Crocodile Tears and the Conservative Movement

Why Conservatives encourage bright young men to waste years flipping burgers — while holding up 'reformed' prostitutes as tradwife icons

Over the last few months, the long-simmering frustration of the young, conservative American white male reached a boiling point. The theme of this essay is betrayal … betrayal by conservative think tanks that would rather hire leftist porn stars than young conservative journalists … betrayal by schools that give preference to women and minorities … betrayal by employers that would rather hire H1Bs than American kids who did what they were told and learned to code … and yet further betrayal by conservative thought leaders, who tell young white men that if they can’t compete with third world scab labour that works to 1/3 the standard they do for 1/2 the pay, they should just get a job at Panda Express.

Billionaire Psycho

- the mind behind the transcendent Pygmalion and the Anime Girl, and the author of an excellent ongoing series on the fundamentals of storytelling - has performed a Herculean task with this piece, which doesn’t simply express his own sentiments, but pulls together hundreds - yes, hundreds - of posts from accounts large and small, infamous and obscure, anonymous and onymous, collecting them all in one place. As you read this, the collective howl of fury from our dispossessed generation rolls over you like the shockwave from an Olympian thunderbolt cracking through the firmament of a cultural consensus that you can see shattering in real time.

I’ll leave it at that … save to remind you to click through and subscribe. - JC

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Something we’ve seen over the last decades with affirmative action, with disparate impact hiring, with the absolute degradation and breakdown of our higher education system, with corporate hiring practices, with explicit caps on white men in management, strict caps on white men on executive boards — we have actively suppressed our American talent for several decades. All we need to do is to take the knee off the neck of the white American worker and the American worker broadly and we will see all the talent we need.

—Jonathan Keeperman, December 27th, 2024

I think every major corporation in the country is just in flagrant violation of actual civil rights law. You cannot have these hard quotas and racially, ethnically, and religiously-biased hiring practices. It’s flat-out illegal. These companies have gone so extreme that they’ve ended up in what I think is clearly mass illegality.

—Marc Andreessen

I: Why 'Reformed' Prostitutes are Held Up as TradWife Icons

Chris Rufo is one of my heroes, and I’m not really interested in criticizing him. He single-handedly transformed the national debate in America by pioneering the phrase “Critical Race Theory,” which educated ordinary citizens, galvanized Republican politicians, and equipped soccer moms with the rhetorical weapons necessary to confront antiwhite racial discrimination through decentralized tactics in red precincts, counties, and states.

This is not an isolated victory.

Rufo teaches conservatives how to win.

His book America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, digs into the geological substrate of academia, media, and bureaucracy — deftly illuminating how a diligent minority of Marxist ideologues were able to incrementally infiltrate … capture … contaminate the nation’s core institutions. This tiny seed expanded and metastasized, reaching towards systemic corruption on an industrial scale. Christopher Rufo translates abstract theory into concrete action. As a trustee at New College of Florida, appointed by Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023, Chris Rufo demonstrated a transformative proof of concept: How to fire Leftist staff in huge numbers, how to salvage a dying university, how to withstand a media firestorm, and how to assert an alternative spiritual, political, and moral vision for Americans.

His methods spread.

Other states and colleges in Republican-controlled regions have imitated, and implemented, the tactics and rhetoric of Chris Rufo, rapidly purging Marxists embedded in their staff.

Christopher Rufo is everything conservatives should search for, support, and encourage in an intellectual vanguard. He’s articulate, clever, forceful, passionate, brave, tough, disciplined, and brutally effective at dismantling diffused, parasitic systems of bureaucratic misdirection, legalistic moralizing, and resource extraction.

If we had another thousand conservative intellectual leaders who were as smart, articulate, and ferocious as Christopher Rufo, then the conservative movement would be able to solve America’s contemporary problems. We would be able to seize political power, and use that power to shrink the bloated federal Leviathan.

So that brings us to the crux of the issue — why is Christopher Rufo alone?

Where are the legions of talented, brilliant young men who should be leading the conservative movement?

Where can we find another thousand Christopher Rufos?

In a country of more than 300 million Americans, why is the conservative movement so destitute of masculine talent?

Conservative think tanks have not cultivated the next generation of young leaders. Anyone who says that these institutions have even tried to search for talented young men is kidding themselves. If you are a patriotic young man full of idealistic dreams about restoring Christianity, reducing bureaucracy, defending borders, researching classical philosophy, and strengthening America — these organizations pretend you don’t exist. They don’t care about you. Worse, they don’t care about their own public mission statements, and the virtues they pretend to advocate.

These people are every bit as incompetent as the government bureaucracies which they criticize.

Conservative think tanks are mirrored reflections of government’s inertia, stagnation, and self-satisfied neglect, overshadowed by the federal Leviathan they pretend to oppose.

Political movements require talent pipelines. And these talent pipelines operate on a generational delay. There’s a significant lag. Investment into the nation’s best minds won’t pay off for a couple decades. If you want a forest, these seeds need to be planted far in advance.

Where is the right-wing Barack Obama?

Where is the right-wing Aaron Sorkin? Where are the right-wing versions of Saul Alinsky, James Carville, Noam Chomsky, Bill Clinton, Van Jones, Al Sharpton, Rahm Emanuel, Lena Dunham, Michael Moore? The list goes on.

Here’s the reality. If there is a right-wing Barack Obama, a charismatic political talent born into unlikely circumstances, he is sitting in obscurity in some low-paid cubicle job because nobody cared enough to identify and mentor his talent. Or working a gig economy job. Or teaching at a local community college. Or preaching sermons as a local youth pastor. Or testing bugs for a software company. Or tinkering with numbers in a spreadsheet at a Wall Street hedge fund. Or playing video games at home as a NEET. Or drugging himself with opioids.

And he will remain in obscurity, for as long as it takes him to climb out by himself. For himself. Because none of the professional conservative intellectuals who are supposed to find him, inspire him, sharpen him — none of these professional activists are doing their jobs. They’re asleep at the wheel.

This hypothetical alienated young man will be okay, or he won’t, but he will contribute exactly nothing to the conservative political movement, because the talent pipeline to recruit, train, and guide him as a weapon, guide him as a heat-seeking missile aimed at Leftist projects, simply doesn’t exist.

Conservatives lose because all the institutions are stacked against them — including the so-called conservative institutions.

A younger version of Christopher Rufo would be rejected by these complacent, disinterested think tanks, because they are defeatist losers drifting on autopilot. Every year they lose more cultural defeats to the steady erosion of Leftist entropy — and every year, nothing changes. Continual humiliation alters nothing. They’re still getting paid. They’re still comfortable in their high-paid white-collar sinecures, safely insulated from the ferocious, Darwinian free market pressures they love to espouse. They remain smug and self-congratulatory, convinced in their own intellectual superiority.

In fact, Christopher Rufo emerged after development in a Leftist talent pipeline. His political career began as a documentary filmmaker who lived in Seattle, producing a 2015 PBS documentary about poverty. His research explored the lives of the poor in three different cities, and resulted in disillusionment with the failures of Leftist interventions to live up to the compassionate, humanitarian ideals he believed in. Rufo was trained in the enemy’s methods, and that’s why he’s effective — he knows the Marxist playbook.

If you take a cursory glance at the most prominent right-wing intellectuals, politicians, businessmen, and activists from the past fifty years of American history, some interesting patterns emerge. Almost none of the best conservative leaders were developed by the unimpressive, peripheral right-wing cultural infrastructure that exists. There have been a lot of great conservative leaders, who proposed bold ideas, endured tremendous sacrifices in pursuit of their beliefs, and achieved a handful of marginal victories in the face of widespread Leftist dominance of the prevailing, hegemonic monoculture. But a huge percentage of these right-wing figures were disillusioned Leftists, men like Andrew Brietbart, James Burnham, Jordan Peterson, who embody Ronald Reagan’s quote, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.”

The rest were apolitical figures who succeeded in unrelated industries, achieved enormous wealth or celebrity, and only entered right-wing politics out of a sense of sacrifice and personal idealism financed by their previous careers — Peter Thiel, Thomas Massie, Mel Gibson, Donald Trump, Clint Eastwood, Dan Bongino, Elon Musk. And we must acknowledge that a certain amount of naivete played a role in the kamikaze choice for men like Donald Trump to enter politics — if Donald Trump had realized he would be prosecuted, impeached, harassed, slandered, defamed, and shot at, he might not have chosen to enter “the free marketplace of ideas”.

All of our best talent comes to the right-wing by accident.

Normally they are sacrificing professional, personal, and financial opportunities simply by associating with taboo ideological positions.

This is a fundamental indictment of the disorganized, inconsistent structure of existing right-wing institutions, which fail to protect high-profile defectors to their cause. Dissidents are forced to fend for themselves.

At forty years old, J. D. Vance is going to be one of the youngest vice presidents in American history when he assumes office. In the past 250 years, only two vice presidents have been younger: John Breckinridge, and Richard Nixon.

Where did J. D. Vance come from? Was he a prodigy selected, cultivated, and shepherded by conservative think tanks? Not remotely.

He was raised in poverty by a drug-addicted mother and his maternal grandparents, and learned at an early age that he lacked reliable, aspirational adult role-models who he could trust to protect and guide him. After high school, J. D. Vance joined the Marine Corps in 2003, where he worked as a military writer and photographer in Iraq. After leaving the Marines, J. D. Vance attended Ohio State University for two years (2007-2009) to graduate with a degree in philosophy, and a degree in political science. He was a clever social climber with a disciplined, neatly-delineated plan to build an impressive portfolio, escape childhood poverty, forge himself into a champion, and ascend into the elite ranks of the American ruling caste. Next he attended Yale Law School (2010-2013), where he was mentored by a bestselling author and Yale Professor named Amy Chua, the author of the memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which is about how Chinese strivers design their lives to ingratiate themselves with the de facto American priesthood of bureaucratic managerialism.

It helps for a talented young writer to be mentored by a bestselling author.

Empowered by the guidance of Yale Professor Amy Chua, J. D. Vance wrote a bestselling memoir that reflected his own experiences struggling to escape from drugs, neglect, downward mobility, and the despair of the Appalachian white working class, Hillbilly Elegy. The book was published in 2016, six years later. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, J. D. Vance briefly worked as a legal clerk for Texas Senator John Cornyn, then spent a year as a law clerk for a Kentucky federal district court. Next, he spent seven months (from October 2014 to May 2015) as a corporate litigation associate for the law firm Sidley Austin, located in their Ohio branch. This is the same law firm which employed Barack and Michelle Obama (in 1989). After two years in law, JD Vance entered the venture capital industry at Peter Thiel’s firm, Mithril Capital.

Around this time, Hillbilly Elegy was published to widespread critical acclaim, commercial success, and cultural impact. Opportunities presented themselves at dizzying speed. J. D. Vance began to write a column for the New York Times, and at this point he was courted, tempted, and celebrated by various Leftist institutions which hoped to promote J. D. Vance as an avatar of abandoned, downwardly-mobile rural white voters who were drifting away from the Democrat Party.

The consistent trend is speed.

Relentless speed defined J. D. Vance’s career. Constant, disorienting velocity.

You can see that he moved rapidly from place to place, drifting as a transient mercenary, leapfrogging from one industry to another, never remaining in the same ecological niche for more than two years at a time, swimming furiously and frenetically through the arteries of credentialed institutions where power, prestige, and profits are distributed.

This is how the game is played.

This is how authority operates in elite institutions.

Careers move swiftly, desperately, like salmon swimming upstream.

By the age of thirty-seven, when J. D. Vance announced on July 1st, 2021 that he would be running as a candidate for Ohio’s U. S. Senate vacancy, his professional career had skipped and danced across a broad spectrum of industries. His work experience included time spent in photography, the military, literary publishing, print journalism, the judiciary, the Senate, Ivy League academia, finance, software, corporate litigation, Hollywood films, nonprofit charity, children’s public education, and drug rehabilitation.

What’s missing from this list?

Any time in a right-wing institution.

Conservative organizations are a professional dead end.

In a recent Substack post, Bronze Age Pervert expanded on this point:

Bronze Age Pervert, Race in America and the Dork Right:

The right in general has a problem: it forces its intelligent youth to choose between a life of telling the truth, which if you do it well can bring you fame and notoriety and the social adulation that is as addictive a good for a human, once he has it, as sexual or other satisfaction; and on the other hand a rather grim life of keeping silent but climbing a traditional career path in law, business, politics, academia, etc.; obviously any political faction needs both, and this is an unfair choice especially to put on young, energetic smart right wing or conservative people. One solution is for right wing billionaires to stop being so stingy if they want to win. Obviously some of these writers were treated unfairly by universities and shouldn’t be in a position where they have to make it on their own in alternative media. Still less so for many highly intelligent youth I know in law, business, and science who have to give up any public commentary or keep KGB-level opsec anonymity if they hope to do well in their fields—again, a very painful choice. The left takes its young who find themselves in this position, grooms them, and gives them much private adulation and support and a clear upward career path to make up for their not “sperging” out in public…or otherwise gives a path also to that public expression. The right cares nothing for its best young and tells them they’re on their own and that if their talents mean anything they will find success in “the market”…this is stupid.

To parry potential claims that this is self-interested: I have for now managed to secure for myself the means to say what I believe, enjoy myself doing it and not have to rely on anyone else, but it was a very difficult time in which I received zero support from anyone. I am not saying that to brag but because it’s unfortunate: I could have very much used it, and I would have probably done more. And there are many others like me but who are in positions where they feel they can’t afford the risk, or to go kamikaze as I have, and so probably many good books and especially collaborative enterprises like good movies etc., end up never being made. If the right doesn’t want to be a long-term perpetual loser in the realms of the intellect and culture it will have to solve this problem somehow.

—Bronze Age Pervert, Race in America and the Dork Right

The career of J. D. Vance functions as a blueprint of how to design a career as a social climber navigating elite institutions.

Most people don’t have the talent, temperament, or thirst to achieve this sort of restless existence as a rootless cosmopolitan careerist. Changing jobs every six months, constantly transitioning to new cities, gliding between friendships and communities — this kind of career requires costly personal sacrifices. There’s a lack of routine, familiarity, and identity. It’s rough on a marriage, a family, and the childhood of kids who are always moving from school to school. But if you want to maximize your career, squeeze every drop of financial potential and professional ambition out of your lifetime, this is a highly effective strategy which orients towards optimization of the modern economy’s high velocity, credentialism, reputational networks, and lack of job security.

Compare the highly-credentialed careers of J. D. Vance, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Ted Cruz against the advice which Boomer conservatives half-heartedly propose to other people’s kids (not their own): Learn a blue-collar trade, forget about college in a Woke antiwhite environment which hates conservatives.

The conservative movement shrugs their shoulders, accepting total cultural defeat. There’s a lack of practical answers.

Responsibility is offloaded from elders, onto younger generations.

Paul Graham, The Origins of Wokeness:

For the press there was money in wokeness. But they weren't the only ones. That was one of the biggest differences between the two waves of political correctness: the first was driven almost entirely by amateurs, but the second was often driven by professionals. For some it was their whole job. By 2010 a new class of administrators had arisen whose job was basically to enforce wokeness. They played a role similar to that of the political commissars who got attached to military and industrial organizations in the USSR: they weren't directly in the flow of the organization's work, but watched from the side to ensure that nothing improper happened in the doing of it. These new administrators could often be recognized by the word ‘inclusion’ in their titles. Within institutions this was the preferred euphemism for wokeness; a new list of banned words, for example, would usually be called an ‘inclusive language guide.’

This new class of bureaucrats pursued a woke agenda as if their jobs depended on it, because they did. If you hire people to keep watch for a particular type of problem, they're going to find it, because otherwise there's no justification for their existence. But these bureaucrats also represented a second and possibly even greater danger. Many were involved in hiring, and when possible they tried to ensure their employers hired only people who shared their political beliefs. The most egregious cases were the new ‘DEI statements’ that some universities started to require from faculty candidates, proving their commitment to wokeness. Some universities used these statements as the initial filter and only even considered candidates who scored high enough on them. You're not hiring Einstein that way; imagine what you get instead.

…

The middle-class student protestors of the New Left rejected the socialist/Marxist left as unhip. They were interested in sexier forms of oppression uncovered by cultural analysis (Marcuse) and abstruse "Theory". Labor politics became stodgy and old-fashioned. This took a couple generations to work through. The woke ideology's conspicuous lack of interest in the working class is the tell-tale sign.

…

The middle-class origins of wokeness smoothed its way through the institutions because it had no interest in "seizing the means of production" (how quaint such phrases seem now), which would quickly have run up against hard state and corporate power. The fact that wokeness only expressed interest in other kinds of class (race, sex, etc) signalled compromise with existing power: give us power within your system and we'll bestow the resource we control — moral rectitude — upon you. As an ideological stalking horse for gaining control over discourse and institutions, this succeeded where a more ambitious revolutionary program would not have.

…

Much as they tried to pretend there was no conflict between diversity and quality… What diversity actually means, judging from the way the term is used, is proportional representation, and unless you're selecting a group whose purpose is to be representative, like poll respondents, optimizing for proportional representation has to come at the expense of quality.”

—Paul Graham, The Origins of Wokeness

Any talented young man with good options is going to ask himself some tough questions before joining an existing right-wing institution. Publicly declaring yourself as a traditional Christian, or a dedicated Republican, will carry a stigma in many industries, and will close more doors than it opens.

Teams of smart, competent men are necessary to turn America around. But the first thing a smart, competent man will ask himself is: What happened to the right-wing men who tried before me? Experienced, successful, perceptive men who have already achieved significant professional accomplishments will usually survey the track record of conservative failures, and the misfortunes suffered by previous idealists, during their consideration of a potential career as a right-wing activist.

They’ll think about it, then do something else.

Leftists in America are rewarded for winning. In 2021, Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to Van Jones, one of the key figures of the Obama administration.

This is the same Jeff Bezos who on December 4th, 2024 (at the New York Times DealBook summit) announced how excited he was that Donald Trump had been elected president, so that Trump could solve the deficit and reduce excessive business regulations…

Thanks a lot, Jeff Bezos.

“We’re not spending another dime to help the destruction of this country…

NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) have been perverted into a shadow government. An NGO is sometimes an operation that does things that the government can’t do, because it’s not legally allowed to do it. So they create an entity to legally use government dollars, taxpayer dollars to do something that the federal government isn’t allowed to do — a shadow government used to undermine our country’s national security.”

—Kristi Noem, January 29th, 2025

Conservatives in America are punished for winning, because they register as a threat to the status quo. James O’Keefe was forced out of his company. Steve Bannon was sent to prison. Douglass Mackey was prosecuted for sharing memes. Milo Yiannopoulos was fired when he was on the threshold of becoming a household name, and his celebrity has never recovered. Tucker Carlson was fired at the height of his popularity. Mel Gibson was blacklisted. Alex Jones was sued for more than a billion dollars, bankrupted, and liquidated. In each instance, the details, personalities, and pretexts are different. Some of the punishments were blatant forms of political discrimination. Some seemed reasonable on a superficial level, as fair (but arbitrary) discipline according to rules that are rarely enforced.

But the trend is clear.

Tall poppies get cut.

Anc Aesthetics, February 6th 2025:

If DOGE wants to be successful they cannot give an inch to leftist doxxers in the media. You chose to go to war with the deep state and you chose a team of extremely talented young guys to carry it out.

They are now targets of the enemy, and when you cave and fire one of them for spicy tweets what you are doing is blasting a huge signal that it is open season on the entire DOGE team. What you are also doing is signalling to the other super talented people who might consider working for DOGE that you won’t have their back.

The media will comb through the life of every single one of these guys and when they find something their life will be over. If you want the best people, that's not a very enticing offer. Why would someone who has a bright career in front of them want to work for DOGE if they know they will get doxxed and when shit hits the fan they will be discarded and unhirable?

We need to move past this shit. We’ve been living in this Orwellian cancel culture nightmare for way too long. It needs to end.

The American people rejected this at the ballot box. Free speech means free speech. You don't have to like what he said but firing someone for anonymous tweets which subsequently ruins their life is an insane punishment.

This kid is fucked now. One of our brightest young guys is now unhirable.

How is that appropriate?

Dana White had a similar controversy with Bryce Mitchell just this week. He handled it and now it’s gone from the news in a few days. He didn't agree with what was said but rejected the calls to fire Bryce because Dana believes in free speech.

That's literally all you have to say and it’s done. You don’t have to fire people anymore, the American people will support you standing firm on free speech grounds.

I’ll finish with this.

The left has been saying much worse for years.

Every single day I hear a Democrat politician or activist say the most vile racist shit against White people and get away with it. That’s why they were able to take over all our institutions and culture, they understood that if you want to push the Overton window in your direction you can’t fire people when they cross the line because then the line doesn't move.

Well the line has moved, it has moved so far left that the views of our great founders are a blip on the horizon. If you want to move the Overton window back to the middle you can’t just sit there allowing the left to cross the line while we fire our own when they do it.

If we do, nothing will change, and the left will win.

—Anc Aesthetics, February 6th 2025

Ruined careers function as cautionary tales.

Conservatives are starved of talent.

One of the funny corollaries to this observation about a political manpower shortage is that Leftists are also starved of talent, for unrelated reasons. The total hegemonic victory of Leftism, spreading as a contagion infecting all prestigious institutions, has facilitated loyalty tests, shibboleths, and holiness spirals which have ferociously suppressed their own best talent.

But if conservative institutions are not hiring the next generation’s best minds, who are they hiring?

A recent case illustrates the point, as a symbolic microcosm of the overall drought.

On October 28th, 2024, various affiliates of the Manhattan Institute Logos Initiative team announced the hiring of two new Investigative Reporters: Christina Buttons, and Hannah Grossman, sold publicly as another step in building the “best investigative team in right-leaning media”. Neither hire was especially impressive, or right-leaning, although Hannah Grossman had a solid resume as a veteran of Fox News.

The hire of Christina Buttons was immediately bizarre, without knowing anything about her.

She had no track record, no relevant experience, and her only claims to journalistic achievement were a few sparse articles about mass immigration and the NGO-complex, which regurgitated data and observations from other commentators… and a brief tenure as a writer for the Daily Wire, where Christina Buttons spent seven months writing about transgender issues from the perspective of a Leftist feminist frustrated that women’s privileges were being intruded upon by mentally-ill men. From September 6th, 2022 to March 3rd, 2023, Christina Buttons published frequent Daily Wire articles which were more or less limited to this single topic — until she resigned on March 7th, 2023 with a long essay denouncing her (mild-mannered) employer for extremism, profit-driven sensationalism, hurtful rhetoric, and irresponsible behavior.

Christina Buttons, Why I’m Leaving the Daily Wire:

As a pro-choice atheist who has consistently voted Democrat throughout my adult life…

…

A number of those who identify as transgender today may become detransitioners tomorrow. They will need our help, especially as they face a torrent of attacks from their former “community” for the sin of apostasy. Many of these people are susceptible to gender ideology in the first place because they struggle with mental health problems, body image issues, or autism. I would know: I’ve dealt with all three.

…

As a journalist, I have to believe there are reachable centrists, including moderate liberals, who are uncomfortable with gender ideology but who have been insulated from serious coverage of this medical scandal. Winning over hearts and minds is difficult enough without inflammatory statements such as “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.” There is a critical distinction between speaking truth and being tactless, between sticking to the facts and sticking it to the libs.

…

This is not a game, and we cannot afford to make these issues overtly partisan. The bodies, minds, and lives of children are being permanently damaged, and everyone, not just reporters and journalists, has a duty to approach this issue with the seriousness it demands.

In light of these concerns, I can no longer in good faith maintain my employment with The Daily Wire… When my employer can no longer make good on the promise I was given at the start of my employment, my only recourse is to resign.

…

I’ve illustrated several children’s books in the past and will be writing and illustrating a children’s book that teaches kids to embrace their individuality regardless of their (non)conformity to sex-based stereotypes.

—Christina Buttons, Why I’m Leaving The Daily Wire

Although the Manhattan Logos Institute hire of Christina Buttons was publicly announced on October 28th, 2024, three of her five articles in City Journal — which supposedly qualified her for this job, and supposedly were the deciding factor which separated her from similarly competitive applicants — were co-written with Christopher Rufo on September 10th, October 7th, and October 10th of 2024. This indicates that she had been preselected for approval as early as September 10th, 2024, more than forty-five days before the position was officially filled…

It’s unusual for someone as busy as Christopher Rufo to set aside his time for some random, no-name journalist … especially a Leftist writer who had already proven herself unreliable, by condemning the actions and rhetoric of Matt Walsh. And after she publicly pledged to create a children’s book designed to promote nonconformist propaganda which would help confused kids escape from sex-based expectations.

It helps for a talented young writer to be mentored by a bestselling author.

That kind of counsel, coaching, editing, introduction, and instruction functions as rocket fuel, empowering a rapid professional ascent.

My first reaction was to wonder how many passionate, hardworking young men had been overlooked to give a random apolitical girl this cozy sinecure.

Lomez, November 2nd, 2024:

This week has raised some questions about personnel selection in the conservative/rw ecosystem, something that has come up before and will become a major point of contention in the event of a Trump win next week and his subsequent staffing of the administration...

How do we select good people?

People who are reliable ideologically *and* characterologically? People who are smart, aligned, competent, and won't embarrass the organizations that affiliate with them?

These selection filters gets very narrow, very fast, and if we are being honest, it becomes clear that finding *good* people at scale is actually quite difficult.

Firstly, ideological alignment is necessary but insufficient. People can whinge about it all they want but optics matter. You have to know how to not raise people's alarm bells.

In the context of administrative/public life you have to practice a certain amount of rhetorical and operational prudence.

This cuts against the personality type of many early adopters of now au courant rw views. These types tend to be (almost pathologically) disagreeable. Those who cannot code-switch and suppress that tendency when necessary are going to cause problems and often be more trouble than they are worth.

Secondly, those who can code-switch, who can succeed in an administrative setting, and who also are aligned (i.e. have successfully resisted leftism), tend to already be professionally successful, or are well down the path to professional success, and have *a lot* to lose by openly aligning with the right and/or leaving behind their (probably very well paying) jobs for the pittance they will earn as political operatives.

The perception (if not fact) that the right does not take care of its own people, makes this an incredibly difficult sell.

Leaving a successful law practice, or job in finance, or in tech etc. just doesn't add up for all but a very few. For those in this latter group, the onus is on the right to protect these people, ensure a meaningful (if not exorbitant) livelihood, and the promise that good service will be rewarded with opportunities and yes, money, once their political work is done.

As Silicon Valley, eg, begins to flirt with the right, it has to be the case that those who want the right to prevail, the JD Vance wing of the right to prevail, that the appropriate incentives are in place to recruit capable and aligned people into public service who are incurring massive opportunity costs by doing so.

Will a crypto rw tech bro who goes to work for Trump have a place in Silicon Valley when his term ends?

There has to be a very loud signal that the answer is yes.

For the former, the onus is on the ideologically aligned poster to demonstrate that he won't embarrass people who affiliate with him.

Some people should just stay posters.

It is a noble and worthy role.

And in fact anyone who is a poster and has ambitions beyond that, I immediately regard with suspicion. Their aspirations often overtake their political commitments and their personal loyalties.

They are more likely to defect and betray the interests they previously supported. Rather than concentrating on getting stuff done, the main concern is engaging in the petty ego-driven carnival of "political influencer."

You don't have to compromise your beliefs and shouldn't, but it's perfectly legitimate that the vetting of these types is much more stringent.

I don't have answers to this double problem — those who can, don't need to or want to, and those who want to carry a lot of different risks.

This is only to say that the selection of personnel — particularly young people on the right — as we go through this major generational and ideological transition, is of critical importance.

Personnel selection is maybe *the most* important thing for us to be thinking about. And the people in charge of personnel selection need to be taking this very seriously.”

—Lomez, November 2nd, 2024

In reaction to this announcement, thousands of complaints streamed in. Ironically, in this particular instance, the Manhattan Institute demonstrated a remarkable indifference towards the “free marketplace of ideas”, or any regards to “grassroots input”. But the decentralized complaints carried a consistent message of discontent. The general theme was: “This is why conservatives always lose.” You don’t see Democrat organizations hiring their enemies, but for some reasons Republican organizations seem to hire anyone except a dedicated Republican.

If you’ve been a Republican for more than the past six months, conservative think tanks don’t want you. Your window of ideological pliability has expired.

Sincere belief is discouraged.

If you’ve read Montesquieu, Plutarch, Polybius, Tacitus, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus, Ibn Khaldun, Sima Qian, James Burnham, Vilfredo Pareto, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the Federalist Papers, contemplating the insights and rhetoric of history’s greatest historians, philosophers, and political theorists, conservative think tanks don’t want you.

How antiquated!

Rather, our esteemed institutions are searching for something of an unorthodox curriculum vitae.

To be hired by a dignified and intellectually-rigorous academic institute of the honorable right-wing persuasion, your chances of being recommended, accepted, or promoted appear significantly improved by the exotic metaphysical approach of spending the first thirty years of your life as a hardcore Leftist; excoriating Christians and traditionalists on social media for several years; wearing shirts emblazoned with the phrase “Fuck Trump” and “We Fucking Hate Donald Trump” in multiple videos; sedating yourself with heroin or other addictive substances; ricocheting through a decade of rehab clinics and mental asylums; working as a prostitute; filming low-quality amateur porn in disgusting unsanitary conditions; livestreaming solitary videos impaled by a dildo.

The phrase “moral hazard” comes to mind.

What kind of message is the Manhattan Logos Institute sending to future applicants?

College Young Republicans, it’s time to take notes. Not everyone has the moral fortitude to be a right-wing Investigative Reporter. Lube up!

I only regret that I have *checks notes* three holes to sacrifice for my country.

None of these realizations were obvious, at first. On the first day of being announced as a new hire, Christina Buttons merely seemed like a weird choice, something like The Great Gatsby — an enigmatic cipher with a blank, inscrutable past. And it was puzzling to choose an unaccomplished woman, rather than thousands of more-qualified, more-committed, and more-disciplined young men.

What is the truth?

The true story of how Christina Buttons was hired at Manhattan Logos Institute is that she was dating one of their staffers, Colin Wright, and he helped his girlfriend get a job. There’s nothing wrong with a boyfriend protecting and providing for his girlfriend. It’s a cute, romantic action. Colin Wright in particular has nothing to apologize for. Any man should feel proud for supporting his family, friends, or the people he cares about. Colin Wright and Christina Buttons were dating and living together since at least March 2022, when they moved from California to Nashville, Tennessee as part of the Blue State Exodus of California residents fleeing from Democrat dysfunction.

There was never a fair, open job search.

Everyone who submitted their applications to this position had their time wasted.

It’s disrespectful and unethical to solicit hundreds, or thousands, of hopeful resumes for a position that has already been filled, in order to create the perception of a diligent talent search for qualified candidates. This sort of organizational embellishment happens on a routine basis, in almost every industry, but normally it’s difficult to prove a timeline of events beyond a reasonable doubt. Hopeful applicants have zero recourse available to them.

The correct, ethical, and honorable way to handle this sort of hiring procedure is to make a terse, reticent statement which says something along the lines of: “Christina Buttons impressed us in person with a face-to-face interview, we believe she is a talented candidate with enormous growth potential, and we’re excited to welcome her to the team.” That’s it. Nothing has to be exaggerated, embellished, or justified. Companies can hire whoever they desire, for whatever reasons they desire, at any arbitrary pay scale or schedule which they choose to arrange. Her nonexistent resume, her lack of ideological commitment to the institute’s stated mission, her abandonment of traditional social norms — none of these topics needed to be discussed.

As part of a clumsy attempt to justify the Christina Buttons hire, some of the affiliates of the Manhattan Institute Logos overextended themselves and made the crucial mistake of asserting that not only was Christina Buttons the best available candidate for the job of Investigative Reporter, but also the anonymous (and pseudonymous) crowd complaining about her selection had failed to produce a comparable body of research. The implication here was that criticism was motivated by some combination of jealousy, inferiority, inadequacy…

FrogTwitter received these public statements as a taunt. A deliberate insult. And the challenge was accepted.

A crowdsourced, decentralized exploration soon commenced … a careful investigation of the Investigative Reporter … an excavation of a sordid past … digging up a history of “Rita Lovely’s” participation in twenty-five pornographic films published during an 8-year period, from 2008 to 2016.

The dirt just keeps surfacing. Beneath every layer, there’s another layer of sleaze and deceits.

I don’t really care about any of this.

It’s a small, petty drama which should be beneath the attention of thoughtful intellects. But plunging deep into this material, proving point-by-point in legalistic fashion what kind of nepotism is practiced by the self-proclaimed elite human capital and their stagnant, incestuous institutions, serves to illustrate why the conservative political movement is regularly defeated.

The most important aspect of this conversation is to spotlight the ongoing talent suppression of America’s best young men. Brotherhoods are needed: masculine friendships, mafias, and secret societies which could assert an alternative vision for Western Civilization. That dream is prevented by the elevation of exhausted, disinterested prostitutes.

Each time that another series of uncomfortable truths is exposed about her, Christina Buttons responds with a calculated volley of admissions, half-truths, distortions, misdirections, and outright deceits. She’s a chronic, pathological liar. Elsewhere, Christina Buttons explains that her pathological dissembling and habitual deceptions originate as a defense mechanism which developed from a troubled childhood where she felt bullied, misunderstood, ostracized, and persecuted. In many instances, her memory is unreliable, and she cannot recall some of the most traumatic periods of her life.

One obvious deception is that she claims her porn career was limited to three and a half weeks:

"In three and a half weeks, I had made enough to pay off my debt and avoid homelessness. How the owners chose to distribute, repackage, and republish the content at later dates and under multiple titles was entirely beyond my control."

—Christina Buttons, “Crazy is You or Me, Amplified”

Crazy is You or Me, Amplified

No, I do not believe she filmed twenty-five erotic films in twenty-five days. Give me a break. This is another transparent attempt to downplay her time spent as a prostitute. Her intent is to evade accountability by depicting her promiscuity as a brief, impulsive transgression, rather than a prolonged, purposeful lifestyle. And it’s indicative of a lack of authentic repentance: Christina Buttons doesn’t feel any remorse for her actions. She simply resents that strangers condemn her choices, and she resents the need to pretend regret. To beg for forgiveness.

She sees herself as the victim.

And on this point, I agree with her.

Young girls need loving parents who can protect them from a dangerous outside world. Christina Buttons didn’t have a reliable protector, mentor, or role model to help her. Everything she suffered was tragic. Worse, it was completely unnecessary. She was a normal, plain, unremarkable girl born into a difficult situation which continued to worsen for many years.

Prostitutes shouldn't be appointed as leaders of intellectual movements. They’re fragile, unreliable people who need the benefits of an externally-imposed structure. Escorts, courtesans, and catamites need to be offered an alternative career so they can escape from a bad situation. Some kind of mercy, generosity, and security is called for. But they should be limited to marginal, background roles where they are unable to do any more damage to themselves … and the people trying to help them.

The attention-seeking, marginally-successful pornstar transforms into the attention-seeking, marginally-successful journalist … then insists she’s a new woman.

Hiring prostitutes is very Boomer-coded.

There’s a psychology of narcissism at play. Boomer conservatives experience a religious euphoria, a physical tingle of numinous ecstasy, when a Leftist enemy finally acknowledges and validates their naive belief system. The Prodigal Son has returned home! A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality… It’s the morality play of Saul on the Road to Damascus, with a repentant Leftist crawling on their knees towards glittering enlightenment, weeping for forgiveness. In this dramatic narrative arc, the Boomer’s power fantasy allows them to perform the function of the wise, benevolent, magnanimous father granting mercy to a grateful, humiliated son.

Another example of this phenomenon is how excited Boomer conservatives get when a black celebrity, podcaster, radio host, or television anchor repeats their own opinions back to them. They’re receiving multiracial permission to advocate for their own self-interest.

This narcissistic desire to grant mercy is very easy for hostile, subversive entryists to Trojan Horse, by mouthing a few perfunctory platitudes about how they’ve realized they were wrong, vaguely alluding to an ideological crisis of conscience, and then immediately pivoting to attacking anyone who asks for an explanation of when this crisis of conscience occurred … or who might question the timeline of events.

When exactly did Christina Buttons become a conservative? What does she believe a conservative is?

I guess we’ll never know.

Christina Buttons makes an offhand comment that she met up with a stranger, had sex with him, and sent him to prison for six months. More than a decade later, she feels zero remorse, and takes zero accountability for any suffering he endured:

As my behavior escalated and became increasingly risky, I began seeking out drugs and alcohol. Things took a drastic turn for the worse when an internet predator found me on Myspace and began grooming me. He was 47, and I was only 15. He had deceived me, and when I met him in person, he raped me. The emotional pain was so unbearable afterwards that I tried to hang myself.

…

As for my rapist, he served less than six months in jail. This type of crime carried lighter penalties 20 years ago. I later learned that he reoffended four years later with another underage girl. He's still on the sex offender registry.

—Christina Buttons, “Crazy is You or Me, Amplified”

The hardest part of building a career is finding a first job, getting your foot in the door, and establishing professional credibility in an unfamiliar industry. Nobody wants to hire you when you’re inexperienced, because they don’t want to patiently train an amateur’s inevitable mistakes.

For a limited person, this Investigative Reporter job is a limited role, and that’s all it will ever be.

But for a right-wing Barack Obama, for a man like J. D. Vance, this opportunity would represent the perfect launching pad to kickstart an astonishing, meteoric career.

Curtis Yarvin:

"I think that American conservatism is in the long and very difficult grieving process of realizing that it has always been a fraud. And I think one of the special dangers in American conservatism is that there's so much grift in it, which consumes so much energy and so much attention and produces so little. Professional conservatives are still a factor of a hundred from being able to give the people who are voting for them and donating to them anything like what voters, donors imagine they're going to receive.

The Washington Generals are never going to win the game. It just doesn’t have the power to give anything it promises.

…

Fully enlightened for me means fully disenchanted. When a person who lives within the progressive bubble of the current year looks at the right or even the new right, what’s hardest to see is that what’s really shared is not a positive belief but an absence of belief. We don’t worship these same gods. We do not see The New York Times and Harvard as divinely inspired in any sense, or we do not see their procedures as ones that always lead to truth and wisdom. We do not think the U.S. government works well.

It’s a disenchantment from believing in these old systems.”

—Curtis Yarvin, New York Times: "Curtis Yarvin on the End of American Democracy", January 18th, 2025

On October 31st, 2024, Christina Buttons posted a photo hugging Curtis Yarvin, attached to the caption, “In Miami with my mentor Curtis Yarvin.”

It helps for a talented young writer to be mentored by a bestselling author.

Neil Gaiman’s career was launched by his friendship with Alan Moore, who recommended him to DC Comics. Ryan Holiday’s career was launched by early jobs working for Robert Greene and Tucker Max. J. D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy was made possible by the mentorship of Yale Professor Amy Chua. These golden, life-changing connections are wasted on mediocre minds. Because ordinary people stop pushing as soon as their lives become comfortable. A more intense ambition is required to remain a disciplined, ravenous hunter when life is finally good.

It’s not just one job, one chance encounter, one casual conversation. When conservative think tanks hire a talented man — if they ever choose to hire a talented young man, because clearly they prefer to avoid that outcome — that first job symbolizes a temporary bridge to his new life.

In Hollywood, James Cameron’s films Titanic and Avatar have broken every record for the highest-grossing films of all time. James Cameron’s Terminator films launched Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career as the Governor of California. Cameron became a cultural icon. He became a kingmaker. But he didn’t start out that way. James Cameron started out as a janitor and a stressed truck driver who would read about film camera technology and optical lenses in the USC library. He needed someone to give him a chance. And that someone was the low-budget horror director Roger Corman.

That’s what’s at stake here.

Dreams, ambitions, talent … launching careers, building parallel networks, organizing America’s bravest men into something serious, rather than sitting on dildoes. You can hire mentally-ill prostitutes, or you can hire dangerous men who embody the best traits of Machiavelli’s Lions and Foxes. If you try to compromise by hiring them both together, it’s only a matter of time before the mentally-ill prostitutes sabotage the nascent brotherhood with false rape accusations.

II: Coda: Learn to Code, Cook the Burrito

“The military doesn't care about you, the country doesn't care about you, the people running the military and the country don't care about you…

We're living in a gay racial nepotism kleptocracy. The incentives are so out of whack that really my best recommendation for you would be to look for ways to steal. You got to just figure out how to steal, bro... They're going to be paying a lot of lip service to fairness and meritocracy over the next ten years as they look for ways to replace people like you with Indians. Just remember as they do that, you should steal and file sexual harassment lawsuits…

It's not a nice thing. It's not nice to encourage people to steal. That's not how society should work... There's no route towards restoring a high-trust society in America, in my opinion…”

—Sam Hyde, January 20th, 2025

There’s an expression, “You can’t keep a good man down.” It’s true. And I think this aphorism is the correct way to think about the talented young white men who are being suppressed in modern America — anyone who is smart, tough, persistent, hardworking, and resourceful will eventually find a way to succeed, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in their way, no matter how many times their job applications are rejected in favor of more ‘diverse candidates’, no matter how much propaganda attempts to demoralize and emasculate them.

You can’t keep a good man down … but you can delay him for five, ten, fifteen years by structuring every institution to deceive him and misdirect his ambitions. You can stack the laws against him, rig the economy to waste his youth, design a maze of credentializing mechanisms to force him to compete against foreigners for a fraction of his rightful birthright, promote mediocrities at his expense, pressure him to sign humiliating Diversity Statements where he enthusiastically performs a confession that white men deserve to be overlooked in favor of every other demographic.

You can’t keep a good man down … but you can force him to do everything himself, to learn through bitter and painful experience that half of what he learned during childhood was dishonest Gay Race Communism, and the other half of instructions have become obsolete directions oriented towards a richer, easier, softer environment that no longer exists. You can force him to spend the early years of adulthood unlearning all of the compliant social conditioning, harmful advice, and maladaptive etiquette that was preached during his childhood by every adult authority figure he trusted — parents, teachers, coaches, preachers, academic textbooks, media figures, celebrity icons.

A smart, tough, persistent, hardworking, and resourceful man will eventually make something of himself.

He will eventually own a house, get married to a loving wife, and have a couple of beautiful, intelligent kids. He will eventually earn enough money to qualify as middle class, or upper middle class. But it’s unnecessary. We’re forcing our best young men to spend decades in pointless suffering, and forcing them to watch as incompetent affirmative action hires are encouraged to speedrun the cursus honorum of American prestige. We’re forcing smart young men to downsize their dreams, to scale down their ambitions, because at every angle they are besieged by hostile external power structures attempting to trick, entrap, and crush them. We are reducing family formation by delaying the average age of marriage by ten years, so that men who want to have five children can only afford to have one or two kids, much later in life.

These are small dreams, the bare minimum of a good life, and we deserve better.

We demand more.

Young men suffer. But in the long run, they can survive and carve out their own little fiefdoms in pure masculine defiance of a world that despises them. Most of them will.

The big loser is civilization.

"Elders rarely acknowledge their own role in fostering the conditions that led to spiritual and cultural decline... Conservatives should offer the young a future worth embracing instead of ridicule for the world they inherited."

—Auron MacIntyre

Our best young men could be accelerated, elevated, and empowered to work together in enthusiastic, visionary teams. They could be solving scientific problems and geopolitical problems, rather than the personal tragedy of “How do I make enough money to own a home when the government despises me?”

We want /ourguys/ to be given ten percent the amount of career rocket fuel which Lesbian Black Girlbosses have been sponsored by the current Regime.

December 2024, and January 2025, have been extremely illuminating moments when suddenly a lot of beloved conservative figures went MASK OFF. You will own nothing and be happy … you will marry the roastie … you will train your foreign H1B replacements in return for a severance package … you will abandon your college degree to work as the Panda Express assistant manager.

That $70,000 salary is like $35,000 in 2000. Young men aren’t just complaining about a lack of work opportunities; they’re grappling with the reality that even if they do work hard, they’re still priced out of homeownership, can’t afford to start families, and are buried in debt. Telling them to fry up teriyaki chicken bowls doesn’t address the Federal Reserve’s reckless monetary policy or the government’s endless spending spree.

For decades, Americans have watched their quality of life decline. Do we even build starter homes anymore? Would those neighborhoods be safe? Manufacturing jobs have been offshored, small towns have been hollowed out, and traditional institutions like the church and family have been undermined. Young men aren’t looking for meaningless platitudes about hard work; they want leaders who will fight to restore the conditions that allowed previous generations to thrive. Electing Trump was a means of flipping the game board and disrupting this process.”

—Sam Dexter, A Tone Deaf Think Tanker

The H1B visa debate, and the immediate pivot into demanding that college-educated white men slave away in the demeaning, sexless life of a fast food manager, are variations of the same philosophical question.

Modern America is built on failed promises.

Feminism … Civil Rights … the American Dream … all of the political formulas and civic mythologies of the Global American Empire are rotting with the stench of a carcass left open beneath a desert’s blazing sun. The fun of sexual liberation is gone. The bill has come due. The mistakes of older generations are vampirically feasting upon the young.

When NAFTA accelerated the deindustrialization of the American Rustbelt, politicians promised that America wouldn’t lose any jobs. We were assured, and reassured, that blue-collar workers would be retrained to have exciting and prosperous careers as white-collar middle managers of a global workforce, overseeing factories in Mexico, India, Brazil, and Vietnam. Coal miners would be retrained to be software engineers, with a less dangerous, more comfortable, and more rewarding life.

On September 14th, 1993 President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore hosted a ceremony accompanied by ex-Presidents Bush, Carter, and Ford, supported by 41 of America’s 50 governors, to sign a bill related to NAFTA’s side agreements — worker protections that ended up counting for little.

This was a near-unanimous betrayal of the American worker, the American middle class, and heartland unions by the uniparty of the permanent political class.

September 14, 1993 Remarks in Signing of NAFTA Side Agreements:

Vice President Al Gore: “There are some issues that transcend ideology. That is, the view is so uniform that it unites people in both parties. This means our country can pursue a bipartisan policy with continuity over the decades. That's how we won the Cold War. That's how we have promoted peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. And that's how the United States of America has promoted freer trade and bigger markets for our products and those of other nations throughout the world. NAFTA is such an issue.”

President Bill Clinton:

“First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.

…

Global trade grew from $200 billion in 1950 to $800 billion in 1980. As a result, jobs were created and opportunity thrived all across the world. But make no mistake about it: Our decision at the end of World War II to create a system of global, expanded, freer trade and the supporting institutions played a major role in creating the prosperity of the American middle class.

Ours is now an era in which commerce is global and in which money, management, technology are highly mobile. For the last 20 years in all the wealthy countries of the world, because of changes in the global environment, because of the growth of technology, because of increasing competition, the middle class that was created and enlarged by the wise policies of expanding trade at the end of World War II has been under severe stress. Most Americans are working harder for less. They are vulnerable to the fear tactics and the adverseness to change that is behind much of the opposition to NAFTA.

…

The only way we can recover the fortunes of the middle class in this country so that people who work harder and smarter can at least prosper more, the only way we can pass on the American Dream of the last 40 years to our children and their children for the next 40 is to adapt to the changes which are occurring.

…

I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect.

…

I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact. And I believe that that is many more jobs than will be lost, as inevitably some will be as always happens when you open up the mix to a new range of competition.

…

So when people say that this trade agreement is just about how to move jobs to Mexico so nobody can make a living, how do they explain the fact that Mexicans keep buying more products made in America every year?

…

Even when you subtract the jobs that have moved into the Maquilladora areas, America is a net job winner in what has happened in trade in the last six years. When Mexico boosts its consumption of petroleum products in Louisiana, where we're going tomorrow to talk about NAFTA, as it did by about 200 percent in that period, Louisiana refinery workers gained job security. When Mexico purchased industrial machinery and computer equipment made in Illinois, that means more jobs.

…

Many Americans are still worried that this agreement will move jobs south of the border because they've seen jobs move south of the border and because they know that there are still great differences in the wage rates. There have been 19 serious economic studies of NAFTA by liberals and conservatives alike; 18 of them have concluded that there will be no job loss.

Businesses do not choose to locate based solely on wages. If they did, Haiti and Bangladesh would have the largest number of manufacturing jobs in the world. Businesses do choose to locate based on the skills and productivity of the workforce, the attitude of the government, the roads and railroads to deliver products, the availability of a market close enough to make the transportation costs meaningful, the communications networks necessary to support the enterprise. That is our strength, and it will continue to be our strength. As it becomes Mexico's strength and they generate more jobs, they will have higher incomes and they will buy more American products.

…

This is not a time for defeatism. It is a time to look at an opportunity that is enormous.

Moreover, there are specific provisions in this agreement that remove some of the current incentives for people to move their jobs just across our border.

…

In a few moments, I will sign side agreements to NAFTA that will make it harder than it is today for businesses to relocate solely because of very low wages or lax environmental rules.

…

And as the benefits of economic growth are spread in Mexico to working people, what will happen? They'll have more disposable income to buy more American products and there will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home.

…

We do have some obligations here. We have to make sure that our workers are the best prepared, the best trained in the world.

Without regard to NAFTA, we know now that the average 18- year-old American will change jobs eight times in a lifetime. The Secretary of Labor has told us, without regard to NAFTA, that over the last 10 years, for the first time, when people lose their jobs most of them do not go back to their old job, they go back to a different job; so that we no longer need an unemployment system, we need a reemployment system. And we have to create that.

And that's our job. We have to tell American workers who will be dislocated because of this agreement or because of things that will happen regardless of this agreement, that we are going to have a reemployment program for training in America, and we intend to do that.

…

So I say this to you: Are we going to compete and win, or are we going to withdraw? Are we going to face the future with confidence that we can create tomorrow's jobs, or are we going to try against all the evidence of the last 20 years to hold on to yesterday's? Are we going to take the plain evidence of the good faith of Mexico in opening their own markets and buying more of our products and creating more of our jobs, or are we going to give in to the fears of the worst-case scenario?

…

If we walk away from this, we have no right to say to other countries in the world, you're not fulfilling your world leadership, you're not being fair with us. This is our opportunity to provide an impetus to freedom and democracy in Latin America and create new jobs for America as well. It's a good deal and we ought to take it.”

—Bill Clinton, September 14, 1993 Remarks in Signing of NAFTA Side Agreements

In retrospect, it’s almost funny how everything the proponents of NAFTA promoted was revealed to be deceptive, and everything they characterized as a hysterical fear tactic ended up understating the full scale, impact, and intensity of deindustrialization that has occurred since the 1990s.

It’s especially funny to read Bill Clinton promising that Mexican illegal immigration would decrease by signing a free trade deal.

Or that we are trusting the good faith of the drug cartels of Mexico, in order to restore freedom and democracy in Latin America.

kek!

lol, lmao, lmfaooooo

During the years from 2001-2016, America lost an estimated 60,000 factories. These facilities were shuttered, laying off millions of workers directly, but indirectly impoverishing local vendors, restaurants, and ancillary businesses which relied upon servicing the blue-collar factory workers employed at each of these 60,000 buildings.

It destroyed rural America.

America employed close to 20 million factory workers in 1979. But by 2023, this number had dropped to a little under 13 million factory workers — despite a total population increase of 149 million residents during that time period. The percentage decrease in American manufacturing workers was extremely severe.

There was never any serious program to retrain downsized employees. Many displaced workers found new jobs after a long and frustrating search, but their earning potential never recovered. Some estimates indicate that displaced American workers earned 20-30% less at their next job — before factoring in the steady creep of inflation.

None of what Bill Clinton promised was ever delivered.

We were promised that blue-collar workers would be retrained to white-collar middle management. Instead, we got rural unemployment, hicklib strivers abandoning their hometowns, fentanyl, OxyContin, and OnlyFans digital prostitution.

Nobody was punished.

Don't blame the Zoomers for ten million factory jobs being offshored before they entered adulthood.

Everything we’re hearing today about H1B visas and working at Panda Express is the exact same bullshit — even the rhetorical argument structure is identical:

Change is inevitable, so you need to cooperate in your own disempowerment because you can’t defeat us, we’re going to help you find a better lifestyle because past decades have weakened the middle class, but also the economy has never been wealthier and more dynamic, incomes have never been higher, opportunities have never been easier to find, and really these economic dislocations are going to be wonderfully good for you, so embrace your own political disempowerment, don’t listen to logical objections, if you disagree with global labor arbitrage you must be a cowardly lazy pessimist afraid to compete against Bangladeshi child prodigies who are morally superior, maybe you arrogant American snobs deserve to be humiliated and ruined with our economic policies like we are already attempting to destroy your backwards primitive rustic communities, but also we want to help you because we care so much about you bro.

The same scams keep happening.

Propagated by the same personality types.

“The average soldier’s job had been shipped off to China anyway, so at least he could enlist and drone strike an 8-year-old Pashtun boy sent to plant IEDs on a dirt road, and when he got home to the sticks, his psyche fried, he could nod off on opioids until his heart stopped. Our Experts demanded he make that bargain, for his own sake, for the sake of justice in the world. And who was this soldier to object to the Experts?”

—Lomez, How the Lizard People Took Over America’s War

How the Lizard People Took Over America's War - The American Mind

The 2008 housing crisis was a similar kind of scam — housing mortgages were the safest, most boring type of investment. Everyone pays their mortgage each month. As with NAFTA in 1994, the ruling caste of America wanted to murder a healthy industry, to feed on the carcass. Collaterized debt obligations (CDOs) were invented in the late 1980s as a safe investment, but around 2002-2006 these bundled debt instruments were used to siphon off trillions of dollars from the American middle class.

Properly understood, America is no longer a productive economy that manufactures much value, and as a result, financialized fraud, and the economic plunder of industrial self-cannibalization has become the main game in town.

There’s a passage in Margaret Mitchell’s historical novel Gone with the Wind, in which the scandalous smuggler Rhett Butler flirts with the vivacious Scarlett O’Hara, and he explains this kind of negative-sum economics to her:

“What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one."

"And what does all that mean?"

"Your family and my family and everyone here tonight made their money out of changing a wilderness into a civilization. That's empire building. There's good money in empire building. But, there's more in empire wrecking."

"What empire are you talking about?"

"This empire we're living in — the South — the Confederacy — the Cotton Kingdom — it's breaking up right under our feet. Only most fools won't see it and take advantage of the situation created by the collapse. I'm making my fortune out of the wreckage."

"Then you really think we're going to get licked?"

"Yes. Why be an ostrich?"

"Oh, dear, it bores me to talk about such like. Don't you ever say pretty things, Captain Butler?"

—Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

At this point, American decline has been happening for five consecutive decades. There are less places to hide. And the young white male Zoomers are being targeted as the next group to be financialized, impoverished, and enslaved into a complex wealth extraction scheme.

The steady erosion of American industry was justified under the argument that by eliminating old jobs, human creativity would respond by creating tens of millions of new, better jobs. Mostly this hasn’t happened.

We can’t all be podcasters.

J. D. Vance, “Up from Conservatism” December 23rd, 2023:

Those of us, it’s called the New Right, and it’s called the New Right because those of us in the conservative movement are trying to do something new with the old institutions, something new with the old ideas, and something new with the old tradition of American conservative failure. I hate to say it, but that is the defining inheritance of American conservatism for the past thirty years — has been that we have largely failed at the goals we have set out to accomplish.

…

Margaret Thatcher was a very successful prime minister electorally, but is there a single thing that Margaret Thatcher actually fought for that has proven successful in 2023 Britain? Or if you go back to the Reagan revolution in the 1980s and asked what is it that you want — if you ask the voters ‘what is it that you want out of of this presidency’ — did any of it actually succeed?

Maybe the enduring legacy of Ronald Reagan's tenure in Washington was the 1986 immigration reform, which set about the greatest change in American Immigration policy in a generation. We’re still feeling the consequences of it today. The consequences, by the way, have turned multiple red States blue — and I think have transformed our country in very profound ways.

That's not a criticism of Ronald Reagan, who I think was genuinely a great president — it's a criticism of the approach of the conservative movement, which I think has been structurally flawed for a very long time. How is it that we keep on winning elections, and keep on losing the country's most important battles?

That's something that we have to be honest with ourselves, and not just sort of point to the past and dismiss by retreating to say these are great people. True, many of them were great people… but many of them failed despite being great people, and I think if we want to succeed where they failed, it will require us to think about those failures in in a new light.

…

We had this terrible train crash in East Palestine Ohio. You all saw the mushroom cloud, the chemicals burning, and so forth. And there were two sort of very quick insights that I gleaned from spending so much time in East Palestine: The first is that the train crash was really bad, but East Palestine had been left behind by this country 40 or 50 years ago. The area had suffered terribly from waves and waves of deindustrialization.

There were people there who were trying to figure out how to piece back together their community. How to create wealth and create jobs and opportunity in East Palestine Ohio.

But this train crash was just another in a long line of leadership that kicked these people in the teeth. The accident was terrible, and I don't mean to understate it… but in a way, it came as part of a long line of really awful things that had happened in East Palestine Ohio.

If you had visited it the day before the train crash, you would have said this is a community that has been left behind by policy makers in Washington DC.

—J. D. Vance, “Up from Conservatism” December 23rd, 2023

All of this discussion concerning Elite Human Capital and "Top One Percent Talent" proceeds from a flawed worldview. What kind of society are we trying to build here? A nation that doesn't provide a meaningful role, community, and income to ninety-nine percent of its citizens is dysfunctional by any holistic measure. At that point, focusing on the moral shortcomings of individual citizens can only distract from a more serious analysis into underlying problems.

Zoomers were promised that if they Studied Hard Mathematic, sacrificed their childhood to develop academic skills, gained entrance to a respectable university, majored in a STEM degree, and Learned to Code, they could achieve the American Dream of owning a home, marrying a loyal wife, and having 2-3 children.

The best of the Zoomers did everything they were supposed to do. A huge cohort of conscientious, responsible, self-motivated young men attended college, worked hard, sacrificed long hours to build themselves into productive citizens. Now young white males are being racially discriminated against, rejected in favor of women, foreigners, racial minorities, and sexual perverts — anyone is welcome except a young, well-adjusted Christian white male.

Conservative think tanks would rather hire a drug-addict, mentally-unstable, Biden-supporting prostitute who denounced the Daily Wire as extreme … than to take a chance on a young white male.

The purpose of these organizations is ideological containment.

The one group that is feared as a legitimate, formidable threat to the status quo is competent, organized groups of Christian white men who have the rhetorical, financial, and logistical capability to advocate for their own self-interest in defiance of social decay, technocapital corrosion, and imperial deracination.

It’s strange and infuriating that white males are the only group expected to compete based upon some vague abstraction of “merit”, when every other group is advanced at their material and political expense on the basis of identity politics, racial grievance, and historical claims to persecution. This results in perfectly-justified frustration and rage on the part of young white males who can measure and prove that the government is racially discriminating against them — to reward less qualified ethnic client groups.

We don't live in a "merit-based economy". Los Angeles is burning because they fired all the mediocre white males … and the Lesbian Girlbosses forgot to put water in the water hydrants. Young white male autodidacts are being suppressed, and they deserve to be angry.

Maybe the most amazing thing, when you start to dig into the details, is how many decades back America was sold out and divided up for various ethnic cartels.

These problems have been allowed to fester for a long time. Most of America’s core issues date back to before the Zoomers were even born.

Tunku Varadarajan, “A Patel Motel Cartel?” (July 4th, 1999):

America's motels constitute what could be called a nonlinear ethnic niche: a certain ethnic group becomes entrenched in a clearly identifiable economic sector, working at jobs for which it has no evident cultural, geographical or even racial affinity.

…

According to the latest figures from the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (A.A.H.O.A.), slightly more than 50 percent of all motels in the United States are now owned by people of Indian origin. Pull off any Interstate highway and look for a cheap bed for the night and there is a better-than-even chance that the motel you will curl up in belongs to Indians. (Looking at the broader spectrum of all hotels of any sort in the United States -- from trendy boutique hotels in Manhattan to mom-and-pop outfits in the boondocks -- almost 37 percent are owned by Indians.) If you bear in mind that Indians constitute less than 1 percent of America's population, the conquest of this economic niche appears extraordinary.

Look a bit closer and the picture is even more arresting: about 70 percent of all Indian motel owners -- or a third of all motel owners in America -- are called Patel, a surname that indicates they are members of a Gujarati Hindu subcaste.

…

Patels and Amins, however, are not as far apart as Smiths and Browns might be. They share the same slot in the elaborate Indian caste structure, with its four principal castes and myriad subcastes: they are both vaishyas, or traders, who were once employed to calculate the tithes that were owed to medieval kings by farmers in Gujarat, an Indian state on the Arabian Sea, where their origins lie. Most Indians believe that these people have commerce in their blood. And the Patels themselves seem to believe it, too.

'Patels are maybe the shrewdest businesspeople in the world,'' chuckled Lata Patel, who with her husband, Pankaj (''Call me P.J.''), runs the Budget Inn in Jasper, Ga., a mountain town of some 3,000 mostly white inhabitants about an hour's drive from Atlanta.

…

Rama seemed like the man who could explain the motel-Patel phenomenon. But his answers to my questions, it turned out, seemed more calculated to promote a certain myth that successful hotel-owning Indians have begun to spin for public consumption.

''You must know the ancient Sanskrit phrase, Atithi devo bhava -- The guest is God.' Hospitality is in our culture,'' he told me. ''It comes naturally to us. It is inherent in the nature of the Indian. It is natural for us to be in the lodging sector.'' If that is so, I asked, how was it that hardly any of these people ran hotels before they came to America? ''It's all about opportunity and example,'' Rama replied sagely, starting into a speech about hard work. He related how he arrived in America in 1969 and noticed how ''our people'' were buying motels; by 1973, he had bought one himself. Now his company, JHM Enterprises, operates 23 hotels in six states and one in India. Last year, his family created the Rama Scholarship Fund for the American Dream, with a donation of $1,000,001. (Hindus consider gifts of money ending in the numeral 1 to be especially auspicious.) The benefaction is intended to help students from minorities go to schools for hotel management.

It's an inspiring tale, and Rama seems to want me to multiply it by many thousands to explain the Indian dominance of the motel business. But it isn't quite that simple.

…

In this instance, the very earliest years are hazy. But the first Indian motel owner in the United States is said to have been an illegal immigrant named Kanjibhai Desai, who managed to buy the Goldfield Hotel in downtown San Francisco in the early 1940's. By the end of that decade, there was still only a handful of Indian-owned motels, one of them owned by Bhulabhai Vanmalibhai Patel -- whose grandson Pramod Patel is today a hotelier in the Bay Area; his company's portfolio includes Holiday Inns, Ramadas and Comfort Inns.

…

By the 1960's, Pramod estimates, there were still only 60 or 70 Indian-owned motels, mostly in California. Evolving immigration laws helped the next wave of pioneers make their mark in the 1970's. At the time, explains David Mumford, the president of Mumford Company, a hotel brokerage in Newport News, Va., ''many American motel owners, people I call Mr. and Mrs. Jones, were aging. Motels were a postwar thing, and by the mid-70's a lot of the people who owned them were of retiring age. Their kids were not interested in the business.'' The concurrent global oil crisis meant people were taking fewer driving vacations, which hurt the motel business. Property prices were depressed. ''By the late 1970's and early 1980's, hundreds of motels were up for sale,'' Mumford continues.

So why were these Indians attracted to them? I got a more prosaic answer to that question from Vilpesh Patel, the owner of the 85-room Flamingo Inn in Windsor, Conn. ''Technically, it's easy to run. You don't need fluent English, just the will to work long hours,'' he says. ''And it's a business that comes with a house -- you don't have to buy a separate house. Another important thing,'' he adds, ''is the cash flow. We like that.'' Vilpesh was a plain-speaker. True, the guest is God. But the guest is also gold -- gold enough for Indian motel ownership to spiral upward, year by year.

Buying a motel, even one that's in the red, usually requires a substantial down payment, one beyond the reach of most new immigrants. That, however, is one key to how this particular niche was captured. The down payment was seldom a problem for a prospective Indian purchaser, who was often able to turn to a network of relatives and friends to help him out. The story of Lata and P.J., for example, is not exactly the hardscrabble tale associated with some immigrant groups.

Following an arranged marriage in 1976 in the Gujarati town of Nadiad, they left for the United States, but not out of desperation or a lack of options at home. They left behind enviable social status; their families employed cooks, watchmen, sweepers, a chauffeur. P.J.'s family owned a marble mine. ''We had a comfortable life in India,'' he says. They simply wanted independence -- freedom from the web of their extended family, with its pressures to share and to conform -- and the simple pleasure of living as a nuclear family. In 1991, the Jasper motel's owner (also an Indian) offered P.J. the place for $150,000; the couple cobbled together the $20,000 down payment from their own savings and loans from friends and family. ''It was not hard for us to do.''

…

There were other, less romantic factors keeping Indians out of the franchise motel chains. According to Mit Amin, an independent hotelier himself, ''The big brands didn't really want us.''

Indeed, there was a time when Indians were the underdogs of the lodging sector. Mike Patel, the industry-relations chairman of the A.A.H.O.A., explains that some insurance companies thought Patels were scam artists who bought, insured and burned down the property and cashed in. He says that after a couple of fires in Tennessee in the early 1980's, Indian moteliers had trouble getting insurance coverage. The association was formed, he adds, ''in response to that prejudice.'' It began with 160 members.

…

Today, the A.A.H.O.A. has 5,000 names on its rolls, plus seven full-time staff members and an annual budget of $4.5 million. The market value of properties owned by association members is $38 billion. They pay $725 million a year in property taxes and employ 800,000 people. ''The hotel establishment once didn't want to know about us,'' chortles Amin. ''But now we are the establishment.''

…

Pride in the conquest of a niche has for some evolved into a curious and not very enlightened machismo. Again and again these owners will boast that they got ahead by working harder than anyone else.

…

This Braggadocio aside, what else has kept other hard-working immigrant groups from breaking into the clearly lucrative motel sector? For starters, other groups have muscled in -- Taiwanese innkeepers in Southern California, Iraqi Christian motel owners in the Detroit area -- just not in such great numbers. The most significant reason early on was probably a combination of the idea that the motel sector didn't look terribly attractive when Indians started buying in, and those who were buying were able to assemble unusual amounts of cash from an extended group of relatives and friends. The unique kinship ties in the group unquestionably help in other ways -- for instance, a kind of bush-telegraph network of Indian moteliers often relays breaking news of properties for sale to other members of the same community, observes Mike Patel.”

—Tunku Varadarajan, A Patel Motel Cartel? - The New York Times (July 4th, 1999)

Individual problems should be solved by individuals.

Collective problems should be solved by group teamwork.

When conservatives say a problem is too big to be solved personally, the only valid answer is an aspirational organized political response.

It’s not a victim mentality to recognize pervasive racial discrimination.

Delaying careers, persecuting talented men, and crushing ambition has a deep personal cost. There’s a massive opportunity cost inflicted onto our best young men. The damage is permanent. The suffering is measurable. Even for clever, brave, determined champions who succeed in overcoming these artificially-imposed obstacles. And I want to give a chance to tell some of their stories, to communicate the human consequences of this injustice:

These experiences deserve to be told.

Benjamin Braddock, December 26th, 2024:

I graduated into the Great Recession. Had a solid academic record, internships, some awards. But the job market was terrible. In the meantime I had worked construction for day laborer wages.

It took about a year for me to finally snag a salaried job. Was in a different field but at that point I just wanted to not be carrying shingles up a 40 ft ladder over a concrete pad.

The job I landed was for an IT firm. 40k/year before taxes and the newly mandatory health insurance. But it seemed like a decent start. I was hired along with some other recent grads, as I would find out later, because we were more accommodating to the psychotic managers.

A month after I started, Chuck joined the program.

We shared an office, along with 6 other people jammed in there. We were deskmates. Chuck was a boomer. He was around retirement age but still spry and sharp and he needed the work. His wife had cancer and was a couple years younger than him, so she wasn’t eligible for Medicare, and Medicaid in my state was too barebones to get good cancer treatment.

Chuck was the nicest guy.

Very kind and considerate. He was diligent with his work and very earnest and focused with everything he did. He would call his wife on every break. He treated her like a queen. He was proud that he was able to provide for her.

He wasn’t a total digital native, but he was decent with a computer, honest, and totally committed to doing great work. His work product was better than the average person I worked with.

We had H1B people who would straight up lie about the work they didn’t do but claimed they did. My job was basically to clean up the mistakes of an Indian woman who made twice what I did but half of her assignments were not even done (though she claimed they were) and the other half were incomprehensible nonsense.

But my manager got into his head that Chuck was too old.

He would make fun of him behind his back and just sort of wrote him off - not because of his work, but because of his demeanor. Chuck never had a real shot.

One day, HR sent an email to those of us who worked in that office to come to the meeting room. All but Chuck. We got to the conference room and were told to just stay put. When we came back, Chuck was gone and his desk was bare. He was let go for being a boomer.

He was never given the chance to say goodbye to any of us or to swap contact info. I wish he had because I would have liked to stay in touch.

That was probably the end of his career. No watch or retirement ceremony. Just told that he was obsolete and thrown out into the cold.

This is the sort of thing that was rejected at the ballot box. We aren’t resentful communists. We don’t want to burden business with nonsense regulations and bureaucracy.

But we have had enough of the abuse and disrespect that has been heaped upon decent Americans by capricious managers, executives, and politicians who violate the social contract on the slightest whim.”

—Benjamin Braddock, December 26th, 2024

Raw Egg Nationalist, January 14th, 2025:

When I finished my PhD at Oxford, I worked briefly as a chef at a fairly upmarket hipster diner. I didn’t want to be an academic writing about medieval saints’ cults, but even so, it was an enormous, pretty surreal comedown from life in the dreaming spires.

It made me absolutely determined not to waste my time or my abilities. It was a valuable experience.

I actually did manage to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and create something that’s totally my own, with no help or family connections, purely on the basis of hard work and I suppose a measure of talent. I understand the bootstrap discourse. It’s true.

The truly talented and determined will be successful—or they’ll perish, and they won‘t resent perishing, because they know the struggle and the risk are integral to the enterprise. You have to roll the dice to play.

It’s also a strange thing for the right, which valorises the past and the tremendous virtues of our ancestors and the hardships they overcame, to complain about hardships in the present, as if our forebears didn’t have it much, much worse.

We can argue about how that had it different, and whether material hardships and facing down cave bears and massed ranks of pike are worse than the largely spiritual hardships we face today. Even so, it’s stupid and counterproductive to tell young men to accept decline and be satisfied with it.

The tremendous decline in living standards and expectations is not, as Vivek Ramaswamy would have us believe, the product of paying too much attention to Zach and Slater and not being more like Screech.

Americans haven’t renounced their birthright. The future has been stolen. Decline has been forced on Americans by the people who have flooded the country with illegal immigrants and opioids and allowed native manufacturing and industry to be packed up and shipped abroad.

Young people should be angry. They should be livid.

…

I’m not sure what I’m defending here that you object to. I’m saying that struggle is a perennial aspect of life and the willingness to struggle will always be a distinguishing factor.

At the same time, America (and the Western world) has been deliberately trashed and the odds are massively stacked against the natives in a way that’s dangerous and counterproductive.”

—Raw Egg Nationalist, January 14th, 2025

John Carter, December 27th, 2024, January 16th, 31st 2025:

This is exactly on point. I will amplify with my own experience. Until a few years ago I was working as a mid-career research scientist, no I won't tell you what field. Within my collaboration I was known for being extremely productive.

I've seen jaws drop when I show colleagues my publication list. Then it came time to start applying for junior professor positions. Got a few interviews, but doors kept getting slammed in my face.

It's a very opaque process of course, they never tell you why. In one case however I had the dean - a portly Hispanic woman - tell me two minutes into the interview that "women in STEM are very important to me", and ultimately heard informally from one of the profs at that dept that I hadn't been hired because of interference from the dean, despite all of the profs on the committee wanting me, and that instead they'd hired ... no one.

That was in the US.

Meanwhile in Canada, where open discrimination against white men is not only legally allowed but federally mandated, the federal government rolled out a research chair program that was only available to applicants who weren't white men, while telling universities that if their faculties weren't diversifying overall they wouldn't qualify for the research chairs.

After that I heard from two different deans, at two schools, that there was an unofficial moratorium on hiring white males. Sure enough, every subsequent new hire I saw was a nonwhite. At the same time, "diversity statements" became mandatory for application packages, basically everywhere.

These require the applicant to wax poetic about how much they love DEI, how much they will do to advance DEI, how DEI is the absolute center of meaning for their lives. It's a bit much to demand guys write about how they adore a system that discriminates against them.

I have my pride. So if a diversity statement was required, I did not apply. Whoops, there go like 90% of available positions.

Just because a school doesn't have an explicit DEI policy, doesn't require diversity statements, etc., means little. One European university I applied to provided detailed feedback, not just on my application but those of other applicants, due to some kind of transparency policy.

This was very informative. Not only was the (female) referee noticeably biased towards women, she gave a 1/5 rating to every teaching statement that didn't mention diversity ("no mention of diversity" was literally the only comment she made on most of the teaching statements).

Needless to say, as this situation continued, I became rather discouraged. My research activity slowed and then basically stopped.

What the fuck is the point.

I killed myself for like a decade, for what?

This isn't a sob story, I'm not fishing for sympathy here.

In the meantime I started writing, building an audience, and for now I'm supporting myself reasonably well as an essayist, with the added bonus that I can work while traveling and living wherever I want. And honestly, I've always wanted to be a writer. So it's working out reasonably well for me, personally.

But if it wasn't for DEI it's very likely that I'd still be in the field, happily doing scientific research, supervising students, and so on. Instead whatever resources were used to train me got poured down the drain, as far as the system is concerned.

And I know for a fact that my particular story is very far from unique, and is very far from being limited to academic science departments.

…

Go apply for a job and build your career.

Whoops looks like all the entry level positions are gatekept either by menopausal harridans whose religion commands them to hire anyone but white men, or ethnic H1B mafias channeling all job offers to their coethnics.

Too bad you wasted all that time grinding through an expensive engineering degree. Wait where are you going, why are you dropping out of university to go make TikTok videos?

…

To add to this... The bad blood caused by the tech bros sperging about how they can't find local talent (when everyone knows this is because local talent has been ruthlessly suppressed for decades) can be smoothed over with a billion dollars or so.

Why a billion?

That's a ballpark figure for what it would cost to found a new technical university - or a few of them - call it X University or something.

X University would offer undergraduate and graduate level education in engineering and the exact sciences, with a focus on those industries currently of primary economic interest: aerospace, robotics, AI, etc.

The explicit purpose would be to educate a new generation of American students, with - crucially - direct pipelines to major industrial and tech employers following graduation.

The goal would be to build a pipeline directly from high school to tech sector employment, graduating tens of thousands of engineers every year. Oh and admissions must be meritocratic - none of this anti-white, anti-male, DEI affirmative action shit.

Why new universities?

Because the existing universities are, without exception, filled with anti-American wokoids. New universities would be staffed with new professors, selected for technical competence and, frankly, hostility up wokism.

Candidates for the professoriate exist in abundance, mostly outside academia (and many are underemployed). A billion is cheap for the tech bros. Your most prominent members are, after all, billionaires.

Founding these universities would be a massive gesture of good faith to Americans, it would cement your legacies for generations to come, it would solve the talent problem — permanently - in short order, and it would be a massive fuck you to your enemies.”

…

Got in a cab once in Madison, heading to the airport. Cabbie asks why I'm in the city. It's for a conference, I tell him. He pushes for details, draws me out. Starts asking surprisingly insightful questions.

Turns out he's a former NASA mission scientist. Spent his career working on a project that got cancelled. Was so specialized he couldn't find a position anywhere — pretty common situation actually.

So he ended up driving a cab. Said he was happy enough, though.

But this shit happens all the time.

Study STEM, they say. We need more engineers and scientists, they say.

Whoops haha you spent ten years in university and another decade as a contract researcher but actually it turns out we don't need you, now fuck off, sucks to suck, sucker.

Hey wait where are you all going why don't people want to study STEM?

…

“A few months back, was killing time at hostel bar in Hamburg, having quiet beer. Dutch boomerdad wants to chat - family trip, wife and kids sleeping or on their phones or whatever, he comes down for beer, as you do.

Nice enough guy, engineer or something. He asks what I do.

This is always awkward question, because, well, "I am unemployed" is not great answer, but neither is "I write pseudonymous right wing essays on the Internet for my racist frens".

So I tell him what I did, until recently.

Wow, he says, that's really cool. But why aren't you doing that now?

Well, I say, it's very difficult in academia, in general, to find a job if you are from "unprotected class".

Ah, he says, trying to sympathize, yes that is unfortunate. But surely you must understand, for a long time there was much discrimination, now we try to correct...

All of a sudden, the frustration and hate boiled up inside of me, like acid reflux, like hot bile.

I turned on him.

That is very easy for you to say, I tell him. You are already quite comfortable. You have a good job, a house - wife, kids. Now you take them on vacation. A pension, probably, on the way soon enough. You can support feminism, anti-racism, DEI, at no cost to yourself. I pay the cost. Me, and millions like me. We did not discriminate. That happened long before we were born. We were raised to be egalitarian, to be colorblind. We had no hand in Jim Crow, slavery, whatever. Now you and people like you make us pay the price for these sins that we did not commit. And you tell yourselves you are good people as you destroy our lives to help others.

You have a point, he said. He looked troubled. I do not think he expected such a vicious response.

I finished my beer and left. No one clapped.”

—John Carter of Mars, December 27th, 2024, January 16th, 31st 2025

Eighth Century Woodchipper, January 15th, 2025:

I worked at a Panera Bread my last year of college (2009). When I graduated, the job market was an absolute disaster.

All the great middle class jobs our high school guidance counselors promised us we would get if “we went to college to avoid working fast food” did not exist. Every employee at the day shift at our Panera had at least a bachelor’s degree and several had master’s.

The sense of dread we all felt realizing the pathways to meaningful careers were cut off, and we might have all wasted four years and tens of thousands of dollars was palpable.

Very slowly we all eventually found careers. No one was lazy nor despairing. But took far longer than we expected and years of our lives were wasted.

None of us wanted to be our general manager.

He was a good man, hard worker, and made a nice income, but the constant stress he lived under was shaving decades off his life. I imagine for Zoomers things are even worse today.

This was all before DEI, trillions of inflation, and tens of millions of third worlders driving up housing costs. Not to mention having a year and a half of your youth stolen from you over a bad cold virus.

Something is going to burst. You cannot cut off the path to work hard for a good life and then tell everyone to simultaneously accept a lower standard of living AND to just work harder.

My best friend graduated with honors in finance and had great internships, etc. He could only get hired in a Wells Fargo call center.”

—Eighth Century Woodchipper, January 15th, 2025

Ripplebrain, January 14th, 2024:

“Ten years ago I was sitting behind bulletproof glass in an inner city gas station making $9/hr under the table working 55 hours a week. I had no prospects and no college degree, and had been working there for three years.

At a certain point I had a moment of clarity where I realized if I didn't do something dramatic I'd be poor for the rest of my life.

I took out a $10,000 loan so I could go to a full-time four month long coding bootcamp.

In code school, it became immediately apparent that at least half of the students had no business being there. This school was significantly more rigorous than what the average code school wound up becoming, so the attrition rate was extreme. We lost something like 40% of the cohort within the first three weeks.

I actually applied myself for the first time in my adult life and did significantly better than anyone else in the class. I got a job quickly while others in my class spent months applying and receiving no offers.

Eventually several of them gave up and returned to their old jobs, resigning themselves not just to a lifetime of low pay, but the loss of the $10k tuition.

Fast forward ten years to the present day, and I've moved from a senior engineering position into management.

My boss (the CEO of my company) recently told me that the *only* acceptable model for small tech companies going forward – from the perspective of VCs – is to have "lean" domestic teams overseeing a much larger workforce overseas. Over my objections (which are informed by very bad experiences with offshore contract labor), all of our future hires will be offshore.

He isn't doing this because he wants to, he's doing it because we won't be able to get funding in the future if he doesn't.

The ladder has already been kicked out.

If I were ten years younger I wouldn't have a job waiting for me after I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and took on debt to get out of that gas station. I "learned to code" and narrowly avoided eventually becoming the Chipotle manager Chris Rufo wants me to be.

Based on how I've been repeatedly promoted and received stellar reviews from every company I've ever worked at (my Ethiopian gas station boss tried repeatedly to find another worker so he and I wouldn't have to work 55 hours a week but failed to locate a single competent person willing to work for $9/hr under the table in three years), I "deserve" that white collar job.

But the hypothetical, younger version of me probably wouldn't have gotten it. He would have had to settle for less.

I have children and have no interest in the argument that the best the American worker should be able to accept is fast food.

I've been working continuously since I was 14 years old, and there is no sense of honor in slaving away for some small business tyrant in one of a million identical fast food franchises.

I don't wish that life on anyone. It wasn't rewarding, spiritually or financially.

And despite the angle people like Rufo are taking, it isn't going to get better, it's going to get worse.

People who demand you should accept less – with no future on the horizon where the average American's life would actually improve – are your enemy.

Of my high school friend group, more than half of them are making less than $75,000 a year. Unlike me, they do have college degrees, some of them from very good schools. Several of them come from families with net worth in the millions. I am, by far, the most successful of my cohort.

I've seen the top and the bottom of the American labor market, and the lesson I took away from that is that anything which harms the *average* American worker is dangerous to you, as an American worker, regardless where you are on the hierarchy at this exact moment.

Because as class mobility upwards becomes more difficult, class mobility downwards becomes more likely.”

—Ripplebrain, January 14th, 2024

Vagrant of Rhodes, January 25th, 2025:

YOU feel betrayed?? How dare you.

Maybe you really don't get it, so let me explain.

We've had to watch your people gloat about pillaging America, calling my people "stupid", stealing American jobs, treating our home like a cow to be milked for quick cash and status on LinkedIn. We had to watch our livelihood get shipped over to your country, and then, the NERVE of you people, that's not enough!

It's not enough to take all our jobs away into your call centers.

Now you need to come here and take some more! You come here and manipulate the so called "rules" for your own gain, exploiting student visas, H1-B, chain migration schemes, etc. You come here to collect material goods and money to brag to people back home, not to become American.

Anyone who holds this mentality will never be one of us.

I don't get what you're so confused about, it's pretty clear why we're so frustrated by this behavior.

You see yourselves as "superior" because you're willing to work a poverty wage for 80 hours a week, undermining our delicate societal balance for personal gain.

You pretend to follow the rules when it benefits you, but as soon as we notice how you've exploited those rules, your true colors are revealed. We've had to listen to countless numbers of your people insult, berate, and scam our countrymen for years. You think you're entitled to our birthright, which you had no hand in building.

You, from the other side of the world, think we owe you something because you hold a grudge against all westerners for the days of the Raj. Daddy British Empire didn't love you enough so now you're gonna make the west pay.

So you come here, to my country, angry at people who weren't even involved in that period of history, in the hopes of retrieving your selfish prize.

So don't sit there and lecture us about "betrayal".

Let's be clear: you come to colonize my homeland, to change the very fabric of MY nation to benefit your own people back home.

You send rightful American money overseas. You come here to take advantage of our hospitality and kindness. You take, take, take.

And when your hosts, who graciously let you into our country for free and even helped you when you asked, start paying attention, what do you do?

You don't apologize. You don't try to understand us. You don't commit to America and cut ties to your mother country.

You don't try to genuinely assimilate.

No... You instead act like ungrateful cretins and your true resentment is revealed, claiming you will "take over" America because "Americans are lazy" and because "white people are bad" or "colonialism", or whatever.

You threaten us by holding jobs hostage and throwing around the weight of 1.5 billion people as a threat to "drown" us.

You harass our women endlessly with your disgusting lack of self control.

You scam our elderly out of their retirement money and ruin their lives for profit.

You pollute our environment with litter and exploit our system by doing things like buying entire grocery stores out of milk and reselling them at gas stations for a markup.

You try to take over our major companies and censor our speech.

I use the most extreme examples because they are so visible — and not once, not a SINGLE TIME have I seen any of the big subcontinental accounts on this platform even mention these cases, let alone apologize for them, or say it’s unacceptable behavior.

Not a single time.

The excuses and the knives always come out and you start blaming us for all your problems, claiming you're the poor victims of imagined "racism". You always excuse your exploitative behavior and instead criticize the victims.

Then you have the gall to run around complaining?? How dare you. You don't come here to assimilate: you come here to drain the life from us like a plague of locusts.

Take a look in the mirror. YOU are the betrayer here. Now we see you for what you are and what you've done to us. So don't sit there whinging about how unfair it is that we've finally figured it out.”

—Vagrant of Rhodes, January 25th, 2025

Josiah Lippincott, December 26th-27th, 2024:

As a White man, there is very little reward for working hard or having talent. In modern America, the most important number for determining your salary isn't IQ, GPA, or hours worked but the year you were born.

Generally speaking, the oldest people in any organization are the highest paid and have the most authority. The only exceptions are diversity (non-Whites and women) or nepotism. This is true about the military, business, academia, government, doesn't matter.

American work life is demoralizing for talented young men. At every turn, you must justify yourself before tribunals of Boomers, foreigners, and HR cat ladies. Every internship, job offer, and promotion has to be wargamed, negotiated, and fought for.

No one recruits you.

No one goes out of their way to help you.

Starting offers are mediocre (assuming you get them at all) and the underlying assumption is always that you will make money "later," after you've "proven yourself" to the reigning gerontocrat, usually after years of grinding.

American business leaders simply don't give a shit about cultivating future workers and innovators. They would rather go abroad and hire servile corporate drones than offer their talented countrymen an upward boost.

Our institutions are dominated by the selfish, the resentful, and the corrupt. Toxic to the core.”

…

“I had a rockstar application for college — near perfect SAT score, perfect AP scores on 7 different tests, Eagle Scout, congressional internship, varsity athlete, etc. — but I spent my summers doing manual labor for long hours (100+ a week @VivekGRamaswamy) because, hey, that was the only work available that paid.

Not one major American firm ever tried to recruit me for anything much less cultivate my talent.

If American corporations are really so desperate for talent that they need to poach software coders out of the slums of Mumbai, where were they when I was a young kid looking for opportunities?

Hell, where are they NOW?

I have proven rhetorical, organizational, and intellectual ability. If these companies are in dire need of high-quality employees then surely they would be scouring American universities for hardworking and smart young men with real talent, right???

They should be offering competitive pay to smart guys who really would be willing to learn to code because we NEED hundreds of thousands of engineers. America needs to WIN!

It's laughable, of course. I am a White male!

No one is going to go out of their way to give me anything.

What the powerful would really like would be for me to fuck off and drop dead (after I pay my taxes, of course). I've had enough of this.

With the exception of Trump, this country is ruled by people who hate me, openly or covertly. There needs to be a reckoning. Apparently MAGA hasn't gone far enough.”

—Josiah Lippincott, December 26th-27th, 2024

Alaric the Barbarian, December 26th, 2024:

This is disgusting but a common sentiment; as far as these people are concerned, the American [upper-]middle class doesn’t exist.

Simple resentment aside, there are legions of native-born Americans (note that Vivek put it in quotes, why?) who are wildly motivated, high-skill, educated. They imagine some kind of dumb hick stereotype when they talk about the American workforce.

They don’t even consider the existence of smart, driven white kids taking AP Bio in 7th grade at a decent public school and then academically dominating at a state college their parents could afford.

The “culture” argument is nonsense. These are successful people, with parents who aim for their children to get ahead as much as possible. And yes, Vivek, despite your people’s inadequacy, athletics are actually a part of that.

Despite this good-faith investment in The System, these types grow up as the most hated group in the media. Their families still play by Anglo rules of fair meritocracy, and avoid nepotism — other groups do not abide by these same constraints. On top of that, they’re legally discriminated against in college admissions and job hiring.

They have no patronage groups dedicated to their advancement. “Temper your expectations” has been the line fed to them since birth. A lot of the young people who post anonymously on here fall into this group.

Literally nobody advocates for their interests. The Left tells them to go fuck themselves, and the Right tells them to learn to weld.

Now, ethnics on the Right tell them they Just Aren’t Motivated Enough, that they didn’t do enough Kumon — despite the fact that Arjun and Arush cheat off of them all thru high school and college.

Until ~30 years ago, people of this type would enter cutting-edge industries with ease, go into academia, or climb the ladder in business.

Now, these avenues are increasingly cut off, instead favoring H1B indentured servitude and incompetent minorities, so major companies and institutions can show fealty at the altar of DEI. I know Vivek is saying this out of pure resentment for the Perpetual Jock he felt inferior to in high school (and still does today) — but I see a lot of people believing in this framing out of ignorance rather than spite.

America has an incredible native talent pool. And we’ve been kicking them around for decades, telling them that they deserve to scrounge for scraps while their earnings pay to import infinity foreigners. This was what was defeated at the ballot box last month.

—Alaric the Barbarian, December 26th, 2024

bumbadum, January 21st, 2025:

All of this H-1B and India talk reminds me of an old friend of mine from college. Born in Mumbai, his father was a senior member in the chemical engineering department at Exxon.

We met in 2nd level chemistry class in college. Kid had good grades and got into some of the best CE schools in the country but went to my school due to its infamy of being a party school. He always said he wanted to go to American schools to “date white women and be a chemical engineer” (he was only successful at one of these).

He didn’t have great grades, he would chegg his way through homework and limp his way through exams.

Study sessions would quickly get derailed away from academics because he had no inclination to pay attention. Never took notes in class, never went to study hours, spent more time drinking than anything else. A true example of the “Elite Human Capital” we hear about.

Keep in mind his parents were paying upwards of 30k a semester as he was an international student. After his first sophomore semester his dad got him an internship at Exxonmobil. Anyone who has been to college knows how rare or exceptional it is to land an internship at any billion dollar corporation after merely 3 semesters of university.

My friends and I keep in touch, I even went down to Huston a few times to go visit him. He was working on a project in their EMRD program (ExxonMobil Renewable Diesel). He would eventually tell me that his project for the EMRD department was a complete throw away to appease climate activism pressure and really wasn’t going anywhere. While there he was making nearly 70k a year as an intern.

He lived with his parents, pocketing as much of the money as possible. Much of it was being sent back to the rest of their family back in Mumbai.

Eventually COVID hits and Exxon is tanking, gas prices are lower than could ever be imagined and the company is bleeding cash. Fellow interns and even full time employees he was working with were being laid off left and right, but not him.

Protected by his co-ethnics and father, department after department started to be culled and began to be filled with people that looked like him. The middle management overseeing the cuts were obviously prioritizing Indians. He told me all of this as if it was a good thing.

Eventually he has to work completely remote so he moves back to the college town I was living at and moves in with my friends and I. He would tape an oscillating fan to his mouse and go out with us during the day.

While we were studying he would be playing video games, smoking weed, and drinking.

When time on his internship ran out he was offered another intern position at Exxon (who knew). But instead of taking it, or going back to school, he applied to Phillips 66 for a chemical engineering internship. There using his fathers connection they of course made him an offer which paid more than what Exxon was paying him.

He then used that offer from Phillips to tell Exxon that if they didn’t match the pay, then he would quit and go work for Phillips. They capitulated and gave him the raise, as they COULDN’T say no considering the moment they did his father would step in and force them to hire him on the terms of his counter offer.

HE DID ALL OF THIS, not out of some Machiavellian ambition to ascend the corporate ladder, but at the behest and guidance of his father. Any person that has lived near these people, watched them work, and has seen their behavior has heard a story like this.

These people aren’t “Elite Human Capital” like Elon, or Vivek, or Hanania would have you believe. They are pirates, raping and looting your homeland and sending away to theirs.

He was a good friend, and at times I admired the things he would do.

But it is time for it to end. It is time for them to go home.“

—bumbadum, January 21st, 2025

PresentWitness, December 25th, 2024:

Now that H-1B has become a topic of discussion, here’s my story: Born in Appalachia, went to a top-tier university, interned in wealth management and trading, recruited for all the top investment banks and research firms, only offer I received was to cold call South American high-net-worth-individuals on a commission-based salary, 10k base. Could not afford to take the job because cost of living in NYC was too high.

All my foreign-born friends and classmates got the jobs I dreamed of and worked my whole life for.

They weren’t more skilled than me, in fact, most were less skilled.

6 months after graduation, I took a 15$/hr job at a geopolitical analysis startup. I received effectively zero equity (thanks Silicon Valley). Worked the night shift for 60k/yr. Slept on the floor of that office many nights.

Lost money for 3 straight years. After 5 years, I was the most tenured employee at the company other than the founders. Finally got up to 80k/yr, then was fired within a year of relocating for them across the country. Many of my foreign-born classmates were extremely successful investment bankers and financial professionals by this point. Jumping from JPMorgan to Facebook to private equity etc.

Once again, I applied everywhere, including Palantir and government agencies that I was extremely qualified for. Didn’t get a single interview anywhere, not even low level data analyst positions.

Here’s the point: The very people telling you that we need H-1B are the same exact people who wouldn’t even give me an interview despite having impeccable qualifications.

At that point, I was completely on my own.

Bought Bitcoin and crypto with my severance, and after a few years of struggling, trained myself to become a successful derivative trader and investor. BTC: $3k, ETH: $150, PLTR: $6, RKLB: $5, TSLA: $180, NVDA: $10

No American institution ever helped me.

They stole my family’s wealth and took advantage of me.

We don’t need an H-1B program. We need to believe in and invest in Americans. The American system, as it currently exists, is a complete scam that exploits the American people more than anyone else.

I don’t believe in victimhood culture, it’s utterly disgusting, but as an American, without ethnic connections to capitalize on, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. The quicker you accept this, the better off you’ll be.”

…

“Some additional color on my last post:

1. I had a few close friends in college who were international students. All received offers from top American companies. None, nor any one I ever heard of from college, actually returned to their home country because they could not secure a job. Those who did not win the H-1B lottery were sent by the firm who hired them to temporarily work in Canada or Europe until they could re-apply for H-1B. In other words, every foreign-born student I knew ended up taking an American/Euro job. In my estimation, <5% were actually more skilled than their American counterparts.

2. I did not say that ALL of these international students went into investment banking specifically. Some did, but many went into accounting, consulting, and research analyst positions as well.

3. I did not claim that H-1B was SOLELY responsible for this. Other factors include 1. female applicants that slept with senior employees for referrals and 2. nepotism. When you’re dealing with thousands of applicants/role, you could imagine how much this disrupts the recruiting process.

4. The people (many of whom immigrants) claiming that this is a ‘skill issue’ have to think that, otherwise they would be forced to confront the possibility that they are just cheap labor and not actually the exceptional people that they’re told they are.

5. It is noteworthy to observe the way that modern immigrants treat native-born Americans. Read the comments. Many of them genuinely think that they are better, smarter, and more capable than we are. They don’t even try to hide it, in fact, they’re vicious about it. They aren’t grateful for being here, they feel entitled to it. I call this ‘Immigrant Exceptionalism’. Until we start to effectively defend our civilization and our values, they will be right. We are dealing with cutthroat people who will do anything to not return from where they came from.

6. People accused me of lying about my experience working for ‘top corporations’. I interned at them, I just didn’t mention it in the original post.

7. The problems in recruiting start even before the full-time job phase, at the internship phase. If we wanted to make a real difference in the hiring process, this would be the area to focus on. We need more Americans getting the internship experience required for top jobs. The job market at the high end is so competitive that if you don’t secure a solid internship, you have ~0 chance at ever breaking into the industry.

8. This was a story of American SUCCESS yet so many used it to try to attack me. Here’s a question for you; why does it make you mad that I found a way to succeed outside of your system? Through my ‘lived experience’, I actually embraced the fact that the world isn’t fair, have you?”

—PresentWitness, December 25th, 2024

Bronze Age Pervert, December 26th, 2024:

Many tech types have gotten used to offering startup-like lifestyle and work hours without startup-like benefits or prospects. I've had friends who worked 100+ hours per week on their own startups with their own friends but that's because they looked forward to selling their companies for tens of millions and cashing out (which they did).

It looks like many tech firms (Amazon famously) want to reproduce this "culture" but for wage employees with no prospects of a million$ cashout.

To make up for this they try to adopt the aura of a guru and have gotten used to hectoring and bullying people with cynical self-serving selective appeals to tradition or manliness. They love especially H1B and temporary migrants because their status in the USA and visa depends on the employer's goodwill, so it's essentially a kind of indentured servitude.

What's in question isn't innovative startups but spaghetticode mills.

Thus here and these past few days you can see "experts" whose greatest achievements consist in bullshitting VC's to fund "genius" ideas (dick pic apps at best) assert their Guru status to lobby for turning the USA into a call center work-camp.

Trump is the return of common sense though: the reason he's done so well is because Americans are tired of getting taken for freiers and hectored and moralized to give something for nothing.

Tech types whose lifeblood runs on bullshit and PR hectoring maybe haven't realized the moment... Americans getting tired of getting suckered.”

—Bronze Age Pervert, December 26th, 2024

Charles Haywood, December 26th, 2024:

Musk's claim that there are not enough "talented and motivated" engineers in America may be true, but the reason for it is decades of vicious hobbling of white men.

For example, it is extremely difficult for white men to get into top engineering programs at a university. Most spots are reserved for one of three categories: (a) foreigners (Indians and Chinese) who can pay full tuition; (b) silly girlbosses who have been preferenced their whole life as part of a push for shoving girls into STEM, including endless girls-only lavishly-funded programs, but who really have no talent and less interest for engineering, and even if they did, don't have the drive to achieve of young men; and (c) any non-white American.

These policies not only produce untalented and unmotivated engineers, and/or ones not loyal to America, they fatally discourage white men, who have always been 95+%, maybe 99+%, of America's engineering talent.

If you erase all three of these policies, you will very soon get massive amounts of both talented and motivated engineers. But we won't, because we're not allowed to point any of this out.”

—Charles Haywood, December 26th, 2024

Pagliacci the Hated, December 26th, 2024:

The American working class has the fresh memory of their parents achieving a high standard of living through honest work, and that they hold that as an expectation. Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc do not have that memory or expectation.

American workers have become fully disillusioned with runaway capitalism, and do not want to sacrifice their bodies or minds for a standard of living far below what their parents enjoyed with less education and skills than they have.

They do not want to work 50+ hours per week to barely be able to make ends meet for themselves, let alone for the family they hope to have. They have zero incentive. So what Vivek means when he speaks of "culture" is the culture of insects. What Vivek is describing when he refers to "hyper-competitiveness" are Americans being unable to compete with insect culture.

It is an American with the blood memory of a happy family being comfortably provided for on a union mechanic's salary up against a swarm of roaches content to be packed 20 to a pod, eating slop, shitting in a bucket, and doing it all for nothing more than the occasional headpat from their master.

For their refusal to accept such a slave-like existence, American workers are being mocked by the insects, who cannot even begin to fathom that there is meaning and value to life beyond a few extra dollars in their bank account, a bit of extra shareholder value, being #1 in some bullshit industry that shouldn’t even exist, etc…

It’s kinda crazy that sick leave and 2 weeks vacation a year is an unreasonable request to an american businessman.

—Pagliacci the Hated, December 26th, 2024:

J. Respectful Clark, January 14th, 2024:

So the Panda Express discourse seems to have evolved in the following direction:

Boomers: You can still buy a home/have a job, stop feeling sorry for yourself and take responsibility.

Zoomers (the smarter zoomers anyway): You're not entirely wrong but you need to acknowledge the difficulties we face now that weren't there before.

Boomers: You need me to acknowledge your pain now? Are you a girl who just needs someone to say "I'm so sorry that happened to you?"

As a gainfully employed older millennial, I am here to advance the discourse by saying no, this isn't about having pain acknowledged. It is about proving your bona fides that you are not buying into this tired boomercon meme that struggling zoomers mostly brought this on themselves. Because if you do believe that, you are not a reliable ally and probably do not actually understand how to fix things, nor have the desire to do so.

Think of why ppl were so mad at Elon and Vivek over Christmas. It wasn't just that they wanted to expand H1Bs. It's that the reasons they gave were so far from reality that they sounded like clueless leftists/lolberts/globocons. Like they had no idea what the real problems are. You can't trust someone who even now, in the current year, doesn't know what's up. And you kind of have to assume they are going to screw you if they are in a position to do so.

"Hey, it's not impossible to succeed even now" can sound helpful coming from someone that you *know* actually knows the problem and isn't just conveniently blaming you so they can avoid solving it. But without that level of trust, it just sounds like boomerslop/Yellowstone meme conservatism that got us into this mess.

That's what the acknowledgement is for.

—J. Respectful Clark, January 14th, 2024

Eric S. Raymond, December 26th, 2024:

Today's big beef is between tech-success maximizers like @elonmusk and MAGA nationalists who think the US job market is being flooded by low-skill immigrants because employers don't want to pay competitive wages to Americans.

To be honest, I think both sides are making some sound points. But I'd rather focus on a different aspect of the problem.

When I entered the job market as a fledgling programmer back in the early 1980s, I didn't have to worry that some purple-haired harpy in HR was going to throw my resume in the circular file because I'm a straight white male.

I also didn't have to worry that a hiring manager from a subcontinent that shall not be named would laugh at my qualifications because in-group loyalty tells him to hire his fourth cousin from a city where they still shit on the streets. It's a bit much to complain that today's American students won't grind as hard as East Asians when we abandoned meritocracy more than 30 years ago.

Nothing disincentivizes working your ass off to excel more than a justified belief that it's futile.

Right now we're in an everybody-loses situation.

Employers aren't getting the talent they desperately need, and talent is being wasted. That mismatch is the first problem that needs solving. You want excellence? Fire the goddamn HR drones and the nepotists. Scrap DEI. Find all the underemployed white male STEM majors out there who gave up on what they really wanted to do because the hiring system repeatedly punched them in the face, and bring them in.

Don't forget the part about paying competitive wages. This whole H-1B indentured-servitude thing? It stinks, and the stench pollutes your entire case for "high-skill" immigration. You might actually have a case, but until you clean up that mess Americans will be justified in dismissing it.

These measures should get you through the next five years or so, while the signal that straight white men are allowed to be in the game again propagates. I'm not going to overclaim here. This will probably solve your need for top 10% coders and engineers, but not your need for the top 0.1%.

For those you probably do have to recruit worldwide. But if you stop overtly discriminating against the Americans who could fill your top 10% jobs, your talent problem will greatly ease.

And you'll no longer get huge political pushback from aggrieved MAGA types against measures that could solve the rest of it. Doesn't that seem like it's worth a try?

—Eric S. Raymond, December 26th, 2024

KarenWStewart, December 26th, 2024:

Absolutely... this shit has been going on for decades. Enough. Just ask any of us boomers who remember what it was like in the 80's before all this started. New college grads with computer science degrees should be prioritized over H1B's (most of whom have mediocre skills). Many of my daughter's friends who graduated last spring with computer science degrees are still searching for jobs -- most can't even get an interview.

My blood boils when I see what's happening to our new college grads.

Here's what it was like when I graduated in 1981.... My degree is in computer science, had excellent grades from a small SUNY school in upstate NY. Did a semester internship at Kodak (ONLY place I ever encountered mysogny in my 35+ yrs in tech). Didn't learn anything at Kodak -- pure waste of time but helped my resume.

And my degree was done 100% on punch cards. Bet most of you have never even seen a punch card reader, let alone used one. Imagine having to write code that you only get 10-20 tries to get both the syntax and the logic right.

Computer time was expensive and it took time to run those punch cards through so you were limited in the number of runs to get it right.

Companies came to our campus, interviewed and then flew us out for on-site interviews. I had offers in CA, PA, DC, NY and MA by the time I graduated. Went to work in CA for HP and then was recruited a year later by my boss's boss to a start-up.

Five years there with an amazing team (company didn't make it but I learned an immense amount). From there I worked the rest of my career as an independent consultant (when you could still do that and didn't have to always go through a bigger vendor).

Once I had those relationships I was able to avoid working through a broker. Luckily I had those in place and had a pretty specialized niche before the H1B wave started. I worked with hundreds of H1Bs over the years -- most were mediocre at best -- I don't remember any who were truly exceptional talent. None that even came close to the American teams I worked with in the 80's.

Fast forward to the late 90's. H1B visas in full swing and now my software engineer husband who I met at that start-up can't find a job. Brilliant, hard worker, would have worked for far under what he was worth.

He just loved to code. Couldn't even get an interview.

Especially if it's a company using H1B's. His chances of getting an interview drop to virtully zero if the hiring manager was Indian. Incredibly demoralizing.

We finally moved to NC in 2005 so that he could find work. Landed a great job at Wells doing what he loved until he retired in 2016, and then he kept coding for free helping non profits and small family businesses until he passed away in 2018. Many very talented programmers just gave up during the 2000's when competition with the H1Bs made it too hard to find work.

So, for this boomer, it's very personal.

I've been watching what the H1B program has done to Americans for decades (and if you know me IRL, you've heard me bitch about this obnoxiously for that long too). Stop the H1B program. Stop telling us that they have some magical specialized skills.

They don't. They never have.

And they generally discriminate against hiring Americans once they are in hiring positions. Prioritize the talented Americans who are looking for work in tech. Prioritize the new college grads -- most of them are excited by the field and want to work hard.

—KarenWStewart, December 26th, 2024

We can change this.

And we will.

Something is coming.

---

Told you that was impressive stuff. I have a feeling this will be a standard reference work. If you’re hungry for more of Psycho’s writing, here’s his award-winning essay Pygmalion and the Anime Girl.

Pygmalion and the Anime Girl

You should click through, read the whole thing, and subscribe while you’re at it.

And of course, if this is your first time reading a Postcard From Barsoom, and for some reason have not subscribed, you should do so now:

I have such things to show you.