The beginning of history and the first men
As readers know I think Matthew Yglesias’ One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger is a decent read. Unlike a reviewer at the new TNR, I didn’t expect a Ph.D. dissertation. Though a few years ago I would be very skeptical of one billion diverse Americans, today I am far less so, mostly because […]
Portland is radicalizing, the rest of Oregon is not
The New York Times has a piece out, 100 Days of Protest: A Chasm Grows Between Portland and the Rest of Oregon. It is one of those articles where the reporter talks to individuals who present a gripping narrative in an ethnographic sense. Aside from Portland, there are names of towns which are probably unknown […]
Kamala Harris embrace of ‘victim identity’ bothers me
Apparently Kamala Harris was admitted to law school through LEOP: LEOP offers admission to approximately 50 high-achieving students each year—up to 20 percent of the class—who have experienced major life hurdles, such as educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability. The majority are students of color. Besides traditional admissions criteria, such as grades and LSAT scores, …
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An Iyer on the ticket
Biden picks Kamala Harris as VP nominee.
One billion Americans is about families
I will probably pitch a review of One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, but since Matt Yglesias is pushing for preorders, I will note a few things about the book that might induce some people to buy it. Firstly, it’s not a case for “open borders”. The title is kind of a gimmick […]
ABCD Politics, Episode 2: Why I Am A Conservative
A new episode of ABCD Politics is out. For those of you who can, can you please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. And give us a rating too! Surya has submitted to Stitcher and Spotify, so it will be on those platforms soon too (my experience is that Stitcher approves fast, while Spotify …
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Being right-wing is just a thing, no matter the color
The Juggernaut has an amusing piece Seema Verma and the #DesiWallofShame, which basically assumes that any brown person (Indian American) who has non-liberal beliefs must be exhibiting either false consciousness or self-interest. The piece reminded me of this PLOS ONE piece, The Moral Stereotypes of Liberals and Conservatives: Exaggeration of Differences across the Political Spectrum: …
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Autarky in the USA!
I am on record as saying COVID-19 is bigger than 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis put together. It is probably the biggest thing that’s happened since the end of the Cold War. In terms of intensity and impulse, I think COVID-19 is a bigger compressed shock, as the “end of the Cold War” really […]
The Republicans are becoming the stupid party
Recently my wife asked me how stupid Republicans were. I made a comment to the effect that Republicans weren’t that stupid compared to Democrats. But…I hadn’t checked in a while. So I decided to look at the WORDSUM results in the GSS. WORDSUM is a 10-word vocabulary test that has a 0.71 correlation with IQ. […]
Brown Tories!
Pieces like this in The Guardian are somewhat funny, How did British Indians become so prominent in the Conservative party? It’s not that complicated. A lot of British Indians are professionally and economically successful. As bourgeois voters, they’re good targets for the Conservative Party, so long as that faction mutes excessive anti-minority sentiment.* The same …
Liberal democracy as a balance between deontology and consequentialism
Not often I comment on politics as such, but this piece, The Joe Rogan controversy revealed something important about the American left, is more interesting than its title. The author basically suggests that the conflict is due to the fact that individuals switch between operating in a deontological or consequentialist framework, depending on the context. […]
What has brown done for you?
I’v bemoaned the hard-Left shift of Indian Americans in political organization and consulting (Bong-commies at every turn!). But there are still neolib centrists around! Tech Veteran’s Fundraising Team Rakes In Cash for Pete Buttigieg Campaign: Three years ago, Swati Mylavarapu had never worked for a political campaign and attended just a single campaign fundraiser. Now, …
What has brown done for you?
I’v bemoaned the hard-Left shift of Indian Americans in political organization and consulting (Bong-commies at every turn!). But there are still neolib centrists around! Tech Veteran’s Fundraising Team Rakes In Cash for Pete Buttigieg Campaign: Three years ago, Swati Mylavarapu had never worked for a political campaign and attended just a single campaign fundraiser. Now, …
Huge difference in attitudes toward homosexual behavior among Democrats by race
There has been a little hullabaloo in the media about lack of support for Pete Buttigeg in the black community due to the skepticism of his identity as a married gay man. My own prior is to assume that there will be some differences in attitudes, but it will be modest. I come to this […]
Living in a post-biracial America
Where Does Affirmative Action Leave Asian-Americans? For the purposes of this article, Alex Chen, an 18-year-old senior at the Bronx High School of Science in New York City, is the “typical Asian student.” Alex has a 98 percent average at one of the city’s elite public high schools, scored a 1,580 on the SAT and, …
Toward a beige future
But @JDVance1 is in an interracial marriage and family. Does the Washington post not have some basic standard of fact checking before casual accusations of white nationalism? https://t.co/FAQDXm3Opl — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 27, 2019 The Washington Post: As border controls tighten, though, the links between pronatalism and nativism have once again become visible. Inspired …
Appropriation of “black and brown”
Language evolves, and social media has made certain phrases mainstream where they were relatively unknown. The fragment “black and brown”, often used in conjunction with “folks,” connotes certain issues and politics in 2019. It probably emerged as a term because there are 35% more Latinos than black Americans and the two form a minority social …
An enemy of his class, and a warrior for his sect
Though American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us was written ten years ago, it’s still very topical. Its observations about the secularization and polarization of American society are relevant and insightful. Arguably more so than in 2010, when someone like Barack Obama was still making overtures to religious conservatives in symbolic terms from the […]
Browncast Episode 56: Urbane Cowboys in the conservative wars
Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above. You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than …
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Brown power now!
A comment below set me off because it’s so dumb. In the 1980s brown Americans were so marginal that my parents were excited when they saw a little Indian boy in a cereal commercial. Today the man behind the skirt is <<<Saikat Chakrabarti>>>, a Communistic fellow of bhadralok, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley pedigree who …