Here's a promotional video marketing Bellingham, Washington, a small city on Puget Sound up near the Canadian border, as a "Local Living Economy." From Wikipedia:
0.98% Black or African American, 1.48% Native American, 4.25% Asian, 0.17% Pacific Islander, 2.16% from other races, and 3.08% from two or more races. 4.63% of the population is Hispanic or Latino of any race.
For a long time I was baffled by the hipster trendiness of economic localism since the rationalizations put forward for buying only products grown or made within X number of miles are clearly specious.
For example, modern merchandise transport doesn't emit a whole lot of carbon because it has become so incredibly efficient. The latest generation of freighters bringing new cars from Japan to America carry 8,000 automobiles in each ship.
On the other hand, the idea of creating an inward-focused high cost / high price local economy might make sense from a demographic standpoint. If you like your community the way it is or want to attract more of your kind of people, resistance to Wal-Martish globalization makes sense as a way to put up price barriers to discourage being flooded demographically.
Of course, rain helps too.
Posts
121 comments:
I traveled to Bellingham a few times for work years ago. Flights up there from Seattle can be pretty rough, given the weather. Seemed like a nice, quite place though. There's also a brutal-looking golf course there, if memory serves, with most of the holes laid out along a narrow peninsula.
The latest generation of freighters bringing new cars from Japan to America carry 8,000 automobiles in each ship.
Aren't a lot of foreign cars assembled in the US now? I think a lot of these factories foreign automakers set up in the US import parts and then assemble the cars in the US.
so true. modern large scale industrial agriculture is more efficient by two orders of magnitude at least. the local farmers market is super inefficient by comparison.
the "buy local" people are literally using 10 times as much gasoline to create the same food infrastructure, and if that was expanded to all food production and consumption, at least 100 times as much gasoline would be necessary.
like modern fad diets or body building, it is only POSSIBLE to do this stuff because we have TOO much stuff already. when you have SO much food that you can pick and choose which food to eat, you know you've got a lot of food, and a huge efficient infrastructure behind it.
the atkins diet for instance is ONLY POSSIBLE in a modern super productive society. it's completely impossible in a third world setting. you just can't exploit the food chain enough in a place like that to eat meat every meal.
The best integrated (that is at least optically skin-deep pigmentation defined diversity) shopping experience I've seen in the Puget Sound area is the Wal-Mart in Renton.
For some reason I see more people of color (OK not the South-Asian style Microsofties...) at Wal-Mart than at the Whole Foods.
Can anybody explain how that leftist coalition of down-market blacks works with all those Bo-Bo locavore food snobs actually works?
Probably just like the hedge-fund manager country club members enjoy working together with their bible pounding buddies.
This idea you keep entertaining that liberals are constantly scheming against minorities is absurd. For the most part they legitimately believe what they say they believe. Go ahead and point it out if you think they're wrong, but it's kind of grasping to pretend that everybody totally agrees with you but won't admit it.
By the way,
How do you all keep your lunch down every time you hear those terribly fashionable "progressive" buzzwords, eg diversity, sustainability, non-profit?
I'm risking a big dry cleaning bill everytime I expose myself to the mass media.
Everything's "efficient" if you can transfer the costs to some other sucker. The cost of bringing those autos from the Orient is the destruction of Detroit and other manufacturing cities.
Bellingham is a college town. Further south, towards Seattle supports the same terms, but is eager for diverse people from Mexico, Thailand and Somalia to grow the "local", "sustainable" food.
They also have grants so that people receiving EBT can purchase the higher-priced goods at local farmer's markets. So, not disputing the price barrier premise and all, but noting that they are still cheerfully trying to diversify in places that aren't college towns near Canada but which are still pretty SWPL-filled.
Two words, one name: Jose Bovee.
That French farmer famous in the late 1980's and early 1990's blockading McDonalds in Paris and pushing for more farm supports to French Farmers and against globalization.
I don't have a problem with people using self-determination to keep their places the way they have mostly always been. I don't think the elaborate code words and smoke-screens are sustainable.
For one thing, non-Whites like nice things too. They like safe streets, working hospitals (that don't kill you through general incompetence), and all those things. And are completely incapable of sustaining them much less creating them, any more than the Visigoths and Vandals could sustain Roman aqueducts and roads and cities and villas, though they wanted to do so in the worst way.
So guess what? Portland, Seattle, and Bellingham are going to get an influx of refugees from Detroit, from Atlanta, from Philly, and will have to move out to some OTHER place until there is no more places to go. Demands from favored NAM groups within the Dem coalition will insure this process. Since the Granola crowd has nowhere else to go (they surely won't vote Republican since those are the wrong sort of White person).
When you look at Seattle, or Bellingham, or Portland, you are looking at doomed areas. Their destiny is Detroit's.
For a long time I was baffled by the hipster trendiness of economic localism since the rationalizations put forward for buying only products grown or made within X number of miles are clearly specious.
Don't be such a clod, Steve. Surely you can understand that the discriminating taste appreciates provenance.
"This idea you keep entertaining that liberals are constantly scheming against minorities is absurd. For the most part they legitimately believe what they say they believe."
Think of it as evolution in action. No plotting required. Just try different things and see which ones tend to create communities that you like better, that attract people you like and keep away people you don't. No higher thought required whatsoever. Indeed, at a more abstract level of thought, such as national immigration policy, you'll tend to be completely clueless.
Naaah, that's just a side effect. They'll never admit it to themselves.
Liberals really believe in liberalism. Look, I grew up in NYC. I went to a lefty private school. I know these people. They believe their own bullshit. They invent rationalizations so they can do all the things they subconsciously know are a good idea. They believe they're not racist, but they won't go into Harlem after hours. It produces the well-known liberal guilt, of course.
College town with a reputation for debauchery and liberalism. They used to have good farmland pretty close but I suppose most of it is bedroom communities now.
The locavores and localists are part of a pretty broad umbrella, which happens to include folks from a lot of walks of life and political persuasions.
If you really want to understand why people get involved in things like this, you need to read up on Peak Oil, which isn't the total philosophical underpinning of the whole thing, but something you have to understand the gist of.
Now there aren't too many people who spend a lot of time on the internet who haven't heard that phrase. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet most of the readers here are going to poo-pooh it.
That really doesn't matter.
The debates have all been had, all the arguments have been made. It's just a matter of what you believe at this point.
I'd say that the biggest single political orientation in these kinds of things is what most would call leftist. There are a lot of libertarian types, and some conservatives though I'd say they are the rarest.
And a whole heck of a lot of people who are apolitical or don't fit into any convenient category.
Here's a good link to kind of understand what localists believe on some level: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259
I think it's pretty obvious what the relation is, but it's always hard to tell what people will think.
All kinds of possible futures, but I'm expecting the US to be something like Brazil in a few decades.
On the up side we might have some white only favelas, which ought to make everyone happy.
If we make it to that point, fragmentation of the US is a very likely possibility. Right now I'd say the West Coast from slightly south of SF to the Canadian border, and west of that long mountain range is an area with good prospects.
Problem is guys, it's all happening at the same time: Idiocracy, Overpopulation, Climate Change, Peak Oil, Automation/Singularity, you name it, it's happening.
All at the same time, and where it stops no one knows.
P.S. The shipping miles thing? And the Carbon? I can literally find you thousands of pages of stuff people have written on this from many angles.
I need to make some promotional fliers for this lovely enclave. I've been meaning to do some HBD volunteer work.
500 copies to local social service dept.
100 to local soup kitchen
I can make a poster for the day labor office and the bus station.
It would give me great satisfaction knowing that I helped send much needed diversity their way.
I think those who lean right-aspy underestimate the degree to which liberal verbalists can lie to themselves without even realizing it.
...might make sense from a demographic standpoint...
SALLY RIDE, PhD
May 26, 1951 - July 23, 2012
* Bachelor's, Double Major, English & Physics, Swarthmore/Stanford
* Master's, Physics, Stanford
* PhD, Physics, Stanford
* Mission Specialist, Space Shuttle Challenger, 1983
* Mission Specialist, Space Shuttle Challenger, 1984
* Professor of Physics, University of California at San Diego
* Endorsed Barack Hussein O'Bama for President, 2008
* LIFETIME TOTAL FERTILITY RATE: 0.0
Bellingham mostly gets its food from more diverse Skagit County, which is heading for 20% Latino with a bullet (about 17-18% right now.)
Here is one hard core conservative who has no patience for the Diversity Industry or any other lefty fads. However, when it comes to food, I try to go local for one very good reason - taste. In the Midwest we get fruit and vegetables year round from California and most of it has little or no flavor. I supect this is partly because it's picked too early for transportation purposed and partly because it's been cross bred to be big and pretty, not tasty.
"Of course, rain helps too."
Huh?
Stuff White people like
Bellingham is a great town, with miserable weather, I went to college there in the early 90's.
I have to disagree about "sustainability" and "local living economy" being code words, these people are true-believers in this kind of stuff, probably because they've had very little exposure to NAM's. Most of them are from the Seattle area and came for college and stayed on because they liked the small city vibe and the natural beauty of the area. If you mentioned anything about securing our borders or cutting back on third world immigration the right kind of white people in Bellingham would consider you slightly deranged and you wouldn't be invited back to their vegan BBQ/hemp fest.
NAM's and immigration aren't topics they think are relevant because they live in a cold, rainy little paradise. Legalizing pot, ending war and keeping greedy corporations with their GMO crops out of their community is what they talk about.
Most likely the nice, small town vibe will be ruined by Hispanic gangs which have already ruined much of Eastern Washington, especially the Yakima valley. Truly sad to see such nice areas turned into little Tijuanas.
So what's your point, then? If you admit that lefty white cultural preferences only inadvertently exclude minorities, then it follows that localism and environmentalism have more to do with the well-established anti-corporate tradition within leftism. Then there's no hypocrisy, no equivalence between them and the overt racialism of you and your ilk.
I don't get the rain part.
"If you admit that lefty white cultural preferences only inadvertently exclude minorities ..."
It's called Disparate Impact. If fire departments promote firemen who know more about how to fight fires, that has disparate impact and the Obama Administration is not happy. Same with schools that suspend troublemakers -- turns out, surprise, surprise, that has disparate impact and the Obama Administration is currently investigating them.
"Then there's no hypocrisy, "
but liberal privilege is invisible.. and the small matter of idiocy that results from being immune against reality.
"They invent rationalizations so they can do all the things they subconsciously know are a good idea. "
It's like the liberal hamster!
"This idea you keep entertaining that liberals are constantly scheming against minorities is absurd. "
Indeed, they are well-wishing people who are just befuddled out of their high IQs when the outcomes don't match their expectations and even go the opposite way, or when in better frame of mind, blame reagan for AIDS epidemic.
"...heading for 20% Latino with a bullet (about 17-18% right now.)"
That was funny.
Yes, sunbeam, Peak Oil explains everything, doesn't it? And you can keep reading the same people over and over and the ones they link to, and that will just reinforce it to you more that it explains everything.
Except it, er, doesn't really explain much of anything. There's a lot of hand-waving and hand-wringing.
But yes, yes, thousands of pages of it, sure.
Please look up the phrase "confirmation bias" and ponder it deeply.
Steve, I agree with your central point, that these are racially-comfortable outcomes for people, but the critics have a point. They really believe this. They do not connect the dots.
Bellingham is a great place if you don't mind not seeing the sun for weeks on end, or having summer begin and end in August. Like most college towns its full of well-to-do lefties with little connection to reality or the business world.
They live off the College or some teacher/professor pension or the students. As long as the students and the state/Fed monies keep rolling in their cool. Its an insulated world.
Of course they are, which is why environmental stewardship will be considered racism in ten years. After all, the US's 1.8M immigrants per year need some place to live and throw their trash.
These stupid granolas have no idea what's about to hit them.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/protesters-storm-anaheim-police-station-after-lethal-police-related-shooting/
Bigot
": a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance "
courtesy of merriam-webster dictionary(where the editors help you further with their little videos)
lol at especially.
Almost all the paleo locavore people I know are Ron Paul libertarians. And most of the small farmers who sell pastured meat and eggs are actually anti-government Christian fundies like Joel Salatin. The SWPL types are still mostly vegan/vegetarian dweebs who subsist on seitan & soy and sneer at meat-eathers (unless those meat-eaters are exotic ethnics, in which case it's cool cuz that's their heritage).
They are doomed. Either the Somali will find them and descend upon them like a cloud of locusts as they did Lewiston, Maine, or the Barbara Lerners will approach their weofare departments and try to foist some Somalis, Kenyans, or Ethiopians, off on them.
Once a small beach-head is established in their community, the federal and state grant programs almost require you to set up or expand several support agencies, that will then expand the initial wedge until the white folks are driven out.
The cries of guilt and shame will resound, until the town is as ugly as Yakima. They will shout about disparate hiring, disparate school scores, disparate college matriculants, disparate everything.
All of it points unwaveringly to the evil in the soul of every goyim, a point that will be hammered on incessantly, creating hate and discord between people who have lived peacefully together for generations.
Their local churches will fall into line, sponsoring little orphans from overseas to come and live in Bellingham, setting up food kitchens to serve the Africans and Mexicans until all the folks with money inevitably move on.
So sad. So inevitable.
glocalism
Sign me up for this lifestyle!
And here I thought the main industry in Bellingham was catering to Canadian cross border shopping.
Here gangs of Sikhs from Surrey are swarming the Bellingham Costco to buy cheap milk:
http://www.kirotv.com/videos/news/video-canadian-shoppers-swarm-bellingham-costco/vDx2N/
This gives the Bellingham people a taste of multiculturalism.
* LIFETIME TOTAL FERTILITY RATE: 0.0
I think going into space fries your ovaries from the radiation.
"I think going into space fries your ovaries from the radiation. "
no, no that's the stuff of male privilege.
Assistant Village Idiot said:
"Yes, sunbeam, Peak Oil explains everything, doesn't it? And you can keep reading the same people over and over and the ones they link to, and that will just reinforce it to you more that it explains everything.
Except it, er, doesn't really explain much of anything. There's a lot of hand-waving and hand-wringing."
It really does explain everything. I mean it is downright spooky to see how closely the energy use curves and population curves match up.
Ditto for the economy. Very little hand-waving, and hand-wringing I might add.
"And you can keep reading the same people over and over and the ones they link to, and that will just reinforce it to you more that it explains everything."
Don't make me laugh. I mean you really want to go there?
"Please look up the phrase "confirmation bias" and ponder it deeply."
Aaah, you are the one. Many a night have I spent perusing the texts of Nostradamus, seeking a clue as to the identity of the Clear Headed One.
There are legends and prophecies of you, we gather in legions in the meeting rooms of Red Roof Inns across this land. We show our individual power point slides, hoping somehow that we might find you through the power of our shared consciousness.
I have spent many nights begging the Greys to come in their wicked cool ships, to give me some knowledge of you.
And now, now you are here.
Is it true you look just like Bob Dobbs?
This is probably a better strategy for middle class and upper middle class. The wealthy can just price out the undesirables...
modern large scale industrial agriculture is more efficient by two orders of magnitude at least. the local farmers market is super inefficient by comparison.
It actually isn't more efficient if you take soil quality and fertility into account. Modern large scale industrial agriculture depletes soil quality and fertility. Organic farming doesn't just maintain soil quality and fertility. It often increases it.
If you really want to understand why people get involved in things like this, you need to read up on Peak Oil.
Lemme fix that for ya.
"If you really want to understand why people get involved in things like this, you need to delude yourself into believing a gigantic scam like Peak Oil and never let any amount of contrary evidence change your mind."
There.
Sally Ride was a lesbian.
Indeed. When fans of underground music got bored with grunge (shortly after it went overground), Bellingham was ground zero for the next underground hipster fad: retro garage rock. Estrus Records had been putting out records with bands with a trashier take on the mid-1960's teen bands influenced by the British Invasion for a few years, and all throughout the country kids in former punk clubs were dressing in vintage clothes and digging all the coolnesss of US culture pre-Summer of Love. There were even complaints among the hipsters that guys were taking this retro thing a little too far and were getting touch with their "inner sexist". The 4B Tavern in Bellingham was the premier bar in the country for this whole scene, and they had a bunch of big music festivals there a few times a year until the whole thing puttered out in the early 2000's. Of course it was also a mostly SWPL bunch into this whole scene, but it was still lots fun and the last time I got excited about music and making the scene almost every night of the week.
"Surely you can understand that the discriminating taste appreciates provenance."
By that logic Pacific North West swipples would want to get their food from Provence, Normandy, Savoie, Tuscany. Instead they claim to want local stuff. The best provenances are unlikely to be local. The world is really big and the culinary arts have deeper roots in the old world.
These hipster chicks seem very happy with their beta males. They don't seem to have slightest desire to venture out and find an alfa stud/thug.
BTW Steve, looks as if someone is influenced by you again (maybe anti-influenced, since in typical fashion she seems have to derived the exact opposite of the truth from available evidence)
See also Brendan O'Neill's post earlier this month about the inherent conservatism of neo-Marxism
And Sailer never said anything about liberals screening out people by race; he DID imply something about screening them by status, though that might have gone over the reflex complainers' heads. People like to establish closed-source criteria for admission to our clubs, guilds, communities and then later we make up post-hoc taboo-conforming rationalizations for the esoteric rules. It's the same "gaffe" about Ivy League NAMs that's gotten columnists into trouble of late
They don't seem to have slightest desire to venture out and find an alfa stud/thug
You mean "alfalfa stud" right
The best provenances are unlikely to be local. The world is really big and the culinary arts have deeper roots in the old world
You can grow just about anything in central California but the foodies aren't exactly flocking to Clovis or Hanford
This idea you keep entertaining that liberals are constantly scheming against minorities is absurd. For the most part they legitimately believe what they say they believe. Go ahead and point it out if you think they're wrong, but it's kind of grasping to pretend that everybody totally agrees with you but won't admit it.
Bullshit. You need look no further than the liberal bastions (I'm in the SF bay area) where people posturing about their total and complete lack of racism yank their own kids out of the local public school as soon as a black family shows up.
I live in Bellingham, unlike most people I know who grew up here, and I grew up here, unlike most people I know who live here.
1. It's less than 30 miles to the Canadian border. It sure doesn't take me an hour to get there. Maybe they're including the border wait or mean an hour by solar-powered vehicle.
2. I'm not sure where they get the statistic that most people are employed by local businesses. Perhaps that's true, but that just may be a statement about the obstacles to creating the kind of productive industry here that would employ a lot of people. The largest employers, in order, are the hospital, the state university, the school district, the county government and the city government. I don't think these count as "local businesses".
3. I've never been to the Farmer's Market. Our food budget wouldn't be sustainable if we did.
4. We shop at Wal-Mart, which, as others have observed, does a lot to sustain the minority and white working class population of the area. They do exist. They just can't afford to shop with the cool white people.
5. "People don't live here because of money." They couldn't if they wanted to. There's a dearth of productive industry and living wage jobs. Maybe fixing bicycles for a zero-waste business is cool when you're 23 and sharing a rental with 3 other guys, but it won't let you raise a family or buy a house in one of the most inflated real estate markets in the country.
6. Locally-sourced agriculture is only sustainable if you don't mind periodic famine. But I guess if the ultimate goal of sustainability is a smaller human population, maybe that's the point.
7. I consider myself blessed to have been able to find productive work here. It is a beautiful place, if you can stand the rain. I even share some of the SWPL culture I love to mock--we paid way too much to buy a small house in town, we grow vegetables and think about getting chickens, and I bike to work when it's not raining. More importantly for me, though, I'm close to kin, lifelong friends and the church of my baptism.
I don't know that it's any worse than other college towns, but Bellingham's self-selected, trendy, "community" relies on a heavy annual import/export trade of young college students, graduates and dropouts. There's nothing local about it. I guess my idea of a sustainable, local living economy would be one that could sustain a family in a way of life over multiple generations.
Though I wonder what's the secret signaling behind a cannibalism restaurant in Deutschland... Maybe they could open an immediate-family-only swingers club next door?
Dunno if you already posted but the NY Times' census map is a handy companion to the mental geography of opinionators
Sailer said:
If you like your community the way it is or want to attract more of your kind of people, resistance to Wal-Martish globalization makes sense as a way to put up price barriers to discourage being flooded demographically.
Agree with Sailer here. White liberals have discovered that they can keep out "undesirable" minorities by playing the "progressive" or "green" cards. Gee, we can be trendy, save the earth AND keep out blacks, AND still feel noble about it! Thomas Sowell has pointed out the same hypocrisy- like the zoning regulations enacted with lofty rhetoric ("future generations etc) which have "ethnically cleansed" certain places not only of the usual "NAMs" but purged the ordinary, unwashed working class white out of the market too.
Can anybody explain how that leftist coalition of down-market blacks works with all those Bo-Bo locavore food snobs actually works? Probably just like the hedge-fund manager country club members enjoy working together with their bible pounding buddies.
LOL, there is no "coalition" except to the gullible, or the blinkered "social-justice faithful" who time and time again, will vote in the same leftists who are supposedly "helping" assorted minorities. COnservatives naively imagine liberals to be all gaga over said minorities, but they too are played by liberals to be the "hard hearted" - convenient foils.
Everything's "efficient" if you can transfer the costs to some other sucker. The cost of bringing those autos from the Orient is the destruction of Detroit and other manufacturing cities.
The cost has a plus side- weakening of lazy, featherbedding white unions.
Whiskey says:
For one thing, non-Whites like nice things too. They like safe streets, working hospitals .. And are completely incapable of sustaining them much less creating them, any more than the Visigoths and Vandals could sustain Roman aqueducts and roads and cities and villas, though they wanted to do so in the worst way.
^Actually white people are themselves incapable of sustaining and creating them at various points in history. It just depends on the white group you want to look at, and at what particular time. You alrady mention the Vandals, but in America there was/is the white Irish- bringers of massive violence, disease, illegitimacy and corruption to urban America.
When you look at Seattle, or Bellingham, or Portland, you are looking at doomed areas. Their destiny is Detroit's.
Chicken Little crying... Actually white liberals have already worked out sophiscated ways of keeping out or "cleansing" targeted minorities as Sailer's opening posts suggests.
Sunbeam says:
The locavores and localists are part of a pretty broad umbrella, which happens to include folks from a lot of walks of life and political persuasions.
Good point. ANd all white persuasions have discovered that they can pretty reduce the number of targeted minorities by such things as localism, rent control and "green" zoning controls, while posturing as non racist.
Dave in Seattle sez:
NAM's and immigration aren't topics they think are relevant because they live in a cold, rainy little paradise.
But they do. They have figured out the game. "Green space" zoning controls or rent controls for example eliminate cheaper housing, OR reduce the amount of housing being built. Result- less targeted minorities. Meanwhile the progressive set can posture nobly. White liberals, and other "green coalition" members have figured out how to play everyone.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-schools-insider/post/federal-civil-rights-complaint-filed-over-low-numbers-of-black-latino-students-at-elite-tj-high/2012/07/23/gJQA1sY04W_blog.html
Did someone say disparate impact? It was only a matter of time before they came after TJ.
By that logic Pacific North West swipples would want to get their food from Provence, Normandy, Savoie, Tuscany.
That would hold true for things like wine and cheese (which really are better in France) and specialty products like truffles and caviar. But it doesn't hold true for meats and vegetables, which are the mainstay of your cuisine. All the great chefs source locally. The American Thomas Keller, considered one of the very greatest chefs today, gets all his meats and veggies from local producers, usually less than 100 miles away from his restaurants.
Re: globalism
Efficiency is not the goal. The goal is robustness. This is easy to forget.
Everything's "efficient" if you can transfer the costs to some other sucker. The cost of bringing those autos from the Orient is the destruction of Detroit and other manufacturing cities.
Americans wouldn't buy so many Toyotas and Hondas if they had reason to believe Detroit's cars were better. You think we should base our purchasing decisions on charitable feelings for strangers who produce shoddy merchandise at high prices and manipulate the political system to the detriment of the taxpayers?
Too Tall is basically right.
In conservative cities like Atlanta, when the blacks start moving in the white people just move out to a further suburb, and rinse and repeat every 10 years or so. This is how the Atlanta metro area now covers like a quarter of the surface area of Georgia.
In hip liberal cities, the white people stay in the central area and drive out/keep out minorities with a variety of "progressive" policies that have the effect of making housing as expensive as possible: historical preservation, environmental protection, smart growth, etc.
"In conservative cities like Atlanta, when the blacks start moving in the white people just move out to a further suburb, and rinse and repeat every 10 years... In hip liberal cities, the white people stay in the central area and drive out/keep out minorities with a variety of "progressive" policies"
Much as I hate to admit it, that sounds as if liberals really *are* smarter than conservatives...
I think going into space fries your ovaries from the radiation.
Sally Ride was a lesbian.
It doesn't matter why.
The only thing that matters is the bottom line: 0.0
You can either get busy making babies, or you can get busy going extinct.
There is no middle ground.
O/T - these stories both relate to the Hawala transfer system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
In the UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2177634/Judge-questions-illegal-immigrants-able-set-corner-shop-defraud-customers-50-000.html
"Two illegal immigrants face jail after being found guilty of using a money transfer service to con customers out of almost £50,000. Syed Bukhari, 25, and Siyed Asem, 58, ran the legitimate service from a corner shop they set up in Gloucester. But when customers entrusted them with their cash they skimmed hundreds of pounds a time off the top of the sums. They also offered made up exchange rates and pocketed the difference"
In the Middle East
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=278488
"The Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved a bill Sunday that will make it illegal for migrants to transfer money abroad. Under the new law, the penalty for migrants trying to do this will be some NIS 29,000 and six months imprisonment, and the punishment for those assisting them by transferring the funds will be the same fine, but a year in jail."
I liked how in a 5:19 video, you only saw one NAM for a couple seconds, starting at 2:48--the African-American (mulatto?) kid picking out ice cream.
Sure could have used more of the redhead the opening seconds seemed to suggest was going to be the main presenter.
"In conservative cities like Atlanta, when the blacks start moving in the white people just move out to a further suburb, and rinse and repeat every 10 years... In hip liberal cities, the white people stay in the central area and drive out/keep out minorities with a variety of "progressive" policies"
Much as I hate to admit it, that sounds as if liberals really *are* smarter than conservatives...
For decades, the liberal and upper-class communities have been treated with kid gloves compared to the tactics used against working-class, “ethnic” White (e.g., Polish-American), and conservative communities. This is true even where a working-class community adopts verbatim the policies of nearby wealthy communities.
In liberal communities, media coverage will focus on the “progressive” policy's benefits, portraying NAMs as needing to be “educated” as to the policy's benefits; in a working-class White community, the media will focus on how minorities are harmed, how Whites are engaging in “cultural imperialism,” how Whites are failing to “humanize the Other,” etc. Articles will be accompanied by heart-rending pictures of minority women and children who are purportedly harmed by “racist” whites hiding behind environmentalism.
Working-class and conservative communities are more likely to be subjected to “disparate impact” analysis, i.e., the idea that any policy that disproportionately burdens NAMs or discourages them from moving in is inherently racist and therefore illegal. Liberal communities are allowed to keep their policies if policy-makers have a “rational basis” for adopting them.
Finally, upper-class and liberal communities are treated with far more leniency when they persistently defy civil rights laws. Enclaves of limousine liberalism such as Westchester county, New York and Marin County, California continue to block the construction of minority-inclusive affordable housing, despite numerous consent decrees, court orders, and administrative directives. Even the Obama administration refuses to address the matter as forcefully as the Reagan-era judiciary dealt with working-class communities such as Yonkers, New York that refused to allow the construction of public housing projects meant to facilitate integration. No massive fines, no fines doubling daily, no contempt citations against and jailing of local officials until they agree to vote for whatever the federal judge wants, etc. The same liberals who supported the use of eminent domain proceedings to tear down working-class and "ethnic" White neighborhoods (and Asian neighborhoods (e.g., Japantown in San Francisco)) to build public housing projects refuse to even consider its use in places such as Marin County.
I concur with Too Tall and Anonymous 7/24/12 12:11 AM.
Every smart growth policy can be re-purposed into creating a safe haven of sorts.
However, should your community become too much of a safe haven, it will of course be targeted, as well-documented here: http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/
o/t - just imagine if the US were doing it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/netanyahu-plan-for-negative-media-campaign-to-deter-african-migrants-emerges-7939398.html
"One Israeli official said the feasibility study on a media campaign is being led by the National Information Directorate, a unit under the Prime Minister’s Office normally charged with promoting a positive image for Israel.
The possible campaign would stress the –genuinely severe—dangers of rape, kidnap and robbery inflicted on migrants by Bedouin traffickers and others in the Sinai desert, and that Israel is rapidly building a fence along the Egyptian border. Furthermore, migrants will not be allowed to work in Israel, and they face detention for up to three years at a desert detention camp currently under construction.
There are strong doubts that such a campaign will actually materialize, with the Foreign Ministry arguing that two major sources for migration, Eritrea and Sudan, are repressive states without the independent media to carry it.
The official emphasized it was in no way envisaged that any campaign would focus on recent attacks on Africans and their property. But the Foreign Ministry was worried that it could still present a negative image of Israel."
Marc B, I believe the band Death Cab for Cutie is from Bellingham.
Bellingham is all good until the alien elephants drop the dinosaur killer on it after the launch of the Orion ship.
Sorry, couldn't resist the obvious Niven/Pournelle reference, especially after Steve used the tagline from their novel Oath of Fealty "Think of it as evolution in action".
According to her obit, Sally Ride was "survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy". O'Shaughnessy is an author and professor emerita at San Diego State.
So, in their 27 years together, two intelligent, accomplished women managed to have zero children, while crack mothers have cranked out literally thousands of kids. And people are still wondering why we're on the fast track to becoming Nigeria.
There is a basic problem here. What I and probably most other educated middle class people want is to exclude the underclass--we want good schools for our kids andsafe streets for our families. Anything you do to get these things has a disparate impact, in the same way that only hiring firefighters who score well on written tests has disparate impact.
Nice places to live are usually places that don't have a lot of people like that lady with three kids by three different losers. (Those kids have neither genes nor environment going for them, and aren't too likely to be an asset to the local school's gifted program. On the other hand,they'll probably be up to bustingout car windows and stealing stuff.) Typically, that filtering is done either thanks to expensive housing or to regional differences that give a low fraction of NAMs. Btut other ways would be fine, too.
One of the unhealthy aspects of this filtering is tht it excludes a lot of the middle class people needed to make the community work. In order to price out nearly all the troublemakers in a plausilbly deniable way, it turns out that policemen and nurses and schoolteachers can't afford to live in the community. It would be nice to find other ways to filter, but I don't know what they would be that would survive legal challenge.
"Actually white liberals have already worked out sophiscated ways of keeping out or "cleansing" targeted minorities as Sailer's opening posts suggests."
I know, right?
Like, take Jackson Hole, where the billionaires are pricing out the millionaires.
A billionaire *needs* his underpaid helots, see. But they're such unattractive little critters. Tut-tut. Musses the view of the setting sun behind the Grand Tetons.
Such a shame. Really, Something Must Be Done.
"AHA! We'll store them while not in use BEHIND the mountains in Driggs, ID, with those Wrong Kind of White folks over there.
"Yeah! Bus 'em in in the morning to mop the Great Room floor, then bus 'em back OVER the mountain, conveniently out of sight, by 5 pm.
Genius!
"What do you mean, it's like Nouveau Sundown Towns?! We're not racist like those icky Southern White Trash in Mississippi!"
"So, in their 27 years together, two intelligent, accomplished women managed to have zero children..."
I think someone needs to explain to you about the birds and the bees.
That's the great thing about decadence - it is self-extinguishing. These two may been intelligent and accomplished, but from the evolutionary POV (the only one that counts in the long run) they weren't really "women" (look at Tam's photo if you need confirmation) - they were programming errors and their genes did not get copied as a result. End of story. We can invent all sorts of modern SWPL life affirming BS about what a wonderful loving relationship they had but it doesn't change the reality.
A crucial question is whether Disparate Impact applies to you or not. For example, the four or five million Latinos in L.A. County hold hardly any good jobs in the entertainment industry. But nobody cares.
Beautiful video and beautiful place. Too bad it'll be aged in 2 generations, what with their .9 children per family. Talk about lack of sustainability.
Too bad, really.
"Disparate Impact"
I find funny how many are the American terms for Race related issues.
"the atkins diet for instance is ONLY POSSIBLE in a modern super productive society. it's completely impossible in a third world setting. you just can't exploit the food chain enough in a place like that to eat meat every meal."
You don't need the Atkins diet in a third-world setting because you're not eating enough to get fat.
And as far as eating bananas from Ecuador being more efficient than eating kale from a farm 5 miles away, jody, that's just silly.
Or in areas where the bottom has dropped out of the economy, like Western Illinois, it can help keep money in the community. These areas buy almost everything from outside, other states and countries, and only have service jobs to offer. So money is flowing out and hardly any is coming into the area. The area bceomes poorer and poorer. Buying local, at least with some products (it is not a contest to see if you can do everything local!), keeps some of the money in the community, BTW it is not only hipsters that believe in this. A lot of conservatives and just regular people do as well: http://sustainabletraditions.com/2009/07/where-are-the-sustainable-conservatives/
http://www.frumforum.com/a-conservative-case-for-farmers-markets/
I see a lot of resemblance between today's affluent SWPLs/progressives and the pre-war English aristocracy/landed gentry classes that the former hold in such contempt.
jody said...
"the "buy local" people are literally using 10 times as much gasoline to create the same food infrastructure, and if that was expanded to all food production and consumption, at least 100 times as much gasoline would be necessary"
Can you cite where you got this data or is this just off the top of your head? I am involved in local agriculture, in an area that is heavy into conventional ag, and the huge tractors, crop dusting planes, Trains, and hundreds of semis that plow, spray, plant, cultivate, irrigate, harvest, transport to storage, transport from storage, and transprot to processing facilities, the grain and livestock in conventional ag uses a hell of a lot more gas than a guy with a few acres running a CSA! I didn't even go into all of the gasoline used in the dryers at grain elevators, fossil fuel used in the production of fertilizers (which is all the Green Revolution was, using cheap fossil fuel to fertilize fields), or the fact that much of our food is imported. Why talks about Buy American when tc comes to cars but not when it comes to oranges, garlic, apples, lettuce, cabbage, and tomatoes, most of which come from other countries now?
Anonymous said:
"That's the great thing about decadence - it is self-extinguishing. These two may been intelligent and accomplished, but from the evolutionary POV (the only one that counts in the long run) they weren't really "women" (look at Tam's photo if you need confirmation) - they were programming errors and their genes did not get copied as a result. End of story. We can invent all sorts of modern SWPL life affirming BS about what a wonderful loving relationship they had but it doesn't change the reality."
That is a pretty deep comment. I think it would take me 100 pages to write my thoughts down on that statement.
Too bad that books only come in two sizes now: thick and thickerer.
Steve, I think you are grossly in error in seeing a linkage between Lefty locavore food issues and a policy to exclude NAMs. you attribute far too much rationality to the Lefty mind. They are incapable of basic reasoning. the whole "sustainability, locavore eating" thing is more like Marie Antoinette and her court ladies playing at milk maids.
OT: From NBC (No Black Conversation)--a gay couple who were, in one of the victim's words, "probably holding hands" were attacked by five teens.
The article doesn't mention the color of the perps.
Roike said he’s not sure if he and his boyfriend were attacked because of their sexuality:
“ 'I can’t think of another reason other than we got out of a fancy town car and we were walking in a not great part of town at a late hour,' Roike said. 'We were probably holding hands. It could have been because we’re gay, but I don’t know for sure.' ”
"'It’s so unnecessary in this day and age, when everybody could just get along,' Gail Hall [mother] said."
-------------------------------
I fully expected the story to state that it's suspected that members of the Tea Party attacked the couple.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Yoga-Instructor-Hospitalized-After-Gay-Couple-Attacked-163475546.html
View Of The World From 9th Ave - did you notice that Whites and Asians are red and green, while blacks and hispanics are blue and yellow, so people with the most common forms of color-blindness will group NAMs and non-NAMs?
SWPL Bellingham is just down the road from hardcore right-wing Lynden, which was founded by fanatical Dutch Calvinists in the 19th century.
The Dutch, who live on both sides of the border and have occupied the Fraser Valley for a long time, run the most productive farms and dairies in western Washington. Buying locally is no great chore when you've got the most efficient farms in the region just a few miles down the road. I buy goods from there in Seattle supermarkets all the time, and not for any sense of local pride. It just happens to be the best stuff for the money.
So these granola kids in Bellingham are actually enjoying the fruits of austere Dutch Protestantism, which has provided an agricultural cornucopia in the area.
As for why the minorities aren't there, well... it really is because of the rain. And it's just a podunk college town without any significant industry. I go there all the time to pick up/drop off my kids, and trust me, ain't nothin' goin' on.
Frankly, I'm not sure what bothers me more, dangerous blacks, or white kids who fill every sentence with an "amazing" and two "incredibles."
@Whiskey:"When you look at Seattle, or Bellingham, or Portland, you are looking at doomed areas. Their destiny is Detroit's." - There is no infinite demographic of people able to come here, provided that they don't vote for another amnesty(africa and asia of course can supply all the people needed to swamp them out with populace to spare), so their strategy might work.
Likewise if they dampen their opposition to those evil racist republicans, that can also help them out.
"Surely you can understand that the discriminating taste appreciates provenance."
By that logic Pacific North West swipples would want to get their food from Provence, Normandy, Savoie, Tuscany. Instead they claim to want local stuff. The best provenances are unlikely to be local. The world is really big and the culinary arts have deeper roots in the old world.
I meant to be ironic. However, since you took it literally, I'll address it. The SWPL's are actually getting their own "provenance" going, for better or worse. Rather than imitate/import the glories of Europe, they're making a claim to their own. Give them that, at least. It's kind of like the story about the new noblesse who brushed off his old aristocracy critics: "I am an ancestor; you are descendents."
The vast majority of jobs and industries are unaffected by disparate impact: real estate, law, medicine, manufacturing, technology, etc. Even in elite college admissions, preferences for blacks and (mostly white-ish) latinos balances out against Asian quotas.
That's the great thing about decadence - it is self-extinguishing. These two may been intelligent and accomplished, but from the evolutionary POV (the only one that counts in the long run) they weren't really "women" (look at Tam's photo if you need confirmation) - they were programming errors and their genes did not get copied as a result. End of story. We can invent all sorts of modern SWPL life affirming BS about what a wonderful loving relationship they had but it doesn't change the reality.
I'm going to have to tone down what I'd really like to say to you [because Komment Kontrol would never approve it], but in an earlier era - even as recently as about 50 years ago - these two gals would have settled down with some nice guys and had 3 or 4 children each.
Then they could have let off a little steam every Saturday night by playing footsies with one another beneath the bridge table, and giggling like little girls in front of their husbands.
But if you can't see the civilizational catastrophe inherent in exchanging IQ 120/130/140 white chicks, having 3 or 4 kids each, in favor of IQ 80/70/60 Nahuatl or Nigerian chicks, having 6 or 8 kids each, then that great big over-sized brain of yours is just too damned imposing for me to be able to reason with.
I'm a little skeptical about Steve's point in this posting. My impression is that the locavore/hipster crowd would sincerely LOVE to live "diversely," provided the nonwhites who'd show up would be as into ecology, food, excellent coffee and other cool values as the locavore crowd is. I really don't think their ethos has anything to do with keeping nonwhites out, it has to do with "living better," at least by their own standards.
(Incidentally and FWIW, I've eaten a lot of locavore-inspired meals in the last five years, and many of them have been great. I know that hipsters can be silly, and I enjoy having a giggle at their expense from time to time. But the locavore food scene strikes me as one of the best and most vital parts of culture generally right now. You don't have to take the "local food would solve all the world's problems" claims terribly seriously to enjoy the eats, and maybe even appreciate the general attentiveness to community, localism, the particular, real farmers, etc. Most reform movements make silly cosmic claims, but some of them have something worthwhile to contribute anyway.)
Anon:
The same is true of any number of DINK couples, who are often smart and capable in many ways, but who leave behind no offspring.
I wonder if either woman ever donated eggs or anything. I don't know about O'Shaunghasy, but Sally Ride was apparently a very impressive person (being an astronaut and getting a PhD in physics are both pretty damned hard), and it's a pity she didn't spread her genes around. In an ideal world, the same fund that paid miss 3 kids by 4 fathers from the previous discussion to get sterilized would have paid Ride to at least donate some eggs.
The locavore people I know are a mix of paranoid about pesticides and GM foods, and valuing good tasting food over cheap food.
As far as the paranoia, I also would rather have less nasty chemicals on my food, and might be willing to pay more for it. But I do have some skepticism about the honesty of the guy at the farmer's market selling the nice tomatoes or blueberries or whatever with a hand-written note saying "organic."
Farmers' markets usually sell much better vegetables than you get in grocery stores, however, since the tomatoes didn't have to survive a cross-continent truck ride, and didn't have to be genetically engineered to survive that trip. The locally grown stuff almost always tastes better. That's worth more money, if you've got the money.
Anon 7:09, no explanation needed. If a turkey baster is OK for Ellen and Portia...
But you are essentially correct with the rest of your comment. Too bad society sees it as a feature and not a bug.
I'm more than willing to pay more for local food if only to ensure it has not been adulterated in China.
"I really don't think their ethos has anything to do with keeping nonwhites out, it has to do with "living better," at least by their own standards."
They want 'cultural whites'.
Gee steve you get this image that all white towns are radicals, these radical towns cost taxpayers a lot less moneny. Not certain why middle to upper middle class folks that are notare that much on the welfare dole on left but the right has done a terribeljob of getting people interested in some sort ot alterantives. On the right you have the catholic distrubisism which is to go back the guild systems of the middle ages but because their Cathilic and like the middle ages no gay marriage and their against abortion.
In a conservative area like the South the paleo-con types are becoming eastern orthoodox since they like to return to religion in the age of Justinian and some like the economics of the middle ages like guilds and such, gib fans of distrubtism which is also popular when some ROman Cathilics. These folks think evangelicalism is too modern and want to hop back into the middle ages.
They are doomed. Either the Somali will find them and descend upon them like a cloud of locusts as they did Lewiston, Maine, or the Barbara Lerners will approach their weofare departments and try to foist some Somalis, Kenyans, or Ethiopians, off on them.
Once a small beach-head is established in their community, the federal and state grant programs almost require you to set up or expand several support agencies, that will then expand the initial wedge until the white folks are driven out.
The cries of guilt and shame will resound, until the town is as ugly as Yakima. They will shout about disparate hiring, disparate school scores, disparate college matriculants, disparate everything.
All of it points unwaveringly to the evil in the soul of every goyim, a point that will be hammered on incessantly, creating hate and discord between people who have lived peacefully together for generations.
If someone wanted an environment tailor made to make Harold Covington sound sane and rational, that would be it.
"Americans wouldn't buy so many Toyotas and Hondas if they had reason to believe Detroit's cars were better. You think we should base our purchasing decisions on charitable feelings for strangers who produce shoddy merchandise at high prices and manipulate the political system to the detriment of the taxpayers?"
3 points:
A) Detroit had traditionally ignored or made mediocre products for the small/ medium car segment, but their output in the past decade has been competitive or superior to the best Japanese cars. Modern cars in general from any make are completely different from the vehicles of just a couple decades ago. They are designed and tested with computers and made with manufacturing robots. This by itself has leveled the playing field in terms of build quality among manufacturers. Further, the implementation of engine computer management systems has eliminated hundreds of breakable, moving parts while providing for more durable, reliable operation. The rat nests of vacuum tubes and complicated mechanical carburetors and distributors have long since been replaced with solid state electronics and simple actuators. A new car from even a low end make like KIA will very likely be more reliable than the most reliable Honda of 10 or 15 years ago was out of the showroom simply by design. And that is pretty reliable.
B)Japanese cars actually were grossly inferior to the American cars that dominated their market prior to that country's protectionist economic policies and massive government subsidies to their auto industry. If the Japanese had followed your lights their biggest export would still be silk.
C)Every trade or profession angles for the best salaries or benefits that they can get. Lawyers, accountants, etc. do this through professional organizations while working people do it through it unions. The blue collar guys are the only ones who get slammed for it though even while union influence has been in free fall for decades. Further, there are hundreds of other industries tied into the auto industry. So, no, I don't want to see the country's industrial base hollowed out and the working class converted into a population of tweakers and crack heads just so some guy can buy a slightly cheaper, import car. People who want to live in a 1st world nation while paying 3rd world prices and wages for their goods and services need to be told that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Ray Sawhill said:
"I'm a little skeptical about Steve's point in this posting. My impression is that the locavore/hipster crowd would sincerely LOVE to live "diversely," provided the nonwhites who'd show up would be as into ecology, food, excellent coffee and other cool values as the locavore crowd is. I really don't think their ethos has anything to do with keeping nonwhites out, it has to do with "living better," at least by their own standards."
Your statement rings true to me. But the fact of the matter is, the hipster/locavore/green/hippie remainder/whatever culture is totally antithetical to the bulk of black culture.
This is just just an opinion, though it is one based on my personal experience, I think most black people dislike these type more than most other kinds of white people.
I don't think the black community is too fond of redneck cops, but at least they understand them. I'm pretty sure the teabaggers aren't faves of the black community, but they understand them.
I think that hipsters to the black community are something like space aliens or something.
I mean just about everything about these types and black people is separate. TV, whether it is watched, or what is watched. Music. Food. Lifestyle. Values, education it's all 180 degrees opposed.
In a very real sense the guys in this clip are whiter than the Birmingham, AL Republican committee.
I can imagine one of those guys screwing a black chick, or listening to rap. I can't imagine the guys talking in that video doing the same.
People who want to live in a 1st world nation while paying 3rd world prices and wages for their goods and services need to be told that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
There is such a thing as a free lunch. It's called economic rent.
In a conservative area like the South the paleo-con types are becoming eastern orthoodox since they like to return to religion in the age of Justinian
Eastern Orthodox in the the American South for non-Slavs in southern USA? No.
... and some like the economics of the middle ages like guilds and such, gib fans of distrubtism which is also popular when some ROman Cathilics. These folks think evangelicalism is too modern and want to hop back into the middle ages.
Do you mean the age of the 30 Yrs. War, or the era of the Crusades, or the time and mood of Jean Calvin? ( "Middle Ages" or early Modern ?)
How about "In Hoc Signo Vinces" in the time of Constantine?
Socks, as a right-aspy, I concur.
'Liberal fascism' or
liberal Volkish-ism. Organic community that is sustained from within. Food from one's own soil. Honest work, honest business, honest cooperation. Get rid of the 'middlemen' and 'moneymen' in between.
Jonah Goldberg was onto something but he botched it by reducing his ideas into a simple polemic against the left. What he failed to notice--maybe intentionally--was he was making fascism sound pretty good.
"In an earlier era - even as recently as about 50 years ago - these two gals would have settled down with some nice guys and had 3 or 4 children each."
And the kids would probably have been miserable, what with their closeted mother who didn't really want them and was probably hitting the sauce to ease the pain, etc.
Ride tried marrying a man (a fellow astronaut) in the early '80s - even 30 years ago there was societal pressure for lesbians to marry and live "normal" lives.
I'm glad that Ride didn't go that route - I'm guessing that she would have made a terrible mother and the kids would have been terribly unhappy and messed up. Intelligence is a wonderful thing but I've known some very sad people who were the products of very intelligent (but also screwy) parents.
Absolutely. Tilling the soil, producing one's food, home made textiles, Homes built from mud or some local material. Simple, honest work, closeness to "Nature" and rejection of commerce, capitalism and all those .. things. It is German romanticism of the 19th century, the idealistic Wandevogel movement. It is not specifically fascist, in our case (the Zionist movement) it was left wing. We had the same romantic ideology with its big bearded tolstoyian "Rav" (teacher) in JP Gordon. For Gordon there was a magical value in working the soil and eating its fruit. Basically it is rejection of modernism, it is Luddism. Let them be, they are inoffensive.
"And the kids would probably have been miserable, what with their closeted mother who didn't really want them and was probably hitting the sauce to ease the pain, etc.
"
Indeed, it's she who should have been raised right. The stupidity of women's movement crushed before she was born.
btw love the children's happiness argument.
"even 30 years ago there was societal pressure for lesbians to marry and live "normal" lives.
"
And the dreaded "societal pressure" makes an appearance! As if lesbians today don't find their lesbian selves after some dick-dandling.
Well, there was a small riot in Anaheim, cops shot a gang banger who republicans here that lover minority neighborhoods since whites are more conseravtive should take notice> I notice since Obama is Prez these things are occuring more. In fact Tom Tancredo stated that a lot of the protesters were from a far left group in La which consist of Mexican and white Radicals.
But the fact of the matter is, the hipster/locavore/green/hippie remainder/whatever culture is totally antithetical to the bulk of black culture.
Confirmed. I have an organic-hemp-wearing, Earth First! hippy friend who, on more than one occasion, has blurted out in exasperation, "I don't like black people!" By that she meant typical black Americans. If they were Haitian voodoo priestesses or loincloth-wearing African tribesmen, she'd gush about how authentic such people are. But she has absolutely NO use whatsoever for black Americans and avoids them whenever possible. She thinks they're crass, greedy, anti-spiritual people. I notice her whiter-than-white Earth First! friends don't hang around with blacks either.
"Well, there was a small riot in Anaheim, cops shot a gang banger who republicans here that lover minority neighborhoods since whites are more conseravtive should take notice> I notice since Obama is Prez these things are occuring more. In fact Tom Tancredo stated that a lot of the protesters were from a far left group in La which consist of Mexican and white Radicals."
- I'll tell ya once boy, quit huffin' paint. It ain't a pretty sight...
Out of curiousity, why would Tom Tancredo know anything about the protesters? I mean, did he have someone from his staff go to Anaheim and investigate, maybe go through pictures of protesters and match them up to known radicals? Or did he get some kind of inside access to surveillance footage coupled to cellphone location records used to track political radicals in demonstrations?
No, of course not. He made it up. Because there's no acrual consequence to making shit up as long as it doesn't offend someone with a megaphone.
A lot of protests and riots are being reported now that used to be buried, because basically everyone in the country is now carrying a video camera with internet access in their pocket. Something reported in one paragraph as a small disturbance with a few people arrested for disturbing the peace in the local paper is a lot harder to bury, when there's footage of cops busting heads and protesters tossing bricks on YouTube.
One of the entertaining aspects of this is that a surprising number of cases of "resisting arrest" turn out to look just exactly like some guy getting the living crap kicked out of him for mouthing off to the wrong cop. And these days, the video is quite likely to show up, and it's pretty hard for the cops to arrest everyone who is taking video in a big crowd.
Somewhat off topic, but related to a common thread in discussions here: Some discussion on the effect of student loans on the housing market. The student loan bubble is basically the housing bubble, applied to younger people, and with the laws way more favorable to the lenders.
They point out that the exploding student debt is driving a crappy housing market (who wants to take out a big mortgage when they're still paying on their student loans?). But there's another side to this--the crappy housing market is probably making students take out more debt, because their parents can no longer pull the tuition money out of refinancing their homes.
The student loan bubble has all kinds of ugly consequences--effective debt peonage for a lot of ambitious middle-class people, a prisoners dilemma situation where everyone must spend more on unnecessary education because everyone else is (and this is how you signal you're smart and functional), dygenic effects as deeply-indebted people put off starting a family till they can pay their bills, a huge penalty to realizing at 23 that you want to pursue a completely different occupation than you set out on in school, fewer young people willing to take the risk of working for a startup, etc.
Steve,
I live in an interracial neighborhood (roughly 50% black, 40% white), and almost all of my white friends here are into "sustainable living," "buy local," and the like. They're a homogenous group of middle-class whites -- the poorer whites and the blacks in my neighborhood aren't into this stuff -- but they're clearly not trying to live in a white enclave. (They're also not straightforwardly liberal, either; many are more traditional Catholics, for example.)
So these granola kids in Bellingham are actually enjoying the fruits of austere Dutch Protestantism, which has provided an agricultural cornucopia in the area.
Are you sure those "Dutch" were actually Dutch?
After all, the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually German. I can imagine some goose-stepping Prussian spies settling in Bellingham and setting up Soviet-style collective farms for the ultimate in efficiency. And masquerading as Dutchmen.
so true. modern large scale industrial agriculture is more efficient by two orders of magnitude at least. the local farmers market is super inefficient by comparison.
How very true. The Soviet collective farms were models of efficiency, so much so that they were copied world-wide.
Video was presented by Timberland. Pat Buchanan might say that's like the convent taking ten percent from the brothel around the corner.
I liked that these young people had no weird piercings, no ink and no advertising on their clothes.
They have typical craftsman personalities. Crafting a culture where their skills are appreciated seems perfectly normal. The problems start when the next generation has to decide who gets the farm, who gets the business and who takes care of the old folks.
These people are bright but not geniuses, it's not like the whole world will be affected if they misdirect their careers, as was the case when Pascal drifted in and out of the monastery. Pascal was an ascetic, but no Luddite - he invented a calculator at 19 to spare his father labor.
Let them follow their bliss. We'll see how it works out. I'll bet they will certainly be more fertile than big city middle managers, how could they not be?
Rest assured that they would hate me, even though I have similar tastes. I'd be the one who would want to build the traditional town wall.
Question interesting me, from the outside looking in, is what progs truly think under the code language about the idea of a black middle class (i.e. are they for/against). The GOP will say they want it, even while militating against the black median by importing Spanish-speaking serfs. But how does the Prius-driving, Joanna Newsom-listening quintessential SWPL react viscerally to a small but stable nationwide caste of black store owners, branch managers, non-gov't consultants, and mid-level administrators? Even though they support AA, which would augment that caste, they also by the evidence of their statements & actions desire expanded entitlements, SNAP, single mothers, etc.* I can see two lines of reasoning:
1) They disdain the notion of any # of blacks adopting the white bourgeois mores, and for visceral aesthetic preference want them to remain an authentic Other.
2) Because of the experience of the 60s/70s, inside they doubt, and it's a source of psychic conflict, that blacks are capable of forming that stable class to any small degree. Dependent blacks are, in one way of viewing it, safer for the continued existence of white progs, now recolonizing D.C. and Manhattan and the SF Bay Area. They know speaking of social uplift is a bit quixotic at this point, though old habits die hard.
But perhaps there are additional strands of ideology to these 2, tying together the SWPL spontaneous coalition.
*This prog constellation may also serve as intra-white tactics against non-SWPLs in regions that hate the welfare state policy but will inevitably be dragged into supporting once it's enacted from the Supreme Court or any central progressive authority
NOTA - One of the entertaining aspects of this is that a surprising number of cases of "resisting arrest" turn out to look just exactly like some guy getting the living crap kicked out of him for mouthing off to the wrong cop. And these days, the video is quite likely to show up, and it's pretty hard for the cops to arrest everyone who is taking video in a big crowd.
Thats a good thing.
It cuts both ways though. World Star Hip Hop has plenty of content, freely given, that illustrates vibrant diversity in all its glory.
For Gordon there was a magical value in working the soil and eating its fruit. Basically it is rejection of modernism, it is Luddism. Let them be, they are inoffensive.
Doesnt have to be as clear cut as that. I used to like the feeling of toiling on my website then stopping, going outside and chopping firewood or pruning an apple tree.
Post a Comment