This Week in Reaction (2015/07/12)

A very lazy, laid back summer week here in The Reactosphere™. Book reviews were the order of week. All that time down the shore pays back richly. And various flavors of Exit remain burning topics in the charred forests of Western Civilization. Along with green shoots. So without further adieu and in no particular order: What was going on this past week?

Warg Franklin swings for the fences on the first pitch with Monkey Politics and Political Entrepreneurship. He knocks it out of the park. Politics is unavoidable in primate societies such as our own. What rewards are at stake and how you get them is what really matters.

Sometimes you just can’t get to a good political dynamic no matter what anybody does, but often you can if someone talented puts in a bunch of work. For example, in the simple case of a straight cat-herding coordination problem, someone could take it upon themselves to build up legitimacy, take a leadership position for the group, and then use their position of authority to change the dynamics, for example by acting as a nexus of coordination for productive work by delegating tasks, making key decisions, and so on, and exiling or executing people who do antisocial stuff. The more complicated cases beyond the simple coordination problem are obviously different, but the fundamental idea is similar; someone can change things with a bunch of work.

But why would they do it? They will have to invest a lot of effort and resources, and are likely to face sometimes very harsh resistance from people who would not benefit from the change. No one wants to expose themselves to that.

Unless they get to take a cut of the new situation they created.

Outlaw biker gangs are about more than just motorcycles. For his efforts here, Warg wins an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.

Sydney Trads catch the ABC (the Australian one I presume) in a moment of speaking power to truth: referring to the perpetrators of London’s 7/7 bombings as “British”.

Jim likes Greg Cochrane, even though they do seem to have electric wires attached to his testicles. Also from Jim, with an assist from Bonald, an back-of-the-napkin analysis of The death of Christianity.

Friend of this Blog, Pax Dickinson is back in the news, or at least the fact the he was in the news is in the news. Based Cathy Young at Reason tells the story of The Social Media Shaming of Pax Dickinson.

Porter connects the dots about the awful fruit of San Francisco’s, too high-minded by by half, Sanctuary City Administrative Code: Blood in the Sanctuary.

Next at Kakistocracy, this bit of commentary on Chicago Independence Day Vibrancy placed next to Irvine CA’s relative lack thereof. It was fantasic:

It is not the simplest answer that is correct, but the least racist one. What results is a perennially profligate expenditure of resources and intellects to mine pieties rather than reality in pursuit of solutions. If hamburgers were Hate they wouldn’t be an answer to hunger. Inculcating this state of mind is one of our educational system’s crowning achievements.

Porter is one of the better writers on the alt-right lately, and deserves far more attention than he gets. For A System Has Failed but Which?, Porter wins an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.

Filed under Missed This Lastweek Because Blogspot: MG at Those Who Can See has Reacting to Spree Killings, Progressively. He plays the old game One of These Things is Not Like the Other. Sesame Street seems to have eliminated this game a while back. MG is always always worth the read.

Wasenlightened says Dammit Jim! I’m a Doctor not a Neoreactionary. Progressive utopians from 1968 meet with the real deal. You will not believe what happens next. Also a big dose of wry humour to sell a deadly serious message in Frazelled.

Frazzell’s post is not a “narrative”. It is religious ecstacy; religious lunacy. I can, and do say: This has the same truth value as “People of the Reich: Today Polish murderers crossed the border and assaulted helpless Germans!”

Obviously unrelated: Asking Me To Watch Your Stupid Video Constitutes a “Microaggression”.

By way of Nick Land, Stefano Mancuso at TED talks about The roots of plants intelligence:

If you want to fly, it’s good that you look at the bird to be inspired by the bird. But if you want to explore soils, or if you want to colonize new territory, the best thing you can do is to be inspired by plants that are masters at doing this.

Donovan Greene has up not but two (2) book reviews this week. First, he reviews Samuel Finlay’s Breakfast with the Dirt Cult. (Henry reviewed this one a while back and Foseti did even earlier.) Donovan, like others, seems to have liked it:

Were this just a book about picking up strippers and bantering with comrades, it would be an entertaining beach read. However, this is not just shallow entertainment. References abound to figures like Toynbee, Juvenal, and Ibn Khaldun, and many of the passages should have a special resonance to those across the broader alternative right.

Next he reviews Death of the Family, which Donovan says “gives an exemplary overview of the Cultural Marxist theory of Anglo-American cultural subversion”.

The attention it pays to the slow erosion of marriage and the results that this has on society is what really earns the book its commendation. It’s narrative on the degradation of marriage is sure to hit home for many who feel that their instincts are better suited for an entirely different time, and it magnificently drives home the point that the family truly is the bedrock of civilization.

As well, Friday Frags—Art-on-drugs-Feminists-Abhor-Alcohol Edition.

Neocolonial has some hollow-tipped bullet points on Uncertain Realities in which uncertainty is found to be, in part, social construct and communicable disease, but increasingly expensive to hide. Also towards Valuing the Commons.

HBD Chick is the go-to guy girl on polygamy, family types, and the selection for clannishness. Also: ashkenazi jews, mediterranean mtdna, mating patterns, and clannishness.

Free Northerner has a data rich response to Scott Alexander’s Cultural Evolution. Even after anti-biotics and AIDS drugs, for some mysterious yet persistent reason, teh ghey remains degenerate. For his excellent research here, Northerner wins a☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. Also: On the impossibility Safe, Affordable Housing for all.

Mark Citadel expands upon the principles of the “Benedict Option” to devise a Parallel Blueprint to Victory. It is, in what is becoming a habit for him, a typically strong article:

When the government of the United Kingdom passes some debauched law, do the Muslims of that country care? Do they gnash their teeth and rub beads wondering what persecutions are to come? No! They shrug their shoulders, for what do the rulings of the secular mass culture matter? Any Muslim who obeys these statutes, who puts his loyalty to the state over that of the ‘ummah’ (Islamic community) is immediately ostracized as an apostate. This process only intensifies with generations. While today’s youngest Occidental Christians are the weakest in their faith, and the most ignorant of its teachings, it is the youngest Muslims of today who are the strongest in their faith, and the most devout to the letter of their law. If we can replicate this success in our own religion, we have a future, we have a roadmap to an eventual victory. If not, we will fade into utter obscurity and eventual extinction, whether or not Rod Dreher votes notwithstanding.

A species of Exit

I would contend that we already have put this system in practice within a version of Christianity, viz., The Amish. And we, parallel citizens, would do well to learn what part of their system is essential to maintaining it, and how, if at all, it could be modified to provide capable protection in the case of the host/protector society falling apart. Mark wins yet another ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.

NIO emerges from an hiatus with two big and important posts. First: Public Choice+. The plus is “Holiness, Cathedral Style”.

Do some parts of the bureaucracy seek to maximize their budgets? Of course. There are always the cynical and manipulative actors, but to stop with these is to miss the even bigger fish. A civil servent lobbying for a couple of extra million for some more staff is nothing compared to the ideologues and holymen/women/xhe’s that manage to get entire new holy projects off the ground. The resources to be gained from these entirely new patronage systems are eye watering. Did anyone do a cost analysis of the benefits of gender mainstreaming? What is the upside of having entire women’s studies departments created in pretty much every university in the western world?

Like we said… “Holiness”! For his efforts in Public Choice+, NIO wins the coveted ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀. Congratulations, sir!

Next, NIO goes meta to talk about Nrx Schism. It doesn’t seem to be much of a schism, but, you know, clicks-n-all. A gentlemanly dispute seems more like it, i.e., between neoreactionary anarcho-descriptivists and anarcho-prescriptivists. Taking the former position with Moldbug, NIO quotes him liberally. Demarcating this fission line within the movement was I think very helpful.

This Week at Social Matter

Ryan Landry rings in the new week with A Collegiate System of Corruption and Crime. A message to Sabrina Rubin(in-in-in) Erdely: Real campus rapes are easy to find, so long as you’re not too picky about the color.

Speaking of teh ghey degeneracy… Tetrarch Warg Based Franklin held a gun (but it wasn’t loaded) to Surviving Babel’s and my head and forced us to do a “low edit” show. The result: Descending the Tower – 1. As luck would have it the first thing we talk about is teh ghey. Also don’t miss Part 2 of our Episode VII with Anatoly Karlin, which SB has called our best EVAH (!!).

David Grant checks in on Monday with Love Versus Hate. Therein, he dons the rose colored mental glasses of the Progressive and tries to make sense of the moral universe. Which turns out to be possible, so long as you’re not too picky about essential categories and characteristics, or the actual meaning of words.

Hubert Collins arrives on Wednesday with an epic smackdown of Israel-luvin’, totally not fascist or racist or anyting, “conservative” George Will Sucker Of The Summer: 2015. Will knows which side his bread is buttered on.

This Week in 28 Sherman

At SoBL’s home blog, he begins the week by turning the mic over to Grerp, who reviews two documentary movies: Sexy Baby and Hot Girls Wanted. They appear to be about the pornification of all of life, or the parts that anyone cares about at any rate. Grerp found them depressing:

The crazy thing about Laura is that she doesn’t have a boyfriend and she’s not spending thousands of dollars on plastic surgery [apparently labiaplasty (yes, apparently, that’s a thing)] as any sort of direct strategy. She just wants guys to like her or feel sexy enough to attract one to sleep with her. This was confounding. I’m not exactly in the thick of things anymore, but if a thin, attractive, 23-year-old girl can’t go out and find meaningless sex somewhere, I don’t know what kind of world we’re even living in.

Feminist-empowered mother and daughter

Aw c’mon, Grerp, where’s the nuance?

Then on Tuesday, SoBL reviews the same two, but from a male perspective. This Grerp-SoBL back-n-forth is a pretty cool idea, BTW. SoBL is, of course, impolite enough to point out the Too Jew for You overtones. From sexy Sexy Baby, he notes:

One bit of [32-year-old former porn actress, now exotic “dancer” Nichole’s] time onscreen stands out. It is a sequence where she provides strip tease lessons for women. Onscreen, she does it for some very cute banker girl. As Nichole explains, regular girls take lessons to be like Nichole, but this cute, nice banker takes the lessons to be like the other girls. They do it to chase a media crafted ideal of sexy, while banker girl does it to chase her ideal of what regular women do.

In that anecdote lies the beauty of this entire documentary. These women all know this is all around them and NO ONE rejects it. No one says, “I’m not doing this shit”. No one pushes back. The human being being a herd animal is never better on display than here.

Feminism, for all it’s sound and fury and putative principles, is really just a recipe for society-wide laying back and taking it. Hot Girls Wanted appears to be little else than that. “This is your world feminists.” Way to go girlz!! Read both Grerp’s and SoBL’s reviews. Two great tastes that taste great together.

Wendesday, SoBL makes a request for his readers to link to him in Pedoteacher articles. It has been his less than perfectly well advertised and lifelong dream to become the world’s foremost expert on Teachers doing the Wild Thing with their students. In seriousness, we strongly expect a comprehensive view of the phenomenon would be simultaneously both unutterably sexist and unutterably racist. That’s why it’s important for us to document it.

Thurs WW1 pics continue with a Double Amputee.

This Week in Propertarianism

Curt Doolittle is a busy beaver. This week he brings us some very illuminating notes: Critique vs Criticism with not much nice to say about the former; Capitalism Refers to a Bias within Government, Not a System of Government; a very pithy: Truth: Doing The Laundry of Imagination.

This Week in Evolutionist X

Evolutionist X starts off the week talking about Lotteries and the relative lack of impact they have on long-term outcomes. This is mostly why they have them.

Also a good bit of research here: West African Marriage and Child-Rearing Norms vs. African American Norms.

This was interesting The Genghis Khans of Europe. It seems genetic diversity was women’s work. At least until very recently in human evolutionary history. Hmmm.

Evolutionist X notes everyone is searching for reasons to get offended and we’re killing ourselves:

Leftist ideology (cultural Marxism) ascribes all observed statistical differences in group performance to nefarious cultural forces, therefore nefarious cultural forces must be at work everywhere, therefore you must be oppressed at all times, thus you must dedicate yourself to finding the oppression in every aspect and moment of your life. So we deconstruct every movie, commercial, TV show and book, searching for the hidden oppression that will explain why more of us aren’t math professors or CEOs or magical flying unicorns.

Even if the oppression narrative were true (which in certain rare cases it inevitably is), it still wouldn’t be doing anyone a damn bit of good.

Finally: Effective Altruists are Cute but Wrong. LOL.

This Week in World Crass

Crassus has re-emerged as World Crass (get it?) at a new URL with a new, not quite perfected, template. It’s a great place to stop by and get one’s weekly dose of snark on current news. Or as the case may be 3000 year old news: Alcibiades was the cheekiest, wittiest general in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. I feel Greece would be better-served to have a guileful guy like Alcibiades at the helm right now rather than the earnest Alexis Tsipras.

This was interesting: Powerful computers in the triage nurse station to identify emergencies that masquerade as benign. Computers do Bayesian filtering better than humans. And they don’t golf much.

Speaking of the slaying of Kathryn Steinle, Crassus notices The New York Times has a Sista Souljah moment after San Francisco slaying.

Greece personified

Here he finds western liberals Using Greece to sublimate concerns over the moral hazard of welfare systems. Moral hazards don’t exist apparently, until you run out of other people’s money. When I think of Greece, I think of that 52 year-old hairy dude sunning himself on the beach. In a Speedo. Living off a generous pension. (Yeah, that guy.) That some German paid for. Because Greeks are the same as Germans. Because, otherwise, Hitlor. Related: We’ve seen casinos dressed up to look like Greece. Greece is about to be turned into casinos:

[W]hy did the Greeks stop developing the world’s most scenic coastline for a few thousand years? Is the answer to that related to the low average IQ of Greece? Is Greece’s low average IQ related to their immigration policy over the thousands of years post-Aristotle?

Of course not, you racist. Greeks are just like Germans, except for the accent and the cuisine. In fact, it’s probably people like you, whose negative stereotypes have oppressed these poor Greeks and kept them down these couple thousand years.

Here is The New York Times celebrating elder abuse of author Harper Lee. The result: the elder Atticus Finch learned his lesson and became a despicable racist

World Crass has a picture rich exposè with Some state flags have subliminal pro-slavery messages. On the other hand, lots of state flags quietly promote gay marriage. LOL.

Crassus reads the NYT so you don’t have to: Main takeaway from “When Algorithms Discriminate”: NYT should use an algorithm next time they hire a technology writer. He asks the questions NYT politely ignores.

Here is D.C’s dilemma: weed out killer (synthetic) weed, or let ‘flakka’ act as Darwin’s weedkiller. In other words, don’t tempt Crassus. Also, tunneling out of prison would make an awesome video game.

Crassus notes: When governments relocate people, insiders get lucrative real estate deals. Poor folks lose. Being nomadic sucks anyway. And finally: Everyday consumers should take advantage of twenty-first century gambling financial tools.

This Week… Elsewhere

Bonald wonders Can we work for any protection from “hostile environment” firings? Holding liberals to their principles should work for a while longer. But the long term solution is exit, even if in place. As mentioned about, Bonald also spells out what his blog is for.

Kristor gives a worthwhile exposition on, and warning against, The Temptation to Improper Reduction. Also: Gnostic Despair.

Briggs gets another one up on The Stream: Pope Francis’ Dr. Strangelove Craves One World Government Run by “Experts”. Great job with the photoshop! Over on his own blog, further fisking of the Gaia Hypothesis. And Briggs tackles Idols With Wee P Values. Statistics As Ritual. As well: Laudato Si: “The Curate’s Egg and This Week in Doom.

World War T has been down-graded to a mop-up operation. Dalrock notes: Republican leadership preparing to roll over on the issue of transgenders in the military.

Dark Brightness fires on all cylinders here: Parasites now killing their host: what to do?:

Being told you are special and owed a living by the general public is bad for you. Being told, particularly, that this is due to your race or blood is very bad for you. There is a reason the house of Windsor sends all the sons into the military: they need to be under the discipline of a good drill sergeant until they learn discipline, and learn that they are not owed a living, but have a duty to serve.

But that lesson died during the American revolution: the most snobbish and unthinking elite in the world is in Washington, D.C.

Also, I’m a sucker for any mash-up of sentimental ballad, Biblical exposition, and expert social commentary, which Chris Gale provides well in More than 100 years to live: generations, fragility, and micromanagement [I Sam 17]. This too was pretty good: Cthluthu is corporate.

When an atheist explains Sex, Marriage, and Abstinence this well, one has a very hard time imagining that he or she is very long for atheism.

Speaking of book reviews, the Cheshire Ocelot finally gets around to reviewing Dante’s De Monarchia which had been accumulating a bit of dust these past 700 years.

And another: Dr. Peter Blood is back with a review of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age.

Mr. Roach says Trump is Right about illegal immigrants and crime.

Speaking of Trump, CWNY finds him at least making all the right enemies in Defending Christ’s Image in Man.

Real Gary notices Wapo coming a tiny bit around on the subject of race. Calling the politically correct urge to rename monuments and erase history “Stalinist” was particularly apt (and accurate).

Sunshine Thiry asks What would it look like for Christians to honor husbands and fathers?

Over at FPR we find a nice meditation from John Cuddeback: Working, For a Living.

Welp, that’s all I had time fer. Best wishes everyone on a relaxing summer. Keep on reactin’! Til next week… TRP, over and out!!