I recently realized that Rob Henderson’s theory has echoes of Thomas Sowell:
“The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?”
"Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power."
That many of the elite live conservative family values while pushing radical individualism is evidence that they are lying. They do not personally embrace the choices they promote to others. It is almost as if they want those below them to fail and be miserable.
I've been rolling the framing of transitioning as suicide around in my mind. Very thought provoking. It must surely be an exaggeration even if it provides some insights as an analogy. There is still shared experience , legal connections, and more connecting you to someone who transitioned.
But there are two senses that made it seem correct. The first comes from the trans rights movement, the idea that your old name, from before you transitioned, is called your "dead name". That old person, the one with that old name, is dead to them too it seems.
Second, in the movie The Emerald Forest, there is the following exchange:
Tomme, you think you are a man...
but I only see a stupid boy.
Your time has come to die.
Must he die?
Yes.
I will never see my boy again.
The boy is dead...
and the man is born.
Basically, the tribe's position is that the boy has to die for the man to be born. That there are stages and rituals that fundamentally separate people from earlier in their lives. I think there is a recognition that puberty and parenthood can be like that and it can be traumatic but good. Maybe transitioning is an example of a similarly irreversible transformation of the self.
It's hard to know what to think about your analogy between transitioning and suicide without further elaboration. You don't really say what the two have in common, except that they both have a tendency to cause pain to loved ones (but of course there are many good things that have that same tendency on average, like children moving out of the parents' home). I get the sense that some members of your audience are so much "on the same wavelength" as you when it comes to these issues that vague analogies like this will get through to them, but if you want to communicate with readers who'd perhaps score a bit higher on Openness in a Big Five personality test, you're going to need to explain what you mean more clearly.
You and Arnold should consider the analogy to body integrity identity disorder (BIID), where people want to amputate some healthy part of their body. See:
Trans surgery is similar to both, but also different.
The current huge difference is the number of celebrities and media who support trans surgery, including so many queer teachers, where BIID & suicide remain discouraged.
I agree with what Alex Tabarrok really said: ' Put it all together along with the timing and other evidence and the case is strong that the 2020 BLM protests led to police pullback which led to a spike in murders, especially in black communities.'
‘… who told him that her daughter was transitioning, with the help of an online community, and felt that this community “had essentially taken her away from me.”
No Madame, you abdicated your parental responsibilities! How can the ‘on-line community’ do anything if your daughter were not on-line? Look up the word ‘discipline’ and also ‘no’.
Too many voters voted Democrat in order to get gov't benefits, as Dems promised - but the Dems were often lying (Obama & Obamacare) and at other times claimed to want a good result but their policy led to the opposite, a worse result.
If one believes that BLM and defund the police is better, but you're just stupidly wrong, it's not quite lying. Just as Bush 43 truly thought Iraq was developing nukes, but was wrong, not lying.
Voting Democrat was giving up individual responsibility.
Too bad you refuse to link to Steve Sailor, who has long been showing the spikes in homicide and car deaths, especially in the black, er Black, communities. Like June 26
"Just as blacks have gotten 49% more likely to die by homicide from Jan-Nov 2018 to Jan-Nov 2021, they’ve gotten 38% more likely to die in motor vehicle accidents. Hispanics are up 40% in homicides and 30% in car crashes.
Perhaps less worry about racial profiling during the racial reckoning contributes to both?"
Yeah, Steve is too snarky, maybe bitter about his exile, but he does good work in data.
Arnold, not quite Berensen, says "this a problem for the left, as the party of government". Nobody voted "left", they voted Democrat Party - they voted stupidly. Including Scott Alexander and Glenn Loury and most of our drafted Fantasy Intellectuals. [Not thenewneo.com ]
Berensen concludes: "The Democrats offer expertise, Ivy League brilliance, the smartest folks in the room; the Republicans personal control.
...
Reality is the problem for the left. Reality wants a course correction, and in four months voters are set to deliver that message to the Democratic Party with a foghorn blast."
Because it's a worldwide OECD phenomena, the "left" is a reasonable phrase for globalist secular humanist elite policy, but in US voting, the problem is the voters who vote Democrat.
And the elitist intellectuals who, based on emotional dislike of Trump, use their Big Brains to rationalize why voting against his policies was good.
All Biden voters are useful idiots, whether intellectual or merely loud & annoying. Terrible results from terrible policies; policies entirely predictable and accurately predicted by many anti-Biden folk - few who are considered intellectuals by the elites, tho.
The drug experimentation comment hits home with me. I reject most libertarian philosophy because they refuse to recognize the second and third order effects of the drugs we have largely legalized (alcohol and tobacco, with weed coming up fast) and it appears that the relative affluence of most people pushing libertarian ideas plays a large role in that.
The Berenson anti-vax idiocy against the sane protective actions of the Canadian government, idiocy that you endorse, are me nearing the point of cancellation.
I began to follow you for sound economic analysis. Now you are falling through the rabbit hole.
"I think there’s clear evidence that the current murder spike was caused primarily by the 2020 BLM protests."
I think that the evidence is rather that the spike was the result of police (non) response. If we knew that we need police reform before the spike, this really proves it.
This is nonsense, Thomas- the police non-response is a direct result of the protests, and I think you know this. What happened is similar to what would happen if you berated the pest control guy every time he serviced your home. You would be blaming him for the roaches that showed up after he quit coming altogether.
Berated or not, the police pull back, and that is what I understand that is was, is not proper policing. If anything perhaps greater street presence was needed in the immediate aftermath of the protests.
In those cases, I excuse the police leadership. But the policy implications remain. We need policing reform that focuses police on preventing and solving serious crimes, probably with more such officers as Tabarrok argues and relieving "police" from traffic enforcement (a lot more of which can be automated) and public nuisance calls.
Berenson is an anti-vaxxer. And your carelessness in equating trans with suicide is cruel to those of us who know people who have lost a child to suicide.
I find your posts to be a net negative. I am cancelling.
"Stop" is often a very helpful idea, seeing that most of the ruin in the nation is due to "leaders" initiating stupid plans. Just stop the stupid plans and society improves.
Biden has launched an endless war against the East - Russia and any country that does business with Russia, which includes China and India. This is a very stupid idea. Stop it!
Biden has declared government support and backing for policies promoting transgenderism. This will create much strife and misery. Stop it!
Covid mitigation policies such as mandates for masks, jabs and testing have been useless at stopping transmission and extremely costly to society, the economy and the education and mental health of individuals. Stop it!
Biden has announced a war against the fossil fuel industry. This will increase the cost of living, decrease grid reliability and have zero impact on "climate change". Stop it!
Just politicians stop being stupid would reap such great rewards for the people. If you want more than that may I suggest this rule: If Biden is for something, do the opposite. For as Biden's former boss said, never underestimate Biden's ability to screw things up.
"Stop" can mean do nothing or do something different? I reject the idea that we are already polarized on exactly the right dimensions.
To be a little more specific:
It there there a better way respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
What are the correct federal government policies with regard to people that want to change their gender?
Should there have been no "mandates" to use masks and vaccinations in any circumstances? Or only recommendations? Which circumstances? Should vaccine development not have been subsidized? Etc.
What if any is the proper policy with regard to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. [I happen to agree with you that restrictions on production of fossil fuels is a terribly inefficient policy.]
Done selectively do the opposite [well, differently] of the Biden administration would be a good program.
Just stop discouraging highly skilled people to come here to study and work.
Stop enforcing the Trump trade restrictions.
Staunch the deficit. [My way would be with higher collections from high-income people, but your milage may differ.]
On the issue of gender dysphoria, the government owes the people a balanced approach, consistent with the 1st amendment. So first, the government must oppose any evangelizing of transitioning by public departments and public employees. As a matter of public health, youth and young adults ought to be discouraged from making life altering decisions until they are older. Maybe 25? Perhaps 75 <tic>
Second, children should be protected from treatments that would alter their natural puberty and maturation. Private / religious persuasions against transitioning must be allowed.
As for accommodation of identity changes, there are legal and social concerns. First, no person should be punished for misgendering or misnaming. Second, if a person goes through the legal process to change their name then that change ought to be recognized.
As for the complexities of health care and coverage for transitioning I question what the public interest is on the matter. It seems like a cosmetic surgery to me but whatever.
That last one is a genius analysis because it differentiates between what we tolerate in an elite - the king of the hill has more to lose through misbehavior, its a long way down - and what we won't - the king of the hill is insulated from the impact of misbehavior.
Tragedy is when the great are felled by their flaws. Comedy is when the little people strive and succeed. When only the little people suffer and see the powerful escape justice, it is a powder keg.
I recently realized that Rob Henderson’s theory has echoes of Thomas Sowell:
“The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?”
Another quote from the same Sowell article:
"Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power."
That many of the elite live conservative family values while pushing radical individualism is evidence that they are lying. They do not personally embrace the choices they promote to others. It is almost as if they want those below them to fail and be miserable.
I've been rolling the framing of transitioning as suicide around in my mind. Very thought provoking. It must surely be an exaggeration even if it provides some insights as an analogy. There is still shared experience , legal connections, and more connecting you to someone who transitioned.
But there are two senses that made it seem correct. The first comes from the trans rights movement, the idea that your old name, from before you transitioned, is called your "dead name". That old person, the one with that old name, is dead to them too it seems.
Second, in the movie The Emerald Forest, there is the following exchange:
Tomme, you think you are a man...
but I only see a stupid boy.
Your time has come to die.
Must he die?
Yes.
I will never see my boy again.
The boy is dead...
and the man is born.
Basically, the tribe's position is that the boy has to die for the man to be born. That there are stages and rituals that fundamentally separate people from earlier in their lives. I think there is a recognition that puberty and parenthood can be like that and it can be traumatic but good. Maybe transitioning is an example of a similarly irreversible transformation of the self.
It's hard to know what to think about your analogy between transitioning and suicide without further elaboration. You don't really say what the two have in common, except that they both have a tendency to cause pain to loved ones (but of course there are many good things that have that same tendency on average, like children moving out of the parents' home). I get the sense that some members of your audience are so much "on the same wavelength" as you when it comes to these issues that vague analogies like this will get through to them, but if you want to communicate with readers who'd perhaps score a bit higher on Openness in a Big Five personality test, you're going to need to explain what you mean more clearly.
You and Arnold should consider the analogy to body integrity identity disorder (BIID), where people want to amputate some healthy part of their body. See:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/07/02/doctors-trans-surgery-and-language/
Trans surgery is similar to both, but also different.
The current huge difference is the number of celebrities and media who support trans surgery, including so many queer teachers, where BIID & suicide remain discouraged.
I agree with what Alex Tabarrok really said: ' Put it all together along with the timing and other evidence and the case is strong that the 2020 BLM protests led to police pullback which led to a spike in murders, especially in black communities.'
‘… who told him that her daughter was transitioning, with the help of an online community, and felt that this community “had essentially taken her away from me.”
No Madame, you abdicated your parental responsibilities! How can the ‘on-line community’ do anything if your daughter were not on-line? Look up the word ‘discipline’ and also ‘no’.
‘They took our rights.’
Did They The Elites take them, or did We The People give them?
Too many voters voted Democrat in order to get gov't benefits, as Dems promised - but the Dems were often lying (Obama & Obamacare) and at other times claimed to want a good result but their policy led to the opposite, a worse result.
If one believes that BLM and defund the police is better, but you're just stupidly wrong, it's not quite lying. Just as Bush 43 truly thought Iraq was developing nukes, but was wrong, not lying.
Voting Democrat was giving up individual responsibility.
Too bad you refuse to link to Steve Sailor, who has long been showing the spikes in homicide and car deaths, especially in the black, er Black, communities. Like June 26
https://www.unz.com/isteve/homicide-and-motor-vehicle-accident-death-rates-through-2021/
"Just as blacks have gotten 49% more likely to die by homicide from Jan-Nov 2018 to Jan-Nov 2021, they’ve gotten 38% more likely to die in motor vehicle accidents. Hispanics are up 40% in homicides and 30% in car crashes.
Perhaps less worry about racial profiling during the racial reckoning contributes to both?"
Yeah, Steve is too snarky, maybe bitter about his exile, but he does good work in data.
Arnold, not quite Berensen, says "this a problem for the left, as the party of government". Nobody voted "left", they voted Democrat Party - they voted stupidly. Including Scott Alexander and Glenn Loury and most of our drafted Fantasy Intellectuals. [Not thenewneo.com ]
Berensen concludes: "The Democrats offer expertise, Ivy League brilliance, the smartest folks in the room; the Republicans personal control.
...
Reality is the problem for the left. Reality wants a course correction, and in four months voters are set to deliver that message to the Democratic Party with a foghorn blast."
Because it's a worldwide OECD phenomena, the "left" is a reasonable phrase for globalist secular humanist elite policy, but in US voting, the problem is the voters who vote Democrat.
And the elitist intellectuals who, based on emotional dislike of Trump, use their Big Brains to rationalize why voting against his policies was good.
All Biden voters are useful idiots, whether intellectual or merely loud & annoying. Terrible results from terrible policies; policies entirely predictable and accurately predicted by many anti-Biden folk - few who are considered intellectuals by the elites, tho.
The drug experimentation comment hits home with me. I reject most libertarian philosophy because they refuse to recognize the second and third order effects of the drugs we have largely legalized (alcohol and tobacco, with weed coming up fast) and it appears that the relative affluence of most people pushing libertarian ideas plays a large role in that.
> Perhaps I should double-down on my analogy between transitioning and suicide.
I think the trans community would agree with you. After all, they refer to use of their old name as "dead-naming"
Edit: I see OneEyedMan beat me to the point.
The Berenson anti-vax idiocy against the sane protective actions of the Canadian government, idiocy that you endorse, are me nearing the point of cancellation.
I began to follow you for sound economic analysis. Now you are falling through the rabbit hole.
"I think there’s clear evidence that the current murder spike was caused primarily by the 2020 BLM protests."
I think that the evidence is rather that the spike was the result of police (non) response. If we knew that we need police reform before the spike, this really proves it.
But you're missing the other part of the causality, which Alex Tabarrok put plainly: The police non-response resulted from the BLM protests.
I did not miss it. That is not the right response.
This is nonsense, Thomas- the police non-response is a direct result of the protests, and I think you know this. What happened is similar to what would happen if you berated the pest control guy every time he serviced your home. You would be blaming him for the roaches that showed up after he quit coming altogether.
Berated or not, the police pull back, and that is what I understand that is was, is not proper policing. If anything perhaps greater street presence was needed in the immediate aftermath of the protests.
Yes, but the politicians did not allow it.
In those cases, I excuse the police leadership. But the policy implications remain. We need policing reform that focuses police on preventing and solving serious crimes, probably with more such officers as Tabarrok argues and relieving "police" from traffic enforcement (a lot more of which can be automated) and public nuisance calls.
Your last few posts have made me angry.
Berenson is an anti-vaxxer. And your carelessness in equating trans with suicide is cruel to those of us who know people who have lost a child to suicide.
I find your posts to be a net negative. I am cancelling.
I can't really top Smell Skunk's comment. Adios.
These are all real valid concerns. The problem is we hear a lot of justifiable resentment not translated into ideas for what to do differently.
"Stop" is often a very helpful idea, seeing that most of the ruin in the nation is due to "leaders" initiating stupid plans. Just stop the stupid plans and society improves.
Biden has launched an endless war against the East - Russia and any country that does business with Russia, which includes China and India. This is a very stupid idea. Stop it!
Biden has declared government support and backing for policies promoting transgenderism. This will create much strife and misery. Stop it!
Covid mitigation policies such as mandates for masks, jabs and testing have been useless at stopping transmission and extremely costly to society, the economy and the education and mental health of individuals. Stop it!
Biden has announced a war against the fossil fuel industry. This will increase the cost of living, decrease grid reliability and have zero impact on "climate change". Stop it!
Just politicians stop being stupid would reap such great rewards for the people. If you want more than that may I suggest this rule: If Biden is for something, do the opposite. For as Biden's former boss said, never underestimate Biden's ability to screw things up.
"Stop" can mean do nothing or do something different? I reject the idea that we are already polarized on exactly the right dimensions.
To be a little more specific:
It there there a better way respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
What are the correct federal government policies with regard to people that want to change their gender?
Should there have been no "mandates" to use masks and vaccinations in any circumstances? Or only recommendations? Which circumstances? Should vaccine development not have been subsidized? Etc.
What if any is the proper policy with regard to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. [I happen to agree with you that restrictions on production of fossil fuels is a terribly inefficient policy.]
Done selectively do the opposite [well, differently] of the Biden administration would be a good program.
Just stop discouraging highly skilled people to come here to study and work.
Stop enforcing the Trump trade restrictions.
Staunch the deficit. [My way would be with higher collections from high-income people, but your milage may differ.]
On the issue of gender dysphoria, the government owes the people a balanced approach, consistent with the 1st amendment. So first, the government must oppose any evangelizing of transitioning by public departments and public employees. As a matter of public health, youth and young adults ought to be discouraged from making life altering decisions until they are older. Maybe 25? Perhaps 75 <tic>
Second, children should be protected from treatments that would alter their natural puberty and maturation. Private / religious persuasions against transitioning must be allowed.
As for accommodation of identity changes, there are legal and social concerns. First, no person should be punished for misgendering or misnaming. Second, if a person goes through the legal process to change their name then that change ought to be recognized.
As for the complexities of health care and coverage for transitioning I question what the public interest is on the matter. It seems like a cosmetic surgery to me but whatever.
If the car is headed off the cliff we can discuss an alternative destination once you stop forward progress.
It might help persuade the driver to change course.
That last one is a genius analysis because it differentiates between what we tolerate in an elite - the king of the hill has more to lose through misbehavior, its a long way down - and what we won't - the king of the hill is insulated from the impact of misbehavior.
Tragedy is when the great are felled by their flaws. Comedy is when the little people strive and succeed. When only the little people suffer and see the powerful escape justice, it is a powder keg.