If Mort Divine ruled the world

[HamburgerBoy]

It's a totally meaningless and uninteresting question to ask, possibly the most. Our universe has a virtually infinite number of possibilities, none of those in the past being ones we have control over, few of those in the future we're able to predict. Do blacks living in America have it better than blacks living in Liberia? Sure. Who gives a fuck? I think it's pretty easy to accept that our current state of being is the one we have the most control over, and that performing good actions (like free trade, respect of property, respect of dignity, etc) are more likely to lead to positive outcomes than bad actions (like government monopolization of trade routes and slavery).

Western Africa has improved in bounds since British colonialism and the threats of communism and Islamic extremism left it. Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana are all rising developing nations and at their current rate could compete with at least Central Europe in a couple generations (they're already surpassing parts of Eastern Europe). Their children also outperform British children in the white homeland of his ancestors that he's so proud of. The biggest error that leftists make wrt Africa is in ignoring the critical role of the Arab slave trade and the general white supremacy of Islam. This of course applies to other nations affected by the British like Ireland and India. Persia would probably be a first-world nation today if the British and Jews didn't continue to fuck them after WW2.

 

[CiG]

But my point is Gary didn't say anything even close to what you're saying, I don't agree with Spencer's worldview but I can see that Gary's shit handling of the man did little to dissuade people from Spencer's side.

It does seem heavily edited though, but edited by those on Gary's team not Spencer's so it could be even worse.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

No, that's exactly what he said. He compared the average lifespan of an African American to an African, and then said that slavery is the reason for that, therefore African Americans benefited from slavery/white supremacy.

 

[CiG]

Gary is the black guy, I'm saying if his responses to Richard had been akin to what you're saying it would've been great.

Am I confused?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

nvm misread you there. He did refute it, he considered the possibility that in the absence of colonialism that those regions of Africa may have developed on their own terms a superior standard of living. Then Spencer says "I seriously doubt it" and the scene cuts; perhaps if uncut Spencer would have mentioned something about racial IQ differences or made an analogy to Ethiopia's slow progress (the only uncolonized African nation).

 

[CiG]

He didn't say in the absence of colonialism, he said in the absence specifically of slavery's removal of people to another land.

Edit: maybe it's my bad and what he's saying is, if slavery hadn't removed so many African males to another land, they could have stayed behind and actively rebelled against colonial invaders.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

The two are kinda inextricable for that time period. Even if your interpretation is right, he's crediting white supremacy (slavery bringing Africans to America) for saving them from white supremacy (colonial rule).

 

[Dak]

https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/11/07/the-rising-waters-of-human-tribal-nature/

Finally, understanding that most people don’t need to be right or utter the truth, but simply need to win, has made me much more cheerful and less sour observing everyday stupidities. It is no great insight to observe that I’ve never been one who has had much esteem for the admiration of my peers. I like to do my own thing. But tribal acclamation must be the best of all things for most humans, and now I understand why they fight unfairly and stupidly with such ease and naturalness: their aim not to be right in the eyes of nature, but to rise in the esteem their fellow human. That is the summum bonum.

 

[Satanstoenail]

An Indian comedian has made a documentary about how offended he and other Indians are about Apu from The Simpsons being a racial stereotype.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/arts/television/the-problem-with-apu-the-simpsons.html

 

[CiG]

Something like that could be interesting if society were open enough to also admit that racism is funny as long as it isn't violent or perpetrated by government and all racial stereotypes also contain a grain of truth.

If it's just a one-sided snowflake fest, meh it's just pointless victimhood masturbation imo.

 

[Satanstoenail]

The sole reason this guy seems to be doing it is so he can go "Oh look how offended everyone is that I'm making this, see what snowflakes you all are? Hurhurhur".

Ugh.

 

[CiG]

Huh, good observation you're probably fucking right.

 

[Dak]

https://status451.com/2017/11/05/i-see-trad-people/amp/

To explain this, I would offer the hypothesis that protesting against the social order has become a progressive tradition, a specific custom passed on to the next generation, and as such, people continue to do it for no reason other than its own sake. The grievances of progressivism are now like Boomer Christmas, stuck in time, repeating the same old songs over and over again, recapturing the youthful days of a generation long gone by. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real problems to be solved, it just suggests that’s not why the majority of people do it.
.........
Yes, I’m deliberately speaking in stereotypes here, which means a “not all” rule implicitly applies. However, stereotypes do have predictive qualities, and in this case, I think it helps explain exactly why left and right are both extremely polarized and extremely useless designations nowadays. They have ceased to be identifiers for concrete poles of policy and morality, and have instead become mere flags of necessity to rally around by dispossessed and confused ideologies.

 

[Dak]

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/elite-colleges-veterans/545615/

By the time I’d enrolled at Columbia—before that, and after the Marine Corps, I’d worked at the financial consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers—I’d attained a measure of that freedom. But being on an elite campus after living the life I’ve lived is often jarring.

I remember how it felt when, earlier this year, in a class on development economics, a slide came up that read, “Education investment by the poor—why don’t they go to school?” My classmates proceeded to discuss this “they” and their motivations. It was surreal to have my own experience encapsulated in a PowerPoint slide, and I realized just how little of a grasp some of my peers had on the lives of people much poorer than them. How can poverty be solved when the future policy makers and development economists of the world have little to no personal experience with the problems they aim to address?

This is something I've been saying for years now.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized how unusual my Ivy League story was. Last year, there was only one veteran attending Princeton as an undergrad, and just three at Harvard. In fact, in 2016, out of the 160,000 people enrolled in a group of 36 top-flight undergraduate programs, just 645—or about 0.4 percent—of them were veterans. There are estimated to be 22 million veterans in the U.S., which works out to about 8 or 9 percent of American adults—meaning veterans are grossly underrepresented at these 36 schools.

Why? Because the GI Bill doesn't cover the full cost of tuition as far as I know (capped at instate public tuition), and the COL outstrips the stipend in many if not all cases. It's not rocket science. Those GI Bill limitations were half of the reason I went back to NC for college. A program like I wanted in a low COL area, and I knew I could get instate designation quite easily.

The author brings up issues with old SAT scores (or absent SAT scores), as well as subpar educational background, which are undeniably issues as well, but I think the economics of the situation is a major part of the issue.

 

[rms]

yeah, NYS is a cool state where they cover private state costs but it's not everywhere. Also I imagine most vets like myself never took SAT/ACT and that's a pain in the ass to get into colleges anyways

 

[Dak]

yeah, NYS is a cool state where they cover private state costs but it's not everywhere. Also I imagine most vets like myself never took SAT/ACT and that's a pain in the ass to get into colleges anyways

Yeah being homeschooled and having a lazy mother as an educator I never took the SAT/ACT. I transferred into a public 4 year institution with an AA. I also had an additional barrier to attending more expensive institutions in more expensive places by way of having dependents.

 

[rms]

had an infantry bud leave Boulder and transfer to Northeastern, think he got yellow ribbon though.

that % of vets out of total americans is a really bad stat though

 

[Dak]

had an infantry bud leave Boulder and transfer to Northeastern, think he got yellow ribbon though.

that % of vets out of total americans is a really bad stat though

Yeah, when I was looking at going back to school the Yellow Ribbon was less prevalent iirc, plus COL tended to outstrip the stipend in those places too. I needed housing allowance to cover all expenses, not just housing.

 

[CiG]

This goes out to the "victims" of Louis C.K.'s attempts to have weird, consensual sex.

 

[CiG]