From something I’m currently writing (‘The Longhouse’):
This is now a familiar play from the soft totalitarian playbook: ignore pressing social issues, even when the lives and fortunes of tens of thousands of people are affected, and focus instead on the ‘problems’ which generate bureaucratic activity and shift the cultural needle in the desired direction. The Canadian Mass Graves hoax. Black Lives Matter. Trans genocide. The gender pay gap. Talk about those things. Immigrant-related crime and the fragmentation of family structures in the United States and the profusion of actual knife crimes or Islamic extremism in Great Britain? Don’t mention them and, if pressed, try to link them (no matter how incredibly) to the issues which the Blob and the Longhouse care about: racism, transphobia, misogyny.
This move is also evident in coverage of American political contests. It’s clearly a considered maneuver of the powerful: to introduce distracting stories and try to generate online narratives in order to shift attention away from the negative externalities and profound failures of their own policies.
How much of the media cycle consists of stories in which fairly pedestrian (and popular) executive actions are imbued with some hint of danger or idiosyncrasy? Whenever you watch or read a media story: ask yourself would this framing be used for the policy if the Obama administration was executing it? That heuristic will immediately invalidate ~80% of legacy media coverage about many issues.
This is the playbook: arrange the framing so that the things which the Blob dislikes are positioned as risky/foolish/abnormal. Ignore most of the real social problems which surround us. Neglect the important in favor of the convenient.
In 2020, Nature magazine endorsed Joe Biden for U.S. president. A pre-registered, large-sample experiment found that the endorsement didn’t change people’s view of the candidates - but it did cause them to lose trust in Nature and in scientists in general.
All criminal defendants have a well-settled 5th and 14th Amendment right to all exculpatory evidence (i.e., evidence that could prove the defendant’s innocence, be used in the defendant’s defense or in any way undermine the prosecutions case against them) . . . YET the Democrats in congress kept the 41,000 hours of capital surveillance footage from the public and J6 defendants for over two years, while many languished in prison, barring the public and the J6 defendants from any of that evidence which could be used to demonstrate a basis for their innocence. One person clearly robbed of benefit of this exculpatory evidence is Jacob Chansley—video evidence proves he did not break into the capital, but was invited in by a capitol police officer that helped him open the door and took him on a tour of the building.
All criminal defendants have a well-settled constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial (typically, this means you must learn of the charges against you within 30 days and trial must begin within 70 days of that indictment) . . . YET many J6 defendants were jailed for years, without a trial and sometimes in terrible conditions, when the vast majority were nonviolent, merely charged with trespass. Take, for instance, hundred of people that were still awaiting trial for the entire 4 years since the events of J6, up until Trump’s pardon—many of which, again, having had no opportunity to see the evidence to defend themselves, and having only been charged with a trespass on federal property (Generally, a misdemeanor which can result in up to a year in jail).
Due process prohibits the punishment of pretrial detainees, and other cruel and unusual punishments violative of the 8th Amendment . . . YET many J6 defendants were jailed and tortured for years, all without any trial, opportunity to present a defense, or even a finding of guilt. J6 defendants were kept in a separate units with mold on the walls, brown water and generally unsanitary conditions, subjected to 23 hours a day of solitary confinement, imprisoned with no access to visits for over a year, and denied adequate food, medical treatment and religious services. Bear in mind: international law recognizes 15 days or more of 22 hours of solitary a day as cruel and unusual punishment, yet numerous J6 defendants (like John Strand, Ryan Samsel) experienced months of that. Individual stories show the depth of the cruelty: One defendant committed suicide rather than go back to jail; another recalls a female guard who was so enraged with the J6 defendants that she unloaded several cans of mace in their cell, as the men dropped to their knees in pain and many had to be removed on stretchers.
[W]hy so-called climate attribution studies must not be trusted or used to make any important decisions[:]
In order to attribute a current weather event to “climate change”, one must have two skillful, unbiased, calibrated (all these terms having certain mathematical definitions) climate models, one of the climate as it is now, in its supposed changed condition, and one of the climate as it would have been had it not undergone any change.
Next step is to calculate the probability of an observed event, conditional on the first “climate change” model, and then again on the “no change” model. If the probability of the event on the “climate change” model is larger than in the “no change” model, then this is evidence whatever caused “climate change” might have caused this event, made it more likely, or increased its strength, or the like.
But if either model is not skillful, or both do not make good predictions, or are not calibrated, then the attribution is worthless. As in of no worth.
“Government officials serve as important arbiters of political, economic, and social life.” They mean the permanent officials, the people who are never elected to anything, the people who get government jobs and rise into the senior ranks. They are “the arbiters.” They decide. Replacing their judgment with the judgment of people who win elections and are chosen by citizens to represent their interests is anti-democratic. Only rule by people who weren’t elected and who “cannot be fired or demoted for political reasons” preserves the democratic process that directs the republic. If voters can choose Trump, and Trump can change the government’s policy choices, that’s an assault on democratic principle.
As a painter, he would probably have been somewhat better off under a German occupation than a writer or journalist would be. But still, what he said contained a very dangerous fallacy, now very widespread in the countries where totalitarianism has not actually established itself.
The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the régime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom—that is the idea, more or less. And many people are under the impression that this is going on now in Germany and other dictatorial countries.
Why is this idea false? I pass over the fact that modern dictatorships don’t, in fact, leave the loopholes that the old-fashioned despotisms did; and also the probable weakening of the desire for intellectual liberty owing to totalitarian methods of education.
On Monday, Spanish grid operators found themselves sprinting against sunset. The entire country had blacked out. Planes paused on the runway for want of air traffic control. Trains lurched to a stop on the tracks or sat in their bays at the station. Within a few hours, the Spanish government declared a national emergency.
The blackouts even reached France and Portugal. Europe is learning another painful lesson about its power sector: If one nation mismanages its grid, its neighbors suffer with it. If these blackouts were caused by Spain’s green energy policies, as seems likely, these blackouts are a preview of the world to come.
If you think adults shouldn’t buy minors from pimps for sex, you’re breaking from progressives, who have concerns about imposing that prohibition. Today, after a Democratic committee chair pushed a bill on this question to the next legislative session, saying he needed time to conduct fact-finding and find an “equitable” version of a prohibition against buying children for sex, Republicans will try to force that prohibition into another bill on the floor.
…Maggy Krell, the author and leading legislative advocate of the proposed new law making it a felony to buy minors for sex, is a Democrat. Her background is quite unusual for someone who’s working to protect children: While she’s a former sex crimes prosecutor, she’s also a former chief counsel for Planned Parenthood of California. So even California leftists seem to be tiring of California leftists and the madness of their culture war dogma.
Well into the business day, the Assembly session isn’t starting — and journalists in the capitol are hearing that the delay is being caused by Democratic leaders trying to find a way to avoid the discussion about the trafficking of minors…
A fetus with European parents will come to term a week later, on average, than one with Sub-Saharan African parents (Rushton & Jensen, 2005, p. 264). Since pre-term delivery carries greater risks than post-term delivery (Campbell et al., 1997; Fayed et al., 2022), outcomes should be worse for births to Black mothers and White fathers than for births to White mothers and Black fathers. Indeed, this has been a consistent finding of American studies over the past four decades.
…
We found that infants born to Black mothers and White fathers had a 40% higher chance of low-birthweight than did White infants, independent of other risk factors. In contrast, infants born to White mothers and Black fathers had odds of low birthweight equal to those of infants in the general White population when measured risk factors were controlled. (Collins & David, 1993)
The authors concluded that “traditional sociodemographic risk factors do not explain the birthweight disadvantage of biracial infants born to Black mothers. Indeed, our findings suggest that these infants may also be at increased risk for prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation. Other unmeasured variables appear to be exerting a negative effect only in biracial births in which the Black parent is the mother
Ohhhhhhhh God it’s a BLOODBATH!!!!!! Example from the story: “More than a dozen senior lawyers — many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties — have been reassigned, the current and former officials say.”
Anyway, YOU KNOW WHO ELSE REASSIGNED GOVERNMENT LAWYERS THINK ABOUT IT. So:
There’s a BLOODBATH, it’s frightening and destructive and scary!
Some government lawyers have been reassigned
None of this is politics. We’re watching the explosive decompression of a sealed chamber under pressure — an extremely obvious extinction burst. I don’t think there’s anything in it to analyze, and I think the best response is watchful calm. In a few months, the haze of hyperemotional overreaction will start to clear, and we’ll have a sense of what’s been left standing.
Shapiro and Whitmer are gearing up for a blood feud, as I wrote in a recent focus piece on Governor Whitmer’s White House visit:
Her run will set up another family feud that will make 2024’s look tame when the big pro-Palestine population of southeast Michigan forces Whitmer into a rivalry with Josh Shapiro (he will also certainly be running), who will have the backing of the big Jewish donors out east. Whitmer’s default support base won’t tolerate Shapiro’s, and neither will Shapiro’s base tolerate Whitmer’s.
…this, like other reserves we had been to and were now avoiding, was to be a small plot of disturbed forest where friendly lemurs approached banana-toting tourists. As we were to find over and over again, few people trying their hand at ecotourism in Madagascar understand that some of us want to be immersed in nature, not carefully shielded from its betrayals and surprises.
Conservation is a tricky issue, especially in the developing world. White outsiders want to preserve the environment they view as precious, often without regard for the equally native and natural people who live in it. Ecologists and other trained scientists gain personally by convincing themselves and granting agencies that their work will benefit conservation efforts. Native peoples cannot fathom why the welfare of animals they might eat, or of trees, is more important than their own survival and traditions.
The Department of Health and Human Services has released a much-anticipated report on the “treatment for pediatric gender dysphoria”—that is, a feeling of distress over one’s biological sex. In a review of studies of how to treat the disorder, the report finds that “the overall quality of evidence concerning the effects of any intervention on psychological outcomes, quality of life, regret, or long-term health, is very low.”
…
The report also finds that:
Many of the studies done in the U.S. in support of transitioning minors suffer from serious methodological flaws.
U.S. medical associations create a perception of consensus in favor of pediatric medical transitions that does not exist and even suppress dissent and debate.
There is “no evidence that pediatric medical transition reduces the incidence of suicide, which remains, fortunately, very low.”
Nationwide, headlines describe a spectrum of transgendered, nonbinary, and other “gender non-conforming” variations of criminal offenders. These range from relatively innocuous criminality—like Brinton’s—to deadly violence. In January, transgender repeat knife offender Jaia Cruz fatally stabbed a postal worker after jockeying over places in the sandwich line at a Manhattan deli. A few weeks later, transgender Nicol Suarez, who was being pursued by ICE for previous crimes, stalked and then raped a 14-year-old boy in a bodega bathroom in East Harlem. In February, 18-year-old transgender Trinity Shockley was arrested as she planned a mass Valentine’s Day school shooting. She failed where Tennessee transgender teen Audrey Hale succeeded; Hale gunned down six kids and adults at The Covenant School.
All of these cases raise a very obvious question: Do transgender Americans commit crime at higher rates or of different types than “cis-gender” Americans?
The answer is: We have no idea.
Whereas crime data exist for all other demographics—race, age, educational attainment, etc.—we are not systematically collecting or analyzing stats for trans offenders.
Jeffrey Flier [is the] former dean of Harvard Medical School, who has gained attention in recent years as an insider critic of DEI. He has been mildly critical of diversity statements in faculty hiring, which he claims infringe on “academic freedom” and diminish “the true value of diversity.” Some conservatives praise him as a reformer, but the truth is more complicated: as dean, Flier was not a critic of DEI at all. In fact, he oversaw its rapid expansion and became a critic only after he retired from that position.
EVERY one of these people has proven to be a coward. While inside their organizations they say nothing, do little, and avoid rocking the boat at all costs.
We are done with cowardice and self-serving ambition. People have caught on Dr. Flier.
After resigning as dean, Flier himself admitted that he knew requiring diversity statements in faculty hiring was wrong but could only publicly express his criticism once he was out of power. “As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said [that I oppose requiring diversity statements]. But I will now.” In other words, Flier knew that these initiatives violated his principles but refused to voice his opinion at the time, not because of legal technicalities—a post hoc rationalization—but because it would have jeopardized his career. He could have opposed DEI, but chose not to, out of fear.
For ten years, anybody at all could enter Germany. All he had to do was claim asylum at our borders, and if he was smart, he would also make himself almost impossible to deport by destroying his identification documents. Migrants could do this even though none of them had any right to asylum in Germany. Asylum, after all, has to be claimed in the first EU country asylees reach. Merkel set aside this so-called “Dublin rule” in 2015, to reduce pressure on EU border states like Greece and Italy, but her act opened the generous German social welfare state to the entire developing world, serving only to pull more migrants into Europe generally.
As BILD notes, these policies have been in place for 3,533 days. Probably more than 3 million migrants – the vast majority of them would-be asylees – have come to the Federal Republic on the strength of them. Our politicians told us for years that nothing could be done about this, and now Dobrindt has done something. He has done something really big.
Legally, neighbouring countries are required to accept push-backs without question, and if Germany is consistent with push-backs, the sheer number of rejected migrants will compel our neighbours to enact their own push-backs as well. A domino effect will take root, which will end with the restoration of security at the external borders of the EU. This could be the end of an era – one of the stupidest, most pointless and self-destructive eras in modern European history.
After 13 years of Labour Governments which oversaw more people coming to Britain than had come between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and 1950, followed by 14 years of Conservative Governments which were even worse, the British public simply no longer trust either party to deal with this issue, and I don't blame them.
As such, Starmer will do on immigration exactly what he did on grooming gangs. When forced, he will talk about the issue as if it is really important, while acting as if it is not. We all saw what the Labour Party really thinks about the grooming gangs scandal last week, when a Labour front bencher described it as a "dog whistle". She has since apologised, but even more telling was that Starmer—who spent weeks promoting the Adolescence Netflix series as a "documentary" which must be shown in schools—ignored an actual documentary about grooming gangs that was released shortly after.
I rarely make political predictions, but on this I am fairly confident: immigration will continue to be a massive problem that goes largely unaddressed. The boats will keep coming, deporting violent foreign criminals will still be nigh on impossible because of their "human rights", and low-wage, low-skill mass immigration will continue at a level that is intolerable to a larger and larger section of British society. This will inevitably drive more and more people into the arms of Reform. The only question that remains is whether Nigel Farage and his party can capitalise on the opportunity this presents.
Brutal (and uncomfortable) but largely true. There’s a kind of impulsive, parasitic lifestyle and proneness to antisocial behavior that seems to particularly afflict poor and working class black communities. Most of the people aren’t actively participating in the most flagrant instances of disorder… but many young men (and some young women are) and that’s bad enough.
Honestly, it’s euphemistic to call these people ‘young men/women.’ They’re aggressive and overgrown children, living sordid lives from day to day chasing sex, modest sums of money, status, etc. on a basis that would seem insanely myopic and chaotic to most modern citizens.
This is what happens when you cultivate an entire subclass to fail the ‘marshmallow experiment’ so badly that the lab becomes unusable. Not only would the children not wait for the second marshmallow - they would burst through the door screaming, hit the other children and take their marshmallows, insult the study administrator, and upend the desks… all while filming TikTok.
Forget the causes for a moment. What’s the proper response? It can’t be apology, blanket permission, and the relaxation of expectations. It can’t.
Perhaps it’s just an immutable fact that a culture disintegrates without the guidance and love of fathers.
May 19th, 2025
Freddie de Boer:
At one point cancel culture comes up, and they recite the usual progressive catechism about it - canceling doesn’t matter, people aren’t really canceled, canceling doesn’t hurt anyone. This is of course not true, and I don’t think the people who say it really believe that it’s true. (If you’d like to argue about it, let’s meet in the lobby of the movie theater the next time a movie starring Armie Hammer is released.) The trouble with saying that canceling doesn’t work is that it immediately prompts this question: then why did you take part in it? Why did you defend it? It’s been whiplash-inducing to live through the cancel culture era. Liberals lustily participated in canceling campaigns, throwing fuel on every Twitter fire, insisting that the social media pile-on was a vital tool for achieving justice…. Those of us who expressed reservations were called the enemies of progress or worse. BUT ALSO, now, we’re constantly told that cancel culture isn’t a thing, that nobody really ever gets canceled, that people often actually benefit from cancelation! etc etc etc. These are, of course, totally incompatible claims. And yet not only do people move from one to the other, many somehow manage to believe both at the same time.
One of the amazing things about AI is that it gets better at creating coherent images the more data you train it on even if the data you give it is garbage such as racist memes or child drawings. It learns to mimic the shape of meaning even while losing any sense of ethical context. The underlying mathematical algorithm may seem like the metal endoskeleton that lies beneath the living flesh of the visual brainrot described above, blank and soulless as the blackness of a shark’s eyes, but as Nietzsche said, “If you look long into the abyss, the abyss also look into you.” Or rather, the abyss reflects you like the black mirror of a screen. And what does the mirror reveal? We created it to take the things we talk about most and feed it back to us, plucking the signal from the noise, the echo of humanity’s voice ringing through the dark forest of the uncanny valley. And the chaos of it all is just the visual tearing of the fabric of our being as we witness the death of meaning in the age of infinite content.
Dig beneath the fake AI-generated videos and what now counts are “real” is an actual video of an actual person, except this is not reality either. What appears on Instagram is pure performance. That young girl crying because her boyfriend left her? She had to set up her phone to record before she began to weep. But again, even when you train AI on videos that are themselves not real, something true emerges, the platonic ideal referenced even in the most performative display rises to the top. This is what Jean Baudrillard calls a simulacrum — a copy with no original, untethered from reality, morality, or even coherence. Nothing but a set of signifiers defined not by the referent, or actual thing in the world to which a word refers, but by our collective intuition of what a term probably means in the descriptive linguistics of postmodernist pragmatics where “woman” means whatever people think it means.
This particular fact is considered offensive among many liberal/left college educated women. We’ve done a lot as a group to discourage family formation and honestly I’m grossed out by it. We should have these shared norms instead of excusing single motherhood as an equivalent choice to getting married and then having children, especially because college educated women tend to get married before having kids. And this idea that everyone’s choices should be free of judgment from others is absurd, because even the people who say it don’t practice it themselves.
I can’t help but laugh reading the mainstream write-ups of OBBB [the recent American relief Act of 2025, passed by the House - “One Big Beautiful Bill”]. Suddenly, after four years of being a piggy bank for the world and letting every squatter who could get to Mexico slink across our southern border, the peanut gallery is the most fiscally conservative outfit you’ll ever find…
But the national debt!
Telling me the national debt will go up 10% in a decade if OBBB is signed into law is like someone warning me that a diet of donuts taking me from 450 to 495 pounds in a decade is going to kill me. Here’s a newsflash – I’m already living on borrowed time at that rate, anyway, and so is the country as it stands today.
That final graphic is classic
Excellent.