vdare--2020-08-01--DERB'S JULY DIARY: Law-enforcement Algorithms, The Knot Of Ethnomasochism, And Yet It Moves, Etc. [1

DERB'S JULY DIARY: Law-enforcement Algorithms, The Knot Of Ethnomasochism, And Yet It Moves, Etc. [10 ITEMS!]

Notes from underground .
Well , from the lockdown .
I hope readers are bearing up OK under confinement .
The Derbs are keeping busy .
Paid employment aside , she has her beloved flowers and innumerable contacts on WeChat , the ChiCom messaging app .
I have home-improvement chores : this month , stripping out and rebuilding a bathroom closet for maximum accessible shelving—nearly 28 square feet of shelf in a closet 3′×2′4″×8′ .
This was the last interior space still untouched since we bought the house in 1992 .
It takes me a while to get round to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on translating a Chinese poem : See Segment Four below .
And then of course there 's been reading .
Supernaturally smart .
Through the middle days of July I read Cheryl Misak 's biography of the English mathematician , logician , philosopher , and economist Frank Ramsey .
It 's an astonishing story .
Ramsey must have been one of the smartest people that ever lived .
He was staggeringly , breathtakingly , supernaturally smart .
Here he was translating Wittgenstein 's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , which Misak , who is a Professor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it—as `` immensely difficult . ''
Those last italics are mine .
Wittgenstein , who could read English , went over the translation carefully and was pleased with it .
He and Ramsey became friends , to the degree it was possible for anyone to be friends with the pathologically prickly Wittgenstein .
For a few months in 1927-28 , encouraged by John Maynard Keynes , another friend , Ramsey concentrated his thoughts on economics , producing two scholarly papers on that subject .
Misak tells us that : Having then had his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to math and founded Ramsey Theory , which concerns the occurrence of order in situations of generalized dis-order .
This is still an active field of inquiry , with obvious connections to Artificial Intelligence research .
So why is n't this tremendous genius world-famous ?
Because , as you know if you clicked those links , he died at age 26—January 19th , 1930—from an infection of the liver .
Should you ever be tempted to think of yourself as smart , Cheryl Misak 's book is a wonderful corrective , a real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capable of intellectually at ages 19 or 25 .
By comparison with the Frank Ramseys of the world , the rest of us are stumbling , mumbling dullards .
Ramsey was no spergery introvert , either .
Big-built and active—swimming , hiking , tennis—he was also genial and gregarious , the far opposite of Wittgenstein .
( Whose nephew Tommy described Ramsey as `` the most natural , good-natured , kind-hearted person you could imagine . ''
) He had a successful—although , by mutual agreement , `` open '' —marriage and was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with sex affairs along the way .
Then he died , a month short of his twenty-seventh birthday .
My Ramsey connection .
I can claim some faint personal connection with Frank Ramsey .
At my English secondary school we specialized early , dropping most general subjects at age 15 .
For my senior three years , ages 15 to 18 , the only academic subjects I took were Pure Maths , Applied Maths , and Physics* .
Our main textbook for Applied Maths was Dynamics by Arthur S. Ramsey , a math @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20th century .
Our class teacher , `` Pug '' Richmond** , referred to this book reverently as just `` Ramsey , '' as in : `` All right , gentlemen , open your Ramsey to page 97 … '' This Ramsey , I learned from Cheryl Misak 's book , was Frank Ramsey 's father .
He wrote several other textbooks , including Statics , a companion of course to Dynamics .
I think we engaged briefly with Statics*** .
For a room full of dirty-minded adolescent boys , the favorite section @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Impulsive Motions of a Rigid Body . ''
Prof. Misak tells us that Arthur Ramsey was a stiffly puritanical Congregationalist church deacon , so I imagine he would have been horrified to hear us sniggering**** over his text .
Frank Ramsey himself was an atheist , although a cheerful one .
His younger brother Michael became Archbishop of Canterbury .
* The joke about this early narrow specialization , by contrast with the wider American system , was that we Brits , as we advanced through secondary and tertiary education , learned more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until eventually we knew practically everything about pretty much nothing .
The Yanks , on the other hand , learned less and less about more and more , until at last they knew well-nigh nothing about approximately everything .
** Pug , at center here , number 60 in my 1961 school photograph , signed his observations in my school reports as `` CAR . ''
He was a formidable character who had no trouble at all keeping his classes orderly .
Before WW2 he had been a street cop in the slums @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his lessons with grisly cop stories .
*** Dynamics is the math of things moving under Newton 's Laws .
Statics concerns the math of stresses and strains where nothing is actually moving : dull stuff by comparison with the glamor and thrill of dynamics , but of compelling interest to architects , bridge builders , and such .
**** The verb `` to snigger , '' which the OED tracks back to 1706 , is nowadays very seriously out of favor with the editors at respectable books , newspapers , magazines , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they increasingly , without consulting the author , replace `` snigger '' with `` snicker . ''
I beg VDARE.com editors to stand firm against this deplorable trend .
Conjugal collaboration .
I shall have a note on Ramsey Theory in my Math Corner at the end of this Diary .
Meanwhile , I hope I may be forgiven just one more connection to the Ramsey biography .
This is another tenuous one .
Mrs. Derbyshire and I have collaborated on the translation into English of a Chinese poem .
To see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reading , and understand the Ramsey connection , see here .
Yeah , yeah ; but how are you filling your time under lockdown ?
Mr Sai and Mr De .
Just 99 years ago as I write , in late July 1921 , the Chinese Communist Party was founded .
I imagine today 's Party bosses already have plans for a big celebration one year from now .
One of the prime movers in the CCP 's founding was Chen Duxiu .
Although unable to attend that founding congress , he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the CCP in absentia .
Chen was later booted out of the Party for Trotskyism ; but he avoided the executioners somehow and died in obscurity in WW2 Chungking .
I was reminded of Chen when browsing some reference books for background on our poet in my previous segment .
What reminded me was a passing mention of `` Mr Sai and Mr De , '' which I have always thought one of the oddest , yet cutest expressions in modern Chinese .
Mr Sai and Mr De are not people but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chinese language in a 1919 essay by Chen .
Putting his hopes for the modernization of China in science and democracy , Chen anthropomorphized these two concepts by writing their first English syllables with Chinese characters having the same sound : 賽 ( sài , `` competition '' ) and 德 ( dé , `` morality '' ) .
So : Mr Sai and Mr De , Sài Xiānsheng and Dé Xiānsheng .
Now here we are a hundred years later .
Mr Sai seems to be doing pretty well in China , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sad !
Virus news .
After a mild sore-throat ' n'coughing episode , I yielded to Mrs Derbyshire 's nagging and got tested for COVID-19 .
This was just a test for the active virus .
Testing for antibodies is harder to arrange , with a lot of paperwork and waiting around .
The hell with that .
Do I have the durn virus , or do n't I ?
Our local hospital has testing set up as a very brisk and efficient drive-through operation , thirty-five minutes from start to finish , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ May Heaven forgive me for any unkind words I have written about America 's healthcare sytem .
As a bonus , I was attended at my driver-side car window by two very pretty and personable young nurses , both of whom chirruped happily over my British accent .
( But neither of whom begged me to say : `` My name is Bond , James Bond , '' as American girls used to back in the seventies .
Sigh … ) I got my result a few hours later via the hospital website @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either I got infected and came right through COVID-19 and out the other side without anything much in the way of symptoms , or have never been infected at all .
I am sunk so deep in fatalism I do n't care much either way , but at least this takes care of the nagging .
Thanks again to the hospital staff—especially Teresa and Colleen—for an exceptionally well-run operation , and for standing out there attending a line of cars in ninety-something heat .
And yet it moves .
Steve Sailer has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words Galileo is supposed to have murmured in 1633 after formally abjuring Copernicus ' idea that the Earth moves around the stationary Sun : `` and yet it [ the earth ] moves . ''
You can , Steve is telling us , blather and bluster all you like about `` social constructs , '' poverty , redlining , and the legacy of Jim Crow .
It still remains the case , after decades of effort and trillions in expenditure to close the race gaps , that blacks fill up the jails while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with whites intermediate on both scales—Rushton 's Rule of Three .
And yet it moves .
Leaving aside the fact that scholars doubt Galileo actually said the famous words , the parallel is not a good one .
Heliocentrism went against observation and ordinary intuition .
The notion that the Earth , with all its cargo of oceans , atmosphere , mountains , forests , cities , and us , is zipping through space at nineteen miles a second sounds preposterous .
Nobody feels the Earth to be moving , other than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … no , ca n't think of any other situations .
As I pointed out in that review , the balance of real scientific understanding did not swing decisively in favor of heliocentrism until the matter of stellar parallax was resolved in 1838 .
There are fringe groups clinging to geocentrism even today .
Race realism , by contrast , is hard to deny .
The Rule of Three is in plain sight everywhere you look .
It jumps out at you from all over .
Presidents come and go ; Republicans and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ programs are enacted ; scads of money are spent ; the Constitution is tied in knots ; yet still , after it all—decades of it—the gaps remain .
Not just in the U.S.A. , either .
Haiti is a desperate slum after 200 years of self-government while South Korea , after a brutal colonization , a massively destructive war , then barely 70 years of independence , is stable and smugly prosperous , … and so on .
Might that all be an illusion , like the stationary Earth ?
Might it all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , white privilege ?
I suppose it might , although I have yet to see the race denialists give a convincing account of East Asian success .
`` It 's their culture , '' is their common response ; to which an old friend of mine is wont to reply : `` Culture ?
Culture ?
What are the upstream variables ? ''
And most of the world 's large phenomena are what they seem to be .
Your lying eyes do n't actually lie much .
The tides do rise and fall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do happen together , cause and effect ; living creatures do breed true , lions begetting lions , sparrows begetting sparrows .
The stationary-Earth illusion is an exception , not the rule .
True , population genetics has not yet had a stellar-parallax moment to consign race denialism once and for all to the kooky fringes of scientific thinking .
Still we understand enough that our understanding , together with daily evidence from our senses , make race realism , as a description of the world outside our skulls , a far , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no-such-thing-as-race , culture-culture-culturism .
So why is n't race realism the default belief for all educated people , as heliocentrism was even before 1838 ?
I guess the answer has to be : because thinking about our fellow human beings is , in some deep way , unlike thinking about celestial mechanics .
The one engages our social emotions ; the other does not—at any rate , not since the Inquisition shut up shop .
And yet it does move … The logical knot of ethnomasochism .
In my July 17th Social Distancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the `` logical knot '' of ethnomasochism , but the conversation moved on before I had a chance to enlarge on the concept .
Some viewers want to know what I meant .
Just this : That by grumbling about white ethnomasochism—about the way white Social Justice Warriors bemoan their own `` white privilege '' and hold nonwhites to be their moral superiors—I am myself practicing a style of ethnomasochism .
That brought in a few irate emails from white people : `` I was with the Marine Corps at Khe Sanh , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you calling 'pussy , ' Pussy ? ''
Etc.
, etc .
Well , yes .
The question I always end up at in discussing the race issue— '' What 's the matter with white people ? ''
— is implicitly ethnomasochistic , is n't it ?
I can try to weasel out of the charge by arguing that ethnomasochistic whites—the SJWs — are only a subset of whites at large ; so I 'm not accusing the entire race of moral failure , as Robin DiAngelo and her imitators do .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , though , ethnomasochistic whites are a mighty big subset of whites in general .
As long as that 's so , and I ca n't resist grumbling about it , I guess I have to confess to some degree of ethnomasochism myself .
So , yes : a logical-philosophical knot .
I wonder what Wittgenstein would have said .
( 1 ) Boycotting law-enforcement algorithms .
Friends have sent me this link to a July 20th story in Popular Mechanics .
Opening paragraphs : I am sure this letter will be given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Notices .
That journal is now so thoroughly woke , it is unusual to see a white male face in the photo boxes , other than in the Obituaries section .
There is a lot to be said , on both sides of the argument , about these `` social algorithms . ''
For my part , I ca n't think of anything to add to the remarks I passed in my review of Cathy O'Neil 's book Weapons of Math Destruction which you can read—the review , I mean , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Back to Frank Ramsey .
Just one more time , I swear .
One of the gems of Ramsey Theory , although it emerged after Ramsey 's time , is the stupendously colossal Graham 's Number , which for a while in the 1980s was given in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest number ever to have been used in a published mathematical proof .
Graham 's Number , which dwells far , far , unimaginably far beyond the realm of mere trillions and quadrillions , is the upper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem in Ramsey Theory .
That is , we do n't know the exact answer to the problem , but we have proved it ca n't be bigger than Graham 's incredibly humongous Number .
For the longest time mathematicians thought the actual solution to this problem is 6 .
It 's now been proved that it must be at least 11 .
You probably know the factorial function .
For any positive whole number N , the factorial of N — commonly written N !
, pronounced `` N-shriek '' — is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know that the factorial function gets out of hand rather quickly .
So while we soon get and then , just a bit further along , That last one , although not even remotely as big as Graham 's Number , is none the less quite impressive from just a three-digit argument .
When non-mathematicians talk loosely about something-or-other increasing exponentially , it would actually be more forceful to say `` factorially . ''
The common exponential function of 100 is a trifling 26 million trillion trillion trillion and change .
OK , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ July 26th `` Mind-Benders for the Quarantined '' out of the National Museum of Mathematics .
Consider this number , which you might call a super-factorial , or factorial-factorial : Now that 's a big number , although still the merest speck of dust compared with Graham 's Number .
Referring to the individual factorials that make it up as `` terms , '' so that 2 !
is a term , 37 !
is a term , and so on , can you remove one term in such a way that what @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Notes from underground. Well, from the lockdown. I hope readers are bearing up OK under confinement.
The Derbs are keeping busy. Paid employment aside, she has her beloved flowers and innumerable contacts on WeChat, the ChiCom messaging app. I have home-improvement chores: this month, stripping out and rebuilding a bathroom closet for maximum accessible shelving—nearly 28 square feet of shelf in a closet 3′×2′4″×8′. This was the last interior space still untouched since we bought the house in 1992. It takes me a while to get round to things …
Husband and wife also collaborated on translating a Chinese poem: See Segment Four below.
And then of course there's been reading.
[Permalink]
Supernaturally smart. Through the middle days of July I read Cheryl Misak's biography of the English mathematician, logician, philosopher, and economist Frank Ramsey. It's an astonishing story. Ramsey must have been one of the smartest people that ever lived. He was staggeringly, breathtakingly, supernaturally smart.
Here he was translating Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which Misak, who is a Professor of Philosophy, describes correctly—I've tried it—as "immensely difficult."
Ramsey went to Miss Pate's secretarial agency in the winter of 1921-22 and translated the manuscript. He read it off an Annalen offprint to a shorthand writer who then typed it up … It is hard to adequately convey how astounding an accomplishment it was to more or less straight away translate this immensely difficult text from the German to English. Ramsey turned nineteen in the middle of the translation, in January 1922.
Those last italics are mine. Wittgenstein, who could read English, went over the translation carefully and was pleased with it. He and Ramsey became friends, to the degree it was possible for anyone to be friends with the pathologically prickly Wittgenstein.
For a few months in 1927-28, encouraged by John Maynard Keynes, another friend, Ramsey concentrated his thoughts on economics, producing two scholarly papers on that subject. Misak tells us that:
When the Economic Journal celebrated its 125th anniversary with a special edition in 2015, both of Ramsey's papers were included. That is, looking back over a century and a quarter, one of the world's best journals of economics decided that two of its thirteen most important papers were written by Frank Ramsey when he was twenty-five years old.
My italics again.
Having then had his fill of economics, Ramsey turned back to math and founded Ramsey Theory, which concerns the occurrence of order in situations of generalized dis-order. This is still an active field of inquiry, with obvious connections to Artificial Intelligence research.
So why isn't this tremendous genius world-famous? Because, as you know if you clicked those links, he died at age 26—January 19th, 1930—from an infection of the liver.
Should you ever be tempted to think of yourself as smart, Cheryl Misak's book is a wonderful corrective, a real humility check. Recall what you were capable of intellectually at ages 19 or 25. By comparison with the Frank Ramseys of the world, the rest of us are stumbling, mumbling dullards.
Ramsey was no spergery introvert, either. Big-built and active—swimming, hiking, tennis—he was also genial and gregarious, the far opposite of Wittgenstein. (Whose nephew Tommy described Ramsey as "the most natural, good-natured, kind-hearted person you could imagine.") He had a successful—although, by mutual agreement, "open"—marriage and was a loving father to two children, with sex affairs along the way.
Then he died, a month short of his twenty-seventh birthday.
[Permalink]
My Ramsey connection. I can claim some faint personal connection with Frank Ramsey.
At my English secondary school we specialized early, dropping most general subjects at age 15. For my senior three years, ages 15 to 18, the only academic subjects I took were Pure Maths, Applied Maths, and Physics*.
Our main textbook for Applied Maths was Dynamics by Arthur S. Ramsey, a math professor at Cambridge University in the early 20th century. Our class teacher, "Pug" Richmond**, referred to this book reverently as just "Ramsey," as in: "All right, gentlemen, open your Ramsey to page 97 …"
This Ramsey, I learned from Cheryl Misak's book, was Frank Ramsey's father. He wrote several other textbooks, including Statics, a companion of course to Dynamics. I think we engaged briefly with Statics***.
For a room full of dirty-minded adolescent boys, the favorite section in Ramsey was the one headed "Impulsive Motions of a Rigid Body." Prof. Misak tells us that Arthur Ramsey was a stiffly puritanical Congregationalist church deacon, so I imagine he would have been horrified to hear us sniggering**** over his text. Frank Ramsey himself was an atheist, although a cheerful one. His younger brother Michael became Archbishop of Canterbury.
* The joke about this early narrow specialization, by contrast with the wider American system, was that we Brits, as we advanced through secondary and tertiary education, learned more and more about less and less, until eventually we knew practically everything about pretty much nothing. The Yanks, on the other hand, learned less and less about more and more, until at last they knew well-nigh nothing about approximately everything.
** Pug, at center here, number 60 in my 1961 school photograph, signed his observations in my school reports as "CAR." He was a formidable character who had no trouble at all keeping his classes orderly. Before WW2 he had been a street cop in the slums of Glasgow. He would occasionally enliven his lessons with grisly cop stories.
*** Dynamics is the math of things moving under Newton's Laws. Statics concerns the math of stresses and strains where nothing is actually moving: dull stuff by comparison with the glamor and thrill of dynamics, but of compelling interest to architects, bridge builders, and such.
**** The verb "to snigger," which the OED tracks back to 1706, is nowadays very seriously out of favor with the editors at respectable books, newspapers, magazines, and webzines. I have been told that they increasingly, without consulting the author, replace "snigger" with "snicker." I beg VDARE.com editors to stand firm against this deplorable trend.
[Permalink]
Conjugal collaboration. I shall have a note on Ramsey Theory in my Math Corner at the end of this Diary. Meanwhile, I hope I may be forgiven just one more connection to the Ramsey biography.
This is another tenuous one. Mrs. Derbyshire and I have collaborated on the translation into English of a Chinese poem. To see my translation, hear my lady's reading, and understand the Ramsey connection, see here.
Yeah, yeah; but how are you filling your time under lockdown?
[Permalink]
Mr Sai and Mr De. Just 99 years ago as I write, in late July 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded. I imagine today's Party bosses already have plans for a big celebration one year from now.
One of the prime movers in the CCP's founding was Chen Duxiu. Although unable to attend that founding congress, he was none the less elected first General Secretary of the CCP in absentia. Chen was later booted out of the Party for Trotskyism; but he avoided the executioners somehow and died in obscurity in WW2 Chungking.
I was reminded of Chen when browsing some reference books for background on our poet in my previous segment. What reminded me was a passing mention of "Mr Sai and Mr De," which I have always thought one of the oddest, yet cutest expressions in modern Chinese.
Mr Sai and Mr De are not people but personifications. They were introduced into the Chinese language in a 1919 essay by Chen. Putting his hopes for the modernization of China in science and democracy, Chen anthropomorphized these two concepts by writing their first English syllables with Chinese characters having the same sound: 賽 (sài, "competition") and 德 (dé, "morality"). So: Mr Sai and Mr De, Sài Xiānsheng and Dé Xiānsheng.
Now here we are a hundred years later. Mr Sai seems to be doing pretty well in China, but Mr De never showed up. Sad!
[Permalink]
Virus news. After a mild sore-throat'n'coughing episode, I yielded to Mrs Derbyshire's nagging and got tested for COVID-19.
This was just a test for the active virus. Testing for antibodies is harder to arrange, with a lot of paperwork and waiting around. The hell with that. Do I have the durn virus, or don't I?
Our local hospital has testing set up as a very brisk and efficient drive-through operation, thirty-five minutes from start to finish, no need to leave your car. May Heaven forgive me for any unkind words I have written about America's healthcare sytem.
As a bonus, I was attended at my driver-side car window by two very pretty and personable young nurses, both of whom chirruped happily over my British accent. (But neither of whom begged me to say: "My name is Bond, James Bond," as American girls used to back in the seventies. Sigh …)
I got my result a few hours later via the hospital website: negative. I guess that means either I got infected and came right through COVID-19 and out the other side without anything much in the way of symptoms, or have never been infected at all. I am sunk so deep in fatalism I don't care much either way, but at least this takes care of the nagging.
Thanks again to the hospital staff—especially Teresa and Colleen—for an exceptionally well-run operation, and for standing out there attending a line of cars in ninety-something heat.
[Permalink]
And yet it moves. Steve Sailer has been getting some race-realism mileage out of the words Galileo is supposed to have murmured in 1633 after formally abjuring Copernicus' idea that the Earth moves around the stationary Sun: "and yet it [the earth] moves."
And yet, it moves. — Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) July 28, 2020
You can, Steve is telling us, blather and bluster all you like about "social constructs," poverty, redlining, and the legacy of Jim Crow. It still remains the case, after decades of effort and trillions in expenditure to close the race gaps, that blacks fill up the jails while East Asians fill up the AP classes, with whites intermediate on both scales—Rushton's Rule of Three. And yet it moves.
Leaving aside the fact that scholars doubt Galileo actually said the famous words, the parallel is not a good one. Heliocentrism went against observation and ordinary intuition. The notion that the Earth, with all its cargo of oceans, atmosphere, mountains, forests, cities, and us, is zipping through space at nineteen miles a second sounds preposterous. Nobody feels the Earth to be moving, other than when there's an earthquake, and … no, can't think of any other situations.
As I pointed out in that review, the balance of real scientific understanding did not swing decisively in favor of heliocentrism until the matter of stellar parallax was resolved in 1838. There are fringe groups clinging to geocentrism even today.
Race realism, by contrast, is hard to deny. The Rule of Three is in plain sight everywhere you look. It jumps out at you from all over. Presidents come and go; Republicans and Democrats rise and fall; mighty social programs are enacted; scads of money are spent; the Constitution is tied in knots; yet still, after it all—decades of it—the gaps remain.
Not just in the U.S.A., either. Haiti is a desperate slum after 200 years of self-government while South Korea, after a brutal colonization, a massively destructive war, then barely 70 years of independence, is stable and smugly prosperous, … and so on.
New investigative piece from @rhersher: You Probably Don't Want To Know About Haiti's Sewage Problems https://t.co/dR65kBIWf1 pic.twitter.com/lGs01cUOh1 — NPR Goats & Soda (@NPRGoatsandSoda) July 31, 2017
(Yes, yes, I know: North Korea is a crazy despotism. It's a high-IQ crazy despotism, though, with missiles and nukes. When Haiti has missiles and nukes, let me know.)
Might that all be an illusion, like the stationary Earth? Might it all be the work of invisible forces—systemic racism, white privilege?
I suppose it might, although I have yet to see the race denialists give a convincing account of East Asian success. "It's their culture," is their common response; to which an old friend of mine is wont to reply: "Culture? Culture? What are the upstream variables?"
And most of the world's large phenomena are what they seem to be. Your lying eyes don't actually lie much. The tides do rise and fall with the moon; thunder and lightning do happen together, cause and effect; living creatures do breed true, lions begetting lions, sparrows begetting sparrows. The stationary-Earth illusion is an exception, not the rule.
True, population genetics has not yet had a stellar-parallax moment to consign race denialism once and for all to the kooky fringes of scientific thinking. Still we understand enough that our understanding, together with daily evidence from our senses, make race realism, as a description of the world outside our skulls, a far, far better bet than socially contructed, no-such-thing-as-race, culture-culture-culturism.
So why isn't race realism the default belief for all educated people, as heliocentrism was even before 1838?
I guess the answer has to be: because thinking about our fellow human beings is, in some deep way, unlike thinking about celestial mechanics. The one engages our social emotions; the other does not—at any rate, not since the Inquisition shut up shop.
And yet it does move …
[Permalink]
The logical knot of ethnomasochism. In my July 17th Social Distancing exchange with Jesse Lee Peterson I mentioned the "logical knot" of ethnomasochism, but the conversation moved on before I had a chance to enlarge on the concept. Some viewers want to know what I meant.
Just this: That by grumbling about white ethnomasochism—about the way white Social Justice Warriors bemoan their own "white privilege" and hold nonwhites to be their moral superiors—I am myself practicing a style of ethnomasochism.
I once published a column titled "White People are Pussies."
On a call-in radio program recently, we had been airing my infamous assertion in a Taki's Magazine column back in April that white people should avoid large concentrations of blacks as likely to be dangerous.
A caller-in asked me why I would not be similarly fearful of a large concentration of whites. I made the obvious reply — that the element of racial animus, of black hatred of whites, would be missing. Then I added, off the cuff: "Anyway, why would anyone be scared of a crowd of whites? Whites aren't going to do anything to you. Let's face it, white people are pussies."
That brought in a few irate emails from white people: "I was with the Marine Corps at Khe Sanh, three months under heavy fire. Who you calling 'pussy,' Pussy?" Etc., etc.
Well, yes. The question I always end up at in discussing the race issue—"What's the matter with white people?" — is implicitly ethnomasochistic, isn't it?
I can try to weasel out of the charge by arguing that ethnomasochistic whites—the SJWs — are only a subset of whites at large; so I'm not accusing the entire race of moral failure, as Robin DiAngelo and her imitators do.
To judge by that lady's book sales, though, ethnomasochistic whites are a mighty big subset of whites in general. As long as that's so, and I can't resist grumbling about it, I guess I have to confess to some degree of ethnomasochism myself.
So, yes: a logical-philosophical knot. I wonder what Wittgenstein would have said.
[Permalink]
Math Corner.
(1) Boycotting law-enforcement algorithms. Friends have sent me this link to a July 20th story in Popular Mechanics. Opening paragraphs:
Several prominent academic mathematicians want to sever ties with police departments across the U.S., according to a letter submitted to Notices of the American Mathematical Society on June 15. The letter arrived weeks after widespread protests against police brutality, and has inspired over 1,500 other researchers to join the boycott.
These mathematicians are urging fellow researchers to stop all work related to predictive policing software, which broadly includes any data analytics tools that use historical data to help forecast future crime, potential offenders, and victims. The technology is supposed to use probability to help police departments tailor their neighborhood coverage so it puts officers in the right place at the right time.
I am sure this letter will be given pride of place in the next issue of Notices. That journal is now so thoroughly woke, it is unusual to see a white male face in the photo boxes, other than in the Obituaries section.
(Picking up the June/July issue just to check that I am not misleading you there, I was momentarily embarrassed to see that the first two contributor photo boxes are in fact both of white males. Then, reading the accompanying byline text, I saw that they are "Alexander Hoover and Alexander Wiedermann, Board Members of Spectra, the Association for LGBT Mathematicians." Ah.)
There is a lot to be said, on both sides of the argument, about these "social algorithms." For my part, I can't think of anything to add to the remarks I passed in my review of Cathy O'Neil's book Weapons of Math Destruction which you can read—the review, I mean, not the book—here. Sample:
Programs for social justice, including O'Neil's, rather frequently display this damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, aspect. Here was Jesse Jackson complaining in 2012 about under-policing in poor Chicago neighborhoods: "More police have been dispatched to neighborhoods where the murders have spiked, but citizens there still aren't protected as well as our … uptown businesses are."
On the other hand, O'Neil grumbles that policing algorithms like New York's Comp-Stat and Los Angeles's PredPol send too many cops into poor, crime-prone neighborhoods. She writes:
How about crimes far removed from the boxes on the PredPol maps, the ones carried out by the rich? … We have every reason to believe that more such crimes [i.e., like those that led to the 2008 crash] are occurring in finance right now … Just imagine if police enforced their zero-tolerance strategy in finance. How soon they forget! I refer Ms. O'Neil to Daniel Fischel's 1995 book, Payback: The Conspiracy to Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution, about the vengefully politicized arrests and prosecutions on Wall Street in the 1980s, when traders were led away from their desks in handcuffs.
Doesn't Add Up, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2017
(2) Back to Frank Ramsey. Just one more time, I swear.
One of the gems of Ramsey Theory, although it emerged after Ramsey's time, is the stupendously colossal Graham's Number, which for a while in the 1980s was given in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest number ever to have been used in a published mathematical proof.
Graham's Number, which dwells far, far, unimaginably far beyond the realm of mere trillions and quadrillions, is the upper bound for the solution of a particular problem in Ramsey Theory. That is, we don't know the exact answer to the problem, but we have proved it can't be bigger than Graham's incredibly humongous Number.
For the longest time mathematicians thought the actual solution to this problem is 6. It's now been proved that it must be at least 11.
Ah, math!
(3) Brainteaser. Speaking of big numbers …
You probably know the factorial function. For any positive whole number N, the factorial of N — commonly written N!, pronounced "N-shriek" — is 1×2×3×4×5× … ×N.
You may also know that the factorial function gets out of hand rather quickly. So while
3! = 6
and
6! = 720,
we soon get
10! = 3,628,800,
and then, just a bit further along,
100! = 93,326,215,443,944, 152,681,699,238, 856,266,700,490, 715,968,264,381, 621,468,592,963, 895,217,599,993, 229,915,608,941, 463,976,156,518, 286,253,697,920, 827,223,758,251, 185,210,916,864, 000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000. Which is to say, 93 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion and change.
That last one, although not even remotely as big as Graham's Number, is none the less quite impressive from just a three-digit argument. When non-mathematicians talk loosely about something-or-other increasing exponentially, it would actually be more forceful to say "factorially." The common exponential function of 100 is a trifling 26 million trillion trillion trillion and change.
OK, here's a factorial-related brainteaser from the July 26th "Mind-Benders for the Quarantined" out of the National Museum of Mathematics.
Consider this number, which you might call a super-factorial, or factorial-factorial:
1!×2!×3!×4!×5!× … ×100!
Now that's a big number, although still the merest speck of dust compared with Graham's Number.
Referring to the individual factorials that make it up as "terms," so that 2! is a term, 37! is a term, and so on, can you remove one term in such a way that what is left is a perfect square?
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vdare--2020-07-31--The War on the Suburbs, Election Prospects, Barr Testifies, and Herman Cain RIP, Etc.

01m22s Affirmatively Furthering the war on suburbia .
( From LBJ to Trump . )
08m06s The one great everlasting @ @ @ @ @ votes , too . )
20m49s Congressional report .
( Fun time in the Halls @ @ @ @ @ Herman Cain RIP .
( Would have been better than Romney . )
32m53s Another @ @ @ @ @ ( And Mutti is mad . )
34m51s Signoff .
( From deep in the @ @ @

01m22s Affirmatively Furthering the war on suburbia. (From LBJ to Trump.)
08m06s The one great everlasting problem. (Suburbanites have votes, too.)
13m43s Election prospects. (Logging the unknowns.)
20m49s Congressional report. (Fun time in the Halls of Uselessness.)
26m10s Herman Cain RIP. (Would have been better than Romney.)
28m08s A close shave in South Korea. (End of a fracas.)
29m57s Covington kid collects. (Jolly good luck to him!)
32m53s Another morsel from the President. (And Mutti is mad.)
34m51s Signoff. (From deep in the 60s.)
01—Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! That was Franz Joseph Haydn's Derbyshire March No. 2 and this is your conventionally genial host John Derbyshire with reflections on the passing scene.
This week's podcast starts and ends in the 1960s. I'm sorry about that; I can hear your eyes rolling all the way across town. Yes, yes; It was in the sixties that our country went off the rails in some key respects, and many of us aren't sure we ever got back on those rails.
Those who forget the past, however, are condemned to repeat it. I do have some points to make about current political events, and the sixties are a handy hook to hang them on. Let's see how it goes.
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02—Affirmatively Furthering the war on suburbia.
[Clip: Pete Seeger, "Little Boxes."]
That was old-style lefty Pete Seeger mocking the suburbs back in 1963. The suburbs, according to the songwriter (a different old-style lefty, not Pete), the suburbs were just breeding farms for the bourgeoisie, a wasteland of conformist middle-class values: doctors, lawyers, golfers, and—oh my God!—nuclear families, who drank their martinis dry and sent their kids to summer camp.
Pete's recording of the song was a big hit. There was a market for mocking the suburbs in the sixties: not just songs, but movies like The Graduate and novels like those of Updike and Cheever. The Boomers were looking for something more exciting, more spiritual, more life-affirming than the routine drudgery of middle-class life.
This being America, there was of course a race element to anti-suburbanism. The people in those little boxes Pete Seeger was sneering at were far too white; everyone understood that.
This was the Civil Rights era, so government action followed. Five years after Pete's hit, in 1968 the Lyndon Johnson administration gave us the Fair Housing Act, bringing the power of the feds to bear on race discrimination in those lily-white suburbs. Federal agencies were required, quote: "affirmatively to further" the purposes of the Act, which included diversifying residential neighborhoods.
Fast-forward 47 years. Someone in the Obama administration plucked those words out of the Fair Housing Act and brought forth the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, ordering the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to withhold federal funds from localities that weren't sufficiently diverse.
Some shameless cynics like our own Steve Sailer suggested that Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing—which, Steve observes, sounds like something Daffy Duck might say—that AFFH was really just a scheme to move poor blacks out of the inner cities. This would open up more prime urban real estate for gentrification, for the benefit of hip young Obama-voting urban types with outlooks formed by TV shows like Friends and Sex in the City; and perhaps, coincidentally of course, perhaps also to the benefit of urban real-estate developers like Obama's pal Tony Rezko.
The poor blacks being shunted out of the inner cities would have to go somewhere. So where? To the suburbs, of course. Suburbanites might grumble at having inner-city blacks and their problems dumped on them; but hey, suburbanites are mainly racist white people with way too much white privilege, so it serves them right.
Well, July 23rd the Trump administration announced they are dropping the AFFH rule on the grounds that, quote from HUD Secretary Ben Carson:
Washington has no business dictating what is best to meet your local community's unique needs.
End quote.
Under the AFFH rule, said Carson, local jurisdictions were forced to comply with complicated regulations that require hundreds of pages of reporting, to very little practical effect. Which I believe is true—both parts of it.
That started off what news outlets call a "firestorm" of indignation from social-justice outfits like The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who sputtered that dropping the AFFH Rule was, quote, "a full-frontal assault on the rule of law."
President Trump stoked the flames by tweeting out on Wednesday this week that, tweet:
I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood …
End tweet.
What does Radio Derb think about all this? New segment.
03—The one great everlasting problem. First off, I was never on board with the anti-suburb sentiment, even in my lefty college days. I've always liked the suburbs. I've been living in this one for nigh-on thirty years, and have no desire to live anywhere else.
One of the first opinion pieces I wrote for an American magazine was in defense of suburbia. That was in reaction to an initiative out of the Clinton administration with the almost comically moon-booted bureaucratic title: Building Livable Communities for the 21st Century. I opened my opinion piece with the ringing declaration that, quote:
I shall give up my lawn mower when they prise it from my cold dead fingers.
End quote.
That Clinton initiative—the year was 1999—was not in fact explicitly anti-suburb, just a play for more federal control over zoning and transportation. I don't think it was anti-white, either. The really open, aggressive anti-whiteness we're all used to now wasn't much in evidence in the nineties, before the Great Awokening. It took another fifteen years of leftward drift before Obama came right out into the open with AFFH.
I think Steve's probably right that there were ulterior motives behind AFFH. It's hard to watch someone as sanctimonious as Barack Obama without glimpsing the dollar signs flickering on his eyeballs. Probably there was also racial revenge in play. How dare white Americans monopolize those pleasant leafy suburbs, leaving blacks stuck in smelly, crowded, crime-addled inner cities?
I'm going to give benefit of the doubt, though, and assume that there was some element of genuine altruism in there, too. Let me explain that.
The one great everlasting problem of American society is the problem of poor blacks. There are poor whites, too, of course; but because of race differences in ability and behavior, there are proportionally more, way more, poor blacks.
I raise again my analogy of a man dragging a sack along the road. If the sack is not too big in proportion to the man, it's a nuisance, but he can keep moving. That's the situation of whites in relation to their own poor, antisocial element.
If the sack is too big in proportion to the man, however, it's really hard for him to make any progress. That's how it is for the Talented Tenth of blacks—and indeed for the rest of us, too—in relation to the black underclass.
But that's a race realist point of view. If you're a race denialist, there's a solution to what I just called our one great everlasting problem. The solution is: magic dirt! Just move poor blacks out of the inner cities where they are concentrated and scatter them out into the suburbs. The magic suburban dirt will cure them of antisocial behaviors and have them crowding into Advanced Placement classes in no time. Problem solved!
I've no doubt there are people who sincerely believe in Magic Dirt Theory. That's the element of altruism I just mentioned.
However, a great many suburbanites—including Talented Tenth black ones, and probably a lot of white liberals whose enthusiasm for social justice goes no deeper than virtue signaling—a great many of us don't believe the Magic Dirt Theory and don't want to live around poor blacks. When we hear the phrase "low-income housing" we think of crime, disorder, welfare mommas, and discipline problems in schools.
Was President Trump's Wednesday tweet a bare-faced appeal to us—a "dog whistle," as the media lefties say? I bet it was, but so what? We suburbanites have votes, too.
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04—Election prospects. Votes, yes. We are, what?, I make it fourteen weeks away from the November election. It's a weary cliché by now, but true none the less, that this will be a very consequential election. What are the prospects?
There is a vein of commentary saying that his one is really hard to call. Even just fourteen weeks out, say these commentators, there are too many unknowns.
The virus. Will it make a comeback in the fall, throwing us right back to the generalized panic of February and March?
The economy. The second-quarter GDP figures just came out. Our economy contracted a horrendous 9.5 percent. That's an annualized rate of 32.9 percent; so if we go on like this, a year of pandemic will swallow one-third of our economy. Shall we go on like this? No-one really knows.
The riots. Who will November voters blame for all this social unrest: the Democrats who encourage and support it, or the administration who aren't doing anything much about it? There are respectable polls—I've just been looking at one published this Tuesday from Gallup—reporting strong public support for the anarchists. Ninety-five percent of Democrats support them, says Gallup, and even 22 percent of Republicans. Among whites, 59 percent support; among 18-to-29-year-olds, eighty-seven percent. Good grief! There might be a Bradley Effect in there—people giving Gallup the socially-approved response rather than an honest one—but I feel like I'm clutching at straws there.
Trump. Does he actually want to run? Will the GOP bosses let him? There's been speculation for a while that Never Trumpers in the party will sabotage him—James Carville, who knows a thing or two about retail politics, has made this case. I see signs—like Trump's ham-fisted suggestion Thursday the election might be put off—that he's stopped giving much of a damn. With his poll numbers in the tank, Biden refusing to debate, and coronavirus putting the kibosh on his energizing rallies, Trump may feel that all the fun has gone out of campaigning. Why bother? Retirement might be looking pretty good right now.
Biden. Will he run? If his poll numbers hold up, I bet he will. If they go against him for some reason, though, or if he takes a nasty fall, as people his age are liable to do, or if some major figure in his party turns against him, maybe not.
Biden's Veep. As Radio Derb goes to tape here we are waiting to hear the name of the lucky lady. Given Biden's condition, this is the most significant Veep choice ever.
Events, dear boy, events. Will China make the move on Taiwan? Will China and India go to war? Greece and Turkey? Something no-one's thought of?
I'm sticking with my prediction of a Trump loss. As those Gallup numbers show, what pollsters call "low-information voters" are a mighty legion. Most people don't engage much with politics; they take their lead from the media, who are of course going all out against Trump.
And then, immigration. Not the political issue, but the sheer overwhelming consequence from fifty-five years of high immigration levels. I've just been re-reading a piece from The American Spectator last October by James Delmont, title: Is Mass Immigration Killing Two-Party Democracy in the U.S.? Yes it is, says the author. Sample quote:
The demographic tidal wave of mostly Third World immigrants who vote heavily Democrat is now running legally at a million a year, an all-time record, and is turning red states purple and then blue. Arizona is going, Colorado and Georgia are going, Virginia is gone, North Carolina is tipping, and Florida is a dead heat but the immigration trends (south-of-the-border Latinos and Puerto Ricans) are against the GOP. Even Texas is drifting leftward as Latinos bid to become a solid majority there.
End quote.
Just as we've been telling you all these years: California is the future. The Republican Party has been digging its own grave for thirty years now, and the job is pretty much done.
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05—Congressional report. From the Halls of Uselessness — which is to say, the United States Congress—we have at least been getting some entertainment value this week.
Attorney General Bill Barr put up a spirited defense of the administration Tuesday in a five-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. At least, he tried to: The Antifa members of the committee … I'm sorry, I mean of course the Democrats on the committee did all they could to prevent him getting a word in edgewise.
Barr took it all with good humor for the farce that it was, and scored at least one point against the toad-like Jerry Nadler:
[Clip: You're a real class act, Mr Chairman …]
While I enjoyed the Attorney General's performance there and appreciate his refusal to be baited by the congressreptiles, I can't help wishing he was a bit more forceful in carrying out his other duties.
Where has he been on the wretched DACA business, for example? All right, it's Homeland Security's bailiwick; but the legality of DACA is a Justice Department issue too, and neither Jeff Sessions nor Bill Barr have been shy about expressing their opinions on it.
As our own correspondent Federale has urged, the administration should cut through the Gordian Knot with DACA—placing DACA recipients in deportation proceedings, starting with those who have criminal records. They're illegal aliens, aren't they? Fiat justitia ruat caelum; and as the guy in charge of justitia, Barr should be active here.
There has also been some grumbling that federal attorneys are going easy on arrested rioters. People arrested and charged with federal offenses earlier this month in Portland were released pending trial on condition, imposed by the judges, that they not participate in any public demonstrations or public assemblies while on release. Oregon newspapers report that this condition has now been dropped. Rioters are free to re-riot while awaiting trial. Wha?
In Bill Barr's defense, however, people tell me he's up against an entrenched leftist establishment among his judges and prosecutors. Like President Trump, he's fighting the Swamp.
To add to the entertainment, on Wednesday a subcommittee of that same House Judiciary Committee, a subcommittee on commercial and antitrust issues, had a videoconference hearing on Big Tech. The CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon all testified. Questions focused on whether they are running monopolies and whether they are putting their big fat thumbs on the scales to influence the November election. We already know the answers to both questions, so not much light was shed.
I've recently been reading up on the issues involved here. I was dismayed, although honestly not very surprised, to see that the congressrodents hadn't. The general level of knowledge on the committee's side of the exchanges was dismal. All right, not everybody can be an expert on everything; but don't they have staff to boil things down to bullet points for them?
I respectfully suggest to the congresscritters that before further hearings on Big Tech issues they at least take time to read Yuval Harari's article "Why Technology Favors Tyranny" in the October 2018 issue of The Atlantic. There are huge issues here—issues of privacy, personal autonomy, state power, and the democratic process—that will be of major importance to us all in the decade we've just entered.
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06—Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Back in our July 3rd podcast I noted that 2012 GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain had come down with COVID-19. I confessed to having had a soft spot for Herman back in that campaign, and sent Radio Derb's best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Alas, on Thursday this week Cain passed away at age 74. I was very sorry to hear the news. From my one encounter with him I judged him a smart and likeable man who would probably have made at least as good a President as the eventual Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
Cain was seen without a mask at a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa last month. There's speculation he might have caught the virus there, so that his death has been an issue in the sub-political debate between maskers and no-maskers, which I think is regrettable—and, in the case of some snarky jeering on Twitter, disrespectful.
For the record, I have the same disgracefully low level of interest in the mask controversy as I have in the whole pandemic business. I wear a mask when I go out just from sheer chicken-soupery: it can't hurt.
Good night, Herman. I look forward to discussing ODEs with you in another place.
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Item: Back in my January Diary I recorded the strange little fracas about Harry Harris, our Ambassador to South Korea: precisely, about his mustache.
Ambassador Harris was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and American father, so he looks sorta-kinda Japanese. And has a mustache. That rubbed the Koreans the wrong way, as mustaches sometimes do. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, and several Japanese leaders at the time—including Tojo, the wartime Prime Minister, and Hirohito, the Emperor—had mustaches. I know, it sounds kind of silly, but the Koreans were riled up about it.
Some deplorable spirits in the comment threads suggested that Ambassador Harris trim back the 'tache to just the Hitler style, but our man decided to go all the way. July 25th he went to a barber shop in Seoul and had the whole thing shaved off.
The Ambassador put out a cover story, telling reporters that the mustache, together with a face mask, was making him feel too hot and uncomfortable. That was just shaving face, though … sorry, I mean saving face.
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Item: Hearty congratulations from Radio Derb to Nicholas Sandmann of Park Hills, Kentucky. Sandmann is the best-known and most-abused member of the student group from Covington High School who were in Washington, DC in January last year for an anti-abortion rally.
Sight-seeing after their rally, the students, many—including Sandmann—wearing MAGA hats, were accosted and taunted by a black-supremacist group, then by a Native American activist. They responded with some good-natured chanting of school sports songs. Sandmann himself just stood smiling through the whole thing. It was all reported by the press, however, as racist white-supremacist teenagers threatening and insulting a harmless old Indian.
Sandmann sued eight media outlets—The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS, The Guardian, The Hill, NBC, and Twitter—for defamation, asking for a total $800 million in damages. In January this year he came to an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount with CNN. Now we've heard that on July 24th, which as it happened is his 18th birthday, he got another settlement from The Washington Post, amount likewise undisclosed.
Addressing the sinister Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, Sandmann tweeted that, tweet:
The fight isn't over. 2 down, 6 to go. Don't hold your breath @jack.
End tweet.
I certainly hope the fight isn't over. All strength to you, Nicholas. Radio Derb is cheering you on. Out-of-court settlements in cases like this are way smaller than the amounts being asked for, but I'm betting Nicholas Sandmann will come out of this with enough for a very nice car, perhaps a new house for his Dad and Mom. Jolly good luck to him!
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Item: There were two things we Trump voters hoped for above all others if our man got elected President. One was of course a firm, strict enforcement of the nation's laws on immigration, with some new laws to reduce the numbers coming in. The other was an end to, or at least a major scaling back of, our overseas troop deployments.
We didn't get much of either, but we didn't get nothing; and on that second item, Trump just threw us another morsel. Our troop numbers in Germany, currently at 36,000, are to be reduced by 12,000. Now there will be only 24,000 Americans there when the Soviet forces come charging through the Fulda Gap.
It's better than nothing, I guess; and Mutti Merkel is mad as hell about it, which is a bonus. I still can't figure why we have any troops at all in Germany, though, 75 years after WW2 and 30 years since the Warsaw Pact disbanded.
To add to my puzzlement, I read that only half of the 12,000 being withdrawn will return to the States. The other half will be re-deployed to … Italy. You know, just in case Mussolini rises from the grave.
Oh well; thanks, Mr President … I guess.
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07—Signoff. That's all I can offer you this week, ladies and gents. Thank you for listening, and be sure to catch my July Diary, to be posted on the VDARE.com website sometime in the next few days.
I started off this podcast with Pete Seeger mocking us suburbanites. That was definitely a thing back in the sixties, although I have to say Pete Seeger's sappy leftism wasn't much to my taste.
Here to play us out is something along the same lines that was to my taste; although I'll admit, listening to it again now after a lapse of several decades, I'm a bit embarrassed to say so. If you were around in the sixties you can probably relate; if not, you'll think it's deeply weird. By all means decide for yourselves.
Yes: It's Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, from their 1966 debut album Freak Out, Side Three (it was a double album). Don't blame me: I didn't make the sixties happen, I just report them.
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
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[Music clip: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, "It can't Happen Here."]


vdare--2020-08-05--Sailer Review of Oliver Stone's Autobiography CHASING THE LIGHT

From my new Taki ’ s Magazine column : While increasingly forgotten today , writer-director Oliver Stone might have been the most talked-about figure in American popular culture from 1986 through 1992 , when the press suddenly went to war against him over his JFK conspiracy-theory movie .
Stone ’ s new memoir Chasing the Light recounts his first four decades from his birth in 1946 ( not surprisingly , the first year of the baby boom ) through his annus mirabilis in 1986 .
Staring at the fact that few directors get a chance to break through after age @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entertaining Salvador and the universally admired Vietnam War movie Platoon .
I ’ ve always felt that Stone , who enlisted as a private in the Army after dropping out of Yale and was wounded twice in Vietnam , was more than entitled to be a critic of his country ’ s invade-the-world foreign policy .
Interestingly , before emerging in movies such as Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July as a celebrated critic of Ronald Reagan ’ s policies , military and economic , Stone admits in his book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , just as he had supported Barry Goldwater as a preppie in 1964 .
There isn ’ t much detail on Stone ’ s political change of heart in Chasing the Light .
My guess is that Stone ’ s politics , like those of old-time science-fiction author Robert Heinlein , may be influenced by whoever is his current wife .

From my new Taki’s Magazine column:
‘Chasing the Light’: Mild Stone
Steve Sailer
August 05, 2020
While increasingly forgotten today, writer-director Oliver Stone might have been the most talked-about figure in American popular culture from 1986 through 1992, when the press suddenly went to war against him over his JFK conspiracy-theory movie.
Stone’s new memoir Chasing the Light recounts his first four decades from his birth in 1946 (not surprisingly, the first year of the baby boom) through his annus mirabilis in 1986. Staring at the fact that few directors get a chance to break through after age 40, he suddenly delivered the wildly entertaining Salvador and the universally admired Vietnam War movie Platoon.
I’ve always felt that Stone, who enlisted as a private in the Army after dropping out of Yale and was wounded twice in Vietnam, was more than entitled to be a critic of his country’s invade-the-world foreign policy.
Interestingly, before emerging in movies such as Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July as a celebrated critic of Ronald Reagan’s policies, military and economic, Stone admits in his book that he voted for Reagan in 1980, just as he had supported Barry Goldwater as a preppie in 1964.
There isn’t much detail on Stone’s political change of heart in Chasing the Light. My guess is that Stone’s politics, like those of old-time science-fiction author Robert Heinlein, may be influenced by whoever is his current wife.


vdare--2020-08-05--538: Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes About Crime Rising

Many Americans Are Convinced Crime Is Rising In The U.S.
They ’ re Wrong .
But their fear makes everyone less safe .
By Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux … We are certain crime is rising when it isn ’ t ; convinced our risk of victimization is higher than it actually is .
And in a summer when the president is sending federal agents to crack down on crime in major cities and local politicians are arguing over the risks of defunding the police , that disconnect matters .
In an age of anxiety , crime may be one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crime rate .
In 2019 , according to a survey conducted by Gallup , about 64 percent of Americans believed that there was more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago .
It ’ s a belief we ’ ve consistently held for decades now , but as you can see in the chart below , we ’ ve been , just as consistently , very wrong .
True , but the funny thing , of course , is that the media are most likely to trot out these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when it ’ s not precisely when crime is rising because media-backed Black Lives Matter campaigns in 2014-2016 and in 2020 are getting Black Lives Spattered .
In reality , there is a huge amount of evidence that crime , especially shooting and looting , are up since Day Zero of the George Floyd Era , May 24 , 2020 .
Crime rates do fluctuate from year to year .
In 2020 , for example , murder has been up but other crimes are in decline so that the crime rate , overall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the number of dead bodies .
Moreover , the amount of burglaries in various lootings has been enormous , judging by helicopter and security camera footage I ’ ve watched of neighborhoods I ’ m familiar with .
To say that crime is down because nobody filed a police report on each individual looter is ridiculous .

From FiveThirtyEight:
Many Americans Are Convinced Crime Is Rising In The U.S. They’re Wrong. But their fear makes everyone less safe.
By Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux AUG. 3, 2020, AT 6:00 AM … We are certain crime is rising when it isn’t; convinced our risk of victimization is higher than it actually is. And in a summer when the president is sending federal agents to crack down on crime in major cities and local politicians are arguing over the risks of defunding the police, that disconnect matters. In an age of anxiety, crime may be one of our most misleading fears. Take the crime rate. In 2019, according to a survey conducted by Gallup, about 64 percent of Americans believed that there was more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago. It’s a belief we’ve consistently held for decades now, but as you can see in the chart below, we’ve been, just as consistently, very wrong.
True, but the funny thing, of course, is that the media are most likely to trot out these old studies of people seeing crime rising when it’s not precisely when crime is rising because media-backed Black Lives Matter campaigns in 2014-2016 and in 2020 are getting Black Lives Spattered.
In reality, there is a huge amount of evidence that crime, especially shooting and looting, is up since Day Zero of the George Floyd Era, May 24, 2020.
Crime rates do fluctuate from year to year. In 2020, for example, murder has been up but other crimes are in decline so that the crime rate, overall, is down.
Keep your eye on the number of dead bodies.
Moreover, the amount of burglaries in various lootings has been enormous, judging by helicopter and security camera footage I’ve watched of neighborhoods I’m familiar with. To say that crime is down because nobody filed a police report on each individual looter is ridiculous.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-08-05--War On Free Speech, DHS Edition: CBP Fires Four For Being Rude About Illegal Aliens

Earlier : Border Patrol `` Racist Facebook Group '' Kerfuffle Is Much Ado About Nothing There is a real problem with DHS and civil rights .
Not the usual nonsense about `` immigrants rights '' you read about in the MSM .
The real issue is that DHS has also been silently eliminating the First Amendment for employees .
Some time ago a private Facebook chat group was doxxed by advocates for illegal aliens at ProPublica .
Never before the rise of social media has the Federal government investigated employees for expressing speech protected by the First Amendment .
Not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has mere expressions of protected religious or political speech been investigated , much less punished .
[ Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes , by A.C. Thompson , Pro Publica , July 1 , 2019 [ To forestall historical objections by Communists , the purges of the 50s and early 60s were not based on protected speech , but due to disloyalty to the United States , membership in treasonous and seditious organizations , i.e .
the Communist Party and front groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Constitution of the United States .
Insults , rude humor , and contemptuous opinions about members of Congress as well as other protected speech were never a cause for investigation , discipline , or termination from Federal or any other level of government service .
Only since the rise of the High Church of Anti-White Racism have opinions about politicians or low opinions about aliens been suddenly identified as disciplinary issues .
As background , there was a Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol Agents ( BPA ) , where they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ However , there were no illegal threats or other criminal activity planned or executed on the site , unlike Facebook and Twitter accounts that actively support Antifa criminal activity .
Plenty of those have Federal , State , and local employees involved .
( Pictured right , Minnesota AG Keith Ellison . )
But those are not investigated .
Recall when Donald J. Trump was elected President , Twitter , Facebook , and other social media were inundated with new accounts professing to be representing Federal employees opposed to Donald John Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sabotage the implementation of his policies .
Accounts with “ Alt-USCIS , ” “ Alt-TSA , ” “ Alt-DOS , ” or “ Alt-DHS , ” etc .
were all over the place .
Twitter and Facebook refused to cooperate with investigations and bureaucrats actively sabotaged investigations into the these seditious conspiracies to obstruct the lawfully elected government of the United States .
But when the Federal employees are supporting President Trump and immigration enforcement , the full force of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Professional Responsibility ( CBP OPR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Inspector General ( DHS OIG ) comes down like a ton of bricks .
However , there were no investigations of the “ Alt ” accounts on Facebook or Twitter that were going to sabotage the Trump Administration , which , as we saw from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency , happened .
But now we have the result of the investigation of the “ I ’ m 10-15 ” Facebook page ; four agents have been fired and others disciplined .
The largest federal law enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participation in secretive social media groups that have featured violent , sexist and racist posts against migrants and members of Congress , the Los Angeles Times has learned .
More than a year after launching an internal investigation into 138 employees for “ inappropriate social media activity , ” Customs and Border Protection — the parent agency of the Border Patrol — has removed four employees , suspended 38 without pay and disciplined an additional 27 “ with reprimands or counseling , ” according to data provided to The Times by the agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ s Office of Professional Responsibility determined that 63 of the cases — roughly half — were “ unsubstantiated.
” Six cases remain open , and the Homeland Security Department ‘ s inspector general is also investigating .
[ Border Agency Fires 4 For Secret Facebook Groups With Violent , Bigoted Posts , by Molly O ’ Toole , LA TImes , July 16 , 2020 ] By way of personal experience , early in my career , there was an employee in our unit , a woman who was quickly promoted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a communist .
Not a card-carrying member under Party discipline , but one who openly supported the Soviet Union and violent revolution against the United States and the Constitution .
She resigned while under investigation , but she was not investigated for what she said , but because what she said undermined her professed loyalty to the United States and the Constitution .
That is quite different from gallows humor concerning illegal aliens who died crossing the desert and insults hurled at overly sensitive Latina Congresswomen .
If they were Communists or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild would have lept to the the defense of fired or disciplined employees , but as withDerek Chauvin and Michael Slager , there is no help for white law enforcement officers supportive of Donald Trump and the principle of the right to freedom of speech .
And it appears to be getting worse , CBP OPR reserves the right to “ investigate ” retired and former employees for wrong-think .
How CBP expects to discipline retired and former employees is anyone ’ s guess .
Aside from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken after an employee leaves service .
One can not go back and fire someone after they have left .
There is no legal or Constitutional provision for that .
Now , the issue is not privacy , but protections accorded all Americans , including Federal employees , by the First Amendment .
One would object that those protections do not cover death threats .
While there is no public evidence of actual death threats , to be a crime , it has to be directed at a person , be specific , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vague wish that some corrupt politician in the service of aliens , something that would be both treasonous and seditious , should come to a bad end , would not legally be a death threat , and if uttered in private , would never be considered legally actionable .
Just look at all the teachers at the Portland school district that have made death threats against Federal agents as well as attacked those officers—none have been fired or investigated .
The fired Border Patrol Agents need to be re-hired and clear standards for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Federal service .
The First Amendment applies to all Americans .
And laughing about dead illegal aliens or making rude remarks about seditious Congressmen and women is protected speech .
It is precisely the political speech that the white Founding Fathers wanted to protect .

Earlier: Border Patrol "Racist Facebook Group" Kerfuffle Is Much Ado About Nothing
There is a real problem with DHS and civil rights. Not the usual nonsense about "immigrants' rights" you read about in the MSM. The real issue is that DHS has also been silently eliminating the First Amendment for employees.
Some time ago a private Facebook chat group was doxxed by advocates for illegal aliens at ProPublica. Never before the rise of social media has the Federal government investigated employees for expressing speech protected by the First Amendment. Not even during the height of anti-Communist sentiment has mere expressions of protected religious or political speech been investigated, much less punished [Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes, by A.C. Thompson, Pro Publica, July 1, 2019].
To forestall historical objections by Communists, the purges of the 50s and early 60s were not based on protected speech, but due to disloyalty to the United States, membership in treasonous and seditious organizations, i.e., the Communist Party and front groups, and lack of adherence to the Constitution of the United States.
Insults, rude humor, and contemptuous opinions about members of Congress as well as other protected speech were never a cause for investigation, discipline, or termination from Federal or any other level of government service. Only since the rise of the High Church of Anti-White Racism have opinions about politicians or low opinions about aliens been suddenly identified as disciplinary issues.
As background, there was a Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol Agents (BPA), where they expressed protected opinions about current issues. However, there were no illegal threats or other criminal activity planned or executed on the site, unlike Facebook and Twitter accounts that actively support Antifa criminal activity. Plenty of those have Federal, State, and local employees involved. (Pictured right, Minnesota AG Keith Ellison.) But those are not investigated.
Recall when Donald J. Trump was elected President, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media were inundated with new accounts professing to be representing Federal employees opposed to Donald John Trump, who openly stated that they would actively sabotage the implementation of his policies. Accounts with “Alt-USCIS,” “Alt-TSA,” “Alt-DOS,” or “Alt-DHS,” etc. were all over the place.
Twitter and Facebook refused to cooperate with investigations and bureaucrats actively sabotaged investigations into the these seditious conspiracies to obstruct the lawfully elected government of the United States. But when the Federal employees are supporting President Trump and immigration enforcement, the full force of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Professional Responsibility (CBP OPR) and Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) comes down like a ton of bricks. However, there were no investigations of the “Alt” accounts on Facebook or Twitter that were going to sabotage the Trump Administration, which, as we saw from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, happened.
But now we have the result of the investigation of the “I’m 10-15” Facebook page; four agents have been fired and others disciplined.
The largest federal law enforcement agency has fired four employees for their participation in secretive social media groups that have featured violent, sexist and racist posts against migrants and members of Congress, the Los Angeles Times has learned. More than a year after launching an internal investigation into 138 employees for “inappropriate social media activity,” Customs and Border Protection — the parent agency of the Border Patrol — has removed four employees, suspended 38 without pay and disciplined an additional 27 “with reprimands or counseling,” according to data provided to The Times by the agency. Investigators from Customs and Border Protection‘s Office of Professional Responsibility determined that 63 of the cases — roughly half — were “unsubstantiated.” Six cases remain open, and the Homeland Security Department‘s inspector general is also investigating. [Border Agency Fires 4 For Secret Facebook Groups With Violent, Bigoted Posts, by Molly O’Toole, LA TImes , July 16, 2020]
By way of personal experience, early in my career, there was an employee in our unit, a woman who was quickly promoted to supervisor because of Affirmative Action, who was a communist. Not a card-carrying member under Party discipline, but one who openly supported the Soviet Union and violent revolution against the United States and the Constitution.
She resigned while under investigation, but she was not investigated for what she said, but because what she said undermined her professed loyalty to the United States and the Constitution. That is quite different from gallows humor concerning illegal aliens who died crossing the desert and insults hurled at overly sensitive Latina Congresswomen.
If they were Communists or BLM anti-white racists, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild would have leapt to the the defense of fired or disciplined employees, but as with Derek Chauvin and Michael Slager, there is no help for white law enforcement officers supportive of Donald Trump and the principle of the right to freedom of speech.
And it appears to be getting worse; CBP OPR reserves the right to “investigate” retired and former employees for wrong-think.
At the start of the investigation, Matthew Klein, assistant commissioner of the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, emphasized that the privacy of the social media groups does not protect current or former employees from disciplinary action.
How CBP expects to discipline retired and former employees is anyone’s guess. Aside from criminal activity, no action can be taken after an employee leaves service. One cannot go back and fire someone after they have left. There is no legal or Constitutional provision for that.
Now, the issue is not privacy, but protections accorded all Americans, including Federal employees, by the First Amendment. One would object that those protections do not cover death threats. While there is no public evidence of actual death threats, to be a crime, it has to be directed at a person, be specific, and have credibility.
An untoward and vague wish that some corrupt politician in the service of aliens, something that would be both treasonous and seditious, should come to a bad end, would not legally be a death threat, and if uttered in private, would never be considered legally actionable. Just look at all the teachers at the Portland school district that have made death threats against Federal agents as well as attacked those officers—none have been fired or investigated.
The fired Border Patrol Agents need to be re-hired and clear standards for First Amendment protections need to be established in Federal service. The First Amendment applies to all Americans. And laughing about dead illegal aliens or making rude remarks about seditious Congressmen and women is protected speech. It is precisely the political speech that the white Founding Fathers wanted to protect.


vdare--2020-08-05--Ann Coulter: America’s Most Gullible Journalist, Nicholas Kristof: ‘Visit Portland!’

The entire mainstream media ( plus Fox News ! )
have been assuring us that Portland was a tranquil town , with the occasional peaceful protest … until President Trump ’ s storm troopers showed up and turned it into a war zone .
This portrayal contrasts markedly with videos that have been posted on Twitter every night for more than two months now , especially by @ MrAndyNgo , showing helmeted psychotics hurling Molotov cocktails at the police , among other acts of mindless destruction .
Whom to believe ?
Videos of the riots ?
Or smug journalists telling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Luckily , there ’ s the Newspaper of Record to give us the truth .
Unluckily , The New York Times sent … Nicholas Kristof , aka the most easily fooled journalist in America .
Kristof assured Times readers that the Portland crowds are “ entirely peaceful , ” until around 11 p.m. , when “ some protesters begin to shoot fireworks or set small trash fires.
” Also : the federal courthouse , the Justice Center offices , statues , the Portland police union hall , and a decapitated pig ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kristof [ Email him ] also dismissively remarked : “ No , they ’ re not trying to burn down the federal courthouse.
” Do not trust the dozens of videos showing protesters trying to burn down the federal courthouse .
He further reports that—just as MSNBC has said !
— “ the most violent behavior overwhelmingly comes from the federal agents.
” So there you have it .
You can believe the man who said , “ Mao ’ s legacy is not all bad , ” or you can believe your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collection of videos documenting the violent riots in Portland , Kristof has a long record of being conned by obvious frauds .
Let ’ s review a few of his greatest hits .
In 2009 , Kristof wrote a tear-jerker column titled , “ Are We Going to Let John Die ?
” John was Oregon ’ s John Brodniak , who allegedly couldn ’ t get treatment for his cavernous hemangioma because he didn ’ t have health insurance : Moral of the story : Pass Obamacare now , you fools !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ calls and found out that John was enrolled in Medicaid and was being treated by top neurologists at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland .
He ’ d been a patient there for weeks , including when Kristof wrote his column .
Brodniak himself “ reluctantly ” admitted the truth to Malkin .
Kristof also wrote several columns and blog posts gushing about Somaly Mam , the Cambodian woman allegedly sold into prostitution as a little girl , who went on to launch an international anti-trafficking organization frequently touted in Kristof ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resilience , he once cited this incident as a heartbreaking relic of the trauma she ’ d suffered : Then Newsweek investigated and it turned out Somaly—Kristof ’ s “ friend and hero ” — was a total fraud .
Her childhood friends told the magazine that she ’ d grown up with her parents in their small village , gone to local schools , and had been “ a happy , pretty girl with pigtails , ” well liked and well known .
Still , wasn ’ t she doing good work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for example , Kristof featured Long Pross , one of the girls Somaly had rescued from a life of violence and prostitution : “ Pross was 13 and hadn ’ t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh .
The brothel owner , a woman as is typical , beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced .
“ [ She ] gouged out Pross ’ s right eye with a piece of metal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story , Pross broke down and we had to suspend the interview .
“ Pross ’ s eye grew infected and monstrous , spraying blood and pus on customers , she later recounted .
The owner discarded her … ” It turned out Pross had never been a prostitute and she lost her eye during surgery on a nonmalignant tumor , which Newsweek ascertained using the little-known journalistic technique of … talking to people who knew her and obtaining her medical records .
There are more examples , such as the adventurer-turned-school builder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s ] done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration ” ) who was later the subject of a scathing “ 60 Minutes ” expose—but let ’ s skip the others and get to my favorite .
Last year , Kristof interviewed an expert on Christianity as a special Easter treat for his readers .
In the interview , Serene Jones [ Email her | Tweet her ] president of Union Theological Seminary , confirmed to Kristof that : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to die for our sins .
I could end my column with that , but let ’ s continue .
Jones sneeringly described the idea of “ an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people ” as—I quote— “ nuts.
” • God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient .
“ That is a fabrication of Roman juridical theory and Greek mythology , ” Jones exposited .
• Also , prayer doesn ’ t work and there ’ s no afterlife .
( Speaking as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human kindness , I sincerely hope they both believe that . )
This guy doesn ’ t even have a passing familiarity with the most fundamental elements of Christianity .
But you can totally trust his reports from the bucolic streets of Portland .
Ann Coulter is the author of THIRTEEN New York Times bestsellers—collect them here .
Her book , ¡Adios America !
The Left ’ s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hell Hole , was released on June 1 , 2015 .
Her latest book , Resistance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Left Lost Its Collective Mind , was released on August 21 , 2018 .

The entire mainstream media (plus Fox News!) have been assuring us that Portland was a tranquil town, with the occasional peaceful protest … until President Trump’s storm troopers showed up and turned it into a war zone.
This portrayal contrasts markedly with videos that have been posted on Twitter every night for more than two months now, especially by @MrAndyNgo, showing helmeted psychotics hurling Molotov cocktails at the police, among other acts of mindless destruction.
Whom to believe? Videos of the riots? Or smug journalists telling us that they saw nothing untoward?
Luckily, there’s the Newspaper of Record to give us the truth. Unluckily, the New York Times sent … Nicholas Kristof, aka the most easily fooled journalist in America.
Kristof assured Times readers that the Portland crowds are “entirely peaceful,” until around 11 p.m., when “some protesters begin to shoot fireworks or set small trash fires.”
Small trash fires.
Also: the federal courthouse, the Justice Center offices, statues, the Portland police union hall, and a decapitated pig’s head, among other arsons.
But Kristof [Email him] also dismissively remarked: “No, they’re not trying to burn down the federal courthouse.” Do not trust the dozens of videos showing protesters trying to burn down the federal courthouse.
He further reports that—just as MSNBC has said!—“the most violent behavior overwhelmingly comes from the federal agents.”
So there you have it. You can believe the man who said, “Mao’s legacy is not all bad,” or you can believe your lying eyes.
Even without the vast collection of videos documenting the violent riots in Portland, Kristof has a long record of being conned by obvious frauds. Let’s review a few of his greatest hits.
In 2009, Kristof wrote a tear-jerker column titled, “Are We Going to Let John Die?” John was Oregon’s John Brodniak, who allegedly couldn’t get treatment for his cavernous hemangioma because he didn’t have health insurance:
“With John unable to work, he lost his job—and his insurance coverage … One hospital has told [John and his wife] not to come back unless he gets insurance, they say.”
(“They say” is widely recognized as evidence in the scientific literature.)
“Neighbors have helped, and a community program has paid the rent so that they are not homeless. But bills are piling up, and John and [his wife] Esther don’t know how they will cope.”
Moral of the story: Pass Obamacare now, you fools!
Then Michelle Malkin made a few phone calls and found out that John was enrolled in Medicaid and was being treated by top neurologists at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. He’d been a patient there for weeks, including when Kristof wrote his column. Brodniak himself “reluctantly” admitted the truth to Malkin.
Kristof also wrote several columns and blog posts gushing about Somaly Mam , the Cambodian woman allegedly sold into prostitution as a little girl, who went on to launch an international anti-trafficking organization frequently touted in Kristof’s columns.
Hailing Somaly’s resilience, he once cited this incident as a heartbreaking relic of the trauma she’d suffered:
“To get to the stage, we took a freight elevator, and it was vaguely like a dark cage. That terrified Somaly, because it reminded her of the cages in which she had been punished and tortured when she was in the brothel.”
Then Newsweek investigated and it turned out Somaly—Kristof’s “friend and hero” — was a total fraud. Her childhood friends told the magazine that she’d grown up with her parents in their small village, gone to local schools, and had been “a happy, pretty girl with pigtails,” well liked and well known.
Still, wasn’t she doing good work with her charity? In one column, for example, Kristof featured Long Pross, one of the girls Somaly had rescued from a life of violence and prostitution:
“Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced. “[She] gouged out Pross’s right eye with a piece of metal. At that point in telling her story, Pross broke down and we had to suspend the interview. “Pross’s eye grew infected and monstrous, spraying blood and pus on customers, she later recounted. The owner discarded her …”
It turned out Pross had never been a prostitute and she lost her eye during surgery on a nonmalignant tumor, which Newsweek ascertained using the little-known journalistic technique of … talking to people who knew her and obtaining her medical records.
There are more examples, such as the adventurer-turned-school builder promoted by Kristof (“[He’s] done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration”) who was later the subject of a scathing 60 Minutes expose—but let’s skip the others and get to my favorite.
Last year, Kristof interviewed an expert on Christianity as a special Easter treat for his readers. In the interview, Serene Jones [Email her | Tweet her], president of Union Theological Seminary, confirmed to Kristof that:
God did not send his son to die for our sins.
I could end my column with that, but let’s continue. Jones sneeringly described the idea of “an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people” as—I quote—“nuts.”
God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. “That is a fabrication of Roman juridical theory and Greek mythology,” Jones exposited.
Also, prayer doesn’t work and there’s no afterlife. (Speaking as a Christian practically drowning in the milk of human kindness, I sincerely hope they both believe that.)
This guy doesn’t even have a passing familiarity with the most fundamental elements of Christianity. But you can totally trust his reports from the bucolic streets of Portland.
COPYRIGHT 2020 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
Ann Coulter is the author of THIRTEEN New York Times bestsellers—collect them here.
Her book, ¡Adios America! The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hell Hole, was released on June 1, 2015.
Her latest book, Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind, was released on August 21, 2018.