Wednesday, August 11, 2021

The New Narcissism





The ancient Greeks used the parable of Narcissus to warn against the dangers of self-absorption or obsession with one's public perception. The demi-god wasted to death after being locked in a gaze with himself while looking into a pool of water.

Although ancient, the story provides insight into the underlying foundations of our hyper modern self-obsessed culture. The obsession with the here and now whether demonstrated across TikTok, Twitter or Facebook betrays our collective ignorance of history, vanity for the present and ignorance for the future.

The make belief social media world where digital social justice warriors battle online trolls is inspired by the MMORPG fantasy online communities like World of Warcraft where "good" warriors battle "evil" orcs. Fiction replaces reality as doctored imagery and online escape becomes the primary currency for avoiding real world responsibilities - this new narcissism is society's crack cocaine. 

White collar workers and the professional managerial class obsessed with grievance, claim status of victimhood for imaginary identities on their smartphones while factories producing those same devices install suicide nets for low wage workers.  Its easier to blame your digital neighbor for perceived slights than to get your hands dirty and fix the plumbing.  

How much woke virtue signaling does it take on your smartphone to overcome real supply chains that depend on 'acceptable' worker suicide rates and conflict minerals dug out by children in illegal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The social justice meta narrative conveniently ignores those types of questions.

Virtue and vice are now brands absent any depth or intrinsic meaning and the corporate class has jumped on to the bandwagon in a cynical effort to divide society so as to prevent any meaningful reform on issues such as taxing the rich or poverty.

It became pretty apparent early on in the pandemic that all of the moral self righteousness, identity policing, and otherwise online vapid loud mouths offered absolutely nothing constructive to the very real threats born from an airborne pathogen. These same preachers of modern virtue (no sarcasm detected) arguably worsened the spread of the virus during the first early waves of COVID-19. One only has to jump back to absurd media commentary from February 2020, just before shit hit the fan when socially liberal politicians like Nancy Pelosi or Justin Trudeau opposed travel bans on the basis of ethnic stigma.

Sound and fury signifying nothing.

Classical liberalism wherein ideas are debated on the basis of evidence, curiosity, logic, the scientific method and civility forms one of the cornerstones of Western democracy over the last three centuries. John Locke's treatise provided the intellectual foundation for the enlightenment and with it the subsequent scientific revolution.

The current web that adherents to the diversity, inclusion and equity religion are spinning offers a bleaker, more twisted and ultimately more racist version of Marx's communism. 

Race replaces class membership and everything is defined by power relationships. This type of rationale mimics past witch hunts and political violence whether the Khmer Rouge committing genocide against against that country's intellectual class, the Red Guard offering mass denunciations, the Cheka hunting down White Russian dissidents or even suspicious colonists sentencing suspected witches to death in Salem.

Martin Luther King and his dream for a more fair and just society wherein individuals are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin is jettisoned in favour of a permanent grievance logic that seeks to burn everything down.

The really startling thing of what Andrew Sullivan terms the "Great Awokening" is the extent to which it almost entirely co-opted left wing politics and post-secondary institutions.

Love, friendship, and humour all lose meaning in a world governed by fear and self serving revenge narratives.

This new narcissism is no better reflected than in the rise of individual specific pronouns across social networks, corporate communications and even video gaming. The New York Times (previously the global paper of record) even produced long article on the matter "A Guide to Neopronouns: Are you a person, place or thing? We have good news." The publication advises readers to consider using neopronouns such as Vamp/Vampress or Princ/Princess as well as a multitude of other less decipherable terms to describe individuals so insecure with themselves that they can't use a he/she or even they to describe themselves.

The preponderance of fake pronouns, fake genders and lies concerning evolutionary biology is all indicative of meaninglessness.

And yet when measured against any handful of challenges of our times, identity politics offers nothing in terms of solutions for any serious problems. Take for instance any of these problems:

1. Climate Change
2. Nuclear Weapons and Great Power Politics
3. Financial Markets Regulation
4. Equality of Opportunity and Financial Inequality
5. Any Technical Problem

Identity does not provide a policy or even individual response to any form of complexity outside of irrational mob anger, purity competitions and public denunciations.

This mirrors the threat posed by right wing demagogues to the liberal democratic project in terms of levels of seriousness. And in a strange respect, both the Trump Cult and the Woke Cult function as objective allies in their end goal of disrupting or even overthrowing liberal democracy.

The former Yugoslavia is perhaps the best example of where politics based on identity eventually terminates - Srebrenica. 

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Pause / Reset - The Great Uncertainty

Most transformative figure in next 10 years?

To the credit of Ursula von der Leyen, "doing less or doing nothing literally means changing everything. The infernos and hurricanes we have seen over the last few weeks are only a very small window into what our future could look like." 

Pristine German towns flooded later in the week, killing hundreds.

We are walking into the nascent years of immediate climate change that is sure to disrupt our lives, supply chains, and the very existence of some presently near failed states

Markets haven't priced this into immediate stock valuations - we are more obsessed with currency policy (because we control it) than harder questions tied to civilization oriented (potential) extinction events.

Covid-19 has not so subtly proven that nature, even possible lab induced nature, can easily overwhelm present systems of governance. Which means if the world turns on us, we are f***ed... But hey, let's talk about GME, BBY, and AMC? Beautiful distractions as we walk and invest into the darkness?

At the same time, the identity cult, the anglo-oriented left has largely abandoned both green and working class issues almost in an ironic effort to summon the reincarnation of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Ron DeSantis / Josh Hawley. The challenge fundamental to all three of these possible leaders is that they all signify the death of the American Project courtesy of Facebook.

The city on the hill, the beacon of democracy, America used to mean something... to everyone that aspired for the power of the vote.

Biden is of the geriatric lucky age point that he gives no fuck anymore. And he has no ego to put on a wall but wants to do what he believes is the right thing whether it is or not.

And to his credit Brezhnev (see earlier writing) Biden, was right on Afghanistan. Fighting Afghan tribesmen for the indefinite future is a complete waste of time. The amount of public attention tied to a war in a wasteland over nothing but the remnants of politics is nothing more than pre paying one's own cemetery fees. 

And this is where the pause / reset hits us - both of those things depends on moral and intellectual leadership - something that is entirely absent in our (North America's) leadership class.



Monday, April 12, 2021

"Infrastructure", Deja-vu and Austerity Hawks

The jackhammer has been turned off, the virus is "under control" and the roaring 20s are at it again.

One of those statements is truer than the other two - I will let you decide which is for yourself as credible arguments could be made for all three.

Biden like Brezhnev has turned off the jackhammer (Trump/Khrushchev) - the ancien regime has returned ever glorious and ordinary people have nothing to worry about. (no sarcasm detected)

Trump cast out to his dacha in Mar-a-Lago endures political and digital exile courtesy of commissar elites and the KGB woke political commentators and the social media surveillance state. 

Seems the Hunter Biden narrative was true. Although to be fair to the President, a screw up drug addicted son with a penchant for meth, prostitutes and the wisdom to allegedly upload it to a pornhub account isn't a failing of Joe Biden, his policies, previous work or presidency but rather entirely on his 50 year old son - who managed to burn down his family and career in drug fueled orgies (at least as reported by himself and by the Mail).

Make meth teeth great again?

Democrats to their credit - seem to have learned from both 2008 and Donald Trump's presidency. It turns out if you spend massive amounts of public money to stimulate the economy - you get investor confidence and growth. And given the USD is the global reserve currency, Americans can (for now) lean into that for recovery purposes.

The tragedy of this all is that there is some good policy to be found in the "Infrastructure" Bill. Climate change is real and a move towards electric vehicles and greater renewables is smart. America has had the advantage in these spaces for the last 25 years but has largely squandered that lead due to non-existent political will and government dysfunction. Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are very quickly approaching parity with Tesla and could pose an existential threat to American/European Western global automaker market share.

To Biden's credit, he is one of the few democrats who understands that the future of that party's success depends on supporting working class initiatives - the woke SJW vote on the other hand risks sinking the entire progressive enterprise. The threat of a charismatic Trump or Trump 2.0 speaking the working man's language could result in the end of American democracy. Biden has figured out that doubling down on working class policies could possibly prevent that.

Trump's greatest failure is that despite speaking 'normal' English - he never delivered anything beyond an institutional Republican agenda that largely targeted working class and poor people - the very constituency he depended on to win

But he is an avid golfer, and there is no better example of a mulligan. Why not make an extra swing and run once more? There is no Republican competition.

For the record, I am predicting a Trump / Hawley ticket - unless of course the orange haired lunatic dies over the next 2-3 years. The challenge for democrats is that behind their hollow hero lies a plastic vice president best known for keeping innocent men on death row - while sitting on evidence that would exonerate them.

To be fair, Hawley is about as plastic Harris. His anti-elite Yale Law School pedigree speaks to the depth of his message and credibility of his character.

As for the virus, the American turn around is a miracle tied to publicly funded MRNA vaccine research that both Pfitzer and Moderna are profiting from (no judgment here) just very, very lucky timing.

The Brazilian variant does pose a serious risk over the next year however - the large scale ramp up and possibility of tweaking MRNA vaccine instructions to target other elements of the mutated P1 variant means that the planet should have this under control sometime over the next 2 to 4 years.

The American government on the other hand is making the mistake of not buying the vaccine outright and making it public source globally. This would be an easy geo-political victory against both Moscow and more importantly Beijing. The corporate lobby will sink it - more likely than not....

As for the mainstream Republican and Democratic party elite, they are both dead and entirely devoid of ideas. On one hand, the GOP wants to assert that austerity is the solution to an unprecedented demand collapse. The Dems on the other hand are equally or even more delusional, leaning hard on identity politics as a potential alternative to real injustices whether collapse of meritocratic outcomes, cronyism and mass government overreach. 

The American system is plagued by too many organizational layers of government (not just the 50 states) - where no single area for accountability resides (cities, counties, districts, etc). 

The fact that it took over three years for a multi-millionaire comedian - Bill Maher to get his garden shed permitted for solar speaks to the scale of the problem. In the midst of this, Biden is trying to launch a large scale infrastructure bill that will rebuild infrastructure that has been systemically squandered and mismanaged by local governments across the US.  

I for one am betting that the levels of government that took three years to permit a shed - won't be able to effectively deliver on even a quarter of the Infrastructure Bill's promises.










Tuesday, February 16, 2021

2021 - Back to the Future or a Second Unraveling?


It seems like my last post of 2020 was bang on in terms of predicting post election violence as dismayed Trump supporters were led on to believe the election was stolen from them. The media and political types are selling the line that these folks were all extremists and that a domestic terrorism statute be implemented. What they are largely missing is that these protests are really a social phenomenon of a large disaffected white working class that feels sold out. The Washington Post to its credit reported on the severe financial problems and desperation of many of the participants in the insurrection something which most other media agencies largely have ignored. 

As for the proposed law enforcement response, this is just the US security apparatus trying to justify its own existence. It is easier to justify state suppression than it is to warrant programs that might fix some of the deep seeded social problems through policies such as a $15 dollar minimum wage, basic health insurance or an end to the war on drugs and private prisons. Its funny had Trump moved on any of these initiatives and had he responded to the virus - he likely would have been re-elected in a landslide.

Instead, his legacy can really be summed up as cowardly having not pardoned Assange or Snowden (both of whom he shared enemies with in the national security apparatus) or done anything to address poverty in the country. If anything can be said positively about his agenda, he inadvertently revealed just how little both the Republican and Democratic party elite care about normal people.

So where do we go from here in 2021?

The GME rally was fascinating to watch - there is a real possibility markets will change because of mob oriented plays in the market. To say the least, the assault on Melvin Capital presents an existential risk to the business model of short sellers that base their positions on posted research into companies - inadvertently in the process advertising their own potential weakness to a mob attack from small investors.

This can be seen as a good thing when shorts are speculative and dishonest but could also prevent the market from effectively policing itself. For instance, it was a short seller Kynikos Associates led by Jim Chanos that outed the Enron fraud.

Meanwhile some of the largest value investors appear to have moved to cash positions in fear of a large scale correction while retail and institutional investors continue to chase cryptocurrency dreams as well as tech valuations. The challenge is really that the securities markets are entirely propped up by the central bank system internationally and that business fundamentals across asset classes become increasingly difficult to measure. Maybe this opacity means a much larger correction is coming but on the other hand Japan has basically been using its central bank to prop up companies since the 1990s - in a period of stagnation and deflation.

Its anyone's guess as to whether the printing press and quantitative easing remain able to prop up the stock markets and the wealthy who own most of these assets or not.  Socialism and direct support to the tune of hundreds of billions for rich people while poor people become trapped at desperation levels of poverty. In Florida of all places over 60 percent of the population voted and supported the staggered implementation of a $15 dollar minimum wage attracting both democratic and republican support. The democrats can't apparently reconcile that the majority of the country supports these types of initiatives while also despising virtue signaling woke nonsense.

As for the woke cult, they look likely to grow in the short term as Biden and the corporate democrats prefer to engage in identity politics (really no different than Trump cult identity politics) instead of trying to fix any of the country's problems.  Meanwhile, the technology and social media companies unsure of their newfound position as guarantors of American democracy (and fear of regulation) have jumped on the censorship band wagon to try and kill Trump digitally at least in the short term.

Prediction: If Biden dies in office or decides to not run again and Trump is eligible to run in 2024 - he will crush Harris.









Thursday, October 1, 2020

Illusions, Identity Politics and the Violence Ahead

The roller coaster is just starting – or at least that is what I keep telling myself. Western countries’ politics grow more and more frayed: tribalism is becoming the norm. Friendships, families, public institutions, and universal truths no longer provide moral guidance or meaning. The digital economy and social media instead offer us means to self-isolate in illusions of our choice protected with their own facts, news commentary, heroes and villains – totally distinct and re-enforcing narrative realities. The lofty founding principles of the internet are dying on the floor.[i]

Everything is reduced to 280 characters. Substance, nuance, insight, fallibility and humour become casualties to knee jerk reactions. Identity is the name of the new game. Historical grievances, collective guilt, hierarchies of oppression[ii] and millenarian beliefs in a ‘mythical’ restoration become the primary currency for dealing with real despair. Revenge and settling scores are offered as specious solutions to complex problems. The revolution will eat its children.

The goals of the extreme right and left to restore America to a ‘magical’ greatness[iii] or erase the ‘inherent’ evils of the past mirror each other in their detachment from reality. Both portraits for the future place group membership as the primary driving force in society. This assault on individual autonomy is an existential threat to liberal democracy.

Meanwhile, a conman has taken the helm – fire, fury and chaos are the only means for him to maintain power. His political opponents fan violent resistance in a cynical means to control the narrative. Resistance burns into wildfire as individuals surrender themselves to movements not for building communities but instead to destroy imagined enemies.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”[iv]

 

Writing in 1919, Yeats’ milieu appears remarkably similar to our own a century later. Post-World War Europe devastated by the scars of war, political infighting and the Spanish flu pandemic would rush on straight into un-paralleled economic collapse - fueling political extremism and violence over the next 25 years. The international community then embodied by the League of Nations was paralyzed by an equally isolationist and war weary America.

Today, we find ourselves in a similar gyre – this time everything is accelerated a hundred-fold via global markets, social media, and shortening attention spans. The COVID-19 meteor has smashed the global economy and with it peoples’ livelihoods, families and futures. Varying responses across the planet demonstrate which leaders do and do not have clothes. America like the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale is nude in front of the world and it isn’t pretty.[v]

The crater left not a just hole but an opportunity for the wealthiest to accelerate an automated economy wherein large subsections of the population will face a jobless recovery darker than their already precarious gig-based existence.

The world’s richest man doubled his fortune[vi] and central banks printed trillions of dollars[vii] to prop up the rich while ordinary people got the shaft. Socialism for the 0.01 percent while 50 million would go hungry in the richest country in human history.[viii]

Into the West’s decayed sick patient politics spread all kinds of hallucinations ranging from the absurd QAnon and anti-maskers to millenarian religious groups and self proclaimed Woke Marxist trained Black Lives Matter organizers. Armed groups in the streets battle political opponents convinced that they are defending the nation or fighting entrenched tyranny. The illusion overpowers reality as the poor fight the poor over ideas they will never profit from.

“Things are going to explode. Take care of your family and yourself first. The time for critical thought is dead.”[ix]

The internet has destroyed expertise - every opinion is now equal regardless of fact or flaw. The media consists of not careful analysis but rather screaming heads who long ago abandoned vetting sources. We are all equal in front of the bonfire.

Make believe revolutionaries de-capitate offending statues from distant times. Judging the past by today’s values offers a cruel image of the blind judging the mute.[x] We’ve lost our stake in the present and prefer to fight long dead tyrants as their supposed sins are self-evident.

Enlightenment values are castigated as a tool of white supremacy,[xi] scientists are fired and verifiable scientific truths are discarded on ideological grounds.[xii] 2+2 no longer equals 4 – math is a social construct.[xiii] Educational institutions ban heterodox literature for the sanctity of safe spaces. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is no longer a book exposing the evils of racism but instead perpetuates racism.[xiv] There are no heroes.

Militant ideology took over institutions of higher learning and critical theory replaced critical thinking. The new political correctness reared its ugly head at places like Evergreen College where student mobs threatened staff with bats and academic leadership refused to curtail those who professed violence.[xv] Critical theory, playing political necromancer, revived Mao’s Red Guard in the shape of the Woke Cult, promising similar chaos to that of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

In Woke world, the identity you are assigned in society is the class position you are prescribed for life. Transcendence is impossible. Engaging and admiring other cultural practices is cultural misappropriation. Novels and fiction are not to be enjoyed as a means for understanding other peoples’ lives and experiences – they are tools for critically analyzing power structures. Pleasure, art, humour, creativity and civility are all tools of oppression.

“The civility discourse is a dangerous one. Civility, typically, is a power reserved by, precisely, those in power.”[xvi]

The great non-violent struggles of generations past never counted. Reformers failed. The game is over – radical change is imminent. The mob on the street will determine what is just.[xvii] Looting of small locally owned businesses and large companies is a morale act supporting the fight against white supremacy and systems of oppression.[xviii] The Woke are coming to the rescue.

Working class people were long ago abandoned by the national leadership. Labour, work and dignity were outsourced to developing economies to accommodate the wallets of the financial elite supported by bankrupt theories of Ivy League academic institutions. Austerity was justified by faulty excel sheets[xix] all the while attacking what was left of social safety nets. Let them eat cake.

The red hats remember the past. The post World War Two economic recovery heralded the largest expansion of middle class jobs in history.[xx] Chief Executive Officer to Worker salary ratios sat at ‘humane levels’ of 20-to-1 instead of the current 278-to-1.[xxi] This ‘golden era’ oversaw increased access to university education, home ownership and increased life expectancy. People had a chance of making it.

Party leadership in both the Republican and Democratic national committees exported middle class jobs under the Clinton consensus[xxii] while justifying to themselves that globalization was good for everyone despite not paying any cost themselves. For lack of any substantive disagreement on economic or tax policy with their Republican rivals, it was easier for Democrats to pander to the toxic wellspring of identity politics than to deal with hard questions linked to healthcare, labour protections and social mobility.

Following the jobs, factories and livelihoods devastated by the political class - deaths by suicide, alcoholism and opioids accelerated in what Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton and Anne Case term deaths of despair. White working-class life expectancies fell.

“Destroy work and, in the end, working-class life cannot survive. It is the loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and of self-respect that comes with the loss of marriage and of community that brings on despair, not just or even primarily the loss of money.”[xxiii]

And into the great void, jumped the orange haired salesman offering an alternative to the establishment’s well rehearsed lies. Having built a life on deception whether defrauding the tax man, dodging the draft, lying to banks,[xxiv] refusing to pay contractors or serial philandering – Donald Trump served as the perfect foil to the establishment’s lying leadership.

Here was a self-made trust fund child and corporate magician who had built his life around the illusion of success. Despite many earlier failings and bankruptcies, he had finally succeeded at something – promoting himself to household familiarity through The Apprentice television series. Sitting on his gaudy golden throne in New York, he conjured a brand that he would lease to towers, hotels and golf courses across the planet while owning little beyond the licensing rights to his cult of personality.

With no platform beyond ‘success’ and opposition to the status quo combined with a psychopathic inability to apologize – Trump’s overt lies were interpreted by voters as almost honest in comparison to the subtle lies of his opponents who had devastated working class communities. The American myth of elite meritocracy was shattered by a man who advertised his vices as virtues and surrounded himself with a cadre of soon to be incarcerated felons.

Appealing to the dejected, the MAGA hat was born. A simple slogan designed to appeal to what both political parties had sold out – ordinary people. Enemies were created – immigrants became criminal rapists, the professional civil service became the deep state and countries in direct alliance with the US turned into deadbeats who had abused American goodwill. America became alone in the world.

Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang rejected the divisive prescription of identity politics and tried to reach out to their party’s former working-class political base. In an effort to thwart meaningful change, the DNC establishment cynically used identity politics to sink their campaigns. It was easier to adopt cult like woke language than to confront oligarchic commercial interests.[xxv]

Seeking to get back to business as usual, the DNC and liberal media decided to double down on initially peaceful protests which were quickly coopted by violent elements. Americans had woken up to their police state – unfortunately the man at the helm had no desire to reform the country but rather push it to extremes and the Woke Cult eager to see it all burn further fanned the flames.

Over the last week, a red hat teenager gunned down three protesters in Kenosha followed by Antifa murdering a Christian militia member in Portland. The dangerous escalation plays into the beliefs of a range of potentially violent groups whether the Boogalloo movement, the Proud Boys, white nationalist groups, Antifa, the Woke cult or Marxist BLM organizers. What they all have in common is a belief that they are fighting the personification of evil. The other side is not human.

Given the prevalence of guns and explosion in gun sales,[xxvi] the 40 million newly unemployed,[xxvii] a virus that is spreading rapidly, media tolerance for violence, and the President’s goal of using widespread chaos as his primary means of achieving re-election – the United States is looking very much like the twilight years of the former Yugoslavia, the Late Roman Republic or Weimar Germany. There is the very real chance we see armed battles in the streets between warring political factions – think Gangs of New York minus the Hollywood.

Many of my compatriots here north of the now closed border look down at our cousins with mixtures of horror and mystery. It is as if your neighbour next door has just lit his house on fire and has emerged with torch in hand to boast to you about the blaze. “America First!” he shouts. I look on in amazement wondering, “First to what? – Ruin?”

They fished the corpse of Rosa Luxemburg out of the canals of Berlin in 1919. She had been summarily executed after trying to launch a violent communist putsch during the nascent years of the Weimar Republic. The fear of radical communist takeover would be later used by the Nazis to destroy democratic interwar Germany. That very same fear of radical change appears to be similar to what is gnawing at my southern neighbor’s soul. Making decisions during a state of fear is never a good idea and yet the American people face perhaps their greatest decision yet on November 3rd, 2020.

It’s anyone’s guess as to where the American project is headed. Hopefully, cooler minds prevail. But unlike, Marvel comic book movies, the good guys don’t always win. There is the real risk that election results will be disputed by both camps and that the Supreme Court and even the US military may become involved.

“I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”[xxviii]

The former Secretary of Defense’s words could be interpreted to support a military enforced transfer of elected power or soft coup d'état. The Pentagon and Supreme Court are both the last remaining vestiges of non-partisan led institutions in the country. Depending on how things play out in the ballot box and in the streets, they both may end up occupying serious roles in the months ahead.

If anything is certain from this mess, it’s that there is the real chance that November won’t represent the beginning of the end but rather the end of the beginning. Buckle up – the roller coaster is just starting.



[i] Russell Brandom, We Have Abandoned Every Principle Of The Free And Open Internet, The Verge, December 19, 2017: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16792306/fcc-net-neutrality-open-internet-history-free-speech-anonymity

[ii] Shannon Ridgway, Oppression Olympics: The Games We Shouldn’t Be Playing, Everyday Feminism, November 4, 2012: https://everydayfeminism.com/2012/11/oppression-olympics/

[iv][iv] William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)

[v] Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 1837

[vi] Jonathan Ponciano, Jeff Bezos Becomes First Person Ever Worth $200 Billion, Forbes, August 26, 2020: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/26/worlds-richest-billionaire-jeff-bezos-first-200-billion/#426e626f4db7

[vii] Eric Basmajian, Central Bank “Money Printing” – Is It Inflationary?, Seeking Alpha, March 29, 2020 https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/48075864-eric-basmajian/5427013-central-bank-money-printing-is-inflationary

[viii] Catarina Saraiva, Carolina Gonzalez and Peyton Forte, Workers Keeping Americans Fed Are Going Hungry in the Heartland, Bloomberg, September 2, 2020: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-hunger-minnesota-pandemic/

[ix] Confidential Source, Private Message, Whatsapp, August 31, 2020

[x] Henry Olsen, The Anti-Statue Movement Has Taken A Turn Into Absurdity, The Washington Post, June 22, 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/22/anti-statue-movement-has-taken-turn-into-absurdity/

[xii] Lawrence Krauss, The Ideological Corruption of Science, The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2020: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ideological-corruption-of-science-11594572501

[xiii] Ben Zeisloft, Math Education Prof: 2+2 = 4 ‘trope’ ‘reeks of white supremacy supremacy patriarchy”, August 9, 2020: https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15409

[xiv] Thomas Ullman, Cancel Culture Is Undermining Learning and Undermining Students Like Me, Foundation for Economic Education, August 17, 2020: https://fee.org/articles/cancel-culture-is-undermining-learning-and-harming-students-like-me/

[xv] Franklin Einspruch, Left In Denial Blames Evergreen’s Bat-Wielding Student Mobs On Professor Who Opposed Racism, The Federalist, June 18, 2018: https://thefederalist.com/2018/06/18/left-denial-blames-evergreens-bat-wielding-student-mobs-professor-opposed-racism/

[xvi] Dr. Joseph Weiss, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wesleyan University, Screen Shot – Facebook Post

[xvii] Michael Shermer, The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism, Scientific American, September 1, 2017: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-fallout-of-campus-postmodernism/

[xviii] Natalie Escobar, One Author’s Controversial View: ‘In Defense Of Looting’, NPR, August 27, 2020: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting

[xix] John Cassidy, The Reinhart and Rogoff Controversy: A Summing Up, The New Yorker, April 26, 2013: https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-reinhart-and-rogoff-controversy-a-summing-up

[xx] Cecil Bohanon, Economic Recovery: Lessons from the Post-WW II Period, September 10, 2012: https://www.mercatus.org/publications/economic-history/economic-recovery-lessons-post-world-war-ii-period

[xxi] Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978, Economic Policy Institute, August 14, 2019: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/#:~:text=Using%20the%20stock%2Doptions%2Drealized%20measure%2C%20the%20CEO%2D,1970s%2C%201980s%2C%20or%201990s.

[xxii] Tom Curry, Consensus In Spite of Conflict, NBC News, Date Accessed: September 1, 2020 : http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3071895#.X1ZZwChKjIU

[xxiii] Sir Angus Deaton and Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Deaths of Despair, March 17, 2020, Princeton University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0691190785

[xxiv] Heather Vogell, Never Before Seen Trump Tax Documents Show Major Inconsistencies, Pro Publica, October 16, 2019: https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-never-before-seen-trump-tax-documents-show-major-inconsistencies

[xxv] Michael Sainato, Bernie Sanders: Dems Must Grow Out of Identity Politics Rhetoric, Observer, November 22, 2016: https://observer.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders-says-dems-must-grow-out-of-identity-politics-rhetoric/

[xxvi] Reggie Cecchini, Gun Sales Spike As COVID-19 Outbreak, Unrest Surges In America: Experts, Global News, August 2, 2020: https://globalnews.ca/news/7242103/coronavirus-anti-racism-u-s-gun-sales/

[xxvii] New York Times, U.S. Jobless Claims Pass 40 Million: Live Businesss Updates, May 28, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/business/unemployment-stock-market-coronavirus.html

[xxviii] Jeffrey Goldberg, James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him As A Threat To The Constitution, The Atlantic, June 3, 2020: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/


Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Jordan Peterson, Political Correctness and 12 Rules for Life




The last couple of weeks have really been interesting to watch in the free thinker and intellectual dark web space largely as a result of the pseudo left's dogmatic  reaction to Jordan Peterson's speaking tour and his criticism of political correctness.

I am just over half way through the book and have found it to be fairly vanilla and non-controversial. The book advocates historical enlightenment and heroic values which fall within various traditions of the Western canon of literature, science, culture and politics.

Peterson's emphasis on truth telling, self-respect, genuine friendship, personal development, compassion and order building really are repetitions of traditional values and norms espoused over nearly 2800 years of Western Culture.

These transcendent lessons or 'truths' are easily found in Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, Plato's Republic, the Bible, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare's works, Machiavelli's Prince, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, the whole Enlightenment and Romantic periods as well as the establishment of modern democratic and civil rights movements which emphasized the sovereignty of the individual.

The reaction by post-modern activists that these age old lessons are somehow radical or simply outmoded(1) demonstrates the intellectual hollowness and fragility of his opponents.

Peterson has built a social media platform based on re-telling these old truths in an accessible format. The sheer accessibility of these stories and the demonstrated audience they have found scares post-modernists because it demonstrates that there is value in returning to history, individualism and cultural traditions.

The book portrays a world molded in the image of Hobbes' state of nature - "nasty brutish and short" but refreshingly asserts that it is every individual's responsibility to try and build some semblance of order in their lives starting with making their own beds.

The fundamental problem of the pseudo left post-modernists and their adherents is that they fail to generate a single solution to a single problem. Instead they posit, that everything is tribal and power dynamics distort every relationship to oppressor and oppressed while ignoring obvious timeless truths like friendship, compassion, meritocracy and humour.

Their intellectual bankruptcy has not surprisingly resulted in desperate attempts to discredit and even outright lie about Jordan Peterson, Brett Weinstein, James Damore and other critics of the toxicity of post-modern values.

Nellies Bowles in the New York Times recently went so far to claim that Peterson is the "Custodian of the Patriarchy" and apparently supports the implementation of a patriarchal system similar to Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale because of her misinterpretation of Peterson's reference to "enforced monogamy".(2)

Western and other developed societies do impose "enforced monogamy" standards to discourage, prohibit and even criminalize polygamous practices.

Society through governments choose to enforce these monogamous standards for a number of reasons some of which are based on evolutionary biology and others for cultural values.  Ironically, entrenching monogamous relations by law serves to protect women's rights, stabilizes society, reduces masculine violence and social ills created by throwaway males (3) - something which has been investigated and demonstrated in depth in reporting on radical Mormon fundamentalists' operational need to cast out males so as to purposely skew sex ratios.

But, apparently, critics of the Toronto Professor have entirely conflated the idea that enforced monogamy is somehow a tool of oppression when the legal establishment binding two individuals and their long term interests together offers significant incentives for both parties to invest in the successful outcome of their partner's future through empowerment, education, task sharing, child rearing and other mechanisms.

But, apparently research and a nuanced analysis of his writing and comments is too much for the New York Times when you can simply lay accusations that your subject of criticism supports the mass oppression of women.

Dr. Peterson and Stephen Fry recently defended these perspectives in an excellent debate on May 18 at the Munk Debates in Toronto.(4)

More to be continued once I have finished reading the book.




(1) https://newrepublic.com/article/148473/jordan-petersons-tired-old-myths
(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html
(3) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/14/usa.julianborger
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxYimeaoea0