I am not sure what your point is with this video. Nobody who knows what he (or she) is talking about has ever doubted the general proposition that “thermite can melt steel,” since thermite is routinely used for just that very purpose in a number of industrial settings, especially for the cutting and welding of railroad tracks (an everyday occurrence in track maintenance). This is common knowledge for anyone with a smattering of experience in these matters, so I’m not sure why anyone would feel it necessary to make a homespun video to prove it. It’s bizarre.

This brings up a point I have made before concerning 9/11 Truthers: they don’t seem to have stable notions of reality, nor are they contextually aware of who knows what about whom. Consequently, they do not track events in any kind of rational manner. While I don’t want to resort to ad hominem like they typically do when challenged about their narratives, it still must be said that…

• If you do not already know that thermite melts steel…
• And if you do not already know that this is common knowledge, and consequently already known to me…
• And since known to me, already factored into my appraisal of the events of 9/11…
• And likewise known to anyone else with the requisite qualifications to work for the NIIST and conduct investigations on their behalf…
• And therefore believe that videos such as this one spring forth with novel information on the subject, then…

…Then not only are you wrong in this particular theory, but there is something very wrong with the whole global architecture of your thought-forming process. You are, in fact, “not even wrong,” as the phrase has it. You are living in a parallel tabloid universe of Fortean facts and unrealities. This has been the 9/11 Truther movement from the beginning, and it is horrible that it has lasted as long as it has.

That’s insane. Has any steel frame building ever just free fall dropped into its own footprint a couple hours *after* an earthquake?

Uh…yes. There is plenty of precedent for such things, especially in the presence of concurring secondary causes such as fires and structural damage, both of which pertain to WTC-7’s collapse. For example, the United States Geological Survey’s study of the 1906 San Franciso earthquake contains some descriptions that sound exactly like WTC-7, avant la lettre.

The Chronicle buildings, corner of Market and Kearney streets, comprised an old ten-story structure and a new fifteen-story annex that was in process of construction, both shown in PL XXX, B. The old building consisted of steel beams and protected cast-iron columns, with self-supporting walls, which had a brownstone front up to the second story and were ornamented with terra cotta above. The floor was of hollow tile, filled with cinder concrete and covered with wood. The cast-iron columns were fireproofed Avith 3-inch hollow tile, and 4-inch hollow tile Avas used for the partitions. The terracotta partitions and fireproofing entirely collapsed. The building appeared to have stood the earthquake shock, and received its principal damage through the fire. The collapse of the western section of the building was probably due to the buckling of the cast-iron columns.

The seven-story L-shaped Kamm Building, on Market street, west of the Call Building and adjacent to it on two sides, had a steel skeleton and self-supporting sandstone walls. The floors were of reenforced stone concrete, covered with wood, with hollow partitions and suspended ceilings of plastered wire lath, the steel columns, beams, and girders being also fireproofed with plastered wire lath. The rear structure collapsed when a number of columns in the basement buckled under the intense heat produced by the burning wallpaper, of which there was a large quantity stored in the basement.

[Note that WTC-7 had a tank of diesel fuel in its own basement.]

So, while this is not typical, it does happen under certain conditions, which were present at the WTC-7 collapse. The failure of Building 7 can be neatly explained by ordinary structural damage, fire, and seismic shifting, without recourse to any controlled demolition.

Cool, man! Take your time and enjoy it. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, if you feel up to it. I’m sure a review from you would be fair and perceptive. Have a great day!

But no big airplane went boom boom into WTC 7 and it fell down the same way. What’s your explanation? Did WTC 7 just die out of sympathy for its sister towers?

I have answered this question numerous times over the years, but nobody pays any attention to it. The 9/11 Truthers just go blithely on with their theory as if no one has nullified their principal point of contention.

Both the Truthers and the NIST fail to properly account for the seismic effects that would have afflicted the near vicinity of Ground Zero during the collapse of the first two towers. The fluidized subsurface (rumbling during the collapse itself) and subsequent subsidence into the old basements (now craters) would have destabilized any structure in the area, but there were also two sharp shocks of translational motion that would have lifted and shifted WTC-7 by a fraction of inch, creating stress point and shear points across every support column in basically the same location. Once the fires had further weakened the steel in the fabled Column 79 area, it was perfectly natural for the building to twist and slump, snapping every other column at the same time, which is exactly what we saw.

In short, it is completely fallacious to say that WTC-7 was unaffected by any exploding airplanes. It had two massive “earthquake bombs” (so to speak) dropped right next to it, of the same sort that have been used with great effect since WWII. The Bielefeld viaduct was famously destroyed in a similar manner, despite “never being hit” by the Tallboy.

“Remember 9/11 Truthers, no bomb ever hit the Bielefeld viaduct!”

“What kind of music do you listen to?” has become an obligatory question that newly acquainted Americans ask each other when getting to know one another. It’s supposed to be a way of feeling one another out and assessing personalities. Of course, I myself never have an answer when somebody asks me that (or at least not a simple and unqualified answer). To me, the question of what kind of pop music someone listens to is of far less importance than the fact that they listen to any pop music at all, because I never listen to any of this stuff.

Rather, I should say I never listen to pop music in the same way that other people listen to it, as a primary activity. I may listen to rock from time to time, but never without a certain spirit of irony and curiosity, not as something I want to do for its own sake. It would be similar to a minor deity wandering down from the mountaintop to taste the food of mortals, not because he needed to eat, but just to understand better what the human beings get out of eating.

After many years of living like this, I think I understand a little better what’s going on. I have an aesthetic and an intellectual principle inside myself, but most people do not. Most people need an external source of emotional energy to motivate them, just like they need an external source of authority to organize them and tell them what to do. This is the reason why pop music exists at all, for otherwise it would seem to have but little purpose.

American (Western) culture has exaggerated this emotional forcefield to absolutely absurd proportions, but that is not sustainable and I believe it is already on the wane. The passing of the Boomers and their rock gods will spell the end of the pop-musical era as we have known it, and I don’t think we shall see the likes of it again for several lifetimes.

Mike, over the years you have grown into a great writer and a true artist with the comebacks. Much respect.

I find it completely impossible to follow this never-ending saga of what social media personality said what about whom, because I never listen to any of them anyway. I did not even know who Charlie Kirk was before he got killed. I’d seen his name mentioned, of course, but I knew little else about him and was not curious enough to find out.

In this case, I can safely say that I think the world would be a better place if more people were like me.

(Please, anyone with good opinions on the matter: share a General Theory of Vocal Fry.)

In the general theory, “vocal fry,” as the phrase is being used here, refers to the rhetorical posture of the human female when she is full of self-regard and wants to seem important in a particularly diva-like way. The subtext is, “I am happy, relaxed, divine, above it all, and everything I do is in sync with the universe and comes off effortlessly.” You have to be in a very sanguine mood to do this authentically.

As such, there is a male version of vocal fry that you might call the “magnanimous pedant” register. It occurs whenever a man, in a giddy mood and momentarily thrilled at being the center of attention, begins to lard his public speech with over-intellectualized renditions of commonplace topics. The hosts of “drive time” radio shows often slip into this timbre, especially if there are two or three of them (it happens more in dialogue than monologue).

Anybody who enabled that tyranny – I will remember. I will not forget, and I will not forgive. They will forever have my deepest mistrust and suspicion.

I would hope this also means that anyone who steadfastly fought that tyranny would earn a measure of trust in your book. To wit, I invite anyone to examine my commenting history with respect to Covid, and they will see that I was flawlessly opposed to that regime in every particular, right from the very beginning. Time has proven me right on that score, as it will eventually do with the other unpopular opinions I have voiced here.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Anon, reading through the comments here lately, I have found you to be an especially levelheaded and perceptive voice, and I agree with much of what you say. I hope an ID endorsement doesn’t hurt your reputation in these parts, but I just wanted to tell you I think you’re on the right track.

A useful addendum to Ron Unz’s nameplate, paraphrasing the great Jerry Seinfeld:

“Sometimes the perspectives excluded from the mainstream media, are excluded for a reason.”

America’s Half-Blood Blintz.

You gotta keep the rhyme, homie.

(Several of the commenters here, and many more of the non-commenting readers of this Sailer-blog discussion, were active at the Z-Man site. Intelligent Dasein spent a lot of time there…)

Indeed. I actually controlled his output for several months by basically running Inception ops from the comments section. I would disagree with something he wrote and explain why. The disagreement itself would garner from him and his entourage the usual fusillade of insults and gainsayings that I’ve come to expect from such places; but, being right (as I typically am), the idea would exert some kind of subconscious force on the Z-Man, and—lo and behold!—the next day my “disagreement” would appear as his daily blog entry, suitably worked over in characteristic Z-Man fashion, with both him and his commenters seemingly oblivious to the fact that I had implanted the whole thing in his mind.

This went on for quite some time—me playing the mini Wurlitzer while the peanut gallery hurled rotten tomatoes in my direction—but it wasn’t really the way I wanted it. I kept hoping that he would actually “see” where his ideas were coming from and become conscious of them, so that we could have a real conversation about things. That didn’t happen, however, and I had to quit before it got to be too on-the-nose. I don’t get any pleasure out of that sort of manipulation, which I wasn’t even trying to do in the first place. Now that he’s gone, I can only shake my head at the lost opportunities. HBD is a cancerous thought-worm that really blinds the eyes of those whom it infects, rendering them impervious to any kind of criticism or correction.

The Z-Man had a very odd sort of mind. I think the adjective that best describes it is “backwards.” He would talk about well-known people and things as if they were esoteric figments he was struggling to pull out of the ether—“Speaking of lying, there was that guy from back in the ’90s who just used to lie with impunity…I think he was a politician from Arkansas or somewhere…who was it?…Ah…Oh well, It doesn’t matter…Oh!… Bill Clinton, that was it!”—and meanwhile he would employ his own private lexicon with perfect assurance, as if it were some universal language that we all ought to understand instinctively. Whenever he reached for a commonplace idiom or cliché, he would invariably employ it in exactly the opposite sense that it normally carries. For example, the saying, “Dogs bark and caravans move on,” is supposed to mean that the deeper events of life and history progress towards their destined outcome with a serene steadiness that is not deterred by the yapping objections of inconsequential people; but whenever Z-Man used this phrase, he would identify himself with the dogs and deem the Progressive Left the caravan that marches on: the very opposite of the essentially optimistic manner in which a real Traditionalist would take it.

The Z-Man was not really too bright. He was the kind of person who, in a better world, should have ended up as a middle school English teacher that the students begrudgingly admitted handled the material effectively, despite his tangential stories and monotone delivery; but somehow or another, he got shunted into a “bad timeline” version of himself and became the bellwether for a cadre of internet cranks who only had the intellect and maturity of middle-schoolers. That he was interred with Catholic ceremony despite his atheism, his utter rejection of the faith, and his Norman Greenbaum-level grasp of theology is an ending that only Flannery O’Conner could write—and a merciful repudiation of his work.

It is very much Netanyahu’s style to push his way to the front of an aborning current event, and try to control the narrative to his advantage. It doesn’t mean Israel was actually involved; being the tactless criminal buffoon that he is, he would just do it anyway.

Perhaps ironically (for you being a wordcel), you’re bad at vocabulary.

“Wordcel” is not a word.

Assassination is murder for hire—that’s all; but then the word is used antonomastically for all kinds of dramatic public attacks, motivated hits, and decapitation strikes against one’s rivals. It probably shouldn’t be. If the hit is motivated by any kind of political or economic calculation, it is enough to say that the victim is ‘whacked’ or ‘offed.’ If, on the other hand, the attack is a politically ineffectual but psychologically expressive act of rage, it is enough to say that the victim is ‘murdered’ or ‘killed.’

Charlie Kirk was not assassinated. He was killed.

At that point he is supposed to have a disassembled rifle somewhere on him, but there is no rifle to be seen on his person. Where’s the rifle? It is not there. Explain this, Anglin.

Why is everybody saying this? The rooftop escape video clearly shows the alleged shooter carrying a long satchel that could easily contain a rifle. The conspiracy theories have gotten so weird that they simply deny things that are right in front of their face, contained in the video evidence.

Gregorian chant predates the 15th century, so this statement does not actually make sense as written. It should be, “Other than 15th century organ scores, it’s doubtful ID recognizes anything more recent than Gregorian chant as music.”

I need you guys to pick up your game. You can’t even manage a proper gratuitous personal attack anymore. I’m feeling neglected here.

As Achmed pointed out, Gregorian chant is still being written hence statement makes sense. In any case was not intended as personal attack, more like semi-affectionate twitting but perhaps it was gratuitous.

Other than Gregorian chant, it’s doubtful that ID recognizes anything more recent than 15th century organ scores as music.

Gregorian chant predates the 15th century, so this statement does not actually make sense as written. It should be, “Other than 15th century organ scores, it’s doubtful ID recognizes anything more recent than Gregorian chant as music.”

I need you guys to pick up your game. You can’t even manage a proper gratuitous personal attack anymore. I’m feeling neglected here.

Right. We’ve poured several trillion dollars, thousands (millions?) of lives, decades of time, and uncountable energy down that particular rabbit hole, and we have less than nothing to show for it. The ROI was actually negative. Even if we were dumb enough to rerun the experiment, it is doubtful we could afford it without self-destruction. Can we now admit the Exclusively Environmental thesis is definitively falsified?

That does not follow. The failure of Great Society interventionist measures does not prove anything about the nature/nurture divide, one way or the other. Neither are these two things dichotomous; and neither are they (collectively) exhaustive.

Furthermore—and this is the part that HBDers simply cannot process, because HBD is just another strain of modernism—even if those interventionist measures had worked, that’s still no justification for doing them. After all, there are numerous people, at all times and in every society, who would benefit from better opportunities, and yet society does not treat their improvement as imperative.

This should lead you to conclude that practical outcomes of any kind were never the point of Great Society/Civil Rights-era social engineering. Once you get that far, only then can you start asking yourself the real questions: What was it really all about?

Unfortunately (at least to my own blinkered mind), the actual realistic solutions to these issues…

Your mind is blinkered because you still think there is some sort of problem to be solved here. There isn’t. That is pure, unconscious modernism of a socialist bent.

The important question is not, “Why do blacks underperform in schools?” The important question is, “Why are we all enslaved by the tyranny of universal compulsory education? Who gave these schools authority over us, and how can we stop it?”

The important question is not, “Why are blacks poorer compared with whites?” The important question is, “Why is everyone—black, white, or whatever—beholden to a neoliberal monetary system that deprives the vast majority of them of any productive property and individual sovereignty, and forces them to work a wage-slave job and barely survive off consumerist slop? How can we defeat this thoroughgoing oppression? Is it even possible?”

If you can ask these questions, you might have something worth talking about besides Billie Eilish and blackness.
The important question is not, “Why do blacks commit more violent crime?” The important question is, “What good are the rules if they mean only drudgery and misery for anyone who follows them, while rampant lawbreaking at every level is not only not punished, but positively rewarded? Is such a society even worth preserving? Is it even a society?”

The important question is not, “How can I solve the social problems of the black community, so that I can maximize the ease and comfort of my earthly life without ever needing to deal with their dysfunction?” The important question is, “This world being a Vale of Tears that affords no lasting city, how can I live in such a way as to be worthy of a glorious eternity?”

Yes, I talked about this version years ago, but of course nobody here reads what I actually write, so they wouldn’t know that.

The problem is, as evidence for an HBD explanation of phenomena, this comparative advantage model is circumstantial at best, and cannot in any way be conclusive, as I demonstrated in the comment linked above. There are multiple ways that this could be true without HBD having anything to do with the matter.

All of this conduces to the fact that HBD is exactly what I have clearly and consistently claimed it to be over many years: a Fortean hypothesis that arranges “damned facts” into a pleasing narrative structure, but without a real underlying metaphysic to support it.

Everybody knows this in the back of their minds. The intellect cannot err in its own domain, even among those who make such regular abuses of it as HBDers are wont to do. The increasingly shrill responses marshaled to prevent this aborning cognitive dissonance tell us everything we need to know about the state of their argument.

I wonder if anyone else here has any well-organized thoughts about this. Right here on this very website, Paul Craig Roberts has a piece up in which he links to a Substack post by Donald Jeffries, the burden of which is to disabuse the reader of the belief in black athletic superiority. Jeffries claims that blacks have benefitted from a massive Affirmative Action-like campaign at every level that promotes them well beyond their abilities in sports—a claim that has often been made here, as well—and he has an upcoming book all about the subject.

I don’t much care for the post itself. Jeffries writes in a cantankerous, kvetching manner that rather ill-befits the habit of the contrarian, who above all things must be confident in his assertions; but let that not detract from the logical analysis of the point. If the contention is right—and I believe it is—it puts the HBD community in a somewhat interesting predicament, and that is the more fascinating effect (in my opinion).

Assuming this is correct, it more or less kicks the last plank out of the decrepitating HBD party platform, which had long upheld the myth of black athletic superiority as a collateral hypothesis alongside its beliefs about black IQ and black criminality, the whole cluster of traits being thought to be the result of a divergent genetic heritage between blacks and whites (according to the HBDers). This is where things get difficult, for as I have pointed out before, HBD seems to exhibit a sort of keto-enol tautomerism whereby it can take two separate forms without altering its basic chemical composition.

In the first sense, we have HBD proper, which is the so-called hypothesis that blacks’ lower performance with respect to a host of social indicators is a direct result of “biology,” i.e. a different genetic profile when compared with whites. It is heavy on evolutionary theory, quantishness, statistics, and biochemistry, all purporting to prove that these differences are both inherited and unalterable by cultural influence. This is the keto-form.

In the second sense, we have HBD not so much as a specific theory but more as a loose synecdoche for a very broad-based complaint about the state of racial politics in the contemporary West. In this mode, concerns over the illegality and imprudence of the Civil Rights-era reforms and Affirmative Action predominate, along with global denunciations of white virtue signaling and permissiveness towards black misbehavior. This is the enol-form.

The two forms are usually held in unsteady equilibrium; the same minds tend to believe both, although they are not entirely compatible with each other. The interesting thing about Jeffries’ post is that here they are brought into direct opposition, and HBDers are going to have to decide what they really believe about all this. Are blacks overrepresented in sports because of their superior endowment of fast-twitch muscle fibers, acquired over thousands of generations bounding up and down the Sahel; or have they been the beneficiaries or unfair quota systems, here as elsewhere?

I firmly predict that the hard, keto-form of HBD will prove to be unsupportable, and that much more recondite sociocultural (and even spiritual) factors are needed to explain the reality and politics of race as we understand it today. In the meantime, the purveyors of keto-HBD like Steve Sailer must be made to answer for their vandalism of the subject. Keto-HBD has wasted huge amounts of time and probably set the intellectual development of Rightest politics in America back at least 25 years. Undoing this damage will take a great amount of effort, but there are many promising signs that the tide has turned, with the fading of this blog’s prominence being one of the most visible.

You can read the relevant David Stockman post here on Lew Rockwell, without needing to subscribe to anything.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/08/david-stockman/america-dont-need-no-independent-fed/

For example, “Intelligent Dasein” is fine with our race being wiped out as long as whoever remains practices Tradition.

Don’t put that garbage into my mouth. I am not “fine” with anybody being “wiped out,” and you certainly cannot produce any quote of mine asserting as much. Your hysterical commenting has now crossed the line. Unfortunately, you’ve been encouraged in this libelous behavior by many other commenters here who really ought to have known better, so the fault is not entirely yours.

Part of the reason why White Nationalism will never be anything more than a fringe position is because people like you obviously do not understand what is being said to them. You’ve whitewashed yourself into a corner that is far too narrow to contain the larger realities with which others have to deal, so they rightfully regard you as a curiosity, and move on.

You would be well advised to stop commenting and to read something a bit more substantive than the tenth-rate internet scribblers on which you’ve been weened. This is a waste of everyone’s time—including yours.

What is your response to Christians who say that there is no such thing as race?

Like who?

I’m not aware of any serious contemporary theologian or public intellectual who is making a big deal out of this. You need to stop pretending that this is some kind of ongoing problem. It isn’t.

Christianity has very little to say about race per se, other than to affirm that Jesus is the Lord of all creation and the sole source of salvation for all those who are saved, and that ethnicity and nationality are no bar to receiving His mercy. Anybody with half a brain can plainly see that this is in no way equivalent to saying that “there is no such thing as race” in the physical sense.

When laypeople intone pious bromides like “all men are created equal” and other suchlike sayings, it is clear to me that they are simply making inexpert reference to the Christian truth mentioned above, while probably also being influenced by the egalitarian spirit of the times; but Christianity does not need to answer for the latter, and in any case, the loosely held enthusiasms of laypeople are not really “Christianity” anyway.

There is nothing in Christian doctrine that says, “there is no such thing as race.” This is nowhere to be found in Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition, nor can it be logically deduced therefrom. There is no theologian of any note who ever held such a view with a firm and examined philosophical conviction. It is not something anyone takes seriously.

I fully suspect that you know all this already. You don’t really expect me to believe that you are genuinely perplexed and frustrated by a horde of Bible-thumpers constantly insisting that “there is no such thing as race,” do you? You are raising a red herring just to generate some kind of response from me that you can further impugn. This is a waste of time, and I do not appreciate it.

You are not confused by any of this, so stop crapping around.

No, you’re wrong. They have NOT started to work. Things are worse, in fact. That is, unless by “working”, you mean working at destroying the nation.

By “working,” I mean that they have successfully incorporated the diverse elements of the nation into a single system of publicly permissible expressions and behaviors that I have called “the ethics of the market square,” the underlying desideratum of which is to smooth and facilitate the rule of money. I have shown how this system of pseudo-ethics becomes crystalized into the positive law of urbanized environments (the “traffic”) and then becomes an overwhelming hydrodynamic flow (the “weather”) that sets the tone for collective behavior throughout modernity’s ambit. This force becomes a “city spirit” that I eventually show to be identical with Mammon, whom it is not possible to serve when serving God. Finally, I point out the historical necessity of overcoming this spirit, and a strategy for doing so, which no other discussion of this topic has even approached with comparable specificity.

Sounds interesting, no? Too bad you have already decided not to read it.

I have repeatedly called for an end to Affirmative Action, disparate impact, and preferential treatment for anybody, and I have now done so in print, under my own name—in the book. I have devoted considerable space to explaining both the economic consequences of such nonproductive spending, and the Scriptural exegesis that proves that such things run counter to Christian charity, and I have done so in print, under my own name—in the book.

Similarly, I have repeatedly likened immigration to an exploitative form of revenue extraction that operates like an inverse Export-Land model, I have strongly favored its elimination, and I have done so in print, under my own name—in the book.

I have made even more controversial claims that I doubt anyone here would be bold enough to attach their names to, pseudonymous or otherwise; but to get a taste of those, I invite you to pick up a copy. If you’re going to speak to me, it would helpful if you knew what you were talking about, and for that you will need to reread—or in your case, simple read—what I actually wrote.

Before I list how you are wrong about all 4,

Since I don’t really disagree with any of this, I am not sure what you think I’m wrong about. I am not saying whatever it is you think I am saying. Stop proleptically reacting to any perceived difference and try to understand the words.

As you mentioned, this is true for all demographics and there are a whole host of reasons for it, but the pattern is the same everywhere. Understanding those background reasons would form the substance of a real economic analysis, such as my own. Statistics are a premise, not a conclusion.

It’s strange—for example, even many of the more “numerate” commenters here often make comments that imply (or directly reveal) that they do not realize that both the black and Hispanic TFRs are well below the replacement rate, even among recent immigrants. America as a whole has an inverted population pyramid (i.e. more older people than younger people), but this is also true of every race taken singly.

The Sailer commentariat has, by and large, one of the most obsolete lists of priors of any community on the internet—a problem worsened by their insufferable belief that they represent “the cutting edge of societal evolution” (h/t Rush Limbaugh). Any attempt to educate them out of this impasse is seen as invading the tree fort and triggers their siege mentality, so they never learn.

My indicator of normality would be this: a couple of black novelists actually write good novels about things like the all-white development of Cubism in Paris circa 1919, or an expedition to Antarctica, or the life of Coco Chanel.

Comments like this perfectly illustrate why you and the others here keep missing the point. These things aren’t “normal.” Most white people don’t do them, either. “Normal,” in this context, means being a basically law-abiding guy and holding down a job driving a forklift, or some such. It does not require any rare talent to do such things, but it does require overcoming the rampant dysfunction of the ghetto culture. The majority of blacks have now done this; it is not merely “the talented tenth” who are gainfully employed, and if you think otherwise, there is not much I can say to convince you of anything.

Like hell they have. Currdog is right. This comment of yours has made a book purchase decision very easy for me.

So, I’ll send you a freebie and you can fisk it. Should be easy, right? Does Peak Stupidity have a PO Box? Don’t deprive the world of your superior outlook.

Honestly, Achmed, this whole comment is pretty lame. You hear the call of the apostle but you’re afraid of the murmur of the crowds, so you go running back to your fishing boat. As a Currdog returneth to the vomit…

I’ll miss your normally cheerful self. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Do they actually “do quite well” ? Some mestizos may rise to a ceiling of mediocrity, but that isn’t “doing quite well” in an “Anglo” context.

Yes, they actually do. Many people around this blog have a conception of Mexicans that is distant and outmoded. But I lived in Greater Denver/Northern Colorado for three and a half decades, and I watched the entire transformation take place.

When I was a kid, most of the Mexicans one would run into there were Cholos or the children of Cholos. They tended to be thuggish, crime-prone, uninterested in any sort of higher culture, and best avoided. But today, there are hundreds of thousands of Mexicans there, across all socioeconomic classes, who are simply “normal.” They speak English without an accent, send their children to school, and are upwardly mobile within the limits of their circumstances. There are no behavioral differences between them and Caucasian people of equivalent social rank, for all the good and bad that implies.

Even with blacks, something similar is occurring. The American South and the rustbelt cities of the Midwest and Ohio Valley still have their core populations of what might be called “ghetto blacks,” with everything we understand in that term; but around the periphery, there are an increasing number of blacks who are simply “normal.” They work, they pay their bills, their children have abandoned Ebonics, etc.

Three generations of civil rights, affirmative action, welfare, favoritism, and forced integration have started to work. That does not mean that it was worth the cost, and it does not mean that it was good policy; but it does mean that the basic premise of HBD is, essentially speaking, not true. With enough time, black social indicators normalize into the white range. The differences that still exist are the result neither of genetics nor “structural racism,” but of profoundly different historical and cultural legacies.

One cannot make a black child behave like a white child simply by “educating” him—that is, by bussing him from a black neighborhood to an affluent white school district—when everything else about his home life and environment are still starkly different. After all, education is but one small subset of a larger process of acculturation that requires many generations to achieve, and the more important roots of acculturation are ineffable and unquantifiable. It took white people 250 years of modernity to get to their current state, and black people, as a group, have not had an analogous process of development; however, with the massive opportunities afforded by the late 20th century, many blacks as individuals and families are starting to make the shift.

Again, the fact that this is possible does not mean that it is either morally obligatory or financially feasible. It is not within the remit of society to ensure that every single individual attain to the fullest flower of personal achievement, and forcing this mandate upon society only distorts it and disables it for its nonnegotiable function of providing for the commonweal. But countering this notion requires not a retreat into the pseudoscientific side-parlors of HBD, but a more general critique of the ethical presuppositions of modernity, and that is what my book provides.

Your reading comprehension has reached Tiny Duck levels of nonproficiency. Well done.

I have extensively discussed this dynamic in my book, where I also tie it in with the lack of fertility throughout the developed world, the expansion of urbanization, the modernistic tendency to risk mitigation, and the comparative wealth of nations.

Part Two: Problems of Living and Working
Chapter 6: The Politics of Coworkers

PRECISE: A question that often emerges in discussions of American economic history is, “Why is the USA so wealthy and advanced while Mexico is so poverty-stricken and backward?” The countries, after all, would seem to be similarly situated—e.g. abundant arable land, abundant mineral wealth and energy resources, long coastlines on both oceans facilitating global trade, etc. Conventional appeals to the “Protestant work ethic” do not satisfy, for the number of people whose religious beliefs consciously impact their work habits is vanishingly small. Racial explanations are obviated by the large number of Mestizos who assimilate and do quite well in Anglo societies. The answer is to be sought in liberal progressivism.

Progressivism, if we define it by its sociological effects, has two main components: 1) It legalizes all the rackets. Behaviors that were prohibited or carried significant social risk in traditional societies (like loose sexual morality) are not only normalized but are stripped of many of their deleterious consequences by a deliberate program of risk mitigation carried out by; 2) The bureaucratization and financialization of social life. The substitution of “women’s liberation” for personal codes of honor in relations between the sexes requires the attendant construction of schools to educate women, hospitals to provide abortions and dispense birth control, and so forth. These urbane innovations are expensive and must be paid for using the typical neoliberal strategy of social-democratic debt monetization and exploitative resource extraction. Thus, the social and economic phases of progressivism advance, side by side.

Because the traditional modes of social-sexual enforcement (e.g. killing the guy who deflowered your daughter or slept with your wife) do incur large frictional costs that prevent such societies from accumulating great amounts of liquid wealth, the replacement of such behavior by liberal-progressive risk mitigation really does “work”—for a few generations, anyway. Adult life becomes more and more comfortable, but this comfort is purchased at the expense of all the children who were never born while women were eschewing their matronly role. Future wealth is pulled forward into the present, there to be “financialized” into modern convenience and liberal institutions, with the inevitable, ever-increasing burden of public and private debt being the lengthening shadow threatening a day of reckoning.

There is, therefore, a direct relationship between debt and modernism. Every break with tradition requires a quantum of economic sin that will continue to circulate until it is extinguished by production without consumption, which requires a prudential orientation towards property, family, and future. For the full fleshing-out of this idea, you’ll definitely want to read the entire book. There is much more where that came from. All this is explained in only one chapter, and there are more than thirty others, all similarly replete with insight. This is truly the most important sociological text yet published in the 21st century. It is also rip-roaring fun to read, so pick up your copy today.

I would like to do a few more videos from time to time, now that there is no need to bother about the opsec. It’s a lot easier to engage that way. Anonymous discussion fora tend to give the advantage to whoever has the largest amount of free time to be a provocative, mouthy asshole who never need answer to anybody for his insults—an atmosphere hardly conducive to real thinking.

I think those days are coming to an end. By some combination of law and cultural preference, the age of internet anonymity will give way to a time when attaching a real identity to your words will be the only way to get yourself taken seriously.

ID – thanks for stopping by to promote your book, as long as it doesn’t cost 500 dollars (like Sailer’s gaudy memoir) I’d be interested in purchasing it.

Hello Mike! If there was some way we could connect offline, I’d be happy to send you a complimentary copy, but even apart from that, I don’t think the $21.99 that Amazon charges will break the bank. There may be parts of the book you disagree with, but I think there are other parts you would really enjoy. The main introductory theme involves using traffic congestion (a subject I’m sure you’ve had ample opportunity to meditate upon) as an extended metaphor for neoliberal economic failures. The ever-increasing numbers of people on the road, the poor road conditions, collective behavior imposing individual burdens, the debt that allows all these cars to be purchased, the consumerism that necessitates all these extra trips—the story of modern life is written in the fumes and frustrations of urban gridlock. There is even a special subchapter about spot market freight brokers. That, and much more besides.

Since you’re here, I’d be interested in your opinion on the tariff issue as it is being debated currently. I don’t have the effort or interest in taking a deep dive into the issue, but Unz himself seems to have a bit of TDS as it applies to Trump’s tariffs, so I am curious for an informed assessment.

It’s a nuanced subject, to be sure; but economics is all about nuance—it’s just the nature of the beast—so that’s how we’ll have to roll.

Firstly, a little framing. I am certainly not against tariffs in principle. A protectionist trade policy is essential to industrializing (or in America’s case, reindustrializing) a nation. If Trump’s tariffs had been part of a comprehensive policy package aimed at onshoring industry and reducing exposure to counterparty geopolitical risk, then I would be all for them. America is in the rare and fortunate position of being one of the few nations on Earth that can function as an economic autarky. We don’t need trade at all, assuming we are willing to adopt reasonable expectations and live within our means, but therein lies the rub.

Secondly, I concede the point that these tariffs will eventually raise consumer prices and reduce American standards of living. I’m willing to bite that bullet, because that was inevitable, anyway. Whether we choose the path of austerity, default, or debt monetization, all roads now lead to the same place. There is no way that America can solve its economic problems without pain and sacrifice (in the book, I refer to this convergence of outcomes, independent of policy, as the unity of the utopias). I argue that for America, at this point in time, inflation and debt monetization, working through a wage multiplier that functions like a reverse income tax, is actually the best policy, imposing the least amount of hardship on ordinary people and the most amount of hardship on the financial sector, where it is deserved. A subsiding tide lowers all boats, but inflation, done the right way, is “progressive” (to use the preferred nomenclature).

The tariffs are a budgetarily equivalent but more “regressive” version of the same strategy. Furthermore, the fact that Trump is imposing them in an arbitrary and scattershot manner, leaves a lot to be desired. Although I have not really read Ron Unz on the subject, I can sympathize with those who are not entirely sanguine about how this all went down. But most frustrating of all is this: when Trump uses the imposition of tariffs as a threat and a negotiating tactic, it calls into question the whole rationale for instituting them at all.

I mean, tariffs are either good or they’re bad. If they’re good, we should just do them. Is the purpose of the tariffs to rebuild American industry, or is it to keep Bolsonaro out of the Brazilian court system? It cannot be both. For Trump to tell American workers that he will enact protectionist measures to safeguard their jobs and incomes, and then tell Brazil he will tariff the hell out of them unless Bolsonaro goes free (at which point he would presumably lift the tariffs) is not logical or consistent even from Trump’s own point of view. This is what strikes a hollow note, and I suppose this is what’s fueling the TDS.

So, the TL;DR version of the above:

1) Tariffs as part of a comprehensive protectionist reindustrialization policy are good.
2) Tariffs in isolation are not ideal. There are better ways of addressing the issues they were meant to solve, but since you have to start somewhere, they may be politically palatable for a time (but the clock is ticking).
3) Tariffs wielded like a weapon to arbitrarily sanction whatever regime is on Trump’s shit-list today are not going to accomplish anything meaningful and will eventually do more harm than good.

The situation is nuanced because the tariffs can be either good, bad, or tolerable depending on the overall policy context, but political discussions in America today are not really geared for nuance, so it’s difficult to explain this to people.

ID – thanks for stopping by to promote your book, as long as it doesn’t cost 500 dollars (like Sailer’s gaudy memoir) I’d be interested in purchasing it.

Hello Mike! If there was some way we could connect offline, I’d be happy to send you a complimentary copy, but even apart from that, I don’t think the $21.99 that Amazon charges will break the bank. There may be parts of the book you disagree with, but I think there are other parts you would really enjoy. The main introductory theme involves using traffic congestion (a subject I’m sure you’ve had ample opportunity to meditate upon) as an extended metaphor for neoliberal economic failures. The ever-increasing numbers of people on the road, the poor road conditions, collective behavior imposing individual burdens, the debt that allows all these cars to be purchased, the consumerism that necessitates all these extra trips—the story of modern life is written in the fumes and frustrations of urban gridlock. There is even a special subchapter about spot market freight brokers. That, and much more besides.

Since you’re here, I’d be interested in your opinion on the tariff issue as it is being debated currently. I don’t have the effort or interest in taking a deep dive into the issue, but Unz himself seems to have a bit of TDS as it applies to Trump’s tariffs, so I am curious for an informed assessment.

It’s a nuanced subject, to be sure; but economics is all about nuance—it’s just the nature of the beast—so that’s how we’ll have to roll.

Firstly, a little framing. I am certainly not against tariffs in principle. A protectionist trade policy is essential to industrializing (or in America’s case, reindustrializing) a nation. If Trump’s tariffs had been part of a comprehensive policy package aimed at onshoring industry and reducing exposure to counterparty geopolitical risk, then I would be all for them. America is in the rare and fortunate position of being one of the few nations on Earth that can function as an economic autarky. We don’t need trade at all, assuming we are willing to adopt reasonable expectations and live within our means, but therein lies the rub.

Secondly, I concede the point that these tariffs will eventually raise consumer prices and reduce American standards of living. I’m willing to bite that bullet, because that was inevitable, anyway. Whether we choose the path of austerity, default, or debt monetization, all roads now lead to the same place. There is no way that America can solve its economic problems without pain and sacrifice (in the book, I refer to this convergence of outcomes, independent of policy, as the unity of the utopias). I argue that for America, at this point in time, inflation and debt monetization, working through a wage multiplier that functions like a reverse income tax, is actually the best policy, imposing the least amount of hardship on ordinary people and the most amount of hardship on the financial sector, where it is deserved. A subsiding tide lowers all boats, but inflation, done the right way, is “progressive” (to use the preferred nomenclature).

The tariffs are a budgetarily equivalent but more “regressive” version of the same strategy. Furthermore, the fact that Trump is imposing them in an arbitrary and scattershot manner, leaves a lot to be desired. Although I have not really read Ron Unz on the subject, I can sympathize with those who are not entirely sanguine about how this all went down. But most frustrating of all is this: when Trump uses the imposition of tariffs as a threat and a negotiating tactic, it calls into question the whole rationale for instituting them at all.

I mean, tariffs are either good or they’re bad. If they’re good, we should just do them. Is the purpose of the tariffs to rebuild American industry, or is it to keep Bolsonaro out of the Brazilian court system? It cannot be both. For Trump to tell American workers that he will enact protectionist measures to safeguard their jobs and incomes, and then tell Brazil he will tariff the hell out of them unless Bolsonaro goes free (at which point he would presumably lift the tariffs) is not logical or consistent even from Trump’s own point of view. This is what strikes a hollow note, and I suppose this is what’s fueling the TDS.

So, the TL;DR version of the above:

1) Tariffs as part of a comprehensive protectionist reindustrialization policy are good.
2) Tariffs in isolation are not ideal. There are better ways of addressing the issues they were meant to solve, but since you have to start somewhere, they may be politically palatable for a time (but the clock is ticking).
3) Tariffs wielded like a weapon to arbitrarily sanction whatever regime is on Trump’s shit-list today are not going to accomplish anything meaningful and will eventually do more harm than good.

The situation is nuanced because the tariffs can be either good, bad, or tolerable depending on the overall policy context, but political discussions in America today are not really geared for nuance, so it’s difficult to explain this to people.

Well, let’s see if this works.

According to the criteria set forth by Ron Unz at the commencement of these open threads, I should now have my comments automatically approved—a privilege that I never enjoyed when Sailer was here and one that I now (ironically) no longer require, having decided to comment here no longer.

However, I am breaking radio silence just this once to inform the forum of the publication of my new book: Traffic and Weather Together Next: The Love of Money, the Root of All Evil, and the End of the American Economy.

I have long been convinced of the truth of the maxim that when it comes to diagnosing and correcting the modern social dysfunction, amateurs talk ideology and professionals talk economics. Correspondingly, I have placed my full panoply of economic meditations together in one accessible form that is now required reading for all Traditionalists.

I have called this a complete metaphysical critique of neoliberal economics, written with the soul of an adventure. After a long introduction that explains the key concepts of the book, the main text falls into four parts: 1) A philosophical history of neoliberalism, beginning with the break with Thomistic metaphysics enacted by the early modern philosophers; 2) a socioeconomic exploration of the contemporary living and working conditions resulting therefrom; 3) a Scriptural exegesis that explains the fundamentals of Christian economics; and 4) practical individual and policy recommendations for recreating a Catholic economy even while taking in the full scope of concrete, modern realities.

If I do say so myself, this is a uniquely enjoyable and trenchant book, quite timely and pertinent. It is also extremely pleasant to read—it pulls no punches and stands alone in its genre as the first effort of its kind. As this revelation involves a partial doxxing of myself (I assume Ron Unz will allow that) please be respectful when discussing or reviewing it.

The dense but highly readable prose is replete with insights that leap off every page. It is well worth your time and effort to read, as there is nothing else like this today. Thanks, and farewell.

Also, save rare exceptions, the quality of the articles has dropped a lot, not to mention the quality of the commenters. Perhaps it’s time to go.

Yeah, it’s time to go. It’s been years in the making here, and that goes for a lot of other things, too.

Way back in 1998, I made a conscious decision to stop watching television because I realized it had all turned to garbage. The culture was completely fake and gay, moronic, trashy, violent, gaudy—it just had nothing redeeming about it.

I’ve got that feeling again, but now I feel that way about the entire internet. Twenty years ago, even the comments on relatively normal sites like First Things and Asia Times were better than the content you get here, today. Back then, it seemed like there were more erudite and learned people who actually had opinions and would discuss things. Not anymore. The internet is just an amusement park filled with old, broken-down rides, and you’ve already ridden them all.

Of course, the internet is part of the functional infrastructure of contemporary life and it’s hard to get rid of it entirely, but I certainly don’t need to spend any extra time engaging with it, as if it had something to offer. You’re right, it’s time to move on.

Yes, you’re right.

Obviously, most people in the survey misunderstood what they were being asked. Instead of carefully thinking through whether the question itself should be taboo, they just proleptically reacted to their feelings that the subject was somehow immoral or icky. If the idiots understood how the hell they were actually supposed to answer, they would realize that some of the ickiest subjects are actually the least taboo questions to ask.

People are stupid. People do this very thing all the time, and the more intelligent you are, the more you realize that they’re doing it and the more it frustrates you. It’s like being a Catholic and having to put up with all the dipshits who think “the Immaculate Conception” means “the Virgin Birth.”

On the other hand, there is one caveat to all this. The stupid people may have an inarticulable but reliable instinct, born of experience, telling them that when a social scientist says “I want to ask you about X,” what he really means is, “I want to demolish your traditional opinions about X and concoct sciency rationalizations for holding the contrary view.” In this, the stupid people are right, so they may be answering that those questions are taboo as a means of defending whatever remains of their healthy and normal morality from subversive politics masquerading as science. If you were to hindcast this interpretation over the last 30 years of “social science,” you would find it to be eerily accurate.

Spite, much?

You’ve clearly been waiting for this moment. How was it?

You are a man among the Midgets of Unz. Thank you for all your commentary.

I realized I would not be able to sit through another Asian dinner without wanting to stab myself with a fork over the trite conversation.

And speaking of speaking–how is BAP so successful? I find nothing compelling or charismatic about his voice and thoughts. I give up. I have no idea what people are looking for.

People read, listen, and watch not to be informed or to think, but to confirm prejudice. Sailer’s ongoing popularity is owed entirely to him providing a platform for disaffected white people to complain about American racial politics, as I’ve pointed out before. It certainly isn’t due to his accurate takes on contemporary issues.

Boy, did this post ever bring out the inner nurturist in the iSteve community.

Posit: Observed difference in black behavior and intelligence are largely genetic in origin.

HBDer: Absolutely. The Real Science!™ of genetics establishes beyond any doubt that 70,000 years of divergent evolution between blacks and whites have conditioned blacks to be low-IQ, compulsive, violent thugs with a high time preference. Environment can neither account for this nor correct it. If you don’t believe this, you are a science-denying, blank-slatist idiot who needs to open up his eyes and look at the statistics. Steve Sailer is the most underrated intellectual of the last 100 years.

Posit: Genetic polymorphisms that correlate with intelligence also correlate with leftist politics.

HBDer: Bullshit. It’s all confounded by assortive mating and the educational system. Only smart people go to college, where they are brainwashed into being doctrinaire liberals (because smart people completely lack agency when it comes to their own intellectual development and they believe whatever their professors tell them to believe—they’re tabula rasas, I tell you). Besides, what does “Left” really mean today, anyway? The designation of what counts as liberalism and what does not isn’t that cut and dried. It all exists on a continuum. Political affiliations are not intrinsic features of a person, they are a social construct.

No further proof is needed that “HBD” has never been anything more than a thin, pseudoscientific patina applied to racial animus, especially against black people. If you were as indulgent towards blacks as you were towards your fellow whites, you would sound no different than any Civil Rights-era hippie. If you were as rigorous with whites as you were with blacks, you would sound like the Nation of Islam.

HBD is not even wrong. It isn’t merely that it gets scientific facts incorrect, it’s that it has no idea what a scientific argument even is, or how to make one. It’s just an excuse for bitching about race relations in America. This, in and of itself, is fine; America has a number of legitimate problems with racial politics, immigration, and underclass black criminality—but that is a completely separate subject from the nature of race itself. What race is, HBD will never discover. I hold this blog and this entire movement discredited.

This is a superb analysis of what it is to say that something exists or does not exist

I don’t think it’s a very good analysis at all. The aura experiment was poorly designed and inconclusive. It would be easy for an aura-perceiver to come back and say that since the aura is a property of the whole person, you cannot see the aura unless you are actually perceiving the person, too. Auras were never supposed to be taken as physical emanations like light. But even if the aura had been actual, physical light, the experiment as designed would have blocked that, too. Thus, it really doesn’t prove anything, other than the fact that the experimenter is an idiot.

I would guess that auras are a type of synesthesia.

I had very strong synesthesia with respect to letters and numbers when I was young. I would perceive every letter and number on a printed page as surrounded by a halo of color of a particular hue that was unique to that character. It was a really cool talent to have, since the colors are easier to recall than abstract signs. It gave me a great ability to do arithmetic in my head and to remember things I had read.

Now that I’m in my 40s, the synesthesia is mostly faded, and my ability to calculate in my mind and to remember blocks of text verbatim is correspondingly much reduced from what it once was. It’s kind of sad, but it is an inevitable consequence of the course my life has taken. Now that I am burdened with many cares of the world, my neurological architecture has had to adapt. The adult brain must be formed for willing and doing instead of just perceiving things and delighting in them like a child or a savant.

But here is the thing. Even when I was a little kid, I never once was so silly as to believe that the halos were physically present on the page; but they were part of the way that I perceived the characters. Obviously, I would have to know what character was present before I could “see” its halo. Every letter “A” looks burgundy red to me, but an ambiguous piece of letter “A” does not have this quality.

It’s reasonable to think that other people—probably mostly women—have this same color-added sense when they perceive human forms; but of course, the form must be perceived before its aura can be perceived.

If anyone sees a worthwhile observation in that piece could they please point me to it?

I think what we have here is not an intellectual revolt, but the beginnings of one. Miss Keira, like most modern people, does not really have the vocabulary or the conceptual architecture to develop the kind of case she needs to make. Even though she knows that something sticks in her craw concerning “hereditarianism,” she does not understand why, and all her education leads her in the wrong direction. So, instead of pointing you to a worthwhile observation, I will point you to the spot where she torpedoes her own argument. It’s right at the beginning of the article:

Hereditarians, biological essentialists, those who really like the idea of a universal human hierarchy to simplify and categorize and organize this messy thing we call life all share one quiet certainty: Our refusal to acquiesce to natural law is what is holding us back.

I know what she means by “biological essentialists,” but properly speaking, that phrase is just a meaningless combination of words. If something is essential, then it does not take a modifier like “biological.” Furthermore, in speaking somewhat derisively of essentialism in general, she throws away her own life preserver. Real essentialism, of course, precludes the kind of biological reductionism she is arguing against. If she had a correct understanding of things, she would see it as an ally instead of a boogeyman.

I gather it would surprise her to learn that HBDers, at least the less doltish variety thereof, ruthlessly reject essentialism because they understand it means the end of their operation. There is an intrinsic materialist implication in HBD which Keira apparently shares for other reasons, so she is somewhat ill-equipped to win this argument. However, while HBD entails materialism, materialism does not entail HBD, so it is possible for two materialists to argue with each other about this; but since neither one has a philosophical advantage over the other, these arguments are merely political not scientific.

Fran Drescher is currently in the studio recording it.

Life imitates art imitates life, or is it the other way around?

Just go back and hit the button you want, you stupid fuck-stick.

Jesus Lord Almighty, the stupidity of you white IQ fanatics is ever a sight to behold.

As to natural rights, I’d suggest checking out the back and forth on the topic between Paul Gottfried and the Z-Man vs Michael Anton. Just my opinion, but it was a tad embarrassing for Anton.

Z-Man is a deranged lunatic who wins every argument in his own mind because he equivocates on important concepts. This does not fool intelligent people who understand the relevant territory, but his readership seems to consist of people who are so damn angry that they just don’t care about his bad arguments. He should stay out of this fight. I’d like to think that the guy means well, but he’s not a philosopher.

Yes, I agree.

To reply to both Nicholas Stix and res:

From a cynical and radical perspective, the trans agenda is a pretty good hill to die on, and taking others’ FU money is the whole objective. If you’re looking for wealthy individuals to sue or powerful institutions to appropriate, then having the ability to accuse them of running afoul of some strange gender ideology is pretty good leverage.

In debates about leftist ideology, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the ideology was never the point for these folks. “Cultural Marxism” has always been a cynical Machiavellian power play that specifically targets classical liberal societies, and it’s been very successful at it.

I get the feeling reading this that J.K. Rowling thinks the cancel culture is bluffing.

They’re not bluffing.

I believe everybody needs to be using their real identity online, at all times. This should be codified into law. There should be no anonymous posting and no screen names. The blanket of anonymity has enabled the worst people here to say all sorts of insulting things without fear of reprisal, and that needs to stop.

The problem is, the people to whom this rule most needs to be applied are the very people who would never abide by it voluntarily, so there is no advantage in doxing oneself until it can be made mandatory for all.

It’s just a simple matter of collimating time and effort. Every generation exerts a multiplier effect on the generation that comes after it, because it becomes easier to do things that have been done before. Whether it’s baseball, or admission to Ivy League colleges, or the Flynn Effect, or any of the other things that people here like to talk about, the underlying dynamic is the same.

However, sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself what the relevant criteria for success really are. I submit that in baseball, it isn’t actually the ability to play—it’s the ability to professionalize, which is a whole different thing. At the margins, simply having the notion that this is a valid way of making a living and is therefore worth pursuing, makes a big difference. Then there is also the whole process of maintaining eligibility throughout one’s youth and then negotiating a proper contract, which can all be pretty high hurdles for a neophyte. Having a dad who knows the business can be decisive.

In demonstration of point, ladies and gentlemen, I draw your attention to the fact that this rubbish from HA has just increased the comment count.

Compare Scott Greer’s following on X with Steve’s: Steve has ¾ the following Scott has, but Scott’s Substack comments count per article is far less than Steve’s is on The Unz Review.

Does Scott Greer have a local version of Jack D and other auto-approved foghorns collectively accounting for half his comments?

If you took Sailer’s comment section and redacted all those from the Un-mod Squad (or in response to them), leaving only those coming from real people with something to say, you will have reduced its bulk by a very considerable margin.

What did this article have to do with healthcare?

He thinks all Sailer’s smart readers left because Steve doesn’t have the right analysis of Ukraine or Gaza.

Ron runs the website, he has access to all the stats, and he is nothing if not obsessive about his numbers. Even without access to the stats, it’s pretty obvious that Sailer has suffered a large drop-off in readership, since many of the old commenter handles simply don’t show up here anymore. The fact that Steve is basically a fame-hungry midwit with a frog’s eye view of reality was obvious to me since the early ’00s, but it took his total butchering of Covid and Ukraine for his readership to catch up. Stevites have a siege mentality and they will reflexively combat anybody who threatens their hero, but even most of them eventually saw the truth. The only people left on this blog are the true sycophants, the handful of auto-approved blunderbusses, and the standout effort-poster whose name really ought to be in the byline, Jack D.

When Tucker Carlson gives idiotic quips stating that Steve ought to be one of the most famous writers in the world, it’s obvious that he does not know from Adam anything about Steve Sailer or what he has said. Some aid whispered to Tucker that Steve writes about stuff the mainstream journalists don’t say, and that quip just kind of fell together in Tucker’s head. It’s an easy line to come up with, requiring no special insight or familiarity with the subject, only the belief that the subject is getting short shrift from the gatekeepers and powerbrokers.

In fact, Steve does not get short shrift. Everybody in quant journalism knows who he is, if only for his nasty habit of needling them with harassing tweets whenever he needs to up his own profile. Tucker is not in quant journalism, so he thinks Steve is just as unfamiliar to everybody as he is to himself. So, he comes up with a throwaway line that tries to sound sophisticated. If Tucker knew what Steve actually thinks about Covid and Ukraine, he would forget all about him and move on.

And then there are the idiot fans with more money than brains, who are willing to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to see the aging rock stars on stage, mostly for bragging rights, even if they can’t perform worth a damn. It’s lunacy, but that’s the world for you.

The further we drift in time from the epicenter of rock’n’roll culture, the more obvious it becomes that the whole thing was a bubble. That is not to say that some of the musicians were not talented, but the excessive amount of attention and energy and money that this music absorbed, the staggering influence it had over 1.5-2 generations, is not something that can be explained in terms of any sort of “fundamentals.”

It was a giant cultural distortion that is now on the wane. Someday, perhaps 30 years from now when most of the Boomers are gone and the Xers are too tired from cleaning up their mess, nobody will be left to understand what the big deal was.

It’s nice to hope that future generations will be richer than us so they will easily be able to afford to maintain our follies so that they don’t fall over sideways.

No skyscraper will ever fall over sideways. Once it started to lean, the tortional force in the moment-arm would greatly exceed the sheer strength of the construction materials, so it would just crumple at the axis of rotation and then fall straight down from there. Skyscrapers are not trees.

In point of fact, all skyscrapers are time bomb structures, not just the weird-looking ones. The basic physical principles involved in this type of building introduce certain problems that cannot be mitigated. They are inherent in the very nature of the thing.

The reason why large portions of the Flavian Amphitheater are still standing after 2000 years is because its construction relied on the static principles of support and load to provide stability. Because it’s made of stone and held together by gravity, it cannot really fall apart. It is already in a least-energy configuration, so it basically ages no faster than a pile of rock—which it is.

On the other hand, skyscrapers are held together by the dynamic tension of structural steel members distributing forces to one another. A skyscraper has more in common with a suspension bridge than it does with the Coliseum. There is a lot of live tension in the structure, and it is most definitely not in a least-energy configuration. This means that when it fails, it will fail catastrophically. There is no other way it can be. The live forces will cause it to warp and buckle, and they will pull the whole building down around itself.

Every one of these structures is going to come crashing down within the next two or three centuries if it is not deliberately dismantled first. This is going to be a serious problem for the world going forward.