Thoughts on the College Admissions Scandal

The college admissions scandal that saw the indictment of Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman was shocking in some ways but not at all a surprise in others. It’s been an open secret that the children of the elite and powerful can pull some strings to get there kids into prestigious schools. After all, all four of Al Gore’s kids went to the Ivy Leagues. But it was still a surprise that there would be any arrests in this. Screwing with admissions is something you’d expect the feds to look the other way on.

Nonetheless, there is more to the story that needs to be thought about. This kind of pay-for-play at the admissions level used to happen in the old days. But it wasn’t pretending to be anything else. The Ivy Leagues back in the day were populated by the children of elite families (think Van Rensselaer or Rockefeller) with the occasional genius from the hoi polloi mixed in.

Obviously, there were people who were upset to see stupid rich kids in the ivy leagues at the expense of there own children and neighbors. The call to reform the ivy league can be seen as analogous to other measures in the early 20th century known as the Progressive Era – although I’m not really sure when it was that the Ivy Leagues were democratized (it might have been later).

With that said, it was definitely considered a liberal idea. Using objective tests such as the SAT would make it easier to identify the “diamonds in the rough” of kids in the middle and working classes. Although the SAT had debuted in 1926, my guess is that the democratization of the universities didn’t really start for another 20-25 years. For one thing, this was a time of plenty and lots of money to go around. Second – you had the 1-2 punch of WWII veterans going to college under the GI Bill and the Silent Generation (those too young to fight in the second war) rapidly reaching college age. Therefore, national and state government spending on postsecondary education mushroomed during that time.

This postwar era seems to be the closest we ever got to a real meritocracy. If I remember right – Byron Roth, in a speech at amren, said that by 1975 – everyone who should have been going to college already was.

Now obviously I was talking in the previous two paragraphs talking about colleges in general and not necessarily elite colleges. But I still think the same principle applied to elite colleges that applied to colleges writ large. Steve Farron, in the Affirmative Action Hoax, wrote that the Sputnik event horrified the Americans and that all universities wanted to make sure they had the best minds in the STEM field. He mentioned that for the Freshman Class of 1960 at Columbia, they actually admitted people strictly by the SAT.

Now obviously the civil rights era created affirmative action (although it may have already existed in some instances) and that may have undermined the postwar meritocratic vision. But unlike the 19th and early 20th century – if you had a perfect SAT score in Podunk, USA – you were probably going to get accepted into the Ivies.

So talking now about the present – it feels that even though the Ivy League is still seen as meritocratic (this scandal notwithstanding) – the reputation of the Ivy League is worse than when it was more or less a boarding school for the American elite. This seems like a sort of paradox that I see in many different things. “Capitalist” America actually spends more money than the “Socialist” Scandinavian states. A supreme court where none of its members have held elected office is more partisan than the supreme court of 65 years ago where four of its members (Hugo Black, Harold Burton, Sherman Minton and Earl Warren) held elected office.

So it kind of makes you wonder – can a meritocracy last forever – or will it eventually degrade into something else? Part of it might be that meritocracy, to the extent it existed, came at an inopportune time being only 10-15 years before the civil rights and feminist movements, as well as the rise of what Irving Kristol once called the ”new class” .

Thoughts?

The Proud Boys

I’ve been intrigued by the Proud Boys and there overnight success as a nationalist organization. Now obviously it helps a lot to have a wealthy founder, but there success is still noteworthy. I admired them for being edgy but not being edgy to the point where it could get someone fired from there job like Identity Evropa or Patriot Front would (or so i thought). They also appeared to be a kind of fraternity without the college and a good place to network for people with like minds. In a way they didn’t really seem different than the old, often defunct community organizations mentioned in Bowling Alone.

Obviously it hasn’t turned out that way. The $PLC classified them as a hate group last spring, becoming the first ever organization to be put into there new “General Hate” category. Then in August, McInnes, ProudBoysUSA and all the local proud boy chapter twitter pages were all shoahed. But what’s happened even more recently is that knowledge of them has started to trickle down into NPC-world and what little information they have of them is bad. This of course being after the Proud Boys got into a brawl with antifa in manhattan on October 12th. The future of the organization seems in jeopardy.

I feel that what we can learn from this is that you don’t get to choose if you are bigoted or not. You’re basically at the mercy of mediamatters, rightwingwatch, $PLC, angrywhitemen and other intelligence agencies. It doesn’t matter if you allow in nonwhite members or homosexual members – if they call you a hater, you are one. The fact that the proud boys (and there tactical defense arm) are the only organizations listed as “General Hate” in the SPLC means that Mark Potok was wanting to classify them as a hate group – but couldn’t figure out how to classify them.

The other thing is that success is a double-edged sword. Any organization TPTB consider heretical that becomes too popular too fast – is going to put you right in there crosshairs. One of the problems was that they had uniforms. Even if you’re not going to a goonmarch, you never know if you’re going to run into someone who knows what group you belong to. You could simply be setting yourself up for doxxing and/or attacks by antifa. It also doesn’t matter if antifa drew first blood against the proud boys. All that matters is what gets shown in the media – and that almost always means something negative. Infamy is always worse than anonymity.

All organizations go through an early phase and many never make it past that. Others become giant nonprofits and corporations. But for a dissident organization it is even harder to advance to the next step because once you’ve been identified, you will be freezed, personalized and polarized. There is no one way for a dissident organization to gain acceptance because so few have made it past the genesis phase. You can look at the mormon church as an example of an organization that went from being an insane cult that was kicked out of everywhere they went – to while still being seen as cultish – is mostly seen as harmless (and confined to one or two states). Or you can do the “long march through the institutions” that the commies did in the 20th century. But both examples are before technology and what not made it easier to sniff these things out.

Whatever becomes of the proud boys – we live in interesting times.

competing authorities and turf wars

as a kid, I was surprised that teachers were left wing as I viewed them as “the man” and us, the students, as the rebels. Yet with law enforcement, there was no disconnect as law enforcement personnel probably vote republican. Likewise when I would hear about conservatives not trusting the government I kept thinking “these bozos like the police, what the fuck are they talking about!?”

Yet the more I thought about it, I felt that “the government” meant different things for different people. For left wingers the government meant the police or the military. For right wingers it meant the “twig boy bureaucrat”.

So with that, I leave you with a thought – is modern politics just basically a turf war between military/LE and academia/media?

start and endpoints of decades/generations

A week or so ago, I watched the movie Valley Girl. The movie came out in May 1983 and was filmed, according to imdb, in the fall of 1982. I find it interesting that it was released only nine months after Fast Times at Ridgemont High (from here on out, Fast Times or FTARH). FTAHR was filmed, again, according to imdb, in November and December of 1981 and like Valley Girl, Fast Times is also set in the San Fernando Valley.

The movies at a surface level seem similar – both are teen movies set in the same place and the same time, but in my view – the year between when the movies were filmed seems like the demarcation point between the 70s and 80s. FTARH, which is based off of a book written in 1979, has a late-70s vibe to it, especially with Spicoli and Damone. The music, except for maybe the go-gos, is also mostly late 70s. Valley Girl, otoh, is a full blown 80s movie and seems more like a John Hughes movie.

Now of course although both movies are set in the Valley, its certainly possible that the film was looking at different subgroups within the same region. It could very well be true that FTARH is set among the more working class parts of the Valley (like Damone lives in an apartment) while Valley Girl is set in the wealthier parts of the Valley. I know Adam Carolla in his book Not Taco Bell Material talks about growing up in North Hollywood around the same time and how similar it was to FTARH. North Hollywood, from what I know, is in the more middle class part of the Valley.

On the other hand, It should be noted though that Stacy (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her brother brad (played by Judge Reinhold) and Stacy’s friend Linda (played by Phoebe Cates) seem to come from a privileged background and probably have more in common with the characters in Valley Girl. But none of them have the over-the-top preppiness and/or slang that the characters in Valley Girl have. But its very possible that the “Valley Girl” stereotype of the 80s was probably an exaggeration and that Stacy and Linda in Fast Times were probably a more accurate example.

Negative Identity

Growing up, I always resented the person who seemed more punitive. The person who had a strong personality, a strong opinion, the person who would make no bones in passing judgment etc. As a kid I had (admittedly psychopathic) fantasies about ridding the united states of these people either by deportation or extermination. But even then, there was always the nagging thought that wasn’t I being equally punitive, strong and or passing of judgment?

I thought of this more recently when the zman in either one of his blog posts or one of his podcast episodes – mentioned how black americans have something of a negative identity which is basically that they view everything about themselves in relation to or vis-a-vis whites. This had me thinking of my own political viewpoints and my worldview in general. As I mentioned before, I defined my politics as anti-punitive or anti-punitive people. So naturally this led me toward the left or at least the democratic party.

Likewise, my interest in football stems from the fact that the catholic high school I went to was a football powerhouse and is major rivals with one of the neighboring high schools. The series has largely gone back and forth between the two schools but when I was in high school, we pretty much always lost to them and they were always winning state or at least coming close to it. Again, this was something of a negative identity. I wanted our high school to win of course but I wanted the other high school to lose even more. Even my tastes in music, even though I do genuinely like said music, is probably music I listen to because I view it as in opposition to the punitive peoples (Steely Dan, the Eagles, Pink Floyd, Emerson lake and palmer).

One thing I’ve thought is that maybe a negative identity is merely an identity masquerading as a non-identity. And is it a healthy thing to have? It’s kind of like if devout christians were told that the devil was defeated and that evil had lost for good. Would they still give a fuck about christianity? I doubt it because without the devil or a stand-in for it, they don’t really have a reason for existing.

A contemporary example would be this – if pro-white identity whites were in opposition to anti-white identity whites – and largely were endogamous – after a few generations, wouldn’t the pro-white identity and anti-white identity whites be effectively different ethnic groups? The anti white identity whites would then become an ethnicity of there own with there own ethnocentric worldview! This is part of my theory that for whites – ideology is identity and for less advanced (read: third world) races that identity is still identity and they haven’t gotten to the point where ideology comes into play.

Lastly, the idea of an anti being against a pro and as a result, the anti becoming the pro itself is an interesting concept. It’s like the oxymoron, the double negative, or the math problem that can never be solved.

daily kos and censorship

I guess you could say I’m like George Orwell in that I still consider myself somewhat a part of the left but that I want it to not be as obnoxious as it is. I still post on dailykos somewhat to see what the shitlibs have to say.

Yesterday, I managed to get a post “hidden” which I guess is the daily kos equivalent of how twitter makes you delete a tweet they find offensive. I also noticed that only users on daily kos can see the hidden comment I made so I unfortunately will have to copypasta the whole exchange on here.

Basically the conversation was what senate seats have seen the biggest improvement in the quality of a senator without switching party hands. Someone mentioned how Thecunt and her successor Kristin Gillibrand, were better occupants of the New York Class I senate seat than DP Moynihan.

Here is the exchange (each post is in bold):

ChadmanFL –
New York 2000: Moynihan → Clinton.

Moynihan was a basket case throughout his career with a lot of
overly moderate impulses. Not to mention he was he final nail in
the Clinton healthcare bill in 1994.

Georgia 1996: Nunn → Cleland

Cleland’s record ended up being quite a bit to the left of Nunn’s in
the Senate.

Wisconsin 1988: Proxmire → Kohl

Louisiana 1986: Long → Breaux

Yes, Breaux was a centrist but Russell Long was basically a
Republican by the 1980’s.

my reply to ChadmanFL
I liked Moynihan — a lot smarter than most of the politicos in office
today.

HeartCooksBrain reply to me
He was intelligent but also fell into the trap many intelligent people
do where he would be very good at convincing himself of a wrong
position. So when he was wrong it was really, obnoxiously wrong. His
racial views are the most common to point to, but there were other
times were he was very wrong out of nowhere, like claiming there was no
big probably with the healthcare industry.

my reply to HeartCooksBrain (THIS IS THE COMMENT THAT GOT
HIDDEN)
I like contarians — not lemmings. I mean there are all sorts of
arguments to make that nobody has ever thought of.

For instance, you could make a liberal case for the death penalty in
that its actually the humane thing to do. Would you rather put a damaged
dog to sleep or would you rather keep it in a cage for a few more years
and have it live in misery.

Skaje’s reply to me (he’s probably the guy who reported
me)
Put a damaged dog to sleep? These are human fucking beings we are
talking about. Forget your animal metaphors. How about we ask the people in
question if they want to be put down like dogs or kept alive in “misery”.
Oh wait, we already know people on death row fight their executions for
years, exhausting every legal option at their disposal including
desperately asking for mercy from the governor. But maybe you know
better.

I’m actually surprised I got the post hidden since it was an example I was throwing out and was not the main point of the conversation. Also, I wasn’t saying the typical conservatard argument of “IF YOU KILL SOMEONE, YOU FORFEIT YOUR RIGHT TO LIVE” but actually was bringing up the topic from a more humane and/or liberal perspective.

Ever since I got on the blogosphere circa 2010 – I realized lefties tend to be thin skinned. Growing up, I felt the right wing to be that of rigidity and the left being made up of more skeptical/nuanced/rational people. My experience circa 2010 of getting constantly banned from democraticunderground was one of the first things that got me on the road to red pilling. It’s almost like Jonathan Haidt is wrong on conservatives having more of a “disgust” reaction because these shitlibs have a disgust reaction to anything that offends them.

why I somewhat understand blacks

I’m 26 and still live with my parents. I have a job, but at this point its not enough to live on my own yet. The idea of living in a pretty nice house that you had no part in buying and yet hating the rules of your parents and not wanting to move out into a way smaller apartment and also realizing you can’t at the moment live without them – are all thoughts I’ve had from time to time.

Obviously I have the same genes as my parents since I’m not adopted but I feel that this is the story of blacks in America writ large. In many ways we have mistreated them by forcing them to live by rules they didn’t write on there own and yet exposing them to all the benefits of western civilization – which makes the prospect of going back to Africa all that more unlikely. People don’t miss what they never had and bringing blacks over and exposing them to the benefits of western civilization and expecting it to end well sounds like a terrible idea.

This is also why I think adoption is a bad idea because what if the son or daughter you adopted is cognitively way below your family? What you end up with is a permanent money hole.

has most of the trouble the left has caused been to there own?

Most people on the alt-right know all too well the story of the leftist “long march through the institutions” and about the frankfurt school, cultural marxism etc. But one theory I have is that the cultural marxist left did not make the country more liberal – but that they simply replaced the old left and in the process ended up wrecking the left.

The arts and entertainment have always been the domain of the left since it tends to attract unconventional people. But instead of decent artwork – you end up with Manzoni style garbage. Instead of classic rock – eagles, pink floyd, elp – you end up with garbage written by committee music as grace and steel mention in the linked video.

You could probably say the same thing about academia and the media – they were always liberal – but as Robert Weissberg says at the 1:30 mark – politics among the professoriate was never that big of a deal.

One of the things about the left that made me shift away from them was the realization that the very people the left is dependent on (screeching harpies, and ignorant NAMs) are the very people who are liabilities and that maybe issues like feminism and civil rights should never have been brought up in the first place. To me – being a leftist was all about classic rock, black humor/sarcasm, fucking freely, drugs and skepticism toward “consensus ideas”.

When I started going on liberal message boards circa 2010 – like democraticunderground – i felt shocked as everyone there was acting in perpetual hysterics/derangement. People like Ryan Faulk and Audacious Epigone have mentioned how “conservative” does not mean the same thing for caucasians as it does for POCs and I’m going to say right now that neither does it for men and women. When I was a kid – I always assumed that men were far more liberal than women since the ideas I mentioned in the above paragraph are far more common among men than women. I’ve also noticed that among men who describe themselves as “liberal” – those above traits are far more common than among men who describe themselves as “liberal”.

So the TL:DR version (although it still may be TL:DR) of these musings is –
1) politics should be viewed as the domain of one group of white men vs the other
2) the unconventional men historically were outnumbered – so it made sense to enlist people to act as “vote banks” (NAMs and feminists)
3) the unconventional men ruled the roost for a short period as the women and POCs mostly fell in line
4) eventually the women and POCs invaded white liberal male institutions and ended up wrecking those institutions
5) what a liberal means for a man means something different for a woman therefore
6) liberal institutions that were initially founded by men that are no longer run by them are effectively defanged.

anonymous conservative

I will admit I haven’t read much of his stuff – but I’m aware of what it is he is writing – namely of R/K selection (which is a real thing) and how that explains politics.

The problem I have with it is that I find it to be too self-congratulatory, along the lines of “we’re conservatives who are smart and plan for the future while the lefties are dumb and lazy”.

To me, the whole r/k stuff works fine when comparing the western world to the third world – but if you’re going to compare two relatively advanced peoples who happen to have differing political views – and chalk that up to r/k selection – then you’re thinking too hard.

is saying “you’re lazy” an example of hbd denialism?

I’ve always found that calling someone or something lazy is almost always done under the assumption that they are actually capable of doing what they are attempting to do. In high school, whenever something was going on that I didn’t understand – I usually would spend time scribbling on my notebook and pretending to look like I was doing something. There were times when I would ask for help – but oftentimes that would make it even more confusing and would slow down the class in general.