From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

The Great Awokening Conspiracy Theory
by Steve Sailer

June 12, 2019

What accounts for The Great Awokening that began in roughly 2013? Why did vast numbers of white Democrats suddenly subscribe to theories that only Grievance Studies majors took seriously before?

Over the past few weeks, two academics working separately, Zach Goldberg and David Rozado, have documented how extremist The New York Times, once known as The Gray Lady for its decorum, became during Obama’s second term.

Read the whole thing there.

Women’s soccer is a big deal in the U.S. every four years during the Women’s World Cup because it wasn’t, until recently, a big deal in the rest of the world, allowing the U.S. team to win three women’s World Cups. For example, in their first game yesterday, the U.S. ladies defeated the Thai team 13-0, which says something about how seriously women’s soccer is taken in many countries that a team that bad can make the World Cup.

Anyway, the US women’s team of 23 players appears to feature 18 whites, 2 blacks, and 3 who appear to have black fathers and white mothers. I didn’t see anybody who appeared to be Hispanic or Asian, although I could be missing somebody who is a little of one of those.

Soccer in the US, both for boys and girls, is a famously middle class undertaking, oriented toward playing a lot of games and getting college scholarships. In a serious soccer country like the Netherlands, boys start young at drilling constantly one on one with a ball rather than jogging up down the field in an 11 on 11 game, with its dearth of touches of the ball. No Dutch kid who is any good dreams of going to college. He hopes to be a pro at 16.

The U.S. system isn’t at all good at winning the men’s World Cup, but, if you ask me, it seems better than the Dutch system for giving kids some healthy exercise on their way to a decent life.

But in the less competitive women’s World Cup, the American way of soccer seems to work fine.

From the LA Times:

The working witches of Los Angeles just want you to be your best self
By DEBORAH NETBURN
JUN 11, 2019 | 3:00 AM

The Oracle of Los Angeles was feeling frazzled.

It was already 2 p.m. and she hadn’t had time to prepare lunch, much less wipe the ash from her altar. A tarot card client had just left her yellow Craftsman house in West Adams, evidenced by the smell of incense still lingering in the air. Within an hour, she was scheduled to meet with another client who was struggling to complete a PhD thesis.

In the meantime, she still had to prepare for her weekly podcast, create a purifying ceremony for a new business–and get her nails done for a reality TV appearance. Any downtime would be consumed with writing. The second draft of her memoir was due to her publisher in a week.

The Oracle, who also goes by Amanda Yates Garcia, is a former arts educator with a master of fine arts in writing, film and critical theory from California Institute of the Arts. For the past eight years she has made her living as a professional witch, performing “energetic healings,” “intuitive empowerment sessions” and the occasional exorcism, while also teaching workshops on the art of magic online and at her home, independent stores, and sites like the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The Oracle understands the value of marketing, so she also devotes several hours each week to outreach: writing newsletters, updating her website and sharing tips on social media on topics such as how to break a curse using the ”disruptive energy of a lunar eclipse.”

“If you think being a witch is just sitting around doing spells all the time, you think wrong,” she says. “Half my business is being on Instagram.” …

If you think all this witch-talk is fringe thinking, it isn’t.

A 2017 survey from the Pew Research Center that examined New Age beliefs in America found that 40% of respondents believe in psychics and another 40% believe that inanimate objects like mountains and trees are imbued with spiritual energy.

It also found that 33% of Americans believe in reincarnation, 29% believe in astrology, and 60% say they hold at least one of these New Age beliefs.

Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate the number of people who call themselves witches is growing.

“Interest in witchcraft waxes and wanes, but it is waxing, again, particularly among young women,” says Helen Berger, a professor at Brandeis University who has been studying witches and pagans for 30 years.

Eras of Female Empowerment in which everybody is supposed to uncritically Believe Women often end up with women doing what they’ve always, deep down, really wanted to do: casting hexes on other women, those Basic Becky Bitches.

And then there this accompanying essay by the reporter who wrote the article above:

Behind the story: She was researching an article on witches — and found a path to self-empowerment
By DEBORAH NETBURN
JUN 11, 2019 | 3:00 AM

… A few days later, I pitched a story to my editor, an article that would explore how working witches in Los Angeles make a living. I thought it would be fun. I didn’t expect it to change my life.

When I started reporting this story I was (and still am) dealing with a personal crisis of enormous proportion. I just couldn’t let it go. But after spending months talking to witches in L.A., I gained new perspectives on how to deal with the deep and painful feelings I was experiencing. …

We talked about why it seems that interest in witches and witchcraft is growing, and she suggested that it had to do with more women seeking environments where they feel respected.

“Women are not empowered in the majority of major religions,” she said. But in witchcraft, “they are accepted as powerful and [are] literally seen as the root of power in the feminine form.”

The next witch I met was Loba Loca, a bruja-healer-activist, who uses the pronouns they/them. We spoke about colonialism and people who burn sage and use crystals without considering where those materials come from. ,,,

On a phone call, the witch and spirit guide Aja Daashuur talked about the power of word magic — repeating mantras to yourself. “We read things every day that affect how we see ourselves,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I tell myself [that] I’m powerful, I’m beautiful, I love myself?”

,,, The Oracle of Los Angeles has her own take on the appeal of witchcraft.

“A lot of people, specifically women, who are attracted to witchcraft were taken to the underworld against their will, usually through trauma, and had to find their way out. Now they are a traveler between two worlds.”

I thought a lot about trauma while I worked on this story; I thought about struggles around love, work and equality and the toll they take on our humanity and sense of self.

I bought a strength candle, placed it atop an altar that I set up at home and sat in front of it for 10 minutes twice a day until it burned down. I told myself that I am strong, powerful and courageous.

I’ve got a foolproof idea for making money. It’s called a Pyramid Scheme. I’ve made a pyramid out of coat hangers and crepe paper. You come over to my house and sit under my pyramid so you can absorb the Pyramid Power. While we’re sitting under the pyramid, I’ll give your own official Build-a-Pyramid kit (some coathangers and crepe paper) and you’ll give me a lot of cash. I’m not really good at math, so here’s Time Magazine on June 16, 1980 explaining the Pyramid Power pyramid scam the swept Southern California for a few delirious weeks in the spring of 1980.

For $1,000 each, 32 newcomers buy slots on the bottom row of a pyramid-shaped roster. Each new player pays half of his $1,000 to the person at the pinnacle, who ends up with $16,000. The new player also pays his remaining $500 to the person directly above him on the next tier, which contains 16 people. Since each person on that tier gets paid by two of the newcomers, he ends up with $1,000, thus recouping his original investment. As more people buy in, the players move up the chart. In time, theoretically, each person reaches the top—and $16,000.

But let’s just add another zero to all the amounts. Wouldn’t you want $160,000?

The great thing about the Pyramid Power pyramid scheme was that it was hard to debunk. It was already pre-debunked. Anti-fraud authorities would go on the local TV news to denounce the pyramid schemes as “pyramid schemes,” which just served as good advertising. “Well, duh, of course it’s a pyramid scheme,” participants would laugh. “How do you think those Egyptian pharaohs got so rich that they could afford those giant pyramids? Through tapping the secret energy of Pyramid Power!”

Now this isn’t 1980 anymore, so I’ll add a few up to date touches like first asking everybody who sits with me under the pyramid their pronouns. Also, feminism. And no microaggressions.

@Steve_Sailer You’re blocked at the Hackensack @FiveGuys – but @akarlin88 isn’t. pic.twitter.com/mM18H6Vrhs

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) June 12, 2019

Our Man in Hackensack also writes in Seeking Alpha on the financial implications of Google’s recent moves:

Google May Have Just Increased The Chances Of Antitrust Action Against It
Jun. 10, 2019 2:25 PM ET|16 comments | About: Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), GOOG
David Pinsen

Portfolio strategy

Summary
Amazingly, after news broke that the Department of Justice was preparing an antitrust investigation into Alphabet, the company did something to further fuel antitrust concerns.

Last week, its YouTube unit demonetized numerous conservative channels, apparently after being bullied into doing so by one journalist.

I elaborate, explain why Alphabet shareholders should be concerned by this, and show some new ways cautious bulls can limit their risk.

5/ Will didn't talk immigration in his book, so I asked for his view: "I'm for as much immigration as the economy can take. The economy needs immigration as much as the immigrants need the economy" pic.twitter.com/zayrfmDnke

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 10, 2019

That’s classic. The only thing better would have been if Will had announced:

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what The Economy can do for you—ask what you can do for The Economy. And for immigrants. Them, too. But just don’t ask what’s in the interests of the American people. That’s un-American and un-Democratic.”

Most of the world plays sports that were codified by Victorians speaking English, such as soccer, baseball, basketball, golf, volleyball, tennis, etc. The main holdouts from homogenization, islands of diversity as it were, are, ironically, English-speaking countries,where the Anglo Victorian genius for rules and fair play also flourished. E.g., rugby in New Zealand and South Africa, American football in America, and Australian Rules football in Australia.

Diversity

Ice hockey is a grand Canadian invention that has spread to some other countries where ponds freeze in winter, such as Northern Europe. In the New York Times, however, hockey is racially tainted because most hockey players are white. Therefore, the rise in popularity of the Toronto Raptors’ basketball team in Canada is not another example of the American media-entertainment industry engulfing a once diverse culture. Instead, it is celebrated because the giant blacks (plus, I guess, Marc Gasol) on the Toronto NBA team look like Toronto’s rapidly growing population of South Asians.

Or something. In any case, they are Not White and that’s what counts.

Raptors Fever Takes Toronto, as a Diverse City Embraces a Team That Looks Like It

Nasir Tahir, right, and his cousin Shayan Rajput near their home in a Toronto suburb.

By Ian Austen
June 10, 2019

TORONTO — The young men were shooting baskets near their home in a Toronto suburb on Sunday, but were happy to pause to offer a carefully considered, if partisan, analysis on the Toronto Raptors’ chances of becoming the first non-American team to win the N.B.A. championship.

That famous South Asian leaping ability

“It’s Canada versus everybody,” said Nasir Tahir, 13, as he held a basketball with the Raptors’ black-and-red colors, the team logo long ago erased by the asphalt. “They’ve got it.”

“Hopefully,” he added, in a note of caution.

“Basketball has always been a big part of our lives,” said Nasir, whose parents immigrated from Pakistan.

The sport, said 13-year-old Shayan Rajput, Nasir’s cousin, is “multicultural, it includes everybody.”

Which is of course why there are so many South Asian superstars in the NBA like … uh …

Hockey may be the reigning monarch of sports in Canada, but basketball also has a grip on the country’s imagination. This season, it has been given a lift by the spectacular showing of the Raptors.

The team is on the verge of winning the N.B.A. championship. The Raptors are leading the Golden State Warriors three games to one, and could take the series when they play Game 5 at home on Monday night.

In Toronto and its suburbs, where about half the population consists of people of color, and many are immigrants, it is not just about the basketball. The ethnically and nationally diverse Raptors reflect Canada’s largest city in the 21st century.

“You only see white people playing hockey,” said Andrew Nguyen, 19, whose parents came to Toronto from Vietnam. “But basketball is more like what the nation is like.”

Jeremy Lin is averaging 1.1 points per game for the Raptors in the playoffs, so there’s that.

Anyway, the point is that Toronto is Diverse and the Raptors are about 80% black, so the Raptors aren’t boring and homogenous, they are Super Diverse. Perfect Diversity, of course, would be if everybody in the whole world were a black whose name begins with D and includes an apostrophe. Vibrant cultural diversity will prevail. Some individuals’s favorite things will be basketball followed by hip-hop, while other individuals’ favorites will be hip-hop followed by basketball.

But that utopia of diversity (D’Versyti? D’Versiddi?) is not yet achievable due to White Males, about which something must be done.

iSteve commenter iSteveFan adds:

It is interesting that whenever Whites try to coalesce around an identity it doesn’t take long for the thought police to try to prevent such camaraderie by telling us that Whites have no common history, they’ve often fought against one another, and of course, some Whites don’t consider other Whites White at all.

Contrast that to how they seem to cheer on POC attempting to form some sort of group identity. If you are one of the people making the argument that Whites have no businesses forming an identity due to any of the reasons listed above, or others, then how can you support encouraging the formation of such an identity among POC, who by definition are diverse, and thus would have even less in common than various Whites have with one another?

Only $20.00 USD.

Titania McGrath says:

Wear this with pride.

Unless you’re white, in which case wear it with shame.

Google famously tries to predict what you are searching for, or at least so it says. Other times, it attempts to distract you from the obvious searches you want to do. Via @BrentScher:

Even when you put the "h" in there to begin search for "hoax," it's nowhere to be found in the suggestions. pic.twitter.com/LHTw4GDH5w

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) June 10, 2019

The term “hate hoax” doesn’t exist according to Google Predictions:

I was over the hill and stopped by the La Brea Tar Pits in the insurance company highrise district, where hundreds of Ice Age wooly mammoths met their demises. Here are the tragic fiberglass statues of Daddy Mammoth sinking into the ooze while Mommy and Baby Mammoth trumpet forlornly:

I was pleased to find that movie star Emma Stone shares my regard for the Tar Pits (even if movie star Ryan Gosling does not). From an interview promoting their movie La La Land:

Q. When you moved to Los Angeles as teenagers, did you have an image of the city fixed in your heads?

Emma Stone: I had been here before and seen the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame and Grauman’s. So I was more just figuring out how to live here. I stayed within my little Miracle Mile area, around the Tar Pits. That was mind-blowing for me, the Tar Pits. You go to the Tar Pits often?

Ryan Gosling: I don’t go there often.

Stone: Do you even know about the Tar Pits?

Gosling: Sure, I know about the Tar Pits. [Whispers to interviewer: What is she talking about?] OK. I’ve never been to the Tar Pits.

Stone: [Incredulous] You’ve never been to the Tar Pits? Ever?

Gosling: This is turning into an intervention.

Stone: It’s just fascinating that in the middle of Los Angeles, there are pits of tar with the bones of a woolly mammoth and some dinosaurs.

Actually, I don’t think there are any dinosaurs in the La Brea Tar Pits: just mammoths, mastodons, dire wolves, giant ground sloths, camels, and sabre-tooth tigers. But I appreciate Miss Stone’s enthusiasm.

Gosling: [To interviewer] Can we cut this short? I have to go to the Tar Pits … right now.

I strolled over to the giant Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus and dropped by Los Angeles’s most hugely popular work of art of this century: Urban Light, a grid of 202 vintage 1920s-30s street lights on Wilshire Boulevard. It’s basically wall-t0-wall girls having their pictures taken.

My guess is that the recent street light-centric movie La-La Land was inspired by this installation.

My suggestion is that every city in America should have its own version of Urban Light on some downtown block.

Obsolete street lamps are, presumably, a dime a dozen.

They’re pretty useless at illuminating the sidewalk because they shine the majority of their light up.

But as emblems of downtown glamor, as reminders of how our ancestors had style, they can’t be beat.

One question for other cities is whether the estate of the late artist Chris Burden owns the rights to displaying junked street lamps as works of art.

But you can’t deny that Burden came up with an idea that makes people happy.

From the New York Times this weekend:

The Making of a Youtube Radical

By Kevin Roose, June 8, 2019

Caleb Cain was a college dropout looking for direction. He turned to YouTube.

Soon, he was pulled into a far-right universe, watching thousands of videos filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism.

“I was brainwashed.”

… Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.

Also from the New York Times this weekend:

Looking for Free Speech in Russia? Try YouTube

Stars of Russian YouTube include, clockwise from top left, Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of Pussy Riot; Danila Poperechny, a stand-up comic; Nika Vodwood, a YouTube star; and Leonid G. Parfenov, who was kicked off state TV in 2004.

By Neil MacFarquhar
June 9, 2019

MOSCOW — Mainstream television in Russia, stage-managed by the Kremlin, barely mentions Pussy Riot, the anti-Putin punk band, or Aleksei A. Navalny, the country’s most prominent opposition figure. Forget about hearing much feminist talk, or humor at the expense of the government or Russia itself.

“The entire social, political part of television is controlled by the authorities,” said Leonid G. Parfenov, an independent news anchor who has been shut out of state TV since 2004 for being too critical of the government. “For that reason, you cannot consider this television journalism — it is just propaganda, they are just employees of the presidential administration.”

Yet voices that the government would mute are heard regularly by tens of millions of Russians in another format: YouTube.

For more freewheeling opinions and commentary — particularly from those critical of President Vladimir V. Putin — YouTube has become the leading way to reach Russian audiences. In particular, it is challenging — if not supplanting — state TV as a source of information for the young.

As Stalin summarized the essential message of Lenin, there are no abstract principles of fair play, just the question of: Who? Whom?

“We live according to Lenin’s formula: “Kto–Kovo?” [Who-Whom?] will we knock them … flat, or will they knock us flat?”

It would be interesting to see calculate who pays more lip service these days to old fashioned Anglo conceptions of objectivity and principles: Putin or the New York Times?