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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6333 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Can someone give me an analysis on who Abdul El-Sayed actually is as a person? He gave a weird interview where he said trans is a made up issue because your daughter has an I-Phone in her pocket so she will see dicks all the time anyway.

The first impression is he’s some sort of Muslim Brotherhood type. My second impression is pegging him as similar to brown friends I know whose parents do something science (medicine/engineering), are fairly wealthy, follow zero Muslim codes, hate white girls but probably slept with a few dozen in their twenties. All of these types are/can be fully assimilated into America. Half seem like they really do assimilate. The other half to me seem like they have a chip remaining on their shoulder that their people couldn’t build America.

My guess is he’s that type that still has a big chip on his shoulder to fully white people. So thinking things like sexualizing normies is perfectly fine for him in the same way a westerner might go to Thailand for a holiday and not view Thai’s as his people.

The first impression is he’s some sort of Muslim Brotherhood type.

Are we playing five degrees of separation here? I have not seen credible claims that he is personally a member. His mother was reportedly active in the Egyptian MB (EMB, henceforth) in the 1970s, and reportedly he defended a friend who was imprisoned for funding the EMB in 2021.

Now, to be frank, I think the goal of the EMB -- making Egypt more Islamic -- is a shitty idea, for pretty much the same reasons why I hold that trying to make the Western world more Christian is a shitty idea. Still, their idea of accomplishing this seems to be through competing in the marketplace of ideas and getting elected, and this is a meta-strategy I generally like. The EMB was briefly in power in 2013, and sure some of the stuff they did (like declaring themselves beyond the courts) seems shady as hell. In any case, things went as they usually do and a military coup saw them disposed from power and outlawed.

Reading between the lines of my Claude conversation, I would think of them like Erdogan in Turkey -- certainly not gold-star democrats, but also not Daesh. My baseline expectation for political movements in the ME is just not very high, most governments there are Problematic in one way or another. On the other side of the Red Sea, there are plenty of polities which are at least as theocratic as anything the EMB envisions while also making zero pretense to democracy. From where I stand, it is not immediately obvious that a military dictatorship is preferable to some democratic rule by an elected religious-leaning party.

The other problem with the EMB is that the Palestine chapter of the MB is Hamas, whose evilness I will not dispute. Trump alleges that the EMB has helped Hamas with recruiting. So far, I have seen little evidence why I should give this claim more credit than the claims his administration makes about the causes of autism. I mean, it is not exactly secret who besides Iran was funding Hamas. The reason why the EMB is designated a terrorist organization an Qatar is not seems simply because the former was in no position to gift president Trump a new airplane.

So the story in total is something like "Abdul El-Sayed -> has a mother who was/is in the -> Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood -> whose members have allegedly aided -> Hamas." Clearly that makes him more dangerous than Osama bin Laden.

His father in law is also CAIR.

Looking at his published works…

  • Birth Outcomes Among Arab Americans in Michigan Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001

  • Ethnic Inequalities in Mortality: The Case of Arab-Americans

  • Arab American Health in a Racially Charged U.S.

  • Understanding Differences Within Ethnic Group Designation: Comparing Risk Factors and Health Indicators Between Iranian and Arab Americans in Northern California

Yeah, he is clearly obsessed with his Arab identity (or Arab-ized Egyptian identity). Perhaps this is the result of seeing the clear superiority of Secular Christian America compared to “Arabized” Muslim Egypt, the cognitive dissonance of living in a better country while being raised by parents who are fiercely pro-Muslim and pro-Arab idealists. The glory days of both Egypt and the Muslim world are long behind them, and Abdul would have no way to process this information humbly if he was raised in a Muslim Brotherhood environment. And Islam itself offers no way to deal with this mismatch with grace.

Seems like a Third World entry into First World identity politics. Similar to Mamdani or Barrack Obama.

Third Worlders like big, blocky obvious things with signs on them. Like centralized organizations with logos, leaders and memberships, uniforms and codes of conduct.

First Worlders scoff at those kind of gaudy displays or at best tacitly tolerate them from the sidelines if their interest happens to align. They like small and safe things like associating themselves with their high status employment. Or practically invisible things, like 'personal beliefs' that's functionally lockstep with an ethereal consensus that every 'good person' knows. And anyone that doesn't know automatically signals that they are on the outside of being a 'good person'. But you can't call that anything. Then you're committing a faux pas and showing that you don't know. Because whatever you call it, that's not what it is, actually.

For a lot of First Worlders the idea that their club isn't all that invisible is a sort of social attack. Like being described as 'someone from Williamsburg'. They recoil at every term and label. Liberal, Progressive, Leftist, SJW, Woke, and whatever comes next. So in a similar vein, associating Abdul El-Sayed with the Muslim Brotherhood is an attack. He's just a Doctor doing his best to do good for the people, actually. Any application of an ulterior motive based on ethnic identity or any collectively biological determination is just racist Islamophobia in the same way that saying conservative jews only really care about zionism is antisemitic. Even if it's true for ~95% of them.

I'm not sure when the First World will stop playing this game of pretend. Maybe when everyone smart enough to play is dead. Or the amount of those too dumb to play outnumber those who aren't to such an extent that the complex social dance loses all relevance. But make no mistake, that is the game most people here are playing. So when you break rank for Abdul and friends but not the entire thing, you are validating the assertions that this is just Islamophobia. Either it's ethnic motivation or it's not. You don't get to pick and choose who it applies to.

They recoil at every term and label. Liberal, Progressive, Leftist, SJW, Woke, and whatever comes next.

I'm confused. "SJW" and "woke" have certainly come to be seen as insults, and "liberal" is a vexed term because it's used on the Left as a slur for milquetoast center-leftists, but I have never recoiled at being called a leftist, or encountered anyone who did. (Nor "progressive" for that matter. I suppose particularly theory-brained radical leftists might deem the term problematic because the notion of Progress itself is a white supremacist something something, but I'm reconstructing that and I've certainly seen plenty of Blues identifying as such without a qualm.)

I suppose particularly theory-brained radical leftists might deem the term problematic because the notion of Progress itself is a white supremacist something something

As a centrist (not a radical leftist), I somewhat agree with this framing, actually: much evil has been done in the name of "progress" in recent history, and self-declared progressives always seem to lack the humility to consider they might be contributing to it, despite observing these outcomes regularly.

You think the movements that brought you “white guilt” and “no ethical consumption under capitalism” don’t consider that possibility?

i think they are, like most people, constitutionally incapable of seeing the logs in their own eyes, and see no possible downsides to what they see as progress.

if such a downside becomes apparent (like BLM's reversal on bodycams), suddenly they've always been at war with Eastasia.

I'd lean on some combination of conflict and mistake theory there: some (most, probably) are just bleating dumb, nice-sounding simple-but-irreconcilable platitudes, others are doing so for cynical reasons (power, watching the world burn, etc).

Y..yes? Since when is whiteness associated with progress for these sorts of people? "Capitalism" I could, in theory, grant as there is a whole rant in the Communist Manifesto about how it was a force for progress, but somehow I doubt think it still is.

My guess is he’s that type that still has a big chip on his shoulder

He's 5'6 and did research about Arab women will have lower birthweight babies with non-Arab fathers.

Every. Single. Time.

I swear, it really is high school sexual/romantic grievance, all the way down, isn’t it?

I'm sympathetic to Jonah Goldberg's argument in this podcast, that is, that El-Sayed wants the Democrats to be a straightforward anti-Israel party.

I don't think El-Sayed supports the full Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The social democrat positions that he holds are honest. He is not, I think, secretly an MB supporter in the sense of everything they stand for. But he is, I think, basically a middle-class western Muslim who attributes a disproportionate level of importance of Israel, and it has become organising for his thoughts in a way that it is not for other people.

I'm sympathetic to Jonah Goldberg's argument in this podcast, that is, that El-Sayed wants the Democrats to be a straightforward anti-Israel party.

To be fair, at the moment the Democrats, like the Republicans, are a straightforward pro-Israel party. Most state governors would probably be thrilled to get half the per-capita resources from the USG the US spends on propping up Israel even without the ability to also drag the US into wars for their benefits. Most US states might even spend a smaller fraction of comparable federal resources on killing people.

We know how it looks if the US is 'anti-$COUNTRY'. They find themselves internationally isolated, their nuclear facilities get bombed, their leaders get assassinated or kidnapped, their military (and sometimes educational) facilities get annihilated, their civilian infrastructure destroyed, Trump calls them bad names on Twitter.

For Israel, that is currently far outside of the Overton window, which is a good thing, because most of these tactics are net-negative for global utility no matter who is on the receiving end.

What is reasonable is unfriendly neutrality. "We think your government is doing bad things, thus we might do some trading with you but will not sell you weapons or go out of our way to protect your interests." If Israel can persuade Gulf monarchies to shoot down incoming missiles for them, good for them, otherwise, bombing the shit out of each other seems to be a quaint ME custom which us Westerners can simply not get, it would be disrespectful to their religions interfere on one side or another.

But he is, I think, basically a middle-class western Muslim who attributes a disproportionate level of importance of Israel, and it has become organising for his thoughts in a way that it is not for other people.

The problem is that Israel and AIPAC clearly have an outsized effect on US politics. If someone told me that the Uzbek or Peruvians were largely responsible for US foreign policy, they would have a hard time providing evidence for that. With Israel, the claim that they do not have a higher influence than Uzbekistan on US policy is plainly absurd.

The real failure mode is that people over-update on the evidence, and it becomes a lens through which all of the world is perceived. If you have just learned about the Van-der-Waals force and are excited about it, you might start to attribute all sorts of effects to it which are vaguely explainable by it but are in actuality unrelated to it. Similar things happen with all sorts of lenses: you can probably discover something worthwhile about international politics by looking at it from the perspective of gender relations, but if you are unable to take off the gender lenses, you will be blind to a zillion explanations which have nothing to do with gender.

Most state governors would probably be thrilled to get half the per-capita resources from the USG the US spends on propping up Israel

Officially Israel is earmarked $3.8 Billion a year, which with 9.55 Million people comes out to a few hundred dollars per capita. Quick estimate is that even the most-neglected states get $3,500 in federal spending per capita, an order of magnitude larger.

You can argue that Israel gets a lot of other value out of the American government, but then, so does the taxpayer. Social security paid $1.58 Trillion last year.

Another figure going around is $147 Billion to Israel, over about 80 years, since Israel's founding in 1948. I don't know what the equivalent figure is for American spending but I'm quite confident if we total up all the federal money spent on each American state since 1948 it remains orders of magnitude larger.

Israel definitely plays an outsized role in American politics and has benefited from a lot of generosity and largesse. But it doesn't even come close to what Americans spend on themselves.

After looking up the data, Israel gets $350 per citizen almost exclusively for war. Meanwhile Africa gets $7 and Central America gets $10 on a blended basis.

That's pretty horrifying.

Why is that horrifying? Outside of we ought not fund any of this

Both the magnitude of aid to a first world country and its purpose I find distasteful.

I understand Israel is a proxy and the money creates utility, it doesn't mean I like it.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

Yes the US spends more on itself than it does Israel. What even is the point of this comment? Is that the new Israel talking point? Yeah we get lots of money but you spend more on yourself so it’s not a big deal?

Yes the US spends more on itself than it does Israel.

Well, I don't see you correcting user quiet_NaN, who said the opposite. We agree!

If you want to argue with me just say so, I have some free time.

I didn’t realize he said that so then you are right we agree. That is a ridiculous claim to make.

His father in law is cair. His (albeit estranged) mother was MB. His father is on an organization that has questionable ties. He himself wrote a letter supporting MB.

There is a massive amount of smoke surrounding him. Don’t know why it’s crazy to think he just might be the real McCoy.

One of his staffers is facing federal charges for hate crime vandalism and death threats against Jews. Another just had a viral moment where she chimped out on a Jewish journalist, assaulted her, assaulted the cops, was drug off screaming death threats.

Released within a day, no charges pending, obvs.

facing federal charges for hate crime vandalism and death threats against Jews

She vandalized a military production facility during a period where 85% of children were going hungry due to a food blockade against civilians:

85 per cent of children did not eat for a whole day at least once in the three days before the survey was conducted.

7% of children had moderate or severe malnutrition:

A separate study of 1200 children in Gaza between February 2024 and June 2024 estimated that 6.7% and 9.6% of children below age 5 years had severe and MAM, respectively, also with higher estimates among children in North Gaza

The baseline rate for this in Gaza is 1-1.5%, though this is probably because of the blockades etc they suffered from before the war. In the US the baseline rate is 0.1%.

She vandalized a military production facility during a period where 85% of children were going hungry due to a food blockade against civilians:

I'm sorry you believe anything coming out of Gaza.

Are devout Muslims allowed to lie to non-Muslims to advance Islamic interests? A devout Christian could not for example sell a non-Christian on the benefits of trans in schools. It’s a sin to lead others to sin.

A reminder that when an Evangelical bombs a Muslim country they have to wrap the bombs in “for Democracy” and “women’s school”. Bush had to bomb Muslims for human rights and not because they were Muslims.

My understanding is that Taqiyya is basically the doctrine that Muslims are allowed to lie to avoid persecution. Not a feature of Christianity- Christians are expected to accept martyrdom- but also not a load-bearing pillar of some long term conspiracy.

Taqiyya is real* and probably allowed** by Islam but is a very poor model for how people rationalize and think.

AES is almost certainly not lying smiling while twirling his mustache with his fingers crossed behind his back. (This kind of thinking actually turns off a lot of liberals from seeing what conservatives are seeing.)

AES is probably just rationalizing. Which is to say, he's a Muslim, and has a lot of sympathy for Muslims, and Muslim organizations, and extends them a lot of charity in his own mind. And he's an American, which means of course he condemns terrorism and extremism. If those identities come into conflict at all it is totally rationalized away because they can't possibly come into conflict, definitionally, a priori. His family network contains Islamic ties because Islam is normal and good, but also of course he condemns extremism because he's a loyal American, not that MB contains anything to condemn, but if they did it's unrelated to AES or his family, because it has to be. It's very simple, you must understand. You don't get it? Your reasoning must be motivated somehow, you're probably racist or bigoted, that would explain why you can't see how very simple it is.

Orwell is a cliche now but I think he was spot-on with his model of "doublethink". You simply have to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. Although in this case the two ideas don't even have to be total opposites because it's very possible to imagine someone who is both a Muslim and both an American patriot. It only becomes doublethink at the points of intersection where "faithful Muslim"*** and "loyal American" seem to conflict. ("Seem" because we know deep down that they must not.)

* Exists in official doctrine somewhere that faithful laity never read,

** And isn't necessary anyways because most Muslims and Islamic cultures are quite open about their passions and antipathies.

*** AES is probably not a faithful Muslim, he's probably the classic half-atheist half-progressive standard model.

I mean there’s a difference between “not supposed to lie, but do it anyway” and “lying is fine actually.” There is no Christian doctrine that says I can lie to advance Christianity. It doesn’t exist. If you lie as a Christian, it’s a sin, no matter what causes its advancing. If a Muslim lies for the sake of Islam, my understanding is that it’s not a sin.

Christian views on lying are complicated. As far as I am aware, only Quakers categorically forbid both making false statements and selectively making true statements with intent to induce false beliefs. The Biblical passages normally cited as unequivocal condemnations of lying appear in contexts where it is clear that they refer to defamation (thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour) or commercial fraud.

It is an edge case of "Christian", but Mormons explicitly encourage deception-by-selective-truth-telling as a seeker-sensitive way of introducing LDS doctrine to potential converts. The traditional term is "milk before meat".

There are times when lying is permissible. Based on this article, I don't think this is one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya

Although maybe you can tie yourself in knots and get there "to save lives in Gaza" or whatever.

I can’t tell how stretchy that is in practice but here is one line I found in that article, “ Safeguarding of a Muslim's life is a mandatory obligation that should be observed; and that lying is permissible when the shedding of a Muslim's blood is at stake.”

I feel Israel is indirect but this would seem in a very stretchy way he could advocate for trans rights if he thinks more Democrats means less Israel funding and therefore less dead Muslims. Which opens the door for him being full Muslim Brotherhood.

It's okay to break the rules to save lives or if you have the chance to bang a blonde girl (although it sounds like El Sayed may have struck out in that department before he was famous).

I think the simplest assumption is that he's probably serious about Muslim supremacy but also not super strict about following all the rules.

To be honest I don’t think you can be Muslim and a Democrat in the same way that you can’t be Catholic and a Democrat. You can be a skinsuit globally homogenous Democrat who by virtue of ancestry are Muslim but follow Muslim beliefs. An ethnic Muslim but not a religious Muslim.

Trans is one example where a real Muslim’s response could be nothing less than trans mental people have a mental illness and should be locked up. And there really is no way to sugar coat that while maintaining spiritual connection to god.

I can’t see “anti-Israel” being a core belief that drives all of your beliefs but a symptom of a broader world view. For a typical progressive I think their mental model flows primarily thru an “oppressor-oppressed” framework which makes a progressive good person because they fight for the weak. Israel therefore is the bad side of this framework because they are rich.

The best mental model I can come up with Sayed is to model him on wealthy brown friends who are non-religious but tend dislike Israel for a vague tribal connection feeling similar to how an American with an Irish name supports Ireland. Basically the same reason I hate a few sports teams.

Agreed. Male homosexuality is a bigger sticking point than trans - all three Abrahamic religions unequivocally prohibit it, and to be a leftist in good standing requires you to take Pride in it.

If the Abrahamic God, heaven, and hell exist, then there are no unrepentant Sodomites in heaven, and this is a hatefact by conventional left-wing standards. Tim Farron was forced out as leader of the UK Liberal Democrats over this point - he was unwilling to say that male homosexuality is not a sin, and the party was not willing to be led by someone who believed that it was.

I can’t see “anti-Israel” being a core belief

I think "Israel is the permanent hereditary enemy of my tribe" can sensibly be a core belief if Palestinians, or Arabs or Muslims more generally, are your tribe.

Trans is one example where a real Muslim’s response could be nothing less than trans mental people have a mental illness and should be locked up.

Iran has allowed it since the 1980s. Even while homosexuality is still punished severely, including even executions. So I'm not sure this is necessarily true.

Iran uses medical transition as a loophole for any gay imams to be able to bang dudes without violating sharia by forcing other gay men to transition to avoid being stoned, hanged or defenestrated. It is progressive only via horseshoe theory.

I feel like this is one of those too good to check things that comes up every once in a while. It's about the 10th time I've heard it.

So here's my question. Is this just like 3 dudes who transitioned socially in the 1980s, or is this a real thing with medical transition clinics, drag shows at libraries, ideological support, the whole nine yards?

If I had to wager, I'd guess it's the former and that by any reasonable western standard, Iran would be considered extremely anti-trans.

Drag shows at libraries, no. I'd imagine Western rainbow-flag-ism is about as banned as you'd think it'd be.

But they do have medical transition clinics which see some use. The government will recognize the transition and even change your name and sex on your birth certificate. The public isn't too much in favour of it, and these people obviously do see discrimination, but Khomeini himself issued not one but two fatwas explicitly endorsing it.

It's also a way for homosexuals to get out of the punishment for being homosexual (I'm explicitly not saying "gay" here as I am referring to the sexual orientation and not to the whole culture that's been built around it in the West). They'll make you have surgery before they'll recognize it though, so it's your dick or your life, basically.

Minus that last part it's not too far off from how it used to be in Western countries before the 2010s. Gender dysphoria has been a thing for a while, so has transition, it just used to be rare and not politicised.

Iran actually has a very high rate of trans-ID. Often at gunpoint, they force homosexuals to transition.

The #yeschad way to be pro trans rights.

This is extremely easy to look up; Iran subscribes to some transgender ideology, but it doesn’t manifest in the same way at all because they're very socially illiberal instead of very socially liberal. It's a fluke but not in the sense that it involves very few people or in the sense that it isn’t very well-established policy.

I looked it up. Exact numbers are impossible to find, but they do have medical transitioning. Best/most recent data that ChatGPT could find was this:

839 qualifying medical records were examined in a nationwide study covering referrals during March 2012–March 2017. That was a diagnosis/referral count, not a count of completed transitions.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02250-y

Also this:

1,366 people applied for surgical transition permits during 2006–2010. These were applications; the records don’t establish how many underwent surgery

https://6rang.org/english/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Diagnosing-Identities-Paralyzing-Bodies.pdf

How many actually get surgery? Presumably it's non zero but it could be anywhere from single digits to about 200 per year. I'd treat any reporting on this as highly suspicious by default as its something that certain people want to be true so badly they will crucify the truth to make it that way. It's not a neutral issue where academic and media reporting can be trusted uncritically.

Nevertheless, it does appear to be happening. Very odd.

Obligatory Sarah Haider reference, I suppose? What Islam as a tradition and a body of doctrine teaches is less important than what specific Muslim-identifying people hold to be important - and in a case like Abdul El-Sayed, it's pretty clear that opposition to Israel is central to his worldview and his political advocacy whereas opposition to gender ideology is pretty clearly not.

The fact that Islam as a body of doctrine takes no special position on the existence of a state of Israel (that is, from an orthodox Islamic perspective, there is nothing special or interesting about Judaism qua Judaism, nor Israel qua Israel), and takes a much stronger position on gender, is not consequential. 'Islam', in El-Sayed's case, is an ethnic and a cultural background that informs his identity, rather than a set of propositions to be affirmed or rejected.

and in a case like Abdul El-Sayed, it's pretty clear that opposition to Israel is central to his worldview and his political advocacy whereas opposition to gender ideology is pretty clearly not.

Right, so it's not a product of Islam that he'd rather agitate for the return of the third holiest site in the faith and the removal of the rival religion claiming it rather than the bathroom culture for a non-Muslim country whose schools he has ways of avoiding?

I'm not saying the former is objectively a more Muslim priority but it's at least debatable.

I mean, I hate to break down actual Christian history vis a vis Israel and Judaism and who should control Jerusalem vs current Christian priorities.

Her MINO category fits with every “Muslim” I have ever met. I don’t believe you can be both “Muslim” and “Western”. Real Muslims would be hated by blue and red tribe. I have many MINO friends but no Muslim friends. My vibes on Sayed is he’s one of these MINOs. His family probably does have some Muslim Brotherhood ties, but he vibes fully secularized to me.

The anti-Israel in his worldview feels very much like sports team fandom to me. I am not sure if Sayed types have to be anti-Israel but if you are a Democratic politician today and Democrats hate Israel then rooting for the Muslim side feels like the correct team to cheer for.

I do have a MINO friend whose family loves Trump so they can play for either side. I think a struggle for these types comes down to having to adopt someone else’s culture - Western Culture - instead of being born into it.

MINO's would also be hated by the red tribe, which is just generally islamophobic.

I think their are spots a MINO could fit into the red tribe. I call it the pagan right and I would call Peter Thiel the leading proponent of it.

Obviously, a MINO would not fit in with the Christian right which is probably still the largest right wing coalition partner. A MINO has basically depersoned themselves. They no longer have a central ideology and have fallen into global homogenism. No longer having a cultural tradition they are attached to then yes that does not fit with the definition of conservativism which is about maintaining traditions.

There is no pagan right, at least not in the red tribe(which is the sine qua non of american rightist politics for the forseeable future).

There are red tribers who do not practice Christianity, yes. There are red tribers who are secular, yes. But the red tribe itself rejects the idea that people who are not nominally Christian- or Jewish- can be a part of it.

I don’t believe you can be both “Muslim” and “Western”.

Dunno. There is a quietist strain in Islam, though I think it's harder in a democracy.

But "abide by the local rules and do not get involved" isn't really what people waving the globohomo flags are doing.

The anti-Israel in his worldview feels very much like sports team fandom to me. I am not sure if Sayed types have to be anti-Israel but if you are a Democratic politician today and Democrats hate Israel then rooting for the Muslim side feels like the correct team to cheer for.

You have it backwards: it's sports fandom to the Westerners. The El Sayed types were almost certainly already be anti-Israel as an inheritance that they now feel they can bring to politics because the cordon sanitaire against being anti-Israel is breaking. Before it broke, they (and their white allies) were still trying.

El-Sayed identity is what I’m trying to find out here. If he’s closer to MB then being anti-Israel is obviously his type. I think the not religious MINO types have affection for Palestinians because it feels like your tribe/team. I don’t think general MINO types thought about Israel before it was in the news everyday.

I dunno. Imagine the median secular Muslim activist at the DSA or DNC before October 7. Are they pro-Israel?

I think it was low salience but high in consensus until the war. Then it became more of an organizing principle.

My second impression is pegging him as similar to brown friends I know whose parents do something science (medicine/engineering), are fairly wealthy, follow zero Muslim codes, hate white girls but probably slept with a few dozen in their twenties. All of these types are/can be fully assimilated into America.

Why the hell would we want them?

Regression to the mean is tough, but not that tough.

Intelligent, honest, and hardworking people are generally good beyond the direct economic benefits of their current careers, and foreign affinities, cultural mismatches, and racial differences aren't necessarily enough to counteract that.

One question is: why not just take an Egyptian Copt instead?

Islam is disproportionately represented in terror attacks, and the European experience is that illiberalism doesn't dissipate in a couple of generations. How do we make it so those aren't concerns besides favoring non-Muslims?

It's a serious problem for me personally, and for any country with a mass migration program that must skim from 2 billion Muslims.

El-Sayed is obviously whatever Hannania liked to promote as Elite Human Capital. If you are filtering for talent he’s the far right tail of Egyptian ancestry people and there probably are not many Egyptian Copts above him.

So he fits perfectly with America should take in the top .1% of shithole third world country people.

So that is why you take him. Culturally though America is always going to be a weird fit for him. The uncultural fit for people like him is to completely drop religious identity and join the global homo NYT reading blob. A lot of America still has a lot of Christian influence and being Muslim or atheists doesn’t weld very well to those places.

This is a great point because it illustrates how stupid Hanania's EHC ideology is.

I've mentioned before that the median suburban dad is probably more EHC than Hanania in most ways that matter. He's able to work as a team. He can think on his feet. He has practical knowledge. If I'm on a military mission, I'd take the median suburban dad over Hananian every time. The extremely narrow EHC that Hanania favors is only useful for a few things and is probably actively harmful when it comes to politics.

A person from Egypt with a 120 IQ might be a rarity, and is definitely better at math than the average American, but it's hardly worth taking into our country if they bring toxic politics with them. We know what a nation of people led by El Sayeds looks like. No thanks.

El-Sayed is obviously whatever Hannania liked to promote as Elite Human Capital. If you are filtering for talent he’s the far right tail of Egyptian ancestry people and there probably are not many Egyptian Copts above him.

Is he? What makes him ELITE instead of "fairly smart Muslim boosted like hell in the DEI era".

My understanding is that med school is still difficult enough that he has to be genuinely smart to get through it, even with DEI.

I've always heard that getting into med school is much more difficult than the program itself. El Sayed, AIUI, never did a residency or practiced medicine. I doubt the man is an idiot, but what would make you think he is more ELITE than, say, the 10th ranked student at an average American high school?

DEI complicates it. Did he qualify for DEI? As far as I know he would be a white male bucket. I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.

On the plus side I have him for: Double engineer parents, charismatic, above average looking, Columbia Med School.

Rhodes does do too much individual DEI and is meaningless in modern day.

Mid: UMICH. This is my midtwit line between EHC and Average. The smarter grads are fine especially as a white male

If he got into Columbia as a white male then he’s 100% elite EHC. If not he’s probably just smart.

I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.

Nope. I personally know Egyptians roughly that age who had academic career ending scandals swept under the rug and then were given massive career boosts by the Obama admin. "Muslim outreach" was a huge deal during his years.

DEI complicates it. Did he qualify for DEI? As far as I know he would be a white male bucket. I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.

I've seen Coptic-types get boosted on African-targeted scholarships, and hard to know the inner machinations of KPIs with DEI scoring. Most DEI systems will happily take the least-African type of African to get them over the line, which is part of the absurdity of DEI.

DEI complicates it. Did he qualify for DEI? As far as I know he would be a white male bucket. I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.

This seems naive. The racists at Ivy League schools are much more sophisticated than you give them credit for and are able to go well beyond broad U.S. Census categories.

The census counts Middle East as white but that doesn't govern Columbia admits. Any lib-managed DEI pipeline would have had plenty of options for AES to specify Muslim and brown.

Yeah but their less-talented Children are at their best Night Club Promoters and at their worst become the most annoying type of Radical Islamic person who has a 110 IQ, a chip on their shoulder about 'Islamophobia' or w/e being the reason for their downwardly-mobile social status compared to their Doctor parent who got into the West and has a good chance of pivoting hard towards Fundamentalist Islam and seems to be massively overrepresented Phenotype for terrorism. AI and the increasing scale of the Welfare case means that the bar for 'net contributor' rises every year that passes plus the size of drains gets ever-larger as medical technology improves.

The best case scenario societally is to give them a bunch of sinecure-lite pathways for 'affirmative action', but why would you do that for a totally foreign group that isn't really that oppressed at scale and who when they're in a position of power takes enormous shits upon foreigners and the underclass.

He gave a weird interview where he said trans is a made up issue because your daughter has an I-Phone in her pocket so she will see dicks all the time anyway.

Where does he say that? I watched the whole clip and didn't hear it. He said free flow of information is important and you have to coach your kid to deal with it as an adult instead of trying to completely isolate them from it.

The very obvious connection that he was making is that “free flowing information” in this case is minor girls seeing live male genitalia connected to an individual that possibly has a life altering high level sexual fetish while they’re changing.

No thanks. I’d much rather have everyone involved in this equation except the female minors expelled from polite society forever.

And I can virtually guarantee that this is the supermajority position of parents with children if this is given to a secret ballot. Male access to traditionally female only spaces are already very unpopular electorally. A lot of people can’t bring themselves to say this publicly because the consequences of openly stating your preference is still very severe.

Yes - the only reason why trans bathroom laws are not an 80-20 issue is that thirty seconds of thought tells you that they will be unenforceable in practice because of false positives. Most female-presenting people with manjaws are cis women and, given that nobody gets undressed outside a stall, it doesn't matter enough to make it worth asking cis women to bring ID to go to the toilet.

The rules are mostly about giving the people running gyms a firm way to say no to men in women’s restrooms so you don’t have to wait until the man does something really bad in a women’s restroom before you can act against that man. If the rules don’t say no men, you can’t kick out the men unless they’re behaving badly, and by then it’s probably too late.

The very obvious connection that he was making is that “free flowing information” in this case is minor girls seeing live male genitalia connected to an individual that possibly has a life altering high level sexual fetish while they’re changing.

It's more about teenagers, education and internet usage and not about physically being around trans people. Specifically, he's asked about topics taught in school (e.g. banned books etc) and he compares it to the internet where anything is available. Watch the full video and it makes that clear.

And I can virtually guarantee that this is the supermajority position of parents with children if this is given to a secret ballot.

I don't care. Democracy is bad. Do parents let their children vote in the household? Then why should any random person over 18 get to vote? Most people are children forever.

This is actually not the case. I still think his answer is wrong and would prefer he loses by his associations alone. But you're referring to a deceptively edited clip put out by the Roger's campaign you can find the moment in the full video at this time stamp The question was about parent's control over their children's education, not trans in women's locker rooms.

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