Steve Sailer and the Kung Flu Panic-Fest


Posted On: Saturday - May 23rd 2020 8:46AM MST
In Topics: 
  General Stupidity  Websites  Pundits  Media Stupidity  Kung Flu Stupidity

From the blog 3 days back - still in Kung Flu Panic mode:



I have been a fan of Steve Sailer's iSteve blog, hosted on Ron Unz's Unz website, for just as long*as Peak Stupidity has been in operation. One of our quick posts (the style back then) from the beginning of '17 was in fact, No, we don't worship Steve Sailer. Basically, Steve Sailer's material was almost always interesting, right in our wheelhouse, and half the posts here for a little while back then were taken from his ideas. Part of the idea still is that he reads the NY Times so we don't have to.

Over the last 3 months now, Mr. Sailer has written 75% of his material on the Kung Flu. It was not mostly about the ridiculous overblown reaction to it, or the excuse (what's new?) to blame white people on, well everything, though he's inserted a few posts to that effect. Mr. Sailer seemed personally worried about this latest bad flu, along with feeling the need to give advice of all sorts. There were posts galore about who's hoarding the face masks and PPE, what places to avoid, which State, city, or country is doing this or that. He did have lots of his, usually interesting, own speculation about the virus being spread by skiers and world travelers, which races, ethnic groups, and classes of people would get hit the most, and so on.

Then there were the posts that I really detested, on what WE should do, BY LAW, always. I never said that Mr. Sailer was any Libertarian man of principle (a Conservative of the alt-right who still agrees with Affirmative Action? C'mon, man!), and the words "US Constitution" never came readily off his typing fingers. This was getting ridiculous though. The guy likes to analyze the hell of out things, and each analysis would end up with a new suggestion, but not a suggestion to us, Americans who may or may not get the Kung Flu. No, the suggestions were to governments of all levels and high officials. I think WE should close this, limit this, and make this other thing mandatory. That was the spirit of Steve Sailer's writing for a couple of months.

There was nary a mention of having any limits to government. Even though a non-Libertarian, Mr. Sailer does come across as having respect for law and due process, etc. Why would he then be calling for all this overreach into the private lives of Americans? Because it was an EMERGENCY! Apparently. Steve Sailer fell hook, line, and sinker, for the Infotainment that has instigated this Panic-Fest, right from the get-go.

This is really shocking to me, and not in a Captain Renault fashion either. Here's a guy who has spent YEARS rightfully lambasting, denigrating, and embarrassing the Lyin' Press in this country. That is his bread & butter. (As I wrote above, he reads the stuff, and that includes the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and tweets out the ying-yang, so we don't have to. We can see how the enemy really thinks, and it's horrific.) I have agreed with Mr. Sailer 95% of the time over the years, as he's brought up the Media Stupidity and used his great insight and logic to bring this utter stupidity and maliciousness to light.

What made Mr. Sailer think that, hey, maybe this one time, all the spouting of the media and high government officials was all well thought-out, accurate, and right on the money?

As this Panic-Fest tails off from Peak Panic, which occurred arguably** the last week or two, Steve Sailer has seen new trends and writes accordingly. Much of this is a backing-off of all the couple of months worth of writing that implied that anyone not taking this Kung Flu as seriously as he would a heart attack is just an ignoramus. Let me include a reply of mine to one of his posts, the gist of which is, "hey, some people have been wrong about this. Here's what they are saying now. We'd all better pay attention." It was another post on, sigh, face masks from China.
Steve, I see you are slowly coming around to the (Ron Unz designated) “hoaxers” point of view. You have been much more civil in your posts, comments, and acceptance of differing views than the other guy just mentioned.

Isn’t it pretty damn obvious by now much of what the “hoaxers” have been noting and pointing out since this LOCKDOWN stuff started? I’m sorry, man, but didn’t you read some of your more illustrious commenters here … plus me? Do you believe those entrenched, special-interest lyin’-sacks-o-shit in the US Feral Gov’t over your own commenters?

Listen, you came up with that great bit of noticing on the telephoto shots that have been DELIBERATELY distorting (haha) the story of how crowded beaches, parks, etc. are. Many of us may have had a subconscious inkling about this, but you did a great service to those not in the know about photography by explicitly pointing this out, and mercilessly beating the point home.

OK, and you have been using 1/2 of your writing to lambast the fake narratives of the media, out of intention to deceive and out of stupidity, sometimes both, over the years. We appreciate your bringing to light all of these falsehoods from the NY Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, etc, as most of us don’t read these, but you can show us what the enemy is up to.

After all that, just what made you have this blind trust in both media and government just this one time, during this phony crisis? I don’t get it. Did you think they suddenly got their shit together because “we are all gonna die” or something?
Well, the latest backing-off of rectally-extracted "facts" about this Corona virus involves the change of heart about this thing's extreme longevity on, and ability to attack us from all kinds of surfaces ... days later! This writer has long thought that it was some highly-exaggerated BS - (see Kung Flu vs. VD from just over a month back). I have only been wiping things down when given extra wipes of all varieties at my work place just for the fun of it. I've taken no special considerations in not touching this or that, and only done some stupid shit with changing clothes in the shop and wearing a towel back into the house to take a shower based on my wife's worries. It's something I can put up with to humor her, but quarantining myself in an aircraft hangar for a week was OUT - there's no internet there, dammit!

Peak Stupidity just got done trashing that whole surface-contagion thing, a week back, in Six degrees from Kevin's Bacon . What I was especially pissed off about regarding Steve Sailer's moderation of comments*** was the moderation one of 2 comments directly mentioning this new "It's always been an Airborne War..." change in the government narrative. OK, one could say, "we all learned something". No, that's not the point. People (such as the bright Steve Sailer) should have already known 2 months ago not to listen to every piece of rectally-extracted advice and rulings from the Lyin' Press and government. My comment got held up for most of a day as Mr. Sailer then proceeded to have a post about the same subject, "NYT: We Have Always Been at War with East Aerosolsia!", which I noticed AFTER I wrote my paragraph on that in the Target-shopping post yesterday. Here's my comment from under his post CDC Finally Admits Touching Things Less Risky Than Talking to People , in it's entirety, with the inner italicized blockquote being an excerpt from iSteve:
… but it would have been better if stubbornness hadn’t kept the old ill-informed assumptions in place so long.
It’d have been even better if those ill-informed assumptions had never been seen as the word of God by everyone and his brother blogger to begin with.

Does this mean that the kids can at least play basketball with different balls but with the same rims and pavement? Should I put a call option* on my wipes portfolio.

* No, Jack D., I DON’T know what a call option is, but this is artistic license, so you don’t need to chime in. Thx.
(That footnote is about a very smart commenter named Jack D. He's a guy I really like, but he does tend to correct every little thing, and not write back during those infrequent instances when he was actually wrong.)

OK, look, I'm not trying to make this a 14-y/o schoolgirl-type spat here. It could be that the comments just got lost. Steve Sailer cannot really read every single comment from his readers throughly, especially during the times he posts 5 tor 8 things a day. I am glad he does get so many comments (and lots of readers, I'm sure), as that's why Ron Unz keeps him on his blog. He's a force for good in the world. It's frustrating, though, to communicate this way to a guy who just got swept away in this Panic-Fest and hasn't been giving any respect to the commenters who understand what's going on. As I wrote, who are you going to listen to, long-term commenters or idiots on TV?

Lately, Mr. Sailer has been backing off his "millions of us are going to die" or at least "WE'd better do this, that and the other thing, prontomundo, or millions of us are going to die" attitude as he sees the backtracking by the "official authorities". It's not like he can't think for himself very well, but some things, especially when you start with very uncertain numbers, can't be modeled and analyzed well, and Mr. Sailer just didn't use any of that perspective that he ought to have by now. Even in backing off, I don't read too much "I was wrong" in there, much less an apology.

Really, I don't think Steve Sailer owes anyone an apology, though. He's the blogger, and I could have skipped all the articles on contact contagion, wipes, Italy, ski slopes, NY City etc, etc, etc, instead of just most of them. (There'd have been not much else to read, for a while, and again, I like to read his stuff.) However, a few "I was wrong about this"'s WOULD be in order. I don't mean particularly (just as an example), "I was wrong about the virus spreading via surfaces, blah, blah..." He didn't know. How about "I was wrong to act like the words out of the CDC and the Lyin' Press are the Word of God and to tell the readers that WE MUST DO SOMETHING NOW - ALL OF US!"?

As I asked Mr. Sailer what happened to the moderated comments, I was told by a couple of the commenters (not the ones I really respect though) that I comment too often anyway. It's probably a good idea that I take it easy for a while on the commenting and reading there at unz. I started all that initially to get links in over to Peak Stupidity. It has mattered, I'm sure. I can see commenters from unz over here, and the server log data shows many clicks coming from that site. I can't interpret the data as well as I'd like too though.

Then, I got just plain hooked on commenting there (best commenting system I've seen too), sometimes to the detriment of writing here, even. (Often my comments there will induce a post idea here, though, also.) That is very addictive, and it's best I taper it off. I want to experiment and see how much that would affect visitis to Peak Stupidity. Perhaps I'll only comment under some of the weekly writers and
Audacious Epigone - he's a very good blogger with respect for, and good civil responses to, his commenters. His latest post, BTW, shows he's completely on the anti-panic side of the Kung Flu Gap. I wasn't completely sure about this until now. Also, my comments under A.E.'s posts go directly onto the site. Now that's the way ya' do it.

Readers, this is kind of a rant, but please don't take this as a just a bitch session about Mr. Sailer and his writings and treatment of the commenters. I want to point out here that even the best of us can be so overwhelmed with the Infotainment, that we break down and just LUV Big Brother's Big Narrative. I never was a part of this shit, and you can bet your whole Paypal account that I won't be in the future.


PS: This morning, before I wrote this rant, I could see that Mr. Sailer is back to his usual self, as far as his material goes. That's a good thing. I may lay off for now, but I'll likely be back.



* I'd read his blog elsewhere semi-regularly for some portions of time going way back, maybe 10-15 years ago, also.

** I like using that word "arguably", as it doesn't pin me down, and more importantly, it may bring us some comments with which others can do the arguing for me. Or else, there'll have to be another post - When did we reach Peak Panic?

*** For years, I was under the impression that, with the exception of comments that were just too SOMETHING (usually fair, too), comments would get moderated whenever Mr. Sailer was on his blogging time, basically awake. He's in California and is very apparently a late-night guy. I was used to that and only very occasionally (<1% of the time) had comments get stuck near a day. (It's really hard to communicate like that.)

Comments:
Moderator
Monday - May 25th 2020 11:29AM MST
PS: Borderland, borderline, whatever, Mr. Unz has crossed that border a while back like a broke Guatemalan roofer. ;-}

He's got 20% good writers, but near 90% controversial writers. It's the ones that are in the overlap that are the best - Sailer, Derbyshire, etc.
MBlanc46
Monday - May 25th 2020 11:11AM MST
PS I’m perfectly happy to agree to disagree re website comments’ sections. Although I don’t think much of the system at unz.com, and find Mr Unz to be borderland something, I much appreciate his making so many excellent writers available to us.
Moderator
Sunday - May 24th 2020 8:43PM MST
PS: Mr. Blanc, we'll have to stay in disagreement on this usability (readability) thing for comment sections. Besides that I'd rather see them all laid out, I notice that RCP has ads between comments, at least on this browser. That's not so much a thing about commenting arrangements but more a reminder to me of another thing I like very much about unz:

There are no ads, no flashing around of different things, no shaking around, or making me wait for the text to finally be in one damn place, etc. I am glad Mr. Unz is independently wealthy. Who would hire him at this point anyway, the white shoe financial boys again? ;-}
Moderator
Sunday - May 24th 2020 8:37PM MST
PS: Jim, I agree and would put the concerns for liberty and the US Constitution above the calculations of "years of life lost", even if the latter was in favor of LOCKDOWNS numerically. As I wrote to Mr. Hail on his blog today:

"Were commandeered Fed-Ex vans stopping at every house in America daily, calling “Bring out yer dead!”, then maybe I’d consider dropping “muh Constitution. That’s it."

Your guy lost me at the walling-out portion of "Hmm, that is the same basic formula as blaming ill health on germs and killing them with the arsenal of medicine, so that we can live safe healthy lives ever after, or killing the terrorists and walling out the immigrants and locking up the criminals, all again so that we can live safe healthy lives ever after.", at least for now. I'll leave the page up and read more later.
Moderator
Sunday - May 24th 2020 8:29PM MST
PS: As far as the Navy ship goes, Bill H, then it most be damn near impossible TO get infected for most of the sailors, living the way you do on in the navy. What does that mean? Natural resistance?

Fauci and that gang must know all about these floating experiments. What did they have to say about them?
MBlanc46
Sunday - May 24th 2020 11:10AM MST
PS The link below is to the comments of an RCP article. Note that all that are initially displayed are first-level comments. If there are replies to a comment, there is an “Show X More Replies” that you can expand if you wish. I much prefer that to the Unz system, however, De gustibus non disputandum est. As far as the number of your comments at unz,com go, keep ’em coming. No one is forced to read them.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/23/what_joe_biden_needs_to_say_about_government_corruption_143277.html
Jim
Sunday - May 24th 2020 8:19AM MST
PS I found this interesting.
https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-conspiracy-myth/?_page=4
Dtbb
Sunday - May 24th 2020 5:57AM MST
PS:Hear! Hear! Jim.
Jim
Sunday - May 24th 2020 4:19AM MST
PS The one benefit of the aliens attacking earth narrative that we are being force-fed here is that we get to see the curtain lifted on some of those whose opinions we respected. We get to see some of their real underlying philosophy. They will from now on require our closer scrutiny. To me it's akin to finding out ones lover has cheated on them. One might still love them, but can one still trust them? I for one do not engage in the Corona dialectic as I do not consider it to be an honest one. I rather couch the argument in one of liberty or slavery. This I believe is the foundational issue. You can argue to me for Covid measures, but only in how they relate to liberty. Liberty is primary. If liberty is not a core value to you, there will be no engagement on my part. Your argument is of no interest to me. The real problem here is, is that liberty seems not to be a core value to the majority of the population, which might actually be the point of this exercise. Which side of the liberty/slavery equation do the citizens fall on? Without principles, a good narrative can lead a person to dark places.
Bill H
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 11:04PM MST
PS Not based on symptoms. The crew and passengers of Diamond Princess and the entire crew of USS Theodore Rooseveldt were tested for the virus, and in both cases 80% tested negative for infection by the virus. In every city that has released numbers for general population testing, the infection rate has been around 5% with the exception of NYC, which has been at about 20%.

This compares to annual common flu, which normally has an infection rate of near 30%. This is simply not a highly infectious virus.
Moderator
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 7:16PM MST
PS: Re your 2nd comment, Hail, sure it depends on how you define it. As far as people in stores go, man, my trip to Target, described in the post previous to this, made me think we are not even on the downslide yet! However, numbers and common-sense wise, and the people out on the street where I live make me think we are way past.

I just need to not go into Target for a long while.
Moderator
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 7:14PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, regarding your 1st comment: I do remember both those Sailer comments along with ones very much like them. Over and over it was, and it hit me that maybe Steve knew a lot about this thing and maybe I should learn more and possibly change my view.

No, after a while I realized Steve Sailer was just fixated on the Covid Infotainment. I don't get it. He doesn't fall for any other hype out of the Lyin' Press. It's his bread & butter NOT TO.

Thanks for putting my comment under your Part XII back up. Wordpress-moderation is a mystery I guess, and likely less fair than Mr. Sailer's I'm sure (from your story about the one reader especially).
Moderator
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 7:09PM MST
PS: I just looked it up, Mr. Ganderson - late August! These officials are just ass-covering, if it's nothing more nefarious than that.
Moderator
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 7:06PM MST
PS: Bill H, I remember when you corrected me on the numbers regarding one of the cruise ships. That is amazing stuff that just shows all the hand wringing about hand washing (there's a name for a post - look for it.) and the masking it up, etc, could really be almost completely for nothing.

You give the numbers for people infected and people not infected. Could it be that the non-infected just have no symptoms, or were they all tested? Either way, the conclusion that this is so far from the Black Plague as to be ridiculous is the same.
Ganderson
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 7:06PM MST
PS The Minnesota State Fair has been cancelled for this year. Stupidity abounds.
Moderator
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 7:03PM MST
PS: Mr. Blanc, yes, the commenters under iSteve are the best on unz. No Commie idiots like under The Saker, etc., not many whack jobs at all, though Ron Unz chimes in once a month, which is entirely too much, and some very smart people. I probably chime in too much, and lots of mine are responses to commenters vs. discussion of the articles.

See, I was pretty tolerant of Steve during this thing, as it is his blog after all, and I don't have to read (wouldn't have left me much to read around a month to 2 months ago). However, as he backs off of this, I really think he should be nicer to the commenters that he seems to have blown off as uncaring, unrealistic, etc. and give them some credit. I didn't think he had that kind of ego, but it seems like it.

Now, specifically about your opinion of unz.com commenting, structurally that is, I beg on my bended knees to differ. (I tried to look for a good example on Real Clear Politics, Mr. Blanc, but most links there are to external sites, I got one with only 3 comments, so not a good example, and I spent 5-10 minutes trying. Can you send me a link to a good example?).

I like that on unz, there is no threading that eventually makes 10th-down replies skinny or no longer indented (gotta be one). I also don't like any systems in which you have to "see more" all the time. I like to see them all laid out. I like unz's feature in which you can hover over a name and see what is being replied to or what's the reply to this one.

No doubt, the limits on the responses (Agree, LOL, etc.) are too strict. The 3 comments per thread per hour is something I'm used to now. BTW, with some help, I and others started to make our own dot-retard: Name and stuff like that, but I believe Mr. Unz put software in to wipe those out! No sense of humor with that guy...

Thanks again for writing in.
MBlanc46
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 10:25AM MST
PS Rant on. We’re all entitled to a good rant every once in a while. In my view, the best thing about iSteve, other than the fact that he reads the NYT so that I don’t have to, is the commenters. I am one who found this site because I enjoyed your comments there. I find the endless posts about the WuFlu tiresome, also, but I try to be tolerant of Mr Sailer. He’s far from the only person who’s been spooked by this outbreak. And there are usually enough OT comments of interest to make a scroll through the comments worth the while, even if I’ve only glanced at the post. I will have to disagree about the commenting system at unz.com. The worst thing about it is his limiting comments to three an hour and Agrees to once an hours. That’s not a structural feature, of course, merely an expression of Mr Unz’s Stalinist tendencies. But not showing visual subordination of replies to the comments to which they are replies and leaving everything in mere chronological order makes it next to impossible to follow a discussion. Give me a system like the one over at Real Clear Politics, any time.
Moderator
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 9:55AM MST
PS: I appreciate all the many comments here over the last little while, but I gotta go to meet some friends. I'll be back on later to converse, or whatever you call it.. Thank you all.
Bill H
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 9:29AM MST
PS You think Steve Sailer has gone astray, you should see what has happened to Ian Welsh. He's always been a bit *****, but now he is writing from off somewhere on another planet.

So, anyway, now that we have gone back to where we aren't going to die from touching things, now let's work on it being okay to breathe. We can start with the Diamond Princess where 3700 people were cooped up together in close quarters, eating in a common dining area, breathing recirculated area, etc, and point out that 80% of them DID NOT BECOME INFECTED.

Not only that, but of the ones that were infected, dozens had a cabin mate, eating with them and sleeping with them WHO DID NOT BECOME INFECTED.

Sorry for shouting, but it's hard to get people to listen.

Move on to the USS Abraham Lincoln. 5000 sailors eating with their shoulders touching, sleeping in bunks 18" apart, breathing common recirculated air, and 80% of them DID NOT BECOME INFECTED.

And yet we are constantly being told that this Bat Flu is outrageously contageous and that if we walk withing six feet of someone who is not wearing a mask we will get sick and die.
Hail
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 9:21AM MST
PS--
"When did we reach Peak Panic?"

To answer this question amounts to defining Peak Panic.

It will also vary greatly between classes of people. The lockdown-wackos in high places who seized power in the Corona Coup d'Etat in March peaked their own panic in March (with mid-March the critical period).

After that, they've cruised along on the religion they set up. The panic gave birth to the religion. They scooped up converts along the way in late March and April.

The low-info masses peaked their panic much later, observable by general mask wearing rate (where it is not mandatory).
Hail
Saturday - May 23rd 2020 9:17AM MST
PS--

I've been a reader for many years. I have noticed you are very diplomatic in your criticisms of Steve Sailer.

Steve is remarkably tolerant of people doing this in his comment-sections but it is never a good idea to insult someone on their own home turf. I would agree with another commenter here who wrote the Sailer content became "unreadable" during the Panic. Maybe by March 1 this was so. Once we crossed over into shutdown-craziness it became deeply frustrating.

The doubling-down; the extremism; the tight narrative control (every story spun towards the pro-Panic side); the group-think; the abandonment of skepticism and scientific inquiry.

Here are two little CoronaPanic moments I would like to point to again:

Steve Sailer endorses Bill Gates as Corona-Czar; Steve Sailer calls for reopening "as late as possible."

https://hailtoyou.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/steve-sailer-endorses-bill-gates-during-coronapanic.png

https://hailtoyou.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/steve-sailer-calls-for-reopening-quote-as-late-as-possible-unquote-during-coronapanic.png

This second one was so unbelievable to me, as in wo surreal, it inspired my first anti-Corona comment on his blog, the one that got your attention.

I too reached the conclusion that it was best to back away. For me this came early in the cycle, on March 10. I made zero Unz Review comments from March 10 to March 26.

Anti-Panic forces were routed during that period. The early lie of "closed until April 1 to flatten the curve" turned into "months of lockdown with totally unclear purpose, but just trust us and FEAR" religious-imperative, which were already coming into view by March 26 led me back. By April 1 with the oultines of the long-shutdown nightmare in view, I realized the anti-Panic side badly needed advocates. We had almost no one by that point. Our only assets, Truth, Reason, and Reality.
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