tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post6815034676762357905..comments2024-03-27T18:24:19.683-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Obama and anticolonialismUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18116775750051928572010-09-22T19:56:39.240-07:002010-09-22T19:56:39.240-07:00>"Anyone who has listened to the guy fumbl...>"Anyone who has listened to the guy fumble and bumble and hem and haw and monosyllabically grunt..": it's not all that uncommon for a decent writer to be rather inarticulate.<<br /><br />It's not all that likely, you mean.<br /><br />Listen to the off-the-cuff interviews of authentically competent authors as different as H.L. Mencken and Stephen King. The lucidity of expression in their verbal behavior is striking. They can not only write, they can TALK - and how!<br /><br />Speaking and writing are perceptibly different skills, but the gap between them doesn't seem to be very large for anyone who does either really well.<br /><br />It seems truer to say that good or great thinkers are "not uncommonly rather inarticulate" (in either speaking or writing or both). All good writing and speaking is based on good thinking, but not all kinds of good thinking lead to good writing and speaking. Anyone can hear what I mean if he audits a typical undergraduate physics course.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74026036232293174682010-09-17T20:20:54.345-07:002010-09-17T20:20:54.345-07:00I mean - for Goodness's sake - this is a guy w...<i>I mean - for Goodness's sake - this is a guy who needs dual teleprompters to make "impromptu" remarks to elementary school children.</i><br /><br />No, no. Obama used teleprompters in a news conference later in the day, speaking to reporters in a classroom at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Va.<br />Obama had spoken to the students themselves earlier, and he did not use a teleprompter then.<br /><br />http://www.factcheck.org/2010/01/school-photo/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-66000493524996026882010-09-16T20:57:54.804-07:002010-09-16T20:57:54.804-07:00Anonymous said...
"Unless you maintain that A...Anonymous said...<br />"Unless you maintain that Ayers wrote Dreams you have to admit that Obama has real literary talent and a high IQ."<br /><br />I maintain Ayers wrote Dreams.<br /><br />Ayers and the rest of the trust-fund revolutionaries of the Weather Underground were obsessed with race and dripping with self-loathing over their whiteness. The repugnance with which the author obviously views white people is vintage Ayers.<br /><br />The rest of Obama's writing confirms his lack of real literary talent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30712056779083519832010-09-16T12:56:56.184-07:002010-09-16T12:56:56.184-07:00Graham Asher wrote:
"[In 800-AD Europe] There...Graham Asher wrote:<br />"[In 800-AD Europe] <i>There wasn't mass literacy, but let's not exaggerate</i>."<br /><br />Mass literacy is hardly common in history anyway.<br /><br />Flash forward a thousand years to 1800-AD: The Russian Empire was about at its apex. It had only 8% literacy!<br /><br />In 1800, only the regions of Germanic speech in Europe and North-America had majorities who could read the words you are now reading. And even then, Germanic-Literates were barely a majority of their own populations (Literacy in 1800: 55% England and 'Germany', 58% USA). [<a href="http://www.openhistory.net/files/ISMWSChapter6.doc" rel="nofollow">Source</a> {opens a .doc}. The Russian author concludes that Europe can thank the Protestant Reformation for "mass literacy", led by the Germanic peoples].Wandererhttp://img517.imageshack.us/img517/280/growthideologywp7.jpgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74317959799027003142010-09-16T10:09:17.921-07:002010-09-16T10:09:17.921-07:00"Since Auma and I hadn’t yet been served, I b..."Since Auma and I hadn’t yet been served, I began to wave at the two waiters who remained standing by the kitchen, thinking they must have somehow failed to see us. For some time they managed to avoid my glance, but eventually an older man with sleepy eyes relented and brought us over two menus. His manner was resentful, though, and after several more minutes he showed no signs of ever coming back."<br /><br />Across the globe blacks are known as lousy tippers. So why should Obama be surprised by the reaction of the black waiters, who know this from broad experience? Did it occur to Obama to hold up a ten dollar bill, basically offering the tip in advance? <br /><br />Lot's of Joe Pecsi type I-talians do this -- it's not refined behavior, but it works gangbusters (pardon the pun).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-13965201856374580612010-09-15T19:54:01.208-07:002010-09-15T19:54:01.208-07:00Polchinello, I agree that sticking Detroit in ther...Polchinello, I agree that sticking Detroit in there with the others is likely to make one associate it with the (justified among the left) causes in South Africa and Vietnam. But again there I'd point out that his subject is an "age of innocence" viewed from the perspective of those who enjoyed it, and the "angry young men" are an outside force which end it. From the perspective of a member of the comfortable white establishment it doesn't much matter why these young men are angry.<br /><br />While it's highly doubtful Obama intended this, Soweto actually has strong similarities with Detroit in that it was more characterized by urban rioting than a serious military campaign conducted by a Maoist insurgency. "Charlie" was hardly an assortment of "angry young men".TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-2492058375121666502010-09-15T19:32:46.175-07:002010-09-15T19:32:46.175-07:00The Anti-Gnostic said..."Just another pissed-...The Anti-Gnostic said..."Just another pissed-off perpetual teenager. And we elected this guy."<br /><br />No. "We" most emphatically did not.<br /><br />I will never forget hearing him for the first time when he gave that speech at the 2004 Dem convention. I heard that smug lecturing sing-song cadence some blacks use that leftist whites just lap up and I thought "Uh oh, we're in real trouble."Kylienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-68450091521106991482010-09-15T15:49:00.339-07:002010-09-15T15:49:00.339-07:00I know where I first came across that self-absorbe...I know where I first came across that self-absorbed, self-indulgent immature literary type! He's bloody Hamlet.deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-52574535126160412762010-09-15T15:21:44.858-07:002010-09-15T15:21:44.858-07:00Jack Cashill deconstructs Dinesh over at American ...Jack Cashill deconstructs Dinesh over at American Thinker. MQ, he also has some comments on the authorship question.<br /><br />BrutusAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-1131724695483062912010-09-15T15:11:21.868-07:002010-09-15T15:11:21.868-07:00As someone who's spent an adulthood around wri...As someone who's spent an adulthood around writers, I second Dearieme's observation that many writers are lousy speakers. It's often a practical thing. One reason they're writers is because writing gives them a chance to correct and brighten up their otherwise lousy (spoken) prose.<br /><br />Other thought: what often strikes me about Obama is how generic a creature he is. Interesting racial background, interesting stuff about growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii. All that said: I've seen no indication that he isn't a completely typical example of the genus "bright middle-class kid who gets sent to a fancy private school and eventually winds up in the Ivies." Same agonies, same aspirations, same self-doubts, same habits, same dreams, same vanities as dozens of the kind that I've known.Ray Sawhillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02434181069400646328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-32327165215156539572010-09-15T13:51:31.563-07:002010-09-15T13:51:31.563-07:00I can't recall a single new idea in "Drea...I can't recall a single new idea in "Dreams from My Father." On the other hand, Obama is deft at laying out old ideas. <br /><br />His favorite ploy is to go two-thirds of the way toward a Hegelian synthesis about himself -- thesis, antithesis, but instead of any kind of synthesis, he stops and wallows in the romantic tragedy of his life's contradictions.Steve Sailerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11920109042402850214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76919728222932101132010-09-15T13:41:13.469-07:002010-09-15T13:41:13.469-07:00The ideologies spawned by the so-called enlightenm...The ideologies spawned by the so-called enlightenment-nationalism, nazism and Communism have destroyed Europe. Rome was in its death throes when Christianity took root in the Roman Empire.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-49617041965697969922010-09-15T13:22:43.824-07:002010-09-15T13:22:43.824-07:00Polichinello - contact me thru blogger. You know ...Polichinello - contact me thru blogger. You know me from Liberty Forum.<br /><br />STThe Anti-Gnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04386593803225823789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41009990844149904902010-09-15T12:24:48.359-07:002010-09-15T12:24:48.359-07:00Barbarians didn't destroy the libraries of the...<i>Barbarians didn't destroy the libraries of the ancient world or shut down the Academy of Athens. Barbarians didn't flay the skin off of Hypatia with oyster shells. </i><br /><br />This is good reading - http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/05/hypatia-and-agora-redux.html<br /><br />I'll give the opening.<br /><br /><i>"Well, it's been just over a year since I wrote my article on Alejandro Amenábar's film Agora and expressed my misgivings that it would perpetuate some Gibbonian myths about how Hypatia of Alexandria was some kind of martyr for science, how wicked Christians destroyed "the Great Library of Alexandria" in AD 391 and how her murder and the Library's destruction ushered in the Dark Ages."</i><br /><br />Other quotes:<br /><br /><i>"To begin with, as I detailed in my article last year, there was no "Great Library of Alexandria" as such in the city at this time. The former Great Library had degraded and suffered several major losses of books over the centuries and the last clear reference to it that we know of dates all the way back to AD 135."</i><br /><br /><i>"So the idea that any "Library of Alexandria" or any library at all was destroyed by the Christian mob in AD 391 is simply without evidential foundation."</i><br /><br /><i>"Amenábar depicts some of this tit-for-tat series of threats and violence, but invents a scene where the Taliban-style Parabolani instigate the whole dispute by sneaking into the theatre where the Jews are holding a Sabbath celebration and stoning them. This is found nowhere in the sources but, once again, Amenábar introduces a fictional incident into the story to make the whole conflict with the Jews and the subsequent feud between Cyril and Orestes into the fault of Cyril's faction - a clear distortion of the reported facts."</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-17199199159847670552010-09-15T12:13:13.341-07:002010-09-15T12:13:13.341-07:00Utter rot. Rome was not "already on its way o...<i>Utter rot. Rome was not "already on its way out"; yes there was a CRISIS in the third century, but not a collapse.</i><br /><br />Even the anti-Christian Gibbon, whom you recommend, admits that Rome after Diocletian was a shell of its former self. Other authorities, like Christopher Kelly, argue that Christian ethics and behavior gave Rome almost another two centuries in the West. The alternatives to Constantine were certainly not attractive. Again, see your own source, Gibbon.Polichinellonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-4797075200594932142010-09-15T12:07:49.229-07:002010-09-15T12:07:49.229-07:00TGGP,
Granted, Obama's style defies quotation...TGGP,<br /><br />Granted, Obama's style defies quotation, but the equivalence between criminal and revolutionary is there. You have the coke-crazed passage (which, I admit, doesn't give explicit moral sanction to the mugger), and you have this passage which does:<br /><br /><i>...an age of innocence before Kimathi and other angry young men in Soweto or Detroit or the Mekong Delta started to lash out in street crime and revolution.</i><br /><br />There you have it: the thugs who've destroyed Detroit are on a par with people opposing apartheid and colonialism, both of which in Obama's view are unalloyed goods.<br /><br />To anonymous, I applaud your satire of Fannonian ethics.Polichinellonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-61997438613299293862010-09-15T10:29:24.631-07:002010-09-15T10:29:24.631-07:00It's all very inward-looking, isn't it? He...<i> It's all very inward-looking, isn't it? He talks a little to his half-sister, and recounts the few words of his British fellow passenger, but all the rest is really his musings, his projection of how other people, in his opinion, must be feeling. </i><br /><br />Yes, this is true of the whole book. What's so surprising about "Dreams" is how typical it is of the over-sensitive, inwardly focused young writer type, as opposed to the tough-minded, observant, practical politician Obama became. (And believe me, whatever you think of their political agenda, all politicians at his level are tough minded and practical). However, you can see the other side of him in the ways he second guesses his own sensitivities, the internal dialogue that's going on. It's sort of boring because a lot of it is Obama's argument with himself, and he's attempting to shape it into a narrative an outsider would find gripping and he doesn't quite succeed.MQnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53303969232944671172010-09-15T08:52:51.144-07:002010-09-15T08:52:51.144-07:00"In say, 800 AD, Europe was the plaything of ..."In say, 800 AD, Europe was the plaything of the Northmen and the Muslims, a violent, poor, impoverished place that lacked even coinage, let alone cities or literacy."<br /><br />Ireland was literate at that point and had preserved many of the Latin classics. Kingdoms in England such as Mercia also had fairly good infrastructure in 800 AD. Not to mention freakin' Charlemagne's empire either....<br />All these places had coinage, small cities, and an educated elite/priestly class.BamaGirlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25340771700384492352010-09-15T08:34:00.659-07:002010-09-15T08:34:00.659-07:00Whiskey has once again hijacked a thread with his ...Whiskey has once again hijacked a thread with his assertions about backwardness in Northern Europe in 800AD. A lot of commenters have risen to the bait and I guess I have too. <br /><br />The reason this gets discussed at all is because today we know very well that IQ correlates with latitude. It may not be completely clear why but the observation can't be resisted. There was a thread a week or so ago about northern Italy versus southern Italy and again the key to the issue was acknowledging that northerners are just smarter.<br /><br />There are only a few exceptions to this rule. Hong Kong and Singapore are southerly and have very high IQs but their populations are recent arrivals from the north - first century migrants in the rule of Wang Mang.<br /><br />Classical Greece too was the result of the Doric invasions from the north.<br /><br />This leads to the question of why the Romans were civilized and the Germans and Scandinavians weren't? Central Italy (not northern Italy) today is not a hot bed of native genius. Indeed another thread today is on the topic of Affirmative Action for Italians.<br /><br />The pattern seems to be that cold temperatures made individuals smart but kept early societies from organizing. This all changed about the time of the invention of the chimney.<br /><br />In northern Germany at the time of the Roman Republic, which was also the time of the Roman Warm Period, you could assemble. The temples and markets were open. There was little or no window glass. If you wanted light you met outside or in a temple that had columns not curtain walls.<br /><br />In Germany or Scandinavia when winter set in, you assembled in a log house and sat around a central fire - for five months. There was no privacy because there were no separate rooms. There were no windows and there was no outside light. The houses were small and dark and you were stuck inside for nearly half the year talking to your relatives.<br /><br />The Dark Ages were also the cold ages. The climate warmed up again starting about 800AD and Northern Europe enjoyed the High Middle Ages. That ended in the fourteenth century. When the climate cooled again with the Little Ice Age there was enough technology to keep warm enough for civilization.<br /><br />In Scandivavia today when the snow falls a lot of Swedes and Danes cocoon and catch up on their reading. A thousand years ago you stared into a fire till Spring.<br /><br />AlbertosaurusAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-51000238522366797482010-09-15T08:26:26.308-07:002010-09-15T08:26:26.308-07:00dearieme's right that it's entirely possib...dearieme's right that it's entirely possible for a great writer to be terrible at public speaking. Jefferson was famous for that. That being said, comparing the prose of Obama's two books shows that they're clearly the work of two different writers. I don't know how anyone could read them and come to any other conclusion.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67945188289526380482010-09-15T08:21:49.313-07:002010-09-15T08:21:49.313-07:00There is precisely zero real-world evidence that &...There is precisely zero real-world evidence that "Dreams From My Father" is ghost-written, that charge comes from people who can't stand to admit a (half) black guy wrote anything literate. I mean, admit reality please. I've read Ayers "Fugitive Days" and it is nothing like Obama's autobiography in tone and noticeably inferior in literary skill. <br /><br />You can tell from "Dreams" that Obama has a complex mind that is constantly balancing off opposites, that he's prone to self-indulgence and romanticizing his circumstances but also has a cold intelligence that fights against those tendencies. Those qualities are evident in this excerpt, where he balances off his own sentimental attachment to Africa as a victim of colonialism against his understanding of the extra complexities involved.<br /><br />Also, if Obama was a true anti-colonialist, then what the hell are we still doing in Afghanistan?MQhttp://m@q.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76147877009077216922010-09-15T06:47:00.164-07:002010-09-15T06:47:00.164-07:00Nice.
Privileged, resentful Obama takes time of...Nice. <br /><br />Privileged, resentful Obama takes time off from doing, well, whatever it is he did to drag his mopey ass to Kenya. Mopes around, angry and out of place, and mopes back to Chicago. Marries, has children, becomes a US Senator, and this time searches for identity in more 'authentic' Ghana. Nothing to see there, and the whole family mopes around some more. Now this mope with daddy issues occupies the White House, scolding the citizenry, insulting the Brits, and musing about why prosperity doesn't just appear from the government's Magic Cargo Planes (<i>whitey--that's why!</i>).<br /><br />Just another pissed-off perpetual teenager. And we elected this guy.The Anti-Gnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04386593803225823789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-16291371843463168822010-09-15T05:33:51.696-07:002010-09-15T05:33:51.696-07:00Maybe its confirmation bias, but my first thought ...Maybe its confirmation bias, but my first thought is that this does not at all sound like the voice of the current president.joshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42377617166108987832010-09-15T03:50:51.841-07:002010-09-15T03:50:51.841-07:00It's all very inward-looking, isn't it? H...It's all very inward-looking, isn't it? He talks a little to his half-sister, and recounts the few words of his British fellow passenger, but all the rest is really his musings, his projection of how other people, in his opinion, must be feeling. I'm used to clever people often being more inquisitive than that.deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76606510921853262482010-09-15T03:43:11.759-07:002010-09-15T03:43:11.759-07:00"Anyone who has listened to the guy fumble an..."Anyone who has listened to the guy fumble and bumble and hem and haw and monosyllabically grunt..": it's not all that uncommon for a decent writer to be rather inarticulate.deariemenoreply@blogger.com