Whenever three-fourths of the public says government is the country’s biggest problem, that majority includes millions of non-ideological independents and moderates who just want to see American optimism and prosperity restored. They are more open to the conservative message now than they have been since 1980. So, don’t screw it up, Republicans.
They’ll screw it up.
Islam asks the important questions (via):
“My question is whether I am permitted to allow one of the mujahideen access to my anus, if my intentions are honorable, and the purpose is to train for Jihad by widening my anus.”
The sheik praised Allah and said: “In principle, sodomy is forbidden. However, Jihad is more important. It is the pinnacle of Islam. If sodomy is the only way to reach this pinnacle of Islam, then there is no harm in it.
Allahpundit estimates:
Odds that this is a prank played on the credulous host by some viewer, possibly the MEMRI guys themselves, who simply couldn’t resist: 40 percent. Odds that it’s a legit query, proof that the mujahedeen’s willingness to sacrifice for jihad has taken on painful new dimensions: 40 percent. Odds that the guy posing the question is the world’s dumbest would-be terrorist, whose “recruiter” is really, really eager to start “training” him: 20 percent.
Mass idiocy diagnosed at AoS:
Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.
Give a man a Cult of Fish, which talks a lot about the Wonders of Fish and the cult-leaders’ ability to provide fish to all who want them (despite not doing so), and then he won’t mind that you’re not giving him any fish or teaching him how to fish either.
Because you’ve given him something better. You’ve given his empty life a semblance of meaning, and you’ve given his incoherent and craven thoughts some structure.
And he’ll thank you for that forever. Even though, still, no fish.
He’ll blame the Cult’s list of approved devils for the lack of fish, and he’ll praise you for your wondrous intentions to provide fish.
Or at least your determination to talk a lot about fish.
There are hints of a theme here:
From a TC piece comment by ‘Bah': “Neoreactionaries should really move to North Korea, it’s much closer to what they want for the world.”
David Brin: “Some of you know the experiment to which he refers. North and South Korea.”
Charlie Stross (in his own comment thread): “The reason I think the reactionaries are full of shit is because we have a modern-day poster child for the hereditary king of a nation that embodies all their declared virtues: Kim Jong-Un.”
(Moldbug responds to this ‘analysis’. Much more by others on the TC thread.)
If anyone finds the variant of Neoreaction espoused here indistinguishable from Juche, I’m just going to suck it up.
“The thing is, now that I have been made aware of the phenomenon, I see it everywhere …”
Commenter ‘augurae’ at the TC Colloseum:
I believe these people are stupidest and most dangerous people on the planet. But it would be lying if I said I didn’t share some of their ideas: for exemple, I think that if prior to, or after the second world war, we killed all the reactionaries and other fascists-friendly people, we would’ve prevented the situation we are in today and be way further in term of technology, medicine, economy, social and global peace…
People who prone social darwinism are the people who don’t invent or change shit, except for the worse, and I mean the worse periods in humanity’s History like the Middle Age or WWII. Moreover they are dangerous, racist, retrograde people who should be killed.
Liberal humanists — you have to love them.
Klint Finley at Tech Crunch suspects something is going on:
Incidentally, Thiel’s Founders Fund is one of the investors in Srinivasan’s company Counsyl. The co-founder of Yarvin’s startup Tlon was one of the first recipients of the Thiel Fellowship. Anissimov was the media director of the Thiel-backed Machine Intelligence Institute (formerly known as the Singularity Institute). It’s enough to make a conspiracy theorist’s head spin, but I’m not actually suggesting that there’s a conspiracy here. I don’t think Peter Thiel is part of some neoreactionary master plot — I don’t even necessarily think he’s a neoreactionary. But you can see that a certain set of ideas are spreading through out the startup scene. Neoreactionary ideas overlap heavily with pickup artistry, seasteading and scientific racism (more on that later), and this larger “caveman cult” has an impact on tech culture, from work environments to the social atmosphere at conferences.
[You might know Yarvin by another name]
No one’s exactly saying it’s a fiendish plot …
ADDED: Scharlach is following developments (here, and here). More from Amos & Gromar, and Anarchopapist.
Bryce Laliberte tweeted a link to this bizarre Atlantic article by Richard Florida, which has me trawling down for the ‘idiots’ tag. It can’t be assumed that writers choose their own headlines, but it’s entitled The Paradox of Diverse Communities, and proceeds to ‘argue':
Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.” […] These findings are sobering. Because homophily and proximity are so ingrained in the way humans interact, the models demonstrated that it was impossible to simultaneously foster diversity and cohesion “in all reasonably likely worlds.” In fact, the trends are so strong that no effective social policy could combat them, according to [Zachary] Neal. As he put it in a statement, “In essence, when it comes to neighborhood desegregation and social cohesion, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
What does it say about the state of the contemporary liberal mind that truism and paradox are no longer distinguishable concepts?
Salon has been bat-shit crazy for a long time, but right now it’s really going over the edge. It’s almost as if the people there are getting worried about something.
[Thanks to VXXC for pointers into the bin]
My personal pick for comedy gold goes to the article on right-wing brain washing (5th link), which includes this priceless classic: “He believed it when Rush Limbaugh told him that climate change is a hoax. He called Al Gore an ‘asshole’ even after watching the entire An Inconvenient Truth …” (Especially funny for me because I knew someone like that once — he thought Hitler was a dangerous demagogue, even after watching Triumph of the Will.)
Panic! They’re so brain-washed they don’t even believe our propaganda any more.
ADDED: Da Tech Guy EBT follow-up.
Trolls are funny, so long as they’re ruthlessly eliminated.
Firstly, they seem to be shocked and appalled to find that neoreactionary blogs are unconstrained by the masochistic principles of ultra-liberal comments policy.
Secondly, they totally miss the way relevant incentives line up, especially right now, given the debates unfolding about our own micro-cultural dysgenics. Comments are not any kind of asset to be welcomed with gratitude, unless they’re intelligent, appropriately directed, and reasonably civil. Otherwise, they’re just pollution. Why on earth — in an environment cross-cut by discussions about keeping well-meaning, polite-but-dim commentary at bay — would anybody expect the door to be held open to hostile snarls, snarky one-liners, insults, and disposable trash-talk?
Outside in has benefited immensely from some of the most brilliant commentary on the web. It takes very seriously the warning — most insistently from Vladimir — that the rational expectation is for entropy, so that high-quality discussion cannot at all be taken for granted. In consequence, the private army here is simply itching to string up a few random commentators as a sacrifice to Malthus. And then some graffiti-clad, obnoxious drunk, drooling troll stumbles it …
