

I’m just as certain that readers know of someone who “started from nothing,” who made their fortune while functioning as a sociopath.

Simply because you made your fortune from nothing doesn’t imply you’re a good or stable person. Often that person will have a very narrow field of talents related to his business. Also, simply because you inherit money doesn’t follow that maintaining, much less growing that fortune isn’t a major existential challenge for the inheritor in itself.

Particularly, any reader here with significant real estate holdings knows that if you don’t have your act together, you can lose that real estate very quickly. Simply maintaining and managing a large holding in real estate would be an ass-kicker for most people.

Most people could not function as the leader of the Trump organization, if you handed it to them. They would be under their desks in a fetal position in a week.

So, let’s put this aspect of the “privilege” argument away for good. It’s just stupid, and the life of that argument depends on the ignorance of the audience.

* When was The Republican Party ever not the White party? Mitt Romney did not win a single Black vote in cities like Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Never Trumpers act like the GOP used to be as racially diverse as that 1970s “I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke” commercial.

* Far from the death of the Republican party, a move to garner 70% + of the white vote spells victory after victory. Once the demographics can be stabilized and enhanced, there will be no need for a white party and we can get back to a situation where ideology or issues rather than identity rules the ballot box.

By privilege, Stephens means identity. I wish whites had the privilege of secure borders and freedom from race replacement, taken for granted by the vast majority of non-white countries.

* Didn’t Bret Stephens attend an exclusive international school for rich expat kids in Mexico City?

Also, doesn’t he claim membership in an exclusive clan that was gifted a very valuable piece of real estate on the eastern Mediterranean–on the backs of working Americans and flyover country White soldiers?

You really can’t make this stuff up. The chutzpah…

* “The white party.” Is that anything like the Goy party?

* Stephens is listed with the tony Harry Walker Agency.

* When Stephens was editor of The Jerusalem Post, I wonder if he wrote editorials against Jewish privilege?

Actually, I don’t wonder. I know he didn’t.

* Stephens’ Wikipedia page says that “he was raised in Mexico City, where his father worked.” That, together with the fact that Stephens’ column (“Global View”) is so regularly focused on the national security of Israel, helps fill out the picture. Being raised among globetrotting elite in Mexico City, educated among the elite in New England, at U of C, at LSE, and working at Jerusalem Post and WSJ, all suggest a man who may be elite, but is certainly global in focus.

Stephens misleadingly implies that he came up hard, conveniently ducking the question of his real ‘global view’. He also changes the focus by implicitly accusing Trump supporters of class warfare and envy of Stephens’ hard-earned success.

Nonsense. Only Democrats care how much Bret Stephens makes; Trump voters are concerned with his vision for American citizens and government as expressed in his column and TV appearances, and the underlying reasons for that vision.

* I attended UofC at around the same time as Stephens and remember that he did a senior paper with historian Charles Gray, husband of UofC president Hanna Holborn Gray (I remember that because I was waiting in a hallway while Gray and Stephens were talking). Charles Gray, as far as I remember, probably had trouble getting five students to attend his courses, so he was not a natural choice of advisor. It occurred to me later that Hanna Gray had lots of connections (according to Wikipedia, she has been on the board of Harvard, Yale, the Smithsonian Institution, JP Morgan Chase, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Concord Coalition, the Mayo Clinic, and the Brookings Institution) and therefore was probably the most valuable contact he could have made in college. He was cultivating important connections from the beginning.

* How far into the elite bubble does one have to be to think one can be the son of a chemical company executive, and attend Middlesex School, and think it passes a laugh test to say that one isn’t an elite and has “started at the bottom”?

These people would die of shock if some force were to impose on them a single minute of genuine self awareness.

* I don’t necessarily begrudge wealthy and powerful people their wealth and power but I do get tired of them constantly publishing books and giving speeches about how they started from the bottom and worked hard(er than the rest of us) and deserve every penny of it. It reeks of insecurity when you aren’t content with your nice life but have to justify it to everyone.

At a lower level, I’ve noticed a Lake Woebegone effect among Silents/Boomers where almost all of them will claim that they grew up poor, but when you press them on what “poor” actually means, it turns out to be something like living on a tobacco farm with married parents, not being the bastard of a crack addicted single mother who can’t even hold down a job at the Taco Bell.

* Thing is, white trash–ie., lower-class whites if you want to be noninsulting–still has the right to representation in a democracy, and to having their interests represented in any case.

You have a situation where the left has completely turned its back on a group of poor people. And, well, what sort of left are they then?

* Giving speeches has become a very acceptable form of bribery.

It’s quite odd that no one seems to notice. Oh wait, it’s not that odd at all since anyone noticing would cut themselves off from the trough.

* They’re not so guilty as to invite anyone and everyone into their country. In Israel, there’s a limit to the stupidity. However, Jews are more than happy to give drinks to the drunk in the U.S. and Europe.

* Should white trash be allowed to vote?

Should any candidate be allowed to solicit their vote?

* But Stephen’s grandmother (or grandfather, I forget which) hung out with Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Why was I not surprised to read this?

* Considering that the first Trump to start piling up the cash was Frederick Trump the grandfather, it’s quite unusual for Donald to be much wealthier than his grandfather, much less his father. By the third generation, most dynasties have squandered their wealth unless the original cash generator was careful to tie it up inside trusts to prevent the capital from being spent.

Even with trusts, most descendants end up in philanthropist mode instead of wealth-generator mode, and trust payouts often end up supporting liberal political candidates like Hillary Clinton, or paying for the fat salaries of charity administrators who have to keep the priming the cash pump by hobnobbing, expensive dinners, and ego-massaging.

* The question is *WHY* is an explicitly White party bad? No one complains that say, Blacks are explicitly pro-Black, Hispanics pro-Hispanic, only, and that the Democratic Party is a “No White Men Allowed” party.

Heartiste noted that the Dems are Blacks pretty much, and the Republicans absent Trump are mostly weasely cucks like Paul Ryan who are not only anti-White but lacking any masculine presence. For better and worse, masculine White men like Ike, Reagan, LBJ, and Clinton are gone out of both parties.

IMHO the anti-White (male only, you don’t see it with anti-White women) attitude is deeply organic; and part and parcel of the elite class gender resentment, i.e. Upper Class White women deeply resent their male counterparts.

That’s why you see “White Privilege” stuff — it comes from Elite women those in Stephen’s life who bitterly resent the White lower classes and no doubt various men around them. The ugly thing of Affirmative Action is that it incentives Upper Class White women to defenestrate White men so they have a chance to move up.

* Any time you hear this word “privilege,” you should know that whoever is using it is appealing to the envy within human beings, ie the ugliest aspect of human nature, and they are therefore detestable slime. They get people all riled up, instead of inspiring them and uplifting them, they appeal to that little cretin inside them that says, “Why I don’t got what he got?” Grow the f*** up you little babies.

* Moribund Comedy Central has picked up a few skits by the infamous Sam Hyde, a decidedly un-PC/ unhinged comedian. He is the first HBD comedian.

Here is Sam Hyde’s stand-up in 2015 on the migrant crisis performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He ends on a funny Clock Boy bit.

* As a brown man, the only group I am allowed to make snarky comments about, insult and lampoon with no adverse consequences whatsoever is that of white men. I call that ‘brown privilege.’

* I support the man who won the primary for my party’s nomination – Donald Trump – regardless of what I think of him. Win or lose, I pledged to support the victor of the primary in the general election against the true political enemy, the Democrats. I am dismayed that many Republicans seem to be throwing a tantrum about Trump like little children who are miffed because their friend beat them at playing marbles or something. They are being petty, vindictive, and, worse, self-destructive.

* Reminds me of Gavin Newsome’s claim that he can relate to the peasantry because he too was raised by a single mother. He said this on the Adam Carolla show, but forgot to mention who his father was: Chief In-House Counsel for Getty Oil. These people are unbelievable.

* Fareed celebrates the death of “White Privileged” working class Americans.

Fareed passionately believes that the decline of working class Whites is inevitable and a result of their White Privilege. Furthermore, Fareed is certain that there is nothing that Trump can do to stop the decline. Nice message from our global overlords.

Why is this guy in our country again? Why is he featured on CNN? It certainly can’t be because of his looks. What is going on here?

One thing that Fareed is right about is that the decline of White Americans can only be compared to the demographic decline that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union. Interesting that the social collapse of Russia after the passing of the USSR was overseen by the Council of Foreign Relations, and of course, Fareed is a CFR poster boy. It’s almost as if there is plan to these sorts of things.

Here is Putin discussing Trump with Fareed and putting the CFR lackey in his place.

Who will be America’s Putin?

* Last official count put Whites as 62% of the U.S. population. As Steve has mentioned, that number includes Middle Easterners and Indian/Pakis. Moreover, that number doesn’t take into account the vast number of illegal aliens that have slipped through the official cracks. We are lucky to be 55% of the U.S.A. God help us.

* Greg Cochran: I remember Bret Stephens and some friends explaining that “real Americans” were those that believed in the right propositions, and might come from anywhere – while if you had wrong thoughts, say not being enthusiastic about the Iraq War, coming from a family that had fought for this country for 200 years – in the Revolution, at Vicksburg, in Normandy, at Leyte Gulf – meant nothing, and less than nothing. Apparently he and his friends get to decide which propositions are currently mandatory.

I believe that he was mistaken, and would greatly enjoy having half an hour alone with him to to explain just why.

* CNN Host Slams America’s Greatest Olympian Ever For Not Being Black, Muslim Woman

Michael Phelps may be the greatest Olympian the world has ever known but for CNN host W. Kamau Bell, he is just a “tall, successful, rich white guy” who clearly didn’t “need the honor” of being chosen by his athlete peers as America’s flag-bearer. Instead, Bell exclaims, Ibtihaj Muhammad, a woman, an African-American and a Muslim to boot, should have been chosen because “right now America has enough tall, successful, rich white guys hogging the spotlight trying to make America great.”

* In Newspeak, “privilege” does not mean what it used to mean. “Privilege” is a negative label that you try to stick on your enemies, like racist. You would never claim privilege for yourself. Privilege is a hereditary status that your enemies receive at birth by virtue of being a white male. They can’t get rid of it unless they cut off their man parts or at least declare themselves openly gay. Goodwhites like Timmy Kaine, if they dedicate their life to the advancement of non-whites, may overcome privilege but will always remain suspect. Another way to overcome privilege is to compete for victim status – yes you were born in great wealth but you came from a broken home, are now a recovered drug addict, etc.

Non-white immigrants like Zakaria, even if they are born in great wealth and high status in their native society, are never privileged, just as they can never be racist, by definition. Likewise, women, even white women, are not privileged even if they are wives of Presidents who have been chauffeured from place to place for decades so that they never have to do anything dirty like drive a car. If a woman becomes a man, she is still transgendered and as an LGBT retains her non-privileged status.

Once you understand the new meaning and framework for “privilege”, answering questions about relative privilege become easy to analyze. In future America, any 4th grader will be able to tell you instantly, just as they can conjugate verbs in their native language without having received formal grammar instruction. Only clueless old people will be confused, just like you can never get videos to play on your smartphone.

This works exactly the same way as being from the “landlord class” worked in Maoist China. This is nothing new. The only new thing is that Maoism has come to America.

* Bret Stephens and his ilk just make me sick. Lecturing, hectoring, yap, yap, yap, but nothing but parasites on the body of the nation. The nation doesn’t need his type–he adds nothing. But he nonetheless lives high on the hog because this is a white built\run nation–well ordered, prosperous–while he scratches away at the nation’s fabric and makes is worse.

Furthermore his ideology–and i get that for him there a “what’s good for the Jews” component–makes no long run sense. What exactly is this “conservatism” that he’s upholding?

“Conservatism” is supposed to mean *conserving* something. That inherently means the culture, the ways of doing things, which inherently means the people. Sure, i’m for constitutional limited government. I want good roads and honest courts of law, but i’m *viscerally* hostile to the government sicking its nose into every aspect of my business. Much less having one *national* government doing it. Much less having a Protestant church lady from hell like harpy Hillary with state power to make me behave as she wants. (That’s some circle of hell.)

But those notions of republican “limited government” and “federalism” are Anglo-Saxon in derivation. That visceral feeling of being an independent free man and not looking at the state as a big patronage machine doling out gimme-dats is essentially a *white* thing. It doesn’t pop out of thin air, it comes from the white people who conquered and settled America. When Bret has finally consigned us evil white folks to being a minority in our nation, what’s the actual constituency for these “conservative” principles? Uh …

And that’s not even getting to the notion, that his new America with it’s rambunctious Muslim minority might not be as congenial a spot for old Bret–Bret’s children and grandchildren–as the old “racist”, white guys with pickups, America. But, of course, if it’s no longer so comfy and prosperous, Brett’s kin will just hop on to some other place to loot. It’s my descendants that will be stuck in a crappy Brazillified America.

* The entirety of Trump’s recent poor showing in the polls is due to his support dropping among whites, in particular white women.

Much is made of the changing ethnic demographics causing the country to lean left but the reality is the country started drifting left when women were given the right to vote. Come this November they look to finish the job.

* A friend of mine is very good friends with Hannity. They were best friends in High School (a Long Island Catholic seminary high school. Yes, Hannity went to a seminary.) After college Hannity was working in California, I believe, doing exactly what you describe, hanging dry-wall. He used to listen to these local talk-radio bull-shitters while working and said, “I can do that shit as well as they can…”. The rest, as is said, is history. He just went around sending letters knocking on doors, trying to reach programming managers at radio stations. I think he got his break at a station in Atlanta.

* Middlesex is actually a very interesting school: founded only in 1901, its origins are secular, at a time when to proclaim oneself such was a very definite statement of intent. From the beginning it attracted the sons of the best Wasp families, but only those who were lukewarm about religion. (Amusingly the Wasp to end all Wasps, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr, graduated from Middlesex, but only after having first attended St Albans in Washington DC, at the time perhaps the most firmly Episcopalian boarding school of them all).
It also attracted Jews, at a time when only a vanishingly small number of Jews were to be found at any of the other great boarding schools. The building housing its books is the Warburg Library, named for its donor, alumnus Edward Warburg of the great merchant banking family
This last point may have something to do with Stevens’ family choosing it for their little brat of a son.
Am I the only one to notice how very un-semitic Steven’s features are? I remain convinced that a lot of these “Jews” aren’t really, or at least not exclusively.
Jewishness is the real privilege with clout these days: is it surprising that the occasional sly non-Jew would try to take advantage of that?

* Brett’s kin will just hop on to some other place to loot

If this is the plan of the evil Joos (and it ain’t) then it’s a lousy one. Calling leaving the only country you have ever known (and probably leaving all your property and some of your blood behind) a “hop” is like calling the American Civil War the “Recent Unpleasantness”. American Jews are first and foremost Americans and have no desire to live anywhere else (INCLUDING Israel) because if they did, they would already be living there. Would some small lucky % of American Jews land on their feet? Sure, just like Judah Benjamin became an English barrister after his side lost the Civil War, but most would pay a high price. Ask any of the Syrian refugees what’s it’s like to “hop” to a new country where your degree is no good and you don’t speak the language, etc.

* The newest pro-open borders Never Trump shill is a Mormon from Utah named Evan McMullin.

He is running for POTUS even though it is already too late for him to get on the ballot in most states.

The Never Trump Movement among Republicans are disproportionately made up of Mormons.

It makes sense that most Mormons are pro-open borders, because their religion is small and they are trying to grow their religuous base.

Mormons are huge on trying to convert people to their religion and they are known for knocking on people’s doors just like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

WASP Mormons see Asians and Latinos as natural potential future Mormons. They see these people as being open to accepting Joseph Smith into their hearts.

Joseph Smith was a scam artist just like L. Ron Hubbard.

* …for some Jews their visceral impulses dominate serious logical thinking about their actual long term interests. No outgroup has *ever* been treated better than the Jews by American Protestants. Yet there are Jews who can find just amazing stuff to whine about–for example that Protestants didn’t *immediately* turn over the universities that they had built to the Jews, but slapped on a quota to keep them as Protestant institutions. The horror! Entirely normal and reasonable and Jews whine about it. (They could of course have built their own damn universities like the Catholics, but they’d rather bitch and moan about how unfair whitey is.) But i freely admit, i don’t have deep insight into the psychology of Jews here.

As a gentile i’m much more tuned in to the motivations behind the pathology of my fellow gentiles. For instance, from being scoutmaster of my son’s troop, i know a couple white Christian families raising black kids–when they could have spent the time\money raising more of their own. Biologically … it’s nuts! But i understand their motivations. They are sincere Christians, doing their Christian duty. The motivation is an over-the-top Christian universalism. But Jews are not, let’s admit, adopting a bunch of black kids or out running missions in Africa. Jews are *not* actual universalists. Their identity is tribal–their religion a tribal religion. Jewish immigration love does not come from some impulse that we’re all one big happy family … because they explicitly reject that notion. Rather it seems to come more from hostility to majority white gentile populations preserving themselves and a desire to have more balkanized environment to operate in.

But i leave parsing through precise Jewish psychological motivations in pushing destructive–long run self-destruction–immigration policies to Jews. Jack, an *honest* thorough grappling with this from a smart Jewish guy like yourself would be actually interesting.

* I don’t know anything really about this Stephens guy but since he apparently comes from an upper middle class background (but likes to deny this), his class interests would seem to lead him into the milquetoast political discourse he prefers.

He might like the intellectual stimulation of political debate and the status of being paid to write about it on the WSJ op-ed page, but does he really have any incentive to go all in and argue the hardball side of politics on the national stage like Ann Coulter or Pat Buchanan?

No matter how politics develops in the US over the next few decades, his family line is probably rather securely ensconced in the upper middle for at least two or three generations into the future.

Why would he choose to do the tightrope dance people like Coulter and Buchanan have to do 24/7 for flouting the PC rules and trying to describe the cut-throat tribal nature of politics that lurks just below the surface? Better to keep his easy friendly relations he no doubt has with various members of various groups who might be upset by any straying from PC politics and as for his deeper friendships which I’m sure overwhelmingly are with those who share his upper middle background, it isn’t like they’re going to give him any grief for keeping his politics well within the bland ranges.

* The dominant demographic in the Diaspora ,i.e. secular Ashkenazi New Class types, is just as Leftist in Israel.

You mean they welcome mass non-jewish immigration and are sanguine about–nay actively work toward–disintegrating Israel’s jewish majority?

* My impression from Yglesias’s twitter feed is that he’s pretty based these days, but, sensibly enough, isn’t going to risk his patriarchal obligations to make that explicit.

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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