“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Return of the King
Does it make me racist if I hate the 100 meter dash? (all memes today are as-found)
Scott Adams has been more in the news in the last month than perhaps during his entire career. I think it’s entirely on purpose, since last summer he ran a poll on Twitter® that noted that at some point he was going to retire, and he had the choice on how he was going to go out. The winning choice was to go out with a bang.
Most golfers poll as swing voters.
And so he has. With $50 to $100 million in the bank and after having both his comic strip and his new book deal cancelled, he found something interesting: he was freer than he ever had been in his life. He has all the money (none of which was in Silicon Valley Bank™ – his quote, “Why would I put my money in the 19th largest bank?”) and now he can’t lose his book deal. It’s gone. He can’t lose his comic strip. It’s gone.
Scott Adams can say whatever he damn well pleases.
He also seems genuinely interested in helping black people do better. Since Adams normally tries to look at the world through the lens of “systems” rather than goals, he ended up analyzing the normal system that black people use. Not surprisingly, he found that the systems that they use are, well, awful.
The results have been abysmal, except for the Race Grifters and politicians on the Left. But I repeat myself. And, using their advice, black people are doing pretty horribly. And they’ve been taught that white people are the problem, rather than anything else that black people are doing. And it shows. Here is one of the comments about Scott that I found online after his initial comments:
I don’t think Wildin (no relation) has anger issues, he has an anger subscription.
Black people thinking white people are the problem has obvious advantages for a politician. I recall when I was in Alaska – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was thought to have lots and lots of sweet, sweet oil nestled deep in its rocky bosom. But both the Left and Right used drilling there as a fund-raising opportunity. No one really wanted to solve the issue, since Greenpeace® could use it to fundraise from Lefties, and Congresscreatures on the Right could use it to fundraise from ConocoPhillips®. As long as both sides were unhappy, the money flowed.
The last thing anyone wanted to do was solve the problem. I think the Right would be just fine if the problem were solved, but the Left makes too much money, and gets too many votes.
But Adams would like to work on the solution, which has nothing at all to do with marinating in past tales of slavery. Adams graphed it out. The mindset that the Left has worked to instill in blacks is what Adams calls his Race Filter. It consists of:
- Grievance,
- Critical Race Theory,
- Group Rights,
- Spot Racists,
- Systemic Racism, and
- Reparations
When wearing Spandex® is a war crime.
I’ve written before about Victimhood. If you look at Adams’ distillation of the way that race relations have been put forward to blacks, well, they’ve been spoon fed a diet of Victimhood from both their own leaders as well as every “well-meaning” Leftist.
For decades.
The problem with Victimhood is that it is nearly like a self-devouring concept. It starts to fill every bit of a human soul with greed, envy, hate, and the idea that vengeance is the answer making the person small inside. That’s why when “how much” is brought up in the context of reparations, the answer is simple: no number will ever be enough. For there to be an answer, that would mean that the black people who have given themselves over to Victimhood (and their Grifters and Leftist politicians) would have to let it go.
What do you call a magician without magic? Ian.
Given the current relationship status, they will never let it go. Adams made the comment that he would cease “identifying as black” and would avoid black people because of the relative dislike of white people that showed up on the Rasmussen® survey that showed that 47% of black folks didn’t think that “it’s okay to be white.”
The comments that showed up in social media responding to Scott (as shown above) tended to confirm the polls.
But Adams isn’t done. There is another filter that he suggests can replace the Race Filter – the Personal Success Filter. I generally use the Personal Success Filter, but I never called it that. I endorse Mr. Adams’ thoughts entirely, and I’ll spend much more time talking about his success filters than I spent on the Race Filter, since the Race Filter sucks:
- Replace Grievance with Happiness.
Being happy is generally the easiest thing in the world. Most people who aren’t happy, don’t want to be happy. It’s cold out? I like the cold. It’s hot out? What a bright, beautiful day. Circumstances don’t care about my feelings, so why should I let a flat tire make me mad? A flat tire just is.
I had a friend in college that I’ll call Greg (because his name was Greg) who got absolutely hammered on a very large quantity of alcohol one night, which wasn’t unusual – our school was known as “a drinking school with a college problem.” I had class with him the next morning. I looked at him and was shocked. He was dressed in slacks and button-down shirt. I said, “Dang, Greg, you were smashed last night – I thought you’d feel awful. Yet, here you are, and you look fine. What’s your secret?”
“Yeah, John, I felt awful when I woke up, so I showered, shaved, and dressed up. You can’t feel awful when you look great.”
Why not be happy? Be happy. It’s like pouring river water in your socks: it’s easy and it’s free.
- Replace Critical Race Theory with Gratitude.
I could go back in history and look for all of the things where I was slighted. Where my ancestors were cheated out of something they deserved. Where I should be third in line to be King of Wisconsin. Why?
I’m adopted. I was adopted by great parents, put in a loving family, and worked like a borrowed horse to make me strong. I appreciate each and every bit of it. I’m grateful for even the bad things that have happened to me, because those ultimately made me stronger.
Kierkegaard said that life can only be lived forward, but understood in reverse. I look back, and I’m grateful for nearly everything that has happened to me. And you should be, too, because otherwise you wouldn’t be the stunning example of humanity with enough taste, intelligence, and discernment that comes here every week.
What gratitude doesn’t look like.
- Replace Group with Individual.
As groups we come together to create great things. If Elon Musk was trying to build rockets, he wouldn’t even be halfway done with his very first one if the tried to go it alone. So groups have their place. But when we look to set relations based on groups, we get stupid. Why would Michael Jordan’s kid be more disadvantaged than me? Why would Jesse Jackson’s? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s?
Obviously, they were born with much more privilege than me and more money than me. Yet, in getting into college, they’d have a huge advantage over me based on just their race. Hmmm.
When I go to work on a daily basis, I don’t look to what my group does. I look to what I can do, what I can contribute, what I can write, what I can create. This makes me more successful. There is a double-edged sword here, however. Individual makes me more successful, but faced with a group that hates a group I’m part of?
Again, these are Personal Success Factors. Group factors may vary, and that’s another post.
- Replace Spot Racists with Network.
In the Soviet Union, there were huge numbers of jokes (and real stories) about how the Soviets would go to great lengths to spot those that were going to undermine the revolution. Racism had disappeared in the United States to such an extent that Race Grifters had to come up with nonsense like “microaggressions” and even redefine the word “racist” so that black people couldn’t ever be called that.
I once looked up “opaque” in the dictionary. The definition was unclear.
It would have been better, however, to find people and make friends with them. I have dozens of people in my phone that I call or text on a semi-regular basis. Why? Mainly because I like them. I don’t want anything from them other than to be their friend. Yet, I call them when I need advice. And they call me when they need advice. All of my friends plus me are way, way smarter than me.
And I like them.
- Replace Systemic Racism with Optimism.
Let’s pretend that Systemic Racism exists. To believe that, you’d have to ignore that 58% of NFL® players are black. That 35% of assistant coaches are black. That 72% of NBA players are black. And the black actors that people pay money to see. And the black musicians that people pay money to listen to. And Oprah. Also of note – race relations appear to be best in the Deep South where black people and white people have somehow figured out a way to live in peace.
If Systemic Racism does exist, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to overcome. And the solution is Optimism. Every day I get up thinking that things are going to be okay for me. And, mostly, they are. Being an Optimist means I’m disappointed sometimes, but I’m also happy, so I look for the silver lining. Have I lost a job because of Systematic Racism? Not that I’m sure of. But I was told, point blank, that I wasn’t hired for one particular job because I wasn’t a woman. I was okay with that. And that place? Well, it’s shut down now, and if I had started a career there, I wouldn’t have the skills I have today.
Be Optimistic.
Replace Reparations with Reciprocity.
Reparations are nonsense. Check out the meme for the list of ludicrous demands coming out of California. Note this: every one of them is about “how I can get mine” rather than “how can I improve the world for others”.
“Oh, and we also demand matching t-shirts.”
I write these posts not because I get paid. Indeed, it costs me money to write these posts beyond my time, about $2 a day. I’m planning on increasing my revenues in the coming year by 200%. Let’s see, twice nothing is still . . . carry the two . . . still nothing.
Reciprocity means doing things for others, not because they can help you, but because you’re not a tool. Has Reciprocity helped me? Absolutely. But that’s not why I do it.
Conclusions.
I can’t fix black America. I’m not going to try. Every one of the black people that I know personally are okay and I get along fine with them.
Adams is trying to fix race relations in America, but I think his efforts will ultimately be futile for several reasons – the drug of Victimhood is stronger than heroin. It is also certainly not in the interests of the Race Grifters and the Politicians. Those are two reasons, among many.
What I can do, however is my little bit in the Universe, being a happy warrior fixing what I can, warning when I see dragons ahead. Scott’s Personal Success Filter is a good one for anyone who wants to achieve.
And, like Scott, I’m not leaving my money in the 19th largest bank.
Oh, wait. The 19th largest bank is gone.
Note: Moderation may be tighter than normal (I’ve only nuked 78 out of nearly 21,000 comments)- keep it positive, folks.
The current generation of upper-class communists pays single mothers to breed the next generation of lower-class communists, and the communists cops protect the looters from their victims. But, the upper-class communists are ruining their logistics by spending beyond their means. Soon, both welfare payments and salaries to cops will end. Then, there will be no cops to stop the victims from defending themselves from the looters who’ve suddenly lost their means of support. I can’t fathom how Malcolm X imagined the poorest and least-skilled fraction of the population could win a war for extermination against a manpower ratio of 7:1.
Seems like the “conversation” that the liberals are always demanding….has been started by Adams and yourself.
It is going to be an important conversation, and there are many on the Left who won’t like a minute of it.
We Latinos really can’t understand the Anglo need to debase himself before the blacks. We like Anglos that work hard and run honest businesses. We despise the entitled weaklings that refuse to work and protect criminals. Some of you call us natural conservatives. We are natural workers only. Your politics disgusts us. We only care about strength and weakness. If you lose control the blacks will no longer be the chosen pets and will have to behave. Yanquis have spoiled them, but those that work will survive. And we recognize those that actually run the country. No guilt for us.
Take your places or crawl like dogs.
It wouldn’t work without guilt. Whites, especially white females, are the most guilt ridden people on earth, and trained that way from birth.
Then your people will be replaced. Your women are brujas and men are perverse. It’s too bad really, but God does not support those that emasculate their children
You, sir are totally correct.,
Bear in Indy
i can’t understand that, either.
You know, there is still a 19th largest bank… It just isn’t SVB.
That’s very true. There’ll always be a 19th-largest bank. That is, until there are 18 or fewer banks
Which I don’t expect to happen before … oh, a week from Tuesday. Or thereabouts.
And my money isn’t in that one, either.
Wow again you dance where angels fear to tread. 🙂
An amusing take on a serious trouble.
Thanks for your efforts, John.
Michael, this will be tame compared to the conversations that are coming. There is no way that this behavior can continue.
We wuz kangz wanted the Great Society CPUSA plantation.
Maybe they know that when YT is a minority the gibs will be gone for good.
Most of these wounds had healed until Barry Soetoro came along to complete the Long March. (caps because it is a historical event)
Disunity not seen since 1860 is the way to go into WWIII. (honk!)
Will our indispensable diversity pets lead the charge into the frontlines?
I dare the despised regime to fire up a draft only to see cities burn to the ground.
Tip of the hat to Paul Kersey and his Black Run America lexicon diamond that was way ahead of events.
The fifth column of quisling traitors posing as a government wants former America to burn to the ground by any means necessary and this is their overriding goal for all time.
Yup, Barry was the long step down. And it’s been a big one.
An aside:
We raise and train Heelers, the herding dogs, for Agility, farm/ranch, and Comfort/Service.
Among our latest litter, we have two mostly-white with a touch of black:
* the male is barrack hussein o’dogma — but he prefers ‘Barky’ — in honor of that ex-bureaucrat
* the female is ‘Manchell’, in honor of that ex-FirstSpouse person.
And I always thought Barky was the bottom. Huh.
Here is something I have heard as a kid:
In the South we like our blacks, but we don’t love them. In the north they love their blacks but they don’t like them.
Alabama has (based on one source) the best relations between blacks and whites in the US. That might be why?
This is exactly what I saw and commented to several people there both black and white. I worked TDY at Anniston army depot for six months a few years ago. One of the white guys told me later that they had four hundred years of practice working with each other but outside of work they didn’t accociate much. Black dude pretty much said the same thing.
Both sides were really good to me, a naive white guy from inland pnw that only had stereotypical ideas about the deep south. God bless the great state of Alabama and screw Neil young..kinda
Again, relations are fine here.
John, fellow readers – please correct me if I’m wrong but I’m almost certain that, years ago, Scott Adams wrote that the tax rate, for the highest earners, be temporarily increased by 1%. He wrote that he’d gladly pay.
The money would be used to offer eligible, young blacks the chance to learn a trade or go to college as a sort of one-time reparation.
Whether or not it’s a sensible idea, Adams thinks outside the box and genuinely means well.
He does. He is committed to making the world a better place. He does a lot of this for free. I don’t think it will go that way – because it can’t.
From the late, great Joe Sobran:
“WESTERN Man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible. It’s Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself.
“Other races feel like subiects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared.
“The charge of racism puzzles Whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled goodwill, because they don’t grasp what it really means: humiliation.
“The White man presents an image of superioritv even when he isn’t conscious of it. And superiority excites envy. Destroying White civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call ‘minorities’.”
And this is the reason that self-loathing, lunatic lefties preach the Race Filter to blacks. That, and apparently it pays pretty well for some.
It really, really, bothers some folks that no racial slur can stick against a white guy. Sobran explains why: the slur is meaningless.
It only costs $70/yr. to subscribe to Scott’s locals blog. Did it two weeks ago. In addition to “Dilbert Reborn”, you get “Robots Read News” daily, which is a slam against the MSM.
OH, Dogbert has a new job…CEO of Twitter. That thread started yesterday. I’m sure that Elon is amused.
Worth it?
Yes, Dilbert Reborn is worth it. His podcasts are interesting too.
On it. I’ve been giving him $70 a year for a long time in books, etc.
How it starts…
“…they’ve been taught that white people are the problem, rather than anything else that black people are doing. And it shows….” “…if anything should be done to him , it should be to execute him.”
How it spreads…
https://www.tpusa.com/live/jane-fonda-calls-for-the-murder-of-pro-life-activists-on-the-view
How it ends…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506
And just so nobody thinks I am being “deliberately ambiguous” or sending out a “dog whistle” : John is right. We ALL gotta choose The Success Filter.
With white folks there is an on/off switch. It’s Dad sitting in the chair. It’s all cool until Dad gets pissed off enough to get up.
“our school was known as “a drinking school with a college problem.”
You went to WSU?
Back in the late 90s, Alabama Football was in a funk. Older daughter came back for Xmas w/ a new t-shirt that said this – “Tuscaloosa – A Drinking Town With A Football Problem”.
Hahahahaha! No! But alcohol was a part of campus life in a very significant way.
Your suggested solutions are among the best I have read.
Further, whenever, if ever, they are adopted (like you) they
will be successful. However, free $ for existing with color
is an irresistible concept for many and personal responsibility
may be a lost concept for the same many.
Anyone can use them. Anyone. That’s why it’s a Friday post. Those that won’t? Should be left behind.
“I can’t fix black America.”
You can’t fix a group of people whose collective IQs hover somewhere in the eighties. To that end, Scott was absolutely right, but we don’t have anywhere to run to anymore.
The collective I.Q. of a country is its fate.
“Spandex is a privilege, not a right.” – John Ringo
Scott can’t fix race relations because the government has way more money than he does.
There’s always a 19th largest bank….. unless…
Mr. Ringo is right. And he has a great first name. And, yeah, I expect a LOT of banks to fail.
There is a groundswell of mounting impatience and frustration with our national problem population, who have seemingly outgrown their britches in recent years and find it advantageous to vilify and abuse their phantom “oppressors”. To read even such gentle barbs as you, John Wilder, lay out here is actually a revelation, and I welcome it wholeheartedly. No pale-skinned demographic would get away with the anti-social behavior routinely exhibited by those to whom it is skin tone über alles.
Indeed, the ingratitude is simply off the charts. Yes, some Whites enslaved non-Whites. But a far greater percentage of the White population sacrificed, fought and died in terrible numbers to, ultimately, free the enslaved. Why is it that we are forever reminded of the former while there is virtually no mention made of the latter? Ingratitude.
I don’t expect to be stopped on the street and thanked by the descendants of freed slaves for any possible noble actions on the part of my immigrant ancestors, for I and they played no part in either the enslavement or the emancipation. But I also do not regard it as fair to be vilified and abused by the descendants of those former slaves for crimes that I and my kin never committed.
Kaepernick, the Obamas, Oprah, LeBron. Would that I might be as “oppressed” as they.
There is no collective benefit for people of similar genetics to mine freeing slaves, yet there is a collective condemnation for people of similar genetics owning them.
The British Empire just paid off the bill for buying the freedom of all of the slaves in Empire. But they’re the bad guys?
A short distance from the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury intersection in 1971 I was approached by a woman who appeared to be seeking reparations from me in return for “some action”. I said I only had $20. She sneered & turned away, leaving me free to optimistically go about my business, as planned.;
And you still had $20!
From “Regent”:
“I suppose,” Colour continued once she caught up, “that given all that demi-human talk, and a surname like Hartmann, you’ve got some pungent views on race, too?”
“Very,” the demi-human said again.
“So, only White people in that imperium of yours?” she snarked.
“The Empress is half Chinese. Oh? Didn’t know that, Miss Jansen?”
Colour looked away.
“No…”
“So that means her brother, my father, is, too. And my mother is a made thing: a child of a Machine who later wrecked a fusion reactor to take a mortal body to be with him.” Now Aurelia paused. “She is made of diamond dust and star fire. Having said all that to ask this: so, what am I? White?”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
The princess stood on the toes of her boots to again brush her lips to her friend’s cheek.
“Does the imperium treat races in aggregate? Of course; that’s good policy,” Aurelia went on, wrecking the moment. “But I choose my friends one by one. Look right. There are the remains of a road. Let’s take that.”
https://tinyurl.com/3xtfszrt
I wonder what ChatGPT would say?
A Modest Proposal
Adams is still too laissez-faire on the underlying problem.
Implement Lincoln’s solution.
We tried to assimilate them, but there are just some things that cannot be accomplished with good intentions.
If populating the Joint Chiefs, Congress, SCOTUS, and the White House aren’t enough for them, admit defeat, and end the experiment forever.
Cut the bullsh*t, and end White Guilt.
Ship the entire race back to Africa.
Lock, stock, and barrel.
Not voluntarily: 100% mandatory.
Eliminate the entire category in the U.S.
Ban any further immigration of same, in perpetuity.
(It isn’t like they could hide anywhere in plain sight, is it?)
If You’re Black, You Go Back.
And the halfs, quatroons, eighths, and sixteenths left behind can worry about either flying right once and for all, or seeing the bar for permanent deportation lowered until the problem resolves.
No more prison. Just a boat ride out, for good.
First class, all travel expenses paid, one way, no returns, ever, with whatever you can carry off in your baggage.
Don’t harm a hair on their heads, just shuffle them up the gang plank, and shove off with the lot.
Same way they got here, albeit under better accommodations for the journey.
Convicts and jailbirds, too. Free at last! Over there.
Reparations: paid in full.
Game Over, man.
Imagine waking up in a country without Whoopi Goldberg, Stacy Abrams, or Maxine Waters. Ever again.
Move them back to a continent where every single day is Black History Month, and they can wallow in their cultural heritage until the day they die.
They should all be absolutely ecstatic at the news.
Encourage the rest of the hemisphere to do the same too. From the Great White North to Tierra Del Fuego. Let their people go. It’s the only decent approach.
The mean IQ of all continents involved would go up 30 points overnight, and the crime rate in America the following year would give San Marino, Lichtenstein, and Monaco a run for lowest on the planet. Traffic jams get 13% better in a week – except at the docks – and the murder rates in Chicongo, Philtydelphia, Detroit, Newark, Atlanta, and among the Baltimorons drop by 90% by the end of the year. The bottom would drop out of the welfare market too. Boo frickin’ hoo.
Revisit in 20 years, and see how real Wakanda is.
And in the meantime, we can focus on things that matter, instead of listening to the whiny tantrums of the world’s millennially pre-eminent problem children, for whom nothing enacted is ever good enough.
Even odds if we made one step in that direction, the sane 20% of the race would start whacking the crazies and criminals in droves, until the problem self-corrected short of anything as simple as continental prepatriation, but either way, it’s a win for the nation.
Change my mind.
Very good thought experiment.
Could I add you also send over anybody who feels offended by this Imperial Edict?
That should IF you do like they did for the Brown Shirts throw a Big Party-Protest so you can grab them before they cockroach back into their hides.
You’d get rid of the bulk of the liberals that way.
First class would be cheaper than a few months EBT and other free shit so it would be a bargain.
I almost added that exact thought. One problem at a time.
But the obvious solution to the Idiot Question.
“Want to live in a low-impact, Green friendly, negative carbon, Total Diversity land? Travel to Africa!
One way only. Ships departing every day to Wakanda, Mudhutville, Shitholia, and Trashcanistan.”
Halfs and quads go, too. Those who resist would have to be… dealt with.
Just like Operation Wetback (which was a real thing, and shows you really can just round them up and deport them), start in Maine and work your way south.
You have taken the bait, and completely misidentified who the enemy is. The real enemy is not the thief or murderer, it is the voters who elect officials that prevent you from defending yourself from the thief or murderer. Minorities don’t have the vote percentages to elect anyone, therefore they can’t be blamed as a group because they don’t have any power as a group. Your proposal wouldn’t change a thing, because the sociopath leaders and the sociopath voters who elected them would still be in place.
I don’t want an iron curtain on the southern border, for the purpose of centrally planning who is permitted to labor. Checkpoint Carlos is a nationalistic, socialist kind of idea. The question of not giving tax-funded benefits to people who haven’t previously paid taxes in is utterly separate from the iron curtain idea. Government could check for sufficient past tax payments before offering welfare, then it wouldn’t matter who crosses a line on the map.
The idea that any group of humans can hide from competition from any other group of humans has a terrible track record. The Aztecs and the Soviets did that policy, and you see how competitive it left them. The rich societies are always the traders, not the hermits.
Glad you shared this at your place. I said at the end I wasn’t thinking that the Adams’ solution would work – the Race Filter is too much of a drug. Perhaps he just wanted us to see it so the reaction against it could start?
There is nothing that can stop the filter short of consequences. You have some above. More are coming (not because I will do them, but because society cannot function with this insanity).
I don’t usually comment, but when I do, it’s to say, “Well said, sir!”
Thank you!
John, something interesting to read. I’d love your thoughts.
https://johngaltfla.com/economics/everything-bad-that-could-happen-to-markets-today-did/
I’ve found him pretty accurate over the years. I’m wondering how well Yellen can spin all those plates in the air.
Or as I’ve mentioned to a blogger we know about printers that go Burrrr, the proverb of the straw that broke the camel’s back. Potholes for us, HIMARS for them.
Proverbs are proverbs, fables are fables. Both teach IF you’re willing to learn.
He’s 100% on point. Right now, I’m betting the Fed models are running nonstop, and they don’t like any decision that they have available.
re — HIMARS
According to Lockheed-Martin, their rocket-launcher is:
* “… cutting-edge technology…”.
Any time I see ‘technology’, I automatically think ‘fragile’ and ‘vulnerable to dys-operation by idjits’, with a dash of ‘supply-chain disruptions’ thrown in for good measure.
The rugged individualists were rounded up into boxcars by those who organised and stuck together no matter what.
Yup, that’s a future post, when I figure out how to write it.