Back in the 70’s I read a book/essay by Tom Wolfe called Radical Chic (paired with another essay May-Mauing the Flak Catchers). It was precisely about the fawning Left adopting their favorite black radicals. It nearly lost Wolfe his vaunted place in literature for exposing the ruse. Like 1984 and Animal Farm, there are certain books that are so eye opening politically that they retain a certain space in one’s mind, a referent for digesting current events. So when DEI arrived it was clear it was a replay of Leonard Bernstein inviting the Black Panthers to one of his dinner parties on the Upper East Side. Glad to see this permutation of White Elitist guilt is riding off into the sunset.
It will continue until western European cultures get a grip on guilt. For an exercise, contrast the idea of guilt, and how it is assigned, among US/European upper-middle class with Chinese of the corresponding strata.
Me, I cannot even see the beginnings of correction.
Yes. I’m sure it will emerge again with a new dress, blonde wig, and red lipstick. But hopefully it will be immediately recognized and sent to its bedroom without dinner. 🤣
I would recommend reading Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers again. I read it a couple years ago and it seemed as fresh and insightful as it surely was in the 1970s.
Add Bonfire Of The Vanities, in spite of the cinematic effort. I have a friend who is a 3rd generation sushi chef. His knives are sharp and he makes the thinnest slices, but no one was better than Mr Wolfe.
Have read these. Couldn't get through Bonfire but maybe I need to try it again, I normally enjoy Tom Wolfe, his best for me was 'Man in Full,' But, I digress. These types of things are always lurking in the background of society. People, particularly elites, like to consider themselves 'smarter' than us.
I suggest also reading the first 40 pages (or so) of the book "Liberal Racism" 1997 by Jim Sleeper, a high-school classmate of mine. It was bold & brave at that time.
Race baiters are a subterfuge to undermine culture and in fuse Marxism. Marxism couldn’t be successful in the USA by exploiting economic extremes. They chose to fan the flames of racial bias and exploit hatred.
I disagree. Wolfe was very careful not to advance or betray any political agenda, at least not in those works of his that I have read. His approach was to mock aspects of American culture by reporting on them accurately, as a sort of fly-on-the-wall, allowing his subjects to prove themselves worthy of either contempt or admiration by reporting on their statements and behavior. Tone was everything for Wolfe. He deployed a unique sort of sarcasm.
I tried to read his "novels," the ones that sort of modeled themselves on "In Cold Blood," but I prefer his essays. That reminds me, Wolfe pilloried Capote's novel as an example of "pornoviolence" in an essay by the same title. To paraphrase, Capote teased readers to read the whole story by not revealing the grisly details of the Clutter family's murder until the end of the book. Wolfe's entire project with "the new journalism" was to apply the techniques of fiction to nonfiction stories, so including "In Cold Blood" as a target might have been a deliberate dig at a rival. I've always thought "In Cold Blood" is a great book despite the fact that Capote abandoned his great talent to become a social gadfly, a high-profile schmoozer, a regular on talk shows, and a bitch who called Kerouac's work "typewriting." I never forgave him for that.
Rich white people cannot accept how they have ravaged the working class in this country. The wealthiest shipped factories off to China, and left their American workers laid off and left to rot. White privilege is another trendy way for the exploitative class to pretend that they are not monsters. It is cheaper to give Kendi $50m than to increase the long-term capital gains tax to a fair rate that would balance the federal budget. Besides, it is far easier to control their diversity puppets than to say, negotiate with organized labor. Globalization allowed them to ignore basic decency. They could pay themselves whatever they wanted without a care in the world about the sweatshops where their products are made.
We broke our society in the late 1960's (I always say after 1965, the last year of necessary legislation). It will take generations to put it back together again, if we ever can.
This is a typical liberal class-based argument which is fundamentally ignorant of economics and society. Rich people mostly get rich by creating things that are wildly popular and beneficial for the world and implementing their ideas with great skill. Rich people, especially the innovators that the Left loves to hate, have brought tremendous value to society by creating jobs and improving our lives through technology, transportation, communications, and on and on.
American workers get laid off for one reason only, that is they price themselves out of the market by demanding far-above-global-average wages, while simultaneously relentlessly demanding lower prices on the goods they buy. They are selfish at both ends of the spectrum and don't understand how the two demands are interrelated and incompatible. You can't have simultaneous high wages and low prices.
Anyone who wants to save American manufacturing jobs can commit to buy only American-made furniture and clothing, i.e. put your money where your mouth is. As long as you shop at Costco, Walmart, Ikea, and Harbor Freight, don't point fingers at manufacturers for moving production offshore and cutting loose overpaid American workers. There is not a single American large manufacturer who would not prefer to build goods for the American market right here at home. They outsource production in response to relentless market pressure for lower prices that cannot be met by the American workforce's wage levels. This is the bare naked truth that Liberals are unable to admit.
There is a secondary and long-term more important issue of lack of education in the American workforce that causes innovators to have to hire foreign talent to develop the technologies that Americans and the world are hungry for. If America cared more about education and pushed our children to learn useful skills in college, we would have a more capable workforce able to remain competitive on the world stage. As it is America is rapidly losing ground to China and soon to India as well. It won't be long before America loses its pole position due to a toxic combination of self-indulgence and incompetence.
I agree with you in the beginning. I have no problem with people getting rich. What I hate is when people bend the rules for their benefit against the country. I love investment banks, hedge funds, software firms, they all are great for America. What I cannot tolerate are clothing firms and manufacturers that closed American factories to produce in China, then cried when their intellectual property was stolen.
We NEVER should have allowed the PRC into the WTO. Free trade is fine among countries who have the same values (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico,...), but it does not work with a habitual criminal communist state, and the those who got fat at that trough are the worst scumbags who socialize their expenses and take outsized profits (Walmart would be the worst example, but I would add almost every clothing company, many manufacturers,...).
I believe in capitalism, but not crony mercantile garbage where Walmart closes down competition then pays their labor nothing so the taxpayer ends up feeding them and paying their health care. Walmart, the company that turned in Chinese workers to the police for being Christians. Walmart, the evil corp.
But instead of writing about this, foolish left magazines criticism investment banks who did nothing wrong because they were jealous of their wages. That was criminal.
As for children in college, "useful skills" are taught in trade school, not university. We have too many attending university. Each state should have one flagship, perhaps two for California, and they should be free. We do not need so many university students. Most graduates today are useless no matter what you teach them. They never should have wasted their time studying. The primary job of a university is to admit the right kind of students. Companies will train them after recruitment. Intelligent people can learn to do anything. Attending a university is not much more than finishing school. Precious few will actually need to use that Riemannian geometry or classical Greek, but attending a university that was difficult to get into lets recruiters know that university is worth recruiting from. Most American students need basic skills, not college. We need to focus on that and only reserve deserving students for university. We have wasted too much sending the masses off and expecting some kind of benefit. Also, there is no "competitiveness." Currency markets fix that. The problem today is local zoning. If we fixed housing (for example, if Trump set federal housing density rules to create cheap housing in growing markets), that would be wonderful. California needs density and cheap housing. The Federal government forcing that would allow poor people to migrate there. Magically predicting the skills of the future is a fool's game. We simply need good rules and good regulations and the market will fix itself. We have not done that since the 1960's. Everything started going wrong in the 1960's. We need to fix all of the bad policies put forward by delusional baby boomers.
Either way, the Federal government needs to cut costs and increase revenue. I say a good start would be to eliminate corporate taxation and increase capital gains, with the capital gains rate harmonized up to the short-term rate. There is no reason to have two rates. It follows the myth of "speculation." That is just another word for investment. Only economically illiterate people believe such nonsense.
Wow that's a lot of ideas in one comment! I agree with a lot of what you said, but here are a few counterarguments.
The idea of long term vs. short term capital gains tax is, like all tax policy, to encourage certain behaviors over others, in this case to encourage people to hold onto their investments for a longer period of time, which helps to maintain market stability. If you know you're going to pay an extra 20% of your gain by selling today instead of waiting 6 months, you're more likely to hold onto the stock instead. While many people think that the stock market is for idle rich people and speculators, the fact is that almost every public employee's pension, and therefore every city's budget, is dependent on the stock market. So we need to maintain its stability.
Sadly I'm beginning to agree more with the idea that college is not as important as it once seemed to be. But I think that's because people are majoring in the wrong subjects. We don't need so many graduates in history, language, and the social sciences. We need more graduates in hard science and technology to keep up with the world and the pace of innovation. It would probably be a good idea to, like tax policy, "encourage" limits on admissions to various majors by making federal tax incentives already given to colleges somewhat dependent on the distribution of graduates across various disciplines. This would steer universities toward more productive disciplines that are more beneficial for society.
Yes I think more trade schools is a great idea. Plumbers are too expensive! And we need more people in general construction.
Yes high density housing is needed. There's a lot of that going on here in Silicon Valley now, in fact I find it depressing and ugly how all these giant building are popping up one after the other, trying to eke out every possible square foot of living space and property tax revenue on each parcel. There's no life there, they just go to work, then go to Costco, then go home.
Housing availability and cost are directly tied to politics in the form of city planners who want to maximize property tax revenue coupled with excessive building regulations that make low cost housing impossible. In Tahoe for example, it's not economically viable to build low cost housing for the working class because of the $50K or more in fees demanded by a multitude of agencies. So only monster second homes are being built. Then the locals complain about too many vacant properties and blame the homeowners, who helped out the economy by paying for all the construction and now having a property with a 4x higher valuation and therefore 4x the annual property tax.
I don't know what you're referring to by blaming boomers. I'm a boomer, and I think I'm great! I never did anything wrong, I just make the world a better place by creating jobs and selling products that help other business make their own products.
Now I disagree with every statement you wrote. There is ZERO difference between someone holding an investment one time or another. that is the fallacy of "speculation." Any economist worth his salt can tell you that, unless he is a Marxist. They believe in that sort of thing. Also, less trading brings DOWN asset prices, not up. Your augment is bad logic there. This is why bans on short-selling make prices drop. Short seller hedges bottom out and increase asset values. Short sellers are GOOD because they put money into the market. If you do not know this, look it up. Any derivatives text book will have the example in it. Speculation is investment and vice versa. There is no argument on this outside of Marxist circles.
As for Tahoe, they could easily have studio apartments that cost $150k and have affordable rents. The problem is zoning. Why not have dense multi-family in "truckee" (I do not know how to spell) where housing costs are lower? Closer to the ocean, there is no reason one could not tear down single-family housing and build multifamily. Furthermore, take away misguided taxes called "affordable housing." Those taxes are literally the most economically illiterate idea ever. The way to reduce housing costs is to build more housing. For communities that insist on single family, simply charge them an annual tax for the privilege. For example, Tahoe could pay "Truckee" 30% of their property taxes to expand roads and infrastructure to accommodate the increased population.
But the key is just to keep building. That and take away senseless regulations that have made California, NYC, Boston and DC so expensive. I could get Manhattan affordable in ten years. Of course, I mean affordable studios and one bedrooms, not some idiotic idea like single family in Manhattan, or large condos, but that is not what the market needs. The market needs tiny, affordable homes--ideally entire high rises full of studios that are dirty cheap. You see this in Asia, and the markets there work. San Francisco could be fixed with a hundred mid-rise building full of studios and one bedrooms. Hell, just knocking down old, ugly houses and replacing them with mid-rises would help, but getting rid of requirements for affordable and large units would dramatically reduce and increase supply, especially if public land were used. NYC has so many parking lots around their public housing that could easily be full of 30-50 story cheap high rises that only have studio apartments. Those 20,000 units would have a massive impact alone. DO that across all five Burroughs and the city would start growing again.
The reason why I blame boomers is because they are the ones who: changed the zoning laws, enacted foolish uneconomic policies such as short-term capital gains rates, running up record national debt, especially the foolish COVID shut downs, foolishly opened up trade to Communist China. I am not saying every boomer is bad, but they have been the worst generation. I guess I would also add: the destruction of the family, the abandonment of religious culture, the sexualization of everything, and a senseless attack on traditions for no reason without any thought to the consequences.
There have been many good boomers, but they are the antithesis of their parents generation who worked so hard to build a better country. I think of Vietnam, where racists like Jane Fonda hung out with genocidal maniacs who literally openly called for genocide. Asian lives meant nothing to those who protested against Vietnam. They were all racist Nazis. There were honest people who wanted a better world, but they were mocked and excluded. They would rather live in a world where Black Tai, Cham, Hmong,..., were all murdered off the face of the earth, so long as they could play revolutionary. It was sickening. Jane Fonda should be in prison in Cambodia with Pol Pot's former minions. Instead she married a billionaire.
I can sympathize with good baby boomers, but it sickens me that the evil ones were able to take control of culture and ruin it. It will take generations to build what they burned down. I think a good start would be to ban single family housing, unless a community gives 30-50% of their property taxes to a neighbor that allows multifamily. that would be a good way to bring down housing prices and make the country look and feel better. There is something vulgar about urban single family housing. I am not willing to call for a ban, but it should be taxed mercilessly. Cities should be multifamily. Houses are for rural areas, or they should be ultra-luxuries. The idea of Silicon Valley towns not allowing apartments makes me sick. We need federal over-rides to save the states from themselves.
The only realistic alternative would be a total free market reform, starting with a full monetizing of the debt. We start over, endure a few years of inflation, then make new rules from scratch. I cannot imagine that happening. We will end up monetizing that debt, but over more time. I can assure you that millions of baby boomers will not prepare for it, then complain loudly about how inflation is bad, when stupid COVID lockdowns have required at least a decade of inflation more to reduce federal debt. They are the same morons who complained that the anomaly of having basic bank products pay positive real rates to savers should magically continue. This only existed from the 1950's to around 2000, but they thought that was some how an iron law.
I am curious about exactly what you are talking about here:
"They are the same morons who complained that the anomaly of having *basic bank products pay positive real rates to savers* should magically continue."
I am asking about the highlighted phrase. My guess is that you are referring to interest paid on passbook deposits being greater than the inflation rate.
Is this what you mean? If not, please give me a clear example.
Thanks in advance. I'm not looking to criticize your position, I am just not sure what it is, in this case.
" Rich people mostly get rich by creating things that are wildly popular and beneficial for the world and implementing their ideas with great skill."
That's a corny fairy tale. Actually, a great many people get rich or increase their fortunes on the basis of the lowest sort of corner-cutting. There are entire industries built out of scams, fraud, parasitism, regulatory capture, legislative capture, and lobbying exclusively for private gain at the expense of good government and the public interest.
Moreover, the basis for the largest fortunes is almost entirely about making money from money, not invention or productive innovation. An economic paradigm that emphasized talent and authentic material advances would provide at least half of the rewards to the inventors and teams responsible for an improved pharmaceutical drug, not to financial backers and venture capitalists. Taking viable businesses, busting them out, and selling them off for parts and declaring bankruptcy has been considered a brilliant profitmaking strategy ever since the 1980s. http://www.barlettandsteele.com/books/am_wwrcd_foreword
The kids notice all this, by the way. It has a lot to do with their cynicism about being rewarded for making useful products and providing responsive services. They've gotten very clear messages that it doesn't matter how much intelligence and creativity someone has; what matters is Celebrity Fame, surfing fad trends, and above all, Power. Is Spotify all about "creating things that are wildly popular and beneficial for the world and implementing their ideas with great skill"? Really? Is Facebook all that brilliant an "invention"? Sure it's a clever concept, but does it really make Mark Zuckerberg 2000 times the creative titan that Steve Wozniak is? How many sectors of the industry these days are tech oligarchies largely for the purpose of rent-seeking?Google doesn't owe its business growth to improving its search engine. the owners and investors have made Google a cash cow by making it worse. Ed Zitron calls it the Rot Economy https://www.wheresyoured.at/
anyone can cuss. As a herding behavior to discourage people from actually reading the books I mentioned, the simpleminded smear labels do work--up to a point.
Speaking of Books, here's one, by one of Richard Nixon's chief campaign strategists in 1968, when he was only 27-28 years old. The same guy whose first book was The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips. It's titled The Politics of Rich And Poor, from 1990. Free to read online. A neat Historical Perspective, packed with graphs and data. https://archive.org/details/politicsofrich00phil
< oh no, don't open that door--watch out for that door, it's too much Mind Expansion
Sticking a literary knife between one’s ribs and delicately rotating it was one of Mr Wolfe’s enduring qualities. Before meeting her, my wife worked for him. Although he might skewer one in literature, she assures me he was a very kind man. As for losing his place at the high society table, that was never an issue, no matter what one might have read.
I remember Bernstein’s dinner party and the photos in the NYT. I later read that the Panthers enjoyed the spectacle hugely, hitting on the rich white chicks and sneering their way through the spectacle. They were serious people with skin in the game. Their hosts were anything but.
I highly recommend the thought-provoking works "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them" by Jason Stanley and "How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them" by Barbara F. Walter. The United States is at a pivotal moment, with the possibility of considerable unrest arising from the challenges associated with American fascism, as outlined in the Project 2025 Mandate. A regression to Jim Crow is not a viable option. Blacks are not getting on their knees for you.
If this article proves anything, it proves your vicitimization ideology has already collapsed. My advice would be focus on Project 2026 and 2028, instead of Project 2025. Signed citizen of a republic ruled by one party 12 of the last 16 years.
I’m giving a friendly nudge to all law-abiding Black folks: how about we band together and equip ourselves like we're preparing for a superhero movie? And while we’re at it, let’s orchestrate a clever little boycott and give a big shout-out to our Black-owned businesses. After all, I managed to retire a several years back without relying on the usual suspects for my essentials—who needs that? As for Kendi, let’s just say his ideas have all the seriousness of a rubber chicken. I'm not a victim, but I'm woke (aware)!
Fabulous assessment. I posted a comment prior to reading yours positing had Huxley, Serling and Orwell collaborated on a film, the federal buildings would eliminate the need for a set.
Six years ago, I stumbled upon a 1958 Mike Wallace /Aldous Huxley interview. Chilling is an understatement. No doubt Huxley came across as absurdly eccentric, albeit brilliant. But what has unfolded since is exactly what he warned of in explicit detail. Sequentially, how, why and where it would lead. What makes it so extraordinary is every bizarre , fantastical facet of what he prophesied did not yet exist. Psychotropic drugs, AI, directed energy, mass surveillance, global satellite media, transhumanism ( interface of man and computer technology). He laid out the wars, distraction, propaganda, globalism, corporate multinational monopolism entwined with global government, created pandemics, depopulation , dissolution of nation states and sovereignty, migrant insurgency , a cabal of powerful elite sociopaths directing the whole damn thing to bring about a tyrannical one world central government… which he refers to as the “ final revolution”. For humans as a natural species.
Mike Wallace was pompous and condescending, as though humoring a child or a mental patient suffering a break with reality. Watching the video now, I wonder whether Huxley was a prophet of sorts warning us to thwart the future before it came to fruition.
But it was a 1961 French interview with Huxley that sealed the deal. “ Brave New World Revisited “ had just been published and Huxley was fraught with panic and guilt, believing that his 1932 opus was being used as a playbook. Ironically, Brave New World was complete sardonic fiction, a jab at his brother Julian, a eugenicist. While Huxley was once intrigued by eugenics, he feared the downside… an emergent Mengele.
Thanks for directing me to the Tom Wolfe book that was all around me in NYC in the late 60's, but I had no idea what it was about! Now I do and will read it with the expanded context you provide here. Another distant memory: Lenny's famous article (in Esquire?) about how much the intellectual elite share with the Panthers!!! Spot on man.
I lived in that weird little village (Wappinger's Falls) in the early 1980s. Tawana and her mother lived in one of the tenements left over from its days as a mill village. The hoax started out as a way to get her out of a sexually abusive household. Too bad she turned to Sharpton, who wouldn't let her come clean. A more reputable lawyer would have killed the whole thing at the "yes, it was a hoax, but she had to get away from her mother's sexually abusive boyfriend, cut her a break" stage.
I remember that story as it dominated the news for what seemed like years. I had never thought of the sexually abused angle before. But you are probably right. Once Sharpton got a hold of it, it was off the rails. It worked out for him though.
"Brawley," but that's okay -- you got autocorrected.
Right-thinking black people back in the day were disgusted by Sharpton. "He calls himself a reverend!" they sneered. I have this from a teacher cousin whose colleagues didn't mind talking in front of her: My cousin S. was from the Bronx and spoke the language.
Wow that is tough, figuring out who is worse, Sharpton or DiAngelo. Having watched the documentary on the CRT-based ruination of Evergreen College, I would go with DiAngelo. Although Matt Walsh's public humiliation of her in his movie was pretty satisfying.
One of the reasons I am glad I stopped listening to "Morning Joe" is that Al Sharpton was a regular. Once or twice Sharpton provided valuable insights. Most of the time, though, he offered platitudes in his thoroughly annoying voice.
Much more embarrassing to me was Obama, whom America elected not once but twice. He was never vetted by the MSM, so it is perhaps understandable that people who wanted to signal how broad-minded they were voted for him in 08. But by the end of his first term it was clear how vapid he was, particularly in foreign policy where his radicalism was pretty evident. Yet voters doubled down in 12, even as it was clear he was laying the foundation for the bloated, leftist federal government we now enjoy. He appointed more GS15s than any president ever, mindless lefties granted civil service protection for life. Many of them were at the cutting edge of the Biden Miracle. Small wonder Trump has his work cut out for him. Still waiting for Harvard Law to release Obama's academic transcript btw. Me thinks our savior has feet of clay.
I'll never forget watching Tom Brokaw on TV on election night 2008. When "The Call" was made announcing that Obama was indeed going to be the next U.S. President, there was this kind of odd pause and then Brokaw turned to the guy sitting next to him and said, "You know, it occurs to me that we have just elected a man to the Presidency and we really don't know very much about him."
There was another odd pause while the other news people up there looked a little discomfited, and then they all started talking about something else. It was one of the weirdest moments I've ever seen on live TV.
Remember the 15 years old computer genius who demonstrated that the " live birth" certificate of "44 the TRAITOR" was a compilation of over fifteen such certificates, with a Connecticut Social Security Number? For him being born in Hawai'i?
My office was in St Paul and had coffee a few mornings with Mr Brokaw at the downtown Starbucks during the Republican convention. In spite of rubbing elbows with many celebrities, he preferred Montana and was very candid in his assessments of politicians. Although I never watch today’s talking heads, from what I read about them, none are qualified to carry his pencil.
Tom Brokaw's retirement is pretty much when I quit watching any form of the "news" on the TV.
The rest became, and still is, a wasteland consisting of the preening ego of people like Cuomo, the execrable childishness of Stelter, and descending, in no particular order, to the howling wilderness that is Whoopi Goldberg's mind.
On Brokaw’s comment about not knowing anything about Obama. Well, we knew everything about Biden, we had reams on him and his decades of corruption, and we still elected him. Side by side, Obama was a better President. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find one worse.
Columbia University record too. If he didn't have feet of clay, all of his hidden academic records would have been released long ago. The fact that they haven't tells us most of what we need to know.
Our method of selecting a President, during my 75+ years, has consistently offered equally objectionable candidates. It is rare that I have voted for a candidate I loved, rather than the better of the two choices. Luckily, the last three elections have allowed me to engage in then former. Yes, even in ‘16, loved Mr Trump as a candidate, and he clearly, was the better choice than Clinton, Biden or Harris.
If one thinks the election of Biden was harmful, and it was. Just think of the consequences we might have encountered had we elected either of the women.
I'm fond of saying that I voted for Obama in 2008 to prove to everyone that I was not a racist. I did not vote for Obama in 2012 to prove to everyone that I was not a masochist.
I was following a discussion on X the other week about the Right needing to fund/create more arts and culture projects. There are definitely some options (Lomez with Passage Press, for example), but it would be great to see more resources put into that area.
The Left rarely actually contributes anything themselves. Instead they move into and seize control of institutions like cuckoos and take over what began as legitimate awards schemes. They have turned the "genius grants" into a joke and item of ridicule, as has been done with the Pulitzer Prizes. Every institution the Left manages to seize control of becomes a laughingstock. Oh, and the Nobel peace prize. They are outgunning the Right with the Right's own money. I am sure John D. MacArthur had no idea what to was to come of this noble gift, first directed by non-nut jobs such as Jonas Salk and Paul Harvey.
Remember the nine Jewish Marxist "thinkers" who evaded Germany in 1938 and installed themselves in the greatest schools of the US. "Hahaha", Columbia, Stanford, etc. Destroyed every kid into socialists, at least the sheep...
Their outgunning us is true quantitatively, but for every million bucks thrown at leftist sinkholes, an institution like Hillsdale can and does do infinitely more. Conservative investment in our children's and our nation's future should encourage us to cheerfully give where our contributions will do the greatest good.
As a current student, I'm a big fan of Hillsdale! It's definitely doing a lot of great things. But I think there's also room for more right-wing cultural investment, although I don't know exactly how to do that or what it should like.
Those leftist sinkholes churn out tens of thousands of young professionals that are trained to be ideological loyalists. They might be producing shit, but they produce plenty with their massive amount of funding that it drowns out efforts like Hillsdale.
It is good to have institutions like Hillsdale, but they are permanently going to be a minority in the country so long as progressives have such a massive amount of cash and institutional capture.
Its a truly disgusting habit, handing out money like candy to the people who should be learning ANYTHING but "arts and culture". I think arts and culture should be removed from University level learning for a decade or two. Let's get back to basics for awhile....
Apparently, no one, including internal audit at BU, knows where the money went. Incredible... Look for this year's and next year's 990 forms from BU, they will be available for free on line and they should make interesting reading...
Oh yeah. That one has been used for decades. Force owners of really valuable property to rent, lease sell it for less than surrounding listings.
Property is a function of supply and demand. Low priced housing will not have the best location, but one fu nation of government is public transportation (that pays for itself), allowing people of lower incomes to bypass the location issue.
Reparations debt takes into account the approx. 300,000 union deaths in the civil war, ostensibly to free the slaves, as we're told in history classes.
Kendi is a racist. He conned the gullible left and the “intellectuals” at our Universities. what does that tell you about our “intellectuals”? The same crowd loved communism back it the 20th century.
Kendi is sickening, and I don't think he's smart enough to pull a con. He has the intellect of a 10-year-old. He's another useful idiot like Al Sharpton, MLK, DiAngelo, and so many others of their ilk that are used by the global cabal to destroy Western civilization. Dumb whites buy their anti-white victim whine and give him lots of taxpayer money. It sickens me!
I was thinking the same thing. It’s the exact same phenomenon of western intellectuals that fawned over Stalin (right up until Krustev called bullshit) and swore that the Rosenburgs were innocent.
The pretzels that corporations forced themselves into was intellectually embarrassing! We are AMERICANS - act like one - compete - do your homework. Apply yourself.
The corporation I just left is so confused, it has a "BIPOC" group that only white people are in, and to make the DEI crew happy, it spends precious Learning & Development time and money on producing such directives as how to not text and walk at the same time.
BU like most all of higher Ed and major institutions marched down this path since the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter was issued. Boiling frog indeed. The fulcrum of choice is Equality of opportunity of the Equity of outcome. I resigned my trusteeship over BU’s direction of social justice over impartial justice. Kendi was more in line with BU’s Howard Zinn than BU’s Martin Luther King. Good work Mr Rufo Thank you.
BU admitted MLK was a plagiarist making him a thief and a liar, but refused to strip his Ph.D. So much for academic integrity. He was bright and skilled enough to ride the zeitgeist, but became increasingly political with the garbage workers' strike and Vietnam.
Turns out, MLK, who in many ways was a remarkable leader, was also a known plagiarist, and a sexual predator. But who has the balls to spray paint that truth on his statue in DC?
Yes, he might be laughing all the way to the bank. I think a grift of this enormity ought to have a jail sentence attached to it, call me crazy. Otherwise, why wouldn't a multitude of others aspire to it?
Amazing. It is so sad that these types of people can't use their intelligence and drive for the common good instead of being dividers and charlatans on the take. Reminds me of Al Sharpton and his racked he has had going for years and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Sad.
There is no intelligence or drive in these race hustlers. The race hustling is all they have; there's nothing else. Someone pays them to be useful idiots. That includes Sharpton, Jackson, MLK, Coates, DiAngelo, and others of their ilk. They're paid stooges, paid to ruin white civilization with their grift and whine.
That would require an attitude other than martial chutzpah. No, they will double and triple down, even if it means stealth and shapeshifting for the time being. Just as the early 90s P.C. was resurrected from the 60s revolutions, (what is now called) woke too will be resurrected again in a few decades. Mark my words.
Agreed. I think that radical leftist Marxist thought (whatever you want to call it) having been introduced into the world, is now a permanent force that will always find an audience with some people.
Back in the 70’s I read a book/essay by Tom Wolfe called Radical Chic (paired with another essay May-Mauing the Flak Catchers). It was precisely about the fawning Left adopting their favorite black radicals. It nearly lost Wolfe his vaunted place in literature for exposing the ruse. Like 1984 and Animal Farm, there are certain books that are so eye opening politically that they retain a certain space in one’s mind, a referent for digesting current events. So when DEI arrived it was clear it was a replay of Leonard Bernstein inviting the Black Panthers to one of his dinner parties on the Upper East Side. Glad to see this permutation of White Elitist guilt is riding off into the sunset.
I just read Radical Chic for the first time. It was fascinating to see how long this has been going on.
Way too long !
It will continue until western European cultures get a grip on guilt. For an exercise, contrast the idea of guilt, and how it is assigned, among US/European upper-middle class with Chinese of the corresponding strata.
Me, I cannot even see the beginnings of correction.
Oh it’s still around, just gone to ground like a snake hiding under a rock.
Yes. I’m sure it will emerge again with a new dress, blonde wig, and red lipstick. But hopefully it will be immediately recognized and sent to its bedroom without dinner. 🤣
I would recommend reading Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers again. I read it a couple years ago and it seemed as fresh and insightful as it surely was in the 1970s.
Add Bonfire Of The Vanities, in spite of the cinematic effort. I have a friend who is a 3rd generation sushi chef. His knives are sharp and he makes the thinnest slices, but no one was better than Mr Wolfe.
Have read these. Couldn't get through Bonfire but maybe I need to try it again, I normally enjoy Tom Wolfe, his best for me was 'Man in Full,' But, I digress. These types of things are always lurking in the background of society. People, particularly elites, like to consider themselves 'smarter' than us.
I suggest also reading the first 40 pages (or so) of the book "Liberal Racism" 1997 by Jim Sleeper, a high-school classmate of mine. It was bold & brave at that time.
Race baiters are a subterfuge to undermine culture and in fuse Marxism. Marxism couldn’t be successful in the USA by exploiting economic extremes. They chose to fan the flames of racial bias and exploit hatred.
Yes.
Critical race theory is simply Marxism with "race" substituted for "class". Proletariat is now people of color, and capitalists are Caucasians.
Yeah, Tom Wolfe's candor and insights would never be allowed today, even though they are more relevant than ever.
We must ensure works such as there are always allowed.
I disagree. Wolfe was very careful not to advance or betray any political agenda, at least not in those works of his that I have read. His approach was to mock aspects of American culture by reporting on them accurately, as a sort of fly-on-the-wall, allowing his subjects to prove themselves worthy of either contempt or admiration by reporting on their statements and behavior. Tone was everything for Wolfe. He deployed a unique sort of sarcasm.
I tried to read his "novels," the ones that sort of modeled themselves on "In Cold Blood," but I prefer his essays. That reminds me, Wolfe pilloried Capote's novel as an example of "pornoviolence" in an essay by the same title. To paraphrase, Capote teased readers to read the whole story by not revealing the grisly details of the Clutter family's murder until the end of the book. Wolfe's entire project with "the new journalism" was to apply the techniques of fiction to nonfiction stories, so including "In Cold Blood" as a target might have been a deliberate dig at a rival. I've always thought "In Cold Blood" is a great book despite the fact that Capote abandoned his great talent to become a social gadfly, a high-profile schmoozer, a regular on talk shows, and a bitch who called Kerouac's work "typewriting." I never forgave him for that.
Rich white people cannot accept how they have ravaged the working class in this country. The wealthiest shipped factories off to China, and left their American workers laid off and left to rot. White privilege is another trendy way for the exploitative class to pretend that they are not monsters. It is cheaper to give Kendi $50m than to increase the long-term capital gains tax to a fair rate that would balance the federal budget. Besides, it is far easier to control their diversity puppets than to say, negotiate with organized labor. Globalization allowed them to ignore basic decency. They could pay themselves whatever they wanted without a care in the world about the sweatshops where their products are made.
We broke our society in the late 1960's (I always say after 1965, the last year of necessary legislation). It will take generations to put it back together again, if we ever can.
This is a typical liberal class-based argument which is fundamentally ignorant of economics and society. Rich people mostly get rich by creating things that are wildly popular and beneficial for the world and implementing their ideas with great skill. Rich people, especially the innovators that the Left loves to hate, have brought tremendous value to society by creating jobs and improving our lives through technology, transportation, communications, and on and on.
American workers get laid off for one reason only, that is they price themselves out of the market by demanding far-above-global-average wages, while simultaneously relentlessly demanding lower prices on the goods they buy. They are selfish at both ends of the spectrum and don't understand how the two demands are interrelated and incompatible. You can't have simultaneous high wages and low prices.
Anyone who wants to save American manufacturing jobs can commit to buy only American-made furniture and clothing, i.e. put your money where your mouth is. As long as you shop at Costco, Walmart, Ikea, and Harbor Freight, don't point fingers at manufacturers for moving production offshore and cutting loose overpaid American workers. There is not a single American large manufacturer who would not prefer to build goods for the American market right here at home. They outsource production in response to relentless market pressure for lower prices that cannot be met by the American workforce's wage levels. This is the bare naked truth that Liberals are unable to admit.
There is a secondary and long-term more important issue of lack of education in the American workforce that causes innovators to have to hire foreign talent to develop the technologies that Americans and the world are hungry for. If America cared more about education and pushed our children to learn useful skills in college, we would have a more capable workforce able to remain competitive on the world stage. As it is America is rapidly losing ground to China and soon to India as well. It won't be long before America loses its pole position due to a toxic combination of self-indulgence and incompetence.
I agree with you in the beginning. I have no problem with people getting rich. What I hate is when people bend the rules for their benefit against the country. I love investment banks, hedge funds, software firms, they all are great for America. What I cannot tolerate are clothing firms and manufacturers that closed American factories to produce in China, then cried when their intellectual property was stolen.
We NEVER should have allowed the PRC into the WTO. Free trade is fine among countries who have the same values (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico,...), but it does not work with a habitual criminal communist state, and the those who got fat at that trough are the worst scumbags who socialize their expenses and take outsized profits (Walmart would be the worst example, but I would add almost every clothing company, many manufacturers,...).
I believe in capitalism, but not crony mercantile garbage where Walmart closes down competition then pays their labor nothing so the taxpayer ends up feeding them and paying their health care. Walmart, the company that turned in Chinese workers to the police for being Christians. Walmart, the evil corp.
But instead of writing about this, foolish left magazines criticism investment banks who did nothing wrong because they were jealous of their wages. That was criminal.
As for children in college, "useful skills" are taught in trade school, not university. We have too many attending university. Each state should have one flagship, perhaps two for California, and they should be free. We do not need so many university students. Most graduates today are useless no matter what you teach them. They never should have wasted their time studying. The primary job of a university is to admit the right kind of students. Companies will train them after recruitment. Intelligent people can learn to do anything. Attending a university is not much more than finishing school. Precious few will actually need to use that Riemannian geometry or classical Greek, but attending a university that was difficult to get into lets recruiters know that university is worth recruiting from. Most American students need basic skills, not college. We need to focus on that and only reserve deserving students for university. We have wasted too much sending the masses off and expecting some kind of benefit. Also, there is no "competitiveness." Currency markets fix that. The problem today is local zoning. If we fixed housing (for example, if Trump set federal housing density rules to create cheap housing in growing markets), that would be wonderful. California needs density and cheap housing. The Federal government forcing that would allow poor people to migrate there. Magically predicting the skills of the future is a fool's game. We simply need good rules and good regulations and the market will fix itself. We have not done that since the 1960's. Everything started going wrong in the 1960's. We need to fix all of the bad policies put forward by delusional baby boomers.
Either way, the Federal government needs to cut costs and increase revenue. I say a good start would be to eliminate corporate taxation and increase capital gains, with the capital gains rate harmonized up to the short-term rate. There is no reason to have two rates. It follows the myth of "speculation." That is just another word for investment. Only economically illiterate people believe such nonsense.
Wow that's a lot of ideas in one comment! I agree with a lot of what you said, but here are a few counterarguments.
The idea of long term vs. short term capital gains tax is, like all tax policy, to encourage certain behaviors over others, in this case to encourage people to hold onto their investments for a longer period of time, which helps to maintain market stability. If you know you're going to pay an extra 20% of your gain by selling today instead of waiting 6 months, you're more likely to hold onto the stock instead. While many people think that the stock market is for idle rich people and speculators, the fact is that almost every public employee's pension, and therefore every city's budget, is dependent on the stock market. So we need to maintain its stability.
Sadly I'm beginning to agree more with the idea that college is not as important as it once seemed to be. But I think that's because people are majoring in the wrong subjects. We don't need so many graduates in history, language, and the social sciences. We need more graduates in hard science and technology to keep up with the world and the pace of innovation. It would probably be a good idea to, like tax policy, "encourage" limits on admissions to various majors by making federal tax incentives already given to colleges somewhat dependent on the distribution of graduates across various disciplines. This would steer universities toward more productive disciplines that are more beneficial for society.
Yes I think more trade schools is a great idea. Plumbers are too expensive! And we need more people in general construction.
Yes high density housing is needed. There's a lot of that going on here in Silicon Valley now, in fact I find it depressing and ugly how all these giant building are popping up one after the other, trying to eke out every possible square foot of living space and property tax revenue on each parcel. There's no life there, they just go to work, then go to Costco, then go home.
Housing availability and cost are directly tied to politics in the form of city planners who want to maximize property tax revenue coupled with excessive building regulations that make low cost housing impossible. In Tahoe for example, it's not economically viable to build low cost housing for the working class because of the $50K or more in fees demanded by a multitude of agencies. So only monster second homes are being built. Then the locals complain about too many vacant properties and blame the homeowners, who helped out the economy by paying for all the construction and now having a property with a 4x higher valuation and therefore 4x the annual property tax.
I don't know what you're referring to by blaming boomers. I'm a boomer, and I think I'm great! I never did anything wrong, I just make the world a better place by creating jobs and selling products that help other business make their own products.
Now I disagree with every statement you wrote. There is ZERO difference between someone holding an investment one time or another. that is the fallacy of "speculation." Any economist worth his salt can tell you that, unless he is a Marxist. They believe in that sort of thing. Also, less trading brings DOWN asset prices, not up. Your augment is bad logic there. This is why bans on short-selling make prices drop. Short seller hedges bottom out and increase asset values. Short sellers are GOOD because they put money into the market. If you do not know this, look it up. Any derivatives text book will have the example in it. Speculation is investment and vice versa. There is no argument on this outside of Marxist circles.
As for Tahoe, they could easily have studio apartments that cost $150k and have affordable rents. The problem is zoning. Why not have dense multi-family in "truckee" (I do not know how to spell) where housing costs are lower? Closer to the ocean, there is no reason one could not tear down single-family housing and build multifamily. Furthermore, take away misguided taxes called "affordable housing." Those taxes are literally the most economically illiterate idea ever. The way to reduce housing costs is to build more housing. For communities that insist on single family, simply charge them an annual tax for the privilege. For example, Tahoe could pay "Truckee" 30% of their property taxes to expand roads and infrastructure to accommodate the increased population.
But the key is just to keep building. That and take away senseless regulations that have made California, NYC, Boston and DC so expensive. I could get Manhattan affordable in ten years. Of course, I mean affordable studios and one bedrooms, not some idiotic idea like single family in Manhattan, or large condos, but that is not what the market needs. The market needs tiny, affordable homes--ideally entire high rises full of studios that are dirty cheap. You see this in Asia, and the markets there work. San Francisco could be fixed with a hundred mid-rise building full of studios and one bedrooms. Hell, just knocking down old, ugly houses and replacing them with mid-rises would help, but getting rid of requirements for affordable and large units would dramatically reduce and increase supply, especially if public land were used. NYC has so many parking lots around their public housing that could easily be full of 30-50 story cheap high rises that only have studio apartments. Those 20,000 units would have a massive impact alone. DO that across all five Burroughs and the city would start growing again.
The reason why I blame boomers is because they are the ones who: changed the zoning laws, enacted foolish uneconomic policies such as short-term capital gains rates, running up record national debt, especially the foolish COVID shut downs, foolishly opened up trade to Communist China. I am not saying every boomer is bad, but they have been the worst generation. I guess I would also add: the destruction of the family, the abandonment of religious culture, the sexualization of everything, and a senseless attack on traditions for no reason without any thought to the consequences.
There have been many good boomers, but they are the antithesis of their parents generation who worked so hard to build a better country. I think of Vietnam, where racists like Jane Fonda hung out with genocidal maniacs who literally openly called for genocide. Asian lives meant nothing to those who protested against Vietnam. They were all racist Nazis. There were honest people who wanted a better world, but they were mocked and excluded. They would rather live in a world where Black Tai, Cham, Hmong,..., were all murdered off the face of the earth, so long as they could play revolutionary. It was sickening. Jane Fonda should be in prison in Cambodia with Pol Pot's former minions. Instead she married a billionaire.
I can sympathize with good baby boomers, but it sickens me that the evil ones were able to take control of culture and ruin it. It will take generations to build what they burned down. I think a good start would be to ban single family housing, unless a community gives 30-50% of their property taxes to a neighbor that allows multifamily. that would be a good way to bring down housing prices and make the country look and feel better. There is something vulgar about urban single family housing. I am not willing to call for a ban, but it should be taxed mercilessly. Cities should be multifamily. Houses are for rural areas, or they should be ultra-luxuries. The idea of Silicon Valley towns not allowing apartments makes me sick. We need federal over-rides to save the states from themselves.
The only realistic alternative would be a total free market reform, starting with a full monetizing of the debt. We start over, endure a few years of inflation, then make new rules from scratch. I cannot imagine that happening. We will end up monetizing that debt, but over more time. I can assure you that millions of baby boomers will not prepare for it, then complain loudly about how inflation is bad, when stupid COVID lockdowns have required at least a decade of inflation more to reduce federal debt. They are the same morons who complained that the anomaly of having basic bank products pay positive real rates to savers should magically continue. This only existed from the 1950's to around 2000, but they thought that was some how an iron law.
I am curious about exactly what you are talking about here:
"They are the same morons who complained that the anomaly of having *basic bank products pay positive real rates to savers* should magically continue."
I am asking about the highlighted phrase. My guess is that you are referring to interest paid on passbook deposits being greater than the inflation rate.
Is this what you mean? If not, please give me a clear example.
Thanks in advance. I'm not looking to criticize your position, I am just not sure what it is, in this case.
" Rich people mostly get rich by creating things that are wildly popular and beneficial for the world and implementing their ideas with great skill."
That's a corny fairy tale. Actually, a great many people get rich or increase their fortunes on the basis of the lowest sort of corner-cutting. There are entire industries built out of scams, fraud, parasitism, regulatory capture, legislative capture, and lobbying exclusively for private gain at the expense of good government and the public interest.
Moreover, the basis for the largest fortunes is almost entirely about making money from money, not invention or productive innovation. An economic paradigm that emphasized talent and authentic material advances would provide at least half of the rewards to the inventors and teams responsible for an improved pharmaceutical drug, not to financial backers and venture capitalists. Taking viable businesses, busting them out, and selling them off for parts and declaring bankruptcy has been considered a brilliant profitmaking strategy ever since the 1980s. http://www.barlettandsteele.com/books/am_wwrcd_foreword
The kids notice all this, by the way. It has a lot to do with their cynicism about being rewarded for making useful products and providing responsive services. They've gotten very clear messages that it doesn't matter how much intelligence and creativity someone has; what matters is Celebrity Fame, surfing fad trends, and above all, Power. Is Spotify all about "creating things that are wildly popular and beneficial for the world and implementing their ideas with great skill"? Really? Is Facebook all that brilliant an "invention"? Sure it's a clever concept, but does it really make Mark Zuckerberg 2000 times the creative titan that Steve Wozniak is? How many sectors of the industry these days are tech oligarchies largely for the purpose of rent-seeking?Google doesn't owe its business growth to improving its search engine. the owners and investors have made Google a cash cow by making it worse. Ed Zitron calls it the Rot Economy https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Baloney. Leftist baloney.
but you can't say why ;-D
anyone can cuss. As a herding behavior to discourage people from actually reading the books I mentioned, the simpleminded smear labels do work--up to a point.
Speaking of Books, here's one, by one of Richard Nixon's chief campaign strategists in 1968, when he was only 27-28 years old. The same guy whose first book was The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips. It's titled The Politics of Rich And Poor, from 1990. Free to read online. A neat Historical Perspective, packed with graphs and data. https://archive.org/details/politicsofrich00phil
< oh no, don't open that door--watch out for that door, it's too much Mind Expansion
Reduce your cannabis intake; come down from your inflated ego; cease regurgitation of leftist propaganda; live a more realistic life.
Excellent. As Trump might say: “This is simply Common Sense.” Leftists are unable to embrace Common Sense.
"One reason only"?
Thanks, Jonathan. People will disagree with you, but you're right, as you are also in your follow-up comment.
?
IF is such a large word!
They abandoned us until they use our children for profit centers on battlefields and the court systems we finance.
Sticking a literary knife between one’s ribs and delicately rotating it was one of Mr Wolfe’s enduring qualities. Before meeting her, my wife worked for him. Although he might skewer one in literature, she assures me he was a very kind man. As for losing his place at the high society table, that was never an issue, no matter what one might have read.
I didn't know Wolfe took any heat for his essay Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, brudda. What sort of backlash did he experience?
I remember Bernstein’s dinner party and the photos in the NYT. I later read that the Panthers enjoyed the spectacle hugely, hitting on the rich white chicks and sneering their way through the spectacle. They were serious people with skin in the game. Their hosts were anything but.
I highly recommend the thought-provoking works "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them" by Jason Stanley and "How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them" by Barbara F. Walter. The United States is at a pivotal moment, with the possibility of considerable unrest arising from the challenges associated with American fascism, as outlined in the Project 2025 Mandate. A regression to Jim Crow is not a viable option. Blacks are not getting on their knees for you.
If this article proves anything, it proves your vicitimization ideology has already collapsed. My advice would be focus on Project 2026 and 2028, instead of Project 2025. Signed citizen of a republic ruled by one party 12 of the last 16 years.
I’m giving a friendly nudge to all law-abiding Black folks: how about we band together and equip ourselves like we're preparing for a superhero movie? And while we’re at it, let’s orchestrate a clever little boycott and give a big shout-out to our Black-owned businesses. After all, I managed to retire a several years back without relying on the usual suspects for my essentials—who needs that? As for Kendi, let’s just say his ideas have all the seriousness of a rubber chicken. I'm not a victim, but I'm woke (aware)!
Good for you, Jamal X. Live like a King by being a prince to others.
“Oh, ‘Rufo’ and ‘Arturo’? What a surprise! Italian fascist lineage, right? How original!”
Oh sure, because who doesn't just love a good old monarchy and the charm of white supremacist neo-fascism? Sounds delightful!
Back to the kitchen, nigs.
Fabulous assessment. I posted a comment prior to reading yours positing had Huxley, Serling and Orwell collaborated on a film, the federal buildings would eliminate the need for a set.
Six years ago, I stumbled upon a 1958 Mike Wallace /Aldous Huxley interview. Chilling is an understatement. No doubt Huxley came across as absurdly eccentric, albeit brilliant. But what has unfolded since is exactly what he warned of in explicit detail. Sequentially, how, why and where it would lead. What makes it so extraordinary is every bizarre , fantastical facet of what he prophesied did not yet exist. Psychotropic drugs, AI, directed energy, mass surveillance, global satellite media, transhumanism ( interface of man and computer technology). He laid out the wars, distraction, propaganda, globalism, corporate multinational monopolism entwined with global government, created pandemics, depopulation , dissolution of nation states and sovereignty, migrant insurgency , a cabal of powerful elite sociopaths directing the whole damn thing to bring about a tyrannical one world central government… which he refers to as the “ final revolution”. For humans as a natural species.
Mike Wallace was pompous and condescending, as though humoring a child or a mental patient suffering a break with reality. Watching the video now, I wonder whether Huxley was a prophet of sorts warning us to thwart the future before it came to fruition.
But it was a 1961 French interview with Huxley that sealed the deal. “ Brave New World Revisited “ had just been published and Huxley was fraught with panic and guilt, believing that his 1932 opus was being used as a playbook. Ironically, Brave New World was complete sardonic fiction, a jab at his brother Julian, a eugenicist. While Huxley was once intrigued by eugenics, he feared the downside… an emergent Mengele.
Thanks for directing me to the Tom Wolfe book that was all around me in NYC in the late 60's, but I had no idea what it was about! Now I do and will read it with the expanded context you provide here. Another distant memory: Lenny's famous article (in Esquire?) about how much the intellectual elite share with the Panthers!!! Spot on man.
Now do Robin DeAngelo.
Sorry, no cutting the line. Al Sharpton is on deck.
Remember the Tawana Bradley hoax perpetrated by Sharpton!
I lived in that weird little village (Wappinger's Falls) in the early 1980s. Tawana and her mother lived in one of the tenements left over from its days as a mill village. The hoax started out as a way to get her out of a sexually abusive household. Too bad she turned to Sharpton, who wouldn't let her come clean. A more reputable lawyer would have killed the whole thing at the "yes, it was a hoax, but she had to get away from her mother's sexually abusive boyfriend, cut her a break" stage.
I remember that story as it dominated the news for what seemed like years. I had never thought of the sexually abused angle before. But you are probably right. Once Sharpton got a hold of it, it was off the rails. It worked out for him though.
That story, and McMartin had very long shelf lives.
Both tested the publics credulity, with the public failing miserably. It was a foreshadowing. What was McMartin but an early version of #metoo?
“The Public” have always wanted witches to burn and they don’t care where they come from. People love to be part of a mob.
It's a wonder that a fraud who was exposed so broadly is still given credence and a platform by the left.
"Brawley," but that's okay -- you got autocorrected.
Right-thinking black people back in the day were disgusted by Sharpton. "He calls himself a reverend!" they sneered. I have this from a teacher cousin whose colleagues didn't mind talking in front of her: My cousin S. was from the Bronx and spoke the language.
Race-baiter Sharpton?
At this point, Sharpton is as close to the voice of reason as you'll get from the woke side of the room.
Yes, scary as it is
Wow that is tough, figuring out who is worse, Sharpton or DiAngelo. Having watched the documentary on the CRT-based ruination of Evergreen College, I would go with DiAngelo. Although Matt Walsh's public humiliation of her in his movie was pretty satisfying.
Wasn’t it? I enjoyed it so much that I almost felt guilty!
One of the reasons I am glad I stopped listening to "Morning Joe" is that Al Sharpton was a regular. Once or twice Sharpton provided valuable insights. Most of the time, though, he offered platitudes in his thoroughly annoying voice.
Matt Walsh put a nice dent in her with “Am I Racist?”
Much more embarrassing to me was Obama, whom America elected not once but twice. He was never vetted by the MSM, so it is perhaps understandable that people who wanted to signal how broad-minded they were voted for him in 08. But by the end of his first term it was clear how vapid he was, particularly in foreign policy where his radicalism was pretty evident. Yet voters doubled down in 12, even as it was clear he was laying the foundation for the bloated, leftist federal government we now enjoy. He appointed more GS15s than any president ever, mindless lefties granted civil service protection for life. Many of them were at the cutting edge of the Biden Miracle. Small wonder Trump has his work cut out for him. Still waiting for Harvard Law to release Obama's academic transcript btw. Me thinks our savior has feet of clay.
I'll never forget watching Tom Brokaw on TV on election night 2008. When "The Call" was made announcing that Obama was indeed going to be the next U.S. President, there was this kind of odd pause and then Brokaw turned to the guy sitting next to him and said, "You know, it occurs to me that we have just elected a man to the Presidency and we really don't know very much about him."
There was another odd pause while the other news people up there looked a little discomfited, and then they all started talking about something else. It was one of the weirdest moments I've ever seen on live TV.
Obama's birth certificate is fake. He is stated as African-American, a term unheard of in the sixties, along with other discrepancies.
Oh, stop it. Just stop.
Remember the 15 years old computer genius who demonstrated that the " live birth" certificate of "44 the TRAITOR" was a compilation of over fifteen such certificates, with a Connecticut Social Security Number? For him being born in Hawai'i?
My office was in St Paul and had coffee a few mornings with Mr Brokaw at the downtown Starbucks during the Republican convention. In spite of rubbing elbows with many celebrities, he preferred Montana and was very candid in his assessments of politicians. Although I never watch today’s talking heads, from what I read about them, none are qualified to carry his pencil.
Tom Brokaw's retirement is pretty much when I quit watching any form of the "news" on the TV.
The rest became, and still is, a wasteland consisting of the preening ego of people like Cuomo, the execrable childishness of Stelter, and descending, in no particular order, to the howling wilderness that is Whoopi Goldberg's mind.
Viva La Substack!!!
His programs were instrumental in steering public opinion. Operation Mocking Bird staffer?
On Brokaw’s comment about not knowing anything about Obama. Well, we knew everything about Biden, we had reams on him and his decades of corruption, and we still elected him. Side by side, Obama was a better President. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find one worse.
Columbia University record too. If he didn't have feet of clay, all of his hidden academic records would have been released long ago. The fact that they haven't tells us most of what we need to know.
He preferred to enjoy pot and his Afghani boyfriend more than the classes, knowing his diploma , paid for, was waiting for him.
Yes, the diploma was waiting for him, along with any job he wanted, including president, as it turned out. Barack early on figured out the hustle.
The contenders Hillary and Obama were neck and neck until that fateful meeting after which Obama emerged as the front runner.
The worst of all presidents. More racist even than Woodrow Wilson! Hard to imagine, huh?
Beer summit with a hard working cop and a racist “professor”.
If I recall correctly Obama had a Bud Light. How appropriate.
BOOM 💥
agree
Amen to that!
His opponent was Mitt ‘how many homes do I own?, Romney. Harris could have beaten Mitt.
Yes, Mittens was the political equivalent of the Bum of the Month Club.
Our method of selecting a President, during my 75+ years, has consistently offered equally objectionable candidates. It is rare that I have voted for a candidate I loved, rather than the better of the two choices. Luckily, the last three elections have allowed me to engage in then former. Yes, even in ‘16, loved Mr Trump as a candidate, and he clearly, was the better choice than Clinton, Biden or Harris.
If one thinks the election of Biden was harmful, and it was. Just think of the consequences we might have encountered had we elected either of the women.
I'm fond of saying that I voted for Obama in 2008 to prove to everyone that I was not a racist. I did not vote for Obama in 2012 to prove to everyone that I was not a masochist.
“They” ensured the ‘08 and “12 election by allowing such low quality opposition.
Just another race huckster exposed as a fraud.
Kendi is one of a thousand leftist commissars who won MacArthur “genius” grants. A million dollars, no strings attached. The left outguns the right 1,000 to 1 on arts and culture patronage networks: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/macarthur-fellowship-leftist-patronage-network
I was following a discussion on X the other week about the Right needing to fund/create more arts and culture projects. There are definitely some options (Lomez with Passage Press, for example), but it would be great to see more resources put into that area.
The Left rarely actually contributes anything themselves. Instead they move into and seize control of institutions like cuckoos and take over what began as legitimate awards schemes. They have turned the "genius grants" into a joke and item of ridicule, as has been done with the Pulitzer Prizes. Every institution the Left manages to seize control of becomes a laughingstock. Oh, and the Nobel peace prize. They are outgunning the Right with the Right's own money. I am sure John D. MacArthur had no idea what to was to come of this noble gift, first directed by non-nut jobs such as Jonas Salk and Paul Harvey.
As Biden did with the Medal of Freedom. They have nothing of value of their own.
Remember the nine Jewish Marxist "thinkers" who evaded Germany in 1938 and installed themselves in the greatest schools of the US. "Hahaha", Columbia, Stanford, etc. Destroyed every kid into socialists, at least the sheep...
Please name the nine Jewish Marxist thinkers who came to U,S, universities to evade WWII.
Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas.
Their outgunning us is true quantitatively, but for every million bucks thrown at leftist sinkholes, an institution like Hillsdale can and does do infinitely more. Conservative investment in our children's and our nation's future should encourage us to cheerfully give where our contributions will do the greatest good.
As a current student, I'm a big fan of Hillsdale! It's definitely doing a lot of great things. But I think there's also room for more right-wing cultural investment, although I don't know exactly how to do that or what it should like.
Support substacks that are doing the Lord’s work, like Rufo or Sasha Stone. The opportunities are endless.
Those leftist sinkholes churn out tens of thousands of young professionals that are trained to be ideological loyalists. They might be producing shit, but they produce plenty with their massive amount of funding that it drowns out efforts like Hillsdale.
It is good to have institutions like Hillsdale, but they are permanently going to be a minority in the country so long as progressives have such a massive amount of cash and institutional capture.
There were reputable people winning those awards. Unfortunately, many phonies like Kendi got them too.
Its a truly disgusting habit, handing out money like candy to the people who should be learning ANYTHING but "arts and culture". I think arts and culture should be removed from University level learning for a decade or two. Let's get back to basics for awhile....
Race-baiter
Does the $55 million count against the Reparations debt he believes is owed? Can we get a receipt?
Apparently, no one, including internal audit at BU, knows where the money went. Incredible... Look for this year's and next year's 990 forms from BU, they will be available for free on line and they should make interesting reading...
Same with covid19 money given to universities and colleges. Not one dime accounted for.
DOGE….
It won't matter to me unless the people who did it get jail time. Otherwise, the corruption will just morph and find a new home.
I'm sure it's "racist" even to ask where the money went.
Reparations is no different than ‘fair share’. It has no monetary limit.
Neither does "affordable housing".
Trying asking for a definitive list of human rights, so that once and for all we'll know the limit of what's expected of us.
I've gotten an answer, as often as I've asked it on various forums over the years.
Now, AHG, we all know that a Human Right is defined as Whatever I Want.
Oh yeah. That one has been used for decades. Force owners of really valuable property to rent, lease sell it for less than surrounding listings.
Property is a function of supply and demand. Low priced housing will not have the best location, but one fu nation of government is public transportation (that pays for itself), allowing people of lower incomes to bypass the location issue.
Earn more money, get better location.
Reparations debt takes into account the approx. 300,000 union deaths in the civil war, ostensibly to free the slaves, as we're told in history classes.
Or do they have no value?
Kendi is a racist. He conned the gullible left and the “intellectuals” at our Universities. what does that tell you about our “intellectuals”? The same crowd loved communism back it the 20th century.
If you remember, Kendi elbowed out Tah-Nahisi Coates for "prominent black thinker" right around BLM days.
Kendi is sickening, and I don't think he's smart enough to pull a con. He has the intellect of a 10-year-old. He's another useful idiot like Al Sharpton, MLK, DiAngelo, and so many others of their ilk that are used by the global cabal to destroy Western civilization. Dumb whites buy their anti-white victim whine and give him lots of taxpayer money. It sickens me!
I was thinking the same thing. It’s the exact same phenomenon of western intellectuals that fawned over Stalin (right up until Krustev called bullshit) and swore that the Rosenburgs were innocent.
The pretzels that corporations forced themselves into was intellectually embarrassing! We are AMERICANS - act like one - compete - do your homework. Apply yourself.
It really is that simple
The corporation I just left is so confused, it has a "BIPOC" group that only white people are in, and to make the DEI crew happy, it spends precious Learning & Development time and money on producing such directives as how to not text and walk at the same time.
Citibank was like that too. They laid me off, so I feel able to call them out by name.
Auto-Destruct
X man we hardly knew ye. When asked matt walsh's question AM I A RACIST he can proudly answer "you betcha and it sure has paid off."
Matt Walsh the clarity…
BU like most all of higher Ed and major institutions marched down this path since the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter was issued. Boiling frog indeed. The fulcrum of choice is Equality of opportunity of the Equity of outcome. I resigned my trusteeship over BU’s direction of social justice over impartial justice. Kendi was more in line with BU’s Howard Zinn than BU’s Martin Luther King. Good work Mr Rufo Thank you.
BU admitted MLK was a plagiarist making him a thief and a liar, but refused to strip his Ph.D. So much for academic integrity. He was bright and skilled enough to ride the zeitgeist, but became increasingly political with the garbage workers' strike and Vietnam.
Turns out, MLK, who in many ways was a remarkable leader, was also a known plagiarist, and a sexual predator. But who has the balls to spray paint that truth on his statue in DC?
Find any interview with Vincent Everett Ellison on MLK. Good work was done. The myth of the life does not stand scrutiny.
So the question remains: How much of the $50M (plus speaking fees, etc.) went into his own pocket? 🤔
Yes, he might be laughing all the way to the bank. I think a grift of this enormity ought to have a jail sentence attached to it, call me crazy. Otherwise, why wouldn't a multitude of others aspire to it?
Prosecution would be considered racist.
Ah.
Amazing. It is so sad that these types of people can't use their intelligence and drive for the common good instead of being dividers and charlatans on the take. Reminds me of Al Sharpton and his racked he has had going for years and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Sad.
There is no intelligence or drive in these race hustlers. The race hustling is all they have; there's nothing else. Someone pays them to be useful idiots. That includes Sharpton, Jackson, MLK, Coates, DiAngelo, and others of their ilk. They're paid stooges, paid to ruin white civilization with their grift and whine.
I hope the Left is at least slightly embarrassed at their glorification of this dumb guy.
The left has no shame, is never embarrassed. Just think about COVID or Biden’s dementia. The crescendo of apologies is overwhelmingly silent.
I sincerely doubt it.
I do, too.
That would require an attitude other than martial chutzpah. No, they will double and triple down, even if it means stealth and shapeshifting for the time being. Just as the early 90s P.C. was resurrected from the 60s revolutions, (what is now called) woke too will be resurrected again in a few decades. Mark my words.
Agreed. I think that radical leftist Marxist thought (whatever you want to call it) having been introduced into the world, is now a permanent force that will always find an audience with some people.
Woke will never go away, just as virtue-signaling will never go away. Too much of a dopamine rush.
No chance.
Not to worry: Ta-Nehesi Coates effortlessly fills the void Kendi leaves open.
Coates is even crazier and more evil that is Kendi.
watch Matt walsh’s movie; “Am I a Racist?” Every professor should watch it.
What is it about the liberal mind that makes it dependent on self loathing in order to feel good? It's an odd juxtaposition.
I think it might be fake performative self loathing. Really, it's a way of feeling superior to ordinary people because they "get it".
That pigment pimp's just moved to another corner, but he's still in business.
‘pigment pimp’….I’m stealing that one.