This Week in Reaction

Jim Donald interprets Radish’s Karl Boetel on the meaning of racism. “Racist” is an epithet. Pure and simple. Never has been anything but that. Racism literally did not exist prior to the 1930s, during which the idea “that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race” went from being profoundly obvious to all English speakers (and presumably everyone else), to being a “theory” which, therefore, needed a name.

So the reactionary strategy should not be to make peace with the term “racist”, i.e., as in an irrational bias against those of other, especially less accomplished, races. No such meaning ever existed. It seems improbable that it has much of a chance going forward. Accept “racist” as the meaningless epithet that it is, and always has been (like “poo-poo-head”).

BTW, stratospherically high praise from Jim for Radish:

Radish is replacing Moldbug, with lengthy, slow essays, that marshal all the facts without clearly pushing the conclusion, leaving a mental time bomb to slowly detonate as the implications slowly dawn.

Agreed.

Speaking of which… Radish on Brevik’s Norway (and Mandela’s South Africa). Can’t remember if Karl was on time last Friday or not, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Book reviews from Foseti: Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An America Autopsy and Robt. Welch’s The Blue Book. Glad someone’s actually reading. [Note to self: read, you idiot!] LeDuff reports,

The only difference between Detroit and the Third World in terms of corruption is Detroit don’t have no goats in the street.

Foseti concludes,

Apparently, ignoring the death, chaos, destruction and tragedy of Detroit is the politically correct thing to do.

In Sciency News, dropping 20,000 bouncy balls out of a helicopter now counts a science “experiment”. Empirical data suggest that bouncy balls do bounce. Yep, that oughta keep us on pace with the Russians. (Via Wilhelm Durand.)

In his valuable series Profiling Cathedral Clerics, Scharlach analyzes: Charles K. Gifford, Wealthy Professional Busybody.

Anomalyuk diagrams the Modern Structure (aka. The Cathedral).

In an extraordinary display of anti-scientific crimethink, Isegoria dares ask the question: Why does an absence of traffic rules work well in England but not in Haiti? (Probably one of those “uninteresting” questions that Harald Eia kept asking those Norwegian scientists.)

Malcolm Pollack reports that, once upon a time (within the lifetime of many still living), respectable, eminent, mainstream historians used to say stuff like:

The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival. Since Nature (here meaning total reality and its processes) has not read very carefully the American Declaration of Independence or the the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man, we are all born unfree and unequal; subject to our physical and psychological heredity, and to the customs and traditions of our group; diversely endowed in health and strength, in mental capacities and qualities of character.

Not only is reality racist, it is also misogynist. You can’t make this shit up. (Via Anissimov on Twitter.)

Speaking of misogynist reality, Elspeth says women just might not be able to have it all. Career (usually caring for other people’s children or serving a man other than your husband) or family? Choose wisely. She notes:

College and the marketplace will always be there. The vitality, fertility, and the openness of heart and mind that comes with youth will not.

Reality is also climate skepticist. EPA-regulated pollutant CO₂ has a fertilization effect on plants in arid regions. The looming AGW apocalypse may yet be averted. (Via Dyspepsia Generation.)

Assistant Village Idiot on the soft bigotry of high expectations—successful people downplaying their inborn gifts, and chalking up success to mere hard work → “If I can achieve my dreams, so can you.” Maybe. Is there a Plan B?

Paging Anonymous over at Alrenous’:

Commercials featuring “social justice” proponents wearing silly homemade superhero costumes and doing silly acts of do-gooderism [in] which they completely screw up, humiliate themselves, and/or harm themselves.

If you want to win, the Antiversity should be a savvy advertising agency/think tank, producing ten minute commercials.

…

The messages should be subversive. Not authoritarian or anti-authoritarian, but invariably anti-progressive. Themes such as all-white families, hillbillies putting one over on or outsmarting urban blacks and rich liberals alike. Men triumphing over pouting women in contests, races to the checkout aisle in stores, etc.

Things that cause the liberal psyche to fester and chafe. The idea is to cut to the quick of the ideas of equality, multiculturalism, democracy, women’s suffrage, diversity, worker’s rights, Judaism, Islam, race-mixing, gay marriage, communism, higher education, psychology, environmentalism, women’s reproductive rights, gun control, the Hippie Movement, vegetarianism, globalism, financial protectionism, centralized banking, slave emancipation, etc.

Every time they turn on the television or surf the web,they should read a message addressed to them which skewers one or all of their most deeply held beliefs.

[Handle, was that you?] Alright. Make it so, gentlemen!

That Last Psychiatrist pokes his or her head up from the drudgery of writing his or her porn story.

That’s it for now… til next “week”… The Reactivity Place, Over and Out.