More On Moron Google

This Google memo debacle has been nothing short of amazing to watch. A smart, soft-spoken politically moderate engineer wrote an internal memo describing how Google was not taking the best approach towards the shared goal of building a working environment that is diverse, inclusive, and, more specifically, female friendly. For that, his memo was blasted by the media as right-wing sexist bigotry, the media engaged in the most egregious lie-telling, and his employer publicly denounced him as dangerous and summarily fired him without even the pretense of due process.

How do you know your society is dominated by a cult of lies? When soft-spoken, private truths are amplified into national fits of outrage. Let's look at some examples of the sheer mendacity at play here.

Gizmodo first broke the story, where they set the tone by dubbing the memo as an Anti-Diversity Screed. Despite the fraudulent title, the article actually gives the memo a reasonably fair shake.

In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” he writes, going on to argue that Google’s educational programs for young women may be misguided.

Of course, they seem to have missed the very first sentence of the memo as they posted it:

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes.

Googler: I value diversity.
Gizmodo: That's anti-diversity!!!

The Guardian chimed in with their piece, Fired Google memo writer gives first big interviews to rightwing YouTubers. I'll concede that Molyneux could be called right-wing these days, but Peterson? What is the basis for that?

Damore – who argued in his memo that “biological” differences between men and women contribute to the gender gap in the tech industry – gave lengthy video interviews to Stefan Molyneux and Jordan B Peterson, who both have large followings on YouTube and have espoused anti-feminist views.

Oh, there it is. If you aren't a 3rd wave feminist you're right-wing. Look at the quote they use to qualify the memo. "biological." That's it. One word. It's just about the longest quote I've actually seen from the memo. They don't dare quote an entire statement. Because it would come off as too rational. So they just describe it however they want, using a single word quoted from the memo to make it appear to be properly sourced.

One former Harvard student, who was in the systems biology program at the same time as Damore, told the Guardian that it was not surprising to find out he was the author of the controversial manifesto, which was widely criticized for relying on shoddy science.

“His comments do not reflect the ability to read literature critically that a typical Harvard student develops over the course of actually completing a PhD,” the former classmate said.

Damore’s views, the source said, made him an outlier in the department, which values diversity.

“It’s pretty unusual someone would have those opinions and be stupid enough to voice them,” the former classmate said. “Part of me worries that he got into some dark corner of the internet.”

Again, Damore literally states in the first three words that he values diversity. This couldn't be a more blatantly false critique if it tried. It's like reviewing The Cat in the Hat and stating, "I'd prefer a book about a cat in a hat." We also have the insinuation that he relied on shoddy science. His external references were previously compiled on this blog here. Sources include, but are not limited to:

The Atlantic
Wikipedia
The New Yorker
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
The Wall Street Journal
The New Yorker
Scientific American
Psychology Today
Boston Review
Perspectives on Psychological Science
Association for Psychological Science

When the same lefties condemning Damore's referenced science start criticizing the (mostly liberal) sources he referenced, then we can at least give them credit for consistency and move on with the debate. But until they do so, the situation is apparent. Science is the holiest sacred word unless quoted by a conservative (or someone merely defending conservatives), in which case it becomes "shoddy." We can't have a debate with people expressing blatant intellectual dishonesty. Also note that the classmate doesn't say it's stupid to have those facts opinions, but that it's stupid to voice them. Everyone knows that the liberal orthodoxy is a cult that seeks to punish dissent.

Google's Vice President of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance (i.e. Social Justice) was also compelled to virtue signal show leadership. From Fortune:

Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I'm not going to link to it here as it's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.

Can you take a moment to appreciate how fucking insane this is? "I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender." Okay but, which one? Which of the 22 linked sources is faulty? Do journals or media outlets need to issue retractions? Do the institutions of the researchers need to take action? What is actually the thing that is wrong here, and what further action is required, oh head of governance?

"I'm not going to link to it here as it's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages." Holy child's argument. If you don't know why I'm mad I'm not going to tell you. Like The Guardian, she doesn't dare reference arguments made from the article, because there is no way to quote it to make it look unreasonable. It's so offensive I must shield you from its horrible power, is merely the excuse to avoid anything that smells like truth or logic. This is the Vice President of Integrity. Anyone know how to short Google stock in the long run?

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

Oh boy, I bet Googlers are lining up to share their differing views and political opinions. Why don't you feel safe sharing? Just because we publicly degraded and fired that other guy? Note the cop-out, that views must comply with the Code of Conduct. But she's not even attempted to explain how it violated the Code of Conduct; hasn't recited a single sentence or a single fact cited in the memo. They decided they don't like it overall, thus it violates the Code. You're free to share alternate views that don't violate the Code of Conduct. Also, all alternate view violate the Code of Conduct.

To be fair, the CEO did make an attempt at this in his initial response.

Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”

The source of those facts is here, done by American, Estonian, and Austrian researchers and published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Is this study faulty? Should it be retracted? Should researchers be forbidden from determining gender correlation with psychological measurements? Is referencing those studies to make your company more hospitable to all genders really a violation of the Code of Conduct, and, if so, doesn't that seem a bit self-defeating?

The Google CEO made another statement:

First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.

Much of the memo is fair to debate? I agree. But, like the VP of Social Justice, he insists that portions of the memo violate the Code of Conduct by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes." Which. Fucking. Portions? Which statements or cited facts were the offensive ones then? Which research institutions are producing these fraudulent hate facts, and which publications are promoting them? He mentioned some before, then decided not to. I wonder why.

Just like fish swimming in water, these people so accustomed to navigating a web of lies and deceit that they don't even realize it anymore. These are Fake People. Someone's blog, maybe it was Brett Stevens, put forth the notion that democracies inherently lead to this kind of mass delusion. In a democracy, the only way to be important is to be popular, and the only way to be popular is to tell people the little lies they want to hear. At some point we become so accustomed to the sound of lies, and so immune to the resulting cognitive dissonance, that truth starts to sound strange. People don't understand it and are upset by the truth. And, as Mr. Damore's old college contemporary rightfully states, you'd be stupid to voice it.

Mr Damore is not really conservative. He shares the values the left cherishes. Diversity, inclusion, etc. If he was truly conservative he would not really hold those values to begin with. Instead, he attempted to use reasoning to help the left advance those goals more effectively, and they've done everything to destroy him for it. Being a liberal and a truth seeker are no longer compatible behaviors. Objective liberals and moderates have only two choices. They can abandon their desire for truth and recite falsehood to gain social status on the left. Or they can change their values and join us on the reactionary right. The irrational left is driving the schism, we are responding to it. The left may control the public narrative, for now, but they also push the best & brightest in our direction, and they put us on the side of objective truth. And doesn't the truth inevitably win out?

Google Hatefacts

Here is a collection of 22 hatefacts referenced by James Damore in his infamous Google memo. They mostly are references to scientific literature, or sources that reference the relevant literature, or are pieces out of the left's own media outlets.

These are the biological realities that Google CEO Sundar Pichai describes as "advancing dangerous stereotypes." As such, we demand that all investigators, authors, and publishers related to the following links be publicly identified, retract their works, and step down from the positions in which they serve. It's time for the scientific community and liberal media to stop advancing dangerous stereotypes.


Google Hatefact 1
Mainstream media outlets politically left of center
Link

Google Hatefact 2
Sex differences in psychology
Link

Google Hatefact 3
Women prone to empathizing over systemizing
Link
Link

Google Hatefact 4
Women score moderately higher than men in neuroticism (anxiety, stress)
Link

Google Hatefact 5
Greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits
Link

Google Hatefact 6
Men Suffer 93% of work-related deaths
Link

Google Hatefact 7
Competitiveness and self-reliance disadvantaged in education
Link

Google Hatefact 8
Women prefer a work-life balance
Link

Google Hatefact 9
Diversity programs can increase race and gender tensions
Link

Google Hatefact 10
The left is doing more than the right to set back scientific progress
Link

Google Hatefact 11
95% of the humanities and social sciences lean left
Link

Google Hatefact 12
Enormous confirmation bias in the social sciences
Link

Google Hatefact 13
Men paid more for a variety of reasons
Link

Google Hatefact 14
Political correctness constrains discourse
Link

Google Hatefact 15
Moralizing an issue halts cost/benefit analysis
Link

Google Hatefact 16
Conservatives alienated in field of psychology
Link

Google Hatefact 17
Conservative professors fake liberal political beliefs to avoid workplace hostility
Link

Google Hatefact 18
Conservatives score higher in conscientiousness
Link

Google Hatefact 19
Excess empathy causes us to overvalue anecdote and harbor biases
Link

Google Hatefact 20
Microaggression training equates words with violence
Link

Google Hatefact 21
Evidence does not support the premise of microaggressions
Link

Google Hatefact 22
Stereotypes more accurate and open to new information than training suggests
Link

Shots Fired in the War on Biology

I have been anticipating that the left would eventually begin attacking three academic fields: biology, evolutionary pysch, and anthropology. The first two are because they will reject any scientific results that imply a biological basis for gender, race, or sexual behaviors. The last one has recently been added as I've learned about the social brain hypothesis for the evolution of human intelligence, which makes the case that it was internecine competition, not ecological pressures, that drove the emergence of intellect. Liberals will seek to dismiss or silence any result that shines a positive light on human competition.

As expected, Google has fired the engineer who dared to distribute a memo questioning the effectiveness of the social-justice monoculture for "advancing gender stereotypes." The CEO signaled the firing with a memo sent out today, which includes the following snippet:

To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”

The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”

The war on biology is now underway. Biological results will not be tolerated in Gootopia. I hate to delve into credentialism, as the arguments made by the engineer should stand alone, but they are very juicy here. Not only did the memo include numerous references to scientific literature, but the author himself has a PhD from Harvard -- the favored lefty institution -- in Systems Biology!

To quote a commenter on Steve Sailor's post, Google Fires Honest Man Pour Encourager Les Autres:

They said that if DRUMPF got elected we’d have scientists silenced just for speaking out against the grain, and they were right!

The author of the memo was making the observation (a risky activity these days) that the differing outcomes between genders are more explained by different inclinations and capabilities of the genders as measured through scientific inquiry rather than some vast culture of institutionalized oppression. Common sense has long been under assault, and now the scientific world is as well. Liberals must by their very nature destroy anyone promoting uncomfortable objective truth, as they are in a constant struggle to reject it. We are at the point where the statement women tend to have vaginas could put one at risk of termination for advancing gender stereotypes.

The good thing is the truth must prevail, eventually, one way or another. (Although, how we get there can be the difference between simple honest debate or wholesale tyranny followed by inevitable social collapse.) It's hard to know if this engineer was very naive thinking he could influence liberals through logic and proper scientific rigor, or if he knew the score but was courageous enough to declare battle anyway. Probably more of the naivety, but we'll be hearing plenty of his side of things to be sure. The fact that Google fired him so swiftly only serves to underscore his case, and to give this thing huge exposure, huge-redpilling potential. They didn't even wait the measly 2-3 days for the news cycle to move one, let alone give the illusion of bureaucratic due process. He said dissent to the sjw monoculture was not to be tolerated (not his language), and they proved him correct. This only goes to show that Google is a fully converged institution. It is a political organization first, followed by its role in providing IT services to the public.

Google will fall. Slowly, but it's death sentence has been signed. Now would be a good time to think about business ventures that might compete with Google's products, as they are now severely handicapped to properly compete in a reality-based competitive market. Rational and observant (i.e. evil) white males will start looking for the exits, leaving only the rabid feminists who don't actually contribute to the code base. And it's not much to begin with. I've only had limited exposure, but I did once try using their open source Google Test library, written in C++, which I wanted to modify a bit for the output I needed from the test results. The code was not at all written in a modular way to allow for expansion. I tried to tease it apart to do so, but it was such a tangled web I had to abandon the task. In short, the code was very poorly designed, if you could call it designed at all. The hype is real over there. [And would seem to confirm Damore's assertion that Google's culture is one of individual heroes (favors the boys) versus collaborative teamwork (favors the girls). Team code is more likely to be modular, because that's the only way to do parallel workloads in a project.]

If you are interested in the leftist war against scientific results and objective facts, I've started keeping a list at https://voat.co/v/hatefacts. If you're on voat I encourage you to contribute, if you like.

UPDATE: looks like Slate is going after evolutionary psychology too, as predicted. http://www.unz.com/isteve/it-cant-be-hate-speech-against-white-men-because-you-deserve-it/

Contradictions in the Ctrl Right?

A key difference between liberals and conservatives is we believe in a more traditional social arrangement based on natural hierarchies. The alt-right, being very conservative, tends to be more intense in its desire for a return to hierarchy, to the point of being anti-democratic and desiring a political structure based on aristocracy or even monarchy. Brett Stevens is one such advocate:

[P]eople choose what is more convenient for them, at the expense of civilization and nature, every time. This means that we need a force to intervene and force civilization at large to do what is right, because its impulse is to do otherwise unless such an intervention occurs.

Our major complaint with the left is that it ultimately boils down to a movement for centralized social and political control, under their terms. In fact, we dub them the "Ctrl Left" for just that reason. Just the other day this blog stated:

For every liberal opinion, there is advocacy for state control of other people's behavior.

That doesn't seem all that different from "force civilization to do what is right." Are we hypocrites for condemning their program of social control, while advocating our own? Let's first look at this through the lens of the Law of Canceling Hypocrisy, postulated on this blog, which states:

Hypocrisy is not a valid argument against hypocrisy. Perceived hypocrisy is immaterial if the accuser must engage in hypocrisy to make the case.

There are two ways we might attack the Ctrl Left. First would be the application of straightforward partisanship. Wars are ultimately fought this way. It's bad if the Nazis bomb England, but it's okay if we bomb Nazis. It's bad if the left tries to control society, because they will ruin it. It's good if the right tries to control society, because we will save it. Such an argument is fine, but it does put us on an even moral footing with the left. We'd prefer to have the superior position.

The second viewpoint is that we point out that the left is controlling to call them out on their own bullshit. The ideological core of the left is that there is an oppressor class (i.e. the controllers) and a victim class. The left purports to free people from control, yet in action everything is about government control of behavior. Thus, hypocrisy. But the right can't condemn the liberals for seeking to control society since that's what they do. The rule of canceling hypocrisy applies.

The difference may be that, as long as the right is open about their intentions, and they don't make the implication that a drive for social control is implicitly evil, then they are not committing hypocrisy, but merely stating a fact. If I'm a serial killer on death row, it would by hypocritical to declare the Hillary is wicked because she killed Seth Rich. But it would not be hypocrisy to merely state as fact that Hillary did indeed kill Seth Rich. If we are trying to "force civilization to do what is right", then we can't condemn the left for doing the same, but we can point out that social control is their intent no matter how nicely they dress it up, and that their version of control will destroy all the good things our society has built. In this case we take the superior moral position. They seek to control civilization just as we do, except we don't lie about.

The Case for Cruelty

I saw a great guitarist this weekend, Michael Chapdelaine, an accomplished classical guitarist who is most noted for his fantastic pop covers. It was a house party in a small living room, so there was a lot of interaction between performer and audience. The first thing I noticed about him, right when he walked into the room, was how calm he is. He seemed totally at ease and free of anxiety. It wasn't very surprising when later he mentioned he is a practicing Zen Buddhist. I don't know much about Buddhism, but this isn't the first time I've met someone who radiates inner peace and later found out they were a Buddhist. We can't be sure if Buddhism truly guides people to tranquility or if tranquil people are simply drawn to Buddhism (likely both are true to some degree), but there seems to be something to it.

Tranquil people are really worth their weight in gold. They're the types you want to surround yourself with, while keeping the dramatic people at arm's length. Anxiety is contagious. We see that all the time. One person emits anxiety and the uneases ripples through the group like a wave, with an uptick in fidgeting, foot tapping, and throat clearing. Tranquil people are anxiety neutralizers. They're like baking soda in the freezer, or an active carbon filter. When they're around, everyone else feels at ease. Ideally, every social gathering should have one of these types present. (Otherwise alcohol is the typical substitute.)

Whatever your thoughts are on religion or Buddhism, this man was spiritually enlightened. On this blog we're typically concerned with intellectual enlightenment. Human nature is a triad composed of mind, body, and spirit, which is approximated in Christianity with God the Father, the omnipotent; Jesus, the physical incarnation; and the Holy Spirit. Most people believe we need to live with each in equal proportion for proper balance. Christianity would seem to imply an ordering. God is foremost, followed by the son, and the Holy Spirit playing a more minor role. Given the spiritual wisdom of Jesus, the order of importance overall is really Mind > Spirit > Body. Intellectual enlightenment is the most important component of the three because intellect is the unique gift given to humans. All things have a physical embodiment, and many animals display emotion, but intellect is the sole domain of humans. To call intellect no more important than physical well-being or emotional concerns is to resist one's own humanity. Genesis makes the point very clear. Mankind did not emerge thanks to the Tree of Physical Health or the Tree of Spirituality, but the Tree of Knowledge.

At some point during the performance, the guitarist was talking about how his favorite arrangements were those that conveyed songs that had a component of anger too them. (He's quite fond of Somebody That I Used to Know.) He said he had learned to embrace the full range of human emotions, including anger, except that he just couldn't comprehend humans' ability or propensity to be cruel to each other. This seems to be a common condition for thoughtful or enlightened people. It is the great tragedy of humanity, that we could build so much and then destroy it through war. The key component of this is frustration. It seems so irrational. But there is an order to this. We can't escape the cruelty paradox, but with deeper wisdom we can at least soothe the frustration. Cruelty has played an important role for humans, and, surprising as it may sound, we would not be here without it.

The Social Brain Hypothesis is the leading theory from anthropology for the evolution of human intelligence, and argues that the primary selective pressure was internal, not ecological. Most people would likely assume we evolved from ecological pressures. For example, to survive under predation by lions, or harsh environmental conditions. Yet these kinds of pressures face nearly all organisms, and all have evolved much simpler solutions than the human brain, which is by far the most complex structure in the known universe, and which comes with costs. It has extreme energy requirements makes childbirth difficult and risky.

The social brain hypothesis posits that the primary evolutionary force on intelligence was other humans. There are two aspects to this. First, humans are tribal, and human tribes are complex. Those at the top acquire better reproduction opportunities, but getting to the top requires the cognitive ability to navigate the complex social situation. The second aspect is that smarter tribes are likely to displace duller tribes. The uncomfortable aspect of evolution that people prefer to ignore is that it requires death by competition. The prairie grasses that give Illinois its nickname prospered at the expense of the oak forests that preceded them in wetter times. The Megalodon was driven to extinction by sharks and killer whales. And nearly every tribe or nation on earth that occupies some location displaced other people that were there first. Certainly intelligence yields an advantage in tribal and national rivalries, and there is empirical evidence to support it. For instance, Indo-Europeans, who birthed the most successful nations in history, displaced the Neolithic farmers of Europe and modern genetic testing shows they are indeed more intelligent than those they displaced. The Indo-Europeans also had an advantage as they were the first to domesticate the horse, but we assume greater intelligence yields a greater rate of technological progress. The Neolithic farmers themselves dominated thanks to their invention of agriculture. We should suspect they were more intelligent than whoever they replaced.

At any rate, the theory provides a reason for cruelty. If more intelligent tribes did not displace and kill less intelligent tribes, human intelligence would not have improved much. Without improved intelligence we'd not have agriculture or writing or beautiful classical guitar compositions. In Genesis, the Tree of Knowledge was provided by God, but in reality the tree was paid for by many thousands of years of men killing each other for access to resources and women. This doesn't sound like a revelation the should ease the consciences of men pondering the great tragedy of human cruelty, but in fact it should. Knowing there is a cruelty paradox is a much better position than frustrated grappling with the question of why cruelty should exist at all. We can deal with paradoxes. Duality of nature seems to be the norm and, as mentioned here before, if you find yourself in some field of thought that embodies no duality, tradeoffs, or paradoxes, then either you don't understand the field adequately or there is an opportunity to make a breakthrough in that field.

Mr Chapdelaine is comfortable with the range of human emotions, including anger. That is because we understand that the dark emotions, while dangerous in abundance, can also be dangerous if absent. This seems to be a fundamental principle of psychology. We strive for a balance of emotions, not the removal of bad emotions and the forced imposition of good emotions. (Although in America a lot of people demand just that.) Look at anger. What is the role of anger? Too much anger is bad, and we see those results all the time. But anger plays an important role. It causes us to act in the face of great injustice or incompetence, and to defend what is good. Think of a man that never gets angry, even if his wife or children are at risk of harm. We would never say his lack of anger was a virtue. Everyone would despise such a man and call him a coward of the lowest order. Likewise, a tribe that didn't express anger would be quickly destroyed by a tribe that did. We know that there is a healthy expression of anger, and extremes in either direction are dangerous and immoral.

The same must be true for cruelty. The great accomplishments of humanity require an intelligent and stable society. If building such a society was easy, then it would be easy. But it's not easy. It requires sacrifice, work, a general sense of morality, and leadership willing to make difficult decisions and to engage in cruelty when necessary. A tribe that decides to forbid cruelty will degrade and be replaced by a tribe that embraces it. It's no surprise the western countries are being invaded by Muslims. It's the natural way of things, given the current co of the two civilizations.

The question isn't is cruelty permissible? but, rather, in this instance do the benefits of cruelty outweight the costs? Let's look at America as an example. No one can deny that whites were cruel to the Amerindians. We do debate on extent; for instance, the mainstream narrative tends to overstate the genocidal nature of Europeans while understating the primitive and barbaric nature of most of the Indian tribes; but ultimately the Amerindians were cruelly displaced by an invading tribe. The costs are immense. But what of the benefits? Would America, or the world, be a better place if Europeans had landed and said "Oh my, looks like some people are here already, better turn those boats around," instead of building a nation that has exported democratic ideals to the world, exported technology that has dramatically risen the standard of living of virtually every person on the planet, and created an era of Pax Americana, an unusual period of time where the primary causes of death are not violence and starvation? In most of the world these days you're more likely to die from too much food! That is truly incredible.

You could hardly say this in our society without being demonized, but I believe the wholesale displacement of the natives was worth the cruelty cost, just as the near eradication of Neolithic farmers by Indo-Europeans was, overall, beneficial to humanity, and just as we benefited by the Neolithic farmers displacing their predecessors, and so on. What if America had compromised, and instead blended with the natives? Well that was the outcome for all countries in the Americas besides the US & Canada. (After that Argentina is closest.) None of those countries has profoundly benefited the world. (Unless maybe we count bossa nova. 😃)

Like all emotions, the human propensity for cruelty plays a vital role. It fits into the Ying & Yang of human morality, just like everything else. The fact that people find so much cruelty to complain about in our society means that either (a) our society is indeed excessively cruel, or (b) those people have an unhealthy dismissal of cruelty as a natural aspect of building and maintaining an advanced society. I suggest our civilizational malady is of the second variety. The typical westerner recoils at the thought of any sort of cruelty. We are as unbalanced as the man who never rises to anger, not even in the face of grave injustices or harm to his family. If we don't learn to responsibly apply cruelty from an intellectual perspective, then we will be eventually forced to do so out of pragmatism. And if still we find ourselves unable to do so, we will simply be replaced. This is all perfectly natural.

Sabotage & the Deep State Cult

The war between Trump and the bureaucracy/media (i.e. the deep state) rages on. Today the Washington Post ran with full leaked transcripts from Trump's state conversations early in his tenure. This is internal sabotage on a scale never seen before. Sure the Republican Congress was obstructionist against Obama, but never did he have private state discussions leaked wholesale to the press. No, that idiot had to jabber into a hot microphone for his conversations with foreign dignitaries to be revealed to the public.

There are two forces working against Trump here: institutional inertia and questions of trust. The first is just what we expect. Trump is an outsider and a government reformist. He doesn't have an established political machine to draw from, and he faces resistance from a behemoth state that doesn't want to be reformed. If the system was easy to reform, it wouldn't need to be reformed.

But the even more profound problem here is a matter of trust. How can he know who to trust?  This is an area where we are completely outmatched by the left. Why? Because the left is a cult. Recalling from Religions, Cults, and the Alt-Right, which gave one definition of a religion is an organization where members profess logically improbable beliefs to gain acceptance. A cult demands purity. It is a religion characterized by a virtue spiral, wherein the more improbable one's beliefs, the more social status one acquires within the organization. Look at today's other big headline: Man gives birth to baby boy. These people are clearly trying to outdo each other.

A religion may be a type of a more general organization where people engage in self-harm to signal loyalty. Call it a trust signaling network. Think of the monks of old engaged in self-flagellation, or Jesus fasting in the desert. Stating logically improbable beliefs is a form of self-harm: it opens one up to ridicule from outsiders. Engaging in socially taboo behaviors is a form of self-harm because it puts one at risk of ostracization or punishment from the larger society. Which brings us to the deep state elites. How do they signal loyalty to the in-group? At the higher levels, by participating in occult rituals and pedophilia. If you've seen Bob worshipping Moloch at Bohemian Grove, spirit cooking with Marina Abramovic, and diddling children at Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Island, you can be pretty sure he isn't a traitor to your cause. Here we see the value of a cult. There are many downsides (e.g., it can be destroyed by its own virtual spiral), but the major benefit is that it serves as a trust network. The cult trickles down through the entirety of the organization. For instance, if you're a liberal Democrat president, you can be fairly sure that, if an intern says that a woman with a hormonally induced beard is a man who can give birth, they aren't going to leak your private conversations to the Washington Post.

They have the advantage that their most dangerous signaling is done in secret. Trump doesn't know if Bob has secretly proven his loyalty to the liberal elites through salacious behavior. It is possible to infiltrate their organizations, as shown by Project Veritas, but getting to the higher levels would take years or even decades, which would require a large and persistent political machine to accomplish. The right doesn't have the benefit of secrecy because the left uses the largest and most persistent political machine there is  -- the state -- to infiltrate right-wing trust circles. 25% of the Oregon standoff militia were informants. I think of the joke that there are no Ku Klux Klan members anymore, just FBI agents who don't know the others are also under cover.

As it turns out, the alt-right doesn't need to build shadowy institutions to determine its trust circles. We can just let the left do the job for us. Look at what's happening with the leaks. A lot of people think McMaster is leaking. Many others think it's Priebus. Both men were plucked from the established political machine. No one thinks Bannon is the leaker because we know the press hates Bannon. There is a simple heuristic here: if the media hates someone and Politifact gives them "Pants on Fire" ratings, they can be trusted. If the media rushes to defend someone, they're traitors. Look at McCain.

If Trump wants to hold off the deep state sabotage he needs to start ejecting everyone the media does not despise. In fact, being despised by the media should be the number one job qualification. Scaramucci went overboard and torched his audition as communications director, but he also displayed his allegiance by enraging the political establishment. Trump should find some role for him.

Only the alt-right can survive against the liberal establishment because only the alt-right is a trust signaling network. The moderates & Rinos sell out or they get shredded. They are constantly at the mercy of leftist sabotage and negative media coverage. The media can't destroy the alt-right. In fact, being attacked by the media raises one status within the ranks. It's going to be alt-right nationalism versus communism. Pick your side.

Body Modification Oppression

The latest most trendy oppression group are people who mutilate their own bodies for attention. No, not trannies, but people who tattoo, pierce, and otherwise modify the physical appearance of their bodies. The call to acceptance is now, like most political action, summarized in a facebook video, here. A number of liberal ethos are on display here, most significantly, you can't judge me no matter how I behave. Let's look at some of the others.

This is an example of the liberal ethos of words mean whatever I want them to mean. There is a meaning to the word professional, and it certainly does include maintaining the proper appearance for the job. The word is a bit subjective, in that what is deemed to be professional depends on the actual profession being practiced. The word has meaning, but it's flexible depending on circumstances. The video here disregards all logic & nuance and boils the whole thing down to a simplistic good/bad dichotomy. Unprofessional sounds like a bad word. Engage liberal powers of logic & argument: I'm not [the bad word], you are!!

Another major liberal ethos, perhaps the premier liberal ethos, is using the government to control other people. It's not enough to state that you should tolerate body modifications, or that you are a sinful oppressor if you don't, but they want the government to demand that you hire people you wish not to. For every liberal opinion, there is advocacy for state control of other people's behavior.

Here we see the liberal demand to have everything both ways. Do you think this guy got his large neck tattoo in spite of stigma against them? No, he got it because of the stigma. He got it to be edgy, because he wants attention, wants a tough image, wants to attract chicks, and wants to signal that he isn't a square. Guess what...businesses love hiring squares, and they avoid edgy tough guys who might have an attitude problem. These people want all the upsides of their social signaling but none of the downside.

How dare people use their human intuition and pattern recognition abilities! I suppose Mr Pink Mowhawk isn't aware of recent science showing a correlation between cognitive ability and stereotyping. People need to stop being smart & stereotyping, I guess. Speaking of being smart...

This is an appalling statistic. That means nearly 3 out of 4 Americans are unaware of the empirical evidence indicating a negative correlation between tattoos and IQ. This would highlight a couple final insights into the liberal worldview. First, facts don't matter. Only feelings matter. Second, statistics are evil because they might imply something inaccurate somewhere about some individual.

The thing about liberals is their solutions only make the problem they're trying to solve worse. Tattoos are fairly well accepted in society these days. The worst thing that could happen, if lowering stigma against body modifications is the goal, is to have them become associated with leftist politics. You can be sure that I won't hire a tattooed or pierced person if the first thing my mind associates them with is social justice warrior.

CORRECTION: the last link appears to be satire. Looking deeper I can find only one minor study (sample size 104) which showed no correlation between IQ and ink.