More disagreements in IDW land

The Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), defined by, and introduced to the world by Bari Weiss, who is on the record as a fan of the stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik of "Libs of TikTok," is tied together mainly by a right-libertarian point of view and a predilection for race pseudoscience. 

But they do sometimes have their disagreements.

Two named members of the Intellectual Dark Web, Claire Lehmann and Sam Harris, left Twitter when Donald Trump returned. However, their businesses remain: Lehmann's Quillette, allegedly funded by babbling lunatic Peter Thiel among other plutocrats, and Harris' MakingSense. 

This fact was noted by ivermectin-promoting, game theory loving crackpot Bret Weinstein, also a named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

Meanwhile the Cato Institute's "Human Progress" has gotten around to critiquing Peter Thiel's crackpot, Bible-citing keynote speech for the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference (Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists) for not appreciating the last 50 years of Human Progress.

Steven Pinker, who Bari Weiss considers the exemplar of respectability on the IDW spectrum, linked to the "Human Progress" article from his Twitter account. 

It's a safe bet that Pinker will never leave Twitter based on a principled stand. 

"Impressionistic" is a very generous way to describe Thiel's babble, but considering  how Thiel funds organizations that Pinker counts on to support race pseudoscience and right-wing reaction, like Quillette, he can hardly be scathing and expect to remain a member in good standing of the plutocrat-supported IDW.

But some mild criticism is likely welcomed by Cato, since it is largely a Charles Koch vehicle. 

Although Koch and Thiel agree far more than they disagree, there must be a rivalry there, and Koch may not be displeased when Thiel gets some mild criticism. 

The article does not mention Thiel's bizarre Antichrist reference, complete with Bible citation, but then, one of the two authors of the piece is Gale L. Pooley, a senior fellow at the intelligent-design promoting Discovery Institute. Discovery used to employ far-right Trump flunky CRT/trans-panic mongering Christopher Rufo.

This section of the Human Progress piece caught my attention

Progress has been especially good for the poor – especially when considering time inequality. A person in China working eight hours a day to earn enough money to buy food in 1960, would only need to spend around 18 minutes to do the same in 2021. For the time it took to buy one meal in 1960, he or she would get 27 meals in 2021. The Chinese gained 7 hours and 42 minutes a day to do with as they please. Indians gained 6 hours and 30 minutes a day over the same period. Some 3 billion people now have much more time to learn and contribute to knowledge discovery and creation.

How absurd to include that, as if right-wing libertarian plutocrats cared about the poor.

Peter Thiel is infamous for his lack of human empathy, justifying apartheid as a good economic system. 

And Cato, well Cato's idea of "Human Progress" is to attempt to end taxation for the rich. A belief-system that now rules the Republican Party.

If the poor have benefitted from progress, it is not thanks to the plutocrat-forward policies of Cato and friends. Thanks to their policies, economic inequality has, after being relatively low since the end of WWII, skyrocketed starting with the Reagan administration.

Based on their policies, the endgame of Thiel, Koch, Musk and other right-wing plutocrats must be to create a world controlled by about one hundred obscenely wealthy men - a global feudalism.

Which is why they hate democracy so  much, as this video notes.

Another excellent YouTube video on the evil of a human society controlled by billionaires.