Poverty Porn From The Popinjay

Date
Canonical
10201
Archive
10201 [history]

I make no bones about that fact I don’t like Kevin Williamson, the house rumpswab at National Review. I have no tolerance for people who put on false fronts and Williamson’s quill pen act is as phony as a three dollar bill. George Will did the same thing for decades, but he at least had a first class education and did some time as a university instructor. He was a gold-plated phony, but at least he had some credentials. Williamson has none of that. He’s just a real life version of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

Gratuitously mocking fat guys is not a good look so I resist the temptation by doing what most everyone does and that’s avoid reading National Review. It’s not that hard as the only interesting thing about conservative commentary these days is the remarkable dullness of it. Even the most boring people are interesting on occasion. It takes special talent to be that ineffectual all the time. So, I was minding my own business scanning twitter and I see this tweet from Charles Murray:

Another example of why @KevinNR is essential reading. https://t.co/Nn6v8SMoi2

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) May 3, 2017

It was in response to this tweet;

https://twitter.com/arthurbrooks/status/859779407300501505

Naturally, I thought it was word that Williamson had got what he has been publicly wishing on normal Americans for the last few years. Instead it was more poverty porn aimed at the pseudo-academics, who populate think tanks and opinion sites in the Imperial Capital. It’s becoming a specialty for Williamson. He writes up a scene from lower class white America that portrays the people as benighted losers, who deserve the abuse heaped upon them by the good whites in his audience. It’s a ghetto tour as morality play.

The unconcealed contempt Williamson has for the subjects of his poverty porn is both ugly and bizarre, given his alleged background. He has invested a lot in creating a hillbilly back story for himself, which suggests it is probably fictional or highly exaggerated. Even if it is accurate, his contempt for the sorts of people he claims to have grown up around as a kid is pathological. It suggests that Kevin Michael Grace was right when he said in our chat a few weeks back that Williamson is filled with self-hatred.

Self-loathing fat guy is not an interesting area of inquiry. What is interesting is the audience. Charles Murray pimping this stuff suggests something about Murray and his view of the current crisis in American culture. Murray is a libertarian and like all famous libertarians, he is a ward of the state. AEI is a tax racket, like all of the so-called think tanks. Murray also makes big money charging taxpayers between $20,000 and $30,000 per speech at colleges and universities. That’s not working class wages.

Similarly, Arthur Brooks is cashing in on the college speaking rackets. He also gets between $20,000 and $30,000 per speech. Brooks also pays himself $700,000 per year out of AEI, plus expenses, of course. He also gets $100,000 a year for other work at AEI, but that’s not defined on the tax filing. He may not be a one-percenter, but he is close enough to see it from his perch in the Imperial Capital. Being a libertarian lion is a lot easier when you take home close to a million a year from a tax exempt foundation.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge these fat-cat grifters their money. It’s a crooked and corrupt system and they are simply working it to their advantage. I could do without the Randian lectures about small government and rugged individualism, but hypocrisy is a feature of the human condition, not a bug. What’s curious to me is why these people seem to take pleasure in the suffering of the white lower classes. The glee with which they praise these Williamson columns suggest they get some strange pleasure from it.

That’s thing. That column was mostly just sneering, but Williamson put a lot of effort into letting the reader know he took pleasure in not only evicting his wayward tenants, but also in observing the suffering of the poor people in housing court. I grew up dirt poor, so I have no illusions about poverty. Poor people are poor mostly because they have low-IQ’s and poor impulse control. Progressive efforts to romanticize poverty were always ridiculous, but that does not mean we should take pleasure in their suffering. That’s just sick.

Regular readers of this blog will know that my view of the Official Right and their slow-witted little brother, Official Libertarianism, is that they trail along behind the Progressives, as they flit from one fad to the next. Their contempt for the Dissident Right is not about ideology. It’s that they think the scruffy trouble makers to their Right make them look bad to their friends on the Left. It’s hard to make $30K from college speeches when the people running the college are blaming you for the alt-right hate-thinkers.

Maybe that’s why there is a market on the Official Right for the type of contemptuous poverty porn Williamson is peddling. The Left has made hatred of working class white people that shop at Walmart a centerpiece of their identity. Hillary Clinton ran for President on a platform of “White People Suck.” Perhaps the Official Right is just aping what they see, but with their own spin on it. “The Conservative Case for Hating Poor Whites” is probably in the works at National Review.

To keep Z Man's voice alive for future generations, we’ve archived his writings from the original site at thezman.com. We’ve edited out ancillary links, advertisements, and donation requests to focus on his written content.

Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

81 Comments

Joey Junger #32622 May 4, 2017 1:40 am 31
Kevin Williamson (and his use to the powerful) is pretty easy to understand. Do you remember in “Silence of the Lambs” the part where Doctor Lecter cuts Clarice Starling to the quick by sniffing her out as one generation removed from poor white trash, hiding her accent? I believe Williamson’s pedigree is as roughneck as he portrays it, if only because he behaves like a lot of those aspiring people who get exposed to rich leftists in the metropolises, and then return home to flyover country for Thanksgiving to see their working-class conservative relatives, and they begin to feel a sense of near-schizophrenic insecurity. They don’t want to go back to the dirt, so they beat up the dirt people to exorcise their fear of falling. Leftists from better backgrounds find it unseemly (usually) to beat up directly on the Wal-Mart whites; it’s better to have intermediaries in the culture war, people who work like collaborators or house slaves. A lot of Jews in concentration camps said that the other Jews who were given a little power over the prisoners beat the prisoners harder than the S.S. men. Or, if you don’t like that analogy, Williamson’s an overseer or perhaps a house-slave on the plantation, whispering to Massa that those alt-right types are going to try to ford the river to freedom, and of course he gets an extra portion of fatback for reporting us.
Tim Newman #32628 May 4, 2017 4:57 am 4
Good points. The worst guards in the Japanese POW camps were actually Korean collaborators.
notsothoreau #32690 May 4, 2017 1:24 pm 3
It’s a lot like Hillbilly Elegy. I think the guy was secretly relieved that his grandmother died before he became successful. Having to deal with his mother was difficult enough.
Tim Newman #32626 May 4, 2017 4:53 am 19
Progressive efforts to romanticize poverty were always ridiculous, but that does not mean we should take pleasure in their suffering.Indeed, and every single one of us should be very, very aware that no matter how good things might be *right now* , situations can change very quickly. A new technology, an illness, an unfortunate lawsuit, a change in government…and suddenly us wealthy middle classes are staring down the barrel of poverty wondering how we’re gonna eat that day. I’ve never been poor and never been hungry, but I grew up smart enough to know one day I might be and to thank my lucky stars that I’m not. I spent a lot of time in Russia: they’ll tell you all about sudden, dramatic changes in fortune. I’m not religious but I do have a grudging respect for karma: you sneer at the poor and you may well find yourself joining them one day.“There but for the grace of God…”
roger #32661 May 4, 2017 10:22 am 7
“…a change in the government…”like, for example, muslim outreach becomes your new mission and 30 years of experience are now excess baggage?
Montefrio #32673 May 4, 2017 12:00 pm 15
I was fortunate enough to have been raised in a financially comfortable, well-educated, well-connected and cultured family and feel no “guilt” whatsoever for having had such good fortune. That said, an important part of the “code” by which I was raised was that conspicuous consumption was frowned upon and any disrespect of the less fortunate was absolutely forbidden.I live in a small South American rural village in which there exists a distinct social class divide and in which I find myself as one of the only “better-off” folks who treats the less-better-off folks with conversational equanimity, a fact that I confess has a certain degree of self-interest in it, given that if ever the day comes when the pitchforks come out, it’s less likely that I’ll be a target, foreigner or not: “Ah, Monte, he don’t put on airs, he’s a regular guy who has a real nice place and all but’s fun to talk with even if half the time I got no idea what he’s talkin’ about.”Those who express contempt for the poor, who fail to treat them with the dignity and equanimity that human decency demands are those upon whom I’ll happily pull rank and put in their place, a place outside the true meaning of community. We’re all in this together, class distinctions notwithstanding, and those who fail to recognize this will indeed pay a karmic price, be it economic or otherwise. The sneer is one of the least attractive facial or verbal expressions.Pandering to the poor is hypocritical; treating them with personal equanimity is simple human decency.
Dutch #32687 May 4, 2017 1:21 pm 6
We all indeed may be joining the poor someday. If you sneer at or pander to the poor, you aren’t going to know how to function when that time comes. A habit and reflex of human respect for the well-meaning people around you, of any social or economic stripe, pays karmic rewards. I am convinced of it. Our family is of mixed political persuasions. The one rule we have for each other is “be nice”. Don’t just tolerate others, accept them as they are. It has worked very well over the years, but college has corrupted one of the kids.
TWS #32619 May 3, 2017 11:11 pm 19
I like that. A libertarian raking money off a non profit. You should be able to harness the hypocrisy some how for alternative energy.
Joey Junger #32623 May 4, 2017 1:42 am 3
Even worse is someone like Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. He makes neocon chickenhawks look sane. His problem with the war in Iraq is that we didn’t take pages from the books of Sherman and Churchill and scorch the earth and deliberately target civilians.
Tim Newman #32627 May 4, 2017 4:55 am 22
To be honest, if you’re going to fight over there that’s pretty much what you’d have to do. Which is an argument against war of course, not for it.
SamlAdams #32629 May 4, 2017 5:16 am 10
And something that Sherman and Grant grasped instinctively. Until your enemy was thoroughly beaten (physically and psychologically), fundamental change was impossible. “My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
George Orwell #32618 May 3, 2017 10:38 pm 15
For all their scholarship, it will nevertheless be impossible henceforth to view Brooks and Murray as anything but hothouse orchids, maintained in costly greenhouses to gratify their billionaire hobbyists. Nearly a million a year from AEI? We know *what* you are now, presently we’re just haggling over the price.
Hades #32631 May 4, 2017 7:17 am 13
We’re reaching the Globalist endgame in the West, mainstream conservatives don’t pretend anymore that they care for the Native working class and mainstream liberals the total eradication of Western culture and its people
Xennady #32625 May 4, 2017 3:07 am 12
One of the things that strikes me about Williamson is that every slur he aims at poor whites is also quite applicable to poor blacks and poor illegals- but somehow he never quite gets around to mentioning anything about all that. Of course as usual here he includes the typical bootlicking praise the mainstream right requires immigrants must receive, especially the sacred immigrants of color.Shrug. I detest him and I normally won’t read anything from him or the worthless publication that presumably is paying him- but I’ll give him this: He knows what his paymasters want, and delivers it with all the servile devotion of a trained seal balancing a ball on its nose with the sure hope it will get a fish in return.Or in this case, a check in the mailbox.
JTwig #32677 May 4, 2017 12:37 pm 11
I work in the gas station/convenience store business, so I can tell you that it would be a lot harder for me, a native born American, to open up such a business than a new immigrant. Most of my customers have taken advantage of the fact that if you are an immigrant and start a business you don’t have to pay federal taxes for the first seven years (which is why many such businesses seem to be taken over by a relative every few years, who then pay a percentage of their profit to the previous owner), and special loans/grants only available to what we call “New Americans”.Now I don’t blame them for doing this, as they are smart business owners who work hard. I get upset with the people who created the environment that makes it so difficult for us “Old Americans” to do the same.
David Wright #32651 May 4, 2017 9:31 am 10
I have read a few of Murray’s books including the Coming Apart one.My take on him is he’s basically a prig who looks at lower class white Americans with a Margaret Mead attitude with the natives, all in a barely concealed condescending manner.That he likes Williamson’s latest is the giving his thumbs up to someone who is willing to do the dirtier work he is too refined to touch.As for Williamson, yeah he definitely is a self loather.A lot of the respectable upper white classes don’t want to be reminded of their lessers and who’s class they at some point belonged to.
Toddy Cat #32652 May 4, 2017 9:50 am 11
Charles Murray, like VDH, wants to tell the truth, but still wants to be considered part of the “respectable” right, and above all, above everything, not get called racist. It’s all futile, or course, and the Left will call them racist anyway, so they come off as being pathetic, despite the fact that there remains much of value in what they write (for now, anyway). They are reminiscent of those “moderate” Muslims who are always going on about how ISIS is not “real” Islam, even though ISIS can justify almost everything that they are doing with reference to the Koran; it’s actually easier to respect ISIS than it is liars like these.As for Williamson, he’s beneath contempt. He’s an actual traitor to his people.
George Orwell #32656 May 4, 2017 10:00 am 8
Consider: Murray points out with regret, in Coming Apart, that the elites no longer marry outside of their classes. The lawyer doesn’t marry his secretary, but another lawyer. Yet can we imagine Murray approving one of his children hitching up with a forklift driver? Also one of Murray’s kids is gay, I believe. And *surprise* — Murray came out in favor of gay marriage a couple of years ago.
Montefrio #32680 May 4, 2017 1:00 pm 3
Marriage shouldn’t be a merger, but all too often it is and I speak to this with experience. I married for the first time (1970) within the Social Register circle that was all that was “permissible” at the time and it proved to be an error. My son on the other hand married (after two and a half years of cohabitation) a bright, educated and enterprising former beauty queen Latina (we live in South America) from a lower-middle-class family; two kids down the road, so far, so good.I confess to having been doubtful at first, but no longer: marrying “down” doesn’t necessarily equate to marrying in error; the heart has reasons that reason (and economic pragmatism) doesn’t always understand.
Karl Hungus #32655 May 4, 2017 10:00 am 8
when you think of it, Williamson The Plebe seems an awful lot like a white(ish) Tanishi Coates (or however you spell that knob’s name).
thezman #32658 May 4, 2017 10:16 am 10
Ha. A white shadow that follows behind Genius T. Coates.
David Wright #32697 May 4, 2017 2:42 pm 2
Kind of like the Right’s Shaun King.
Teapartydoc #32632 May 4, 2017 7:25 am 8
Inability to maintain the habit of delayed gratification and poor impulse control may have as much or more effect on whether one is successful than IQ, depending on the circumstances. I’ve seen some highly successful people of middling talent who have merely been able to keep their nose to the grindstone and stay out of trouble whole keeping an eye out for opportunities. I’ve also seen some highly successful and intelligent people brought low by what seem to be epidemic attacks of a loss of these attributes, sometimes at least partially attributable to a bit of mental illness, sometimes totally without it. And as to being poor, sometimes it is a function of where people choose to live as much as anything else. I know several people with good brains and good morals who live lives that some would say are impoverished if one were to look solely at the standard of living, but that are actually quite comfortable, merely because they refused to move away from their home towns. The old movies from the thirties and forties did a good job of portraying folks like this, and it was picked up for a time on the TV of the fifties and sixties, think Andy Griffith Show, and Petticoat Junction, now all gone.Who knows? Maybe they are smarter than I thought. It would be interesting to see some studies that can demonstrate these things and whether there is as high a correlation between intelligence and gratification delay and impulse control as we say there is.
Ryan #32668 May 4, 2017 11:30 am 2
All the traits you discuss correlate with each other over large enough sample sizes. So they tend to serve as better predictors of group level outcomes than individual outcomes. An individual with an IQ of 90, great impulse control and the ability to delay gratification may be very successful. A group of people with an IQ of 90 and below average impulse control and ability to delay gratification will likely be not that successful.
FaCubeItches #32705 May 4, 2017 5:13 pm 7
“What’s curious to me is why these people seem to take pleasure in the suffering of the white lower classes. The glee with which they praise these Williamson columns suggest they get some strange pleasure from it.” Why is it curious? The best way to show that you aren’t one of the peasantry is to watch them suffer and revel in the fact that you aren’t. It’s not unlike how, in “1984,” the proof of having power was the ability to inflict suffering on others.
karl hungus #32630 May 4, 2017 7:06 am 6
i am thinking that if someone pointed out to kevin, that his plebe dna is what makes him fat, it will cause him no end of misery.
The Anti-Gnostic #32663 May 4, 2017 10:24 am 1
Anti-retrovirals?
Buckaroo Banzai #32681 May 4, 2017 1:03 pm 2
Epigenetics undoubtedly play a role as well. Think like a disgusting piece of shit, talk like a disgusting piece of shit, write like a disgusting piece of shit, act like a disgusting piece of shit… chances are excellent that you’ll physically resemble a disgusting piece of shit.
Ivar #32706 May 4, 2017 5:21 pm 1
His DNA is what makes him a mulatto, that’s for sure.
Christopher #32691 May 4, 2017 1:34 pm 5
“A lot of (white) people would rather be dead than rude. Enter Trump.” This absolutely cannot be stressed enough, especially for the – for lack of a better term – RINO right, wailing about how they don’t recognize their party anymore and are ashamed of the “hate” and “divisiveness” coming from Trump. These are Jeb Bush people and Mitt Romney people and John McCain people – they would rather (in fact, seem pathologically eager) to lose like “gentlemen” rather than win under the banner of a short-fingered vulgarian.
Saurons_Lazy_Eye #32704 May 4, 2017 5:09 pm 7
I sort of believed this once, but not anymore. Those people lose because theywantto lose. All that “Oh, well, I could never go along with the likes ofhim” is just an excuse. McCain and Romney couldn’t even pretend to want to win.
RDittmar #32688 May 4, 2017 1:22 pm 5
On a related note, check out what our betters in the GOP have planned: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/04/gop-propose-american-workers-replacement-bill-amnesty-immigration/ The toothless, meth-addicted deplorables in the provinces have become so lazy and worthless, the GOP now talks openly of replacing them.
thezman #32694 May 4, 2017 2:06 pm 5
I asked Mark Kirkorian when we should stop pretending we can negotiate with these people. This looks like a good point to break off talks and start slitting throats.
RDittmar #32696 May 4, 2017 2:24 pm 4
I guess it still could be a lot worse. I’m actually kind of surprised that the GOP didn’t pass an amnesty last summer as a big middle finger to Trump voters.
Rod1963 #32695 May 4, 2017 2:17 pm 8
The GOP has been openly hostile to white blue collars since NAFTA was passed. Ever since then they have never passed up a opportunity to kick lower white class in the teeth,Then GOP made sure no economic populist candidate would ever get their hands on the levers of power.So voters had nowhere to turn. So much for democracy.And look whose backing it – libertarian scumbags from the CATO Institute, you know the folks who support open borders, demographic obliteration of whites and off-shoring.Eventually the only way this stuff will be fixed is with the wholesale slaughter of Republican and Democratic party officials along with the cloud people behind them.
Horace Pinker #32678 May 4, 2017 12:37 pm 5
Charles Murray has had an enormous impact on how I view the world, but it’s getting to the point where I really can’t stand him. I was glad Middlebury happened. In an interview with Bill Kristol a couple of years ago, Murray spoke about the deep depression that he slipped into after the publication of TBC. I felt sorry for him then. I don’t know. I’m glad that he’s viewed as a racist eugenicist persona non grata by the social class that he’s so desperate to remain a part of.The Williamson article is genuinely infuriating. No enemies to the right? I think I see two that the alt-right should make an example of.
Toddy Cat #32682 May 4, 2017 1:10 pm 4
You can kinda-sorta forgive Murray and VDH, they are from a different generation, back when civility in public discourse was a two-way street, and lots of people really thought that the whole multi-racial society thing was going to work out. They should know better, they probably do know better, but old habits die hard. For Williamson, there’s no excuse, and I agree he’s genuinely infuriating.
Horace Pinker #32711 May 4, 2017 7:15 pm -1
My difficulty with Murray is my disappointment with someone who I used to highly admire. I am going overboard by suggesting that he should be a target for the alt-right, and I take that back. But when the next Middlebury happens, I won’t defend him.His recent interview with Sam Harris was useful. Just listen to the intro Harris gives before the interview. Harris is highly influential in the skeptic/atheist/rationalist community and it’s good to hear someone who’s so highly regarded there side with the facts on IQ. The interview itself is mostly Murray being the Murray that I used to admire.https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/forbidden-knowledge
karl hungus #32714 May 4, 2017 7:57 pm 2
there is nothing wrong in wanting murray to receive a decent beatdown. he deserves more than one.
thezman #32683 May 4, 2017 1:14 pm 4
Yeah, I’ve grown to dislike Murray too. I get that a man needs to make a living and provide for his family. Murray is long past the point of having to grovel to the Left, yet he is in full grovel now. I think it reveals something about that man I wish I had known decades ago.
Buckaroo Banzai #32686 May 4, 2017 1:20 pm 5
“No enemies to the right?” No, it’s “No enemies to the right of YOU” Every reader of this blog is well to the right of Williamson. He is a shit-tier liberal progressive masquerading as a conservative. He deserves to get bullied relentlessly.
James LePore #32669 May 4, 2017 11:35 am 5
I’m shocked. The poor are poor, inept and clinging to what little they have. Thank you, Kevin, I would never have guessed.
tamaleman #32641 May 4, 2017 8:24 am 5
I only go to NRO for Victor Davis Hanson. What do you guys think of him? Here’s his latesthttp://www.nationalreview.com/article/447231/why-progressives-lie-leftist-agenda-requires-deception
Casher ONeill #32643 May 4, 2017 8:37 am 2
The realities of future America and leftist rule have been a good, hard school for him; but he is still haunted by the ghosts of Official Conservativism due in large part, it seems, to his associations.
Casher ONeill #32645 May 4, 2017 8:55 am 6
Even in that VDH article, though, his conventionality shows through. The agenda requires deception, but there is no account for what that really is or why it changes at the drop of a hat. It is a very safe article to write. Leftists lie and they know they lie and they continue to do so because they know pointing this out doesn’t matter at all.Contrast that with Dr. Charlton:https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2017/04/q-why-is-it-that-secular-people-cannot.htmlI’ve seen other people come close to this conclusion, but blink:http://www.friesian.com/satan.htm#text-2(the important insight of this atheistic, Californian philosopher being: ” If I were a Christian, and if I thought that abortion or homosexuality were morally wrong, I think it would be hard not be believe that Satan, as in Lewis’ novel, was personally behind Democrat politics. The mix of lies, seduction, death, sterility, and corruption seems Satanic in its combination of fair face and vicious substance, hedonism and rot, glowing rhetoric and iron fist.”)Incidentally, Dr. Charlton’s account explains why Cthulhu always swims right.
Casher ONeill #32665 May 4, 2017 10:26 am 1
*swims left*
thezman #32648 May 4, 2017 9:22 am 15
I won’t go into the reasons, but I’m pretty sure Hanson hates me.I think VDH is one of the few readable writers in the Buckley Mystery Cult. I think he knows that the great chain of causality is real. I think he makes the same mistake everyone else makes and that is he thinks the Progs are amenable to reason. He believes they think through what they are doing, as a conscious strategy. Therefore it can be defeated with facts and reason. All of the evidence says otherwise, but he persists in going with the old facts and reason approach.VDH is a good example of how religions can co-opt secular virtue and turn it into a vice. Hanson is polite and prizes his respectability. The Progs meanwhile keep dragging the definition of respectability in their desired direction, thus dragging Hanson with them. His too polite to tell them to fuck off, so he reluctantly lets himself be towed behind the Progressive boat. Because it is hard to hate a decent guy like that, many people who see what’s happening, go along anyway. After all, most people would rather be dead than rude.It’s also why we have a rude loudmouth in the White House and why what comes next will be worse, unless things change.
Karl Hungus #32654 May 4, 2017 9:56 am 8
VDH always says the same things, over and over and over and…
ErisGuy #32664 May 4, 2017 10:25 am 4
Yes, he does, but he believes his ideas are important, and in the public sphere something said once sinks without notice, thus all good ideas (in the eyes of their authors) bear repeating.
james wilson #32676 May 4, 2017 12:21 pm 3
Yes he does, which got me to thinking. In Hanson’s case, and perhaps in many more, saying the same thing over and over is a form of angst in place of moving on to the next level of thinking which the first level demands. But all unspoken truths become poisonous, to where even speaking to one becomes extraordinarily rude. Hanson cannot bear being rude. A lot of (white) people would rather be dead than rude. Enter Trump.
Ripple #32679 May 4, 2017 12:57 pm 0
Very true. Early on in my red pill days he was invaluable in my education, but after a time he didn’t seem to have anything new to say
Montefrio #32675 May 4, 2017 12:20 pm 3
Long ago, when I was young, WFB was a neighbor and as a fellow fortunate Irish Catholic of budding conservative bent, I held him in high regard, but as the years passed, said regard began to diminish and eventually evaporate. I prefer not to be rude, but there are times when it’s called for, something VDH has apparently forgotten; I like to believe that I haven’t. Well said, Mr. Z! There are times when a “SIUYA” and “GFY” are the only appropriate rebuttals to nonsensical premises.
Saurons_Lazy_Eye #32703 May 4, 2017 5:05 pm 3
His too polite to tell them to fuck off My fault in life (or maybe one of my many) is that for the most part, I can’t bring myself to say it, but I give off a vibe that lets everybody know what I’m thinking all the same. Worst of both worlds, I guess. Anyway, since the mention of VDH suggests that a reference to Classical literature would not be out of place, on the topic of being too polite to say fuck off, read Horace,Satires1.9. It’s pretty funny.
Teapartydoc #32667 May 4, 2017 10:56 am 4
As far as I’m concerned he’s collateral damage. I don’t read their stuff and he’s irrelevant by association.
el_baboso #32701 May 4, 2017 3:32 pm 3
VDH was a Hubert Humphrey/George Meany Democrat on 9-11-2001. He’s come a long way in his political evolution. He’s really not a pundit… more of a chronicler like a Tacitus or a Suetonius. Short form essays are not his strength either. I recommend his books.Carnage and Cultureis an important work. He very effectively counters Jared Diamond and the “magic dirt” thinkers. There are a lot of ideas in that book that are very relevant to what we are discussing here.
Siddo #32710 May 4, 2017 6:53 pm 4
The white working class must be destroyed by the left. The white working class remind the left of where they came from .It is fair game to discriminate against the poor whites and refer to them in language that the left would call racist if used against any other group. The working class founded the nations institutions through the theft of their wealth. Who is prepared to represent us now?
Al from da Nort #32692 May 4, 2017 1:45 pm 4
I re-read the article in case I missed something the first time. I don’t love NR any more nor Williamson, but I don’t get all the hate being heaped on him for this particular article.The account reminded me of Life at the Bottom by ‘Theodore Dalrymple’. IOW, it struck me as a bleak, dispassionate view of the combinations of bad luck and bad choices that keep the poor, poor. No doubt somewhat like, but far less immediately damaging, than the poor choices that made Williamson fat, if he is. But what does his BMI to do with the proceedings he describes_?I can tell you from having been involved tangentially in somewhat similar proceedings in the past, that there is ultimately no other way, however much it is to be regretted. As a brief example, If your tenants trash your place the city inspector comes after **you**, not them. Moreover, it sometimes isn’t even possible to *give away* a tenant blighted property: Nobody wants to assume the liabilities, most particularly any non-paying tenants.Would it have been better if Williamson had played the liberal and expressed a bunch of phony regrets_?
David Wright #32698 May 4, 2017 2:44 pm 1
Maybe, just maybe, if Williamson could show once the other side of working and lower class whites. It’s all hate. Self loathing hate as we have said before.
Horace Pinker #32708 May 4, 2017 6:07 pm 3
@AlIt’s important to take this latest article in context. In an article from last March in NR Williamson wrote, “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.” Full article here:https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/432569/father-f-hrerIf you understand where he’s coming from, his contempt for prole whites seeps out of this latest article. A few examples:“She has a daughter and a man in her life (it is not clear whether he is her husband or the girl’s father or both or neither), and they are obliged to maintain two separate households, “because of the domestic . . . event . . . that happened,” she explains.”I come from a cushy middle class background, but I’ve known a lot of prole whites and I feel like I know this woman. Describing physical abuse as a “domestic event that happened” is a likely a coping mechanism for a woman who feels ashamed to be involved with a violent man who she’s had a child with. Williamson seems indifferent or contemptuous toward her.“[My lawyer] is the son of Mexican-American farm laborers, who learned at least one thing from his hard and poor childhood: Don’t be a farm laborer. Law looked like a pretty good alternative, and it seems to be working out pretty well for him. The idiomatic English would be, “He became a lawyer.” The better English would be, “He made himself a lawyer.” How did that happen? It must have begun with decisions he made as a child or as a very young man: A leads to B leads to C leads to a good income and a nice house and a bass boat.”Yeah, and maybe it began with him being born with an IQ of at least ~115. White liberals feel that their hatred of poor whites is justified because poor whites didn’t use their white privilege to go to college and then get middle class jobs. How anyone who actually knows prole whites can believe this is beyond me. I think Williamson knows the score and doesn’t care.“And while I am not much of a hard-ass on these kinds of questions (we have a positive moral obligation to help the poor, and not just the “deserving” poor)”Except, of course, when he’s cheering on their extinction. To be fair, he seem to be making a distinction between “communities” that deserve to die and prole whites as individuals, but I do wonder how long he waited to evict that woman and how much pleasure he took in it. He seems like he resents her, her dead husband, and his dead mother.Williamson’s BMI has little to do with any of this, but he’s a fat ugly slob with a penis-shaped head who deserves to be mercilessly bullied. I’m normally very much against bullying and I think picking on people for the way they look is usually really bad, uncalled for, rude, and often times an indication that the person hurling the insults is a piece of shit, but when it comes to Williamson, I’m happy to make exceptions.
Lulu #32650 May 4, 2017 9:29 am 4
I believe KW has picked up his pretend-poor persona as a schtick. Gives him the “credentials” to write what he sees as niche journalism from a place his elite wannabe colleagues at NR wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. His fostering of his own authenticity, an expert on his nasty subject.I have a hunch he was a dull, homely little dweeb of a kid who was picked on and never got over it. So ordinary that his middle class (OK, maybe lower middle class) roots left him in a terrible limbo all his life. A nothingburger. Especially in his own eyes.We know the ones at NR who are full of themselves – Lowry, French, Goldberg – and terrified of anything that even smells like poverty. Ewwww. Williamson has carved out a niche for himself with his bogus roots.
TomA #32712 May 4, 2017 7:49 pm 3
The day after the collapse, the prima donnas in the Citadel will learn first about the sharpshooting skill set of those backcountry boys. And among the poor, an insult is never forgotten.
Nedd Ludd #32700 May 4, 2017 3:20 pm 3
The ne plus ultra of poverty porn:Pre-Monty Python: We Were So Poorhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAdlkunflRs
Ryan #32672 May 4, 2017 11:55 am 3
Posts like this are an interesting history lesson for me. I was raised a moderate (by today’s standards) prog with libertarian leanings on government and business. Then I read Moldbug and was done with all that. Now I pretty much read the alt-right blogosphere. So all these names, Kevin Williamson, the National Review, never heard of them before. My only exposure to the whole enterprise is having them described as the Washington Generals to the Prog Globetrotters. It’s fascinating that their writings used to form opinions on the right.
Toddy Cat #32684 May 4, 2017 1:17 pm 4
You’re not missing much. “Movement” Conservatism played a genuinely useful role in giving the US the spine to stand up to Communism, and in introducing lots of people to the idea that there were other ways of looking at the world than the Lefty one, but they have not really done anything useful since about 1989, and since the late ’90’s they have been an actual detriment to the Right.It’s natural for old conservative guys to constantly re-fight the battles of their youth, moon over Reagan the way old liberals used to moon over FDR when I was a kid, and compare every tin-pot dictator to the old USSR, but there’s really no excuse for anyone under fifty doing this.Movement Conservatism has nothing to say about the struggles and challenges facing our people today; hence, the Alt-Right.
Alzaebo #32699 May 4, 2017 2:45 pm 4
The original target was silencing the Birchers.The rest was just a cover for previous and continuing Hegelian ‘solutions’.
Ivar #32722 May 4, 2017 9:53 pm 1
I used to have a girlfriend from an old New York family. The parents were terminal progs, but very nice people, and they liked me. The first time I met the girl’s mother, she looked me in the eye and said, “The fairest rose was Roosevelt.” She had a portrait of Eleanor in her sewing room.
Jim Scrummy #32649 May 4, 2017 9:29 am 3
I started my 12 step plan of leaving the “Buckley Conservatives” about 11 years ago. Made the final break about 4 years ago. I still get the mailers from NR to sign up for their “cutting edge” conservative magazine. The mailers go directly to the trash can. These supposed “conservatives” have never contributed anything of value to the fight against the progs. Oh sure the “Buckleyites” have fought to get a piece of the lecture circuit from the progs, but they have CONSERVED nothing. It’s a racket that’s been finally exposed as nothingness (except for lining the wallets and purses of the Buckleyites…Joni Goldberg, et.al). NR and NRO can’t go bankrupt soon enough.Never really liked fatso Williamson when I use to read NRO. Good to see he is still his loathsome self. I always felt that he was an “intellectual poser”, who thought he was smarter than me to hide his actual stupidity. As like the other “Buckleyites”, he creates no value. Worthless bytes of information that will soon be forgotten.
thezman #32653 May 4, 2017 9:54 am 10
John Derbyshire wrote about his departure from the CoE as a two step process. He left spiritually, but kept going to services out of habit. Then one day he decided he was done and never went back. That was a similar process for me with regards to the conventional right. I lost my faith in them under Poppy Bush, but I hung around out of habit. That and there was no where else to turn, for the most part.
Ben h #32646 May 4, 2017 8:56 am 3
When they had the thin-Kevin photo. Of him years ago, I thought he was black.
Dan Kurt #32670 May 4, 2017 11:40 am 0
Kevin is of Black & White admixture: mixed race. See:http://www.amerika.org/politics/mixed-race-kevin-williamson-gives-us-the-talk-about-white-boys/ Dan Kurt
thezman #32671 May 4, 2017 11:50 am -1
I’ve never been able to locate anything that shows Williamson is mixed race, at least in the normal sense of the phrase.
Cjx #32707 May 4, 2017 5:54 pm 2
I’ve spent most of my professional career working in and around the people Kevin’s poverty porn describes, and this one in particular seems 100% correct. I guess the reason I enjoy it is because I have to see this every day so it’s kind of cathartic to have these people called out for their flaws, especially because they work so very hard to never take responsibility. His description of them as essentially passive (everything happens TO them), always having some lengthy evasive explanation how nothing is their fault, thinking the world is out to get them whenever you expect them to carry any weight themselves, it’s all there every single day in all of the work I do.Now in rural America we might take an occasional “you can’t do that to our pledges only WE can do that to our pledges” attitude when some D.C. Think Tank type wants to bash our communities. And every community has good and bad people in different ways, I’ve met and worked with many good folks in the kind of civic organizations that east coast elites would be surprised sill exists. But I see no reason to defend the particular subset of people Kevin described or consider them allies politically. I don’t know why the alt right and Trump supporters are often so defensive of this group, these folks don’t vote and they will never do anything for you. And they cost us a ton of money and time dealing with their problems, and with the inevitable problems of their inevitably many many children.Every year a civic group I belong to cuts a check to buy winter coats for the children of the sort of folks Kevin writes about. And every January I get to watch the parents blow their “tax” “refund” – which they get because of those kids whose coats they supposedly can’t afford – blow most of it on a new ATV and mop up the rest with $4 energy drinks and shitty pizzas. Then every April I get to write a fat check for the taxes I owe to support this system that insulates them from the consequences of many of their choices, and then the rest of the year watching them whine when even the slightest bad consequence actually comes to fruition. So yeah I take a little bit of pleasure in mocking them.
karl hungus #32713 May 4, 2017 7:52 pm 3
way to miss the point…completely. it’s a given that the white underclass has myriad and multiple disadvantageous character traits. the topic at hand is why some cuckservatives are so hostile to these people. you try making your way through this world with a 90 IQ and a lifetime of being surrounded by other 90 IQ’s. these people need active guidance and a much simpler “user interface” for life. i reserve my scorn for dicks like Williamson, because I feel he should be more appreciative for the blessings he has been granted.
WalkingHorse #32778 May 6, 2017 8:18 am 1
Well done, and your commentary reminds me of something GHC wrote almost a century ago:“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”— G. K. Chesterton, The Blunders of Our Parties, Illustrated London News, April 19, 1924.
fondatorey #32647 May 4, 2017 8:58 am 1
When they had the thin Kevin photo up a few years ago I assumed he was black or mulatto.
model_1066 #33065 May 9, 2017 2:44 pm 0
“Charles Murray pimping this stuff suggests something about Murray and his view of the current crisis in American culture.” I think that in America, there is no crisis in culture, but that crisis IS its culture.
CaptDMO #32702 May 4, 2017 3:59 pm 0
Poverty porn.Victimization porn, offense porn, illegal alien porn, “economics” porn,political comedy porn….all the same to me.
Alzaebo #32693 May 4, 2017 1:59 pm 0
I am undone!I thought you hated libertarian ideas- a fantasy as honestly dead as small government or Constitutional limits.No, whate you hate are the frauds and hucksters of Libertarian Inc.It’s not that they said what their paymasters want, it’s that I fell for it.They often seemed to say what I wanted to hear.Cucked. I was cucked, as surely as I supported the Iraq War.So, the Right offers me-A police state run by criminals.The Left offers me a police state run by criminals and insane fanatics.Well, I’m sure the Zman knows that the glorious knights of chivalry were actually the skinheads of their time, while libertarian clerics got their libraries burned.Is the Z offering an option?First, unmask the quislings?
notsothoreau #32685 May 4, 2017 1:18 pm 0
Curious that Williamson doesn’t think about the shiftless relatives of those successful immigrants. They stayed home. Or they were from a culture that encouraged families to stay together and have some loyalty. The “smart” people in this country are opposed to it.And add this to your list of things poor people don’t seem to be good at: they don’t seem to be very good at remembering court dates. We know a guy like that. He has a cell phone with a calendar and could enter it there, or even get a paper calendar to keep track of dates. he just forgets about them instead.
Pilgrim #32730 May 5, 2017 3:55 am -2
Well, this time it seems the Z man behaves in the same way as a snowflake would when seeing a mention of blacks and the bell curve: gets into excited and irrate moralizing.I don’t care whether Kevin Williamson is fat or slim as an inmate of a Sudanese prison. After all, Bill Kristol is not so fat, but says the same thing. What Williamson writes about is perectly verisimile and recognizable (there may be some exaggeration and simplification for effect, but otherwise we have all seen the cases he writes about hundreds of times, on our own). And mind you, he does not offer any “policy implications”, just paints the landscape.If his derogatory narrative happens to hit whites in particular, this is mostly because black evictions do not happen in such an above-board way in a courtroom any more. I suspect most of the destitute black-occupied rented property has long been discreetly sold to black real estate entrepreneurs, of the sort that do not go to court but simply call in enforcers. And with those around, evisctions proceed smoothly and noiselessly.So, Williamson’s text is simply an invitation to think. And the result of this thinking in my case is not going to make staunch alt-right ideologues happy, I’m afraid. All that white advocacy efforts seem to be based on a idea of white America from early TV-commercials of the Eisenhower era. (Happy white families boarding a new GM car, moving into a new house, taking a college loan for the elder kid, etc. The esthetic is very much like the products of the Stalin era socialist realism, the Aryan art of the Third Reich or similar creations known from Red China or North Korea.) Williamson reminds us what that legacy population can be really like. And these people, even if they normally do not vote (some of them actually do, on a whim, which might be even worse than if they had consistently and predictably voted for Bernie every 4 years), still lame America in thousand different ways.In short, a thousand Somali migrants in every small town could not have undermined the U.S. society so profoundly as its own dumb white majority is doing day by day.
Triggerman #32940 May 7, 2017 8:31 pm 0
Haha, right. That’s why Somalia’s such a great place to live. Your post, like Williamson’s, is beyond parody.It is precisely because Williamson willfully ignores the pathologies in non-white groups that his piece is repulsive and cowardly drivel. Yes there are dysfunctional white people, but Williamson knows perfectly well that the immigrant groups he extols by contrast have lower human capital on the whole. He also knows (or else he’s stupid) that his buddies in the Chamber of Commerce have spent the last several decades selling out the American lower and middle classes (both black and white) in preference for third-world slave labor.See here for more on that:https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/all-you-americans-are-fired#.ysMQgxA15ZSo yes, Williamson’s step-step mother and her daughter might be the scum of the earth, but the deck is stacked against poor white people in general. And poor white people conveniently comprise the only safe target for the scorn of elites on Right and Left.The upshot of all of this is that it isn’t conservative in the slightest to advocate that communities should be uprooted so that everyone can chase an atomized consumerist existence in a coastal city. Nor is it conservative to advocate a merciless dog-eat-dog global labor market. At best, Williamson is a borderline retarded hypocrite; at worst he’s a globalist shill pushing for a fuedal hellscape for his own people..


Back to top