Pondering the Why

And with the defenestration of James Damore, the great machine of progress continues its tireless work: Onward, comrades!

Far be it for me to ascribe this or that analysis to Google’s behavior and trajectory. I have little to say, no solutions to offer beyond letting Google eat itself. Let the little conservatives have their pearl clutching and fainting couches, I am a reactionary! Whatever that counts for anyways.

I’ve been re-reading Moldbug. Truth be told, there is much that I never read that I have covered since I started. Far be it for me to have ever said that I’ve read all of Moldbug – I certainly read more than Michael Enoch, whose contributions to his movement not withstanding none the less annoyed me with his habit of not reading a thing and then pontificating on the subject matter. Someday I’ll have some unsolicited advice for Mr. Enoch, but that day is not today and I somehow suspect he won’t read it. Anyways, working the old mental treadmill is good once in a while, and I enjoy Yarvin’s prose, not to mention his theories generally.

Being a dutiful reactionary and going through Unqualified Reservations had me thinking quite a bit today at work. Incidentally, this involves the unfortunate fate of Mr. Damore, but beyond his ignoble fate as a starting point, my train of thought quickly diverted elsewhere. That elsewhere, specifically, is the progressive obsession with racial diversity. Why specifically.

There are a million competing narratives on why White Leftists profess to loooove diversity. My least favorite is the standard talking point of the Alt-Right: That Jewish influence through media and universities promotes cultural degeneration among Whites that itself inculcates ethnic self-loathing, pathological altruism, miscegenation and a whole host of other evils. I used to buy in to this a little bit more than I do now, but increasingly I have found myself regarding the JQ with a bit of incredulity. I always have to stress this part, in large part because I do not want to suddenly realize that the neuroticism of the Alt-Right is as bad as their opposites (thus incidentally giving ammo to Sargon of Akkad’s horseshoe theory and his insufferable “above the fray” centrism). It is not that I have suddenly forgotten incidents of Jewish malfeasance. Let me run through this:

Where the Alt-Right is correct is pointing out not just the bad behavior of a whole host of coin clutching oven dodgers, but also the fact that merely pointing out bad behavior on the part of Jews is considered among the most offensive acts within modern, polite society. I use those last two words loosely. Where the Alt-Right is wrong is in how they order categories. What is the common denominator between people who espouse progressive views? That's a trick question. The lowest common denominator between progressives is the progressive worldview. For practical purposes, considering Moldbug's thesis on political ideology as the new religion (the various flavors of progressive idealism), there are almost no right-wing Jews in America. Let's take a count: Michael Savage, Steven Miller (who most certainly browses /pol/), Shylock Holmes and Curtis Yarvin makes... 3 and a half Jews. Roughly. I threw Michael Savage in their because I like the guy well enough and because he resisted the tendency of his ethnic brethren to go full retard #NeverTrump. It is to a degree understandable that members of the Alt-Right are so focused on Jews, but as I have said previously, this focus ultimately transforms into a sort of neuroticism along the lines of White Nationalism 1.0, which you should by now know failed spectacularly in all of it's goals.

But I'm not here to bitch about errors in a blossoming political movement. That comes later. Continuing down the long list of reasons that progressives fetishize diversity, allow me to contradict myself:

The Alt-Right's it's the Kikes! narrative isn't my least favorite. While I dislike the Alt-Right's narrative, I don't dislike it because they aren't telling the truth. Much of what the Alt-Right says about the who and the whom is on point, as far as I can tell, so my biggest beef with them is that the monomaniacal focus on the Jews inhibits them from fixing White people. But it should be stressed that factually most of them are not lying.

My actual least favorite narrative is that Progressives actually are deeply altruistic people with a keen sense of justice and that they actively and selflessly work to create a better world with little thought of any sort of reward. That's an elaborate and generous explanation for behavior like this:

Have you tried not being a cunt?

If only the instinct to signal holier than thou could be harnessed for something more productive than flagrant and garish displays of risk-free altruism. Like actual virtue. Of course the author of this cringe piece is a woman, and I am generally unimpressed by what goes on in a woman's head. Roissy's hamster wheel is not just an evocative piece of rhetorical flourish. Perhaps it was the constant squeaking of under-oiled wheels spinning on their axles that drove me insane during my undergraduate.

Anecdotally, I've noticed that the more wretched the White, the more likely they are to fall for the progressive meme. Or, as PA once said it, "Being the most feeble of our stock, SJWs rush after the the Left’s mirage of a shortcut to power." I've noticed this on the occasion that I run into people I knew from high school. Some of these people I've known since I was three or four. My hometown is not particularly large, and the Catholic School community is (was) particularly close nit. It is not surprising to me that the people who never really fit in, the fatties, the unpleasant or ugly girls, or the guys who always sat on the periphery of the jocks are all SJWs now. There is also the bleed over from the formerly attractive who (usually through the fattening effect of copious amounts of alcohol) also convert to Progressive Idealism because running a caloric deficit is hard. Fortunately, most of the hot girls from high school are still hot. The effect I just described should be called Ashley Judd Syndrome. I'm willing to bet that as insufferably stupid as she is today, a younger Jessica Valenti was cute and apolitical. Intelligence, incidentally, is something I only use as a selection filter for my male friends. I don't need you to be smart, sweetheart, just stay in shape. Someone somewhere, perhaps on Social Matter, made the case that Egypt and the rest of the Arab World slipped from the relaxed progressivism of the 60s into the hard-line Islamist countries they are today in part because the formerly young girls of the 60s resented the attention younger and more attractive girls were getting after they past their prime. Interesting if true, as this self-destruction mechanism could plausibly be linked to the anti-family mentality modern feminists are attempting to inculcate on young college students. Regrettably I am currently without a link. When I find it I'll put it in, for your reading pleasure.

The point of the matter is that the self-evident wretchedness of White millennial progressives has compelled me to forgo the classic conservative failure of responding to ridiculous arguments and bullshit talking points like micro-aggressions, x y and z privilege and the perennially scientific mansplaining, in favor of this basic conversation ender: What are you getting out of this? The obvious truth, the truth no one dares take to its logical conclusion, is that White millennial progressives only believe what they believe because it allows them to harvest social signals with which they build their reputation. Some things, like taste in music, are ephemeral. It should not surprise anyone that bands fall in and out of favor, partially due to the whims of the masses and of course in large part due to the quality of the content produced. While there are seemingly eternal exceptions such as the Beatles (you have terrible taste), music comes and goes. Remember when people liked Skrillex? Because I do, and get right the fuck out of my face with your I never liked Skrillex shit. Of course you did, you're a wretched White millennial and the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you being a dipshit with plebeian taste.

Somethings, however, are less ephemeral, by which I mean change in direction is rather slow in the coming, but should the great ship of public opinion ever tack in the opposite direction, that change will happen so fast that it will seem like it happened all at once. The sort of wretched Whites that are invested in the religion of Progressive Idealism are not invested because they are good people. They are millennials! And millennials are not to be trusted without proper verification, because millennials are so shitty that they actually beat Boomers on the scale of low quality. It is true that Boomers are god-awful, and as an Alt-Right peer I know IRL recently put it, the day of the pillow cannot come soon enough. But like removing the malfeasance and misbehavior of Jews, removing Boomers will still leave a horde of low quality Whites to contend with. The Boomers are fading as natural death and, increasingly, direct and indirect suicide finally silences their whining. (Direct suicide is a gunshot wound to the head, an indirect suicide is alcoholism.) Likewise, the malfeasance of Jews in America will disappear with the obliteration of non-Orthodox Jews through their susceptibility to the same dysgenic trends that is consuming American Leftists. The chief difference therein is that there are a lot more White Leftists than Jews in America, so hunkering down and attempting to wait out the demographic destruction of White Leftists will take quite a bit more time.

The reason, as I stated, that particularly wretched White millennials cling to the religion of Progressive Idealism is that there is a sort of return on their investment. But what if the investment stops paying dividends? I asked this question recently and I'm still leaving it to your imagination. My suspicion is that the rabid ferocity with which these wretched Whites defend the bastions of Progressive Idealism will eventually make way for the rabid defense of something altogether quite different. Yes, I am indeed implying that rabid, wretched White millennials will eventually begin moving towards the Alt-Right. No really, I'm dead serious.

We're here to make everything Alt-Right. Whiter than the Whitest White, times infinity.

I will freely admit that I could be wrong. I've mentioned this offhand to some Alt-Right goys I know IRL, and most of them laugh and dismiss it. The suicidal impulse that we see in White progressives we naturally take to it's logical conclusion. They will throw themselves off cliffs! They will hang themselves, just to prove their virtue! Bullshit. An animal, cornered, will fight in it's own way. My girlfriend used to own a rabbit, a crotchety little fucker that I'm not particularly disappointed died a few months into me dating her. Unlike the handful of pet buns I've met in the flesh, this little cunt was mean, didn't like anyone, and would attempt to scratch you with his paws when you tried to pet him. Even a domesticated rabbit, if he's in the mood, will defend himself. Thankfully he's dead and the bun she got as a replacement is much nicer.

Letting the Left eat themselves is funny, but fails as a narrative when you consider why people virtue signal. This is surprising coming from Alt-Right people I know, who aren't just particularly aware of the concept of virtue signalling. People from TRS popularized the idea of virtue signalling, which makes it a little disappointing that the result is widely understood while the mechanism behind it is not. So I'll reiterate: White Leftists virtue signal because they get something out of it, namely the signals required to build a reputation. White Leftists resist White ethnic self-interest because it is antithetical to their current reputation. Eventually, however, given current trends and the treatment (abuse, really) White "allies" have been receiving lately, the dividends may not outweigh the overall costs, and the little rent seekers will start moving elsewhere. Remember to look where the profit is when you want to explain most human behavior.

I'm going to go into slightly more detail here, and perhaps this will clear up why I insist that there is legitimate reason to believe that the SJWs will one day convert. Imagine you've invested a considerable amount of money in a company. Being a good investor, you keep a fairly disciplined eye on the market day to day and are quite happy at the end of every day to see that your investment has grown considerably since you first traded your hard earned fraudulent Federal Reserve notes for stocks. Suppose now that one day your investment starts losing value. Have you ever considered at what point you're going to jump ship? I bet not. When your investment loses value there are a whole host of considerations that you're going to need to work off in order to figure out what move is best. An extremely successful investor that I have known for a long time once told me that your best bet is probably to hunker down, accept a short term and temporary loss, and look forward to when the market will inevitably bounce back. Sound advice, yes? The select few people who didn't panic during the 2008 financial meltdown made out like bandits, which brings me to the round about point I was trying to get to with the investment metaphor: In a downturn, most people panic and try to sell their assets to retain that hard earned value they passively sat on over days and weeks and months and years. And so the panic spirals and value is lost and a great many people end up selling their assets for pennies on the dollar and a handful of smart people who aren't totally ruled by the herd make more money than God.

That right there? That's literally reputation and signals. That is how public opinion changes. It's the same damn mechanism. As a side note, I used to wonder why Curt Doolittle translates his historical and social arguments into economic terms. I do not wonder anymore.

The question is what will cause the herd to panic into the next great thing? I'm fairly certain that I know what the next great thing will be, since we essentially live in a binary political system with a few subsets of flavors for each over-category. What I don't know is the when and the specific why.