I really thought this essay was building up to a stronger point than "how can they be too powerful if I can write a dissent on Substack without being harmed."
Just for starters, they did everything they could to shut down Substack and it is only the bravery of the owners that thwarted that plan. You have whole teams at elite institutions like NYT and Wapo dedicated to deplatforming dissent.
For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard is both part of, and representative of, the elite that dominates K-12 education, the rest of academia, Hollywood, the media, government, the FBI/CIA/military, NGOs, Tech, SV, Wall Street, corporations, etc.
For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard and the rest of the elite have become bastions of intolerant, religious, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of Harvard students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities and the rest of the elite have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer
“Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”
The converse point is that Harvard and other universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2003. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.
Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on 'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”
These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.
Have you noticed that the same people who insist one minute that they're the tough guys and "liberal elitists" are a bunch of wimps will day the next minute that those liberal elitists are all-powerful tyrants subjecting them to Nazi-style persecution? How is that possible?
For people who claim to believe in competition, they don't seem to be open to the possibility that the ideas of liberal democracy could have outcompeted theirs. No, the other side *must* be cheating. That's who they need conspiracy theories.
The existence of cancel culture is not in dispute. The signers of the Harper's Letter were on the left, not the right. So far cancel culture has not reached Nazi levels. Being kicked out of Twitter is not the same as being sent to a concentration camp.
The reality is that liberal democracy in the West is in deep decline and authoritarian states are on the rise. China passed the US in GDP years ago and hasn’t looked back. For better or worse, authoritarian China is a rising power and ‘woke’ America is a declining power. I have a single line that summarizes the decline of the USA and the rise of China.
“China is very good at building dams, the US is very good at enforcing PC. Which system will prevail in the 21st century?”.
It’s a good line about China, but it’s not true. Look closely at what’s happening in China and you won’t see an all-powerful, dominant regime. And do you think that another authoritarian state, Russia, is really a rising power? They’re losing a war against a smaller, ostensibly weaker, democratic neighbor. Victor Orban in Hungary is someone beloved of authoritarians, but his country is still small, weak, and largely uninfluential. Would-be authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro lost his bid for re-election in Brazil. So which authoritarian states are truly “on the rise”?
And saying “liberal democracy is in decline” is a form of wishful thinking. What’s scary is that you, or any American, would wish for that.
The fundamental anti-enlightenment distrust of the individual persists. It seems wrong but the idea that there is an alternative, worthy counterpoint to the enlightenment cannot be dismissed easily. Yarvin and that ilk obviously don't make the case but it does seem like there should be one.
The "Red Pill" hypothesis has taken what anthropologists know about societies and amplified it 100 fold. Why can't we accept the fact that - as a species - we humans cannot make conscious or unconscious conspiracies work for more than a few years or decades? The conspirators only get as much as decades if the conspiracy is backed by the force of arms after which everything falls apart.
I really thought this essay was building up to a stronger point than "how can they be too powerful if I can write a dissent on Substack without being harmed."
Just for starters, they did everything they could to shut down Substack and it is only the bravery of the owners that thwarted that plan. You have whole teams at elite institutions like NYT and Wapo dedicated to deplatforming dissent.
For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard is both part of, and representative of, the elite that dominates K-12 education, the rest of academia, Hollywood, the media, government, the FBI/CIA/military, NGOs, Tech, SV, Wall Street, corporations, etc.
For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard and the rest of the elite have become bastions of intolerant, religious, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of Harvard students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities and the rest of the elite have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer
“Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”
The converse point is that Harvard and other universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2003. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.
Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on 'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”
These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.
The new religion at Harvard and many of these other institutions is "Wokeology".
Have you noticed that the same people who insist one minute that they're the tough guys and "liberal elitists" are a bunch of wimps will day the next minute that those liberal elitists are all-powerful tyrants subjecting them to Nazi-style persecution? How is that possible?
For people who claim to believe in competition, they don't seem to be open to the possibility that the ideas of liberal democracy could have outcompeted theirs. No, the other side *must* be cheating. That's who they need conspiracy theories.
The existence of cancel culture is not in dispute. The signers of the Harper's Letter were on the left, not the right. So far cancel culture has not reached Nazi levels. Being kicked out of Twitter is not the same as being sent to a concentration camp.
The reality is that liberal democracy in the West is in deep decline and authoritarian states are on the rise. China passed the US in GDP years ago and hasn’t looked back. For better or worse, authoritarian China is a rising power and ‘woke’ America is a declining power. I have a single line that summarizes the decline of the USA and the rise of China.
“China is very good at building dams, the US is very good at enforcing PC. Which system will prevail in the 21st century?”.
It’s a good line about China, but it’s not true. Look closely at what’s happening in China and you won’t see an all-powerful, dominant regime. And do you think that another authoritarian state, Russia, is really a rising power? They’re losing a war against a smaller, ostensibly weaker, democratic neighbor. Victor Orban in Hungary is someone beloved of authoritarians, but his country is still small, weak, and largely uninfluential. Would-be authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro lost his bid for re-election in Brazil. So which authoritarian states are truly “on the rise”?
And saying “liberal democracy is in decline” is a form of wishful thinking. What’s scary is that you, or any American, would wish for that.
The bottom line is that the West is failing. In the West 2+2 is now 'white racism'. In China, 2+2 is still 4. See "As US Schools Prioritize Diversity Over Merit, China Is Becoming the World’s STEM Leader" (https://quillette.com/2021/08/19/as-us-schools-prioritize-diversity-over-merit-china-is-becoming-the-worlds-stem-leader/). The quantitative data supports this conclusion as well. See "China’s rise as a major contributor to science and technology" (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1407709111). The PNAS article is from 2014. Since then, China has become the number one producer of scientific papers. See https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Science/China-passes-US-as-world-s-top-researcher-showing-its-R-D-might for some data.
I am not wishing for anything (save for an end to PC). However, the reality is that China is rising and the US/Europe are falling. The US was 40% of GDP in 1960 and 24% in 2019. See https://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-share-of-global-economy-over-time/. These number appear to be nominal GDP (not PPP) based. China was just 4% of global GDP in 1960. By 2019, China reached 16.3% of global GDP. Of course, Europe is in decline. See "Europe on the wane " (https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-on-the-wane-global-economics-demographics-gdp/) for some numbers.
Spinning the Russia:Ukraine conflict as an instance of an authoritarian state beating up on a liberal democracy is too glib.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/ukraines-accelerating-slide-authoritarianism
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-zelensky%E2%80%99s-ukraine-becoming-increasingly-autocratic-182124
The fundamental anti-enlightenment distrust of the individual persists. It seems wrong but the idea that there is an alternative, worthy counterpoint to the enlightenment cannot be dismissed easily. Yarvin and that ilk obviously don't make the case but it does seem like there should be one.
The "Red Pill" hypothesis has taken what anthropologists know about societies and amplified it 100 fold. Why can't we accept the fact that - as a species - we humans cannot make conscious or unconscious conspiracies work for more than a few years or decades? The conspirators only get as much as decades if the conspiracy is backed by the force of arms after which everything falls apart.