Said Matt Yglesias. Who, while being a disgusting piece of grease, is more candid than most other apparatchiks. Which is useful in understanding what leftists, or a particular set of leftists from a particular ethnic group, are thinking about. See this other recent example:
https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/896793662050283521
Mmm why would he say that?
There, FTFY.
If you're into memes this guy makes the same point.
https://twitter.com/MLChristiansen/status/896800538058039296
[…] All politics are identity politics […]
The Charlottesville marchers are more punchable than Sam Harris' face. Alt-Reichtards and their rally for Hitler did nothing wrong. Type-2 diabetes is a lifestyle choice Americans. And yet Harris manages to make himself look like the shit stain in comparison. This blog has done us all wrong, once you are taught to see virtue signaling, you can't unsee it. And no one likes to see pathetic.
This blog has done us all wrong, once you are taught to see virtue signaling, you can’t unsee it.
Heh. This would make a good subtitle for the blog.
It consoles me that, if the left wins in the upcoming civil war, Sam will hang, and if we win, he will get tarred, feathered, and deported. A fitting end for an establishment climber cum intellectual fraud.
http://www.loonwatch.com/2017/07/hollywood-harris-and-the-best-defence-money-can-buy/ He should check his white privilege.
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
Harris thinks that selfhood is an illusion (see SPIRITUALITY WITHOUT RELIGION), so would probably tweet that personal identity politics is, come to think of it, even worse than White identity politics.
You can read the passage where matty gushes about how unique and special his dad is here: https://quaslacrimas.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/matthew-yglesias-crackhead-and-his-snowflake-theory-of-identity-politics/
Possibly what Harris has in mind is something like what Terry Pratchett expresses here, in NIGHT WATCH. (A political rebellion is underway in Ankh-Morpork, the London of Discworld; the rebels are waving Ankh-Morpork flags and singing the Ankh-Morpork anthem.) -- “Tom?” “Yes, Clive?” “Have you ever sung the national anthem?” “Oh, lots of times, sir.” “I don’t mean officially.” “You mean just to show I’m patriotic? Good gods, no. That would be a rather odd thing to do,” said the captain. “And how about the flag?” “Well, obviously I salute it every day, sir.” “But you don’t wave it, at all?” the major enquired. “I think I waved a paper one a few times when I was a little boy. Patrician’s birthday or something. We stood in the streets as he rode by and we shouted ‘Hurrah!’” “Never since then?” “Well, no, Clive,” said the captain, looking embarrassed. “I’d be very worried if I saw a man singing the national anthem and waving the flag, sir. It’s really a thing foreigners do.” “Really? Why?” “We don’t need to show we’re patriotic, sir. I mean, this is Ankh-Morpork. We don’t have to make a big fuss about being the best, sir. We just know.”
(The text has the upper-cased words here italicized: “WE don’t need to show WE'RE patriotic, sir. I mean, this is Ankh-Morpork. We don’t have to make a big fuss about being the best, sir. We just KNOW.”)
Does "Why would he say that?" mean "What thoughts lead him to his conclusion?" or "What experiences and imaginative associations have given him the emotional inclination to arrive at such a conclusion?"
What to say? The same rules apply to all relations, from the dating and mating game to politics -- aren't they all social relations? Basically, everything will be perceived -- and claimed by the majority -- counter to truth. The more racist/ethnocentric groups will be known to be the more antiracists... and viceversa. The less supremacistic will be the only ones to be charged with supremacism. Heck, isn't everything in this life like this? I've never seen anything unlike this...
Who lies/deceives best is the most right. Who lies/deceives well is well right. Who lies/deceives bad is wrong. Who can't lie/deceive is... gamma.
(And also a stalker, molester, harasser of poor guiltless harmless saintly freshly-divorced wifies, to make another example.) It's strange (from my point of view) that you on this blog fight women freedom and independence, but never say a word on their uncanny talents in deception, feeling unanswerable for whatever disaster they cause to fall upon themselves (this wouldn't be much of an issue) and their partners, ... There is no doubt that the same intellectual gap between men and women (which is something wider than IQ...) is there when it comes to cheating, lying and deception, just turned the other way. Heck, sometimes they see one standard deviation above men.
Let's just posit for sake of argument that my identity is Coptic (Egyptian) Christian. It is not, but it is a close enough proxy for the sake of this discussion. I have very little in common with the White Nationalism demonstrators or whatever you want to label them. For all I know many of the demonstrators may regard me as indistinguishable from being Jewish to outward appearances and disdain me as they would a Jew, although to some Jewish people, my identity may be indistinguishable from White Nationalist. Remember Ted Cruz furiously virtue signaling by dissing his hosts when they were voicing their gripes about Israel? What has happened and continues to happen is that a broad swath of people are lumped in with the Charlottesville White Nationalists with regard to having their ability to assemble and to speak being vigorously suppressed. Everyone from Charles Murray to Ann Coulter to Milo Yiannapoulos to James Damore to Nakoula Nakoula are all lumped in this together (Mr. Nakoula is the Egyptian film maker alleged to have provoked the Benghazi "protest.") If Charles Murray's speech is violently suppressed by Antifa or whoever other hipsters-in-black, how is Charles Murray different from the Nationalists? If Nakoula's speech is suppressed under color-of-law as being a "dangerous extremist", how am I to react with the Nationalists are called by the same label? I am quite disappointed in Mr. Trump for backpedaling from blaming "both sides" for the violence. Were I the president, I would proclaim that I swore an oath to defend the Constitution as amended and interpreted over the years to protect Free Speech. I don't care how odious their beliefs or morals, we famously let the Nazis march in Skokie, home to many Jewish residents as well as WW-II veterans. We don't shut them down, we protect their right of public assembly and then we ignore them as we so choose because as Americans, that is truly who we are." We separate protesters from counter protesters so both have Free Speech. We don't let Antifa or whoever be the deciders of Constitutional rights and shut everyone down from a scholar, a former presidential speech writer, a goofy Greek guy, a crazy Egyptian, or yes, even "racist White Nationalists." The public Nightly News breast beating about Charlottesville deeply offends me because I am no White Nationalist, but I know they will be after me if I speak out too publically.
"What does he think he might gain by saying that?"
Hi Spandrell, I think you are making the classic mistake here. Sam Harris wrote in The End Of Faith: "The gravity of Jewish suffering over the ages, culminating in the Holocaust, makes it almost impossible to entertain any suggestion that Jews might have brought their troubles upon themselves. This is, however, in a rather narrow sense, the truth. […] the ideology of Judaism remains a lightning rod for intolerance to this day. […] Jews, insofar as they are religious, believe that they are bearers of a unique covenant with God. As a consequence, they have spent the last two thousand years collaborating with those who see them as different by seeing themselves as irretrievably so. Judaism is as intrinsically divisive, as ridiculous in its literalism, and as at odds with the civilizing insights of modernity as any other religion. Jewish settlers, by exercising their "freedom of belief" on contested land, are now one of the principal obstacles to peace in the Middle East." Does this sound like written by someone who has a serious case of Jewish identity? The classic mistake is that seeing there are liberal Jews and ethnocentric Jews, somehow it follows that Jews are one monolithic block who are demand different rules for whites and jews. Not at all. It seems, liberal Jews hate Jewish identity about as much as they hate white identity.
... for this reason the actually correct answer is not "Harris having a Jewish mother and Quaker father makes statements like this invalid coming from him" but more like: https://www.xkcd.com/774/ - New Atheists are stuck in an earlier loop of liberalism when signalling smartness was more important than signalling goodness and basically Harris is saying "I am smarter than all of you, black, white, straight, gay identitity-politicians, smarter than all of you, but still a liberal, still ingroup with the black or gay identity-politicians, just want you all to know that I am smarter than even them". To be fair, signalling smarts more than signalling goodness does seem to be a specifically Jewish flavor of liberalism, what little I know about Jewish culture suggests that smartness signals - like the whole Talmud thing, which is valued because basically it is such a convoluted mess of a legal system that defending any position of interpretation is super hard - are incredibly highly rated there.
Okay, so what do you think he thinks he might gain by saying that?
That's a liberal Jew hating religious Jews. But he hates whites way more strongly. As in the tweet.