This Week in Reaction

Jim reports that the Congressional Budget Office is predicting lower deficits relative to GDP. So it’s high time you stop worrying and learn to love Government Spending.

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Filed under: “Why can’t they both lose?”: I’m sure you’ve all long been concerned about the over-representation of white women cast in The Vagina Monologues. Well Columbia University is finally doing something (the hell) about it. (via Malcolm Pollack.)

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Handle’s very brief, O so brief, take of Yglesias’ Immigrants Create Jobs post. Also, burn me once, shame on you; burn me 473 times, shame on me. And this:

So, while it might be possible to build manned fighter jets capable of taking turns at 20g, it would be pointless for us to do so because it would turn the pilot’s brains into pulp. In general, nothing should be built that exceeds the potential of the individuals who must wield it. This category includes the governance of organizations.

Easy, we’ll just build better pilots’ brains.

The Cathedral’s oldest extant missionary group, National Geographic, takes notice of Bitcoin:

But what Bitcoin also does is make digital payments possible for people who not only don’t have PayPal, but don’t have a functioning credit system. In many parts of Africa, Latin America, and south Asia, most people have no access to credit or digital payments; with Bitcoin, that infrastructure comes for free.

That’s the ticket: If you oppose Bitcoin, you’re keeping down (browner) developing nations (and therefore prolly rayciss). Clerical representative, Timothy Carmody, goes on to extol the humane virtues of the digital currency:

The area with the biggest potential for Bitcoin worldwide is probably international remittances: money sent home by workers living abroad. Currently, this money has to be handled by several intermediaries: banks, wire services, and currency exchanges all take their cut. … Western Union’s profit margins are enormous for an intermediary, nearly 16 percent, and most of its costs are devoted to the technologies moving money from one place to another, guaranteeing the legitimacy of the transfer. In short, Western Union spends and earns billions to do what Bitcoin does for free.

Instead of Western Union, migrant workers (or businesses operating on their behalf) could use Bitcoin to send payments from one country to another through email, without worry of fraud or needing to support an elaborate exchange or credit market.

It would be real-time, immediate settlement at a fraction of the cost. In ten years, instead of international drugs, Bitcoin could act as a genuine lingua franca for international work.

Actually, I agree: Sound currency is fundamentally humane—more humane than Cathedral NGOs can possibly imagine.

The Last Journalist, Chuck Ross, is all over the latest almost surely bogus racist hoax. Used to be, you’d have to injure yourself, or be really good at faking it, to win this kind of attention and prize money: “Jenkins purchased a car with the windfall.”

And speaking of cars, Nick Land on “social” (for low values of social) gamesmanship

The ‘mainstream’ neoreactionary account of American political history is that of reiterated Chicken games between progressives and conservatives, in which conservatives always swerve. This analytical framework, despite its crudity, explains why conservatives consider their opponents to be intoxicated lunatics (i.e. winners) whilst they are sober and responsible (i.e. losers). As traditionally positioned, conservatives are the principal social stake-holders, and thus primarily obligated to avoid mutual destruction. It is essential to conservatism that it cannot take things (domestically) to the brink. Its incompetence at Chicken is thus constitutional.

And speaking of Nick Land, Jason Kuznicki catches him in the act of not wretching violently enough at the Evil Spectre of “Race Realism” and proceeds to go all Sunday School on Land’s ass. Witch-Hunters gotta hunt witch. Land’s takes his very English bow here.

Vox Day, upon the 7,136,219th victim of domestic assault taken into custody for domestic assault:

The solution is simple. It is very simple and it’s very effective. If a woman physically attacks you in a manner that indicates her serious intent to harm you, then you beat the living shit out of her. Beat her so badly, so painfully, that she fears for her life.

Afterwards, let her know that if she calls the police or tries to press charges after she attacked you and forced you to defend yourself, you’ll simply do your 30 days or whatever and then you’ll come back and do it again. Only this time, you won’t be merely defending yourself. You’ll be looking for payback, and payback is a serious bitch.

She’ll believe you.

Sadly, I think that is probably the lowest risk option—for the man, and for the safety and integrity of his family. When violence works, and it almost always does, there is little need for violence.

M. G. at Those Who Can See brings us Meritocracy and Its Discontents. Two pretty good arguments for Affirmative Action programs. Hint: “Celebrating our Diversity” is not one of them. Dealing with our diversity, humanely and with eyes wide open, is much closer to the truth.

Laliberte traces the path from game, the gateway drug, to neoreaction.

Matt Forney has become a noun and a verb, according to Bryce:

forney — n. an insult designed to evoke a response tends to validate the insult itself;

forney — v. tr. to create or use a forney

Judgy Bitch offers some mild correctives to Forney’s thesis. (also via Bryce.)

“Growing a pair” is good advice, but doesn’t solve much when applied as yet another layer of duct tape on the decaying foundation of modern marriage and family life.

Also from the Anarcho-Papist, Feminism is Misandry. Indeed it is. Yet the greatest of feminist cruelty appears to be reserved for two classes of women, one small, the other quite large: 1) those who succeed in male-dominated areas purely on their own merits, without state (i.e., feminist) supports; and 2) those who choose traditionally feminine female roles. Let’s just split the difference and call it: misanthropy.

Friend of This Blog and lately Defenestrated Business Insider CTO, Pax Dickinson, is in Frisco this week, visiting with Unidentified Reactionary parties therein or nearby subsisting. Stay tuned for the fallout.

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So that’s about all I got time fer…

Til next week (or whenever)… The Reactivity Place, Over and Out.