is the "Not a Bus" concept in "#147 - Public Transportation That Is Not a Bus." Christian Lander developed my basic point nicely:
... White people all support the idea of public transportation and will be happy to tell you about how the subways and streetcars/trams have helped to energize cities like Chicago and Portland. They will tell you all about the energy and cost savigns of having people abandon their cars for public transportation and how they hope that one day they can live in a city where they will be car-free.
At this point, you are probably thinking about the massive number of buses that serve your city and how you have never seen a white person riding them. To a white person a bus is essentially a giant minivan that continually stops to pick up progressively smellier people. You should never, ever point this out to a white person. It will make them recognize that they might not love public transportation as much as they though, and then they will feel sad.
The book is on Amazon for $11.80. I was going to mention that it's very easy to give books as gifts via Amazon (just fill in the address of the recipient), but then I noticed "#138 Books:"
So now that you know that white people like books, you might assume that a book is the perfect gift. Not so fast. There are a few possible outcomes from giving books, and few of them end well. If you get a white person a book that they already have, the situation will be uncomfortable. If you get them a book that they do want, you will be forever viewed as someone with poor taste in literature. In the event that you get them a book that they want and do not have, they are forced to recognize that they have not read it, which instantly paints you as a threat. There is no way to win when you give a book to a white person.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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33 comments:
OK, this is straight in my trailer park.
I'm a huge fan of public transportation. Granted, I live in Germany so there are probably less smelly people her. But we also have our share of obnoxiously loud Turkish kids and families, misbehaving German teenagers, bums and fat smelly Germans. I'm a fan because I use the system on a daily basis. I don't own a car out of choice. Not green choice, but because a car is a money pit and German cities are fairly compact and well served. By and large the busses and trains are also clean but the standard has dropped down in direct relation to the number of immigrants. In the 70's I'm told (and can believe) that public transportation was glorious. The busses were all new and the people taking them were disciplined, well dressed and behaved. Often old couples and shopping ladies. What a great time that must have been. When I think of this I realise how endearing western countries could be if we did not have these foreign hordes in our midst and did not keep getting our noses bloodied somewhere for a crazy idea and on behalf of other nations. These western countries would be veritable paradises.
Oh before I forget. The only people I never see on a bus or train are the types that continually tell me how we need to save the environment.
Steve -- Lander's formulation of his blog/book is very clever in the way it makes fun of a certain type of liberal (the type who would express indignance at your columns), but by nominally disparaging just white people in his title, he's making it palatable for the PC crowd at the same time. Perhaps you should give your blog a similarly misleading title and thereby gain acceptance by the MSM. Might I suggest, "Why White People Are Doomed"? Or perhaps, "White People, the New Dodo Birds". Or just, "Why White People Are Such Losers".
Don't forget, giving someone a book is like assigning them homework. You're saying they really should read this; if they don't want to read it, it's a terrible gift. Even if they do, it might feel like you're pressuring them. Forget class, forget color, just remember a simple rule: never give someone a book unless they're a child or they specifically ask for it.
No problem if they already have the book. One thing white people love to do is regift. Whatever uncomfortable feelings they have will be overcome as they feel they have something more valuable to pass on then that foot massager.
Christian Lander had'em rolling in the aisles when he discussed "Stuff..." recently at our Local Lefty Book Store.
Of course, this was partly due to the audience. Nine out of ten book talks are given by some guy who looks like Raskolnikov to an audience of grim-faced, middle-aged, sexually indistinguishable people who memorize every one of the author's factoids about how the Bush Administration has slaughtered innocents, destroyed the Constitution, impoverished the middle class, etc., etc.
The huge crowd for Lander's talk was different: it was jolly from the start. There were Stanford sweatshirts, alligator tee-shirts, and some actually attractive girls, several of whom even wore skirts. I thought I was at a UVA mixer in the 1960s.
They were laughing at themselves, of course, or at least a slice of themselves. Most of the attitudes ridiculed by Lander are, hardly confined to, but most prominent in subsets of American whites, for example the kind of people who run bookstores.
The half-hour of almost continuous laugher was brought to a thudding conclusion when the Local Lefty Book Store owner closed off questioning and thanked Christian for "raising some interesting social and psychological insights."
Next night, it was back to Raskolnikov.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/20/11-asian-girls/?cp=235
My favorite "Stuff White People......
In Whit Stillman's Metropolitan, Nick says to Tom, "So, you're one of those public transportation snobs. You look down on those who take taxis."
Brad Templeton questions whether mass transit is even all that efficient to start with: "[White people] know that transit is greener and don't even question it. Some may simply hope that transit is on the verge of a breakthrough, to get riderships like those seen in foreign transit-oriented cities. Some are the sort who think transit is the perfect choice for everybody else."
This is very true. I live in Portland, which has the MAX train system. Lots of white people ride it. Seattle is also building a train system. I am sure that many white people will ride it when its complete.
However, it is next to impossible to get white people to ride a bus. Buses, you see, are considered low class. Only the "working" poor and hoods ride the bus. The closest white people will get to a bus are the ones they see at the beginning of a Spike Lee joint.
Many years ago, in an article about public transit, The New Republic quoted a transit exec saying: "Show me a man over 30 who rides the bus to work, and I'll show you one of life's losers."
I have seen one exception to this rule - the Golden Gate Transit buses which take commuters from Marin County to downtown San Francisco, which are full of SWPL White People during rush hour.
Now this is a true story: I take my left wing girlfriend to LA years ago for a vacation. Last day I turn in the rental car at 11AM and decide to kill some time by taking the bus to the nearest shopping centre. In South Central LA. She went nearly comatose, sort of an out of body experience.
My favourite part was when the bus driver calls out "hey, you *in the* white, this is your stop" (we were wearing white t-shirts) - the *in the* part was soooooo superfluous.
Taking the bus up here in Canada is less of a race issue I think; we have some pretty good transit systems and up until recently didn't have too many thugs to worry about. Toronto only recently had its first subway shooting, and Montreal's metro has a well deserved good reputation. They actually line up at bus stops in Montreal - weird. No newspaper boxes on the street though. I digress.
Now, buses in my city have priority seating at the front for the disabled, pregnant, and elderly. 14 of 42 seats, to be precise, a ratio ~2-3 higher than necessary. The funny thing is that visible minorities are so used to preferential treatment that they seem to assume these seats are for them. I get the odd dirty look when I sit up front (lotta stabbing in the back these days), and believe you me I am fixing for my reverse-Rosa Parks moment when I'm told to make room while able bodied minorities aren't.
Our free commuter paper just ran an astonishing story where, despite a 42% annual increase in "service calls" they claim that buses are actually safer. Yep, they are, in fact, all out to get us.
Bus Riding Idiot said...
..."up until recently didn't have too many thugs to worry about."
Oh yeah? Here's one more:
"Man Accused of Stabbing, Decapitating Seatmate on Greyhound Bus in Canada"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,395313,00.html
I'm a fan of public transportation too and while Poland public transport ain't pretty and has it's share of misbehaving teens, working class people that don't bathe enough and foul-tempered old people, it works remarkably well.
A car here would be a worrisome money pit (cars here are status symbols more than anything that's actually very useful) and driving (given local kamikaze habits) pretty stressful.
Immigration rates are (obviously) lower than in West Europe but in Warsaw it's visible enough. But generally, the further from Poland the immigrant the more likely they're either a small businessperson or university graduate.
There have been a number of assaults and IIRC killings in Portland's metro. IIRC brusselsjournal.com had a story on that phenomena a while back.
"Oh yeah? Here's one more:"
Completely unrelated. Not a city bus, and I did say "up until recently", and even cited an example of a recent shooting, so you are not countering my argument in the slightest. And the cops haven't released the race of the suspect yet. How did your stupid comment get through the filter?
They really are all out to get me. I could say the sun will rise tomorrow and someone would disagree with me. What's the deal with that? Are people so viciously opposed to reason that they seek to destroy it whenever confronted by it? What bizarre times we live in; at least 75% of North Americans are savagely hostile to reason. I will not be discouraged, though. This calls for more reason.
And of course here in Califoria where Sailer and I hail from, I've noticed that the same politicians who want to herd all the white folks onto buses and trains are the same ones who insist that illegal aliens "have to" get drivers licenses so they can go to work and whatnot.
Anthony: Many years ago, in an article about public transit, The New Republic quoted a transit exec saying: "Show me a man over 30 who rides the bus to work, and I'll show you one of life's losers."
I thought it was Margaret Thatcher who said that, maybe he was quoting her...or vice versa.
Bus-riding black women may have learned the wrong thing from Rosa Parks. I used to take the bus to college and usually got to the station early to stand in line -- mostly with white, asian, hispanic classmates, while the blacks would sit on benches. At the last minute the ferry would let out (this was Staten Island) and a horde of black females would come running out and jump the line, along with all the ones who were waiting on the benches. Anyone in their way got a shove and line be damned. It was then I started rethinking my SWPL orthodoxy.
Lander is correct, books are lousy presents unless someone asks you for a specific book. If someone is a serious reader, they generally have a stack of books they're hoping to get around to. They don't need more books, they need more time.
People make the mistake of thinking that by giving you a book in your general area of interest, they're showing that they really thought about you. The problem is, most people don't understand the nuances of another person's interest. For example, I'm a conservative; does that mean I want to read Sean Hannity's latest, or some book by Bill Kristol? No thank you, I'd rather just sit quietly and munch sand.
What really annoys me is when someone gives me a book I don't want, then questions me about it the next five times I talk to them.
"c.o. jones said...
And of course here in Califoria where Sailer and I hail from, I've noticed that the same politicians who want to herd all the white folks onto buses and trains are the same ones who insist that illegal aliens "have to" get drivers licenses so they can go to work and whatnot."
Good point.
Public transportation can be quite good in densely populated areas, with well behaved populations, such as in Europe (at least, the way Europe used to be) and Japan.
Public transportation in the U.S. is generally lousy because the U.S. is under-densely populated. We tend to live in far-flung suburbs, partly as a result of white flight.
And in even in densely populated areas, like cities, public transit is still lousy. I rode the bus everyday in Seattle for a couple of years. In addition to the fact that the buses (at least on the down-town lines) had a diverse and vibrant thug ridership, and that most all the buses occasionally carried piss-bums who could single handedly stink up an entire bus, the buses were simply too slow.
You could spend an hour on a cross town bus, when a car would make the same trip in 15 minutes. This was because the bus stopped every other block. I mentioned this once to a very liberal aquaintance of mine - exactly the sort of person who is all for public transit - and she replied that the halt, the lame, the old, and the infirm needed to use the bus, and that it'd be too hard for them to walk more than a few blocks. Okay. That's fine. But then don't expect able-bodied people with jobs to take the bus.
I think public transit could work in this country provided the following:
1.) Drivers had the authority to not let on obvious piss-bums who are only riding the bus, because they found a discarded bus transfer.
2.) Police would maintain order in the old fashioned way - by occasionally roughing up the riff-raff - and by kicking off the thugs, the hooligans, and the roudy.
3.) People would stop tolerating the rude and solopsistic behavior that has come to dominate our society: playing music so loud that others can hear it, talking loudly, talking loudly on the phone, talking about private medical matters.
I.e., as with so many things in our society, it'd work if it were once again 1965.
Paul K
If someone is a serious reader, they generally have a stack of books they're hoping to get around to. They don't need more books, they need more time.
Very true.
does that mean I want to read Sean Hannity's latest, or some book by Bill Kristol? No thank you, I'd rather just sit quietly and munch sand.
I genuinely laughed out loud when I read that!
In Montreal ,
people do line up at the bus stop and there's very little line cutting to get in. I don't know how it happens in every neighborhood but even the usual suspects rarely cut the line .
Sometimes people will leave their spot to throw something in the garbage or whatnot and they usually go back in the line to their original spot without any problem.
I find it a very civilized way to get on a bus and didn't like the way they did it in Toronto where they just bunch up in front of the bus and whoever is most pushy gets in first.
High point of a recent AMTRAK trip was watching the surf between Ventura and Goleta from the dome car. Low point was witnessing an attack by a crazed African-American on an elderly white woman in the LA station. Fortunately, it was broken up by a station employee, also African-American, who held the attacker until police arrived. And that was the train..
Kevin V. writes:
I've been following your latest series of posts on this topic with great interest, because, as with much of what you write about, this particular issue is one that transformed me from a leftist to a traditionalist who believes strongly that race does matter.
I remember when I was in college hearing of a Stanford student named Amy Biehl who had been killed by a black crowd in one of the townships in South Africa. She had gone there to help. Since my roommate at the time was a South African graduate student, I had been receiving a great education about current events there. Even though he was a liberal, he explained to me why Biehl's activities were near suicidal in nature.
It was the television reports that got to me. I remember very clearly watching the ABC News reports on the trial of the men who had stoned and stabbed Biehl to death as she begged for her life. The courtroom was packed with the relatives and friends of the accused, who had to be admonished by the judge over and over to maintain order during the proceedings. The ABC newsman focused on one dramatic event during that day's testimony. As a witness for the prosecution described in detail Biehl's begging while a knife was being driven into her chest down to the hilt, the black women in the crowd began to laugh and perform a mocking ululating while a few performed mock begging motions. The black men yowled in glee and the entire courtroom broke out into hysterics as the black crowd mocked this white girl's final moments.
Sitting in the courtroom, fresh from lily-white and very wealthy Newport Beach, California, were Biehl's parents, Linda and Peter Biehl. The news report then cut to an interview of the parents after the day's testimony, in which they declared that understood the anger of the crowd and that their fondest hope was that their daughter's murder trial would lead to an opportunity for reconciliation and forgiveness. It was seeing this despicable reaction that made me realize that what I was seeing around me in Berkeley was, in fact, true: there is no black depravity against whites that white liberals will not excuse or forgive. We have it coming. Even our own daughters have it coming.
In case you think that this was an instance of shell-shocked parents not thinking clearly, I should note that the Biehls have gone on to form a charity, the Amy Biehl Foundation, which "continues Amy's work in South Africa." The website of Beyond Intractability, which describes itself as a site dedicated to finding "more constructive approaches to destructive conflict," has this report on Linda Biehl from December, 2005:
Eventually, Peter and Linda quit their jobs in California and started a South African organization, running after-school programs and small businesses in the townships.
"We had already determined that Amy was killed during a very violent time, but there was still violence. It was mostly economic-based, there were no schools. We wanted to help make functional young people," says Linda.
In 1997, Desmond Tutu created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Created to deal with the horrors of apartheid, the TRC allowed perpetrators of racial crimes to receive amnesty for a full confession. Victims could also receive reparations for the pain they had suffered. The four men convicted of Amy's murder applied.
The Biehls wanted to be respectful of the TRC process because they knew that Amy would have supported it. They granted all four men amnesty. At the hearing, Peter addressed the Commission saying, "The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue ... we are here to reconcile a human life which was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms." However, despite what Peter had said at the hearing, probably nobody expected what happened next.
After they were released from prison, Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni, two of the men convicted of Amy's murder had come to much the same conclusion the Biehls had about the townships.
"They were shocked to see things hadn't changed. Things were worse. Their friends were not in school. There was a lot of drinking and drugs," Linda remembers. The two men started a youth group in their township and they wanted to show the Biehls what they had done. An anthropologist who had been interviewing them offered to contact the Biehls. They agreed.
The Biehls took Nofemela and Peni out to dinner. That night was the beginning of a strong friendship between the four. The Biehls hired the two men to help out with their organization.
[end of excerpt]
She helps the murderers obtain amnesty, she dines out with them, and she hires them, the savages who murdered her own daughter.
Simply put, this is monstrously inhuman. This is liberalism.
If we, as a movement, are waiting for whites to "wake up," we will fail. The Biehl experience shows that even under such circumstances, liberalism remains a terminal disease.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/011093.html
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/011093.html
Brad Templeton,
I agree with you that on a holistic basis public transport probably costs more than it saves, both in terms of investment, energy and the environment. Just consider how often buses run with only a few people inside. Most trains are at best half full, except for the obvious rush our times. Lots of the electricity for trams and trains is generated in gas or coal powered plants which are NOT environmentally friendly. Busses usually have bad consumption, especially when the bus is almost empty, as you have in the evenings.
My motive is simple. I pay for all this public transport through my taxes, so I would be stupid not to utilise it. And on top I can save the costs of a car which is money straight back into my pocket. That's the complete raionale.
Um, aren't metro trains generally a lot faster than buses (since they aren't affected by traffic and stoplights) and a lot easier to use if you aren't already intimately familiar with the bus routes and the area of the city you're trying to get to? There *are* reasons why metros exist and why people prefer them to buses that don't depend on race (I live in Shanghai, anyway, where both buses and the metro are completely safe and filled with Chinese...)
"Low point was witnessing an attack by a crazed African-American on an elderly white woman in the LA station."
With all possible respect Steve, the fact that you 'witnessed' such an event says more about you than it does the 'crazed African-American', or the bus.
High point of a recent AMTRAK trip was watching the surf between Ventura and Goleta from the dome car.
I used to commute from Ventura to Santa Barbara, and I'd take the train about once a week. It was not much more expensive (at my mpg's) than gas at the time. And they had really strong coffee. And the view was really nice. And wine on the ride home. Huh, I sorta miss that.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,395781,00.html
The decapitating bus passenger appears to be one of those well-behave Asian folks.
They're generally well-behaved,but when they go off,they really go off.
teacher.paris,
I was an officer in Soweto and Katorus (Katlehong, Vosloorus, Thokoza) during some of the bad violence. Katorus was home to about 2 mio. people. Xhosas and Zulus would routinely abduct each other's wives or girlfriends. Then they came to us to get them back out. Or they would go on drive-by shooting sprees, so we had to separate them and we built alternative road outlets. In spite of all the liberal hate and propaganda of the old army, blacks actually had a fairly decent opinion of us. Unfortunately some elements of the old police force were unnecessarily violent. We used to call it poaching. It created animus towards us. But most of the violence was either criminal or expression of group fighting. Blacks were hungry for political power and did not care about victims. Most of the victims came about through group fighting between the political factions. I had made friends with a fairly intelligent Zulu political organiser who got shot when a hostel search erupted in a fire fight between the residents and the army (in this case black soldiers). The army guys were robust so once you started shooting with them that was it. I was really sad about that. I had joined the Inkhata Freedom Party (Zulu Nationalists) because my premise was that the Afrikaner nationalists (I’m a conservative Afrikaner) and the Zulu nationalists should support each other so we can form a strong confederal state. That was the only viable political solution. Now we have a de-facto one-party state which leads to the marginalisation of minorities (in this case whites, Indians, people of Malaysian descent, and even Zulus). It’s a bad outcome but what can I say.
I could never understand how these liberal girls could be so reality-absent and go to the townships. You wouldn’t catch a white South African girl even dreaming of doing this. Even the liberal English babes kept clear of black areas. That was only for Cops, army and basic services. Even with a few other soldiers in armoured carriers it was dangerous. Some guys had their vehicles torched with Molotovs after they had been mislead into an alleyway. When they got out of the smoking hot vehicle they got shot. Some of the violence was gruesome, really horror-movie stuff. I could understand that blacks hated cops or soldiers but why they had to be so barbaric I could never understand. But it sure increased the anxiety factor when on patrol! I bet they never showed any of that on US TV.
One day on patrol in the worst part of a huge township we came across a business owner whose truck had been hijacked. He was carrying a shotgun and driving a Mercedes looking for his truck. I suggested he better get out ASAP since the troublemakers also had machine guns and pistols. It was a wild time but my feeling is, looking at all the violence in the "new" South Africa that we were just bottling up the violence in the townships. Now it’s everywhere which is bad for the country. I think the long-term solution would have been to train a professional black military force to take over control permanently. Those townships just need to have permanent military supervision, there is no other way. And blacks know how to dish out when necessary. I can tell you that black soldiers were usually far rougher with ther racial compatriots than the white guys. If hostel dwellers refused to cooperate during weapons searches the black soldiers would just start throwing the dwellers out the windows! And usually their belongings after them. They were not instructed to do this. It just speeded up the process so they could get back to base by afternoon tea time. It was their idea.
I don’t think the old white government had all that much to do with it. Many other African countries also have violent cities. And on top there’s lots of money and goods to steal in South Africa. Even in the new South Africa. Like they say, "those were the days".
the fact that you 'witnessed' such an event says more about you than it does the 'crazed African-American'
Truth's values in a nutshell?
"Truth's values in a nutshell?"
Yes sir, a very small compact nutshell.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
-Edmund Burke
Having spent a good many years driving on the North side of Chicago, which tends to be very white, it is quite preposterous how many double buses (capacity 100+) I have passed that had between 0 and 3 passengers. The doubles get terrible mileage and are very expensive to operate. My friends report the same. Only real ridership is during rush hour.
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