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Notes -
I linked this blog post in a reply at the bottom of a long comment chain, but it occurs to me that it is probably worth discussing in it's own right.
According to all known laws of physics and aviation there is no way that a bumble bee ought to be able to fly. The bee, of course knows nothing of this and insists on flying anyways.
Wikipedia has an entry dedicated to the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi” because for the last 100 years or so, no matter how bad off your state may be in a particular way, you could typically take solace in the idea that Mississippi had it worse. "Yes, our health outcomes suck..." the the people in Wyoming and Alaska may tell themselves "...but at least we aren't Mississippi".
In my experiance shitting on the South Eastern US as an embarassing, degenerate, cultural backwater, is not only tolerated in blue and grey tribe spaces but venerated and encouraged. Of course the south sucks, that's where Mississippi is. If you are from that region and you are persuing a degree at a school like Stanford or Cal-Tech you quickly learn to hide your accent and claim to be from somewhere else if you want to be taken seriously and graded honestly by your professors.
According to all known laws of of demographics, economics, and reason Mississippi shoud not have good schools and yet...
The "Missisippi Miracle"
In 2002 the second Bush administration signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. Educational standards and reform had been had been a big part of his 2000 campaign platform, his wife Laura being a grade-school teacher, and one of the provisions of this act was a a mandate that "Public" (that is tax-payer-funded) schools would participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) originally established by the Johnson administration in 1964. As a result we now have standarized test data for almost every state and municpiple school district in the country going back over two decades.
For those outside the US, US school system is typically broken into 3 4 year long blocks. Kindergarten/Elementry School, Middle/Secondary School, and then High School. Specific names and implimentations vary from state to state but as a general rule the idea is that a child will enter the public school system at the age of 5 or 6 and graduate at the age of 18. The NAEP tests students for reading and mathematical proficiency at grades 4 and 8, IE upon entering and exiting Secondary/Middle School.
In 2003 Missisippi 4th graders where ranked near to last in the nation for reading comprehension, with an unadjusted average of 203. Only DC and Puerto Rico ranked lower. As of 2024 thier score is 219, representing a lttle over a standard deviation of improvement and placing them just shy of the top 10. This on it's own would represent admirable progress, but where things start to become unhinged is when you look at the "adjusted" figures. NAEP and various outside NGOs apply various adgustments to the raw scores in an attempt to control for things like demographics, socio-economic status, and spending per-student. When these "adjustments" are applied, Mississippi schools are not just performing better than they were 20 years ago, they are performing better than any other state school sytem in the nation. This is the alleged "Miracle".
Now a number of liberal commentators ranging from Friedliche DeBoer (of the South African Boers perhaps?) and Kevin Drum to Steve Sailer and the LA Times have all tried to debunk the so-called "Mississippi Miracle". The arguments generally fall into three broad categories. The first is that the mainstream media, academia, and establishment politicians are all prejudiced against liberal coastal blue-coded states like New York, Massachusetts, California, and Oregon, in favor of southern states like Mississippi. I find this claim laughable on it's face for reasons stated in the opening of this post. The second is the significantly more defensible claim that the NEAP's "adjusted" scores do not accurately reflect ground level truth. I believe that this is a fair critique, but the people making this critique often explicitly refuse to acknowledge that the unadjusted scores also saw an marked improvement (casts side-eye at Sailer and DeBoer) and that even when comparing like to like, the average Black student in Mississippi reads at a level about 1.5 grade levels higher than the average Black student in democratic strongholds like Illinois or Wisconsin.
Finally there is the claim that Mississippi is effectively "gaming the system". In 2013 the Mississippi State Legislature enacted the Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA) which required kids to pass a reading test to be promoted from elementary to middle school or else be held back or forced to repeat a year. The argument as it is, is that 4th graders in Mississippi are actually 5th or 6th graders by any other state's reckoning. If that were true one would expect to see a substantial age difference in the class cohorts, however that is not what we see, the average age of a 4th grader in Mississippi is only 0.01 years (or just under 4 days) above the national average.
To all appearances, and against the most ardent protestations of our resident Boer it would seem that having standards and enforcing them may actually matter.
How is this possible
I have a cynical answer that I expect to get me in trouble with the moderators, because I am about to take a stand in defense of Bulverism. Ad Hominem may be a formal fallacy, but in the real world it provides real value. Whether or not someone has an ulterior agenda is absolutely something you should be thinking about when you are trying to decide whether or not you are going to believe them.
I expect to be accused of "lacking charity" but the words are going to be theirs not mine. At some point all the experts in the blue and gray tribes seem to have decided that teaching kids to read was too much trouble and that not teaching them to read would be just as effective at promoting literacy as not doing so because demographics matter more than basic competency or engagement. Why would they do that even as they admitted that “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,”. The answer is in the following line "And we hated it."
By claiming that standards matter i am effectively take taking a shit on the foundational beliefs of Steve Sailer, Friedliche DeBoer, and a number of users here including at least one moderator.
Mississippi accepts your hate and Volleys it back. Ideocracy may be coming for America, but its coming for you, the blue tribe, not for MAGA country. We will teach our children Shakespeare Kipling and Twain, and you will not, and in 20 years we will see who has come out on top.
Not for this, but for unmasking yourself. Someone else finally pointed out the obvious, and I am kicking myself for not seeing it.
Hlynka, I have told you this before, but I am hugely disappointed that rather than taking your ban like a man, or asking us to reinstate you, you keep creating alts. Good job that you managed to run this one for months and being actually rather flamingly obvious about it in retrospect and not getting tagged, but you're done now. We don't exert much effort to catch alts and some people think they are clever, clever little people bragging about how easy it is to recycle an alt every time you get banned, but it just shows you have no integrity and place no value on your word or reputation. You're there to troll, to shit up the place, to giggle and get your digs in before the mods swat you and you reboot. Hoorah, a winner is you. Yes, it's easy to do this. Eventually, however, everyone regresses to their mean.
ETA: In case anyone doubted my judgment, he confirmed it in modmail.
Never understood this concept. In Paths of Glory, when they decide to execute three soldiers at random, one of the condemned starts whining and dragging his feet, saying it’s so unfair and he doesn’t want to die, and his executioners and their priest tell him to show courage and die with dignity …. But why should he help them to commit an unjust act?
That quivering mess is the only honest man there, and moreover he’s morally correct. You want your “comrades” to have nightmares for years where they see you begging for your mother – their conscience torturing them is good. You don’t want them to commit a grave crime, then eat breakfast like it’s tuesday.
When you make it easy on them, you are cooperating with defectors. In modern parlance, by acquiescing to your own destruction, you become a cuck.
They're not going to have nightmares or be tortured by their consciences. They're just going to remember you as a whiny, blubbering coward. If you can't change your fate, then facing it with dignity is better than making yourself pathetic. You aren't helping people do what they are going to do anyway.
Banning people from a forum, of course, is nothing like executing them, and I feel no remorse for banning people who deserve it, so arguing that it's "cucked" to refuse to accept a banning just means you think there is some virtue in being an undignified annoyance. There isn't.
Pure vanity. A grave injustice and your life hang in the balance, this is not the time for such superficial concerns. If morality requires you to cry, you cry. If your duty requires you to die despised, then you swallow your ego and holler like a bahamian.
Btw, I don’t know, and thanks to mods’ I won’t know, but I’m pretty sure that Hlynka, as the NCO law-order-honor-type, would not back my defense at all, which I find amusing. As is tradition, since I’ve always maintained he should not be banned, even though he himself was the most pro-censorship of the mods.
If you really believe that begging might save you, there is an argument for it, but otherwise, no, I can only despise the "morality" you advocate.
Also, your example is of someone being unjustly and arbitrarily executed, not someone being justly punished for his actions.
You've said that begging here CAN save you, even rescue you from a permaban. Which encourages begging, which is why you shouldn't do it.
That is not what I said. You did not misunderstand me. You are pretending to misunderstand me. Stop doing that.
I did not misunderstand you, nor am I pretending to. I am merely seeing the issue from a perspective you don't share. If you permaban someone and they go away and never come back and never contact you again, they remain permabanned; this is what "permaban" means, of course. If they go to you and request to come back and promise they'll be a good boy, you might let them come back. You don't want to call that begging, but I can't see how it is anything else; you're saying the only way back is through the supplicant's door.
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You expressed skepticism earlier that it would inflict guilt-ridden nightmares upon the executioners - but supposing it provably did, would your stance change? Or what if your death is to be witnessed by the public? If you think you're being unjustly put to death, it stands to reason you dislike the regime doing this to you, and want to use what little agency you have left to raise the odds that it'll be toppled or reformed. This is to say, it stands to reason that you want to make yourself a martyr. All else being equal, making as much of a stink as possible when they drag you to the gallows increases the odds of your death having consequences for your killers, whether it makes them second-guess themselves or drives public opinion against them.
Notably, this needn't take the form of whining and blubbering; you could also try and make an impression on the basis of fighting spirit, struggling and cursing your murderers until your last breath, to try and inspire others to show the same rebellious courage - even if you have ~0 odds of actually freeing yourself or injuring your captors. Much manlier, but also very different from "facing death with dignity".
I guess it depends on what kind of role you have the look of. e.g. if you're a nebbish-looking student protestor, or a woman, you'll probably make a more memorable martyr if the cameras capture you as a weeping victim slaughtered by merciless monsters. If you're a big strong guy, going out as a fiery revolutionary might be inspirational and make you look the bigger man, while a sobbing breakdown, rightly or wrongly, might indeed look pathetic.
(To be clear, none of this is about Hlynka's behavior, I'm just curious about the meta-argument.)
Well, now we're deep into hypotheticals having nothing to do with the original example.
If I knew that undignified groveling and blubbering would make my killers feel bad, but not save my life, would I do it? I like to think not. If it would serve some instrumental purpose - like making a martyr of myself that would stir public pity such as to prevent future killings? Assuming I was capable of making such a rational and strategic decision in such a moment, maybe?
Fighting them and cursing them seems much more dignified than begging and crying. At least I wouldn't die ashamed.
and I would do
I would prefer to be able to take actions earlier (when they would be more effective) but in such situation I expect that my priority would be to cause whatever damage I can do, even if i would be only a minor annoyance to them
+1, though not on shame reasoning but because I guess it would be a bit more effective
(hopefully I will not have reason to apply it in practice - but I will not reduce my opinion about someone being unjustly executed and begging/crying/etc, though I would harshly disapprove of offering to turn traitor at last moment)
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On what grounds? Your idea of 'manlyness'? You're generally liberal, but the sex stuff is your achilles heel.
Right, but I don't think Hlynka thinks he's been justly punished for his actions. Personally I don't consider most of the permabans the mods hand out justified.
That's a general problem with the old liberalism. Men are still supposed to act traditionally, but then accept worse results for it. A man who stands up for his rights in court will just get slapped down and get a tougher sentence than one who pleads guilty and begs for leniency, and liberals applaud this -- but still despise the latter man.
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I don't even know what you mean by "sex stuff" here. I despise cowardice, weakness, and lack of dignity and self-respect.
Actually, he was pretty straightforward about his disagreement with Zorba and acknowledging that this disagreement necessarily led to his being removed as mod and then banned. We had many conversations with him: I don't know that he necessarily agreed that he was "justly punished" (obviously he wanted to keep doing what he was doing and he did not want us to make him stop) but he knew what he was doing and at the time seemed to accept the consequences.
This does not surprise me.
I think you know what I mean – there’s a tension between liberal egalitarianism which you generally support, and your traditional view of manhood as special protectors and providers, paying for everyting before going to the gallows with a smile. You foist plenty of duties on men you would never foist on women. They’re not even allowed to make a fuss on their last moments on earth when they’re wrongfully executed. By contrast you indulge women their tears in every situation, and tend to view them as innocent victims, like your idol feminist JK rowling (I’m not talking about the "anti-trans" stuff, which is fine and compatible with liberalism).
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