Jonathan Katz took a deep dive into the infamous Eric Weinstein-hosted interview of J. D. Vance and came up with some good, if predictably nauseating stuff.
He refers to Bret Weinstein as "disgraced evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein." I certainly have long thought Bret was a disgrace, since the Evergreen incident, which I am convinced was at the very least partly a deliberate scam on the part of Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying. My opinion was then bolstered by Bret and Heather shilling ivermectin as a treatment for Covid.
And then there's that obsession with Game Theory.
But I didn't know about this latest Bret Weinstein disgrace:
Bret Weinstein, the evolutionary biology professor turned podcaster and ivermectin guy, repeated a series of discredited pseudo-theories about AIDS in a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Weinstein, a frequent guest, told Rogan that he found the theory that party drugs like poppers cause AIDS to be “surprisingly compelling.” (It is not.) Weinstein also told Rogan he came to these ideas by reading a recent book by anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, creating a sort of unholy turducken of misinformation passed onto an audience of millions.
Wow, what a garbage person.
Katz goes on to give a full accounting of the Intellectual Dark Web's racist, misogynist pseudoscience context that inform's Eric Weinstein's views, and demonstrates how much Vance agrees with them.
The problem is that race-baiting, misogyny, and a general obsession with supposedly in-born hierarchies aren’t distractions from the Trump team’s message. They are the campaign’s message. Even when confronted with an issue that genuinely concerns the electorate — such as the still-high cost of living, especially for those of us raising children — they can’t resist offering rhetoric and solutions that sound like they come from the minutes of a 1920s meeting of the American Eugenics Society, if not the pronatalist movement in Fascist Italy itself. The reason is simple: They really believe this stuff.
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The vice-presidential candidate concludes:
VANCE: Just to sort of bring this full circle to where we started, is that the economic logic of always prioritizing paid wage labor over other forms of contributing to a society is to me, it's actually a consequence of a sort of fundamental liberalism that is ultimately gonna unwind and collapse upon itself. It has to. I think it's, yeah — it’s the abandonment of a sort of Aristotelian virtue politics for a hyper market.
Yes, Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and great influencer of medieval Christian doctrine, who taught, among other things that: “the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying”; and “for the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority,” and who summarized “the female is a misbegotten male.” Those virtue politics.
In spite of Steven Pinker's public distaste for Trump, the Republican ticket is the Intellectual Dark Web ticket, holding the same pseudoscience beliefs that Pinker has been promoting via evolutionary psychology first, then by a cleaned-up version of Steve Sailer's "human biodiversity." Or as David Lubinski, bigwig at the International Society for Intelligence Research calls it "human psychological diversity."
Which is why the Republican ticket, funded by anti-democracy Peter Thiel and lead by a pussy-grabbing rapist and a misogynist creep, is the most evil in American history.
And Pinker likes to attack Trump but he has no qualms about allying himself with Republican operative Bari Weiss and her garbage rag. But that's who Pinker is, a complete and utter weasel.
