RSS
Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times:
The Myth of Cosmopolitanism
Ross Douthat JULY 2, 2016NOW that populist rebellions are taking Britain out of the European Union and the Republican Party out of contention for the presidency, perhaps we should speak no more of left and right, liberals and conservatives. From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists. From now on the loyalties that matter will be narrowly tribal — Make America Great Again, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England — or multicultural and cosmopolitan.
Well, maybe. But describing the division this way has one great flaw. It gives the elite side of the debate (the side that does most of the describing) too much credit for being truly cosmopolitan.
Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s own. It takes its cue from a Roman playwright’s line that “nothing human is alien to me,” and goes outward ready to be transformed by what it finds.
The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens.”
This species is racially diverse (within limits) and eager to assimilate the fun-seeming bits of foreign cultures — food, a touch of exotic spirituality. But no less than Brexit-voting Cornish villagers, our global citizens think and act as members of a tribe. …
They can’t see that paeans to multicultural openness can sound like self-serving cant coming from open-borders Londoners who love Afghan restaurants but would never live near an immigrant housing project, or American liberals who hail the end of whiteness while doing everything possible to keep their kids out of majority-minority schools.
They can’t see that their vision of history’s arc bending inexorably away from tribe and creed and nation-state looks to outsiders like something familiar from eras past: A powerful caste’s self-serving explanation for why it alone deserves to rule the world.
I blame the rise of the word “cosmopolitan” over the last decade as a favorite of Virtue Signalers on Helen Gurley Brown finally getting old.
For most of my life, the word “cosmopolitan” had been inextricably linked with the magazine edited from 1965 to 1997 by the force-of-nature author of Sex and Single Girl.
So, back then, Davos types didn’t go around praising each other as cosmopolitans because everybody would be reminded of the famous magazine and snicker.
But now they do.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
“So, back then, Davos types didn’t go around praising each other as cosmopolitans because everybody would be reminded of the famous magazine and snicker.”
Given what we know now, perhaps a lot of those cosmopolitan Davos types would like to appear on the cover of Cosmopolitan.
In one form or another.
cosmopolitans like to frame the sitiuation in terms of “openness” vs “narrow-minded / xenophobic”. But actually I have the impression that nativist positions are not against openness but against the unbalanced and extreme expansion of some groups at a cost of all other groups.
Right, into the late 90s, everybody associated the word with the magazines glaring out at you in the grocery check out line with things like “how to please your man sexually in the bedroom” on the cover.
It’s really impressive how much out-of-control outrage the elite can get gin up over an argument that is so empty.
What is actually wrong with nationalism? What is wrong with citizens of a country seeking to keep the country mostly intact with respect to its peoples and culture?
I’ve asked that question in any number of places. I’ve never received what I would call a rational response.
The elites have many smears they use for nationalism — nativist, xenophobe, racist, bigot. But, apart from these entirely emotional terms, what is the argument against nationalism?
Their “arguments” always end where they start: with scare mongering, with pretending that any nationalistic attitude is and must be a precursor to hate and fascism. But on what rational basis can they possibly leap to such extraordinary conclusions? Were the US and England fascist, hate-filled countries until we had massive immigration? In the US, were the years between the closing down of immigration in the 1920s and its opening up in the 60s an ongoing devolution into authoritarianism and hate? Weren’t they instead a time a time when The Common Man was celebrated, a time of increasing prosperity for all and enfranchisement of all groups?
Really, what’s the argument? Why are the elites always reduced to talking about “fear of the other” (is there a more childish, or superstitious expression?), and “hate”, and other boogeymen of their own manufacture when the subject of nationalism comes up?
Other immigration stories are win-lose, particularly in modern US, Canada, Europe, where the immigrant gains at the expense of the host. Those would justify nationalism.
Peoples and culture matter not because preserving their inertia has value, but because culture is the expression of a people's innate genetic tendency. Thus, erasing borders on the theory that everyone is the same will lead to catastrophic results. Garbage in (the blank slate theory) garbage out (innocent Rotherhammers confronted with Pakistani reptiles).
The big problem is: people are no longer cool & wild. The 70’s into the 80’s was a cosmic age. I blame the financialization of the economy….the break of capital from labor in the 80’s. If anything, more hot women were on the cover of Cosmo….but, now…hmmmm?…kinda’ lame. Over the last 20 years, women discovered it sucks to figure out how to have a family while being fabulous.
There's a saying: the golden age of science fiction is thirteen.
I dunno. That magazine was usually referred to as “Cosmo”, as was the cocktail of the same name.
Checking Google Ngram, it looks like “Cosmopolitan” has been rising fairly steadily since 1988.
Anyhow, this all detracts from the last two paragraphs of Ross’s column, which were killer.
Maybe they’ll start calling the fun-loving members of their elite club playboys.
I’m suprised Cosmo doesn’t have articles on sexually pleasing your women. I’m sure at least 20 percent of the women that read this mag are bisexual. Ironically though, Cosmopolitan probably isn’t isn’t all that cosmopolitan politics wise – expect a relatively high proportion of Cosmo readers to be Donald Trump supporters.
I think very few of them will give up a wedding and kids (and alimony!) to live with a woman with a buzzcut and shop at women-owned stores.Replies: @Dissident, @unpc downunder
28 Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex Positions
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/g4090/mind-blowing-lesbian-sex-positions/Replies: @Big Bill, @Pericles
Funny, whenever I’ve used the word “cosmopolitan” in the sense that the globalists like to think of themselves, I’ve been accused of using an old anti-semitic slur. Apparently, according to every single Jewish person I’ve ever had encounters with, “cosmopolitan” was an old code-word for “Jew”, slightly more noxious than calling someone a dirty kike or putting parentheses around their name. Perhaps I’ve just been dealing with the wrong Jewish people.
Though the phrase "shanda fur die goyim" comes to mind reading this by the Uganda-born, Netherlands- and California-raised, Paris-living Simon Kuper:
https://twitter.com/FT/status/749158186293362688Replies: @Gato de la Biblioteca
But I would guess that most American Jews have only a vague understanding of the inner workings of Soviet antisemitism and perhaps rightly so because it was just a thin ideological veneer on top of (deeply rooted) Russian antisemitism. "Rootless cosmopolitan " doesn't particularly register at all, given how poorly history is taught in America. You can imagine that Soviet anti-Jewish purges are not something that is emphasized heavily in American "liberal" education - if Americans learn anything about the '50s, it's more about Emmett Till and McCarthyism. If you were doing a word association test, the first thing cosmopolitan would bring to mind is not a magazine or a Soviet epithet but a cocktail.Replies: @Anonymous, @Hunsdon
Not so much “cosmopolitan” as “rootless cosmopolitan”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootless_cosmopolitan
Though the phrase “shanda fur die goyim” comes to mind reading this by the Uganda-born, Netherlands- and California-raised, Paris-living Simon Kuper:
BHO is cosmopolitan without being sophisticated.
And I'm sure Obama could speak knowledgeably about the latest cultural phenomena.
But years ago, Steve wrote about Obama's skill at articulating the arguments of his opponents. I think that's less true today, as the Overton window has shifted to include more antagonistic opponents. I'm sure Obama could articulate, say, Marco Rubio's views. But not Trump's.
A temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration isn't something Obama would be comfortable batting around in the salons of Georgetown. It's something he'd dismiss with a "wrong side of history" or a "It's not who we are".
Same with Trump's views on trade or immigration in general. So, in that sense, Obama isn't sophisticated. As most cosmopolitans aren't.Replies: @Broski
Though the phrase "shanda fur die goyim" comes to mind reading this by the Uganda-born, Netherlands- and California-raised, Paris-living Simon Kuper:
https://twitter.com/FT/status/749158186293362688Replies: @Gato de la Biblioteca
Perhaps that’s how it started out, but I’m told it is a horrible anti-semetic slur now. This, of course, by Jews who tell me that any time I oppose anything any Democrat wants to do that I’m a Nazi or worse. (How the fuck I’m supposed to be worse than a Nazi I don’t know, but they insist upon it.) I guess that by saying “cosmopolitan” I’m micro-aggressing against them, because I might slip “rootless” into the conversation somewhere. You know, like saying “niggardly” is the same thing as calling for slavery.
yes. boom, Dave, those last paragraphs you cite. – serious ruminating by Douthat, he’s been such a tool this year…I always liked him in the past…now it’s just, ugh…it’s almost: don’t write anything you know is being a suck-lord.
Sounds like more people have read Moby Dick or something, lately….wondering if they are being honest. Even if Trump does not win, many people will not like being tools to the establishment/globalist/egocentric cabal. Trump being a lousy messenger, may be long gone back home to a nice family in late Nov. Now, the rest of the people, working so hard to take Trump down, well, their lives may continue to be sub-par…and, crap, is their job even solid?
Gotta go to sleep now as meds are affecting my faculties – my soft tissue is healing very well, but I have half the energy I had a year ago – but, I’ll be fine.
Given what we know now, perhaps a lot of those cosmopolitan Davos types would like to appear on the cover of Cosmopolitan.Replies: @Kylie
“Given what we know now, perhaps a lot of those cosmopolitan Davos types would like to appear on the cover of Cosmopolitan.”
In one form or another.
Ok, get some rest and get well soon.
I guess it depends on how you define sophisticated. Ross distinguishes between a surface cosmopolitanism and a deeper one, but one could argue Obama is more of a deeper cosmopolitan, having lived in places like Indonesia, rather than having just been a tourist.
And I’m sure Obama could speak knowledgeably about the latest cultural phenomena.
But years ago, Steve wrote about Obama’s skill at articulating the arguments of his opponents. I think that’s less true today, as the Overton window has shifted to include more antagonistic opponents. I’m sure Obama could articulate, say, Marco Rubio’s views. But not Trump’s.
A temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration isn’t something Obama would be comfortable batting around in the salons of Georgetown. It’s something he’d dismiss with a “wrong side of history” or a “It’s not who we are”.
Same with Trump’s views on trade or immigration in general. So, in that sense, Obama isn’t sophisticated. As most cosmopolitans aren’t.
Related to what Gato and Dave Pinsen were discussing upthread . . .
A young, fashionable, rootless cosmopolitan from Russia who seems to be the media go-to girl in Berlin when it comes to questions of German identity:
Ioulia Isserlis, in July 2014 telling the Times of Israel why she won’t be rooting for Germany.
Ms. Isserlis, quoted in a New York Times October 2015 article about Germany, post-unification:
“On adapting to a New Life” …
“On being German” …
The term (((rootless cosmopolitan))) is considered to be dastardly and bigoted, so it’s amusingly revealing when an actual rootless cosmopolitan blithely dismisses the ethnic/racial (self) identity of others, while in the next breath declares one’s own Jewish identity to be of ultimate importance.
To any smarties who would claim she is talking about religion rather than blood… she doesn’t seem to have very Orthodox concerns:
One of the huge tunes in the Business Men’s club I picked up glasses in, as part of my cosmopolitan duties in the 80s, was Big Country’s In a Big Country.
Vodka, triple sec and cranberry juice was a signal that this bird wasn’t going home alone tonight!
Scottish nationalist rock songs set to outer western suburbs attempts at sophistication. Rather than lassitude I heartily imbibed that one year; it was like being at a Hitler Bunker orgy, in perpetuity, on the eve of the Leader’s suicide.
I loved Big Country.
“Londoners who love Afghan restaurants but would never live near an immigrant housing project”
This is a bit misleading, in London asylum seekers etc are generally spread out in public housing that is mixed in with private rented & owned housing, and the majority of white cosmopolitans are mixed in with non-white immigrants. Currently my next door neighbour is a mentally ill cannabis-smoking Afro-Caribbean, and there is a large council estate (‘housing project’) across the street which is mixed white & non-white. Previously I lived on a street of terraced houses with a mixed population of whites, working non-whites, and ‘refugees’ like the Somalis who did a home invasion on my Irish neighbour. That’s pretty typical.
These days you don’t have to be Jewish to be a rootless cosmopolitan, which was the old Soviet slur against its Jewish dissidents. Rootless cosmopolitan is a good description of our current crop of “citizens of the world”.
The opposite of cosmopolitism is nationalism. The global tribe, which is in fact simply a western upper class, likes to think of nationalism as either something only low class dumb people would adhere to, or as a dangerous instinct to be warned against without constraint.
However, nationalism was a contract between the lower, middle and upper class of a nation to recognize they share destiny. In that sense nationalism was the peace after the social disruptions of the industrial revolution, even though nationalism does have it particular dangerous sides.
Seems very simple to me. The upper classes and the wealthy violated this contract, this accelerated after the fall of communism. The really bad trade treaties and giveaways came after communism crumbled.Replies: @backup
I’m making a pledge to stop using the word “elite” to describe the ruling class.
An elite warrior means someone with the talents and training to be good at his trade. It also implies the he has gone through battle and come out on top.
None of this applies to the ruling class that is better thought of as an aristocracy.
Ross is an excellent op-ed writer. Watched some of the Amy Schumer show on HBO last night. Good gosh. Would have been a blast to read an iSteve simulcast.
Douthat didn’t learn from the primary I see. He declared last year that we’d all look like fools when Rubio ended up as the nominee. Now he’s saying Trump has no chance.
Given that the Dems are running the worst, most vile human being to top a ticket since who knows when, saying Trump can't win is stupid.Replies: @ben tillman
The argument, which they cannot state, which is why you never hear it, is that nationalism will be VERY bad for elite pillaging and prestige. They are correct about this. Many people have built whole careers off progressive signaling and narrative enforcement. If a nationalist regime manages to take power, it will have a new narrative, which will not be kind to the constituents of its predecessor, and it won’t be shy about bringing their many crimes to light.
It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.
Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques.
A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge.
Of course, this shrinking from the brutal vivacity and brutal variety of common men is a perfectly reasonable and excusable thing as long as it does not pretend to any point of superiority. It is when it calls itself aristocracy or aestheticism or a superiority to the bourgeoisie that its inherent weakness has in justice to be pointed out. Fastidiousness is the most pardonable of vices; but it is the most unpardonable of virtues.
The main difference being that this time the divine right to rule and tax without reciprocal obligations to subjects is derived from human rights and social justice, not religion.
Since I was young, I assumed “cosmopolitan” just referred to people who have travelled about the world, with enough money to create a bubble of safety for themselves.
I never thought of nationalism as its opposite, as I considered the former to be a temporal state, while nationalism, with exceptions, rings eternal. Cosmopolitanism last as long as your bank account holds out. You can be a dead broke nationalist, no problem.
I think at least 20 percent of women that read that mag are ‘bisexual’, in the sense of ‘I like to fool around with women, especially in front of my boyfriend’.
I think very few of them will give up a wedding and kids (and alimony!) to live with a woman with a buzzcut and shop at women-owned stores.
I marvel at how blissfully unaware you apparently are.
The LGBTs who are most likely to vote for Hillary will be the androgynous or asexual types, while the least likely will be the bisexuals with high sex drives.
Don’t forget those orgies coming into fashion out in the Hamptons. Or that French high minister who got caught year before last. Cosmopolitan can be very Cosmopolitan indeed (though some might call it decadence instead).
There are some genuinely happy, win-win immigration stories, and clearly nationalism inhibits that.
Other immigration stories are win-lose, particularly in modern US, Canada, Europe, where the immigrant gains at the expense of the host. Those would justify nationalism.
Instead of cosmopolitan, how about neo-reactionary? After all, their emergent aristocratic worldview is anti-democratic & anti-middle-class to the core.
It's an old story: the elite likes to convince themselves that they are the best people to rule. In the Middle Ages they had priests to tell them God had chosen them, in the nineteenth century they were the product of superior breeding.
That wouldn’t happen to have been your youth, would it? 😉
There’s a saying: the golden age of science fiction is thirteen.
You’re right, but Moldbug’s stolen that one.
It’s an old story: the elite likes to convince themselves that they are the best people to rule. In the Middle Ages they had priests to tell them God had chosen them, in the nineteenth century they were the product of superior breeding.
That the middle and lower class do the grunt work at home and fight the wars. In turn the upper classes and plutocrats don’t try to enrich themselves by shipping industry and jobs to Mexico and China and we don’t have open borders immigration policies driving down wages.
Seems very simple to me. The upper classes and the wealthy violated this contract, this accelerated after the fall of communism. The really bad trade treaties and giveaways came after communism crumbled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Abjuration
We should do something similar.
Actually the term ‘Cosmopolitan’ was once polite code for Jews.
Helen Gurley Brown was anything but rootless. She got plenty of root.
Like an Italian economist (carefully censored by all the MSM) said,
“London is a place full of millionaires. People who never dine but at lofty restaurants, and take a plane every 50 times a year. When you look around you think it is your fault if today you can’t have a Rolls Royce.
On the other side of London, there is England.
London has declared war on England.”
We can extend this to the whole West, the cradle of democracy. As soon as the threat of real socialism and communism waned, the rich declared war on the non-rich.
Considering they own everything, included the totality of what Marx called means of production, and today are first of all the means of production of ideas (that is, in our case, myths and illusions), you don’t see how on earth their dreams of absolute dominion would be stopped by democratic, peaceful opposition.
It’s like the only choice is between a nightmare (real socialism) and the other (pure capitalism).
Douthat is spot-on. Cosmopolitan implies weak attachment to any particular view, but today’s elites are very much attached to one view. That view is to destroy all traditional ways of life and sources of authority in order to convert people into American-style consumers. The means: open borders, trade agreements, and stirring up trouble abroad to generate streams of immigrants and refugees (invade/invite). These look like cosmopolitan and progressive ends, but in fact they are merely means to a reactionary end.
Ross Douthat really nails the pro-nationalist backlash sentiment. He explains it extremely clearly and articulately and he does so from the authority of the New York Times. It is weird that he is so completely against Trump. I don’t recall him ever even trying to explain why he articulates Trump. He just states as assumed that Trump is unfit, etc.
David Frum is similar in that he is a highly respected figure that quite articulately explains reasonable opposition and backlash to mass immigration, yet he also abhors Trump.
I wonder if Douthat and Frum both secretely want Trump to win but want to deflect from his bad sides.
Did you even bother to look?
28 Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex Positions
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/g4090/mind-blowing-lesbian-sex-positions/
Disappointing.
“They can’t see that paeans to multicultural openness can sound like self-serving cant coming from open-borders Londoners who love Afghan restaurants but would never live near an immigrant housing project, or American liberals who hail the end of whiteness while doing everything possible to keep their kids out of majority-minority schools.”
Bingo!!
The further apart the so-called “Elites” on the Boston-DC/SanFran-LA corridors isolate themselves from the rest of America the greater the level of contempt which exists between both groups. As they wing their way to and from the Deep Blue East and West Coasts while pissing over “flyover country” from on high, it probably hasn’t dawned upon them that if there is anyone to blame for the rise of The Don it is THEY who are to blame.
Maybe you and I, but keep in mind that last I checked Cosmo was the best-selling item in college bookstores twenty years running.
Two observations about the topic.
Think of the poor refugees. They all aspire to be cosmopolitan and no longer rootless.
Cosmo readers seemed to me to be pathetically aspirational, looking for some How-To tips to reach some shifting ideal of young womanhood. Look at who buys and reads that laughable rag. It has been described as written for receptionists and those who aspire to become receptionists.
Immigrants and refugees of various types are cosmopolitan, learning the language and culture of a foreign country that they’ve settled in to and straddling both. Typically this isn’t as glamorous as various people like to portray it, preferring to attach some snob appeal to it and styling themselves as ‘cosmopolitan’ jet setters familiar with foreign food. Much of it is just status mongering on the part of those who consider themselves to be the superior ones.
This was mainly a Soviet thing. Since the Soviet Union was officially atheist and multi-ethnic, it wasn’t possible to directly criticize Jews as Jews, so they had to come up with a new critique and euphemism that fit Soviet ideology. So they came up with “Eskimos”. No, sorry wait, that’s the alt-right. The Soviets came up with “rootless cosmopolitans”. During WWII, Stalin shifted the emphasis of Soviet propaganda from love of Communism to love of country, which more people could unite behind. Jews were said to be insufficiently rooted in, and lacking love for, Russia and its people. To be honest, a lot of the alt-right criticism of the Jews resembles the Stalinist view.
But I would guess that most American Jews have only a vague understanding of the inner workings of Soviet antisemitism and perhaps rightly so because it was just a thin ideological veneer on top of (deeply rooted) Russian antisemitism. “Rootless cosmopolitan ” doesn’t particularly register at all, given how poorly history is taught in America. You can imagine that Soviet anti-Jewish purges are not something that is emphasized heavily in American “liberal” education – if Americans learn anything about the ’50s, it’s more about Emmett Till and McCarthyism. If you were doing a word association test, the first thing cosmopolitan would bring to mind is not a magazine or a Soviet epithet but a cocktail.
And perhaps the stupid TV show Sex and the City.
Douthat is trying to ride herd for the elites by claiming that there really aren’t any elites. Don’t notice the elites, nothing to see here, move along.
Now, where did I put those parentheses?
Now, where did I put those parentheses?Replies: @anonymous-antiskynetist, @The most deplorable one
They’re in the same box as the roots.
I just don’t “get” the sex-obsessed magazine Cosmopolitan as being a “women’s magazine”, especially with all of the visual and verbal teases on the front cover that you would think are aimed at the male gaze.
So what then is a counterpart “men’s magazine”? Playboy? GQ? Esquire? Maxim?
The answer to that is Popular Mechanics. Especially the issue once featured prominently as an impulse purchase in the supermarket checkout line next to People, Cosmo, and the National Inquirer, the one with “We Fly the B-2 Stealth Bomber” on its cover.
Men really want to know what that is like. In case you were wondering, it is controlled by a side stick through a digital fly-by-wire control system, and it flies much like an A320 Airbus.
-Read our magazine and you can look this fabulous too.
None of the B-2 pilots I know (and I know several of them) have experience in transports, but they say that the B-2 is very crisp, especially for its size. It has achieved Level 1 handling qualities (the top tier) across the flight envelope.Replies: @Former Darfur
a. You go, girl! You're PERFECT just the way you are!
b. Lose 10 pounds in 10 days!
It’s good to see a “mainstream” commentator finally catching on.
I don’t get it? Isn’t ‘cosmopolitan’ a neutral term for Jewish?
I heard about ‘cosmopolitan’ with Yuri Slezkine and his book ‘The Jewish Century’ but it looks like a pretty common appellation if you google ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘Jewish.’
What’s the deal? the addition of ‘rootless’?
If that is the case doesn’t it come down to a positional good, like ‘black ‘and ‘African-american?’ A virtue status signal that loses its effect the more people sign on to it?
Now, where did I put those parentheses?Replies: @anonymous-antiskynetist, @The most deplorable one
Did you miss this part of what he wrote:
He seems to have written in a (((nuanced))) fashion there and is clearly referring to the globalists.
Perhaps the surface test was meant to disguise the sub-test so that it became another example of dog whistling.
Vox Day points out the real reason in:
https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/07/free-trade-bad-idea-or-bait-and-switch.html
That is, the globalists want a one-world government where they can exploit all the resources of the world. And, of course, the politicians among the globalists see that the opportunity for corruption in a one-world government is much greater than it is in any single country.
Nationalism obstructs them.
I did like this bit:
The claim that progressivism is a secularized version of Christianity is espoused by Moldbug and other neoreactionaries. Is this an idea that Douthat likely picked up from neoreaction, or are there other likely sources?
nah the proggtards are more like a secularized islam. they be always seeking new infidels to destroy or dhimminize.Replies: @newrouter
yea it be always " our fault"
An elite warrior means someone with the talents and training to be good at his trade. It also implies the he has gone through battle and come out on top.
None of this applies to the ruling class that is better thought of as an aristocracy.Replies: @dcite, @ben tillman
Agreed. Nothing “elite” about them. More like the dregs, morally, mentally (not referring to IQ; talking quality not quantity),and ethically.
“For most of my life, the word “cosmopolitan” had been inextricably linked with the magazine edited from 1965 to 1997 by the force-of-nature author of Sex and Single Girl.”
Isn’t Cosmopolitan also the name of a drink? Just lie around the swimming pool all day drinking Cosmos and you’ll be out of this world. Cosmo. Its really a blast.
Allow Jewish neo-Nazi Ryan Gosling to explain:
This movie, “The Believer” was denounced by the ADL, and ignored by Hollywood, for its a little-too-articulate-for-comfort explication of…the Culture of Critique. And, of course, Hollywood prefers its nazis to grunt.
Supporters? No. I’d agree they might have a vaguely positive impression of DJT and money generally. The magazine comprises social grooming and checklists for, putatively, extracting attention & dollars from high-value males, or at least outshining other women in the process, plus monthly-recycled advice written by gays. Perhaps your localized edition of Cosmo is different in degree of political activism.
I don’t have a link but there was an article I read by Walter Russell Mead about that. He said the people who founded Obama’s prep school were proto-SJWs after a fashion. Actually the title went something like, “From Honolulu to Hyde Park” (which must be the Chicago one in this context)
“Cosmopolitans,” elites on the coasts, are really provincial and myopic. Their solipsism is endemic as they are incapable of noticing the reality outside of their cloistered mind-melds.
But I would guess that most American Jews have only a vague understanding of the inner workings of Soviet antisemitism and perhaps rightly so because it was just a thin ideological veneer on top of (deeply rooted) Russian antisemitism. "Rootless cosmopolitan " doesn't particularly register at all, given how poorly history is taught in America. You can imagine that Soviet anti-Jewish purges are not something that is emphasized heavily in American "liberal" education - if Americans learn anything about the '50s, it's more about Emmett Till and McCarthyism. If you were doing a word association test, the first thing cosmopolitan would bring to mind is not a magazine or a Soviet epithet but a cocktail.Replies: @Anonymous, @Hunsdon
“If you were doing a word association test, the first thing cosmopolitan would bring to mind is not a magazine or a Soviet epithet but a cocktail.”
And perhaps the stupid TV show Sex and the City.
So what then is a counterpart "men's magazine"? Playboy? GQ? Esquire? Maxim?
The answer to that is Popular Mechanics. Especially the issue once featured prominently as an impulse purchase in the supermarket checkout line next to People, Cosmo, and the National Inquirer, the one with "We Fly the B-2 Stealth Bomber" on its cover.
Men really want to know what that is like. In case you were wondering, it is controlled by a side stick through a digital fly-by-wire control system, and it flies much like an A320 Airbus.Replies: @Fredrik, @cthulhu, @Brutusale
The images of beautiful young women on the covers of women’s magazines should be seen as aspirational.
-Read our magazine and you can look this fabulous too.
An elite warrior means someone with the talents and training to be good at his trade. It also implies the he has gone through battle and come out on top.
None of this applies to the ruling class that is better thought of as an aristocracy.Replies: @dcite, @ben tillman
An aristocracy is a government by the best. That certainly doesn’t apply.
A girlfriend once had a subscription to Cosmo. It didn’t take long to figure out the cornerstone of their marketing strategy: include the syllable “sex” exactly three times on each cover.
Please delete. The technology defeats me.
If human ancestral groups are exactly identical in talent and personality then nations are obstacles to global peace and prosperity. Why shouldn’t all peoples live under one government that achieves economies of scale in management and facilitates western norms that have allowed large swathes of humanity to escape grinding poverty for the first time in human history, along with permanently rendering shooting wars irrelevant? Liberal cosmopolitans overwhelmingly believe all groups are the same. Indeed, even the grand elites, such as U.S. presidents, captains of the media, and captains of industry, seem to think so.
Peoples and culture matter not because preserving their inertia has value, but because culture is the expression of a people’s innate genetic tendency. Thus, erasing borders on the theory that everyone is the same will lead to catastrophic results. Garbage in (the blank slate theory) garbage out (innocent Rotherhammers confronted with Pakistani reptiles).
I think very few of them will give up a wedding and kids (and alimony!) to live with a woman with a buzzcut and shop at women-owned stores.Replies: @Dissident, @unpc downunder
I hate to be the one to break this to you but living a homosexual lifestyle is no longer mutually exclusive with having a wedding and children. Alas.
I marvel at how blissfully unaware you apparently are.
Reactionary is perfectly serviceable. Now we just have to get people to use it.
So what then is a counterpart "men's magazine"? Playboy? GQ? Esquire? Maxim?
The answer to that is Popular Mechanics. Especially the issue once featured prominently as an impulse purchase in the supermarket checkout line next to People, Cosmo, and the National Inquirer, the one with "We Fly the B-2 Stealth Bomber" on its cover.
Men really want to know what that is like. In case you were wondering, it is controlled by a side stick through a digital fly-by-wire control system, and it flies much like an A320 Airbus.Replies: @Fredrik, @cthulhu, @Brutusale
The B-2 is most definitely NOT a sidestick airplane; it has a center stick.
None of the B-2 pilots I know (and I know several of them) have experience in transports, but they say that the B-2 is very crisp, especially for its size. It has achieved Level 1 handling qualities (the top tier) across the flight envelope.
And I'm sure Obama could speak knowledgeably about the latest cultural phenomena.
But years ago, Steve wrote about Obama's skill at articulating the arguments of his opponents. I think that's less true today, as the Overton window has shifted to include more antagonistic opponents. I'm sure Obama could articulate, say, Marco Rubio's views. But not Trump's.
A temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration isn't something Obama would be comfortable batting around in the salons of Georgetown. It's something he'd dismiss with a "wrong side of history" or a "It's not who we are".
Same with Trump's views on trade or immigration in general. So, in that sense, Obama isn't sophisticated. As most cosmopolitans aren't.Replies: @Broski
I agree. People think Obama is a lightweight consumer of elite pablum because he’s been a crappy American president. But he’s not an American president, at least not in his own eyes. He’s an anti-American leftist who has done an excellent job sloughing off the United State’s control of various browns with whom he truly sympathizes. Turning his back on our historic allies, and making alliances with our historic enemies, or at least giving them free reign to cause trouble (Iran; Russia, despite being mostly white or north Asian, as a legacy ally of various anti-western states from the Soviet days (an enemy of my enemy is my friend)), has been tremendously successful for Obama.
The perfect antidote:
Ladies – it’s not enough to just read those articles, we’d like you to absorb some of the advice and act on it. Thank you.
That was odd. It seems like Douthat is doing everything he can to retain his respectability, so that whether Trump wins or loses people can’t accuse him of being a supporter.
Given that the Dems are running the worst, most vile human being to top a ticket since who knows when, saying Trump can’t win is stupid.
I first heard it from Moldbug ca. 2007. Never seen a source that preceded him.
The problem is that Moldbug is wrong about the reason for the phenomenon.
Seems very simple to me. The upper classes and the wealthy violated this contract, this accelerated after the fall of communism. The really bad trade treaties and giveaways came after communism crumbled.Replies: @backup
When the Low Countries rose against the Spanish Habsburg king they mentioned the king had not lived up to his part of the deal of Royalty – protecting his subjects – and gave out the Act of Abjuration: From then on they considered the throne and position of king abandoned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Abjuration
We should do something similar.
I would be grateful to anyone who could be so kind as to explain this whole “(((((( )))))” thing. Thanks.
Fun fact – none of the classic lineup of Big Country were born in Scotland. One was born in Canada, the others in England. One was actually black (Ghanian), another was English/Polish.
This is a bit misleading, in London asylum seekers etc are generally spread out in public housing that is mixed in with private rented & owned housing, and the majority of white cosmopolitans are mixed in with non-white immigrants. Currently my next door neighbour is a mentally ill cannabis-smoking Afro-Caribbean, and there is a large council estate ('housing project') across the street which is mixed white & non-white. Previously I lived on a street of terraced houses with a mixed population of whites, working non-whites, and 'refugees' like the Somalis who did a home invasion on my Irish neighbour. That's pretty typical.Replies: @Big Bill
For a few years the Daily Mail seemed to be full of stories of African/ME refugees with 4-8 kids who got posh digs in Kensington (at $3000-5000 per month free rent) since those were the only flats that had enough bedrooms to accommodate the entire family. All paid for by the local council, of course.
28 Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex Positions
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/g4090/mind-blowing-lesbian-sex-positions/Replies: @Big Bill, @Pericles
Hey! I resent that! Most of those positions are hetero positions that lesbians have culturally appropriated from us dudes! Make ’em come up with their OWN positions!
"London is a place full of millionaires. People who never dine but at lofty restaurants, and take a plane every 50 times a year. When you look around you think it is your fault if today you can't have a Rolls Royce.
On the other side of London, there is England.
London has declared war on England."
We can extend this to the whole West, the cradle of democracy. As soon as the threat of real socialism and communism waned, the rich declared war on the non-rich.
Considering they own everything, included the totality of what Marx called means of production, and today are first of all the means of production of ideas (that is, in our case, myths and illusions), you don't see how on earth their dreams of absolute dominion would be stopped by democratic, peaceful opposition.
It's like the only choice is between a nightmare (real socialism) and the other (pure capitalism).Replies: @ben tillman
This war was declared in the 1640’s, if not before that, when the plutocrats deposed and killed Charles.
It’s much more difficult to be comfortable with something that you’ve had forced on you, that you think is to your detriment.
It’s much easier to be cosmopolitan and comfortable with difference when they aren’t in the form of a boot, stamping your face forever.
Diversity isn’t some spice. It’s a flood.
I think you mean it's a sauce. [I'm just kidding. :) ]
Apparently it highlights Jewish people and/or Jewish influence dynamics. I first saw it in the comments here a couple months ago. (((Karl Marx))), for example, is the son of a rich lawyer who changed his name to disarm goyische business associates (Kevin Macdonald refers to this as crypsis), though his Jewishness is well known.
I am still curious as to the history of this "(((( ))))" signal and why multiple parentheses, specifically, were chosen.
You’ve got to be kidding. I wrote a paper on this topic for my Anthro 13 class 30 years ago.
The problem is that Moldbug is wrong about the reason for the phenomenon.
>”I first heard [thta progressivism is a secularized version of Christianity] it from Moldbug ca. 2007. Never seen a source that preceded him.”
It’s an old idea.
I believe it would be rather problematic to refer to current cosmopolitans as “Cosmo”.
The UK version of AFFH?
28 Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex Positions
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/g4090/mind-blowing-lesbian-sex-positions/Replies: @Big Bill, @Pericles
“2. Sweatpants and a box of haagen-dasz in front of the TV.”
Disappointing.
Probably runs well ahead of American Jews’ understanding of the Jewishness of the Revolution, Red Terror, NKVD, etc., though.
FIFY.
Given that the Dems are running the worst, most vile human being to top a ticket since who knows when, saying Trump can't win is stupid.Replies: @ben tillman
I know when: 1964.
In addition to changing his name, Karl Marx’s father Heinrich also converted to Lutheranism. The reason he did so is that Prussia did not allow Jews to practice law at the time.
It's much easier to be cosmopolitan and comfortable with difference when they aren't in the form of a boot, stamping your face forever.
Diversity isn't some spice. It's a flood.Replies: @Anonymous
“Diversity isn’t some spice. It’s a flood.”
I think you mean it’s a sauce. [I’m just kidding. 🙂 ]
I’ve been known to mix my metaphors.
>The claim that progressivism is a secularized version of Christianity is espoused by Moldbug and other neoreactionaries.<
nah the proggtards are more like a secularized islam. they be always seeking new infidels to destroy or dhimminize.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/237798/
Big Country so easily could have had the Living in a Box hat trick of band name / album title / hit single. Tragically, the album and single were called The Crossing and “In a Big Country,” respectively. I’ve never really gotten over that.
http://youtu.be/freo9lWj-B0Replies: @Brutusale
nah the proggtards are more like a secularized islam. they be always seeking new infidels to destroy or dhimminize.Replies: @newrouter
>As I’ve noted before, Islam, particularly fundamentalist Salafist Islam, is a meme-complex designed (and successfully evolved) to appeal to emasculated, marginalized men in on overbearingly bureaucratic and feminized society. It might be smart to come up with a countervailing, competitive system of beliefs and behavior that offers many of the attractions with fewer antisocial elements.<
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/237798/
>The claim that progressivism is a secularized version of Christianity is espoused by Moldbug and other neoreactionaries. <
yea it be always " our fault"
Really, what’s the argument?
If nations are allowed to exist, the Holocaust will happen. It’s not really a rational argument.
>”I first heard [thta progressivism is a secularized version of Christianity] it from Moldbug ca. 2007. Never seen a source that preceded him.”
It’s an old idea.
H. Richard Niebuhr…considered one of the most important Christian theological ethicists in 20th century America… criticized the liberal social gospel, describing its message as, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
F. Nietzsche, *Twilight of the Idols* and *The Anti-Christ” circa 1878.
A number of people already reacted on this, but John Gray’s Black Mass makes the case that leftism is a Christian heresy. The book considers the several eschatological movements of the middle ages the ancestors of the enlightenment. Schopenhauer considered the enlightenment veiled Christianity. Communism is the child of enlightenment.
None of the B-2 pilots I know (and I know several of them) have experience in transports, but they say that the B-2 is very crisp, especially for its size. It has achieved Level 1 handling qualities (the top tier) across the flight envelope.Replies: @Former Darfur
It makes me glad as a taxpayer that our ever-so-smart Air Force puts people with no experience in transports in command of a billion dollar , 300,000 lb airplane.
The B-2 pilots I know mostly came out of other bombers: B-52 and B-1. Or they were test pilots, so they had experience in lots of different aircraft. None were missing anything from not having commercial transport experience.
I think very few of them will give up a wedding and kids (and alimony!) to live with a woman with a buzzcut and shop at women-owned stores.Replies: @Dissident, @unpc downunder
Correct. Most female bisexuals are married to males but like some female action on the side. Prominent bisexuals include Camille Paglia and Amber Heard. Bisexuality in both females and males is strongly correlated with having a high sex drive, but isn’t correlated with being left-wing, hence my claim that Cosmo readers are just as likely to vote for Trump as Hillary.
The LGBTs who are most likely to vote for Hillary will be the androgynous or asexual types, while the least likely will be the bisexuals with high sex drives.
You aren’t making any sense. There’s really no similarities between the B-2 and a commercial transport aircraft except being in the same approximate weight class. First and foremost, the B-2 doesn’t have a tail: this fundamentally changes many aspects of the aircraft including flying qualities. The quad-redundant flight control system is completely unrelated to that of any commercial transports. The flush air data system, ditto. There is minimal cockpit automation; some basic autopilot modes, but famously no autothrottle. Dropping bombs is a lot different than commercial flying. Handling the unique mission modes for stealth flying, ditto. And commercial transports don’t do aerial refueling.
The B-2 pilots I know mostly came out of other bombers: B-52 and B-1. Or they were test pilots, so they had experience in lots of different aircraft. None were missing anything from not having commercial transport experience.
Lots of sanctimonious hypocrisy in the writebacks, as usual for the New York Times:
Hmm. Don’t Democrats refer to this as “dog-whistle words”?
>”I first heard [the claim that progressivism is a secularized version of Christianity] from Moldbug ca. 2007. Never seen a source that preceded him.”
Also, if Moldbug was talking about this in 2007, it’s worth noting that in the previous year, Ann Coulter published Godless: the Church of Liberalism, whose central thesis is that “liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, yet bears all the attributes of a religion itself [as described by its creation myths, sacraments, holy writ, martyrs, clergy, places of worship, and doctrine of infallibility.]” The book received wide coverage (esp. Coulter’s criticism of the “Jersey girls”, i.e., the 9/11 widows.)
The wiki page on the book has a link to the entry on “secular religion” which discusses earlier formulations of the same thesis, applied in particular to Communism.
Kings were ripping off the peasantry since Rome fell, and before that the same dynamic prevailed.
It is interesting watching the UK Labour Party being torn apart because the current leader is not sufficiently pro-Israel. The following is a typical attempt to smear Jeremy Corbyn as a Jew hater by the pro-Israel lobby.
In the following video a black Corbyn supporter only points out that he has seen a Labour MP passing messages to a Daily Telegraph reporter. Because The Daily Telegraph is a very anti Labour Party paper the accusation is quite a serious charge of treachery.
The Telegraph reporter and the MP, Ruth Smeeth, who has a background of giving away inside information to foreign powers, immediately start accusing the black supporter and Corbyn of antisemitism. The shrieks of “How dare you?” are particularly grating because that phrase is normally used for accusations of sexual impropriety. But I suppose women on the attack will use any weapon at hand and tears are obligatory.
Smeeth has now said that Corbyn must resign because under him the Labour Party is “not a safe place for British Jews”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-activist-who-berated-mp-ruth-smeeth-says-he-did-not-know-she-was-jewish-and-denies-momentum-a7111366.html
http://www.potteye.co.uk/around-the-web-ruth-smeeth-and-israeli-lobby-links-come-under-the-spotlight-across-the-web/
With four posts about them it becomes necessary to add this.
http://youtu.be/freo9lWj-B0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pBfIMLzDfE
Trying again
https://g.co/kgs/h75hCy
One of the things one learns if one spends some time going through patent archives, as I happened to have done, is how far back basic and fairly obvious ideas go. One comes away with the general impression that there’s nothing new under the sun. Most basic “new” ideas of a simple nature come about at a certain time more because the things to which they apply rise into existence at that time, rather than because someone became possessed of a brilliant insight at that moment.
To abstract away from Christianity and see certain features that are replicated in secular belief systems isn’t exactly a hard observation to make. Mostly, the observation depends on the rise of a secular belief system, which didn’t become a real, robust thing until the 20th century. (Although I have some vague recollection that even Nietzsche alluded to such generalizations beyond Christianity.) I’d expect these sorts of observations to date from that time.
Ideas that are genuinely brilliant, new, and unexpected always tend toward the complex. One can see how it would have required a great deal of very deliberate effort even to be in a position to come up with them.
Just as an example, the idea of evolution, being a fairly simple one, goes back in its simple form to the pre-Socratics. But the idea of natural selection, being of a subtle and complex mechanism, awaited Darwin and Wallace.
I recall the same kind of idea showing up in Nietzsche, so it’s really pretty ancient. I imagine people have been reading godless Christianity into Kantianism/liberalism for centuries.
But I would guess that most American Jews have only a vague understanding of the inner workings of Soviet antisemitism and perhaps rightly so because it was just a thin ideological veneer on top of (deeply rooted) Russian antisemitism. "Rootless cosmopolitan " doesn't particularly register at all, given how poorly history is taught in America. You can imagine that Soviet anti-Jewish purges are not something that is emphasized heavily in American "liberal" education - if Americans learn anything about the '50s, it's more about Emmett Till and McCarthyism. If you were doing a word association test, the first thing cosmopolitan would bring to mind is not a magazine or a Soviet epithet but a cocktail.Replies: @Anonymous, @Hunsdon
So a six pointed star is automatically indicative of Judaism but cosmopolitan isn’t? Your jewdar must be on the, ahem, Fritz. I’ve certainly run into my share of Jews who think “cosmopolitan” and particularly “rootless cosmopolitan” is directed at Jews, and pointedly. Then again, Jews generally think everything is about them. (I haven’t laughed as hard in a long time as I did when our host wrote an article about Mexico, lamenting that in America we obsess over Israel far more than Mexico, and then our Jewish commentators commenced obsessively talking about Israel, not Mexico.)
I stand by my remarks. In our dumbed down society, “rootless cosmopolitan ” merely draws a blank for most people who haven’t studied Soviet history (which is most people period) but any idiot knows that a six pointed star (without little circles on the end) is shorthand for “Jew”. As Steve said, in the American context, Cosmopolitan brings to mind a magazine or a cocktail but not particularly Jews. But six pointed stars such do, even if the 101st airborne or whoever also use the hexagram.
http://emblems-gifts.co.uk/product/northern-ireland-red-hand-of-ulster-in-star-enamel-lapel-badge-free-uk-postage/
The Lost Tribe of Ulster send you their salutations. No Surrender.
Jews expend a lot of effort defending their tribe from the idea that Jews expend a lot of effort defending their tribe.
The Lost Tribe of Ulster send you their salutations. No Surrender.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @SFG
It’s worth mentioning too that Northern Ireland is made up of six counties, rather than the full eight of the province of Ulster. That may explain the six-pointed star.
The star of David itself seems to come out of the common treasure chest of occult mystery religion stuff that Jews, Freemasons and almost everyone else, from India to Ireland, have drawn upon. the Orange Lodge is obviously Freemasonic, so that’s another possible inspiration for the star on the flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_David#Early_use_as_an_ornament
I prefer the Red Hand as a symbol in any case; it’s indigenous and ecumenical.
The Lost Tribe of Ulster send you their salutations. No Surrender.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @SFG
Isn’t there this whole sympathy with Israel in Northern Ireland among Protestants, and Catholics sympathize with the Palestinians?
Some of the IRA were Marxist, so that Palestine, Nicaragua, South Africa, etc., were more or less sister causes.
>“Catholics sympathize with the Palestinians?”
Some of the IRA were Marxist, so that Palestine, Nicaragua, South Africa, etc., were more or less sister causes.
The foundational premise of socialism/progressivism — i.e. that human beings can usurp the place of God and act as their own saviors and perfectors — goes back to the Garden of Eden. Douthat is familiar with that story.
“…any idiot knows that a six pointed star (without little circles on the end) is shorthand for “Jew”.”
I think you’d be amazed at the number of people in the modern US who, while recognizing the word “Jew” and maybe connecting it to bad things in WWII, hardly know anything else about it.
Ulster has nine counties, three in the Irish Republic. There was a Loyalist group called Tara in the 70s and 80s who claimed Ulster Protestants were one of the lost tribes of Israel. The name recalls the fact that believers in the British Israelist doctrine excavated the Hill of Tara in County Meath at the beginning of the 20th century, and did great damage to that ancient site. They believed the Ark of the Covenant might be buried there.
Your Business Men’s Club wasn’t very cosmopolitan. Replacing the Cointreau with Triple Sec is a giveaway of downscale.
I loved Big Country.
So what then is a counterpart "men's magazine"? Playboy? GQ? Esquire? Maxim?
The answer to that is Popular Mechanics. Especially the issue once featured prominently as an impulse purchase in the supermarket checkout line next to People, Cosmo, and the National Inquirer, the one with "We Fly the B-2 Stealth Bomber" on its cover.
Men really want to know what that is like. In case you were wondering, it is controlled by a side stick through a digital fly-by-wire control system, and it flies much like an A320 Airbus.Replies: @Fredrik, @cthulhu, @Brutusale
A “women’s magazine” is one whose stories boil down to two things:
a. You go, girl! You’re PERFECT just the way you are!
b. Lose 10 pounds in 10 days!
Stuart Adamson was born in England to Scottish parents who moved back to Scotland when he was four, so I consider him a provisional Scot.
http://youtu.be/freo9lWj-B0Replies: @Brutusale
I’ve always been partial to this one, especially given our Endless Wars in the ME:
Why do your replies never indicate the post you are replying-to and quoting from?!
Thank you.
I am still curious as to the history of this “(((( ))))” signal and why multiple parentheses, specifically, were chosen.
I think a part of my mind just wanted to forget about the existence of Monaghan. You’re right that the British Israelite nonsense can be added to the list of reasons for the six-pointed star on the NI flag. I know nothing about that crowd but I don’t think it could possibly marry-up with philo-Semitism, except of the most starry-eyed kind.
I’m still fabulous! However, I think Cosmopolitan is no longer a renegade, outre’ magazine. Too many SJW’s in its midst. Just like the NYC I loved, lived in, partied til’ 1999, has been SOOOO over or uber, for 10 years or more. I mean, I am an artist…and no artists can afford NYC anymore. Actually, they’ve all moved up here, to New England. We have a lot of old factory towns with so-so school systems, which may, just may show different outcomes in a decade or two.