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The Great Divide of Our Time (2 Viewers)

Gary Coal Man

Footballguy
Do you agree with the speaker that the following is the great divide of our time moreso than Trump supporters vs. Trump opponents, urban voters vs. rural voters, or Red America vs. Blue America?

“For years the politics of both Left and Right have been informed by a political consensus that reflects the interests not of the American middle, but of a powerful upper class and their cosmopolitan priorities.

This class lives in the United States, but they identify as “citizens of the world.” They run businesses or oversee universities here, but their primary loyalty is to the global community.

And they subscribe to a set of values held by similar elites in other places: things like the importance of global integration and the danger of national loyalties; the priority of social change over tradition, career over community, and achievement and merit and progress.

Call it the cosmopolitan consensus.

On economics, this consensus favors globalization—closer & closer economic union, more immigration, more movement of capital, more trade on whatever terms. The boundaries between America and the rest of the world should fade and eventually vanish.

The goal is to build a global consumer economy, one that will provide an endless supply of cheap goods, most of them made with cheap labor overseas, and funded by American dollars.

But it’s about more than economics. According to the cosmopolitan consensus, globalization is a moral imperative. That’s because our elites distrust patriotism and dislike the common culture left to us by our forbearers.”


LINK TO TRANSCRIPT & VIDEO OF FULL SPEECH

 
He went to Stanford, Yale, and taught in London.

He *is the elite.
Yeah, but he was born in Arkansas and was raised in small town Missouri.

Having the intelligence to excel academically doesn’t mean you came from the elite class nor share interests with it.

 
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And being born into the elite has nothing to do with being of it also.
I wouldn’t say “nothing”, but there certainly are plenty sons and daughters of the elite class that feel so guilty about their family’s fortune that they actively take positions against that class.

 
I wouldn’t say “nothing”, but there certainly are plenty sons and daughters of the elite class that feel so guilty about their family’s fortune that they actively take positions against that class.
I appreciate your perspective, but be careful you don't endorse the ******* offspring of a dung beetle who had one too many drinks with Sisyphus.

 
I wouldn’t say “nothing”, but there certainly are plenty sons and daughters of the elite class that feel so guilty about their family’s fortune that they actively take positions against that class.
Sure, like Patty Hearst. - j/k, but often they're liberal/progressive and it sounds just as hollow.

 
There is absolutely nothing new about right wing populism. Joe McCarthy and Spiro Agnew both offered the same rhetoric decades ago: the elites vs everybody else. It has its run, then it dies down again. 

 
There is absolutely nothing new about right wing populism. Joe McCarthy and Spiro Agnew both offered the same rhetoric decades ago: the elites vs everybody else. It has its run, then it dies down again. 
Would you then say that Bernie and the Democratic-Socialists crusade against “the 1%” is left wing populism?

 
Would you then say that Bernie and the Democratic-Socialists crusade against “the 1%” is left wing populism?
Yes. And incidentally it will have greater impact in the long run (unfortunately IMO). 

Heres why: because right wing populists don’t really care for politics. That’s why their movements never last, because the anger wears out and they go back to watching football or hunting or whatever- all they really want is to be left alone anyhow. 

Left wing populists love politics- they’re in it for life. They want radical change always. They’re smaller but they never go away. 

 
Yes. And incidentally it will have greater impact in the long run (unfortunately IMO). 

Heres why: because right wing populists don’t really care for politics. That’s why their movements never last, because the anger wears out and they go back to watching football or hunting or whatever- all they really want is to be left alone anyhow. 

Left wing populists love politics- they’re in it for life. They want radical change always. They’re smaller but they never go away. 
Yeah, I completely agree with that analysis.

 
Well it has all sort of ramifications for any sort of divide you can speak of. Give me an hour or so and I’ll lay out some basic theoretical arguments if that premise were true.

 
Heritability and IQ, and its social science ramifications, had been obsessed about since the eugenics movement of The Progressive Era in The United States. During the Progressive Era, many reformers sought to rid the world not necessarily of war or other grand tragedies, but of things such as poverty, ruined cityscapes, disease, unemployment, drinking issues, pretty much every social ill you can think of. One of the offshoots of Progressivism and reactionary conservatism was a theory of eugenics which held that human beings wound up as better, faster, cleanlier, better adjusted socially, and more healthy and intelligent offspring if their parents mated in scientifically controlled ways. While we take this for granted (either by reason or of actual scientific experiment is not my concern) today, back then, it was sweeping and revolutionary, and it changed just about all thinking in micro ways about humans and offspring going into the future. 

One of the offshoots of these attitudes and prejudices was that pertaining to the almost near-mystical rubicon of intelligence that would dominate and vex researchers for many years but had an important consensus among psyshometricians, or those that study IQ. Next post...

 
And that consensus, across all tests and variations, was that IQ was biologically determined by your parents by about half and your environment by about half.  This was simple, accepted, and rarely controversial. However, it wasn't spoken of in terms of public policy very often until two social scientists, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein took these findings and published a sweeping summation of all the studies with an eye towards public policy. The Bell Curve, wi=ritten in 1994, was an immediate sensation, reviled as it was praised. It was certainly controversial. Herrnstein and Murray talked about race, sex, class, everything; They posited this: That there was a heritable part of IQ that was very significant, that there were significant IQ differences by race, and most importantly that these two factors, were significantly tied to one's future earnings. The higher the IQ, the different the race, the better the environment one grew up in, the more it all correlated with income earnings. In fact, when all factors were controlled, IQ -- heritable, remember -- was the one factor correlating most highly with future earnings. This, they said, should give us cause to reevaluate what they called "intelligence and class structure in American life," also the subtitle of the book. The story of the book is one for another day. The goals of this next post will be to list some of the challenges that we will face because of this intractability of inheritance of this gift of IQ. Next post...

 
There are certainly stupid people out there in politics. I use the word “stupidity” here, not necessarily to describe lack of overall intelligence or IQ, but as a sort of catchall term to describe certain traits: lazy, simplistic thinking, intellectually uninterested, often conspiracy minded, often closed minded. Here are some examples that immediately come to mind: 

Donald Trump

Maxine Waters 

Louis Gohmert 

Shelia Jackson Lee

Michelle Bachmann

Ihlan Omar

Sarah Palin 

Etc. As populism rises these types seem to become more popular. When populism decreases they’re typically marginalized and less people pay attention. 

 
And that consensus, across all tests and variations, was that IQ was biologically determined by your parents by about half and your environment by about half.  This was simple, accepted, and rarely controversial. However, it wasn't spoken of in terms of public policy very often until two social scientists, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein took these findings and published a sweeping summation of all the studies with an eye towards public policy. The Bell Curve, wi=ritten in 1994, was an immediate sensation, reviled as it was praised. It was certainly controversial. Herrnstein and Murray talked about race, sex, class, everything; They posited this: That there was a heritable part of IQ that was very significant, that there were significant IQ differences by race, and most importantly that these two factors, were significantly tied to one's future earnings. The higher the IQ, the different the race, the better the environment one grew up in, the more it all correlated with income earnings. In fact, when all factors were controlled, IQ -- heritable, remember -- was the one factor correlating most highly with future earnings. This, they said, should give us cause to reevaluate what they called "intelligence and class structure in American life," also the subtitle of the book. The story of the book is one for another day. The goals of this next post will be to list some of the challenges that we will face because of this intractability of inheritance of this gift of IQ. Next post...
I have no idea who you are, but I’m pretty sure I know where this is going. If I’m right, you’re in the middle of trying to make a pseudo intellectual defense of white nationalism. I’ve read this gobbledy#### nonsense before. 

 
I have no idea who you are, but I’m pretty sure I know where this is going. If I’m right, you’re in the middle of trying to make a pseudo intellectual defense of white nationalism. I’ve read this gobbledy#### nonsense before. 
No, I'm about to make the argument the book really wanted to make but got lost in one chapter where they chose to discuss what they felt was a noncontroversial subject among psychometricians. The science, they thought, had been settled, and why not include it? 

But spare me the indignation please. I've personally heard the author talk about a wide range of things and can assure you that his Vietnamese daughter he gave birth to while having met his first wife in the Peace Corps would be awfully surprised to find him a white nationalist 

 
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As a matter of fact, timschochet, IQ determinism or fatalism, as this is sometimes called, favors the Jews above all else. 

 
Tomorrow we will manage to discuss exactly what this divide is, what it will do, and how seismic it will be in determining the future of life and politics...

 
I don’t care who it favors. I’m pretty sure it’s racist crap.
You're really not sure of anything. It is racialist in a way, but in a way much like they Study European and West African sprinters. It's uncomfortable, but likely true. Here's what's important: What if I told you tomorrow that we only discuss other things besides race. The main and central theses of the book were radically different than people think. And you're making some strong accusations while couching your rhetoric in "pretty sure's" and other hedges. 

I assure you that I don't care about group, race, and IQ when it comes to the importance of IQ and heritability. Only as far as welfare and entitlement programs target those groups as if they didn't have different needs.  

 
Murray  -- Herrnstein is now deceased -- is a paleolibertarian of all things, bordering on classical liberal to an extent. He's a Never Trumper and pretty wide-open minded about a lot of things we accuse him of.  

eta* And let's get it over with: I'm not here to harp on race or subtly troll people as a member of the alt-right. I'm a classical liberal and believe all men are created and should be treated equally in the sphere of negative rights. They should also be treated equally in certain positive rights and privileges, but that's a thornier issue of outcome and result.  

 
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Yea, the alt right loves to cling onto IQ "studies" during the 70's and 80's that "prove" that African and Hispanic countries have IQs far lower than White and Asian countries.  In some cases the study shows average IQ's lower than 70 vs the average white IQ of 100.  On the "real" IQ test, a score of 70 would put someone at the very low normal range and bordering ######.  To suggest that this is the Average IQ for a country is obviously ludicrous but yet the alt right trumpets these as to why European countries are more advanced and stable than African/Hispanic countries.

Just the fact that so many in our country grasp onto nonsense like this shows that our country is far more backwards than we'd like to think. 

 
Yea, the alt right loves to cling onto IQ "studies" during the 70's and 80's that "prove" that African and Hispanic countries have IQs far lower than White and Asian countries.  In some cases the study shows average IQ's lower than 70 vs the average white IQ of 100.  On the "real" IQ test, a score of 70 would put someone at the very low normal range and bordering ######.  To suggest that this is the Average IQ for a country is obviously ludicrous but yet the alt right trumpets these as to why European countries are more advanced and stable than African/Hispanic countries.

Just the fact that so many in our country grasp onto nonsense like this shows that our country is far more backwards than we'd like to think. 
You don't know the first thing about psyshometricians or IQ testing. I'm not wasting my time on this.  

 
No, I'm about to make the argument the book really wanted to make but got lost in one chapter where they chose to discuss what they felt was a noncontroversial subject among psychometricians. The science, they thought, had been settled, and why not include it? 

But spare me the indignation please. I've personally heard the author talk about a wide range of things and can assure you that his Vietnamese daughter he gave birth to while having met his first wife in the Peace Corps would be awfully surprised to find him a white nationalist 
Yeah, Murray touches on the heritability of intelligence in both Coming Apart and when discussing “Super Zips” as a contributing factor for the stark success divide between the upper and lower classes.

Murray now intentionally and specifically avoids race when discussing intelligence as a factor in success because once race is introduced (or even Murray himself) some people refuse to consider the intelligence divide topic and worse — go out of their way to make it impossible for others to discuss the topic.

 
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I think the sooner we all figure out that there are two sets of rules the better. We the people need to enforce one standard and we can not do it while divided by the ones who are benefiting from the current system. 

 
Yeah, Murray touches on the heritability of intelligence in both Coming Apart and when discussing “Super Zips” as a contributing factor for the stark success divide between the upper and lower classes.

Murray now intentionally and specifically avoids race when discussing intelligence as a factor in success because once race is introduced (or even Murray himself) some people refuse to consider the intelligence divide topic and worse — go out of their way to make it impossible for others to discuss the topic.
And yes, as you point out, his central thesis in many of his following works will be this stark cognitive divide, which he argues will show up with respect to income, jobs, down to where you live. And that has huge ramifications and has an entirely differing justification than that one earned these things by merit. If they're tied to IQ, and IQ is heritable, you just inherited a trait. You got luck.  It will, importantly, he notes, not be a meritocracy, which was long the justification for unequal outcomes. His question becomes then "what to do with that?" Chances are that if you're wealthy, or go to a good school, have a beautiful spouse that one thinks one has earned it with merit, when in fact it's often the opposite. You've really won the genetic lottery. So what Murray does is take IQ, measure it w/r/t successful endeavors and living, and says, "okay, what to do with these successes which are largely biological?" How to go about society then. His solution is paleolibertarianism, a branch of libertarianism that emphasizes behavioral and economic restraint, in short, an untroubled life via government intervention but also lived willingly in accordance with Western values. 

 
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I thought the 8 years of Obama divided this country more than anything I've ever seen.

white vs black, rich vs poor, Christian vs muslim, gay vs straight, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, public vs police, citizens of this country vs illegally here people ... in those 8 years it seemed everyone learned to hate someone and self justify it

 
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I thought the 8 years of Obama divided this country more than anything I've ever seen.

white vs black, rich vs poor, Christian vs muslim, gay vs straight, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, public vs police, citizens of this country vs illegally here people ... in those 8 years it seemed everyone learned to hate someone and self justify it
:goodposting:

 
I thought the 8 years of Obama divided this country more than anything I've ever seen.

white vs black, rich vs poor, Christian vs muslim, gay vs straight, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, public vs police, citizens of this country vs illegally here people ... in those 8 years it seemed everyone learned to hate someone and self justify it
lmfao.

Obama inherited a country about to go into a depression.  The first 2 years were spent climbing out of it and the last 6 trying to stabilize the economy.  Oh yea, he said police shouldn't shoot black people without cause, wow so divisive.  Oh, and he wanted healthcare for everyone.  The monster.

You folks act like you are simply without clue sometimes.

The biggest divide we have is educated vs uneducated and you can easily tell which side is which.  Luckily, economic realities are forcing more and more people to get educated so conservatives will all but be gone in 20'ish years. 

 
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I thought the 8 years of Obama divided this country more than anything I've ever seen.

white vs black, rich vs poor, Christian vs muslim, gay vs straight, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, public vs police, citizens of this country vs illegally here people ... in those 8 years it seemed everyone learned to hate someone and self justify it
So then that would that be a “no” that the true great divide is a Cosmopolitan Class that envisions itself as citizens of the world that are separate, distinct, and above the more patriotic lower classes?

And do you think Trump has lessened or furthered the divides you attributed to Obama?

 
So then that would that be a “no” that the true great divide is a Cosmopolitan Class that envisions itself as citizens of the world that are separate, distinct, and above the more patriotic lower classes?

And do you think Trump has lessened or furthered the divides you attributed to Obama?


Sorry  - more patriotic? Can you expand on that?

 
I thought the 8 years of Obama divided this country more than anything I've ever seen.

white vs black, rich vs poor, Christian vs muslim, gay vs straight, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, public vs police, citizens of this country vs illegally here people ... in those 8 years it seemed everyone learned to hate someone and self justify it
Maybe it's where I live or something but I never felt it was that bad.  It's possible it increased some but no where near the level it's at right now.  I really think the divide it at a level we have not seen in a very long time.

 
I think the cosmopolitan divide is a fine theory and has been advanced independently by several scholars, including notably, the former head of the American Enterprise institute, Chris DeMuth, and the former Weekly Standard's Chris Caldwell, among others.  

 
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I thought the 8 years of Obama divided this country more than anything I've ever seen.

white vs black, rich vs poor, Christian vs muslim, gay vs straight, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, public vs police, citizens of this country vs illegally here people ... in those 8 years it seemed everyone learned to hate someone and self justify it
Identity politics will have that effect.

Hate it.

 
We have a chance to argue a sociological cosmopolitan/cognitive/etc. division and we're going to do identity politics? Oh well...but I guess in a way the self is the last American frontier. To take one's identity, deconstruct, and then reconstruct it might take a truly pioneering spirit, only inward.  

 
Sorry  - more patriotic? Can you expand on that?
Sure.  Passages from the OP speech:

- “This class lives in the United States, but they identify as “citizens of the world.” They run businesses or oversee universities here, but their primary loyalty is to the global community.”

- “But it’s about more than economics. According to the cosmopolitan consensus, globalization is a moral imperative. That’s because our elites distrust patriotism and dislike the common culture left to us by our forbearers.”

 

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