The Disco Triplets

Posted on July 25, 2018 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes:

The popular new documentary Three Identical Strangers recounts the famous story of the New York triplets who were secretly separated as infants due to (spoiler alert) an arrogant Freudian experiment intended to prove the power of nurture over nature. But as 19-year-olds, they found one another during a few joyous days in 1980 when each first learned that he had two identical brothers.

The likable lads, brawny, extroverted Syracuse U. frat-boy types dressed in Saturday Night Fever fashions, became a brief media sensation as their similarities in mannerism, despite not having known of one another’s existence until a few weeks earlier, and obvious delight in each other’s company charmed talk-show audiences.

…By the way, the film’s unsympathetic, almost conspiratorial portrayal of the politically well-connected Jewish Board is a rare depiction of Jewish institutional power that doesn’t try to find some way to blame any misbehavior on the gentiles.

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The Public Humiliation Diet

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Luke Ford

You can be a merry prankster or you can lead a life of public service, but you probably can’t do both, as Toby Young discovered.

You can release shock and awe humor on the public stage or you can work quietly for educational reform, but you probably can’t do both.

The baying mob can come for dissident thinkers at any time and you can’t escape. Like Toby, I’ve also done a great deal of volunteer work but I’ve always been prepared to step aside at any time and I’ve always chosen the least public types of jobs. I understand that everything scandalous I’ve said and done in the past can be thrown at people I associate with at any time and many such people won’t be able to handle that pressure and will distance themselves from me under pressure. I think I’m prepared. I maintain multiple income streams. I stay away from leadership positions in polite society. Toby made a mistake in sticking his head above the parapet given the life he’s led and how that can be spun in modern times.

Toby writes: “I had to give up all the charity work I was doing as a result of the scandal.”

Well, choosing work with children as your volunteer vocation was not a wise choice, Toby, after a lifetime writings for lads magazines. I enjoy Toby’s tweets and essays, but because of them, he was never going to be a lasting fit for kids charity work.

In Orthodox Judaism, if you are a bachelor, you stay away from children. You don’t hand out candy to them. You don’t hug them. You don’t take them camping. You don’t volunteer to be alone with them. This is commonsense. I’m not sure why Toby didn’t see this clearly before he embarked on his mission.

When you make one controversial choice in life, all sorts of other choices are forever eliminated.

When you are called a porn addict, it doesn’t help your situation to say, “No, I’m not.” You have to embrace the abuse to tame it. I’ve created a life where I can almost say anything I want because I don’t put much effort into contesting the horrible things people write about me online. I avoid feuds. By and large, I don’t complain and I don’t explain. I’m a man of few words. I keep a stiff upper lip. Queen and country and all that.

Toby writes: “That’s one of the worst aspects of seeing your name dragged through the mud—the fear that people you know and care about are going to believe some of the terrible things people are saying about you and the feeling that there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Recovery begins with accepting that there are many things you can’t control, and you need to surrender them to God, and some things that you can control, such as your own choices, and here you need God’s gift of courage. As an apparent non-believer, Toby’s at a disadvantage when life’s storms engulf him.

Like Toby, I am an attention-seeker. I accept that most of the attention I am likely to receive as a result of my addiction is going to be negative.

Steve Sailer has written a thousand more socially unacceptable things than Toby Young and yet almost nobody dares to go after him. I suspect that they fear being carved up by his superior intellect.

When Rabbi YY Rubenstein went after me in 2009 with all barrels, I responded in kind and after that, nobody tried to bully me again.

Toby writes: “The allegations continued. Two of the most hurtful ones against me were that I’m a misogynist and a homophobe.”

Nobody should bother to defend themselves against such imaginary sins.

Parts of Toby’s self-presentation in Quillette reminsd me of the 2005 movie The Weatherman, which was reviewed by Roger Ebert:

We think of tragic heroes outlined against the horizon, tall and doomed, the victims of their vision and fate, who fall from a great height. “The Weather Man” is about a tragic hero whose fall is from a low height. David Spritz (Nicolas Cage) is a Chicago weatherman whose marriage has failed, whose children are troubled, whose father is disappointed, and whose self-esteem lies in ruins. “All of the people I could be,” he tells us, “they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one — and that’s who I am. The weather man.”

There is nothing ignoble about being a weatherman, especially in Chicago, where we need them. David’s fatal flaw (all tragic heroes have one) is that he does not value his own work. Perhaps his broadcast viewers sense that, which is why they throw fast food at him from passing cars. They sense that he has embraced victimhood, and are tempted. To feel inadequate is Dave Spritz’s life sentence. His father Robert (Michael Caine) is a famous novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize, and who has always been disappointed in his son — disappointed, we sense, at every stage of Dave’s life, and by everything that he has done.

In Robert’s mind, it’s not that Dave is a weatherman, but that he is a bad one. He hasn’t done the homework. He’s not even a meteorologist. He gets the weather off the news service wires. “Do you know,” his father asks him, “that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing?” Dave has made life easy for himself, but Robert tells him, “Easy doesn’t enter into grown-up life.” Dave’s life does indeed seem easy. He does the weather for two hours a day with hardly any preparation and makes the occasional personal appearance; we see him in costume as Abraham Lincoln.

This is one of those Nicolas Cage performances where he seems consumed by worry, depression, and misdirected anger.

Toby writes: “Those claims were based on ill-judged comments I’d made on social media. Like James Gunn, I had deleted them—because they were asinine, ill-conceived attempts to be provocative, usually late at night after several glasses of wine…”

If you are doing things under the influence of alcohol or any other substance or process that routinely hurts your life, you might just have a problem that needs a solution greater than yourself. In this case, it seems alcohol might be a symptom of a deeper sickness. I have never said or done anything under the influence of alcohol that I regretted because I don’t drink and never have (due to my knowledge that I have an addictive personality).

Toby’s article would have been strengthened by the quoting in full of tweets and other writings he regretted.

He writes: “Being publicly shamed is a brutal, shocking experience that strips you of your dignity…”

I suspect that the more your social standing matters to you, the more brutalized you will feel. On the other hand, if your sense of self resides elsewhere than in the public sphere, you won’t feel as knocked for six.

Toby writes: “But the gap between the person she knew herself to be and the anti-feminist villain she was being portrayed as on social media became too much and on February 7 she took her own life.”

I don’t blame the braying mob for suicide. I hold suicides accountable for their choices.

Toby writes: “If so many people think I’m a bad person, maybe I really am.”

If your sense of self depends upon what others say about you, you are vulnerable. By contrast, if you have a largely internal sense of self, you are less vulnerable. For example, I know I have done good writing when I like to read it. Nothing anyone else can say will move me from that opinion.

Toby writes: “Surveying the burning wreck of my career, I was initially consumed by a terrible sense of injustice.”

These sorts of situations are wonderful opportunities to do a Fourth Step. Have you ever engaged in behavior that’s as bad or worse than those who tormenting you? All honest people will say yes. If so, and if you want compassion and understanding for yourself, then you have to be prepared to grant it to others, and when you do that, your anger disappears.

Resentment is a poison we swallow and hope it hurts others.

Toby writes: “Why were some people prepared to cast judgment based on such meager evidence? Why did certain words I’d used in the past count for so much more than my actions?”

Because that’s how most people operate. They find it too taxing to take everything into consideration before declaring a judgment. That’s reality. We only have so much time and attention and it is easier to hate others than than to understand them.

Unhappiness comes from denying reality. According to the Big Book, if we are disturbed, the problem is with us. There is some part of reality that we refuse to accept.

We never know when we might be tested by public humiliation. That’s why we have to stay in shape by rigorously tracking down all sources of our resentment and doing a regular Tenth Step (getting clear about reality and the role we have played in our own misfortune, and then forgiving others for being soul sick like ourselves).

Toby Young writes:

Which is why it pains me to see fellow conservatives mimicking the mobbing tactics of the identitarian Left, whether it’s going after Al Franken, Joy Reid, or James Gunn. We should not embrace the witch-hunter’s credo that says people are defined by their worst moments, that if you’ve said something crass or insensitive about a victim group, particularly if you’re ‘privileged’, then you suffer from a form of original sin so deeply imprinted on your soul that no amount of good works can expunge it. The outrage mob seem to be in thrall to a particularly unforgiving religious cult. Nietzsche said that the West’s tragedy in the 20th-century was that we would be afflicted by the same puritanical abhorrence of out-group behavior as our Christian forebears, but because we could no longer bring ourselves to believe in God there would be no way to save these malefactors—guilt without the possibility of redemption. Good theory, wrong century.

Will I get a second chance?

I’m still writing for the Spectator, which has never wavered in its support, doing some editing for Quillette (thanks Claire!), and working on a book about the neo-Marxist, postmodernist Left. None of this pays the mortgage, but it keeps me busy. My wife Caroline, a lawyer who gave up her job to care for our children, has re-entered the work force, so our household income should recover.

In March, I stepped down from the board of the charity I co-founded that looks after my schools—the fifth position I’ve had to give up since my public shaming. That was the biggest blow of all. I’ve written an international best-seller, starred in a one-man show in London’s West End, and co-produced a Hollywood movie. But getting involved in education and trying to give others the opportunities I’ve had is easily the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I hope that one day, when this period of liberal McCarthyism has passed, I’ll be allowed to resume that work.

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Movie Club Thursdays – Vertigo (7-24-18)

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Luke Ford

Fridays at 3pm, I discuss a new book each week with Kevin Michael Grace.

July 27 The Tragedy Of Great Power Politics by #JohnMearsheimer
August 3 Loitering With Intent by #MurielSpark
August 10 Hackers: Heroes Of The Computer Revolution by #StevenLevy

Monday through Thursday, I do a show with Kevin on my Youtube channel at 5pm. On Thursday’s show, we’ll do a movie club and discuss a different film each week. This Thursday we will discuss an Alfred Hitchcock classic.

Roger Ebert wrote:

“Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you what to do and what to say?”

This cry from a wounded heart comes at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” and by the time it comes we are completely in sympathy. A man has fallen in love with a woman who does not exist, and now he cries out harshly against the real woman who impersonated her. But there is so much more to it than that. The real woman has fallen in love with him. In tricking him, she tricked herself. And the man, by preferring his dream to the woman standing before him, has lost both.

Then there is another level, beneath all of the others. Alfred Hitchcock was known as the most controlling of directors, particularly when it came to women. The female characters in his films reflected the same qualities over and over again: They were blond. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerized the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps. Sooner or later, every Hitchcock woman was humiliated.

“Vertigo” (1958), which is one of the two or three best films Hitchcock ever made, is the most confessional, dealing directly with the themes that controlled his art. It is *about* how Hitchcock used, feared and tried to control women. He is represented by Scottie (James Stewart), a man with physical and mental weaknesses (back problems, fear of heights), who falls obsessively in love with the image of a woman–and not any woman, but the quintessential Hitchcock woman. When he cannot have her, he finds another woman and tries to mold her, dress her, train her, change her makeup and her hair, until she looks like the woman he desires. He cares nothing about the clay he is shaping; he will gladly sacrifice her on the altar of his dreams.

But of course the woman he is shaping and the woman he desires are the same person. Her name is Judy (Kim Novak), and she was hired to play the dream woman, “Madeleine,” as part of a murder plot that Scottie does not even begin to suspect. When he finds out he was tricked, his rage is uncontrollable. He screams out the words: “Did he train you? . . .” Each syllable is a knife in his heart, as he spells out that another man shaped the woman that Scottie thought to shape for himself. The other man has taken not merely Scottie’s woman, but Scottie’s dream.

That creates a moral paradox at the center of “Vertigo.” The other man (Gavin, played by Tom Helmore) has after all only done to this woman what Scottie also wanted to do. And while the process was happening, the real woman, Judy, transferred her allegiance from Gavin to Scottie, and by the end was not playing her role for money, but as a sacrifice for love.

All of these emotional threads come together in the greatest single shot in all of Hitchcock. Scottie, a former San Francisco police detective hired by Gavin to follow “Madeleine,” has become obsessed with her. Then it appears Madeleine has died. By chance, Scottie encounters Judy, who looks uncannily like Madeleine, but appears to be a more carnal, less polished version. Of course he does not realize she is exactly the same woman. He asks her out and Judy unwisely accepts. During their strange, stilted courtship, she begins to pity and care for him, so that when he asks her to remake herself into Madeleine, she agrees, playing the same role the second time.

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Is Kevin MacDonald’s Theory of Judaism “Plausible”? A Response to Dutton (2018)

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Luke Ford

Nathan Cofnas writes:

Dutton (2018, p. 2) says that his argument reduces to six basic claims: (1) “[G]roup selection is a robust model.” (2) “[P]eople tend to act in their ethnic interests.” (3) “Jews are more ‘group selected’ than gentiles,” which means they are genetically disposed to possess traits that give them an advantage in group competition, including “positive and negative ethnocentrism.” (4) The thesis of CofC—that Jewish left-wing activism during the twentieth century was part of a group evolutionary strategy—is more “plausible” than the “default hypothesis.” (5) Jewish left-wing activism “has indeed been in Jewish group interests.” (6) “Jewish representation in intellectual movements that are not necessarily ‘good for the Jews’ simply reflects Jewish high intelligence.”

Regarding (1), Dutton (2018, p. 2) states that it does not matter whether Jews were subject to more group selection than (white) gentiles: “[I]t may be possible for Jews to have developed the qualities highlighted by MacDonald through individual selection alone so group selection does not actually have to be accepted for it to be argued that Jews have been selected for high positive and negative ethnocentrism.” Since, at least on Dutton’s interpretation, the theory of CofC does not stand or fall with group selection, but requires only that Jews are high on ethnocentrism, I will not address the question of whether Jews were subject to more group selection, or whether evolutionary explanations based on group selection are in general plausible.1

I will address claims (2)–(5) in turn. I will not address (6), because this is essentially a partial endorsement of the default hypothesis.

Do “People Tend to Act in Their Ethnic Interests”?
Dutton (2018, p. 3) cites only two studies in support of the claim that “people tend to act in their ethnic interests.” First, Rushton (2005) reported that the most successful beggars in Moscow were ethnic Russians followed by Moldovans followed by dark-skinned Roma. That is, the (primarily ethnic Russian) pedestrians were generous to the beggars in proportion to their genetic relatedness to them. Second, Irwin (1987) reported that intertribal relations between Inuit in Canada reflect genetic relatedness: More closely related tribes are more likely to engage in cooperative behaviors, and are less likely to be excessively destructive toward each other during war.

Even taking the claims of Rushton and Irwin at face value, it seems like a big leap to conclude that “people tend to act in their ethnic interests.” Was it in the ethnic interests of white Americans to fight a war over the slavery of Africans, which killed 600,000 white people? Rich philanthropists of all races donate money to hospitals, theaters, and parks. If people tended to act in their ethnic interests, wouldn’t rich people use their money to support the reproduction of members of their ethnic group? Yet this is hardly the norm except in some small religious communities.

Suppose it is true that, as Dutton (2018, p. 3) says, “[o]n average [people] are more attracted to [those] who are more genetically similar to themselves, they are more likely to invest more in such people even within families and they are more likely to be friends with such people (see Rushton 2005).” Still, most people seem to be primarily focused on themselves, their family, and their friends. The activities that most people are emotionally involved with—sports, music, films, and the like—have nothing to do with advancing their ethnic interests. It seems a much stronger argument than Dutton provides is needed to establish the principle that “people tend to act in their ethnic interests.”

Are Jews High in Ethnocentrism?
Dutton (2018) cites two sources of evidence that Jews are highly ethnocentric. First, MacDonald’s “historical and anecdotal evidence.” Second, Dunkel and Dutton’s (2016) analysis of data from Midlife in the United States 2 (MIDUS 2), a large national survey conducted in the 2000s.

Regarding MacDonald’s “historical and anecdotal evidence,” if the argument in Cofnas (2018b) is correct, then MacDonald’s evidence is based on misrepresentations, distortions of history, and cherry-picking. Dutton (2018, p. 2) appears to accept that I have identified problems with MacDonald’s scholarship.2 So even on Dutton’s view, we should not take what MacDonald says at face value.

Regarding the second source of evidence, Dunkel and Dutton (2016) constructed a “religious in-group favoritism scale…by adding the response to four items”: (1) “How important is it for you to celebrate or practice on religious holidays with your family, friends, or members of your religious community?” (2) “How closely do you identify with being a member of your religious group?” (3) “How much do you prefer to be with other people who are the same religion as you?” (4) “How important do you think it is for people of your religion to marry other people who are the same religion?” They found that Jews and Baptists obtained (similarly) high scores compared to Methodists and Catholics. To explain why Jews supposedly evolved to be higher in ethnocentrism, Dunkel and Dutton suggest that, during long periods of persecution in Europe, “less ethnocentric Jewish individuals would likely have married out into the general population” (p. 314). This comment is noteworthy, since it explicitly acknowledges the obvious fact that marrying out into the general population is a sign of being less ethnocentric. (Opposing intermarriage also contributes to a high score on Dunkel and Dutton’s “religious in-group favoritism scale.”)

Rather than indirectly gauging the commitment of Jews to marrying within their group, it seems better to directly measure their propensity to marry each other by simply looking at intermarriage rates. Intermarriage rates among Jews do not support the theory that Jews are highly ethnocentric. Reform Jews constitute 35%, and unaffiliated Jews 30% of the American Jewish population. Another 6% are affiliated with denominations similar to Reform (Pew Research Center 2013, p. 10). According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center (2013, p. 37), 50 and 69% of married Reform and unaffiliated Jews, respectively, report that their spouse is not Jewish. This is probably a significant underestimate of intermarriage among Reform Jews, because the spouses of many Reform Jews are gentiles who have undergone nominal Reform conversions, and they would be counted as Jewish in the survey—unfortunately, there are no reliable data on how common this is. An unknown percentage of unaffiliated Jews do not identify as Jewish at all, and these people, who are presumably unlikely to marry Jews, would be missed by the survey. These findings suggest that the intermarriage rate among the at least 71% of American Jews who are Reform (or associated with similar denominations) or unaffiliated is well over 60%, and may be greater than 70%. These are the secular, liberal Jews who participated in the movements discussed in CofC. Their marriage patterns suggest that they are, as a group, not particularly committed to associating closely with their co-ethnics or contributing to Jewish continuity. (The offspring of Jewish–gentile couples do not themselves become strongly committed Jews: 83% report being married to a gentile; Pew Research Center 2013, p. 37.) In fact, Jews have the highest intermarriage rates of any religious group in the USA (Riley 2013).

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‘Elton John and Prince Harry launch bid to ‘smash’ AIDS stigma’

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Luke Ford

AIDS is easily preventable: Don’t have unprotected anal sex and don’t share intravenous needles. Anyone who can’t follow such simple instructions doesn’t value his life.

NEWS:

AMSTERDAM (AFP) – Elton John joined forces with Britain’s Prince Harry to launch a $1.2 billion initiative on Tuesday to “break the cycle” of HIV transmission by targeting young men, among whom infections are on the rise.

On the second day of a major international AIDS conference in Amsterdam, the two lent their mega-wattage star power to calls for action to end the lingering stigma around the virus and protect generations to come.

“Young people are the only age group where HIV infections are rising, not falling,” warned rock star and veteran AIDS campaigner Elton John as he announced the launch of the MenStar Coalition.

“We have to do much, much more to bring men, especially younger men more fully into the fold,” he insisted.

The coalition brings together different partners, including the UN’s Unitaid and the US fund PEPFAR, as John warned that 24- to 35-year-old men were accessing HIV testing and treatment at “unacceptably low rates”.

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