Stephen A. Smith on Caitlin Clark and the racial bias of America

No matter how far we've advanced, no matter how far we've come, even when we had a black president a decade ago, even when we had a woman as the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States in the year 2016...  Even with all of these "advancements" per se in our society, Caitlin Clark is a reminder, as great as she is through no fault of her own, America is still more receptive to marketing white folks more so than anybody else.  It's what they've looked for and what they pray for and they're getting it [with Caitlin Clark].  That's the reality.

~ Stephen A. Smith, "Caitlin Clark stands against hate," The Stephen A. Smith Show, 8:15 mark, June 16, 2024

My response:

Ok, how about some proof, SAS?  Where are your receipts?

Here is the counter evidence: Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neill and Lebron James, arguably the three most marketable athletes in modern history.  According to Sportico, Lebron was the top paid athlete in endorsement deals last year at $80 million. 

Sorry, SAS, that can't happen in a systemically racist society.  The real racists are those clamoring for victim status claiming to fight racism.  It's the Oppression Olympics.  Can you understand how white males might get turned off by this incessant gaslighting?  Look at what happened to NBA ratings when the NBA decided to go full activism during the BLM protests.  Activism is not good for business.  If you keep it up, SAS, you'll learn that lesson the hard way.

Dave Rubin on the left: "Everyone wants to be oppressed"

It's an oppression Olympics.  It's a hierarchy of oppressions.  So you've got to figure out how you are oppressed.  If you have a limp, you're this much oppressed or if you're a Jew this much oppressed or a Muslim this much oppressed.  Everyone wants to be oppressed.

~ Dave Rubin, "Leaving the Left," John Stossel, 4:10 mark, September 25, 2018

Matthew McConaughey: "life is not easy"

Life is not easy.  It is not.  Don't try to make it that way.  Life's not fair.  It never was, it isn't now and it'll never be.  Do not fall into the trap, the entitlement trap, of feeling like you're a victim.  You are not.  Get over it and get on with it.  And yes, most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get them.

~ Matthew McConaughey, "5 Rules for the Rest of Your Life," 3:05 mark, January 18, 2023

@tweettruth2me on feminism, LGBTQ, BLM and victimology

The feminist movement destroyed women and femininity.  Did you really believe the LGBTQ and the BLM movements weren’t going to do the same to it’s followers?  It’s a trap.  It’s always a trap.  Stop taking the victim bait.

~ @tweettruth2me, tweet, April 1, 2022

Charlie Munger on victimhood vs. soldiering through

Some people just naturally complain and other people just naturally put their head down and sail through it - soldier through it.  Warren and I believe in soldiering through without too much fuss.  I have the theory that the dumbest thing you can do in life is to ever feel like a victim.  And any politician that makes people feel like victims, I automatically dislike.  I never saw any good to come of feeling like a victim.  Even if you are a victim I think it's a mistake.

The Chinese were living in poverty, subsistence agriculture, in caves and so on.  Real poverty, hundreds of millions of them.  They worked their way out of poverty.  And look at them now.  How would it have worked if they'd known "we'll vote ourselves rich, we'll raise the minimum wage?"  It's just so much better to use the Chinese way.  They just soldiered through and worked their way out.

~ Charlie Munger, "Charles Munger Interview - Becoming Warren Buffett," 7:00 mark, HBO / Kunhardt Film Foundation, July 20, 2021

Kevin Duffy on the 1960s roots of cultural Marxism

The current radical shift left has its roots in the social activism of the 1960s.  Marxism was intellectually dead after a series of failed experiments with nothing but poverty and stacks of dead bodies to show for it.  The Left needed a new marketing campaign.  Influenced by people like Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse, socialists gave up on violent overthrow of the existing order (which wouldn’t work in America anyway) to focus on changing the culture and pitting groups against each other (oppressors vs. victims).  This was to be a long, slow process, like boiling a frog.

~ Kevin Duffy, The Coffee Can Portfolio, August 11, 2020

Paul Craig Roberts on Democrats, law and order, and National Public Radio

The reason Democrats don’t enforce law and order is that law and order are protections for white people. Anything that protects white people is bad, because it lets white people continue their oppression of black people. This is the level of intelligence at NPR, a font of anti-white ideology.

~ Paul Craig Roberts, "'In Defense of Looting'," LewRockwell.com, August 31, 2020

Thomas Luongo on the culture war

This is a war between radicalized lunatics bathed in unquenchable envy and self-pity and those who refuse to act like victims.

But they are victims.

All of us are. On both sides of the divide.

We are victims of a vicious program to divide and conquer the U.S. through a culture war designed to dehumanize each other. We fight among ourselves over scraps while the people who manipulated events to this point walk away laughing at the destruction.

They want the violence. They love it. They relish it. It brings them power and prestige.

~ Thomas Luongo, "After Kenosha - Divided We Stand," LewRockwell.com, August 28, 2020

Murray Rothbard on group egalitarianism

In this regime of group egalitarianism, it becomes particularly important to take one's place in the ranks of the Oppressed rather than the Oppressors.  Who, then, are the Oppressed?  It is difficult to determine, since new groups of oppressed are being discovered all the time.  One almost longs for the good old days of classic Marxism, where there was only one oppressed class, the proletariat, and one or at most a very few classes of oppressors: the capitalists or bourgeois, plus sometimes the feudal landlords or perhaps the petit bourgeoisie.  But now, as the ranks of the oppressed and therefore the groups specially privileged by society and the State keep multiplying, and the ranks of the oppressors keep dwindling, the problem of income and wealth egalitarianism reappears and is redoubled.  For more and greater varieties of groups are continually being added to the parasitic burden weighing upon an ever-dwindling supply of oppressors.  And since it is obviously worth everyone's while to leave the ranks of the oppressors and move over to the oppressed, pressure groups will increasingly succeed in doing so, so long as this dysfunctional ideology continues to flourish.

Specifically, achieving the label of Officially Oppressed entitles one to share in an endless flow of benefits in money, status, and prestige from the hapless Oppressors, who are made to feel guilty forevermore, even as they are forced to sustain and expand the endless flow.  It is not surprising that attaining oppressed status takes a great deal of pressure and organization.  As Joseph Sobran wittily puts it: it takes a lot of clout to be a victim.  Eventually, if trends continue, the result must be the twin death of parasite and host alike, and an end to any flourishing economy or civilization.

~ Murray Rothbard, "The Menace of Egalitarianism," Rothbard-Rockwell Report, April 1991

Paul Craig Roberts: "Universities are unsafe places for white males"

Universities are unsafe places for white males. Faculty and staff live in fear of baseless accusations that can destroy their careers and their financial lives. White male students are routinely graded down by feminist and black professors and cannot complain as all complaints are regarded as proof that the white male is a misogynist and a racist. Identity politics is the ideology that prevails in universities, the media, Democrat Party, and increasingly in the corporate work place. Identity politics deprives the white male of any basis for complaint because it identifies the white male as everyone else’s victimizer. Everyone is his victim. As he is the oppressor, he can never be supported, only denounced.

~ Paul Craig Roberts, "White Professors Live in Fear," LewRockwell.com, July 17, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on why America is not a racist nation

A great deal, indeed, has been recently said from many quarters about the alleged oppressiveness and racism of American society. Even though these denunciations have been delivered in impassioned voices and accompanied by much violence, there is one problem with such claims: They are not true. The opposite is actually the case.

The fact is that there is no institutional or systemic discrimination against black people in American society. Contrary to the assertions we hear today, in the last half a century America has gone into untold lengths to support and assist its black community. During this time, American society has launched countless programs and initiatives and spent hundreds of billions of dollars aimed specifically at uplifting the African American demographic. The support that the black community receives from American society comes in every form conceivable: legislative, financial, educational, commercial, human, material.

To ensure that there is no systemic or institutional discrimination, America went so far as to implement affirmative action and racial quotas in education, employment, government contracts, housing and other areas of life. This means that our laws and codes of conduct grant more protection, privileges and guarantees to colored people than they do to their white counterparts. So eager and willing has America been to elevate its black minority that it actually subjected the majority to reverse discrimination. To redeem itself and correct a legacy of past discrimination, the United Sates has bent backwards to advance its black population. The amount of resources, protection and goodwill that America’s black minority receives from our society is completely unprecedented in the annals of world history.

Nowhere in the world do black people enjoy more freedom and greater financial, employment and educational opportunities than they do in the United States. This is the reason why so many black people from all over the globe seek to come and live in this country... If America was such a racist and oppressive nation, why would they want to come so badly?

Conversely, we do not hear stories of African Americans leaving this “racist” “oppressive” country and then returning with tales of lands where black people lead better lives of more freedom, affluence and dignity. Have you ever heard such a testimony?...  Tellingly, we cannot find a single predominantly black country where its citizens enjoy more rights and affluence than the black people in the United States.  Isn’t it paradoxical that the United States treats its black people better than black nations treat their own?

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Truth About America: Why We Are Not a Racist Nation," LewRockwell.com, June 12, 2020

Kevin Duffy on police reform

Ending the drug war and victimless crimes may be the lowest hanging fruit to police reform. Strangely, raising speed limits might also reduce harassment of peaceful, law abiding citizens.

The problem with socialism, of course, is the system. Tweak it all you want and hire the best people, and it will still ultimately fail. Police services are no different. The past 3 months reveal an epic failure of the police. They were very efficient at shutting down businesses (owned by peaceful, law abiding citizens), but when it came time to protecting those same businesses from hoodlums, they failed.

There are also the deep roots of moral decline, and not just in the black community where approximately 70% of children are born out of wedlock. If your cultural belief is that you're a victim of racism and/or exploitation by capitalists, and that education - the normal ticket out of poverty - is a tool to subjugate you, cultural deviancy is assured.

I have a white friend who grew up poor. He told me how he was afraid of getting beaten up for studying and trying to get ahead. Of course, the public schools have now become propaganda mills, poisoning young minds with victimology.

Another deep root is the welfare state, which provides incentives for the less fortunate to become dependent on the state and stay trapped. By taking over private welfare functions, the state eliminates the glue that holds communities and families together.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, June 5, 2020

Neil Peart on victimology

There are those who think
That they were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them
They weren't born in Lotus Land

~ Neil Peart, "Freewill"

Jess Butcher on victimology

Victims believe they are impotent and that they have no sense of control over the way that events unfold.  Assuming that something has happened to you due to prejudice, whether right or wrong, is rarely the most productive response.  It prevents introspection, self analysis, and more importantly, particularly if it was due to prejudice, evaluation of new methods and techniques for circumventing your status quo.

~ Jess Butcher, "Is Feminism starting to undermine itself?," 7:50 mark

Scott Peck anticipates the victimology movement

When character-disordered individuals blame someone else - a spouse, a child, a friend, a parent, an employer - or something else - bad influences, the schools, the government, racism, sexism, society, the "system" - for their problems, these problems persist.  Nothing has been accomplished.  By casting away their responsibility they may feel comfortable with themselves, but they have ceased to solve the problems of living, have ceased to grow spiritually, and have become dead weight for society.  They have cast their pain on society.

~ M. Scott Peck, M.D., The Road Less Traveled (1978), p. 39

Eagles on victimology

I turn on the tube and what do I see
A whole lotta people cryin’ ’don’t blame me’
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin’ sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma’s too thin; your daddy’s too fat

Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin’ and cryin’ and pitchin’ a fit
Get over it, get over it

You say you haven’t been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, old billy was right
Let’s kill all the lawyers, kill ’em tonight
You don’t want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn’t owe you a thing

Get over it
Get over it
If you don’t want to play, then you might as well split
Get over it, get over it

It’s like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You’re makin’ the most of your losin’ streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak

You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin’ everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I’d like to find your inner child and kick it’s little ass

Get over it
Get over it
All this bitchin’ and moanin’ and pitchin’ a fit
Get over it, get over it

Get over it
Get over it
It’s gotta stop sometime, so why don’t you quit
Get over it, get over it

~ Eagles, "Get Over It," from the "Hell Freezes Over" album, 1994