For a lighter change of pace, check out the best Free Fonts available on the Web. I've tried them with good results. The prior post was written in Vollkorn, from Friedrich Althausen and it is simply beautiful. Containing pretty much everything you'd need in terms of glphys, kerning pairs, accented characters (naturally for a German) and special characters, it reads delightfully on my screen in Ubuntu 10.4 Linux and Abiword. This post is written in Antykwa Poltawskiego, which is a revival of a Polish font used in the Twenties and Thirties done originally by the designer of that last name, and revived by the gifted Januz Marian Nowacki. It too looks beautiful, link here.
The first link, here, will get you to URW free versions of Palatino (done by the incomparable Hermann Zapf, yes the guy behind Zapf Chancery), as well as Goudy versions, Bembo (called Cardo), and of course (at the URW link) Garamond. One of the more hopeful things is the enthusiasm by type designers for reviving and preserving the old type faces, particularly those of the Renaissance and early printing, as well as "National Fonts" that preserve the unique smallness and locality of the nations they represent.
Vollkorn is beautiful, but retains enough of the German "Blackletter" aka Gothic/Schwabacher character to be interesting, while still highly readable. Poltawskiego looks like it came off a book from 1928, and is quite beautiful in a Beaux Arts Way.
Pride in the greatness of European heritage is not yet entirely dead. Against the Occupy people literally pooping at St. Paul's Cathedral is the enthusiasm of middle aged, middle class men for reviving the great type faces of the past. Heck one man even wrote a book about it, even if he does spend far too much time lauding Barack Obama in a way unbecoming for an ostensibly straight man.
Often it is the little things that tell you much about a person, or a society. This is one thing that is quite hopeful.
...Read more
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Reconsidering Sexual Repression
Science Fiction Author and Blogger Eric S. Raymond has a post up on Reconsidering Sexual Repression. Basically his point is that we will likely have to give up two of the following three things: family formation, sexual equality (women equal to men in all legal and social and cultural forms), and sexual liberty (no restrictions legal or social in any way of women's sexual activity). Raymond believes that giving up family formation is out of the question, so that the other two must go, by giving up sexual equality, in the form of "submissiveness" to men. Raymond of course is quite wrong (and considers the question only from the viewpoint, and a skewed, "White Knight" perspective at that, of women). But still it is quite interesting to see an older man struggle with the obvious, that the sexual order of the day is simply unsustainable.
Now, Raymond is wrong because women have already given up family formation. Women, of all races, and classes, are bailing on the nuclear family and having single motherhood instead. Women are doing this by choice, deliberate choice, because women have pretty much complete control over their own fertility. If they don't want to get pregnant, condoms, the pill, the morning after pill (a girl of maybe, 15 was there with her mother getting it at my local pharmacy about a year ago, proud and giggling, Mexican of course), various patches (heavily advertised on TV), and more. Plus of course abortions. If women did want to have kids, there are plenty of guys out there who are husband material. They just are not as sexy as the bad boys.
No, women are choosing, in various amounts among different races and classes, but still broadly choosing single motherhood with bad boys over marriage with some boring Beta Male who does nothing but provide and lacks that sexy domination women crave.
Black women moved from 24% illegitimacy in the 1960's, to over 70% nationally today, and over 90% in the urban core. Hispanic women moved from 17% illegitimacy in 1980 to over 50% today. Charles Murray's talk at the AEI on the State of White America had the following highlights:
Women in the upper 20% of income still got married and had kids, illegitimacy was only 4-5% for this group.
Women in the middle 40% of income had a 20% illegitimacy rate.
Women in the lower 20% of income had a 40% illegitimacy rate.
Clearly, there are a bunch of things going on. If you have a lot of money, being Beta is not an impediment to marriage. You can still be "Alpha" and have all those unsexy qualities women loathe: idealizing or pedalizing your mate, telling her constantly you love her, never checking out other women, never instilling uncertainty about the relationship, never being that guy other women want to have ... all that and more can be done and a marriage maintained if you are in the upper 20% of income. Being even a mini-master of the Universe makes a man by definition, sexy to women. Even his wife! So she won't divorce him, and will marry him in the first place. Since other men defer to him, due to his wealth and power, he's sexy! Thus worth having.
And of course, being married to him means a summer cottage in the Hamptons, heck summer as a verb not a season.
For women in the middle class, that increasingly is not in the cards. Raymond is correct, women find men who are their equal ... unsexy. No woman, anywhere, wanted a man who was her equal. That's a ticket to palookaville. Or single motherhood. If women in the Upper Classes have their pick of the mini-masters of the Universe, middle class women have Joe from Accounting. And no one wants Joe. He does not intimidate anyone, he does not boss any one around, no one fears him, he's not made of money, and thus power. Nothing. Why bother?
Shame, social inertia, a desire for security, those things still have limited White Middle class women to "only" 20% illegitimacy. But the tide cannot be held back forever.
Consider lower class White women. The ones most in need of a husband, to add another income to the table, to provide help in child rearing, to provide an extra security level. These women have reached near Hispanic/Mexican levels of illegitimacy. Why?
One reason is, that the men around them are not equal ... they're inferior! And no one wants inferior men. The only men they find even remotely sexy are those men ... other men are afraid of, and for good reason. The thugs. The bad boys. The crazy ones. These seem to be the only guys White Working Class women find suitable for impregnating them.
And lets review, shall we? Condoms. The Pill. The Patch. The Morning After Pill. Abortion. No woman gets pregnant by a guy she does not want to be pregnant by, in a sustained and deliberate choice. The same is true for Black women, who actively choose the thuggiest of thugs, because that is the only kind of man they find sexy -- one that other men fear. Mexican women are the same, consistently choosing for fathers, not the decent and hardworking men around them, which yes there are many still who would make them excellent husbands and fathers, but the dangerous gang-bangers and thugs.
As Roissy points out, Anders Brevik, who killed over 70 people, most of them defenseless teens, is getting mountains of love letters. If Chicks Dig Jerks, and they do, they dig even more thugs, bad boys, and violent men. As Roissy put it:
Women love assholes. Any perusal of Twilight, or the other vampire chick-lit, will tell you that. As will any Rom-Com. This is just hard-wired. But it is not what you think. Because women did not always have the urge for assholes.
When women had significant social inequality, but mostly full legal equality, most women did not swoon for jerks. Assholes and thugs did not make women aroused. The comment by "Bounder" on Roissy's post Chicks Dig Jerks: Prison Edition would have been from Planet Bizarro fifty years ago:
The female passion for thugs is one unknown, mostly, to men and women of about fifty years ago or more. It is entirely due to women being fully socially and culturally as well as legally equal to men. If not, in fact, superior.
Raymond is right, women find men their equal to be ... unsexy. Hence the "sexy" TV shows set in the 1960's, Mad Men and Pan Am and Playboy Bunny Club. Where the big shots are sexy master of the universe, and women compete to be his number one squeeze. Today Mr. Big would find a sexual harassment lawsuit, a workplace hostile to women finding, and all the men would be sexually invisible because they would not be the sexy guys higher up in the totem pole but men at the same position if not in fact, significantly lower down.
Almost no woman (with any options at all, any!) will find a man her equal even remotely sexy. None will find a man inferior to him sexy.
And as we've seen, no woman will have kids with a man she finds unsexy. But certainly will have kids on her own with men she finds sexy but knows won't stick around.
Raymond looks at it from the wrong angle: how can society get women a good husband? Given that women have now gotten the best of all possible worlds: maximum access to sexy men, and single motherhood with said sexy men. This is exactly what women wanted, because they in fact created it. They chose, actively, the men they slept with. And they chose to have kids with them, knowing them unlikely in the extreme to stick around and marry them and raise kids. Women, collectively, of their own free will, chose to trade sexy now and kids with sexy now over some guy sticking around. Figuring that they will be happier with kids by an Alpha, even dirt poor, than married and middle class with some icky Beta Male. Who lacks even the most tiny bit of sexiness.
Women don't want husbands ... of men who are equal. Nor are men bailing out of marriage. Women choose, and choose increasingly except for Upper Class White women (a tiny demo by the way) ... bad boys and single motherhood. Women are only interested in buying marriage if the man is sexy. Submission? They already have to offer that ... to the bad boys. Thats part of just admission into his bedroom.
Raymond's problem is his mental model. He assumes women want the things they wanted, in 1950, when significant but not unbridgeable social inequalities made most men fairly sexy to most women, and thus helped maintain the nuclear family and marriage. The men they would marry, were all relatively sexy, because they themselves while not subservient chattel, had significant social inequalities.
Now, women will NOT COMPROMISE ON THE SEXY. Not a bit. Men must be sexy to be considered for sex, and then marriage. All the re-jiggering of gender equality (and thus sexual freedom for women) won't address that, and is unlikely anyway. Women are no more going to demand, that they be now made socially unequal in any way, to their male peers. Why would they? What's in it for them? Having had a taste of the most Alpha of Alphas, be it the hipster jerk of Williamsburg for Middle Class White women, or the true thug for Working Class women of all colors, why would they go back? How can they go back? How can society re-make itself, depending on female consumer spending, so that most ordinary men are sexy enough for women to consider sleeping with and then marrying?
Please.
So family formation in the nuclear way is over. Family means, for Black women, a single mother and two children or more, each with different fathers (Black women lead the nation at more than 50% of all births of a second or later child to a different father than the previous). Of course, that makes for an interesting sibling dynamic, one fraught with rivalry more than love. But its damn sexy, dammit, for the women involved.
Family, for Mexican women, means basically the same thing, just not as much as quickly. For Working Class White women, it is closing in on the Black family model, and it is even for the Middle Class White women.
Which means just as in the Black demographic, you will see, rapidly growing, a lot of men who never married, and remain outside of both sex and reproduction. These are life's losers, and their way to "win" is to thug it up, as much as possible, because if other men fear them, women will love them. Yes, that is the equation.
Children, meanwhile, will live in a chaotic, threatening, and violent situation. One in which power is defined by the ability and willingness to deploy as much violence as possible as unexpectedly as possible. They will be poor, and their prospects very poor. The way in which people reproduce is the man becomes a sexy killer, and the most brutal of them gets the most beautiful girl. Men who are insufficiently violent, brutal, and ruthless get weeded out one or another from reproduction, only the most violent reproduce, and none take an interest or care in their children. This is the way in which most of humanity has lived, for most of its existence, and is a poverty-factory though one that produces for women some very sexy men. Men reliably more powerful and with higher status than themselves.
This is the ugly truth of it. Western Civilization is built upon repression. NOT as feminists say, half-truthfully, on female repression. But upon repression of women's ability to get the sexiest men. Western Civilization requires soaking up all those men who create violence and poverty into marriage. Into making them stakeholders directly into society, by giving them a small family, all their own, which they will mostly (not always but mostly) work themselves to death to keep and improve. Just as Napoleon ended the French Revolution and made peasants into ultra conservative Frenchmen by giving them small plots of land, so too did the nuclear family make most men into conservative, society improvers. Not ugly conquer-or-die gamblers.
Western Civilization means the end of sexy. The end of sexy men, anyway, as the supply of those truly sexy, the Alphas, who dominate other men and make them afraid, are limited in the extreme. And their ability to create massive harems is also limited. Thus, yes, Western Civilization does depend on sexual repression, but of unlimited choice by women of ultra sexy men. The supply of ultra-sexy men is limited, as are the options for Alphas, and women in Western Civilization have had the restriction on creating a vast pool of thugs, bad boys, and the like to choose from.
Moreover, if they had kids by these men, they'd pay the consequences (other men would not help them or help raise their kids). Lacking a husband, they'd starve, to put it bluntly. Critically, other women would not care, either.
Women were mostly free, to choose from any number of men, even though they could not create a vast pool of sexy men (rogues, outlaws, bad boys, thugs). They had far greater rights than that of other women, in other cultures, races, and places. Their rights increased, not decreased, over time, unlike that of say Muslim women. Women just had to choose wisely, for risk elimination as well as sexiness. Women had to trade-off on the qualities that made them aroused (violent domination of other men, or simply domination and increased status relative to them) versus those that would keep them clothed and fed: faithfulness, agreeableness, income, and ability.
What women could not do is create underwriters for the risk of bad boys, as the modern welfare state does today. Yes, in that sense women were suppressed, as people of Ancient Athens were suppressed by lacking Ipads and free Wi-Fi and streaming video. If a woman chose a bad boy, she chose all the risk. Women taking on the risk are quite capable of making informed judgments on that matter.
So what is likely to happen? More of the same. Birthrates will continue to fall, because women will chase sexy men, of whom there are either just a few, their bosses, the local thugs, Alphas who play in a rock band and have a drug habit, the handsome player. They'll choose single motherhood with the last Alpha guy they can have, fairly late, over marriage and family with a Beta Male fairly young. Thus guaranteeing small family sizes (another component by the way of single motherhood). Welfare is likely to collapse as Whites as well as Blacks and Hispanics demand it, under economic recession that becomes permanent. Creating a sudden drop-off of reproduction for all, as Welfare simply ceases to exist like the Roman Empire in the West around 400 AD. You can't have kids with bad boys, if there is on one to pick up the tab.
Life will get a lot more violent. For everyone. And there will be a race to the bottom for sexy, as delineated by violence. Since in an economic recession, the only way to make other men your inferior is to make them fear you. Men won't stop wanting sex, and the idea that women will return to social inequality no matter how small or marginal is quaint. And as dead as the England where Vicars get around on bicycles (instead of Mosques proclaiming Allah).
What will be interesting (in a Dark Ages sort of way) is the changes brought upon by birthrate collapse, all across the board. Now, the Welfare state subsidizes kids by Mexicans, and to a lesser extent Blacks. A birthrate akin to Whites (generally outside of Welfare for racial, cultural, and legal reasons) means social collapse. A Detroit writ large, ever more portions of cities abandoned to wilderness, smaller and smaller cities, less and less technology, and flight to security where ever "lords" may rule by utter violence. Just like the last Dark Ages.
Is this "all women's fault?"
No. It is no one's fault. It was not the Roman Emperors, nor the people, nor the gladiators, nor those who crucified saints, nor those who bribed Goths, or Vandals, or Huns, for the collapse of the Roman Empire. It just happened, because Romans stopped having kids, and many more died of the plague, of bad harvests and starvation, and so they could not hold onto anything. Bad Emperors came and went, and so did good ones. There just weren't enough Romans, as Roman women had fewer and fewer children, and the Empire became more and more slave and less and less free.
Women did not sit down and take a vote, to destroy Western Civilization. Women did not ask for the pill, the condom, the patch, and more to be invented. They did not ask for social anonymity, high mobility, and the destruction of social repression and cohesion (the two go together). Women did not ask for the modern consumer and media culture. Women did not ask for men to be brought DOWN to their equal or lower.
Yes women in the main agree with most or all of these things, but that is beside the point. Women just want what they want: men who are sexy, which means men who are higher than they are socially. That's hard-wired, it cannot be changed, it is part of women's innate biology. Women ARE flexible in how they pursue sexiness in men, just as men are flexible in how they pursue sexiness in women, for that matter.
The ugly truth is, no one man or woman is willing to admit, that wealth, power, and Western Civilization is built upon sexual repression. Not a total repression of women, but of Alpha men, women's ability to create vast pools of sexy Alpha men (in practice this means thugs) and the ability to get others to underwrite the risk of sexy men.
Western Civilization means NO SEXY MEN. Or damned few, at any rate. No wonder most women HATE HATE HATE Western Civilization. Who finds guys like Norman Borlaug, Jonas Salk, or Philo T. Farnsworth sexy? As opposed to say, Pele, Khadaffi, Carlos the Jackal, or Vladimir Putin? Western Civilization is the long slow grind, the constant search for new advantages, requiring massive amounts of nerdy, focused men who search for advantage because they like it, and are good at it, and need to ... feed their families. Thus nerdy obsessions turn to the Green Revolution, not World of Warcraft. Polio Vaccines not Angry Birds. The invention of Television not Magic the Gathering. Real technology to accomplish something of value, creating Western Advantage, not trivial past-times for men outside the mate market.
...Read more
Now, Raymond is wrong because women have already given up family formation. Women, of all races, and classes, are bailing on the nuclear family and having single motherhood instead. Women are doing this by choice, deliberate choice, because women have pretty much complete control over their own fertility. If they don't want to get pregnant, condoms, the pill, the morning after pill (a girl of maybe, 15 was there with her mother getting it at my local pharmacy about a year ago, proud and giggling, Mexican of course), various patches (heavily advertised on TV), and more. Plus of course abortions. If women did want to have kids, there are plenty of guys out there who are husband material. They just are not as sexy as the bad boys.
No, women are choosing, in various amounts among different races and classes, but still broadly choosing single motherhood with bad boys over marriage with some boring Beta Male who does nothing but provide and lacks that sexy domination women crave.
Black women moved from 24% illegitimacy in the 1960's, to over 70% nationally today, and over 90% in the urban core. Hispanic women moved from 17% illegitimacy in 1980 to over 50% today. Charles Murray's talk at the AEI on the State of White America had the following highlights:
Women in the upper 20% of income still got married and had kids, illegitimacy was only 4-5% for this group.
Women in the middle 40% of income had a 20% illegitimacy rate.
Women in the lower 20% of income had a 40% illegitimacy rate.
Clearly, there are a bunch of things going on. If you have a lot of money, being Beta is not an impediment to marriage. You can still be "Alpha" and have all those unsexy qualities women loathe: idealizing or pedalizing your mate, telling her constantly you love her, never checking out other women, never instilling uncertainty about the relationship, never being that guy other women want to have ... all that and more can be done and a marriage maintained if you are in the upper 20% of income. Being even a mini-master of the Universe makes a man by definition, sexy to women. Even his wife! So she won't divorce him, and will marry him in the first place. Since other men defer to him, due to his wealth and power, he's sexy! Thus worth having.
And of course, being married to him means a summer cottage in the Hamptons, heck summer as a verb not a season.
For women in the middle class, that increasingly is not in the cards. Raymond is correct, women find men who are their equal ... unsexy. No woman, anywhere, wanted a man who was her equal. That's a ticket to palookaville. Or single motherhood. If women in the Upper Classes have their pick of the mini-masters of the Universe, middle class women have Joe from Accounting. And no one wants Joe. He does not intimidate anyone, he does not boss any one around, no one fears him, he's not made of money, and thus power. Nothing. Why bother?
Shame, social inertia, a desire for security, those things still have limited White Middle class women to "only" 20% illegitimacy. But the tide cannot be held back forever.
Consider lower class White women. The ones most in need of a husband, to add another income to the table, to provide help in child rearing, to provide an extra security level. These women have reached near Hispanic/Mexican levels of illegitimacy. Why?
One reason is, that the men around them are not equal ... they're inferior! And no one wants inferior men. The only men they find even remotely sexy are those men ... other men are afraid of, and for good reason. The thugs. The bad boys. The crazy ones. These seem to be the only guys White Working Class women find suitable for impregnating them.
And lets review, shall we? Condoms. The Pill. The Patch. The Morning After Pill. Abortion. No woman gets pregnant by a guy she does not want to be pregnant by, in a sustained and deliberate choice. The same is true for Black women, who actively choose the thuggiest of thugs, because that is the only kind of man they find sexy -- one that other men fear. Mexican women are the same, consistently choosing for fathers, not the decent and hardworking men around them, which yes there are many still who would make them excellent husbands and fathers, but the dangerous gang-bangers and thugs.
As Roissy points out, Anders Brevik, who killed over 70 people, most of them defenseless teens, is getting mountains of love letters. If Chicks Dig Jerks, and they do, they dig even more thugs, bad boys, and violent men. As Roissy put it:
As everyday observation to those with the eyes to see demonstrates, the primary motivation is women’s love for unrepentant, rule-breaking assholes. That is the elemental, core female hindbrain algorithm that governs all other lustful dispositions and is the catalyst for her mate choice decisions.
Women love assholes because they are assholes. Because it inspires in women those emotions that most delight their pleasure centers. And that, based on the reaction it engenders from civilized men and women alike, is the truth too scary to contemplate.
Women love assholes. Any perusal of Twilight, or the other vampire chick-lit, will tell you that. As will any Rom-Com. This is just hard-wired. But it is not what you think. Because women did not always have the urge for assholes.
When women had significant social inequality, but mostly full legal equality, most women did not swoon for jerks. Assholes and thugs did not make women aroused. The comment by "Bounder" on Roissy's post Chicks Dig Jerks: Prison Edition would have been from Planet Bizarro fifty years ago:
I’m an attorney (fuck you too) and this impulse is even more pronounced among the alpha lawyer women. Frequently female attorneys are caught sexing their scumbag clients.
It starts early. HRC [Human Rights Coalition -- ed] has inmate letter writing campaigns and tons of female law students attend spending their 130+ IQs writing to 75 IQ scumbags. It is beyond fucking hilarious.
The female passion for thugs is one unknown, mostly, to men and women of about fifty years ago or more. It is entirely due to women being fully socially and culturally as well as legally equal to men. If not, in fact, superior.
Raymond is right, women find men their equal to be ... unsexy. Hence the "sexy" TV shows set in the 1960's, Mad Men and Pan Am and Playboy Bunny Club. Where the big shots are sexy master of the universe, and women compete to be his number one squeeze. Today Mr. Big would find a sexual harassment lawsuit, a workplace hostile to women finding, and all the men would be sexually invisible because they would not be the sexy guys higher up in the totem pole but men at the same position if not in fact, significantly lower down.
Almost no woman (with any options at all, any!) will find a man her equal even remotely sexy. None will find a man inferior to him sexy.
And as we've seen, no woman will have kids with a man she finds unsexy. But certainly will have kids on her own with men she finds sexy but knows won't stick around.
Raymond looks at it from the wrong angle: how can society get women a good husband? Given that women have now gotten the best of all possible worlds: maximum access to sexy men, and single motherhood with said sexy men. This is exactly what women wanted, because they in fact created it. They chose, actively, the men they slept with. And they chose to have kids with them, knowing them unlikely in the extreme to stick around and marry them and raise kids. Women, collectively, of their own free will, chose to trade sexy now and kids with sexy now over some guy sticking around. Figuring that they will be happier with kids by an Alpha, even dirt poor, than married and middle class with some icky Beta Male. Who lacks even the most tiny bit of sexiness.
Women don't want husbands ... of men who are equal. Nor are men bailing out of marriage. Women choose, and choose increasingly except for Upper Class White women (a tiny demo by the way) ... bad boys and single motherhood. Women are only interested in buying marriage if the man is sexy. Submission? They already have to offer that ... to the bad boys. Thats part of just admission into his bedroom.
Raymond's problem is his mental model. He assumes women want the things they wanted, in 1950, when significant but not unbridgeable social inequalities made most men fairly sexy to most women, and thus helped maintain the nuclear family and marriage. The men they would marry, were all relatively sexy, because they themselves while not subservient chattel, had significant social inequalities.
Now, women will NOT COMPROMISE ON THE SEXY. Not a bit. Men must be sexy to be considered for sex, and then marriage. All the re-jiggering of gender equality (and thus sexual freedom for women) won't address that, and is unlikely anyway. Women are no more going to demand, that they be now made socially unequal in any way, to their male peers. Why would they? What's in it for them? Having had a taste of the most Alpha of Alphas, be it the hipster jerk of Williamsburg for Middle Class White women, or the true thug for Working Class women of all colors, why would they go back? How can they go back? How can society re-make itself, depending on female consumer spending, so that most ordinary men are sexy enough for women to consider sleeping with and then marrying?
Please.
So family formation in the nuclear way is over. Family means, for Black women, a single mother and two children or more, each with different fathers (Black women lead the nation at more than 50% of all births of a second or later child to a different father than the previous). Of course, that makes for an interesting sibling dynamic, one fraught with rivalry more than love. But its damn sexy, dammit, for the women involved.
Family, for Mexican women, means basically the same thing, just not as much as quickly. For Working Class White women, it is closing in on the Black family model, and it is even for the Middle Class White women.
Which means just as in the Black demographic, you will see, rapidly growing, a lot of men who never married, and remain outside of both sex and reproduction. These are life's losers, and their way to "win" is to thug it up, as much as possible, because if other men fear them, women will love them. Yes, that is the equation.
Children, meanwhile, will live in a chaotic, threatening, and violent situation. One in which power is defined by the ability and willingness to deploy as much violence as possible as unexpectedly as possible. They will be poor, and their prospects very poor. The way in which people reproduce is the man becomes a sexy killer, and the most brutal of them gets the most beautiful girl. Men who are insufficiently violent, brutal, and ruthless get weeded out one or another from reproduction, only the most violent reproduce, and none take an interest or care in their children. This is the way in which most of humanity has lived, for most of its existence, and is a poverty-factory though one that produces for women some very sexy men. Men reliably more powerful and with higher status than themselves.
This is the ugly truth of it. Western Civilization is built upon repression. NOT as feminists say, half-truthfully, on female repression. But upon repression of women's ability to get the sexiest men. Western Civilization requires soaking up all those men who create violence and poverty into marriage. Into making them stakeholders directly into society, by giving them a small family, all their own, which they will mostly (not always but mostly) work themselves to death to keep and improve. Just as Napoleon ended the French Revolution and made peasants into ultra conservative Frenchmen by giving them small plots of land, so too did the nuclear family make most men into conservative, society improvers. Not ugly conquer-or-die gamblers.
Western Civilization means the end of sexy. The end of sexy men, anyway, as the supply of those truly sexy, the Alphas, who dominate other men and make them afraid, are limited in the extreme. And their ability to create massive harems is also limited. Thus, yes, Western Civilization does depend on sexual repression, but of unlimited choice by women of ultra sexy men. The supply of ultra-sexy men is limited, as are the options for Alphas, and women in Western Civilization have had the restriction on creating a vast pool of thugs, bad boys, and the like to choose from.
Moreover, if they had kids by these men, they'd pay the consequences (other men would not help them or help raise their kids). Lacking a husband, they'd starve, to put it bluntly. Critically, other women would not care, either.
Women were mostly free, to choose from any number of men, even though they could not create a vast pool of sexy men (rogues, outlaws, bad boys, thugs). They had far greater rights than that of other women, in other cultures, races, and places. Their rights increased, not decreased, over time, unlike that of say Muslim women. Women just had to choose wisely, for risk elimination as well as sexiness. Women had to trade-off on the qualities that made them aroused (violent domination of other men, or simply domination and increased status relative to them) versus those that would keep them clothed and fed: faithfulness, agreeableness, income, and ability.
What women could not do is create underwriters for the risk of bad boys, as the modern welfare state does today. Yes, in that sense women were suppressed, as people of Ancient Athens were suppressed by lacking Ipads and free Wi-Fi and streaming video. If a woman chose a bad boy, she chose all the risk. Women taking on the risk are quite capable of making informed judgments on that matter.
So what is likely to happen? More of the same. Birthrates will continue to fall, because women will chase sexy men, of whom there are either just a few, their bosses, the local thugs, Alphas who play in a rock band and have a drug habit, the handsome player. They'll choose single motherhood with the last Alpha guy they can have, fairly late, over marriage and family with a Beta Male fairly young. Thus guaranteeing small family sizes (another component by the way of single motherhood). Welfare is likely to collapse as Whites as well as Blacks and Hispanics demand it, under economic recession that becomes permanent. Creating a sudden drop-off of reproduction for all, as Welfare simply ceases to exist like the Roman Empire in the West around 400 AD. You can't have kids with bad boys, if there is on one to pick up the tab.
Life will get a lot more violent. For everyone. And there will be a race to the bottom for sexy, as delineated by violence. Since in an economic recession, the only way to make other men your inferior is to make them fear you. Men won't stop wanting sex, and the idea that women will return to social inequality no matter how small or marginal is quaint. And as dead as the England where Vicars get around on bicycles (instead of Mosques proclaiming Allah).
What will be interesting (in a Dark Ages sort of way) is the changes brought upon by birthrate collapse, all across the board. Now, the Welfare state subsidizes kids by Mexicans, and to a lesser extent Blacks. A birthrate akin to Whites (generally outside of Welfare for racial, cultural, and legal reasons) means social collapse. A Detroit writ large, ever more portions of cities abandoned to wilderness, smaller and smaller cities, less and less technology, and flight to security where ever "lords" may rule by utter violence. Just like the last Dark Ages.
Is this "all women's fault?"
No. It is no one's fault. It was not the Roman Emperors, nor the people, nor the gladiators, nor those who crucified saints, nor those who bribed Goths, or Vandals, or Huns, for the collapse of the Roman Empire. It just happened, because Romans stopped having kids, and many more died of the plague, of bad harvests and starvation, and so they could not hold onto anything. Bad Emperors came and went, and so did good ones. There just weren't enough Romans, as Roman women had fewer and fewer children, and the Empire became more and more slave and less and less free.
Women did not sit down and take a vote, to destroy Western Civilization. Women did not ask for the pill, the condom, the patch, and more to be invented. They did not ask for social anonymity, high mobility, and the destruction of social repression and cohesion (the two go together). Women did not ask for the modern consumer and media culture. Women did not ask for men to be brought DOWN to their equal or lower.
Yes women in the main agree with most or all of these things, but that is beside the point. Women just want what they want: men who are sexy, which means men who are higher than they are socially. That's hard-wired, it cannot be changed, it is part of women's innate biology. Women ARE flexible in how they pursue sexiness in men, just as men are flexible in how they pursue sexiness in women, for that matter.
The ugly truth is, no one man or woman is willing to admit, that wealth, power, and Western Civilization is built upon sexual repression. Not a total repression of women, but of Alpha men, women's ability to create vast pools of sexy Alpha men (in practice this means thugs) and the ability to get others to underwrite the risk of sexy men.
Western Civilization means NO SEXY MEN. Or damned few, at any rate. No wonder most women HATE HATE HATE Western Civilization. Who finds guys like Norman Borlaug, Jonas Salk, or Philo T. Farnsworth sexy? As opposed to say, Pele, Khadaffi, Carlos the Jackal, or Vladimir Putin? Western Civilization is the long slow grind, the constant search for new advantages, requiring massive amounts of nerdy, focused men who search for advantage because they like it, and are good at it, and need to ... feed their families. Thus nerdy obsessions turn to the Green Revolution, not World of Warcraft. Polio Vaccines not Angry Birds. The invention of Television not Magic the Gathering. Real technology to accomplish something of value, creating Western Advantage, not trivial past-times for men outside the mate market.
...Read more
Monday, September 19, 2011
Mr. EBT and the Death of the Welfare State
One of the most fascinating things about the internet is how it collapses different cultures, events, and people into an "endless now" entirely outside the mainstream media's attempt to edit and control the news that people receive. The video on Youtube linked by Drudge today ("My EBT" by "Mr. EBT") promises an incendiary repudiation of not just Obama, but every Democratic policy since LBJ.
Clive Crook at the Financial Times believes only a "move to the middle" can save Obama's Presidency, but Obama encapsulates much of what the Democratic Party has become: the Anti-White Guy/anti-White Middle Class party.
Democrats rely on gerrymandered districts, with Black and Hispanic voters, and state and nationwide, on Black votes around 95%+, and Hispanic votes around 65-70%+, to win. With a about 30% of the White vote, this is often enough. And the coalition of the anti-White votes and the White elite (Steve Sailer's "hi-lo" team-up) is based on transferring money from middle class voters to Black/Hispanic patronage politicians, and folks like Mr. EBT.
At a time when unemployment is at record highs, families are stressed by ever rising food and energy and clothing costs, Clive Crook does not get it, nor do most of the establishment. Voters among the White middle and working class have rejected the Welfare State because the Welfare State does not exist for them. The Welfare State exists for Mr. EBT. A man incapable of earning a living or doing much of anything, other than "keeping it real, dog." The Bismarckian Welfare State, giving ordinary workers a direct stake in the State, by getting various checks and benefits, regularly, is gone. Taken up by race-based Welfare and a permanent Jihad against the White working and middle class.
It is Mr. EBT on the lower end, making life miserable for pretty much everyone, and various enthusiasms of the White Elite Upper Classes, such as "green" lunacy, hideously expensive electricity rates, banning private autos (but not limousines), flights for the average person (but not private jets) and the like.
There is no more money to be gotten out of the White middle and working class, without a French Revolution style fight over taxation. There is no legitimacy or trust or desire to fund a Welfare State oriented around Mr. EBT. This video, a trivial affair, may yet be the opening start of the widespread repudiation of the Welfare State. Drudge has linked to it from the top of his page. The NYT obviously does not want anyone to see it, nor does the rest of the media. But the very act of the Drudge Report alone (which dwarfs the page views of say, the NYT or CNN) linking it and millions of voters and taxpayers seeing it, is revolutionary.
There is no going back to the Welfare State. The Tea Party exists because ordinary White working people, of some money or struggling means, just don't believe the government exists for any other purpose other than to take money from them and give it to Mr. EBT. Barack Obama and his policies just to borrow a Marxist phrase, sharpen the contradictions and class warfare (with overt racial underpinnings) between the hi-lo team up and the White majority. White guilt and shame are poor foundations for that sort of coalition, and the "swipe, swipe" of Mr. EBT may just start the beginning of the end of the Welfare State. You cannot ask the majority of the nation to make themselves patsies forever.
...Read more
Clive Crook at the Financial Times believes only a "move to the middle" can save Obama's Presidency, but Obama encapsulates much of what the Democratic Party has become: the Anti-White Guy/anti-White Middle Class party.
Democrats rely on gerrymandered districts, with Black and Hispanic voters, and state and nationwide, on Black votes around 95%+, and Hispanic votes around 65-70%+, to win. With a about 30% of the White vote, this is often enough. And the coalition of the anti-White votes and the White elite (Steve Sailer's "hi-lo" team-up) is based on transferring money from middle class voters to Black/Hispanic patronage politicians, and folks like Mr. EBT.
At a time when unemployment is at record highs, families are stressed by ever rising food and energy and clothing costs, Clive Crook does not get it, nor do most of the establishment. Voters among the White middle and working class have rejected the Welfare State because the Welfare State does not exist for them. The Welfare State exists for Mr. EBT. A man incapable of earning a living or doing much of anything, other than "keeping it real, dog." The Bismarckian Welfare State, giving ordinary workers a direct stake in the State, by getting various checks and benefits, regularly, is gone. Taken up by race-based Welfare and a permanent Jihad against the White working and middle class.
It is Mr. EBT on the lower end, making life miserable for pretty much everyone, and various enthusiasms of the White Elite Upper Classes, such as "green" lunacy, hideously expensive electricity rates, banning private autos (but not limousines), flights for the average person (but not private jets) and the like.
There is no more money to be gotten out of the White middle and working class, without a French Revolution style fight over taxation. There is no legitimacy or trust or desire to fund a Welfare State oriented around Mr. EBT. This video, a trivial affair, may yet be the opening start of the widespread repudiation of the Welfare State. Drudge has linked to it from the top of his page. The NYT obviously does not want anyone to see it, nor does the rest of the media. But the very act of the Drudge Report alone (which dwarfs the page views of say, the NYT or CNN) linking it and millions of voters and taxpayers seeing it, is revolutionary.
There is no going back to the Welfare State. The Tea Party exists because ordinary White working people, of some money or struggling means, just don't believe the government exists for any other purpose other than to take money from them and give it to Mr. EBT. Barack Obama and his policies just to borrow a Marxist phrase, sharpen the contradictions and class warfare (with overt racial underpinnings) between the hi-lo team up and the White majority. White guilt and shame are poor foundations for that sort of coalition, and the "swipe, swipe" of Mr. EBT may just start the beginning of the end of the Welfare State. You cannot ask the majority of the nation to make themselves patsies forever.
...Read more
Sunday, August 28, 2011
What the Help Says About America and Obama
The movie "the Help" has of this writing (Friday, Aug 26, 2011) made approximately $82 million at the box office, against a production budget of only $25 million and a publicity budget quite likely of $30 million. The movie is well on its way to being at least mildly profitable, though nothing like the big-budget winners of say, Iron Man and Iron Man 2 or the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. But still, the movie has been successful. It is worth noting the reasons why the movie (and before it New York Times best-selling novel) has succeeded in what the movie says about America ... and Obama's chances of being re-elected.
Of course, a good deal of the movie's success has to do with counter-programming. It is quite simply the only chick-flick available now. Women like to go to see movies too, and the idea of say, sitting through Cowboys and Aliens or some other action film doesn't appeal to them. In the same way that Jason Statham movies often take advantage of being the only action flick around, this movie benefits from savvy scheduling. The success of the novel, of course is reflective that the bulk of the book-buying public are women. No one would argue that Twilight is a work of great mastery, but women ate up that stuff like crazy. Romance novels from Barbara Cartland on have sold well, and if instead of Fabio on the cover there is the thrill of a hunky, glittery-gay vampire lurking inside the novel, well that's just the market working to serve a hungry readership and audience.
And yes, the "help" even in say, early 1960's Jackson Mississippi was far more likely to be named Frigidaire, or Kitchenmaid, or Hoover, than anything else. Few American housewives had domestic servants of any kind, back then, and even fewer today. Those who do tend to be on the rich side of things. The reality is that Rich and Powerful Black Men employ domestic servants, and these servants tend to be illegal aliens from Mexico. Not downtrodden Black women in the 1960's caring for White babies. The real "help" was automation, and machines, that made domestic life entirely different, in rich countries first and then poor nations. Hans Rosling remembers how in Sweden, his grand-mother cried when she got her first Washing Machine:
Washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, garbage disposals, vacuum cleaners, all made domestic life far easier for the 1950's housewife. Allowing her to work outside the home in the 1960's and onward. The help was not oppressed maids in middle class houses. It was machines, that transformed the brutal work of women in the house to one of manageable chores. Meanwhile Desegregation happened not because of some noble crusade by White women and Black people, but because Whites had already left places like Jackson and New Orleans, for suburban places far from Blacks. The cheap automobile, provided by Ford, GM, and Chrysler, allowed people to move far away from the urban life, including far away from Black people, and live in air-conditioned isolation, away from the hustle and bustle.
This process had begun, first in places like New Orleans, when the St. Charles Streetcar started running in 1835. People moved out to the more genteel, and isolated places along St. Charles (originally where just a few Plantations and houses stood). The same was seen in London, where the commuting process along regional railways started around the same time. If you could avoid living in the city, it was better. Less polluted and stinking (before the advent of modern sewage systems, the city meant chamber pots emptied out onto the street, and of course horse manure everywhere), people moved out to the country the way only Kings and Emperors had before. Technology is wonderful, it allows ordinary people to get wealthier!
In the 1950's, people moved out of cities like New Orleans and Jackson, MS for the suburbs. In New Orleans, the White middle class moved to Jefferson Parish, or Metarie (home of Britney Spears), or even North Shore outposts like Slidell. Air conditioning and television replaced sitting on the front porch, desperately trying to catch any evening breeze, and gossiping with the neighbors. The great roaring White Middle Class withdrawal from public life dates to about that time.
So nope, the picture "the Help" paints of an oppressive domestic serfdom in the South in the Sixties was false. Whatever semi-serfdom operates today, is the province of celebrities and powerful people, any number of which are Black as well as White. Nearly all Americans cook their own food, wash their own cars, care for their own babies, and have no desire to change. Their only wish -- more powerful technology to make each task easier.
Rather, the key to understanding "the Help" is the basic plotline. A young White woman, Eugenia Phelan, nicknamed "Skeeter" returns from College to investigate where the maid who raised her has disappeared to, and discovering a systematic series of racial oppression ... writes a gossip book about the mal-treatment of the maids by her mother's friends, and their scandals and secrets to boot!
Yep, no standing up to violent abuse by police dogs and firehoses on national television. No investigation of secret killings and burials of civil rights workers by police, at the risk of her life. No non-violent resistance to segregation's uglier practices, with predictable violent consequences. Nope. The protagonist ... writes a gossip book. The protagonist avoids "getting married" (her mother's big dream for her) and instead succeeds in being an "important writer."
In the movie, things are even clearer. The heroine is played by the much younger and hotter Emma Stone, while the bad women are played by older actresses. If you wanted a clearer picture of what "Civil Rights" today meant, you could not find one. Civil Rights amounts to a constant status-struggle by hip young women to over-turn the older women's status and seize it for their own. This story is why the book sold so many copies, to female readers, and why the movie was successful, apart from chick-flick scheduling in the middle of "testosterone action Summer."
For a significant portion of the White, professional, and female demographic, it is always 1963. But that 1963 is not the real version, but rather a fantasy construction of place where they and their projections are the heroes, defeating the forces of evil by ... writing a gossip book.
That's pretty thin. True, Obama does well with White College-educated Women, and poorly with all other Whites:
College Educated White women: 56% approval.
College Educated White men: 38% approval.
Non-College White women: 34% approval (lowest).
Non-College White men: 35% approval.
But even White College Educated Women, prone to using Black people in internal dramas over status with other White women (there are few male characters in the movie and book "the Help") ... need to eat. Or buy gas. Or clothes. All of which have gone up in price under Obama while wages and earnings remain stagnant.
Obama benefited from a perfect storm in 2008. An economic collapse and a Republican opponent who wanted to lose to gain the respect of the NYT and his daughter, who HATES HATES HATES Sarah Palin (echo of "the Help" by the way, you can see its power). Now instead of running against the Man, he IS THE MAN. Americans want results, not a symbol. Largely, people have tuned him out. His speeches tend to be followed by yet another drop in popularity or approval. Obama lost White men voters, but gained in White women voters in 2008's Presidential election, to carry the day when adding all non-White votes on top of College Educated White women voters.
Yes, there are plenty of White College Educated women willing to play eternal status games, with "enemies" like Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachman. But as long as say Republicans avoid nominating women who bear a resemblance to say, Sissy Spacek (one of the villains in "the Help") and focus on economics and Obama's responsibility for the same, status-games will not save Obama. No matter how much women like Meghan McCain want to gossip about Sarah Palin types. "Change begins with a Whisper" (the tagline of the movie "the Help") but Hope and Change have left folks without much change ... in their pockets.
Obama seems to be basing his entire re-election campaign on appealing to the inner "Skeeter" of his White College Educated Female supporters. While it is true that he allows them to play moral superior to those they have rivalries with (again see Meghan McCain and Sarah Palin) that's thin soup these days. "The Help" shows how the Civil Rights struggle ends. In farcical idiocy, akin to the severely retarded and deformed Hapsburg Emperor who cried "I am the Emperor, and I want noodles!" at a state banquet.
The Help won't help Obama.
...Read more
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
It Won't Be a Taxi Driver Summer
One of the seminal films of the 20th Century was Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." A story of a troubled man (a Vietnam Vet) quite literally driven insane by the insane city around him. The current unrest of a "Long Hot Summer" with outright riots in London and Black "Flash Mobs" in the US is unlikely to produce any reaction other than flight and opt-out from the overwhelming mass of the White middle class public. Because Middle Class people even crazy ones have too much to lose. But opt-out and flight have their own consequences, far more severe than any random act of violence.
Here are a few scenes showing the power of screenwriter Paul Schrader and Director Scorsese's vision:
In the movie, the sick and dysfunctional city makes Travis Bickle even crazier. Only a quirk of fate leads him to kill people who need killing (the pimps, hustlers, and corrupt cops keeping a 12 year old as a prostitute) instead of the Senatorial candidate. In other words, a Breivik who kills say, vicious pimps instead of school kids on a resort island. Bickle like Breivik is of course quite scary in that his insanity is matched by organizational toughness. A corrupt, lawless city has a thriving black market in guns. Bickle is obsessive about working out. His initial idiotic dry run on the Secret Service leads to a change of plans and a sudden Mohawk (completely changing his appearance). Crazy cities create and nurture crazy people.
But that's just a movie. And real life is not a movie. In real life, Morgan Freeman is not the voice of God, but a weird guy aiming to marry his (adopted) Grand-daughter. In real life, Woody Allen is not a charmingly neurotic artist but a guy who married his step-daughter. In real life, Whoopi Goldberg is not the Wise Black Woman but a nutty host on "the View." In real life, we've had about fifty plus years of multicultural, PC-driven, "anti-racist" stuff that tolerates the kind of scum that made Bickle wish for a real rain to wash it all away.
And the type of rampages aimed against PC and Multiculturalism amount to just one: Breivik. That's it. Oh sure there's the "Beta Male Rampage" (probably not the best word for it) of disturbed guys like Cho, Sodini, and others. The killings of various jihadis, probably including the Beltway Snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo and John Mohammed. But the only guy who even approximates Travis Bickle in the last fifty years is some Norwegian guy who was a Freemason, an organic farmer, and a member of the middle class who spoke another language (English) and could write it as well.
There won't be any violence against "the Long Hot Summer" of Black Flash Mobs, and various organized lootings/beatings/robberies/arsons (as in London). Because its a LOT easier to simply run away. Opt out. Stay away.
REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are going to pay a heavy price. All those yuppies wanting to move to city centers to find better mates, are going to re-think and move to the suburbs when their leases are up. New leases and sales will be hard to come by, and heavily discounted, hurting cash flow and rates of return. Thus you'll see heavy pressure on mayors and such to do what it takes, to suppress the mobs, but likely far after anything effective short of the National Guard remains.
Meanwhile, Amazon looks to reap rewards from people stopping their mall-shopping habits in favor of online shopping. Netflix, Amazon, and other online video folks will benefit as people seek entertainment at home, and online dating places will gain as people shun city centers as mate-market auctions. Bars and restaurants will hurt, and telecom providers win, as the shift to opt-out becomes easier.
No one wants to live in Travis Bickle's world. Even in the mid 1970's, it was relatively easy to avoid the hell of NYC for suburban places. Now its even easier. Which has several strategic implications.
First, an opt-out White population is going to want specific subsidies aimed at THEM, and have little patience for the populations that in effect cleansed them out of public spaces. This means no money for Black/Hispanic public schools, and lots of money for online education. The same goes for Welfare, TANF, WIC, and so on. Travis Bickle shooting a pimp and some corrupt cops and johns doesn't fix a corrupt to the core NYC. But White flight/opt-out changes the funding completely.
Secondly, the "magic" of the First Black President is over. He's now, Tyrone Willingham. People demand results. A miserable economy, a lost AAA credit rating, a stock market dive, and a "Long Hot Summer" of Black Flash Mobs and possibly, London-style riots/arson/looting won't cut it. People expect results. Obama had about three years to produce results, and considerable good will, all gone now. Hostility and intimidation is likely to produce, not surrender but opt-out. It is not the 1960's any more. People are experiencing hard times themselves, have no sympathy for rioters, and are more likely to agree with the basic desires of a Travis Bickle if not the methods.
Third, the impact of Black Flash Mobs has been to harden racial attitudes (basically, the view that Blacks and Hispanics are dead-weight that White America would do well to shed in a desperate economic struggle). A "Long Hot Summer" won't result in vigilantes, but a ruthless restructuring to regain economic competitiveness and exclusion of non-Whites and non-Asians from most public expenditures and public life. Gone: Affirmative Action (too expensive). Gone: policies investing in urban centers (hostile territory to the White Yuppie/Middle class). Gone: investing in education and in particular physical public schools. Gone: faith in the elite to even tie their own shoelaces, much less order the nation from the food people eat to light bulbs in their homes. Gone: legitimacy or even interest in the media, which has acted to suppress information about the Black Flash Mobs.
The worst thing that would happen for the Liberal Welfare State and the associated NGOs (Ford, Pew, Annenberg, and Gates Foundations), talking heads, permanent governing class, and media hangers on would be a "Long Hot Summer" of most American cities burning down in racially motivated riots. Something like that is impossible to ignore, and will harden attitudes of the pressed White middle and working class immediately. It is not 1968. Whites are not likely to react with buy-off appeasement and guilt. Indeed, 1968 is as distant to us in 2011 as 1925 and the Jazz Age was to 1968 and the original "Long Hot Summer." Flappers and Al Capone were as relevant to the time of the Watts Riots as Martin Luther King's assassination is to us today.
Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with Welfare States is that they eventually run out of other people's money. The problem is far worse, and accelerated, when there is a huge economic dead weight of those with far lower wealth. The Wealth Gap per household is $113,000 for Whites, $6,000 for Hispanics, and $5,000 for Blacks (median net household wealth) according to the Pew Foundation.
Hard pressed White households, watching say Cleveland, Detroit, Philly, and Obama's hometown of Chicago burn, mostly fueled by Black mobs, in a "Long Hot Summer" are likely to conclude that hey, the money would go a LOT further, and be spent on THEM, if say, those people were included out of the disbursements.
People want results. Notre Dame and Washington have not hired another Black coach since Tyrone Willingham. With the great turn-over in college and pro coaches, Willingham is not coaching currently according to Wikipedia. Obama had a long leash to produce results as the First Black President, but even he had to produce results. His likely play of Chicago-style politics (all he knows) of urging the mobs forward, and then posing as "the one man able to turn off the violence" is likely to only further harden attitudes.
It won't be a Taxi Driver Summer. No matter what sort of riots and mobs happen. Bickle is a sad, crazy figure because he's totally alone, and the alienating city only makes that worse (by making nearly impossible any social connections the character wants). But he's just words on a page and a performance by a gifted actor. He wasn't and isn't real. He's just a character. Real life features not White violence in mobs or vigilantes but massive opting out and a reshaping of the social and political and economic life of America. The challenges are just too great.
...Read more
Here are a few scenes showing the power of screenwriter Paul Schrader and Director Scorsese's vision:
In the movie, the sick and dysfunctional city makes Travis Bickle even crazier. Only a quirk of fate leads him to kill people who need killing (the pimps, hustlers, and corrupt cops keeping a 12 year old as a prostitute) instead of the Senatorial candidate. In other words, a Breivik who kills say, vicious pimps instead of school kids on a resort island. Bickle like Breivik is of course quite scary in that his insanity is matched by organizational toughness. A corrupt, lawless city has a thriving black market in guns. Bickle is obsessive about working out. His initial idiotic dry run on the Secret Service leads to a change of plans and a sudden Mohawk (completely changing his appearance). Crazy cities create and nurture crazy people.
But that's just a movie. And real life is not a movie. In real life, Morgan Freeman is not the voice of God, but a weird guy aiming to marry his (adopted) Grand-daughter. In real life, Woody Allen is not a charmingly neurotic artist but a guy who married his step-daughter. In real life, Whoopi Goldberg is not the Wise Black Woman but a nutty host on "the View." In real life, we've had about fifty plus years of multicultural, PC-driven, "anti-racist" stuff that tolerates the kind of scum that made Bickle wish for a real rain to wash it all away.
And the type of rampages aimed against PC and Multiculturalism amount to just one: Breivik. That's it. Oh sure there's the "Beta Male Rampage" (probably not the best word for it) of disturbed guys like Cho, Sodini, and others. The killings of various jihadis, probably including the Beltway Snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo and John Mohammed. But the only guy who even approximates Travis Bickle in the last fifty years is some Norwegian guy who was a Freemason, an organic farmer, and a member of the middle class who spoke another language (English) and could write it as well.
There won't be any violence against "the Long Hot Summer" of Black Flash Mobs, and various organized lootings/beatings/robberies/arsons (as in London). Because its a LOT easier to simply run away. Opt out. Stay away.
REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are going to pay a heavy price. All those yuppies wanting to move to city centers to find better mates, are going to re-think and move to the suburbs when their leases are up. New leases and sales will be hard to come by, and heavily discounted, hurting cash flow and rates of return. Thus you'll see heavy pressure on mayors and such to do what it takes, to suppress the mobs, but likely far after anything effective short of the National Guard remains.
Meanwhile, Amazon looks to reap rewards from people stopping their mall-shopping habits in favor of online shopping. Netflix, Amazon, and other online video folks will benefit as people seek entertainment at home, and online dating places will gain as people shun city centers as mate-market auctions. Bars and restaurants will hurt, and telecom providers win, as the shift to opt-out becomes easier.
No one wants to live in Travis Bickle's world. Even in the mid 1970's, it was relatively easy to avoid the hell of NYC for suburban places. Now its even easier. Which has several strategic implications.
First, an opt-out White population is going to want specific subsidies aimed at THEM, and have little patience for the populations that in effect cleansed them out of public spaces. This means no money for Black/Hispanic public schools, and lots of money for online education. The same goes for Welfare, TANF, WIC, and so on. Travis Bickle shooting a pimp and some corrupt cops and johns doesn't fix a corrupt to the core NYC. But White flight/opt-out changes the funding completely.
Secondly, the "magic" of the First Black President is over. He's now, Tyrone Willingham. People demand results. A miserable economy, a lost AAA credit rating, a stock market dive, and a "Long Hot Summer" of Black Flash Mobs and possibly, London-style riots/arson/looting won't cut it. People expect results. Obama had about three years to produce results, and considerable good will, all gone now. Hostility and intimidation is likely to produce, not surrender but opt-out. It is not the 1960's any more. People are experiencing hard times themselves, have no sympathy for rioters, and are more likely to agree with the basic desires of a Travis Bickle if not the methods.
Third, the impact of Black Flash Mobs has been to harden racial attitudes (basically, the view that Blacks and Hispanics are dead-weight that White America would do well to shed in a desperate economic struggle). A "Long Hot Summer" won't result in vigilantes, but a ruthless restructuring to regain economic competitiveness and exclusion of non-Whites and non-Asians from most public expenditures and public life. Gone: Affirmative Action (too expensive). Gone: policies investing in urban centers (hostile territory to the White Yuppie/Middle class). Gone: investing in education and in particular physical public schools. Gone: faith in the elite to even tie their own shoelaces, much less order the nation from the food people eat to light bulbs in their homes. Gone: legitimacy or even interest in the media, which has acted to suppress information about the Black Flash Mobs.
The worst thing that would happen for the Liberal Welfare State and the associated NGOs (Ford, Pew, Annenberg, and Gates Foundations), talking heads, permanent governing class, and media hangers on would be a "Long Hot Summer" of most American cities burning down in racially motivated riots. Something like that is impossible to ignore, and will harden attitudes of the pressed White middle and working class immediately. It is not 1968. Whites are not likely to react with buy-off appeasement and guilt. Indeed, 1968 is as distant to us in 2011 as 1925 and the Jazz Age was to 1968 and the original "Long Hot Summer." Flappers and Al Capone were as relevant to the time of the Watts Riots as Martin Luther King's assassination is to us today.
Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with Welfare States is that they eventually run out of other people's money. The problem is far worse, and accelerated, when there is a huge economic dead weight of those with far lower wealth. The Wealth Gap per household is $113,000 for Whites, $6,000 for Hispanics, and $5,000 for Blacks (median net household wealth) according to the Pew Foundation.
Hard pressed White households, watching say Cleveland, Detroit, Philly, and Obama's hometown of Chicago burn, mostly fueled by Black mobs, in a "Long Hot Summer" are likely to conclude that hey, the money would go a LOT further, and be spent on THEM, if say, those people were included out of the disbursements.
People want results. Notre Dame and Washington have not hired another Black coach since Tyrone Willingham. With the great turn-over in college and pro coaches, Willingham is not coaching currently according to Wikipedia. Obama had a long leash to produce results as the First Black President, but even he had to produce results. His likely play of Chicago-style politics (all he knows) of urging the mobs forward, and then posing as "the one man able to turn off the violence" is likely to only further harden attitudes.
It won't be a Taxi Driver Summer. No matter what sort of riots and mobs happen. Bickle is a sad, crazy figure because he's totally alone, and the alienating city only makes that worse (by making nearly impossible any social connections the character wants). But he's just words on a page and a performance by a gifted actor. He wasn't and isn't real. He's just a character. Real life features not White violence in mobs or vigilantes but massive opting out and a reshaping of the social and political and economic life of America. The challenges are just too great.
...Read more
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Chicks Dig Jerks, Version 5,799
Chicks dig jerks. Sad, but true. The most beautiful women often choose the most jerky of men. Including violent, dangerous men. the Daily Mail has a story of another woman, killed by an ex-boyfriend/husband. Laura Ackerson, 27, was found dismembered in a creek, 1,200 miles from her North Carolina home. Her ex-boyfriend and his new wife have been charged with the crime.
This is nothing new. You can find an example of brutal murder of a young (or not so young) woman by a husband, boyfriend, or ex of that category any day of the week, in any major metropolitan area. The question is, why? The standard feminist answer is, that all men are scum, and evil, and murderous killers of women. The more accurate answer is that violent behavior even directed towards women is a turn on. As Theodore Dalyrmple noted, in "Life at the Bottom," but did not address fully, women prefer mostly violent men, even his educated, professional nurses. They'd stick by men who would physically abuse and humiliate them. Why? Because they craved that violent dominance.
It is the role of any society to rein in, control, and harness properly sexuality. Because un-channeled sex is destructive. We don't want 13 year olds having sex, even though biologically it is possible. We as a society understand the great harm, not just to the child involved but society as a whole, when that happens. We take great effort to shield adolescents from sexual activity, or at least society used to (that effort is under continual assault by Hollywood's leftists).
In the same manner, female preference for dark, dangerous, bad boys was usually not a problem, because older women, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, co-workers, neighbors, etc. had a hand in reining that behavior in. Don't be stupid, don't be slutty, don't make a mistake, don't ruin your life. Desire is what it is, but control over primal urges for women roughly paralleled the teachings over desire pushed by adult men for boys: be a man, straighten up, hold your horses, be stronger than your desire, avoid the bad girls, be a gentleman, etc.
One wonders who a guy like the accused, managed to have a kid with a very attractive woman, and then marry another woman, who while not looking good in her mugshot, is probably hotter than any office nerd beta male intermittent girlfriend. The answer of course is obvious. It was the danger and brutality itself that attracted the women in the first place.
That's just unsustainable in the long-run. A society cannot run on women, bad boys, and illegitimate kids. Most beta males, around 99.999999% of them won't do anything harmful. They just won't work. They won't go around shooting kids on some youth retreat. But they will do the absolute minimum at their jobs. Why should they work hard? To give over taxes to this guy's kids:
Or maybe this woman's kids:
You cannot get blood from a stone. Ultimately wealth is created, for things like health care, good roads, clean water to drink, safe food to eat, power flowing through the grid, by beta males. No they are not sexy, but they keep the lights on. All over the West, the lights are going out. Not just light-bulb bans (which is part of the delusion that you can mandate "sexiness' and not pay a concrete price) but the society that produces light bulbs. America and the West are doomed to be miserably poor, violent, and chaotic, as the White middle and working class joins what the Black and Latino classes have already embraced: single motherhood and bad-boy addiction.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
Anders Breivik: Beta Male Rampage
Commenters on the Left are gleefully asserting that Norway Bomber/Shooter Anders Breivik, who claims to have acted alone, and plotted for nine years, is a "conservative" thinker given how he has cited writings by prominent anti-Jihad bloggers, such as Fjordman, Larry Auster, Gates of Vienna, Atlas Shrugged, Pamela Gellar, Bat Y'eor, and more. Commenters on the Right cannot understand him, either, as posted at Gates of Vienna:
This sadistic, barbaric attack must be one of the strangest terror attacks ever. One would never think, from the killer’s online comments, that he was a mass murderer in waiting.
The killer was right-wing and anti-jihad, yes, but he was not a neo-Nazi (he was pro-Israel) or a white supremacist (he opposed the BNP because they are racist). He was Christian, but not a fanatic (he was pro-gay).
In fact he was apparently like me — liberal right. He was anti-racist, pro-gay and pro-Israel. So how on earth did someone like that become a terrorist against the West?
The answer is that politics (either left, right, nationalist, multiculturalist, anti-Jihad, pro-Jihad) had nothing to do with it. It was another … BETA MALE RAMPAGE.
We've seen this before. Breivik planned to spend 1,800 pounds on a hooker before the killing. Yes, oddly reminiscent of the Jihadis, particularly the 9/11 attackers, but a big red flag as to the real motivation. The LA Times reports that Breivik copied and pasted ... the Unabomber's manifesto as his own.
Do men kill for ideology? Surely, some will. But most murders, and particularly most mass-murders sure to wind up with some nasty punishment in one way or another, come from the more common motives. Hate, revenge, sexual frustration, mental illness (Son of Sam, hearing a neighbor's dog "speak" and command to murder), jealousy, rage, and so forth. The ugly side of human nature having to do with primal urges, not which political philosophy one adheres to. What philosophy did the Columbine killers, cross-dressers, anti-racist, adhere to? What philosophy did giggling lunatic (literally) Gerald Lee Loughner, a Jew, and member of a prominent Democratic political family, follow? What philosophy did Cho Seung Hui, or George Sodini, follow? None save the Beta Male Rampage. [The picture at the top of the post is of Cho, Sodini, and Breivik from Top clockwise.]
We've seen this before, in China, as the report here, and also here show. Chinese men, not attached to any political philosophy, go off and kill kindergartners (other men's children). The men are typically loners, without any women in their lives, or any prospect at all in the sex-balance hell that is China (selective sex abortion means about 4 men for every woman in many areas among younger people). So, being beta males they plan their rampage carefully, and kill the winners in the reproduction lottery. That's not hard to understand now, is it? Ugly in the extreme, to be sure, but there it is.
In a similar manner, the ever-present Chinese bus bombings not done by Uighur separatists are lone male, beta male rampages as shown here.
China has occasionally witnessed bus explosions staged by disgruntled farmers or laid-off workers wanting to air grievances over poverty, demolitions or corruption.
Yes, the modern Western society produces a few real winners. Alpha Males (those with the ability to project breezy, unshaken dominance and sexy assurance) get most of the desirable women, leaving the beta males to slave away. A few go nuts, crazy, and unfortunately because the wealth transfer systems of modern Western oriented society (this includes China) dissolves nationalistic, unified bonds, the targets of these rogue males, beta males on a rampage, are not leaders, kings, generals, and the like.
The targets are uniformly, children, young people, and women. The very people most males are hard-wired to protect, but because of lack of any success/investment romantically-physically, and a profoundly atomizing society that acts like acid to dissolve social bonds between people (other than non-White race based organizations like LULAC or the NAACP) the groups who should be protected become targets of unimaginable brutality and cruelty.
We saw this with Sodini. We saw it with Cho. We saw it with the Chinese Kindergarten and bus attackers. We saw it with Breivik, too.
Those on the right are struggling to understand Breivik. Why he did what he did. The man was in favor of gay rights, and opposed fundamentalist Christianity for that reason (as did the Columbine Killers, who were also pro-gay rights). Breivik condemned both Nazism and Communism for violence and the amount of dead it produced, as well as pre-Enlightenment Christendom. Breivik was pro-Israel, and dismissed the British Nationalist Party as racists, the EDL as a bunch of goons, and Vlaams Belang as "pro-Nazi."
Breivik's Facebook page (Atlas Shrugged makes an observation about how it was altered AFTER the shooting) shows his interests to be Winston Churchill, Max Manus (a Norwegian Resistance Fighter) and Machiavelli. That's not important. What a man is will NEVER be revealed by his political philosophies. [Note, "Christian" and "Conservative" were added to Breivik's Facebook page after the shooting, in post after post he describes himself as no Christian, and proud of his pagan Viking heritage.]
What reveals a man's character is what entertainment he chooses. Breivik's favorite books were listed as Kafka's "the Trial" and Orwell's "1984." I doubt he ever read them. If he did, it would seem he's frustrated by what he sees as an overweening state, crushing the life out of his own individuality. In reality he suffered no real oppression, he was not beaten, electrocuted, limbs amputated, or otherwise brutalized the way many in the Third World are regularly. None of his family were murdered by police goons or militias. The reason these books were chosen, likely is that as a nameless cog unimportant to anyone (and significantly, any woman) Breivik identified with the protagonists.
But what stands out is his favorite TV shows. Gay/Female ghettos all, and quite disturbing. The Shield, Tru Blood, Dexter, Caprica, and Stargate Universe. Only a profoundly disturbed man would find these shows attractive, given that they all push a gay man's or woman's idea of an Alpha Male.
The Shield, features an amoral, corrupt bad guy (Michael Chicklis) as the leader of an anti-Gang unit. The character murders an honest cop to conceal his corruption, and frames a gang member. This is the hero. Tru Blood is a vampire/gay-civil-rights metaphor show, the titular "Tru Blood" allowing vampires to eat synthetic blood instead of killing humans. Every normal, White guy is presented as a mouth-breathing, sub-human bigot, with the Vampires being ultra sexy and of course, ultra violent. One scene has the lead vampire (played by Stephen Moyer) breaking the neck of a female vampire during a disturbingly violent and icky sex scene. Dexter of course features Michael C. Hall as the "good" serial killer, trained by his father to only kill … other serial killers. In a most sadistic manner. Meanwhile the character pretends to be a boring beta male in a forensics lab, and dutiful and boring husband/father. Caprica is the sequel to Battlestar Galactica (the revival by Ron Moore, not the original by the late Glen A. Larson) featuring icky sex and killer robots and massive corruption and no decent lead characters. Stargate Universe is the Battlestar Galactica revival version of Stargate, with icky sex, depressing and gritty themes, and no likable lead characters.
The portrait here is of a straight guy desperately wanting to fit in with the conception of an Alpha Male, and failing. The shows all are quite female-skewing, and the fantasy (violent men who kill but are "controlled" by the hotness of a woman like Tru Blood's Anna Paquin) is pretty explicit (and disturbing). The fantasy is not Cary Grant or George Clooney (beta males, get rich, famous, work out and dress suavely!) No it is one of ultra-violence and domination, pure and simple.
Breivik was a sick, disturbed man. But his motivation was primarily sexual, and primal, not political. Unlike say, Volkert van der Graaf, the assassin of Pim Fortuyn, who van der Graaf murdered because of Fortuyn's opposition to Muslim integration and conservatism. [Fortuyn of course was famously openly gay and conservative.] No, Breivik is just another Beta Male Rampage.
Every society will have sick, deranged individuals. A society sufficiently large will have people mentally ill. The question is, how does a society deal with these people, and what constraints society-wide operate to at least limit the damage a mentally ill person can accomplish?
The answer in the West (this includes btw Coastal China) is … not much exists to limit or channel the damage into minimal violence. Most beta male losers channel their frustration into things like World of Warcraft, slacker entertainment, or the like. Amusing themselves to death, as they opt out of the race they cannot win. A small minority end up doing some very nasty violence, in a run-amok rampage. Often very carefully planned and concealed, in Breivik's case for years, supposedly. Due to the sick, winner/loser nature of the society, mentally ill beta males like Breivik don't feel any connection to kids or women. They are "other people's kids" they seek to kill, like the Chinese kindergartner attackers.
The reason is not political. It is one of the losers having their revenge on the winners. Breivik reportedly bombed the Labor Party building, and then went on an attack on Labor Party kids at the Youth camp. Important questions remain: how did the bomber make a successful fertilizer bomb, given the difficulties most terrorists have found in making them go off (the Times Square bomber Faisal Shazad for example). McVeigh practiced in the Arizona desert outside Kingman with the Fortiers, to perfect a detonation system that would work (and not blow him up, he had no intention of dying) far away from Oklahoma. Indeed it was not until the FBI traced McVeigh's movements that the feds discovered this training/practice, despite neighbors at the time complaining to police. McVeigh famously also had the help of Terry Nichols. A massive fertilizer bomb requires muscle to mix the fertilizer and diesel fuel, drums to store the mixture in, and considerable muscle to move them into a big van. It does not seem to be a one-man task.
There is the question of how, after the vehicle with the bomb blew up, (there may have been more than one, according to latest reporting) Breivik made his way to the Island Youth Camp, more than 20 miles from Downtown Oslo. With, I might add, a bag filled with guns and ammo, heavy and bulky, and with a police uniform. This suggests at a minimum another car, stashed somewhere, and quite likely a driver.
Then there are the gun restrictions in Norway, which are quite restrictive and must be approved by the Government. "Machine pistols" which are military weapons, are not available to civilians. Reportedly, Breivik used a "machine pistol" in the shootings. Gun licenses are expensive, to acquire and maintain, as is ammunition, which is also quite restricted.
There is no reporting, as of yet, how Breivik got onto the Island. He certainly did not swim with that load of guns and ammo. Meaning quite likely a private boat not a ferry (the arriving SWAT team found no boats available, and dithered as the shots rang out on the island only 1,000 yards away).
I myself suspect a helper of some sort. Perhaps a weaker personality dominated by Breivik, as in the John Mohammed/Lee Boyd Malvo Beltway Sniper mass murders, or Columbine.
But ultimately, making sense of this massacre will only happen when people face the truth. The reason, the real reason all those people died, was another Beta Male rampage. These will continue to happen, until loser-dom for Beta Males is ameliorated, or crazy people are locked up quickly (easy bet, Breivik was notably mentally ill to those who saw him in person, and nothing was done), or perhaps both. Crazy people do crazy things, and naturally our society that doles out rights and is reluctant to lock up the crazy will pay a severe price. But even so, crazy people follow only the path of winner and loserdom. It is human nature for the loser beta males afflicted with deep mental illness to want to punish those (kids, women) they feel are the "belongings" of the Alpha Male winners.
Outside of the families and friends of the slain, of course, no one really cares in Norway or elsewhere about the dead. That's the ugly but effective reality. And now that he's killed about 100 people or so, assuming Breivik is not knifed in prison, he'll have beautiful women throwing themselves at him in conjugal visits. The depressing reality -- when Joran Van Der Sloot was arrested for the murder of the Peruvian Girl, women all around the globe sent him marriage proposals. He had previously cut a wide swath among women in SouthEast Asia, on the notoriety of being the prime suspect for the murder of Natalee Holloway. Accused wife-killer Drew Peterson had hot coeds throwing themselves at him, at age 55, left and right. Scott Peterson arrived in prison to find marriage proposals from beautiful women. And Scott Peterson not only married an attractive woman, but had an attractive mistress (Amber Frye). Newly accused Dodger Stadium thug, Marvin Norwood, one of two men accused of beating Giants Fan Brian Stow, has according to his cousin who called in to KFI AM 640 Los Angeles "the John and Ken Show" a number of illegitimate kids by a number of women, all of whom he beat on a regular basis.
Violence does not (sadly) repel women, it rather attracts them, and often the most attractive rather than the least attractive. Tru Blood is not a story about a man who is devoted to his wife, changes diapers, and does the dishes. That behavior is what a "Kitchen Bitch" does, a beta male with no attraction to any woman. Rather it is about a hot chick waitressing at a diner who snags the ultra Alpha male, a dominant and violent vampire. Just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about a hot chick who first bangs a violent, sadistic vampire who kills her mentor's girlfriend (and tortures him), and then her violent, sadistic, murderous rapist (vampires Angel and Spike, respectively).
On one sick level, Breivik merely became the fantasy that women adored. The violent, dominant, killer Alpha.
This is why things like Tru Blood are important. They didn't cause the guy to go out and kill people, but as a signal of what female audiences want, it is a huge red warning flag. Because women tend in the end to get exactly the kind of men they desire.
Breivik was a time bomb waiting to go off. Mentally ill, no doubt, no women in his life at all, save his mother, and with nothing to live for save a fantasy of violence, he was going to do damage. There was no question about it, unless he had been committed early. [That he had a hand gun and hunting license is appalling -- the man was obviously mentally ill and no one examining him spotted it.] BUT … a society more healthy and robust, would have channeled that explosion of mentally ill violence towards less damaging targets: a political leader, a celebrity, or the like. Horrible and tragic, but far less damaging than that of 100 people more or less lying dead, many of them children.
Those on the anti-Jihad side are filled with despair, feeling (accurately) that this will be used to smear all anti-Jihad, anti-Islamists. They should not despair, for there was no way Europe would ever resist Jihad and islamization in the first place. If Breivik had never been born, it would not have mattered a jot. Any more than the murder of Pim Fortuyn by van der Graaf made any impression at all on the pro-Islamicization, pro-Multiculturalist, pro-Diversity forces.
Women in the West, raised to equality or even a bit more, than their male peers, naturally find them … repulsive. Beta males. Lacking the sexy! They want … well they want Vampire Bill. Or Vampire Angel. Or Vampire Spike. Or Dexter. Or Vic Mackey (the Shield). Violent, dominant, murdering men who kill with impunity, and whom they hope to control. That's the fantasy. It certainly is not … changing diapers and doing dishes. That's what a Kitchen Bitch (derisive name for a supportive beta male coined by Sandra Tsing Loh and echoed by feminist bloggers) would do. And no one wants a Kitchen Bitch.
Western men have turned into Kitchen Bitches, by and large. Being supportive, being equal, being totally lacking in violent, sexy, domination. Is it any wonder that Western women, en-masse, have rejected Western men and their civilization? In favor of non-White men who will … dominate them? Roderick Shonte Dantzler, who killed his ex-wife, his daughter, her parents, his ex-girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend's sister, his ex-girlfriend's sister's daughter, and tried to kill another ex-girlfriend, was a Black ex-con who got his ex-wife pregnant when she was 16 and he was 22. No statutory rape charges were filed. All his exes were White. No questions there, Dontzler was far preferable, to a Kitchen Bitch, because he was violent and dominant. That he was often in prison, on anti-psychotic medications, and threatened to burn his own mother's house down made no difference. Women in the West are DESPERATE for sexy dominance. So they will put up with anything.
OneSTDV notes again, the stupid White men commercials, with the hot-sexy wife who actually makes money by being a hot-shot businesswoman, continues the theme of White guys are stupid. Larry Auster had noted that DHS had produced a video with "suspicious" White guys reported by patriotic Black/Hispanic/Muslim people. This is no mystery. White guys are mostly, beta males, equal and therefore as sexually desirable as a bowl of cold oatmeal to women. Who in turn support, widely, islamization (at least they'll get domination), mass immigration, and multiculturalism (hatred of White/European culture).
No argument, facts, stats, or anything would sway White women. They want their sexy men! Women will defend a violent, dominant, Alpha male to the end, almost. Meanwhile women despise beta males who they view as weak, untrustworthy, and icky (devoid of sex appeal). As long as women in the West found most of their White male counterparts their equal or slightly inferior, they'd support all of the anti-Western agenda: mass immigration, Islamicization, diversity, PC, Multiculturalism. So they can get sexy, back.
This means the West is doomed. So there is no point in doing anything about it, or even caring much, other than sentiment and nostalgia. White women have decisively rejected White men, hence the appalling low birthrate (they don't find men sexy enough to have kids by). White women are prey to appalling fantasies about violent domination (watch night-time TV). White women find White men unsexy Kitchen Bitches, and will vote en-masse, en-bloc, for their immediate replacement by dominant non-White men. Cherie Blair famously endorsed the Burqua and fought for it, in the UK. Her sister converted to Islam. Why? Because Islam provides domination, something most women want desperately.
That women will find the real-life "Handmaid's Tale" (Margaret Atwood's book created horror among women, because the men were not sexy enough, not the domination) quite unpleasant is of course ironic. But that is human existence.
Human society nearly always flounders on sex. It is explosive, and a limited resource that cannot be spread out much. Repressing Alpha Male, and female sexuality, to a limited set of choices, as traditional Western society did, allowing women the maximum amount of freedom before hypergamy runs wild, with ugly domination fantasies, meant building a high-trust, nuclear family society that could weather lots of shocks and competition and chaos. And still come out with more wealth than ever before. The harem-building model of Mormons before repudiation of polygamy (they were poor and beset with violence and mistrust when polygamous, middle class and prosperous now), and Muslims since the religion's founding, means violence and poverty. Though women are generally happy in it, finding men dominant and violent to their liking.
In short, Breivik is a symptom of underlying causes, rather than the cause itself. The West was doomed the moment it raised up women to full equality, female sexuality being what it is, Western women found Western men unsexy, and therefore deserving of annihilation and Western society deserving of replacement. They've set about it quite well. Had Breivik never existed, the killings never happened, nothing would have changed. Western women would have led the effort to replace the White population (which they damn for producing "Kitchen Bitches") with one non-White and at least possessing sexy, dominant men. That poverty and violence will result is no matter. Western Women are not stupid, they know what they will get. But sexy is worth it, for most of them. And therefore they will get it.
One final note, it is amazing the passivity among the youth on the island. Apparently they only tried to get away, there was no attempt by the young men to overwhelm the shooter and well, kill him. The feminized, passive orientation of young men is striking, and found at Columbine, at Virginia Tech, and many other places (Montreal). Napoleon's genius was to make the average peasant a small landh0lder, with a chance at his own family and wife. His men fought like lions as a result, even after the carnage of the Revolutionary wars. Napoleon far overperformed, with this simple insight. Men and boys will fight like lions for "theirs," had they a claim on their girlfriends likely to be their wives, the young men at Virginia Tech or Montreal or the Youth Camp Island, would have suffered horrific casualties but killed the shooter. Men fight like this in the Marines, even today, doing things of amazing bravery under fire, and they are ordinary men, not Spec Ops warriors, or super-human genetically engineered fighters. The Army, Navy, and Air Force has produced men of similar bravery, decorated for heroic combat actions.
Why then the passivity? Because Kitchen Bitches don't die for an Alpha's harem. A man might die for his "brother" (created by training and combat). But he won't die for the Alpha's squeeze.
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Monday, July 11, 2011
Sleazy I-Banks and the End of Nationalism Among Elites
The Wall Street Journal is reporting (link through financialbin, WSJ behind the paywall) in their dead tree July 5th edition, that big Wall Street Investment banks and commodity firms are snapping up metals warehouses. In turn, their business practices are driving up indirectly consumer prices. More evidence of the utter corruption of the elites, and the vast social distance and disconnect between elites and ordinary Americans.
The Journal reports that about 25% of London Metal Exchange stocks of Aluminum, are sitting in Goldman-Sachs and other big Investment bank-controlled warehouses. The total rental income is about $171 million (for all the owners, combined). The warehouses in New Orleans, contain about 59% of LME supplies of zinc, netting the owners a rental income of $70 million. Also in New Orleans, about 25% of LME copper nets annual rental income of about $16 million, and 73% of LME nickel supplies nets owners about $13.4 million.
These warehouses used to be independent, until Investment banks like Goldman-Sachs, and commodities firms like Glencore, bought them up in the past few years. Users of the warehouses like Coca-Cola, complain that they were lured in by cheap rental rates, but when they asked to pull their stocks out, were told they had to wait seven months, in some cases. Goldman releases only 1,500 metric tons a day (the minimum requirement by LME) of their stocks. Obviously a short-term play designed to drive up the prices of metals on the spot market (by restricting supply from warehouses) and possibly on the futures market as well.
Further, critics like can-maker Novelis, and Coca-Cola, charge that the I-banks and big commodities firms are using a "birds eye view" of what clients put in and request to be pulled out, to spot trends and trade off customer information in the commodities markets. You might recall, it was exactly this "trading off the customer's information" that was one of the more damning things to come out of the sub-prime meltdown financial crisis investigations, largely bearing out the charges made by Michael Lewis in "the Big Short" and various other critics. Historically Goldman-Sachs has been suspected of using customers as ways to gather an information advantage, and screw everyone in the market. The preponderance of Goldman-Sachs executives in the first Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration, the Bush II Administration, and the Obama Administration only furthers that accusation.
That accusation seems spot-on with the purchase of the metals warehouses. Formerly a "backwater" the warehouses don't earn much profit. Capital expenses are large (warehouses, guards, security, people to move the metal in and out, contracts with barges and trucking firms, it is no accident these warehouses are located in major ports or on industrial traffic rivers). The expertise in running large warehouses and synergy with what amounts to trading firms are nil. But ... the information to be gathered on what customers are doing with metals (storing them, or asking to take them out) can provide a key edge in trading the metals. With deals like sub-prime a thing of the past, basically Goldman-Sachs is looking for new people to screw over.
The ABCD firms that dominate basic commodity trading (Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfuss) do so by having a huge network of spotters, counters, and other information/intelligence operatives in places like say, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, counting how much cocoa is actually being loaded into warehouses or shipped abroad. In many cases these networks providing intelligence took decades to construct (and are often highly illegal in the countries they operate in, many of them providing basic economic/commodity information that are state secrets). Agriculture is a tricky business, because sudden weather events can change almost every prediction, and often in the Third World expected harvests come in radically different due to rampant cheating one way or another.
For now, the big I-banks are seeking profits by ... well blatant manipulation of the metals spot and likely futures markets. Naturally this benefits metals producers, basically big mining companies like Xstrata or BHP Billiton. They get higher prices by restricting the supply sitting in warehouses. Of course, eventually the major users of metals will simply build warehouses themselves. And keep their data (what they put in and pull out) as private as possible. But if Coca-Cola or Novelis must build and staff their own warehouses (and nothing of course prevents them from doing so) their overhead becomes larger. Thus the prices they charge the customer in the end becomes higher.
What should have remained a staid, sedate business serving the specialized needs of big metals consumers in the US and elsewhere, has been turned upside down by what amounts to a set of elites with no boundaries or national feelings. Even Gilded Age Robber Barons had some sense of propriety, a shared nationalism that moderated the urge to gouge every last penny out of the average person. Even Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller had limits:
What we can expect is far higher prices, for consumers, in almost every product using metals: every can of soda, every bit of consumer goods containing copper (such as blue jeans with copper rivets or a laptop), or zinc, or nickel, will cost more. Eventually, trust-busting such as brought Standard Oil to heel will be needed. But laws themselves will not be enough. The "smart guys" at Goldman-Sachs will always be searching for a new customer to screw, with the end "screwee" being the average American. The same is true of the other I-banks: JP Morgan, in particular, comes to mind. So too the massive firms like Glencore, incorporated outside the US (and trivia time, formed by a buyout of Marc Rich, yes THAT Marc Rich).
The US has always had people trying to say, corner the silver market. These individuals usually came a cropper because there was always the possibility of new supply over the horizon. Mining companies could mine more silver. Politicians could bust up trusts and force supply onto the market. No one individual no matter how wealthy could stand up to the government that had to act at least sometimes to avoid massive pain on the part of voters. But the problem today has gone far beyond individuals into institutions, with the institutions themselves becoming rotten to the core.
The rot is the result of an elite that fundamentally lacks any identification with, or even understanding, of the ordinary people in the nations in which they live and work. The folks at Goldman-Sachs are not only from all over the world, the ones born in the US feel little loyalty to their fellow citizens. In a word, they lack nationalism. A tie that binds the highest of the elite, the King or the Prime Minister or the President, and the lowly private, janitor, and factory worker.
While an excess of nationalism in its worst form can result in folks goose-stepping down the Champs Elysee, that's akin to saying since food can make some people grossly obese, no one should ever, ever eat anything. That strategy is only viable for supermodels (who have apparently the super power of not eating anything, ever, and existing on cocaine and smokes). For everyone else, eating is essential. So too for nations, nationalism is essential. Like everything good in life, all is well as long as no one goes overboard.
The modern globalized world is very very good at putting some of the smartest people, and some of the most privileged and hereditary privileged people, in powerful groups and letting them run amok in screwing over their ordinary peers in nations powerful and weak alike. Blogger Half Sigma has done outstanding work noting the privileged, rich background of most of the New York Times reporters and editors. The same people essentially make up Goldman-Sachs, or Glencore, or JP Morgan's executives. Plus of course elites from India, China, and other places. Their loyalty is to themselves, their own institutions, and their own hereditary interests. Like mini-royal families in Medieval Europe, they lack even the notion of a nation-state, and national interests, and shared ties with fellow countrymen. They deny even the notion of a country, instead seeing peasants, serfs, a few middling tradesmen, all interchangeable with others in other places. The modern, international corporate world is very good at producing people like this.
Indra Nooyi may be CEO of Pepsico, but how much loyalty does she possess towards Pepsi's American workers? To Americans as a whole? Her career encapsulates the modern elites lack of nationalism. Positions at Johnson and Johnson in India, then a textile firm, then consulting with Boston Consulting Group and strategy positions with Motorola and Asea Brown Boveri. Although a naturalized US Citizen, her main appeal as CEO is her extensive ties to India's elite. I am quite sure Nooyi is a fine person, but Pepsico could not find a more qualified CEO? The results of her leadership have not been good, with Pepsi sliding to #3 among US sodas, trailing both Coke and Diet Coke. Nooyi is quoted as saying she took steps to push "healthy foods" like Quaker Oats and Gatorade and such, and not sell "flavored sugar water." Pepsi has been neglected, lacking promotion compared to Coke, and the stuff Nooyi likes (an elite taste) account for only 20% of the US Pepsico revenues.
PC makes you stupid. So does pushing trans-national elites at a company where most revenues come from US sales. An Indian born Hindu understands US consumer tastes? When her entire career has been from one "strategy" posting to another? Nothing selling, well flavored and colored sugar water? That is what Pepsico is. But the pressure and power of the elites is frightening. [Trivia time, in the CW show "Gossip Girl," one of the characters, herself a "rich girl" plans to get an internship under Nooyi.] Reasoned Sceptic notes that the business press has been light on Nooyi despite her failures to match Coca-Cola because she is both Indian and a woman. Muhtar Kent, Coke's CEO, is of course also foreign born (a Turk) but is a Coke lifer, having started selling Coke out of trucks across the US. If I wanted someone to sell flavored colored sugar water, I'd pick Kent over Nooyi. The former seems to understand (having spent most of his life doing it) how to sell that stuff, and the other doesn't. Both are elites of course, having spoken at Davos (one is always an elite if one speaks at Davos).
Any nation can withstand some corruption and greed on the part of its elites. Those flaws are part of human nature, and can at best be only curbed, not eliminated. But in the end, it is not laws (nearly always evaded in one form or another) that curbs the greed, ambition, and power of the elites. It is, or at least has been since the late 1500s and the rise of the nation-state, nationalism that has curbed the worst excesses. By instilling among even the most greedy, ruthless, and powerful of the elites, a sense that there are lines better left uncrossed. That squeezing every spare penny out of the populace was a bad job, and better go across the ocean and squeeze it out of some other poor person from another country. Nationalism, and nationalism alone, promises a small shelter, perhaps poor, but the only one the ordinary person has got, from greed and cruelty and abuse by the elites.
Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan, and Glencore will always seek advantage. They will always be looking for an edge. As long as there remain limits to what they will do, limits instilled by national feeling and solidarity, then while not perfect, the situation is tolerable for most people, most of the time. Good enough. But without those internal limits, no laws, no regulatory agency, no "perfect administration by perfect people" (not the least because no human being yet born has been perfect) will suffice. Making the urgent task not regulatory reform but the return of ...
Nationalism.
Only that promises to restrain the otherwise un-alloyed greed and shadiness of institutions run by elites like Goldman-Sachs.
...Read more
The Journal reports that about 25% of London Metal Exchange stocks of Aluminum, are sitting in Goldman-Sachs and other big Investment bank-controlled warehouses. The total rental income is about $171 million (for all the owners, combined). The warehouses in New Orleans, contain about 59% of LME supplies of zinc, netting the owners a rental income of $70 million. Also in New Orleans, about 25% of LME copper nets annual rental income of about $16 million, and 73% of LME nickel supplies nets owners about $13.4 million.
These warehouses used to be independent, until Investment banks like Goldman-Sachs, and commodities firms like Glencore, bought them up in the past few years. Users of the warehouses like Coca-Cola, complain that they were lured in by cheap rental rates, but when they asked to pull their stocks out, were told they had to wait seven months, in some cases. Goldman releases only 1,500 metric tons a day (the minimum requirement by LME) of their stocks. Obviously a short-term play designed to drive up the prices of metals on the spot market (by restricting supply from warehouses) and possibly on the futures market as well.
Further, critics like can-maker Novelis, and Coca-Cola, charge that the I-banks and big commodities firms are using a "birds eye view" of what clients put in and request to be pulled out, to spot trends and trade off customer information in the commodities markets. You might recall, it was exactly this "trading off the customer's information" that was one of the more damning things to come out of the sub-prime meltdown financial crisis investigations, largely bearing out the charges made by Michael Lewis in "the Big Short" and various other critics. Historically Goldman-Sachs has been suspected of using customers as ways to gather an information advantage, and screw everyone in the market. The preponderance of Goldman-Sachs executives in the first Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration, the Bush II Administration, and the Obama Administration only furthers that accusation.
That accusation seems spot-on with the purchase of the metals warehouses. Formerly a "backwater" the warehouses don't earn much profit. Capital expenses are large (warehouses, guards, security, people to move the metal in and out, contracts with barges and trucking firms, it is no accident these warehouses are located in major ports or on industrial traffic rivers). The expertise in running large warehouses and synergy with what amounts to trading firms are nil. But ... the information to be gathered on what customers are doing with metals (storing them, or asking to take them out) can provide a key edge in trading the metals. With deals like sub-prime a thing of the past, basically Goldman-Sachs is looking for new people to screw over.
The ABCD firms that dominate basic commodity trading (Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfuss) do so by having a huge network of spotters, counters, and other information/intelligence operatives in places like say, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, counting how much cocoa is actually being loaded into warehouses or shipped abroad. In many cases these networks providing intelligence took decades to construct (and are often highly illegal in the countries they operate in, many of them providing basic economic/commodity information that are state secrets). Agriculture is a tricky business, because sudden weather events can change almost every prediction, and often in the Third World expected harvests come in radically different due to rampant cheating one way or another.
For now, the big I-banks are seeking profits by ... well blatant manipulation of the metals spot and likely futures markets. Naturally this benefits metals producers, basically big mining companies like Xstrata or BHP Billiton. They get higher prices by restricting the supply sitting in warehouses. Of course, eventually the major users of metals will simply build warehouses themselves. And keep their data (what they put in and pull out) as private as possible. But if Coca-Cola or Novelis must build and staff their own warehouses (and nothing of course prevents them from doing so) their overhead becomes larger. Thus the prices they charge the customer in the end becomes higher.
What should have remained a staid, sedate business serving the specialized needs of big metals consumers in the US and elsewhere, has been turned upside down by what amounts to a set of elites with no boundaries or national feelings. Even Gilded Age Robber Barons had some sense of propriety, a shared nationalism that moderated the urge to gouge every last penny out of the average person. Even Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller had limits:
In spite of the formation of the trust and its perceived immunity from all competition, by the 1880s Standard Oil had passed its peak of power over the world oil market. Rockefeller finally gave up his dream of controlling all the world’s oil refining, he admitted later, “We realized that public sentiment would be against us if we actually refined all the oil.”
What we can expect is far higher prices, for consumers, in almost every product using metals: every can of soda, every bit of consumer goods containing copper (such as blue jeans with copper rivets or a laptop), or zinc, or nickel, will cost more. Eventually, trust-busting such as brought Standard Oil to heel will be needed. But laws themselves will not be enough. The "smart guys" at Goldman-Sachs will always be searching for a new customer to screw, with the end "screwee" being the average American. The same is true of the other I-banks: JP Morgan, in particular, comes to mind. So too the massive firms like Glencore, incorporated outside the US (and trivia time, formed by a buyout of Marc Rich, yes THAT Marc Rich).
The US has always had people trying to say, corner the silver market. These individuals usually came a cropper because there was always the possibility of new supply over the horizon. Mining companies could mine more silver. Politicians could bust up trusts and force supply onto the market. No one individual no matter how wealthy could stand up to the government that had to act at least sometimes to avoid massive pain on the part of voters. But the problem today has gone far beyond individuals into institutions, with the institutions themselves becoming rotten to the core.
The rot is the result of an elite that fundamentally lacks any identification with, or even understanding, of the ordinary people in the nations in which they live and work. The folks at Goldman-Sachs are not only from all over the world, the ones born in the US feel little loyalty to their fellow citizens. In a word, they lack nationalism. A tie that binds the highest of the elite, the King or the Prime Minister or the President, and the lowly private, janitor, and factory worker.
While an excess of nationalism in its worst form can result in folks goose-stepping down the Champs Elysee, that's akin to saying since food can make some people grossly obese, no one should ever, ever eat anything. That strategy is only viable for supermodels (who have apparently the super power of not eating anything, ever, and existing on cocaine and smokes). For everyone else, eating is essential. So too for nations, nationalism is essential. Like everything good in life, all is well as long as no one goes overboard.
The modern globalized world is very very good at putting some of the smartest people, and some of the most privileged and hereditary privileged people, in powerful groups and letting them run amok in screwing over their ordinary peers in nations powerful and weak alike. Blogger Half Sigma has done outstanding work noting the privileged, rich background of most of the New York Times reporters and editors. The same people essentially make up Goldman-Sachs, or Glencore, or JP Morgan's executives. Plus of course elites from India, China, and other places. Their loyalty is to themselves, their own institutions, and their own hereditary interests. Like mini-royal families in Medieval Europe, they lack even the notion of a nation-state, and national interests, and shared ties with fellow countrymen. They deny even the notion of a country, instead seeing peasants, serfs, a few middling tradesmen, all interchangeable with others in other places. The modern, international corporate world is very good at producing people like this.
Indra Nooyi may be CEO of Pepsico, but how much loyalty does she possess towards Pepsi's American workers? To Americans as a whole? Her career encapsulates the modern elites lack of nationalism. Positions at Johnson and Johnson in India, then a textile firm, then consulting with Boston Consulting Group and strategy positions with Motorola and Asea Brown Boveri. Although a naturalized US Citizen, her main appeal as CEO is her extensive ties to India's elite. I am quite sure Nooyi is a fine person, but Pepsico could not find a more qualified CEO? The results of her leadership have not been good, with Pepsi sliding to #3 among US sodas, trailing both Coke and Diet Coke. Nooyi is quoted as saying she took steps to push "healthy foods" like Quaker Oats and Gatorade and such, and not sell "flavored sugar water." Pepsi has been neglected, lacking promotion compared to Coke, and the stuff Nooyi likes (an elite taste) account for only 20% of the US Pepsico revenues.
PC makes you stupid. So does pushing trans-national elites at a company where most revenues come from US sales. An Indian born Hindu understands US consumer tastes? When her entire career has been from one "strategy" posting to another? Nothing selling, well flavored and colored sugar water? That is what Pepsico is. But the pressure and power of the elites is frightening. [Trivia time, in the CW show "Gossip Girl," one of the characters, herself a "rich girl" plans to get an internship under Nooyi.] Reasoned Sceptic notes that the business press has been light on Nooyi despite her failures to match Coca-Cola because she is both Indian and a woman. Muhtar Kent, Coke's CEO, is of course also foreign born (a Turk) but is a Coke lifer, having started selling Coke out of trucks across the US. If I wanted someone to sell flavored colored sugar water, I'd pick Kent over Nooyi. The former seems to understand (having spent most of his life doing it) how to sell that stuff, and the other doesn't. Both are elites of course, having spoken at Davos (one is always an elite if one speaks at Davos).
Any nation can withstand some corruption and greed on the part of its elites. Those flaws are part of human nature, and can at best be only curbed, not eliminated. But in the end, it is not laws (nearly always evaded in one form or another) that curbs the greed, ambition, and power of the elites. It is, or at least has been since the late 1500s and the rise of the nation-state, nationalism that has curbed the worst excesses. By instilling among even the most greedy, ruthless, and powerful of the elites, a sense that there are lines better left uncrossed. That squeezing every spare penny out of the populace was a bad job, and better go across the ocean and squeeze it out of some other poor person from another country. Nationalism, and nationalism alone, promises a small shelter, perhaps poor, but the only one the ordinary person has got, from greed and cruelty and abuse by the elites.
Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan, and Glencore will always seek advantage. They will always be looking for an edge. As long as there remain limits to what they will do, limits instilled by national feeling and solidarity, then while not perfect, the situation is tolerable for most people, most of the time. Good enough. But without those internal limits, no laws, no regulatory agency, no "perfect administration by perfect people" (not the least because no human being yet born has been perfect) will suffice. Making the urgent task not regulatory reform but the return of ...
Nationalism.
Only that promises to restrain the otherwise un-alloyed greed and shadiness of institutions run by elites like Goldman-Sachs.
...Read more
Friday, July 8, 2011
NBC's Diversity Bet Fails
[Editor's note: work/family issues required a break from blogging. Hence the lengthy hiatus.]
NBC's past season, from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011, was a massive bust. NBC's big bet on diversity failed. Gone, was "Undercovers" (a glamorous Black couple running a high-end catering service are also super-sexy uber-spies). The show failed fairly quickly, and was pulled in November 2010. "Chase" featuring a waify blonde woman all of 120 pounds beating up on hefty evil White guy fugitives, as an uber-US Marshall, in February of 2011. "The Event" with an Obama-like President uncovering an evil White guy conspiracy involving Aliens was canceled in May 2011. So too was "Outsourced," the wacky comedy about the hilarity of firing Americans and moving a call center to India. So too was "Law and Order Los Angeles," with the usual Law and Orderen lineup of evil White guys (is there anything they can't do?) and downtrodden non-White victims (not reminiscent of the Los Angeles I know, where the Azusa 13 Gang was indicted by the US Attorney for hate crimes against Blacks).
Diversity just did not pull in viewers. NBC's big bet came a cropper. The failure was so bad, across the board, that NBC even ... renewed "Chuck" for a fifth and final season (a limited 13 episode run). Likely that move was taken in consideration of a likely NFL lockout. Given that "Chuck" is the only NBC show (and outside Fox's Sunday animated shows, one of the few on network TV that at all) that skews male. NBC tried betting big on "diversity" and hoped that would draw in lots of female viewers. Who in turn are mostly White. The dirty little secret is that while Univison and Telemundo are posting dramatic gains in audiences, their night-time audiences are still tiny. Less even than the CW, itself a baby netlet often drawing fewer than one million viewers for some shows. NBC thought that going all out for "Diversity" would provide an alternative to what other networks were doing. In this they were correct. Where NBC went wrong was in thinking that the mostly White/Female audience was interested in this diversity. By and large, they were not.
Now NBC has resorted to lots of comedies, crummy reality shows, and hoping NFL football comes back in its new 2011 Fall Lineup. The only things original are the "Sliding Doors" type dual-reality show "Awake" (in one reality his wife is dead, in another his son), and "Grimm" (about a police procedural involving ... Grimm Fairytale characters). These may fail. But NBC should be applauded for at least taking the risk. Both are a bit different, offbeat, and not the same old procedural stuff.
[Interestingly enough, both NBC and CBS, during their fireworks broadcasts on the Fourth of July, heavily promoted their upcoming shows, the first time I can recall them doing so. It seems they feel the need to expend more time/money in promotion than in years past.]
CBS only has "Person of Interest" with Jesus (Jim Caviezel from "the Passion") and Michael Emerson (the bad guy from "Lost") about a covert op teamed with a software mogul aiming to stop crimes before it happens. Basically, a variant of the Equalizer, done decades ago, but hey that was a good show. Everything else is either a renewal or tired re-run (Poppy Montgomery from "Without a Trace" has a new show "Unforgettable" about a detective who cannot forget anything). "A Gifted Man" is a weepy-ghost-chick-flick show (so naturally it should do well). I'm shocked Katherine Heigl is not in this one.
ABC has a "Mad Men" clone ("Pan Am") and a Charlie's Angels remake, plus a woman in jeopardy Lifetime Movie Network series ("Missing") with a global twist, and another with a "Lost" in the Amazon style twist ("the River") and a couple of night-time soaps ("Revenge" and "Good Christian Belles") the latter of which was changed from "Good Christian Bitches." Nothing of interest to anyone not gay and possessing a Y chromosome. "Once Upon a Time" has again, the Grimm Fairytales characters inhabiting the modern world, in the town of "Storybrooke" seeming to mix Harry Potter with conspiracy-theory heavy shows like "Lost" or "Fringe."
Fox has the usual assortment of lame comedies, plus the dramas "Terra Nova" (much delayed) about a family moving to the Earth of 80 million years ago to escape Global Warming and pollution, or just the neighbors, or something. Plus mid-season replacements "the Finder" (about an Iraq War vet with a talent for finding things that have gone missing) and "Alcatraz" (another "Lost" clone about criminals from Alcatraz who never age and go on killing sprees, or something.
CW has "Ringer" with Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, as a woman on the run from the mob posing as her missing twin sister ... who is herself pursued by unknown enemies. The rest is teen witches, teen vampires, and so on.
FX has picked up for pilot Brian Michael Bendis (who did an excellent turn on Marvel's "Daredevil" years back) based on his own comic book (he retains ownership in other words) "Powers." The series features gritty cops investigating crimes committed against ordinary humans and super-powered people by people with ... powers. Meanwhile ABC is prepping for the following season a number of Marvel properties, including "the Incredible Hulk," "AKA Jessica Jones," and "Cloak and Dagger." [Sadly for ABC/Disney, Marvel's drop-off in superhero quality from their first tier is substantial. "Jessica Jones" and "Cloak and Dagger" are both "diverse" and low-rent superheroes, who while having been around since the 1970s never really caught on. By contrast DC has tons of superheroes, poorly used, with rabid followings.]
As usual, AMC has a violent/provocative show ("Hell on Wheels" about the building of the Transcontinental Railway) and various other basic cable and premium cable outlets have new series they will premiere in dribs and drabs.
But of all of them, NBC has fallen the farthest, and the hardest, from a state of grace. NBC, after all, was the network of such male-oriented shows as "the A-Team," "Miami Vice," "Hunter," "Misfits of Science," along with "Hill Street Blues," "Seinfeld," "St. Elsewhere," "Crime Story," "Private Eye," and even "the Rockford Files." Heck what I would not give for a DVD release of "the New Maverick," (the abortive, one-season western with the great James Garner replaying his Brett Maverick character). While CBS may have had "the Equalizer," and ABC briefly "Max Headroom," NBC remained the place for guys in the 1980's and even into the 1990's. Heck as recently as 2009, NBC aired "Life," one of the most shockingly tough-guy shows ever put on network TV.
As Newton Minnow said in his Vast Wasteland Speech
While Minnow is often quoted as noting the vast wasteland, the first part of his speech is often forgotten. I have seen over the course of my life TV go from a purveyor, even though flawed, of a mass culture and matching model of traditional masculinity (do the right thing, don't stop trying) to one of total camp, attention-whoring, and paralyzing uniformity. A place where men exist only as female-oriented studs or gays, without even a smidgen of action, adventure, and excitement.
TV, when it is good, is simply unbeatable. Its restrictions on budgets and effects are matched by the advantage of time. A typical movie will have to clock in at around 2 hours, more or less. A TV series, going 22 episodes, even with only 43 minutes devoted to story (less commercials) can still clock in at around 17 hours. That 17 hours allows for a richer story to be told. One with more detailed and developed characters, one with more complex and emotionally arousing storylines. TV at its best helps unify the country and provide (all the more necessary with the collapse of church attendance and religion) a unified morality, and one based on what the people themselves believe, not what elites in Hollywood and NYC believe.
So, it has been good and refreshing to see NBC's diversity line-up fail. Other networks have followed suit. None have launched copies of what has failed at NBC. No laugh-a-minute yuks about outsourcing to India, or super-glamorous super-spy couples who are Black, or Obama-clones fighting off Aliens and corporate White bad guys. Instead, NBC has basically punted, relying on junk reality, a final season of "Chuck," (at least Adam Baldwin will be on TV again in the role of John Casey, he's completely hilarious) and two new series trying something a bit different. Even so that network will have a huge Sunday night hole if the NFL (hopefully) remains on lockout. ABC, CBS, FOX, and CW are merely repeating in new shows what they've always done before. More soaps for ABC, more procedurals for CBS, more big-budget Sci-Fi for FOX, and hunky magic teens for CW.
Eventually, one network will have to take a chance to break from the pack. More of the same fighting over a constantly declining female audience will not cut it. "Diversity" and other tricks, aping "Lost" or pushing a big-budget (soon to be trimmed) Spielberg-driven Dinosaur show won't do it. "Terra Nova" seems set for the success of "the Young Indiana Jones" or "Amazing Stories." Back when Spielberg was not corrupted by a posse of toadies telling him his every brain fart was genius, he made some pretty compelling movies. He's been consistently bad in TV, however, not realizing that TV requires story-telling emotion over a budget always under assault. The network most desperate is obviously ... NBC. So it was good that "Diversity" failed. Nothing gets network attention (and all the networks pay attention) like spectacular failure.
Sooner or later someone at a network will take a gamble on men, and provide a staple of cheap, entertaining, and amusing male-skewing shows. The country will be better off, because traditional male-oriented shows for the most part must embody fairly conservative values. Honor your word, show physical and emotional courage, stand up and fight, protect the weak, punish the wicked. Those are the stories men of all ages are interested in, and are almost completely absent on the TV screen every night. Let's hoping those stories return soon.
...Read more
NBC's past season, from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011, was a massive bust. NBC's big bet on diversity failed. Gone, was "Undercovers" (a glamorous Black couple running a high-end catering service are also super-sexy uber-spies). The show failed fairly quickly, and was pulled in November 2010. "Chase" featuring a waify blonde woman all of 120 pounds beating up on hefty evil White guy fugitives, as an uber-US Marshall, in February of 2011. "The Event" with an Obama-like President uncovering an evil White guy conspiracy involving Aliens was canceled in May 2011. So too was "Outsourced," the wacky comedy about the hilarity of firing Americans and moving a call center to India. So too was "Law and Order Los Angeles," with the usual Law and Orderen lineup of evil White guys (is there anything they can't do?) and downtrodden non-White victims (not reminiscent of the Los Angeles I know, where the Azusa 13 Gang was indicted by the US Attorney for hate crimes against Blacks).
Diversity just did not pull in viewers. NBC's big bet came a cropper. The failure was so bad, across the board, that NBC even ... renewed "Chuck" for a fifth and final season (a limited 13 episode run). Likely that move was taken in consideration of a likely NFL lockout. Given that "Chuck" is the only NBC show (and outside Fox's Sunday animated shows, one of the few on network TV that at all) that skews male. NBC tried betting big on "diversity" and hoped that would draw in lots of female viewers. Who in turn are mostly White. The dirty little secret is that while Univison and Telemundo are posting dramatic gains in audiences, their night-time audiences are still tiny. Less even than the CW, itself a baby netlet often drawing fewer than one million viewers for some shows. NBC thought that going all out for "Diversity" would provide an alternative to what other networks were doing. In this they were correct. Where NBC went wrong was in thinking that the mostly White/Female audience was interested in this diversity. By and large, they were not.
Now NBC has resorted to lots of comedies, crummy reality shows, and hoping NFL football comes back in its new 2011 Fall Lineup. The only things original are the "Sliding Doors" type dual-reality show "Awake" (in one reality his wife is dead, in another his son), and "Grimm" (about a police procedural involving ... Grimm Fairytale characters). These may fail. But NBC should be applauded for at least taking the risk. Both are a bit different, offbeat, and not the same old procedural stuff.
[Interestingly enough, both NBC and CBS, during their fireworks broadcasts on the Fourth of July, heavily promoted their upcoming shows, the first time I can recall them doing so. It seems they feel the need to expend more time/money in promotion than in years past.]
CBS only has "Person of Interest" with Jesus (Jim Caviezel from "the Passion") and Michael Emerson (the bad guy from "Lost") about a covert op teamed with a software mogul aiming to stop crimes before it happens. Basically, a variant of the Equalizer, done decades ago, but hey that was a good show. Everything else is either a renewal or tired re-run (Poppy Montgomery from "Without a Trace" has a new show "Unforgettable" about a detective who cannot forget anything). "A Gifted Man" is a weepy-ghost-chick-flick show (so naturally it should do well). I'm shocked Katherine Heigl is not in this one.
ABC has a "Mad Men" clone ("Pan Am") and a Charlie's Angels remake, plus a woman in jeopardy Lifetime Movie Network series ("Missing") with a global twist, and another with a "Lost" in the Amazon style twist ("the River") and a couple of night-time soaps ("Revenge" and "Good Christian Belles") the latter of which was changed from "Good Christian Bitches." Nothing of interest to anyone not gay and possessing a Y chromosome. "Once Upon a Time" has again, the Grimm Fairytales characters inhabiting the modern world, in the town of "Storybrooke" seeming to mix Harry Potter with conspiracy-theory heavy shows like "Lost" or "Fringe."
Fox has the usual assortment of lame comedies, plus the dramas "Terra Nova" (much delayed) about a family moving to the Earth of 80 million years ago to escape Global Warming and pollution, or just the neighbors, or something. Plus mid-season replacements "the Finder" (about an Iraq War vet with a talent for finding things that have gone missing) and "Alcatraz" (another "Lost" clone about criminals from Alcatraz who never age and go on killing sprees, or something.
CW has "Ringer" with Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, as a woman on the run from the mob posing as her missing twin sister ... who is herself pursued by unknown enemies. The rest is teen witches, teen vampires, and so on.
FX has picked up for pilot Brian Michael Bendis (who did an excellent turn on Marvel's "Daredevil" years back) based on his own comic book (he retains ownership in other words) "Powers." The series features gritty cops investigating crimes committed against ordinary humans and super-powered people by people with ... powers. Meanwhile ABC is prepping for the following season a number of Marvel properties, including "the Incredible Hulk," "AKA Jessica Jones," and "Cloak and Dagger." [Sadly for ABC/Disney, Marvel's drop-off in superhero quality from their first tier is substantial. "Jessica Jones" and "Cloak and Dagger" are both "diverse" and low-rent superheroes, who while having been around since the 1970s never really caught on. By contrast DC has tons of superheroes, poorly used, with rabid followings.]
As usual, AMC has a violent/provocative show ("Hell on Wheels" about the building of the Transcontinental Railway) and various other basic cable and premium cable outlets have new series they will premiere in dribs and drabs.
But of all of them, NBC has fallen the farthest, and the hardest, from a state of grace. NBC, after all, was the network of such male-oriented shows as "the A-Team," "Miami Vice," "Hunter," "Misfits of Science," along with "Hill Street Blues," "Seinfeld," "St. Elsewhere," "Crime Story," "Private Eye," and even "the Rockford Files." Heck what I would not give for a DVD release of "the New Maverick," (the abortive, one-season western with the great James Garner replaying his Brett Maverick character). While CBS may have had "the Equalizer," and ABC briefly "Max Headroom," NBC remained the place for guys in the 1980's and even into the 1990's. Heck as recently as 2009, NBC aired "Life," one of the most shockingly tough-guy shows ever put on network TV.
As Newton Minnow said in his Vast Wasteland Speech
When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
While Minnow is often quoted as noting the vast wasteland, the first part of his speech is often forgotten. I have seen over the course of my life TV go from a purveyor, even though flawed, of a mass culture and matching model of traditional masculinity (do the right thing, don't stop trying) to one of total camp, attention-whoring, and paralyzing uniformity. A place where men exist only as female-oriented studs or gays, without even a smidgen of action, adventure, and excitement.
TV, when it is good, is simply unbeatable. Its restrictions on budgets and effects are matched by the advantage of time. A typical movie will have to clock in at around 2 hours, more or less. A TV series, going 22 episodes, even with only 43 minutes devoted to story (less commercials) can still clock in at around 17 hours. That 17 hours allows for a richer story to be told. One with more detailed and developed characters, one with more complex and emotionally arousing storylines. TV at its best helps unify the country and provide (all the more necessary with the collapse of church attendance and religion) a unified morality, and one based on what the people themselves believe, not what elites in Hollywood and NYC believe.
So, it has been good and refreshing to see NBC's diversity line-up fail. Other networks have followed suit. None have launched copies of what has failed at NBC. No laugh-a-minute yuks about outsourcing to India, or super-glamorous super-spy couples who are Black, or Obama-clones fighting off Aliens and corporate White bad guys. Instead, NBC has basically punted, relying on junk reality, a final season of "Chuck," (at least Adam Baldwin will be on TV again in the role of John Casey, he's completely hilarious) and two new series trying something a bit different. Even so that network will have a huge Sunday night hole if the NFL (hopefully) remains on lockout. ABC, CBS, FOX, and CW are merely repeating in new shows what they've always done before. More soaps for ABC, more procedurals for CBS, more big-budget Sci-Fi for FOX, and hunky magic teens for CW.
Eventually, one network will have to take a chance to break from the pack. More of the same fighting over a constantly declining female audience will not cut it. "Diversity" and other tricks, aping "Lost" or pushing a big-budget (soon to be trimmed) Spielberg-driven Dinosaur show won't do it. "Terra Nova" seems set for the success of "the Young Indiana Jones" or "Amazing Stories." Back when Spielberg was not corrupted by a posse of toadies telling him his every brain fart was genius, he made some pretty compelling movies. He's been consistently bad in TV, however, not realizing that TV requires story-telling emotion over a budget always under assault. The network most desperate is obviously ... NBC. So it was good that "Diversity" failed. Nothing gets network attention (and all the networks pay attention) like spectacular failure.
Sooner or later someone at a network will take a gamble on men, and provide a staple of cheap, entertaining, and amusing male-skewing shows. The country will be better off, because traditional male-oriented shows for the most part must embody fairly conservative values. Honor your word, show physical and emotional courage, stand up and fight, protect the weak, punish the wicked. Those are the stories men of all ages are interested in, and are almost completely absent on the TV screen every night. Let's hoping those stories return soon.
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