I Want a New Left

Idiots of the EU

See here. This is an article about the EU president Jean-Claude Juncker, and how much he likes the idea of immigration. He asks:

First of all: must we protect ourselves against the unfortunate? Must we protect ourselves against those who flee war, torture, rape, and a lack of perspectives* for their children?

Logic and reason are completely powerless against such cluelessness. Has he never heard of Rotherham? How about what happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve a few years ago? How about cars being torched near Paris?

Actually, this business reminds me of the rationalist-empiricist split in Western philosophy. Those who want immigration are the rationalists, who believe we can discern the character of foreigners by pure reason, while the rest of us are empiricists, who insist that actual facts about them matter and must be taken into account when we consider whether or not to let them in.

* This passage was translated from French by the author of the article, and a better translation of “perspectives” would be “prospects.”

Anglo-Saxon Studies and Racism

There is a big kerfuffle going on in the area of Anglo-Saxon studies. Before getting into that I want to tell about an incident that happened a few years ago. This involves three women – I know all three of them – who are academics in the same field. One edits a journal, another submitted an article to that journal, and the editor sent it to the third woman for “blind” refereeing (that is, the referee did not know the name of the author of the article). That woman trashed the article and said it should not be published. Now, the thing is that all three of these women are friends. Why did the third woman act so viciously? Her action left the editor in a difficult situation. She apologized to the author and asked if she wanted it sent to a different referee, but that woman said she would try a different journal. (It eventually got published elsewhere, ironically in a journal that had more prestige.) As for the referee, I’d like to think that had she known she was trashing the article of a friend, she would have behaved better. Then again, who knows?

Anyway, this is the vicious nature of academia.

Now on to Anglo-Saxon studies. See here. A woman of color is complaining about Anglo-Saxon studies because she claims (1) it is racist, and (2) white supremacists are using the name “Anglo-Saxon” as part of their white supremacist campaign, so therefore the name should be changed. The woman, Mary Rambaran-Olm, claims to have experienced years of discrimination in her field. Now according to her website (here), she got her Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow, and someone has figured out that she got her B.A. at the University of Calgary. In other words, she went to non-elite places. She has some things published, but she is an independent scholar, meaning she has no job. I suspect, then, that the “racism” she experienced was nothing more than the academic viciousness mentioned earlier. (And for that she deserves our sympathy.) It is possible that that viciousness had to do with the fact that she went to non-elite schools and is a nobody (in the sense that she currently has no job). There are plenty of elitists in academia who will cut you to shreds if they know you’re a nobody, and there are others who claim to have “standards,” though it seems to me that the standards they have are double standards (ones that they would hate if they were applied to them). Of course, being a woman of color, Rambaran-Olm can complain and get heard simply by complaining about racism, whereas white males like myself complain and get nowhere.

Incidentally, this same elitist nonsense works against climate skeptics, too. Mark Steyn against Michael Mann is tilted in favor of the one (Mann) who has an academic post and against the one (Steyn) who has none. Except that Mann blew it by not presenting his evidence in court when he could have.

If only Steyn were a person of color, the elites would have torn their hair out trying to deal with him.

To get back to the Anglo-Saxon studies people, I think it is perfectly absurd for them to change the name of their outfit just because some white supremacists like the name “Anglo-Saxon.” Suck it up, people. Why should their liking something prevent you from liking the same thing?

Small Towns and Leftists

It’s ironic that leftists hate small towns, but nevertheless want to turn the entire world into a small town. They hate small towns because they never fit into them and found themselves ostracized. Now, with their cancel culture, they want to ostracize everyone who doesn’t agree with them.

Help for Africa

Two Africans tell other Africans why Africa is poor: here and here. Too many regulations, too much blaming of others, too much ignorance about money, etc.

Some Sense from a Liberal

Here. It’s an interview with Margaret Atwood, who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, and the interviewer asks her if she thinks Trump’s America is like that society. Atwood emphatically says no, and dismisses her fears by telling her to “suck it up.”

More on Women’s Sports and Western Civilization Generally

As I pointed out in the last post, it is entirely possible that women’s sports will be dead soon as the trannies take over and overwhelm actual girls and women with their superior skills. (I have to say that if I were a tranny, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing such a disgraceful thing, but then I’m not a tranny.) There seems to be no societal force that can stop this from happening. Perhaps the most important point to note is that Trump will absolutely not be to blame for such an eventuality. It is not him, but leftists themselves doing this to girls and women. Yet, liberals and leftists are paying no attention, and instead are attacking Trump with all the forces they can muster.

This is true generally for our society. As Western civilization engages in civilizational suicide, liberals and leftists are in denial and instead focus on phantoms like climate change (which was discredited with the ClimateGate scandal a decade ago). In California, there have been outbreaks of typhus, and San Francisco sounds like a terrible place to have to live or work what with syringes lying around and feces of the homeless everywhere, but California is focused on banning straws. Sweden has transformed itself from a relatively pleasant society into one increasing bedeviled by criminals, yet a sixteen-year-old girl from there has the audacity to come over here and lecture us on climate change. I’m sure that if one asked her about Sweden’s problems, she would deny that those are real. Finally, the emphasis on diversity will eventually destroy medicine here in the West, as diversity will be prized more than competence at medicine. I’m glad I won’t be around to have to experience it.

I started off by talking about women’s sports because it is so obvious that there is a big problem here, one that even some feminists recognize. And yet, I’m pretty sure that pointing out this problem to liberals and leftists, and telling them that there are plenty of other symptoms of Western decline, wouldn’t change their behavior in the slightest.

Goodbye to Women’s Sports

This post from Instapundit basically announces the end of women’s sports. It gives the tweet of one Grazie P. Christie, who writes, “I’m surprised that women who care about sports are taking this lying down.” The “this” in question is, of course, trannies competing as women. And here is an important quote from the comments:

Because people are scared to say anything. My daughter played against an obvious biological male in a soccer tournament. He was all over the field and physically dominated my daughter and all of her teammates. I was pissed. Guess who all the parents were upset at? You got it. Me, for bringing it up and complaining about it. The PC crowd has everyone in fear of being called a bigot. No one should be surprised that liberal women are doing nothing to stop it. These are the same women that will tell you women have it better under Islamic rule than they do here in America.

Women’s sports are over. Sorry, Megan Rapinoe, but we heard what might just as well have been your swan song this past summer. The crowds have never been there, except for special occasions and in certain venues. And now with trannies messing things up, and with no pushback from the feminists or anyone else, why should we think it will survive? Why should I, as a soccer fan, pay any more attention to women's soccer?

By the way, didn’t Rodney Dangerfield have a movie years ago about a girls’ soccer team with a boy on it?

Sorry, Readers, I've Got a New Schedule; and Michael Burry’s Strange Buy

Sorry, readers, but I’ve gotten too busy with my “job,” which is speculating in the stock market. I’m going to go to a weekends-only schedule.

And speaking of speculating in the stock market, Michael Burry has a strange pick to survive what he thinks is an upcoming crash: Tailored Brands (TLRD). (See here for his views about the crash.) Burry, by the way, is one of the people highlighted in Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, who figured out ahead of time that there would be a big problem with bad mortgages in 2007, many of which had been bundled together into AAA-rated bonds. He is now saying that all the money being diverted into index funds will cause a vicious spiral downwards once there are enough people trying to get out of them, since so many of the stocks that are part of these funds are companies with comparatively low liquidity. So, there will be many people trying to sell, but few trying to buy. Thus, getting out of them will be like getting out of a crowded theater with only one door.

Whether one buys into this argument or not, Burry has chosen a selection of stocks that includes Tailored Brands. See here. And as the narrator of that link points out, it has declined a lot in the last few years. So, why buy it? I foolishly bought some a few months ago, and sold it at a loss. It has gone down since then, except for a recent blip, and that blip no doubt was due to the news that Burry had bought it. It then went back to going down, and there is no good reason to think it will go up very much. As one analyst – I can’t remember who – pointed out, selling men’s suits is an industry in decline since fewer men wear suits to work. (I just got back from a classical orchestra concert in which not one man was wearing one.) So, even if they manage to get turned around, I can’t see that they will gain a lot.

I’m an “Anywhere” Siding with the “Somewheres”

See here. “Somewheres” are people who are localists and nationalists and who would be uncomfortable living anywhere but where they are right now, whereas “anywheres” are citizens of the world who could live anywhere and who support globalist policies. This distinction has been made by Christopher DeMuth (see the link at the link), and Daniel Pipes observes in this letter to the editor of the Claremont Review of Books that he himself, DeMuth, and the editor are all “anywheres” siding with “somewheres.” It’s true for me, too.

Yes, I’m an anywhere (despite what anyone reading my blog may have concluded). I have a Ph.D., I’ve lived in a bunch of places, some of them foreign (unlike my high-school classmates, most of whom live close to where we all grew up), I follow foreign news more closely than local news, I follow foreign sports leagues more closely than any of ours, I make a point of seeking out foreigners at social gatherings, and I like international travel and I try to learn a little of the local language before I go.

But just because I’m a citizen of the world doesn’t mean I’m an idiot about the world. I know perfectly well that there is still slavery in the world, that women are treated much worse throughout much of the Muslim world than they are here, that homosexuality is a crime in many countries, that atheists get murdered in some countries, and that racism in some form or another exists everywhere (I experienced it myself in the Far East). All of this shows that America is actually rather a nice place, as is true of the West generally. It also shows that there are some nasty people out there who just should not be allowed in. Even during the best of times when we pressured immigrants to assimilate, these nasties would have had a hard time fitting in, and during our current weak-willed era there is no hope they will do so, although there is the fear that we will forced to assimilate to them. (And if we do, it’s goodbye to feminism, gay liberation, and secularism.)

Anyway, if you don’t accept my views on Muslims, then the fact that the Chinese are throwing Muslims into “re-education” camps shows that they are the nasty ones. You can’t both be saying that Muslims are wonderful and that the Chinese are wonderful; one or the other has to count as nasty, and maybe both do.

Knowledge of the world makes me side with the “somewheres,” whereas the “anywheres” seem to be characterized as Mark Steyn characterized them some years ago, as people who don’t know a lot about the world, but who have kind feelings about it. That’s not good enough.

A Union ... Where?

This report from the Powerline Blog brings the hilarious news that a leftist online magazine, Think Progress, had unionized. Why would you need a union in a leftist-run outfit? If it is run by leftists, then it should already be run along socialist lines, so a union wouldn’t be needed. Or if not along socialist lines, at least along lines that would respect the workers' rights. But apparently not.

This is similar to what I’ve been saying about the treatment of adjuncts in academia. If leftist-run outfits or institutions cannot treat people right, right from the start, then why trust them to do anything? We might as well stick with capitalism and capitalists. Any leftist-run outfit should be the ideal place to work, with egalitarianism infused throughout, yet academia is filled with hierarchies which leftists are in no hurry to eliminate.

Never trust socialists.