I lifted a graphic from last weekend’s Powerline Week in Pictures, and posted it on my Facebook feed (where I post only anodyne stuff and things to do with my books, home improvements, and social schedule) which pretty much sums up how I’m feeling this week. Kermit the Frog stares out a rain-drop-misted window, and says, “Sounds Like Thunder Outside – But With the Way 2020 is Going, It Could Be Godzilla.”
Even before one could draw a breath of relief that the Chinese Commie Crud had not ravaged the US population anything like the 1918 Spanish Flu did, and that life was returning to something like normal, what with businesses slowly reopening – here came the stomping behemoth of violent protests and race-riots, in the wake of the death (possibly caused by drugs rather than the apparent mistreatment) of a long-time violent criminal of color at the hands of a white police officer.
This entire brutal and grotesque encounter was on video and understandably condemned as unacceptable overreaction on the part of the officer by just about every reasonable person of any color who watched it. Serious concerns regarding the militarization of police have been raised for at least a decade among thoughtful citizens, what with so many instances of police barging into houses in no-knock and full SWAT mode (often the wrong house, and opening fire indiscriminately), of abusing civil forfeiture statutes and traffic fines as a means of making budget. This concern was exacerbated by resentment during the Chinese Commie Crud lockdown enforcing social distancing – like pursuing a solitary paddle-boarder, all alone on the ocean, and going all-out on parents tossing a softball in a park with their kid.
There might have been a genuine interracial consensus about the proper role of police in a community, in protesting George Floyd’s death (as most everyone would prefer a law enforcement presence more like Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor than Dirty Harry Callahan) … but alas, the opportunity for Black Lives Matter activists to metaphorically wave the bloody shirt was too rich to ignore.
“Black Lives That Can Be Used To Wave The Bloody Shirt Are Useful is a more accurate, if unwieldy, name for that group,” was an acerbic comment at Sarah Hoyt’s place in a long discussion thread, to which another replied,
“Black Lives are an asset of the Black Collective and only they have the privilege of disposing of them. Thus the fifty or so Black Lives discarded in Chicago any given month are acceptable while the (in average) one Black Life terminated in conflict with a police officer (all of whom are White by virtue of upholding the Power of The Man) constitutes a form of poaching and is therefore an unlawful taking.”
And so the urban core of certain cities is burning … again. Curiously, just about every one of those cities – Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Seattle – are reliably, progressively Democrat, in many cases have been for decades. Such shining beacons of toleration, frequently with mayors, city councils and police chiefs of color, all ostentatiously dedicated to the appearance of social justice! Really, a cynical observer such as myself might very well wonder why conditions for inner-city residents have not improved in the slightest; half a century of activism, of desegregation, of political consideration, of affirmative action, of incessant sensitivity training, election of People of Color (is that the current favored term among the Wokerati?) to every office in the land (including the Presidency), and incessant lectures on race relations … and in just about every respect, urban black populations are worse off than before, and correspondingly more resentful. It is a puzzle, indeed.
Perhaps and purely as an experiment we might try just ignoring race altogether. Alas, the Wokerati are demanding more apologies, more loud demonstrations of concern about our own lamentable racism, on pain of everything from social shunning to firing of the uncooperative, adding racial injury to Covid-19 insult.
Everyone on the paler side of the human spectrum is being hectored on social media, by overpaid academics, socially-conscious actors, and grandstanding news personalities about having to do more to confront our own inner racism, or at the very least, solemnly informed by emails from various corporations, that the societal unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death is a Very Serious Concern, and they are all Deeply Committed to Voicing Concern … to which I reply, in rising irritation – look, when I want a sermon, I’ll go to church services. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to say no to the demands of the Wokerati to take part in some kind of perverted public struggle session. No, I will not bow, take a knee, apologize for something that my ancestors never had a part in. I already know enough about racism, thank you, as well as human history. I will not be browbeaten into compliance by the Wokerati, and I am pretty sure that I am not alone.
1 Kings: 19:18 – “Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
In addition to your timely and relevant verse, I would also add Psalm 106:37, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods,” to remind parents what happens when they send their children off to study at college woketariums where they will be indoctrinated into the strange false religion of the Left.
How this goes crazy on the vast majority of cops who are better than just good at their job and have the same revulsion to racist or violent cops as the average American, is a puzzle. On the other hand, the ethnic communities have been told for decades they are poor and violent because The Man is holding them down based on race and they will always be unable to make it without special help from a sugar daddy government. Well, it’s not far to attributing every hardship to the cops. Now the virtue signally contest is in full swing.
If anything the data shows cops generally act uncommonly restrained with blacks. There are millions of positive contacts and we only hear of the few that are screwed up. We can even name them individually.
With this train rolling downhill, the damage to the legal system is beginning to accelerate. The minority communities are about to get tossed under this train.
Death6
The madness has gotten so unbridled that there are noises bruited about regarding cancelling all shows featuring police – and a couple of police-reality-ride-along shows have already been cancelled. And there is chatter about cancelling Paws Patrol? FFS, a kiddy cartoon? Really? (*my voice rising to a shriek*)
Well, at least I already have a DVD of unexpurgated Blazing Saddles. Guess I should snag one of those DVDs of Gone With The Wind in general principles, although that book always made me want to throw it across the room, and Scarlett was one of the most egotistical, self-centered b*tches in literary creation. (I based a minor character in the Adelsverin Trilogy on her – Scarlett as experienced by those people who didn’t like her one single bit.)
These people are trying their damnedest to obliterate history – and our media pukes are merrily going along with it. Even adding fuel to the bonfire. Damn them. Damn them all to the hell that they are creating.
If we focused on improving the police, without the least regard to eliminating racism, the African-American population would be the primary beneficiaries. But then their “leaders” would have jobs and people interviewing them on CNN. Can’t have that.
Most protesters are peaceful, and most city leaders have the good of the public at heart. So say most journalists who are of course mostly accurate and unbiased. We are however supposed to believe that “systemic, inherent” etc etc racism permeates the entirety of every soul working in the police profession. Oh really?
I encountered an engaging metaphor about policing — “The city’s dog-catchers aren’t working for the dogs.”
Among journalists the biggest bias is not so much political as it is in selecting for sensational, rare, stories. Dog bites Dog is no common it is never mentioned. Dog bites Man is not rare and gets no headlines but might be mentioned among other routine reports. Man bites Dogs is so rare it’s sensational and will get headlined. If two or more other Men have bitten two or more other Dogs anytime in the past decade the whole “trend” will be analyzed at great length. But none of the analysis or the reporting is helpful. The frequent issue that the city wants to address is, in fact, the common problem of dogs fighting and biting each other and sometimes the people unlucky enough to be nearby. We have dogcatchers to solve real problems. AND civilized cultures have institutions like the SPCA to ensure the dogs are treated fairly.
I do not mean at all to compare any identity group to canines. What I intend is to distinguish between real trends in common, community, shared-experience, problems with the click-bait headlines and cable-news rants about “narratives” that are — by the standards and systemic structure of news itself — rare and unusual. Basing any public policy on the reports generated by the news will result in AWFUL policy diverting too many funds toward very rare problems.
If racism is the fault of ‘society’, African-American studies programs are complicit, and should be abolished. If sexism is the fault of ‘society’, women’s and gender studies programs are complicit, and should be defunded. If homophobia is the fault of ‘society’, likewise and likewise LGBT studies.
The ‘scholars’ behind this theory are hypocrites, who are not burning down their own offices. The ‘theory’ of these subjects, being used to justify the riots, reaches its usual results only because all argument is very carefully curated. Anti-black pogroms are as valid a conclusion as community based policing. If Anglo-American police customs cannot be practiced on certain populations for racial reasons, then massacre is at least as natural as any other approach to the business.
Cambodia showed us that 1/8th is not too much of the population to kill. The major practical obstacle is that American blacks are not anywhere near as isolated as critical race theory would have us believe. With the end of miscegenation laws, there are more than a few whites with ties of kinship to blacks. With the desegregation of the armed services, and police department hiring of blacks, there are quite a few armed whites with ties of affinity to some number of blacks.
I’m a racist because I can’t be bothered to give lip service to that crap, won’t respect it, and haven’t been spending my time burning down minority businesses? How sure are they that they really want to convince me to identify that way?
The opposition’s information services are going all out this cycle, and I’m really pissed off about that. Perhaps they’ve realized how much they have unmasked, and that they have nothing more to lose? One last throw of the die, because they are so deep in the hole, they can’t get any worse?
Beyond the pure rage at the lies people are telling me, there is the communist issue.
Over on ATH, there was a discussion on books about the Cultural Revolution/Mao Zedong. Alma, of course, had some very good suggested titles. COQ/Vathara mentioned Hungry Ghosts, and how it lead her to the conclusion that communists need to be stopped. Me? I read Chung and Halliday, rolled to disbelieve, failed, and lost quite a bit of SAN. I don’t wonder whether mass murder is justifiable if it prevents communist take over. It absolutely is, /IF/. The only question I have is how much mass murder is just if it prevents communist take over.
Among journalists the biggest bias is not so much political as it is in selecting for sensational, rare, stories.
That sounds like an attempt to explain away obvious political biases. How else to account for the strange silence when it turns out that the black kid shot by police was a thug who had just shot someone? How else to explain the silence and lack of editorial outrage when a black person murders a white or Asian person for racist reasons or other reasons? How else to explain the curious silence regarding the revolutionary Marxist nature of Antifa and BLM? The racist aspects of BLM? The lies told by Antifa and BLM?
That sounds like an attempt to explain away obvious political biases.
It is ranking the biggest of several biases.
Journalists have political biases at least as much as any one else. That skews the way they tell a story. But I say the biggest bias is how a story is selected to be told. When a thug of any race attacks another thug of any race the typical journalist is silent because he she or it sees no novelty or *hook* to a report.
If an already famous celebrity of any race attacks someone else of any race, (or vice versa) then the story is selected to be reported. This is so commonly understood that semi-famous celebrities attempt to leverage such stories. Jussie Smollett for example. Even verbal attacks via twitter -if originating from the famous- get covered. Actual violence from ordinary folks toward other ordinary folks… Not so much. Anyhow this is a celebrity-bias related to but distinct from novelty-bias.
Journalists are biased against stories that use numerical methods to make reasonable analysis. Unless the numbers are like “millions will die”…
Journalists are biased against maintenance and in favor of innovation. A plan to fix potholes will get no attention while a plan to cut a new road will get lots of coverage.
Journalists are biased to cover sex scandals instead of bribes or nepotism or incompetence.
There is the observation that certain “news” is scheduled to be released on days when journalists are covering something else. Timing bias is real, too.
There was a good interview on Tucker Carlson by a Brit who commented on the background of so many of these rioters – incubated by so many of these colleges and universities.
And he had a simple solution: Defund those departments.
And stop given student loans for these dubious disciplines (which upon graduation, the student is further fueled by resentment at not finding a job) – win-win.
And it was noted by Carlson that the first things these anarchists did in Seattle in establishing their own “country” – was to erect a wall :-)
“Journalist” has become nothing more than a shorthand way to say “professional paid leftist liar.”
Curiously, just about every one of those cities – Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Seattle – are reliably, progressively Democrat, in many cases have been for decades. Such shining beacons of toleration, frequently with mayors, city councils and police chiefs of color, all ostentatiously dedicated to the appearance of social justice!
Making racism ‘systemic’ is intended to move it beyond the actual control of anyone who possibly could have authority to do something about it. I’m pretty sure even the myriad of individuals who are moved to confess ‘white privilege’ are not really going to change their behavior in any significant ways. The focus is on changing the ‘system’, i.e. what other people are doing.
Pst314 Says:
June 11th, 2020 at 8:20 pm
…How else to explain the silence and lack of editorial outrage when a black person murders a white or Asian person for racist reasons or other reasons?…
—–
All I watch on TV are true crime shows*, most soon to be cancelled, and my wife is sick to her back teeth of me saying “I don’t recall there being any riots over that murder.”
* Soon to be cancelled.
Oops. Forgot to fill out the header info on that comment … :-)
Actual violence from ordinary folks toward other ordinary folks… Not so much.
When an unknown black racist attacks or even kills an unknown white person, it is almost always only local news and the racist factor is mostly ignored–and is certainly not touted as a reason for doing something about black racism. But when the racists are reversed When an unknown white racist kills an unknown black person, it is the topic of endless national news. When a good white person kills a violent black thug in self defense, that too is cause for national outrage.
It is deeply discreditable to deny this pernicious bias.
The preceding 6:54am Anonymous was me.
“I don’t recall there being any riots over that murder.”
Indeed, indeed.
Speaking of the journalistic dishonesty that some people try to tell us does not exist: When I was a pre-teen, there was a push to expunge from crime reporting any mention of the race of the perpetrator: No photos, no descriptions, etc. This was demanded because it was “racist” to allow newspaper readers to see what a large fraction of crimes were committed by young black people.
And so the urban core of certain cities is burning … again. Curiously, just about every one of those cities – Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Seattle – are reliably, progressively Democrat, in many cases have been for decades.
And in lockstep Democratic officials, media and some of the dimmer Republicans try to shift responsibility to the federal govt – and thereby to shift attention away from the corruption and ineptitude of Democratic local govts.
And so the urban core of certain cities is burning … again.
Thanks in part to the numerous dishonest “journalists” who saw themselves not as honest news reporters but as the propaganda arm of Antifa and other extremist groups.
1 Kings: 19:18 – “Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
Taking a knee is a religiously symbolic act. Jews don’t kneel in prayer, yet Sen. Schumer didn’t hesitate to allow himself be photographed kneeling in submission to the gods of identity politics. A man’s gotta know his priorities, to paraphrase a famous Republican.
Pst314 Says:
June 12th, 2020 at 7:42 am
Speaking of the journalistic dishonesty that some people try to tell us does not exist: When I was a pre-teen, there was a push to expunge from crime reporting any mention of the race of the perpetrator: No photos, no descriptions, etc. This was demanded because it was “racist” to allow newspaper readers to see what a large fraction of crimes were committed by young black people.
=====
The lack of information is information. Inerringly accurate information.
The lack of information is information. Inerringly accurate information.
Of course. If a politician caught in a crime has no party listed, it is a Democrat. If race is not listed, I look for the name or a photo. White criminals are sufficiently rare that they will be identified as such. In British reports, “South Asians” are Muslim.
People of Color (is that the current favored term among the Wokerati?)
And a demeaning term at that; little different from the term colored person. Every human is colored. There are no People of Transparency.
There’s always a silver lining, Sgt. Mom. When you think about it, the CHAZ idea may be worth considering. After all, Antifa and their pals could be kept out of a CHAZ clone as well as in.
Anonymous Says:
June 12th, 2020 at 11:21 am
People of Color (is that the current favored term among the Wokerati?)
And a demeaning term at that; little different from the term colored person. Every human is colored. There are no People of Transparency.
=====
If one believes in evolution, then we are ALL African — some of us just got a little pale along the way. Ironically, albinos in Africa are not only discriminated against, but hunted for their juju …
If one believes in evolution, then we are ALL African — some of us just got a little pale along the way</i
As humans moved north. I used to work with a black orthopedist and teased him one time by saying that Farrakhan was right about us whites. We are “Ice People.” I showed him a copy of “The 10,000 Year Explosion,” which is about evolution. He ordered copies for his daughters. One argument about the WuFlu is that blacks tend to be vitamin D deficient. That’s why, as humans moved out of Africa, they evolved white skin to absorb Vitamin D.
In Asia, the same effect is seen. The further north, the whiter the skin.
Uh, Kingsnake, if one believes in evolution, then one can (even must!) ask, “Which race is superior.” And that presupposes, for that matter, a definition of race.
Interesting observation about “hunted for juju”.
hunted for their juju
Still happening? Has the frequency declined since the 80’s when the first account I read was published?
What do you expect since we/they bought the “culls” on clearance.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-great-grandfather-the-nigerian-slave-trader
“Founder population” effect, I think.
Quick google search: 10 in Tanzania alone, in January, 2019, alone. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47447103
Thank you, Kingsnake.
Following the link I find another headline “Challenging Africa’s albino stereotypes” which ought replace “stereotypes” with “barbaric superstitions”.
Roy, you can’t ask such a question without an understanding of what “superior” means. Is a poodle superior to a dachshund?
If you try to define it in terms of economic utility, I’m afraid we have to part company on that.
If you define it in terms of moral character, you’re getting into what only God can judge.
I have talked to Nigerians who ridicule American blacks as “descended from losers in tribal wars.” Of course they are Igbos, or Ibos as they were known.
There is an enormous amount of mythology about slavery, especially from American blacks. This myth making does them enormous harm but they will not listen. I doubt they can pull down the country but thew whites that use them as symbols are stronger.
Still not more than 1968, I think
James, your question about the meaning of “superior” (ie, by what standard) is not my conundrum, but that of the evolutionist. You probably easily recall plenty of examples in history where this or that person/group attempted to argue evolution made him/her/them superior to some other him/her/them.
James, your question about the meaning of “superior” (ie, by what standard) is not my conundrum, but that of the evolutionist.
Sounds like someone who does not believe in evolution, although using the term”believing” is to misstate the case. Evolution is life. As we move into the age of Genetic Medicine, medical students need to know more and more about it and how it works. There is no meaning to “Superior” in evolution. One adapts to one’s environment or one has no descendants after a while. Plasmodium falciparum evolved resistance to chloroquine. If not, it would die out as a human disease.
Nobody knows why blue eyes, for example, persist. They were the result of a mutation about 10,000 years ago in the part of Europe that is now Lithuania. There are Asians with white skin but none with blue eyes.
As one might expect America reopening has brought surges in Covid cases all over. The Commie Flu is not finished with you, although you like to pretend you are done with it. Arizona is not looking good Mike.
On Vancouver Island we are still Covid free and our cases in BC are dropping nicely, only 16 in the last day or so.
@Mike K
Agree. Evolution is a natural process, so in an evolutionary context the term “superior” is meaningless. Human beings make value judgments, and may deem diamonds “superior” to lumps of coal, but as far as nature is concerned they’re both just masses of carbon. The social Darwinists may have deemed one race superior to another, but they weren’t really Darwinists at all. Natural selection doesn’t work at the level of races, and it doesn’t pick “higher” forms over “lower” forms. Genes are selected because they happen to result in better odds of survival in a given environment. “Superiority” is a human value judgment that plays no role in the process.
PenGun appears briefly to remind us how disappointing it was that Benedict Arnold failed to take Canada and kick all the traitors back to Blighty.
The current enthusiasm, seen on CNN especially, about increased diagnoses reflects the delayed level of testing thanks to our incompetent CDC and FDA. Hopes on the left will not kill the US economy or the Trump re-election.
Helian: “Evolution is a natural process, so in an evolutionary context the term “superior” is meaningless.”
That seems like bowing down to political correctness. In an evolutionary context, “superior” has a very well-defined meaning — Who produces the largest number of viable offspring which survive and themselves reproduce? Are mammals superior to dinosaurs? Take a look outside — the answer is obvious.
Evolution is a natural process. On the other hand, selective breeding — such as humans have imposed on cattle, sheep, dogs, apples, etc — is very definitely not a natural process. In selective breeding, “superior” also has a very well-defined (but different) meaning — the animals & plants allowed to reproduce have traits which human beings prefer. “Superior” has to be understood in the context of what the human breeders want — the kind of dog needed to chase rabbits out of holes is not the same kind of dog needed to hunt deer.
In almost any context, “superiority” has a definite meaning — although Political Correctness makes people reluctant to acknowledge that publicly. We run into the great principle of Relativity — what is superior depends what we consider important. The Gauls were clearly superior to the Romans, in that they destroyed the Western Roman Empire; but the Romans were clearly superior to the Gauls in architecture and literature. What we consider to be most important defines us.
here’s a twist about the kente cloth, pelosi was wearing while kneeling, it’s an ashanti pattern, what were they famous for, and what did baden powell, suppress, according to his diaries, the lslave trade,
One of the memes that I saw was Pelosi being helped up from her knees: “Help, I’m pandering and I can’t get up!”
Celia, at least Nadler did not try to kneel. It would have taken most of the capital staff to get him up.
*snerk* Or a forklift!
Nadler was kneeling in his dreams.
Death6
Penny shows up again to revel in his ignorance.
Arizona has a population of 7.3 million. It is a popular location for relocating retirees. Apparently Penny does not know that retirees tend to be older folks, many of whom suffer from maladies other than old age. Who knew! In addition, about 1/4 of the Arizona land mass is Indian Reservation land, with 27 federally recognized Native American Tribes. Largest of these, the Navajo has 300,000 members. Not widely recognized, the Navajo have suffered a disproportionate number of viral infections and deaths. Let Penny revel in that. While I haven’t studied the issue, I will hazard a guess it relates to the nature of Tribal life on the Reservations. Family life is all-important in the Res. Penny likely doesn’t know much about that either.
Here are a couple of web pages, one devoted to the state infection statistics by county, the other discusses the statistics in Yavapai county (where I live out in the county, outside the Prescott City limits).
https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php
https://www.dcourier.com/news/2020/jun/12/covid-19-update-368-confirmed-cases-7-deaths-yavap/
Of the current 368 cases in Yavapai County, 122 occurred at the Mingus Mountain Academy. It is a residence facility for wayward girls located in a remote part of Prescott Valley. Not really near anything and situated on a remote side road off the road leading to Mingus Pass, on the other side of which lies Jerome, Cottonwood, Verde Valley and Sedona.
Note that the largest numbers of infection and death are from Pima County (Tucson) and Maricopa County (Phoenix, or as we call it, The Valley). Metro area population of Tucson in 2020 is 982,000. Metro Phoenix has 4,737,270 residents
Finally, here is a map of Arizona Native American Reservation lands:
https://universitysecretary.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/native_peoples_of_arizona_-map_0.pdf
Lots of dead and dying there for Penny to revel in.
@Gavin
“We run into the great principle of Relativity — what is superior depends what we consider important.”
Exactly, and with that statement you’ve just refuted your original premise. Only conscious, intelligent minds can make value judgments and, as you claim, they are always subjective. Natural selection does not, and is in fact incapable of, making value judgments. As Hume, and before him Hutcheson and several others pointed out, our value judgments are the outcome of our noodling about what our emotions are trying to tell us. The emotions themselves, as well as everything else about us of any selective significance, are themselves an outcome of natural selection. I am stating facts. They are not politically correct facts, nor are they politically incorrect facts. They are simply facts.
Helian: “Only conscious, intelligent minds can make value judgments and, as you claim, they are always subjective.”
It is not clear what you are trying to do here, Helian, by mixing natural selection with selective breeding. The human value judgment which says — We need a big fast dog which can bring down a running deer and consequently we focus on breeding that kind of dog — is anything but subjective. Size & speed of a dog are objective characteristics.
The Politically Correct part of the deliberate misunderstanding of evolution comes in when people try to ignore the evidence and claim that all dogs are the same. Of course, the Politically Correct don’t make that claim about dogs — they make the claim that all people are the same. And they avert their eyes from Ivy League universities discriminating against students with ethnic Asian heritage. If all peoples are the same, why do those bastions of Politically Correctness have to set the entry bar higher for people with certain backgrounds and much lower for students with certain other backgrounds? Why not one standard for everyone — since we are all the same?
Let’s not mix the scientific theory of natural selection with errant Political Correctness.
Evolution occurs at the level of individual genes. There is nothing emotional or even conscious about it.
Blue eyes are a single mutation. Nobody knows why it persists. There has to be a reason but we have no idea what it is.
Demographics of Metro Vancouver
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black: 29,830 (1.2%)
@Gavin
“Let’s not mix the scientific theory of natural selection with errant Political Correctness.”
Agreed. I’m certainly not in favor of political correctness.
I don’t believe that there is any biological reason that humans couldn’t be bred for selected characteristics in the same way that livestock have been for millennia. This would similarly depend on isolating and reinforcing variability already produced by evolution.
There are a number of practical problems however. The most immediate is the long generational interval that makes any such attempt slow from a human perspective. Humans have a pretty low fertility compared to domesticated livestock, which not coincidentally is a highly desired trait and product of selective breeding. The disconnect in the human female between fertility and receptivity makes actual paternity hard to guarantee.
This hasn’t stopped different regimes and even a few cults from trying. I’m not aware of any successes. The informal experiment carried out by the various royal families of Europe was disastrous. Even with dogs and horses it doesn’t seem possible to narrowly select for certain desired traits without a high incidence of defects. In China and India we see that even selecting for sex is likely to end very badly.
The largest impediment is ethical. Whether this human exceptionalism can withstand the march of scientific progress remains to be seen. The heretofore unthinkable culling of failed human breeding experiments is being steadily eroded, first by abortion and now by euthanasia.
I don’t believe that there is any biological reason that humans couldn’t be bred for selected characteristics in the same way that livestock have been for millennia. This would similarly depend on isolating and reinforcing variability already produced by evolution.
Have you read Charles Murray’s book, “Coming Apart ?” It is about selective mating by social class and IQ.
I haven’t read the book or even heard of it before now. To be honest, it strikes me as a point too obvious to be worth writing a book about.
I suppose there would be some interest in seeing how well individual’s assessment of both their and their mates qualities aligned with reality. If people were very good at it in general, it would have a devastating effect on divorce lawyers, not to mention romance writers.
By that reasoning, you’d expect Mensa to be a real meat market.
The book.
The NY Times didn’t like it.
The problem, Murray argues, is not that members of the new upper class eat French cheese or vote for Barack Obama. It is that they have lost the confidence to preach what they practice, adopting instead a creed of “ecumenical niceness.” They work, marry and raise children, but they refuse to insist that the rest of the country do so, too. “The belief that being a good American involved behaving in certain kinds of ways, and that the nation itself relied upon a certain kind of people in order to succeed, had begun to fade and has not revived,” Murray writes.
Few people today would dismiss the idea that values, culture and intelligence all play a role in economic success. But it is hard to know what to make of some of Murray’s findings. As with David Brooks’s “Bobos in Paradise,”Murray’s sociology depends a lot on his own, sometimes highly idiosyncratic, fieldwork. To demonstrate that the elite are more likely to drive foreign cars than domestic ones, Murray notes the makes of automobiles in a couple of mall parking lots. In an otherwise persuasive chapter arguing that Ivy League graduates tend to live near one another, Murray quotes a remark by Michael Barone, the conservative commentator, complaining about the profusion of Harvard and Yale graduates on his former block. If Murray believes that wealthy yuppies suffer from creeping nonjudgmentalism, I invite him to spend an hour on UrbanBaby.com.
They had no idea. Obama had just lost the House.
“PenGun appears briefly to remind us how disappointing it was that Benedict Arnold failed to take Canada and kick all the traitors back to Blighty.” We ended up giving him a big hunk of land after he defected. The campaign was laughable.
Black: 29,830 (1.2%) Yup we did not build our nation on the backs of slaves.
That’s me. There’s no way you can fix this Jonathan? Persistence was broken by some patch or other.
Penny says: “Black: 29,830 (1.2%) Yup we did not build our nation on the backs of (black) slaves.”
Chinese 499,175 20.6%
See how easy that is? Seriously Penny, we all already know that you are as dumb as a box of rocks. Why do you keep reinforcing that well established meme?
Next you will lecture us on our historical treatment of our indigenous people. You first.
As far as I can see, there are two sorts of parents. Those that marry and have children, even where they may get the order wrong or eschew the actual formalities, they signify a realization that procreation entails a significant commitment over years. And those that simply don’t.
The first group have their problems and failures.
In the second group, it is usually the father that declines the challenge. For the mothers, you have to believe that it is a case of biological imperative overwhelming even the most tenuous grasp of reality.
The enduring mystery is why the steady increase of illegitimacy has paralleled the advent of cheap and effective contraception and abortion on demand. A trend that seems to embrace all ethnicities.
Au contraire, mon ami:
Black Enslavement in Canada
In early Canada, the enslavement of African peoples was a legal instrument that helped fuel colonial economic enterprise. The buying, selling and enslavement of Black people was practiced by European traders and colonists in New France in the early 1600s, and lasted until it was abolished throughout British North America in 1834.
Slave owning was widespread in colonial Canada. Individuals from all levels of society owned slaves, not just the political and social elite. People who enslaved Black persons included government and military officials, disbanded soldiers, Loyalists, merchants, fur traders, tavern and hotel keepers, millers, tradesmen, bishops, priests and nuns. While slave ownership filled a need for cheap labour, it was also considered part of an individual’s personal wealth. The law enforced and maintained enslavement through legal contracts that detailed transactions of the buying, selling or hiring out of enslaved persons, as well as the terms of wills in which enslaved people were passed on to others.
“Chinese 499,175 20.6%
See how easy that is?”
ROTFLMFAO … indeed. ;)
THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS:
COVID-19 DEATHS BY RACE AND ETHNICITY IN THE U.S.
Deaths per 100K population
Black Americans: 61.6
Indigenous Americans: 36.0
Latino Americans: 28.2
Asian Americans: 26.3
White Americans: 26.2
Well CapitalistRoader, that will doubtless cause Penny considerable anguish. Those White American (Deplorable) death rates are too low.
From your link, I see that in Arizona, Indigenous Americans have died at the rate of 69/100,000 people. White Americans have died at the rate of 13.5/100,000 people.
That is a rate that is 419% higher. Somehow, that seems to please Penny. Your move Penny.
We have known about these numbers for quite some time. The darker your skin the worse will be your outcome. This also applies to males and females, and males suffer a lot more deaths and worse outcomes.
I know you are racists but give your head a shake. ;)