People may have noticed Mike Cernovich. I read his book Gorilla Mindset and liked it, but I don't support Trump. Now the New Yorker has noticed Cernovich.

??!?##

Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions to Live Life on Your Terms by Mike Cernovich

The title looks interesting, but I sure ain't gonna read the book if it leads to thinking like that!

He has a new book out - looks disgusting...

Is there something in the pages of Gorilla Mindset that isn't apparent in the quick summary in the New Yorker article? This guy sounds atrocious. Also I can say, "Social media--yuck."

That guy is deteriorating rapidly.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/19 ... ger/214867

LanDroid wrote:That guy is deteriorating rapidly.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/19 ... ger/214867

His response is at https://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/12/0 ... pizzagate/

Nope, his response didn't change my impression of this Mike Cernovich. I hope not to run into him again. Robert, you should change your "status" regarding Trump. On Oct. 27, you didn't support him; now you do. What the heck happened?

DWill wrote:Nope, his response didn't change my impression of this Mike Cernovich. I hope not to run into him again.

I think you will find that Cernovich will become a much more prominent public figure, like his friend Nick Kelly, creator of Victor Pride. These guys have a lot of faults, in being very arrogant individualists, but they also have a refreshing honesty about the personal values that are needed for success in the world.

DWill wrote:Robert, you should change your "status" regarding Trump. On Oct. 27, you didn't support him; now you do. What the heck happened?

Thanks, that is a good question. My interest in life has always been how to improve the world, since my university studies focussed on ethics, and then my work in international development and poverty reduction. I started off with the left wing assumption that government redistribution of wealth is the best way to create a fairer and better world. I hold to the Christian moral goal that the last should be first. But over the years I have gradually shifted to the right, based on analysis of evidence about impact of different approaches.

How do we actually make the last first in ways that work? Big influences that have changed my thinking include Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, Bjorn Lomborg and Robert Conquest. I now share Hayek’s view, expressed in The Road To Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty, that socialism is a pernicious cancer on the body politic, and that opposition to socialist tendencies is a precondition for sound politics. The creeping growth of the power and intrusion of government is an insidious and seductive process that must be constantly fought in the name of social freedom and health.

So, as per the thread that Chris O’Connor started here a year ago, I was quite torn by the Trump candidacy. I reject the vision of a militarized and divided nation and world. However, the path to a stable and prosperous world requires realistic political analysis, and recognition that nations need to hold to their core values in order to succeed.

Although sharing misgivings, as I expressed in the opening post in this thread that you mention, I found that when Trump was elected I was extremely pleased. Since then my sense that despite the risks Trump is a good corrective to bad world trends has only grown. We are seeing this assessment supported by the very positive market response. A good analysis is at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/3-thin ... 2016-12-23 starting up with a chart of the 9% Dow Jones rise since the election, but also noting some of the doubts. Against all the facile left wing mockery about trickle down economics, the fact is that reducing corporate tax is good for jobs and growth.

The frog in a pot analogy is useful here. A Clinton Presidency would have been about the USA managing decline, lacking any vision or energy for a new path. Like the mythical frog that enjoys the gradual warming until it is cooked. But Trump is the frog that jumps out of a dangerous situation. And no I don’t mean Pepe.

On migration and on climate, I believe that the hardline views expressed by Donald Trump show better prospects of achieving good results than the confused compassion of progressives. Regularising international relations based on rule of law is a far better way to improve standards in poor countries than allowing unregulated flows of people across borders. And the whole Paris Climate Conference model of emission reduction is fundamentally flawed as a way to stabilise the climate.

I appreciate that answer to my perhaps impertinent question, Robert. I was just interested in how someone like you--the unprototypical Trump supporter --came over to that side, which I won't claim is the dark side, but it is the strange side from where I sit. The major aspect of your hopes for Trump that I don't see becoming real is for him to benefit the world order if his current attitude toward internationalism continues. America first may be good for America (or it might not be), but by most assessments Trump has signalled a retreat from engagement, using as a yardstick which relationships will directly help the U.S., specifically the U.S. bottom line. That does not seem likely to be good for the world unless the U.S. has been a hindrance, and with that hindrance removed the world can achieve a more stable organization. That seems unlikely, though, because the withdrawal of the only superpower would cause such chaos. Not to worry too much about that, however. Mr. Trump, even if he could manage to use the presidency as a fulcrum for such a revolution, will come to see that the U.S. needs to maintain or strengthen its leadership. The generals with whom he has surrounded himself will be schooling him on that. I can see no benefit to having to wait for him to go through his steep learning curve. Bad things could happen. I'd be so much more at ease with someone who knows the world situation, someone like Hillary Clinton.