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Konvergence Kills

20 Tuesday Apr 2021

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Just as video killed the radio star, so woke idiocy kills the institution – any institution. In this case, it’s a school, an elite private prep school.

Early last June, Brentwood School posted an image of a black square on Instagram. This was eight days after George Floyd had been killed, and it was part of #BlackoutTuesday, a social media campaign against racism and inequality. Other Los Angeles prep schools also participated in the well-intentioned if largely symbolic online gesture, along with millions of other institutions, businesses, and individuals. But Brentwood’s black box got what’s known as ratioed; it received more negative comments than likes. Many more.

I’m sure they also posted a White square for Ashley Babbit…

Here’s just another example that no school, public or private, or even ultra-elitist is safe in the fading USSA. If a potential school isn’t explicitly and actively Christian and pro-Western, then write it off. In fact, if a school maintains an active social media presence, that might be a sign. The surest bet is to educate your children yourself.

Make Them Invulnerable

14 Wednesday Apr 2021

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Make Them Invulnerable

 

Last week’s column struck a nerve with me, a depressing if predictable nerve. Compared to those at the top, the people at the bottom of a double Hollingworth gap are not just relatively retarded. They are, in a relative sense, profoundly retarded. It’s akin to the mental difference between a person of ordinary intelligence and a house cat. This week, happily, I’m addressing those of us on the far right tail of the curve.

I never liked school – from kindergarten through graduate school. I especially detested my short-lived experience with the “enrichment” program in middle school. I only lasted a few weeks before I absolutely refused to participate. The pitiful government school I attended was bad enough. The special program was worse. At the time, someone should have foreseen the incompatibility. 

Just before I was subjected to that particular draining make-work project, a relevant paper was published: Vulnerabilities of Highly Gifted Children, Wendy Roedell, Roeper Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1984)(read it HERE). Roedell briefly outlined the difference between “gifted” and “extraordinarily gifted,” ever cognizant of the semi-subjective assessment and application of both labels. 

Her work is good, great even, and thus, it has been roundly ignored, especially her overly-optimistic conclusion: “As information about the needs of highly gifted children becomes more widespread, and society’s expectations become more closely attuned to the realities of gifted development, the degree of vulnerability of these children will diminish.” If only.

The ensuing period of nearly forty years has seen many things. America has degenerated into a ridiculously stupid third-world cesspool. The schools – almost all publics and most privates – have dropped even the pretense of Western educational standards. And, while the existence of the UHIQ is reluctantly acknowledged, society has adopted an almost universal bias against the cognitive elite. This is the phenomenon Tom Ironsides observed in THE SUBSTITUTE when he occasionally encountered a languishing child of true intelligence in the wild. It is the same treatment he received from a system blindly obsessed with meaningless credentials. Sadly, the experience is not limited to fiction.

No child deserves to be trapped in a failed modern Amerikan school. While some do much better than others, exceptional children are failed in exceptional fashion. Those children above 140 WAIS (or SB) are utterly tortured. In many cases, programs allegedly there to help, in fact, hinder.

As I’ve written previously, the only way to assist a truly intelligent child is for his parents to point him in what they think is the right direction and then step aside and see how far he can go. This isn’t necessarily easy. The parents may not know that correct direction. They may have communication difficulties with their son. And, as is usually the case, they may be plagued with a desire to control that which is not ultimately controllable. If the process is done properly or if it is even attempted, then it is best done within the loose framework of unschooling, self-directed homeschooling, or the Sudbury Valley model.

Back in 1984, Roedell saw the need to remove the bright child from the doldrums of the standard classroom: “Highly gifted children experience increased vulnerability when they spend large portions of their time in inappropriate educational settings. The more a gifted child’s abilities differ from the norm, the more inappropriate becomes the educational program offered in the regular classroom.” She nailed the problems with “enrichment” programs: 

Many programs for gifted children also constitute inappropriate environments for the extraordinarily gifted child … In some school districts, the content of the gifted enrichment class is not linked logically to the identification system. … Even when the child’s abilities and the content of the program are linked, the learning pace of the program may be geared to the level of the moderately gifted child.

The cat comparison is hyperbole, but it is accurate.

It is important to remember that a child with an IQ of 164 is as different intellectually from a child with an IQ of 132 as that child is different from the 100 IQ child. Forcing a child with an IQ of 164 to learn at the pace of the average child, or even the pace of the moderately gifted, is akin to placing an average child in a special education classroom and asking that his/her learning rate be slowed down to keep pace with the rest of the class. The frustration of highly gifted children forced to stifle their love of learning in inhospitable environments can result in withdrawal, behavior problems, or psychosomatic symptoms.

That was my experience in both the special program, specifically, and the schools in general. Then, and worse today, the problem is compounded by a number of factors. First, the schools are geared towards low-achievers; ultra and very high-ability students are seen as nonconforming nuisances. The programs, all of them, are designed to indoctrinate rather than to educate. The people who plan and organize curriculum, general and advanced, have ulterior motives. The “gifted and talented” courses are most appropriate to the all-rounders, and, these days, best suit the needs and proclivities of female students. That is great, though it is of no service to the young minds with the most to offer an ailing country and culture. Additionally, the instructors in charge of even the special programs, in most cases, simply cannot communicate at the appropriate mental level with the most advanced students in their care.

A child forced to endure such low-level foolishness will endure. He may very well continue to perform well, grade-wise, into college or even law school. But, by being denied a real start, he will always be behind his potential. And he will come to resent or even hate the system and those who operate it and those to whom it primarily caters. And, in the end, he will become adrift in a society that denigrates intelligence – more to its detriment than to that of the high-IQ pariahs. 

The sane alternative is relatively simple. Don’t expect smart children to succeed and do not “help” them. Rather, let them succeed. Give them the necessary tools and encouragement and then let them build. What is rightly seen as vulnerability, if properly channeled, can become great strength, beneficial both to the children and to the greater society. A system designed by and for 90 IQ simpletons cannot and will not help. This is up to us. They are our children, after all. Make them invulnerable.

Even Statistics Hate Boomers

09 Friday Apr 2021

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Vox with more and more and more and more reasons to hate Boomers and their hideous evil.

When baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) hit a median age of 35 in 1990, they collectively owned 21% of the nation’s wealth.

The millennial generation will hit that 35 median age in four years and they are nowhere near owning that percentage.

As a whole, boomers have fared better financially than Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) throughout every stage of their lives. Boomers currently boast more than half (57%) of the nation’s wealth, while Gen X owns just 16%, and millennials 3%.

Adults under 40 have been accumulating less and less wealth over the past 30 years, plummeting from owning 13% of the wealth in 1989 to less than 7% today.

Indeed, at a median age of 35, Gen Xers owned just 9% of the nation’s wealth in 2008 — less than half what boomers had at that age. And millennials will have to triple their net worth in the next four years to catch up to Generation X at 35, and increase their wealth sevenfold to catch up to boomers at that age.

That will be a difficult feat indeed considering most are saddled with student loan debt which has hit a record collective $1.6 trillion. The Federal Reserve estimates that more than a third of the 45 million Americans burdened by that debt are under 30.

When the Boomers said “never trust anyone over 30” they were warning the generations to come about themselves.

It also shows how ridiculous it is for Boomers to pull resort to their “when I was your age” nonsense.

Scroll down to the inevitable comments left by some Boomertards and then read Vox’s brutal rebuttals. Stop. Pillow time!

The Demographic Desert: Third-world Cognition in Amerika

07 Wednesday Apr 2021

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The Demographic Desert: Third-world Cognition in Amerika

 

Again, it’s Identity > Culture > Politics. That order. Leading the others, demographics is, as they say, “destiny.” One of the supremely important factors of that destiny, which helps foster culture and politics, is average intelligence. In the USSA and across much of the West, national average IQs are slipping if not collapsing.

Before we enter into the exciting base matter for today’s discussion, I’d once more like to plug the near-definitive At Our Wits’ End by Dutton and Woodley (2018). That book exposed the alarming rate of decline of approximately .4 IQ points per year in places like the UK and the USSA. The primacy of intelligence has been acknowledged more recently: National Intelligence Is More Important for Explaining Country Well-Being than Time Preference and Other Measured Non-Cognitive Traits, Kirkegaard, et al (2020). 

The dystopian trend in the USSA was most recently expounded upon at the BPEA Spring Conference, March 25, 2021, and a paper authored by Caroline Hoxby, Advanced Cognitive Skill Deserts in the U.S.: Their Likely Causes and Implications. Check out the map at that linked summary and see if you’re in a cognitive skill desert. 

In Advanced cognitive skill deserts in the U.S.: Their likely causes and implications, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford University maps county-level data from standardized tests to show which regions have higher percentages of adults and children with advanced skills and which areas have lower percentages. She compares data for adults, 12th graders, 8th graders, 5th graders, and 3rd graders and finds that regional patterns, evident among adults, only begin to emerge by 8th grade and are similar to adults by 12th grade.

I’ve noted more than once that children trapped in failed government schools, and that’s ninety percent of USian children, demonstrate, via systemic standardized tests, a decrease in mathematical ability proportionate to their tenure in the so-called schools. Proficiency scores fall from elementary school to middle school to high school. The schools literally dumb the kids down, in terms of cognitive application, to the level of the average USian adult. That is exactly what Hoxby found. That is exactly what the “schools” were designed to accomplish. It’s a feature, not a flaw.

Of course, math, while last in the acronym, is the first and foremost building block of the STEM idol everyone claims to adore these days. Without it, there is no science or engineering, no advanced modern systems or convenient technologies. These are the numerically centered of the advanced skills Hoxby is concerned with. She focused on the middle school years, finding these to be the time of greatest development potential for higher-order reasoning, logical expression, abstract thinking, and critical inspection. Few if any of those subjects are taught, embraced, or even tolerated in today’s failed government schools. No foundation is laid and the “age of opportunity” in middle school is wasted. 

Hoxby found that – surprise, surprise – larger, higher-tech cities which attract more capable adults also generally have better advanced-thinking scores among the children of those adults. There is also the inescapable pattern of more advanced thinking in the northern parts of the USSA compared with the relative dearth of advanced cognition in the south. 

Still, she remains optimistic, reasoning that as with a geographic desert the mental deserts only require watering, the right water being increased spending. That is noble and, to a small degree, plausible, but it misses the larger causative factor – changing demographics. To put this bluntly, as seen on the map, locations with higher intelligence tend to have populations with higher concentrations of Europeans (and Asians). Areas with higher numbers of other peoples tend to exhibit lower intelligence averages. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s science, though a kind of science seemingly unwelcome in places where STEM is promoted.

The schools themselves are only partly to blame. They, after all, are products of policy and politics. Their work, good or bad, is tolerated in accordance with the norms of the resident culture. All of it is determined by identity. And since 1965, formerly White Christian European America has changed markedly, morphing into the United States of Multiculturalism. The effect of this change on average intelligence is akin to adding paint thinner to paint – both become thinner, diluted. 

In a macro social sense, two things have happened and continue to happen that drive down the average IQ of the USSA. First, intelligent Americans do not reproduce. Native-born citizens of lower intelligence do have children. This is encouraged and in many cases subsidized. Those with higher IQs have few – and increasingly no – children. As the mentally challenged are rewarded, so the intelligent are in a way penalized. An entire society, economy, and the government have come to bear on them, driving them into faithless, work-obsessed, pleasure-obsessed, debt-enslaved, taxed, corporate hedonism that all but forbids the introduction to the world of new, young intelligent people. This domestic evisceration of the cognitive elite is bad enough. However, it is coupled with the second phenomenon, the nearly exclusive importation of lower-IQ foreigners. Paint + thinner = thinner paint. Import the third-world, become the third-world, IQs and all.

For fun, let’s see how this works out in reality. I picked Newton County, Georgia for no reason in particular. Per the 2019 Census estimates, Newton has a population of 111,744. The county’s demographic breakdown is as follows: Black, 47.7%; White, 43.9%; Hispanic, 6.1%; Mixed, 2.2%; Asian, 1.2%; Am. Indian, .5%; Pacific, .1%. These percentages add up to 101.7% … which confirms the government source. I am cognizant of the fact that the 2020 estimates, in advance of the full count, are available as per national percentage increases for Blacks and Hispanics. Newton is likely on the leading curve of those advances. However, I will, for now, ignore those changes and make a slight correction so as to accumulate a realistic 100% total population. Let’s call it 48% Black, 43% White, 7% Hispanic, and 2% Asian/Other. 

Now, we play the weighted average IQ game. I’m going to lump Blacks and Hispanics together (55%) at 87 IQ. Because I am not sure of exactly what kind of Asians are prevalent around Covington, I will lump them in with the Whites (45%). The trick is what IQ value to assign the Whites. I suspect they have drifted south of the old Northern European standardized score of 100, most likely assuming the new American White score of 95. I’ll run a simple average with both. I’ll also add in a third, “worst-case” scenario in keeping with the total domestic intelligence decline.

(.55)(87) + (.45)(100) = 92.85 [ouch]

(.55)(87) + (.45)(95) = 90.6 [oh, boy]

(.55)(87) + (.45)(93) = 89.7 [damn]

Ninety is the score no first-world nation wants to dip below as that is the cutoff below which there is no guarantee of continued societal stability. The average of the averages is 91.05. That’s terrible. All of these numbers are terrible. And, in this specific case, as with much of the rest of the country, they are falling steadily. 

Where do the children of Newton fall into this matrix? Let’s walk through the placements, shall we? We’ll specifically look at school-aged children, 5-18. The 2019 estimates alott 19.4% of the total population to that bracket or 21,678 individuals. I consulted the 2019 Georgia Department of Education [SIC] stats to confirm those figures and to assess the attendant identitarian breakdown. The Great Hoax has wreaked havoc on 2020-2021 enrollments in GDOE-tracked public schools as might be expected. Back in 2019, however, the enrollment was a fairly similar match: 19,579 students, or 90% of all children 5-18 years of age (the national average)(the remainder being privately schooled, homeschooled, or otherwise unaccounted for). 

Pursuant to my previous lumping-normalizing rules, I find the student body is 71% “Black” (13,885) and 29% “White” (5,694). These, by the way, are your future total Census demographics, if lumped and normalized. Taking the middle “95, White” average, we have: (.71)(87) + (.29)(95) = 89.32. It may not be the brightest future.

I’ve looked at more Newton government school performance records than I ever cared to. By and large, they are utter failures, falling somewhere above Detroit and below rural Mexico. Pick one and look at the scores and the trends – low and falling. And, as with most public schools, they fall along the lines of progressively decreasing performance as described by Hoxby. 

Newton is part of the vast southeastern intelligence desert. Their collective experience is demonstrative of the larger pattern and picture. More money, even radically more, will not solve this problem (see Detroit). Voting will not solve this problem (see the past 100 years). The problem is not political in nature. Tossing Dr. Seuss, Geo. Washington, and 2+2=4 out the door in favor of more social justice and equity will accomplish nothing. The issue is beyond cultural. It involves an identity changed, a demographic shift.

The new post-American USSA, to the extent and for the time it endures, will not be the end of the world. It will be, is already different. Relatively speaking, it’s parched – like a desert.

Something for a Saturday

03 Saturday Apr 2021

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I had trouble thinking of the right preview for next week. There’s plenty, but… Happy Easter weekend, faithful!

Oh, yes! I’m getting all psyched up about Monday’s podcast. Last week was another record-setter! Thank you, beloved listeners (and video heads).

Of course, I’ll have my weekly column, here next week. TPC may (may) return to the presses next week, but… Happy Easter weekend!

The Breakup of the United States Begins

30 Tuesday Mar 2021

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The Breakup of the United States Begins

 

Two things are mathematically certain about the future of the US. First, it’s over – even now. Second, it’s going to break apart into smaller nations. How many? Time will tell, though the short answer is “enough.” A third thing that is not precisely definite, but rather, much more likely than not, is open war accompanying the dissolution. Americans like the hard way, after all.

This column is about the second stage. Accordingly, I’ll hold a moment while you cue up The Breakup Song by the Greg Kihn Band as background reading music. Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah-ah, aah… Got that? Good.

As with the Second Coming, only God Almighty knows the timing of this thing. And none of us mortals know exactly where the lines will be drawn. Honestly, before it’s over, it’s sure to be a messy process. We’re already getting glimpses of the start.

Last week, on March 25, 2021, Rep. Jeremy Munson of Lake Crystal, Minnesota debuted HF 2423, under which, if passed, the western half of the Land of 10,000 Lakes would secede from the eastern portion of the state and join South Dakota. 

Munson Tweeted the essential steps of the process: “1) Pass HF2423 by the #mnleg; 2) MN Voters allow Counties to leave; 3) Counties vote to join neighboring State, and 4) Congress approves.” Finally, after all these years, a meaningful Tweet! One also beset with problems, particularly in step four.

Congress, this Congress, the one worshipful of the demon Brahma, might not be so keen on the idea. However, they can be – and ultimately will be – dealt with or ignored.

What’s driving this? There’s the fact that nothing works anymore and people are starting to read the tea leaves. Much of the stated logic behind the legislation centers on rural v. urban, conservative v. liberal, and red v. blue. All of those are semi-valid but there’s also the demographic difference between the genteel western counties and the more “diverse” areas around Duluth, Saint Cloud, The Twins, and Rochester. Something about something about multi-something just not working and people wanting to be around their own. 

Homogeneity being a universally-desired state of being, Minnesotans are not alone in their quest for separation. If allowed under a similar proposal, a vast tract of western Virginia would peel away and join with the former VA counties that previously peeled away to form West Virginia. New York once claimed (without success) Vermont as territory. Now, northern and rural New York could conceivably merge into VT – or PA. 

There’s also the prospect that parts of existing states might seek to form their own fully-distinct states. For example, the relatively normal people in northern California become ill-at-ease with those folks from Sacramento and points south. There are more examples, each requiring an even higher degree of Congressional approval than what Munson seeks – with one exception: Texas. Not that it’s immediately in the cards, but TX joined the Union with the express condition that it could subdivide as decided by Texans and without an OK from DC.

As things devolve further and faster, states, or parts of states, or groups of states will invariably break free from the dying US and form completely sovereign nations. Again, no one knows when this will happen or how it will look. However, when it happens, it will not play out along manufactured political lines. Well, it will, but those will be subservient to the greater, truer lines of Identity. 

Plainly put, people(s) want to live with others who share their own racial or ethnic, religious, and trust or intelligence composition. Westerners of European descent want to and will align with people who look, believe, and think as they do. The same goes for Asians, Africans, and everyone else. The modern revulsion at this natural fact is as false as it is new, staring down the entirety of human history and experience. Like it or not, it’s coming. When it does, then will arise the substantial threat of open warfare over resources within the given or proposed bounds set by the separating groups. 

I’ve recently read some of the most idiotic comments and theories put forward in the antithesis of this progression. Luciferian leftists obviously oppose the natural order, having created such a horrible, jumbled imbalance in the first place. It’s the conservatives and libertarians, usually trying to be “nice” (or stupid), who still refuse to acknowledge reality. All of them necessarily begin from some variant of the enlightened, globalized, civic nationalist view of what constitutes a nation. All of them are, almost without exception, solipsistic. You, the individual, really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. You may get a practical political vote, but it really won’t matter for much or as to deciding the greater issues. Protestations, here, will be no more effective than those issued against the coming of an earthquake. Find. Your. Tribe. There’s time.

We are, most of us, probably steaming towards a Yugoslavian rather than a Czechoslovakian scenario. Count on chaos. Just know that at the other end, the results will be better for everyone involved. Babel was not meant to hold together; it literally must come apart. It’s already started. (Song time out okay?)

*TPC may (may???) come back next week.