Obama

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I was wondering why, if it was such an open secret, no bothered to tell Obama that Harvey Weinstein might not be the best person for his daughter Malia to intern with over the summer.

* You’re assuming Obama cares.

Almost everything strange or weirdly anodyne or detached that Obama does is explained by the fact that Obama just doesn’t care that much.

Obama is a lazy man. He’s perhaps the laziest man who ever got into the presidency. He’s lazy because he just doesn’t care about others—only himself and his own pleasure.

During his presidency his underlings called him “No drama, Obama” because nothing seemed to ruffle him. Now, that could be a sign of a good leader keeping a cool head to fix the problem going on—an Eisenhower type.

But look at how many problems Obama didn’t do anything to solve—no attempts to calm the race rioting, the attack on our embassy, natural disasters, etc. He did nothing—he went golfing, went to a personal concert, or went on vacation.

Keeping cool in a drama could also be a sign that you just don’t give a crap about it. It bores you. You just don’t care. So you get lazy about them.

Most people have noticed how extremely narcissistic Obama seemed, even for a president. He put the word “I” into speeches and referenced himself more than any president before. Narcissists are narcissistic to everyone—even family, even their own children. Obama doesn’t really care about them, at least to the degree a normal healthy father will, they were just tools to election. Please a rich donor by making his daughter an intern with the donor? Why not? Who cares, it’ll help me get re-elected and run defense against attacks.

* Steve Sailer writes: A weird thing about Obama as President was he didn’t really know many people. He had this tiny circle of wealthy black friends from Chicago, and he avoided socializing with people who might know stuff and tell him gossip. For example, he played golf more than 300 times as President, but typically chose low level staffers to fill out his foursome, like his ski bum body man Marvin Somebody. Obama even played dozens of rounds of golf with Marvin the Ski Bum’s brother, a complete nobody. Presumably, Obama liked golfing with guys who wouldn’t try to tell him anything important.

Marvin Nicholson is this 6’8″ slacker in his 30s, a ski bum type with not much in the way of career ambitions, whom John Kerry found working in a sailboarding shop. Kerry wanted to hire him to work on his staff, but Nicholson instead went off to caddy at Augusta National golf club for a year. Eventually, Nicholson became Kerry’s “body man,” which is kind of like being a Jeeves-like valet, on Kerry’s 2004 campaign.

Obama inherited Nicholson from Kerry and Nicholson became his quasi-valet as well, replacing Reggie Love. Nicholson is an excellent golfer and has caddied at the most prestigious country club in the U.S., so he knows all about how to behave on a golf course.

When Obama had a foursome of others, Nicholson would switch over to caddying for the president. But much of the time he was one of the golfing foursome with Obama.

And powerful men just seem to like having the guy around. Presumably he’s very chill. In an environment where everybody wants something from Kerry or Obama, Nicholson was refreshing because he was just doing his current gig as the President’s caddy and golf partner as another in a long line of interesting experiences he’s had without putting much long-term planning into what he’d be doing in five years.

Obama played something like 150 rounds of golf with Nicholson and several dozen rounds of golf with Nicholson’s brother. I have no idea who Nicholson’s brother is, presumably somebody who could show up whenever the President wanted to fill out a foursome. In other words, Obama chose for his primary golf partners a couple of nobodies with, I’m guessing, calm, unobtrusive personalities who will talk about whatever Obama felt like talking about — probably what was on Sports Center last night.

But all that time spent with the Nicholson brothers, as relaxing as no doubt they are, was a huge amount of time Obama didn’t spend with anybody who could tell him anything he didn’t know.

In contrast, Dwight Eisenhower played golf with big timers so he could get to know them better.

I mean, Marvin Nicholson would seem like a pretty useful guy to have around as a subordinate who is also kind of a friend, but a friend you can ignore or send away when you are busy without him sulking about it, and who isn’t wheedling you for favors. He has, I’m guessing, kind of a sidekick personality, like the hero of a cowboy movie’s pal.

On the other hand, if you are president it would probably be better for you to use your time on the golf course getting to know important people who work for you or are in Congress or have interesting ideas and let Marvin caddy. Making him your playing partner for 500 or 1000 hours of your White House years is not very productive use of your time.

My guess is the story is the lack of a story: Marvin Nicholson is a low-stress kind of guy and probably his brother is similar. Obama doesn’t like meeting new people, so playing golf over and over with two guys with congenial low key personalities was relaxing for him, even if it the opportunity cost of Obama not playing golf with more interesting and important people was high.

Posted in America | Comments Off on Obama

Black Genius

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Once you know the mean IQ and standard deviation of a population and the # of members in each group, it’s a trivial mathematical exercise to determine the number that will exceed a certain threshold. If we call it say IQ145+ which is real genius territory, for an Ashkenazi Jewish population this is only maybe 2.x SDs out from the population mean so there is still a fair amount of daylight under the bell curve. Same for Asians except their 2.x is a little higher than the Jewish 2.x but there are a lot more of them. For a white population, it’s 3 SDs where the line is getting awfully close, but there are a whole lot of white people in the US in relation to the # of minorities (at least there used to be) so you still get a goodly amount of geniuses. For blacks, it’s 4 SDs where the line is fast approaching zero. The # of actual black geniuses that you see (very few) is neither more nor less than what the models would predict. If you drill down and look at the few blacks who score over 750 on the SAT (there are only a couple of hundred each year vs. tens of thousands of Asians) you’d find that they are mostly either African-Africans or half white or both (like Obama) and the number that are purebred American slave descendants like Moochelle is close to nil.

* If you want to know what cultures produce inventors, look at the ones that had high-craft cultures before the modern era. Japan was a high-craft culture. Europe was a collection of high-craft cultures.

You get a high-craft culture when you get X minimum percentage of its citizens who are usually gifted in visual-spacial and mechanical skills, and when that culture’s economy has progressed to the point where craftsmen are able to earn a good enough living that they can have more than 2 children per family, and thus begin to increase their descendants in a Malthusian manner. This increases the total amount of high-performing visual-spacial and mechanical genes in each generation, and therefore increases the potential numbers of craftsmen and inventors with every new generation. You can’t get a homegrown industrial revolution without this process happening. You won’t have enough talented people to create it otherwise.

Africa has never been a high craft culture, therefore it does not produce inventors. This is not a surprise.

Posted in IQ | Comments Off on Black Genius

The Hottest Bird On The Planet

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Luke Ford

At the end of the Austalian ABC miniseries on the Easybeats, the manager says: “Our little Jehovah’s Witness [Dick Diamonde] just bagged the hottest bird on the planet.”

According to Wikipedia: “By October 1969 the Easybeats had disbanded and according to Young, Diamonde was “having a ball just being Dick.”[6] In that same month his mother reflected, “He has given up the faith… We never encouraged him to follow this life. As Jehovah’s Witnesses we do not believe in creature worship… It is not right the children idolise him.”

From the Advertiser in Adelaide in 2014:

Stevie Wright was the migrant kid who became the frontman for iconic Aussie rock outfit The Easybeats. But with the fame came a lifetime of pain.

…In the end, though, the heroin won and Stevie spiralled into years of addiction. Desperate to kick his habit, he even checked in to the notorious Chelmsford Private Hospital where he was subjected to deep-sleep therapy and electric shocks, treatment that would have a lasting – and devasting – effect.

When he did finally shake the drugs, he simply replaced them with alcohol, drinking a bottle, sometimes two, of southern Comfort a day. He developed Korsakoff’s syndrome, a brain disorder associated with alcohol abuse.

But that’s all in the past – Stevie’s in a good place now.

Speaking from his home, in a respite centre on the New South Wales south coast, the now 65-year-old rocker is quick to laugh as he recalls the good times.

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How Does Jewish Nationalism Compare With White Nationalism?

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Luke Ford

“Nationalism is all about creating myths about how wonderful your country is,” says John Mearsheimer in a recent video.

In many ways, Jewish nationalism and white nationalism have more in common with each other than either do with Christianity. Both forms of nationalism prioritize action over belief, this world over the next world, peoplehood over theories, interests over principles.

A crude way to compare Jewish nationalism with white nationalism would be to compare the modern state of Israel with pre-1965 America (when the country was about 90% white and about 95% Christian), England and Australia. Where is social trust higher? In the Anglo nations.

While Protestantism focuses on individual salvation, Catholicism and Islam focus on the community, and nationalisms naturally focus on the nation. Race is real. Race matters. Race is the foundation of identity, notes Richard Spencer. Sometimes, however, other identities may have more importance to an individual than his racial one.

In a recent lecture, John Mearsheimer disagreed with Samuel Huntington’s book, The Clash of Civilizations, saying that religion does not matter nearly as much as nationalism for understanding how the world words. For example, the 30 Years War was mainly about national interests not religion.

What is human nature? Good or evil? White nationalism, influenced by Darwin, would view people first and foremost as animals competing with other forms of life for survival. Human nature is savage. In the Christian view, it is evil. In the Marxist view, it is good, it only needs a just and communist society to flourish. In the Jewish view, human nature contains urges to good and bad but it is usually easier to do bad and therefore man needs a ton of commandments to morally elevate him.

How do you morally educate people? From a nationalist perspective, you inculcate in-group identity and prioritize the well-being of your own kind over their competitors. From a Christian perspective, you change the heart through faith in God. From a Jewish perspective, you live by the Torah.

So which of these approaches have been the most successful? Well, the most successful, the most high-trust societies have been Anglo.

What is the meaning of life? From a nationalist perspective, the first meaning is to survive and the second meaning is to propagate your genes and to create a good and safe space for future generations of your people. From a Christian perspective, the purpose of life is salvation to the next life. From a Marxism perspective, the purpose of life is to create heaven on earth through the promotion of communism.

What are nationalist ethics? Those that promote the well-being of the nation. Jewish ethics mean what is best for Jews, white ethics mean what is best for whites, Japanese ethics mean what is best for Japanese.

What are religious ethics? Those that are taught by sacred texts (based in divine revelation in the monotheist faiths).

Almost all ethical systems practice dual morality — one morality for how you treat your in-group and a more relaxed morality for how you treat out-groups. The major exception to this trend is Christianity, in particular Anglo Christianity. That’s why Anglos make the best countries and the best citizens.

What is the source of morality? I asked Greg Johnson (Editor Counter-Currents.com) on Sunday.

Luke: “Do you believe in objective morality and objective good and evil?”

Greg: “Yes. I think that morality and good and evil and things like that are based on nature. I follow the classical Greek notion of Natural Law and Natural Right. I believe those are reasonable views, that we can come up with an ethics that is based on nature, that’s not based simply on social convention or simply on revelation and appeals to religion. Science and socio-biology gives us a lot of useful information for constructing this ethic. Larry Arnhart has written a book called Darwinian Natural Rights. He’s influenced by classical political philosophy and natural right thinking and yet he shows that socio-biology supports a lot of the naturalistic ethical ideas that you find in classical Greek and Roman political philosophy. That is the outlook that I think is most promising. By appealing to science and to classical philosophy, we can come up with a moral consensus and political consensus that is reason-based and science-based and that allows us to sidestep inherently contentious and sometimes violence-inducing things like appeals to religious revelation.”

On November 26, 2017, I asked Richard Spencer: “What is the source of morality?”

Richard: “That’s a very deep question.”

Richard’s phone rings. “Morality and theology are ways of building a group consensus without using direct force so that people feel like they are… I’m going to have to go. Someone just told me there is a major emergency.”

“There’s an evolutionary origin of morality.”

An orthodox Jew or Christian or Muslim will say that God is the source of morality and that God’s will was revealed in the Torah, from a Jewish perspective, or in the Bible and the person of Christ from a Christian perspective, and in the Koran from a Muslim perspective. Without a transcendent source for morality, we simply have different opinions on morality. There is no objective good and evil without God, but then there is only objective good and evil after one makes a subjective leap of faith to God and to His revelation, so how objective is this objective good and evil when it depends, at least in part, on subjective faith?

I quote from Dennis Prager’s book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism:

And yet, for all these beautiful words, in much of the world, the word “Jew” is synonymous with dishonesty in business. How is that so ethical? Stalin’s Jews were among the biggest mass murderers of the 20th Century.

Posted in Judaism, Nationalism | Comments Off on How Does Jewish Nationalism Compare With White Nationalism?

Parasha Vayeshev (Genesis 37:1–40:23)

Posted on December 3, 2017 by Luke Ford

Listen here.

Wikipedia: “The parashah tells the stories of how Jacob’s other sons sold Joseph into captivity in Egypt, of how Judah wronged his daughter-in-law Tamar and discovered his transgression, and how Joseph served Potiphar and was imprisoned when falsely accused of assaulting Potiphar’s wife.”

* New Yorker: The French Origins of “You Will Not Replace Us” – The European thinkers behind the white-nationalist rallying cry

The United States is not Western Europe. Not only is America full of immigrants; they are seen as part of what makes America American. Unlike France, the United States has only ever been a nation in the legal sense, even if immigration was long restricted to Europeans, and even if the Founding Fathers organized their country along the bloody basis of what we now tend to understand as white supremacy. The fact remains that, unless you are Native American, it is ludicrous for a resident of the United States to talk about “blood and soil.” And yet the country has nonetheless arrived at a moment when once unmentionable ideas have gone mainstream, and the most important political division is no longer between left and right but between globalist and nationalist.

* Steve Sailer writes: “There’s a saying in Brazil, “White women for marriage, black women for work, and mulata women for [fornication].”

I’m guessing that as a collateral royal, Prince Harry is prioritizing getting royally served. I wish the royal couple all happiness in their coupling.”

* New York Times: “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland”

When the media profiles white nationalists and other crime thinkers, their main focus tends to be — how did they get this way? But they won’t trace the person’s intellectual journey with care. No, they want to find discrediting personal details. The MSM can’t match up against the Alt Right in the world of ideas so they have to descend to personal attacks. (Steve Sailer More More)

* New Yorker profile of Mike Enoch: “But Mike E.’s conversion was more quotidian than that, and therefore more unsettling; somehow, over time, he had fallen into a particularly dark rabbit hole, where some of the most disturbing and discredited ideas in modern history were repackaged as the solution to twenty-first-century malaise.”

“Then, in January, 2015, Enoch read “The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements,” by Kevin MacDonald, a former psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach. The book—published in 1998, heavily footnoted, and roundly debunked by mainstream social scientists—is a touchstone of contemporary intellectualized anti-Semitism.”

* The Atlantic: The Making of an American Nazi: How did Andrew Anglin go from being an antiracist vegan to the alt-right’s most vicious troll and propagandist—and how might he be stopped?

The Atlantic podcast:

Andrew Anglin spent his formative years flirting with hippie progressivism, then tried his hand at becoming a tribal hunter-gatherer. But he only achieved notoriety after he founded the Daily Stormer, the world’s biggest website for neo-Nazis. Anglin and his mob of followers have terrorized people around the world, and their influence has been cited by the perpetrators of fatal violence.

What lessons should be learned from Anglin’s radicalization? And what is society’s best response to his ideas? Luke O’Brien and Rosie Gray join Jeff and Matt to discuss these questions, and how far-right extremism is evolving.

In the podcast, Luke says that rejection is what made Anglin a Nazi and that Anglin lacked critical thinking skills.

The podcast says that people who join the Alt Right are looking for a tribe.

What do you make of the MSM’s constant use of “extremist” for the Alt Right?

* Joseph would bring evil reports about the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah to his father Jacob. I’ve always hated tattletales.

* “3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate[a] robe for him. 4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.” It’s natural that you might love one child more than another, but you don’t want to show it by displaying your loved child with special gifts.

* Jacob had a dream that his brothers bowed down to him and so they hated him even more.

A key teaching of 12-Step work is that nobody is above you or below you. You’re never better than or worse than others.

* If you are a slave, you have to go along with your master’s wishes, or the consequences can be dire. By allowing himself to be alone with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph put himself in harm’s way. Also, the story teaches us that women have been known to make false allegations of rape.

* Gen. 40:8: Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.”

That’s a great line.

Posted in Torah | Comments Off on Parasha Vayeshev (Genesis 37:1–40:23)