Joe Katzman explains why Trump’s inartful and commonly inaccurate debating technique seems to be working so well.

The right attempts political persuasion. The left, on the other hand, attempts social persuasion — basically seizing the commanding heights of culture-making institutions and then deciding that espousing some political claims (being pro-gay-marriage) increase social status and that espousing other political claims (being against gay marriage) decrease social status and, indeed, make one a social pariah, fit for ostracism, mass mockery, and internal exile.

The left’s method works much better than the right’s. It always has and it always will. Because most people don’t care about politics all that much — but nearly everyone (except for the crankiest of contrarians, including some of the current assembled company) cares about their social status.

Having higher social status gets you invites to the Cocktail Party Circuit, which is a real thing, defined broadly (and metaphorically) enough. It makes you datable, it makes you “clubbable,” as the old term went.

It can get you promoted at work, particularly if the sort of job you do is a bit vague as far as definite, tangible outputs and thus advancement depends more on how upper management feels about you.

While the left wing continues winning arguments by not even having arguments at all, instead simply demonizing those who espouse any contrary position, the #SmartSet (citation required) of the establishment right continues believing, apparently earnestly and definitely ridiculously, that if they just out argue their political competitors, they’ll change minds.

They won’t. Or not enough to actually matter. Because most people don’t really care enough about these issues to really engage with them on an intellectual level; they just want to know what to claim to believe so that other people won’t think they’re weird, and deem them unfriendable, undatable, and poor candidates for promotion inside The Corporation.

Trump’s manner of engaging with The Blob of left-wing virtue-signalling and status-conferring is to attempt to degrade the left wing cultural Borg of its own social status, thereby reducing its ability to set tastes, serve as “gatekeepers” of what the right-minded people agree are proper attitudes and beliefs, and demonize dissenters.

This is often ugly — but that’s how the sausage gets made.

RTWT

HT: Glenn Reynolds.

In a remote part of Northern Scotland, the development of a shore-side world-class golf course that might provide a great deal of local employment is being blocked by “conservationists” fighting to preserve the supposed habitat of Fonseca’s Seed Fly, Botanophila fonsecai, a species, one of 110,000 in the world and one of more than 7000 in the UK, discovered in the 1960s, and differentiable only by a close examination of the insect’s genitalia under a microscope.

The developers have spent the last two years modifying their plans so as to minimize the golf course’s environmental impact in hope that the local Council in authority will be placated.

Today’s world is mad, and the insane environmentalist religion is one leading source of the madness.

The Verge.com

Golf.com

* French: “Bugger the flies.” — Reversal of the French saying “N’enculer pas les mouches,” a crude way of saying “Let us not split hairs.”

I’d buy this app today, if I were young and unmarried.

Metro:

App creates contracts for one night stands to ‘prove’ sex is consensual.

Ever thought casual sex would be a lot easier if there was a legally binding contract proving consent?

Well, as it’s 2018, there’s now an app for that.

Let’s say you’ve met someone in a bar, you get along and it looks like you might be going home together.

To make sure the sex you want to have is consensual, all you do is open up an app and send a request like you would a message on Whatsapp.

The app in question is LegalFling which claims to be filling a void in the minefield that is dating.

Field Marshal Anton Ludwig August von Mackensen (6 December 1849 – 8 November 1945).

“The cruel seas, remember, took him in November.”

England, 1592

Bored Panda:

Sylvain Sarrailh, who is also known by the name Tohad, is a French concept artist based in Toulouse. His works vary from beautiful illustrations to exciting video games that always bring some fantasy into our daily lives.

This time Sarrailh decided to take some beloved characters from our favorite childhood stories and turn them into villains that seem like they just came out from Quentin Tarantino’s movies.

Clash America is warning us:

The plan to ‘reimagine’ the Alamo is well underway… and it’s a giant load of crap.

A plan to restore and ‘reimagine’ the Alamo been in the works for some years, and it’s not just a sprucing up of the place.

It’s a whole new ‘reimagined’ Alamo that won’t focus on the battle that the site is known for.

The Master Planner of the project, George Skarmeas, said, ‘We cannot single out one moment in time.’ …

The Master Plan includes items that cover 300 years of history but will focus on the diversity of cultures of the area. The plan includes being ‘inclusive’ by ‘telling all sides of the military story’.

People in Texas need to stop this.

James Bartholomew, The Spectator, contends that they have been miseducated.

The elite are supposed to be educated. So why are they so silly?

Ah! There is a clue. That word ‘educated’. What does ‘educated’ mean today? It doesn’t mean they know a lot about the world. It means they have been injected with the views and assumptions of their teachers. They have been taught by people who themselves have little experience of the real world. They have been indoctrinated with certain ideas. Here are some key ones.

They have been taught that capitalism is inherently bad. It is something to be controlled at every turn by an altruistic government or else reduced to a minimum. Meanwhile the pursuit of equality is good. These are truly astonishing things for educated people to believe when the past 100 years have been a brutal lesson instructing us that the opposite is the case. The pursuit of equality brought the world terror and tens of millions of deaths along with terrible economic failure. In the past 30 years, by contrast, since China and India adopted more pro-capitalist policies, capitalism has caused the biggest reduction in poverty the world has ever known. You may know that, but it is not taught in schools. Schools actually teach that Stalin’s five-year plans were a qualified success! The academic world is overwhelmingly left-wing and the textbooks spin to the left. They distort the facts or omit them.

What the elite have been led to believe is that governments make things better. ‘Market failure’ is taught; ‘public-sector failure’ is not. In my own area, they are taught that everything was awful in 19th-century Britain until governments came along to save the day with an ever-bigger welfare state. The importance of friendly societies, voluntary hospitals and so on is omitted. It is rubbish — left-wing propaganda. But misleading education of this and other kinds rubs off even on those who are not studying history or politics. It comes through in the Times, the Guardian or, in America, the Washington Post or New York Times. In Britain, BBC Radio 4 is the continuation of university propaganda by other means.

RTWT

I think he overlooks the point that “the elite” is overwhelmingly comprised of the lumpen pseudo-intelligentsia, the incapable-of-critical-thought mass products of elite education, who, armed with those elite credentials, rise via docility, conformity, and a penchant for shit work to occupy positions they are really not qualified to fill.

Just look at Yale President Peter Salovey!

People of his sort are really nihilists, who believe the truth consists of the consensus of the contemporary establishment. People like Salovey feel obliged to treat the Radical Left as their conscience and bow to its demands, because the Left is passionate and people like Salovey are devoid personally of passion for anything but safety and career advancement. Leftists are noisy idealists and consequently must be propitiated, rewarded, and admired.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are infidels and heretics and must be detested and suppressed.

John Ford was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy Reserve.

“I didn’t show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.” – John Ford