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Oooooooh this comment is so far away from my personal suspicions and understanding of things that I'm fascinated to see it written out like this. Apparently you are anti blank slatism and I am very anti blank slate as well but we seem to have completely opposite assumptions and terminal end goals in this.
I don't see this at all. In my views, blank slate progressives are the ones who absolutely prioritize the "Soft Status" of my original theory over any kind of hard status. They are first conditioned not to notice ANY physical advantages of black people over whites, and this only strengthens their conviction that the poor blacks are ONLY victims in ANY circumstance because they do worse in every single category of soft status that they (the progressives) value- test scores, iq tests, academic achievement, wage payments, career advancement, you name it. This is what gives the progressive stack its power- to paint the minorities as the eternal victim. Instead what I propose is that black people have their own strengths, which are not the strengths of the PMC class, and that this is actually completely dignified on its own terms, and to try to prop up the academic achievements of a people not predisposed to these strengths is firstly humiliating toward black people, secondarily dehumanizing toward them, thirdly a waste of time, and fourthly demeaning to the rest of humanity as well. Indeed the arrogance of the white progressive that it takes to even imagine doing this makes me queazy and begin to imagine them all as Icarus circling ever closer toward the sun without an ounce of suspicion that their wings are about to melt.
This doesn't make sense at all to me... If you believe in blank slate you believe that whites are exactly the same as blacks. On the other hand I believe white people, and indeed Asian people, intuitively hold the belief in their inferiority when they find themselves as victims of black crime or feel anxiety when black people are around, because they are bigger scarier and more aggressive etc than smaller weaker people. My family has lived in the midwest for generations and the ones who kept living in increasingly black areas were buying more and more guns and becoming increasingly paranoid of black crime because they lived with its effects every day, meanwhile my family members who have moved out of those areas simply don't live with that fear and paranoia to the same degree.
I can imagine becoming this person only if I was absolutely positive that my group (whites) was superior to black people. If there was a 1000000% superior race out there and I was running around telling people how much I loved them, that would be so crazy. If there was a group that I saw as inferior and I ran around telling people how much I loved them, I would be getting so many brownie points from everybody. Which describes progressivism more accurately? I think white progressives only hold their beliefs out of a deep sense of arrogance and certainty in their own superiority, and of the inferiority of blacks. Anything that would truly point to an axis of power that holds blacks as more powerful (say in sports achievement) can only shake the foundations of the progressive worldview. They need to have a perpetual victim.
That worldview can only be corrected with more real world experience, acceptance of nature, respect for humanity and differences, and less ridiculous hubris, rather than a thin veneer of science and shallow morals that teach us something outside the realm of physical experience and history.
The progressive is trained to have a phobia reaction to intellectual or moral differences only. He is perfectly fine saying white people can’t dance or white people have no rhythm, but if you ask if this is genetic he will say no. And while it’s easy to train someone into believing that everyone has the same baseline genetic intelligence / morality, it’s next to impossible to persuade a human that athletic power doesn’t matter, because that’s a primal indicator of power that goes back millions of years to pre-human ancestors. And we live in a world that valorizes the athletic from the middle school level on. The big adolescence coming of age ritual for Americans revolves around sportsball homecoming. I’m not saying this on top of your theory, but just from an evpsych understanding: men are biased to respect men who are physically stronger and better at performing an athletic activity. Especially if they represent your school tribe. This is one of the reasons that we have an ingrained bias toward height. Culture can find ways to reduce this inclination, but in the West we don’t have that kind of culture, as even our Christians worship sports (they used to be banned). In China, where grades are so much more important and where academic success is honored in society-wide festivals, like doing well on the Gaonkao exam (definitely misspelling but won’t be googling), this bias is probably reduced.
The average progressive isn’t doing a 200iq/eq Magnus Carlson-think on the chess board of sociopolitics. They have been taught that everyone is genetically the same, and have been taught that Blacks are oppressed, and this works to induce the closely-guarded assumption that Blacks cannot be blamed for their intellectual or moral failings. A random teenager from the whitest town of Maine will think this just as much as a hyper-educated Ivy graduate who lives in gentrified Harlem. They are doing the same amount of thinking / unthinking.
Progressives retain a belief in free will. Everyone starts with the same genetic resources, but some people are good and some are bad. White people only have themselves to blame for their failure to do well in sports and rap. Especially when they have all the riches that they willingly and evilly stole from the rest of the world. This is approximately their belief.
There are some studies showing that white progressives have a negative in-group preference, whereas white conservatives and blacks do not. They genuinely don’t like themselves and instead like minorities.
The western
shitlibsprogressives are the only group in the world who don't favor their own group. Their favorite victim group, American blacks, have more ingroup/anti outgroup bias than anyone tested, if I remember correctly.Knock it off with "shitlibs." This isn't that kind of place even if the majority sentiment agrees with you.
Personally I've just never understood what that word is supposed to signify. Irritates me when I see it because I think, there has to be a better way to express whatever it is that you're trying to tell me.
It wasn't meant as a boo outgroup. I just thought it's a good shorthand descriptor that everyone here would understand. Apparently not.
The "shitlib" is the type of American Democrat, blue no matter who, woke, feminist, BLM, big fan of trans and Gaza at the same time, blank slatist, protects (favored) groups as legitimate victims but doesn't really protect individuals, hates the West and its capitalist system, favors anyone outside it, etc etc. It's a certain type of person, often blue-haired or gay and vegan, heavy on language policing, previously a verified check user on Twitter, now on bluesky. You get the picture.
Larry Sanger has a good term for it - GASP. Globalist Academic Secular Progressive.
Except those words would describe Scott, a majority of the SSC commentariat and half the Motte before its evaporation over the past couple of years.
And yet very few if any of these people would agree that TPs description fits them, even beyond the parts where he still couldn't resist more boos ("protects (favored) groups as legitimate victims but doesn't really protect individuals" is nobody's self-description).
Yeah I don't like it when populism is defined by its stupidest proponents either, but that's the world we live in. Do you think people with those values would not recognise themselves as globalist, academic, secular or progressive?
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