PS: I'm not sure if Steve Sailer wants to be a leader. I'm sure he'd like to be known a lot better based on all the interesting insights he's got. I don't know if he's trying to form some critical mass of people to follow him or anyone else.

I think Mr. Sailer is too nice to understand what we're up against, honestly. He's a peacetime consigliere, and he doesn't ever show that he'd be a good wartime consigliere, to put it in Godfather I terms, and you know he loves the movies!

PS: Dieter, do you have a specific link to go along with the story of Michel de Montainge? It sounded like you meant to give us one.

PS: Mr. Hail, you're right. That was Alarmist - Audacious Epigone pegged Ron DeSantis as someone who "knew the material better.

I maintain that being more of an expert on the science or not on an issue like the PanicFest was not as important as being principled on the issuing of emergency measures, especially anything that goes on for 2 years, which is far beyond any definition for that use of emergency powers by Governors, Mayors, whomever.

Regarding Pence and his job as Head of the White House Covid Task Force, well, sure, I guess one should do lots of reading and Pence is probably not stupid. What Trump should have done, had he been a principled man, is to state that, no matter how bad things are, the Feral Gov't was not in the business of running some BS 2-year Emergency operation of Totalitarianism. Trump, per the way Peter Brimelow, just takes what the last guy he talked to told him about the situation, and makes decisions based on that.

PS

@Mr Hail, I'd say Mr Sailer is a good thought leader on a narrow range of issues, but if he was my platoon leader, I'd insist he take point, e.g. he was a COVID coward who totally drank the Kool Aid®️.

PS

"I would read your The Plague On Our House/Scott Atlas essay anytime," says Mr. Kief.

Thanks. It will someday come to life.

PS

Moderator wrote: "Mr. Hail, from the link I provided. Now, first, remember I didn't' go looking for this AE post to rebut your point on DeSantis' knowledge of Covid-19."

I think it was Mr. Kief who introduced this point. The Alarmist countered indirectly by saying that a good leader may not need to have familiarized himself with the details of some of the studies, as it is said DeSantis did.

As for Pence, as he was the HEAD of the "White House Covid Task Force," IMO he probably should have done a lot more reading, especially of the Anti-Panic side's material. Even early on, you had world-leading epidemiologists and other experts sounding the alarm. Although the Pro-Panic prolefeed-dispensing mass-media ignored them and Big Tech suppressed them, these voices were still out there. I have to come down on the side of criticizing Pence for this.

PS

- On Pence leadership and the January Six'ers -

Moderator wrote: "regarding Mike Pence the good neighbor. Sure, I'd expect that from a "conservative" guy like him. I mean that - he is obviously a social conservative, making him a better neighbor by the odds, I think. He probably thinks of himself as a stand-up guy, pillar of the community, just doing that public service."

I am sure you've got him pegged right.

The comment on Pence being an outstanding neighbor (the comment from the ex-neighbors I indirectly knew actually applying to both Pence and his wife, I recall) I remember made me think how unusual it was. The norm outside small towns tends now to be anonymity, seldom interacting with neighbors. I guess some huge percentage of residents of the USA do not know any of their neighbors. And Pence, being a rising figure at the time, could have been another absentee type not interacting with the little people (as I am 100%-sure many equivalents would have been). Instead, Pence chose to embody an earlier America.

No one would likely ever know of those interactions with his neighbors at the time and place, but he went out of the way to be a good one anyway. Is that not leadership? I guess you have already answered by saying, in effect, it is good leadership on a local, small-scale, family-man kind of level, but that may not translate into the political fight of our times.

Pence is stuck in an unwinnable (from his own perspective) position with the "January Sixth" controversy. His statements about "January Sixth" have to be seen in that light. The CNN town-hall environment is also not the place a guy like Pence is going to announce some sweeping and radical-seeming policy.

I don't mean to defend Pence, though it seems I am doing so. I can put what may be the best defense of Pence on this "January Sixth" controversy in this way:

Pence is more likely to decline to publicly SAY he will pardon any January Six'er, but then pardon them anyway if in office. ---vs.--- Trump is more likely to go on and on SAYING he will pardon them, but then somehow never quite follows through and maybe only pardons a few or some other hitch or hang-up to the sweeping claims.

(I'm not saying either of those two scenarios will likely happen as described; they are just statements of personality and style.)

PS

The Alarmist, I agree with your insightful comments on leadership.

-

A thought has just occurred to me to ask a question (to those who might still be viewing this comment-section, now three slots down on the Peak Stupidity main-page "feed"). It may seem an unusual question. The question is:

Is Steve Sailer a good leader?

To consider Steve Sailer as a leader requires stretching the usual definition. For he is the quintessential "one-man show."

But if we are talking, ultimately, about political influence and the fate of the nation and our civilization (not to be too grandiose),

and if Steve Sailer is an influential pundit and inspiration to many over twenty years or more now, then

surely Steve Sailer can be judged to be a leader.

Is he a good one? I think yes, overall, he has been a kind of indirect leader. I am thinking of the earlier eras of blogging when he served as a major nexus of semi-dissident blogging (back to his creation of the invitation-only HBD E-mail list back around year 2000). In this way, good leadership can function entirely behind the scenes. In this way, Sailer and DeSantis have something in common, maybe.

PS
Prof.Christine Stabell-Benn just published a new paper on the pandemic and - - -vaccination (1) immune-system activating vacinations and 2) the mRNA (Biontech etc.) and the Adenovector-Vaccines (Johnson&Johnson etc.).
1) Vaccination to stimulate the immune-system worked fine.
No harm detected.

2) Both standard Covid-vaccines had benefits. - No proof whatsoever that the vaccines caused severe big scale harm. - The apocalypse must wait one more time. The doom-sayers must look out for another chance. - Very well written study too, btw. - - -

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S193131282300197X?dgcid=coauthor

PS
Mod., you might like this one, by enchanted master-essayist and European emblem of humanism Michel Eyqem de Montaigne

Circumferential diseases multiply their terror by dancing with the angst-phantasies of the people.

Michel de Montainge led his hometown of Bordeaux, who's mayor he was for a while, before retiring as fourtysomehting at his castle in order to - write his (later) famous Essais - - - he, I said led his then already: rich! hometown of Bordeaux trough two Black Plague peroiods - - so: He knew what he was talking about. On the other hand: He had a castle out in the country, he could retreat to, so - .

PS: Adam, that guy's good!

Seriously though, could the AI program just take some images and make a composite and then do the shading to give it that hand-drawn look?

PS: Mr. Hail, from the link I provided. Now, first, remember I didn't' go looking for this AE post to rebut your point on DeSantis' knowledge of Covid-19. It so happened that iSteve told us how he is using appropriate colors (well mostly) for the races in his bar graphs, so I went to look for an AE post from the archives to capture a graphic to show his (very appropriate and easy to interpret) colors. I happened upon this post from just over 2 years back.

AE wrote:

"He [DeSantis] also appears to be one of the least ideologically driven. The Florida governor has mastered the material. When it comes to the scientific literature applicable to Covid, no other mainstream politician knows it better. Many on the dissident right mock and disdain the normie right’s celebration of liberty at the expense of other values. Whatever the merits of liberty over other values like order, though, DeSantis has delivered the former while no one in America has made much progress on the latter.:

I don't know about DeSantis' knowing of the scientific literature - that'd be news to me too, but AE's not in business to ask questions to right now. However, I agree completely about the 2nd part of that paragraph.

BTW, the title of that post is: "Ron DeSantis, America's Most Favorably Viewed Politician" Though DeSantis' "Favorable" number is lower than Trump's his "Unfavorable" one is zero, while Trump's is, as they say, Yuge. Well, that doesn't mean much 2 years later as:

1) This ridiculous prosecution going on is helping Trump over DeSantis. I completely understand that. It's people's only way of showing they see the Anarcho-Tyranny going on. They support Trump even more.

2) DeSantis will get his negatives if he gets further along in the race, staying afloat in it. My wife says he's Deep State influenced and "that's why they don't say bad things about him." Oh, they will! They sure will!

PS: Mr. Hail and others, in regards to the knowledge of a little bit of medicine/virology or the hiring of those who have a lot of it: I don't think that was so important at the time. I gotta say, that besides having some perspective on the numbers and knowing the very basics (IFR, TFR, type of virus) I didn't care to look up too much about the Kung Flu myself.

It was the generated PanicFest that I was more interested in and worried about. What I like about how DeSantis handled things (after a month or so of being sucked in) is that he based decisions on Constitutional principles, NOT medicine. As I've written, even if this thing had been comparable to the Black Death, no matter, the lockdown orders and all would not have been necessary. People are not stupid when their and their families' lives are in serious jeopardy.

Trump could have done the same, but he didn't because principles have never been important to him.

I will write more in an hour or two, Mr. Hail, because I also came coincidentally upon an Audacious Epigone post on this:

https://www.unz.com/anepigone/ron-desantis-americas-most-popular-politician/

PS: Mr. Hail, regarding Mike Pence the good neighbor. Sure, I'd expect that from a "conservative" guy like him. I mean that - he is obviously a social conservative, making him a better neighbor by the odds, I think. He probably thinks of himself as a stand-up guy, pillar of the community, just doing that public service.

However, his career is being a politician. You can't stay one for too long, if you act like Donald Trump or support Donald Trump (other than as part of one's VP duties.) In other words, he's part of the Establishment.

I don't know if you watched that 2 minute video (in WWII's VDare article), but what would you think of him after seeing that. Now, I could understand it, if this was some Senator from a far-off State, just being subject to the Lyin' Press narrative for 2 1/2 years now about what went on in the FS. But, no, not only is Pence connected to all that happened Constitutionally - in terms of the questions about the elections, but he was well aware of what went on. For him to use the terms he used in that video and promise no pardons to the Political Prisoners is, I'd call it, pretty sick. I guess he's not a stand-up guy, and maybe he even knows it on some level. He is a stand-up guy for the Establishment but not a stand-up guy for the Truth.

PS
Alarmist - there is data showing what I claimed below - - Prof. Christine Stabell Benn provided it in her - often linked by me - -research papers - - - it is not for no reason, that Gov. DeSantis chsoe her as an adviser (together with Martin Kulldorf, leading figure of the Great Barrington Declaration - - who has high praise for Stabell-Benn's research.- She is one of the (few!) post-vaccination-researchers that there are.

PS

@Dieter, there is no clinical data that conclusively demonstrates that the COVID vaxxes prevented deaths or severe illness. By the time the vaxxes were rolled out, there was a large portion of the population that was already seropositive for SARS-Cov2 antibodies, for whatever reason, and the more virulent but less-lethal forms were already spreading at that time, while the strains for which the vaxxes were designed were in decline. Sure, a correlation that things seemed better with the vaxxes, but no evidence of causation by the vaxxes.

In the meantime, we have no idea of the long-term harm caused by the vaxxes. I can tell you, however, that UK excess All Cause Mortality in 2023 YTD is running near 8% over the average of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 (that is how the UK Office of National Statics tracks and benchmarks this year’s stats). I can’t say this is caused by the vaxxes, but it is a heck of a correlation, as 2018, 2021, and 2022 were big death years, especially when one looks at the underlying age-stratified death data.

@Mr Hail et al, my observation of leaders is that they don’t have to have “big brains” ... in fact, that has proven a handicap for more than a few. What they do need is empathy with the common folk and a sense of understanding their pain, particularly when asking them to make sacrifices. A good leader will understand the pain of sacrifice he is asking the people to make, but is able to sell them on why that sacrifice might be good for them and their progeny. Trump had the empathy, and he could sell the future, but he had a unique talent for picking people who could sabotage the agenda as the ones who could execute the agenda. COVID is the most blatant example of that, but there are a number of other matters in evidence.

Mr. Pence is the classic grey man who rose to middling ranks for whatever reason. I would imagine he was moved like a chess piece, perhaps unwittingly, because yes, Cabal needs to have a few good people in the lineup for the purposes of appearing to be diverse in the other direction, albeit not too many. His stance on Jan 6 and a pardon of those involved may be from deep conviction in the rule of law, though he did indeed remain silent throughout a number of blatant violations of the rule of law during his tenure as VP, or perhaps he merely exercised discretion as a nod to knowing who butters his bread.

PS
Thx. Mr. Hail for your insightful Pence-portrait remarks!

Plus - - a bit about (not only!!!) Trumps best Covid-man Dr. Scott Atlas***:
***he was a top-expert, Trump chose - so: Kudos to him for that****!
****that might have bugged you and been a reason you didn't write the review yet - - - you find it hard to believe/swallow, I'd assume, that Trump chose such a good Covid-expert... - ?? -

Now we're three here in the Dr. Scott Atlas camp (Adam, of course - and: - - I've mentioned Atlas here a lot - maybe a dozen times). I may add to your picture one thing: Atlas did openly attack all of the beauraucrats (CDC/administration/etc. ALIKE) - for not reading research papers - - - NOT ONCE! - Just TV-clips and press-quotes - - - . - So that sure was also true for Mike Pence: Read not a single research paper! - Might also be true for Ron DeSantis (who did attack TRump lots of tiems - because he found, that Trump was to weak (!) on Covid, btw.). Later Ron DeSantis hired his Scot Atlasses - not least in the person of the very competent anti-vaccine-panick vaccination expert Prof. Christine Stabell-Benn from Denmark. Mind you: She says, the vaccines sure did some good - and that we'd still needed more research to find out, whether (and in case: How much) benefits the mRna-vaccines even brought with them - (they, she writes, sure did bring benefits) - - and how the balance looks like: Was it positive in the end - - -or negative?

She says for the mRNA-vaccines this is an open question, for the adenovector-vaccines, she presented data shwowing that they did safe quite some lives - and did shorten hospital-times. - See how close together Trump and Ron DeSantis are here - - -most people would be totally confused about what the best vaccine-researcher in the DeSantis team says and - what the Trumper is saying aboit the vaccines. I'd think, that even most of the Peak Stupidity readership would fail the blind test if somebody would have asked about Ron DeSantis' team take on vaccines...
Ok - - and a caveat: As I said often times: All that changed after Omicron (=after Dec. 2021). The vaccines then were definitely unnecessary - as they - according to Stabell-benn, were before for the healthy below 60, by and large.

PS
I would read your The Plague On Our House/Scott Atlas essay anytime. If you don't find the time to do much about it - - you might do like Tom Wolfe famously did in the case of - was it his NASCAR-feature? - : He simply published what he thought were just his notes - - -

PS: Good evening, everyone,

So, I've been goofing around with an AI art generator.
I had it draw me a Mike Pence...

https://i.ibb.co/QmHPnV9/Mike-Pence.png

And then I had it draw me Mike Pence as an African American...

https://i.ibb.co/x2DxJ5j/African-Mike-Pence.png

Cheers!

☮

PS

(from original entry)
"Candidate Donald Trump picked Mike Pence to be his VP-candidate back in '16. I don't know what his decision was based on. Mike Pence was not some high-seniority Senator with a lot of pull..."

This is why Trump picked Pence:

The mood as of mid-2016, when Trump made the VP pick, was that Trump would lose the election to Hillary because of some combination over outrage over Trump's racism-and-sexism, plus loss in confidence by conservatives that Trump was a conservative at all.

Trump and his somewhat-ramshackle campaign had little control over the people outraged over supposed racism and sexism, and that he continued to survive the slings and arrows astonished virtually everyone. It was decided that his best chance to win in November 2016 was to shore up the reliable-R-voters who were wary that Trump was a fake.

The Pence pick was specifically to try to keep conservatives on board a demagogic populist-nationalist(-looking) train.

It's hard to remember Trump thinking that way, but he did (or was convinced to) back in mid-2016.

PS

-- On the characteristics of good leadership; Trump, DeSantis, Pence --

SafeNow wrote:

"Trump or DeSantis not only need to pick advisers with the same agenda…they need to have the humility to hire 'the biggest brains.' (That is, best qualified who will work for them). Does DeSantis do this, or does he just hire a midpack guy with the same agenda?"

At times I have put much thought into what constitutes good leadership vs. poor leadership.

As with most things, most people who try things are somewhere in the middle. But there are in theory some identifiable traits that can define "good" leadership" and some that end up associated with "bad" leadership.

Millions of pages-worth of words on this subject must have been written over the years, and all kinds of ideas can come to mind on this complex question, varying somewhat by conditions as-encountered that triggered the thoughts. But one thing that one always comes back to:

Good leadership means getting good people involved in the endeavor and giving them leeway to make things happen within their domains.

Andrew Carnegie, who by any account was a wildly successful leader (and not just in industry), always said that he made sure to always surrounded himself by people "cleverer" than himself. He said it never failed to advance the business.

Poor leaders, meanwhile, end up promoting Yes-Men, or wallowing in nepotism, or simply losing any control of an organization (as with those particularly weak monarchs from the yellowed-pages of history who get dominated by scheming courtiers).

I think DeSantis' actions indicate that at the state level (an important caveat, I suppose), he does display many of these traits of effective leadership. Remember that he has also used the corollary of good hiring: Good firing. He axed a few left-wing district-attorneys and diversity-bureaucrats. Meanwhile, the state government has had zero cases of major infighting that we have heard about. The best they could come up with was that mentally unbalanced Woke-woman who claimed DeSantis was hiding a surge of Covid deaths, which was just a lie.

As this Peak-Stupidity entry is on Pence, though, a word about Pence before I close. Is Pence a good leader in the sense of good hiring? I don't know, but someone familiar with his term as governor might give some insight on that. But it might be a more-important question than his an attempt to dig down to find his specific views on this-or-that. I will say this: There would be no figure like Kushner under a chief-executive Pence.

PS

I have two novel things to say about Pence:

(1.) Pence as Good Neighbor.

By wild chance, I met some people who once lived next to Pence and wife during one long-ago point in Pence's career. These erstwhile-neighbors were basically politically Blue, as far as I could tell, but they surprised me by praising what a good neighbor Pence and family were.

In the reminiscences of these people, the Pences were the kind of pillars-of-the-community that build places up. This view of Pence-As-Great-Neighbor was shared by both persons I met, so its wasn't some oddball, one-off view of one person. They also made semi-disparaging remarks about his political views but they doubled-down on the Pence-As-Great-Neighbor point.

.

(2.) Pence During the Corona-Panic of 2020, via Scott Atlas.

The most interesting portrait of Pence I have ever read is that in the Scott Atlas book about the White House Covid Task Force. I wrote down notes while reading the Atlas book, quite a while ago now, but (so far) have not gotten around to writing them up as planned. I write this without consulting those notes:

The Scott Atlas book depicted Pence as a neutral figure, presiding over the "Covid Task Force" something like a near-retirement navy admiral might preside over something he is shuffled into such as a Light House Oversight Board -- not doing a bad job, but not showing great enthusiasm or taking strong stands.

Pence's role during the Corona-Panic was neither villainous nor heroic. The heroes of the hour were those who few who spoke out against the Panic and tried to take active measures to defuse the Panic or slay the Panic-dragons being released into the village by the Pro-Panic side. This was DeSantis' role, by about May 2020 and onward.

Scott Atlas, you may recall, was the only hardline Anti-Panicker in the Trump inner-circle during many of the crucial months of 2020, I think it was July to November/December 2020. He is not necessarily a writer skilled at trying to weave a page-turning narrative, though he does write several characters as overt villains (the arch-villain being Deborah "Scarf Lady" Birx). For Pence. Atlas just gives someone who passes no comment on what he hears, neither starting fires around town nor aggressively deputizing villagers to put out the fires.

There was one scene where Atlas explained to a handful of neutrals why x y and z were wrong and what to do about it, and Pence listened and nodded along, said he agreed, but then did nothing with the information. Still, Atlas does not criticize Pence in the book once that I now recall.

Maybe of us identified a coup d'etat associated with the Panic in 2020. Pence is savvy enough to have recognized it. If a counter-coup was to occur, it could not have come through his efforts alone. Pence had to answer to Trump, and Trump had been largely immobilized by the Panic. (Trump, by the way, essentially never appears in the Scott Atlas book except around once. But Kushner appears a lot.)

Who are we to be angry at that the U.S. government became puppetized by Flu Panickers for so long? If going by the portraits as given by Scott Atlas, Pence is far down the list.

PS: Adam, because I don't "partake" of the Lyin' Press, I am always amazed, and probably more disgusted than most just due to shock value, at the way people talk about the J6 protests and riots. That's all it was at most, and using ringers to egg it on at that. Anything more, as Pence put it, is evil lies.

I didn't watch your video yet, Alarmist, but the voice is still in my head from '92 (or so).

PS

PPS ... Tucker reminds me of Dana Carvey doing Ross Perot:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_RtNzJyAJk&pp=ygUwZGFuYSBjYXJ2ZXkgcm9zcyBwZXJvdCBhZG1pcmFsIHN0b2NrZGFsZSBzbmwgY2Fy

PS

Pence is a Cabal tool. His stance on 6 Jan is proof.

RFK Jr’s voice is the result of a neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia. I don’t know if he ever connected the dots to a vaccine injury, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Ron Paul would not know how to get things done. He doesn’t have the stomach for the mass purge and liquidation of whole swaths of the bureaucracy and deep state. Same goes for Mr. Trump. Oddly enough, based on events at Gitmo during his time there, DeSantis might. Hillary would definitely launched a mass purge of the right by 2018, so we dodged a bullet.

Carlson has the voice of your crazy old conspiracy-theory loving uncle. I would not change a thing.

This whole mess will end with right-wing death squads, and not just in the US.

PS: Greetings, everyone,

Mike Pence is a clown...
https://i.ibb.co/gt9dtSC/Mike-Pence-Clown.jpg

He's wrong about the J6 political prisoners and he's dangerously wrong about the Ukraine.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pence-us-role-in-ukraine-trump-nikki-haley-desantis/

☮

PS: Dieter, Tucker could just make an effort to lower his voice, and keep the sarcasm down to a low roar. That would do it.

Kennedy seems to have a real health problem there - sounds like Alex Jones, but I don't know what the deal really is with Alex Jones' voice. I always figure he should just swallow a gulp of water now and then. Has he tried that??

BTW, there are things I don't like at all about RFK, Jr. anyway. If I recall right, it was that he was a Global Warming Panic pusher, and maybe more than that.

PS: Agreed about Trump and the GOP, Mr. Blanc, and same with Ron Paul's attempt back in '12. Even with all the hatred from the Establishment that he's not one of them, well, I don't know if he or Ron Paul would scare the Establishment more.

After all, especially now, they know Trump doesn't actually get a whole lot done. Ron Paul WOULD know how to get things done, but his agenda scares even decent Conservatives, as talk about the FED and sound money and an economic collapse is something they seem to not want to hear about.

OTOH, Trump has a bigger mouth, and that mouth can be a very good thing as far as garnering support, meaning peeling people away from the Establishment.

PS
Tucker Carlson's voice would stand between him and the electorate - - - same as in the Kennedy case - but with Kennedy it is even more so. Its like a pro wrestler with one arm or such mishap.

PS The employer class love them some labor migration. The Repubs, not terribly successfully, have tried to hitch their wagon to the employer class. Therefore, the Repubs* will stick with labor migration until the bitter end (which is, perhaps, not far off).

* Mr Trump, so far as I know, was never really a Repub. He simply saw the Repubs as a way to satisfy his presidential ambitions.

PS: SafeNow, I think either could get by with underlings with the same (OUR) agenda, even if they are not so bright. All that have to do is be leaders and set the tone. If one guy starts going native and disobeying the ideas of the program, he gets fired, quickly. This just take management, but no doubt some help from a handful of bright guys who DO know lots of detail, like, say, Steven Miller re: Immigration.

Trump's problem, IMO, was UNDER-confidence in this specific job as President. I think he figured "well, this is not NYC Real Estate or a TV show, so I don't know the ropes. I'll hire guys who do." Sure, great idea, as long as you are sure they are on your side. Most of them weren't, but they'd spend a year or 2 there, getting in tweet battles with the freaking President, rather than at least (with the admission of his mistakes) getting shit-canned as soon as they started working against him.

PS

Pence is all you note, and another Israel-firster.

When do we get an actual America-First president? Hint: Mr. Trump was not that man.

PS
A few months I was watching the live broadcast of the world chess championship. Two Grandmaster commenters, one ranked approx world number 150, and the other around number 5. At one point, the former said to the latter “You have a bigger brain than I do”, (so what do you think about…”). This non-hubris phrase stuck with me, obviously, because here I am with it. Mr. M, my question: Doesn’t Trump or DeSantis not only need to pick advisers with the same agenda…they need to have the humility to hire “the biggest brains.” (That is, best qualified who will work for them). Does DeSantis do this, or does he just hire a midpack guy with the same agenda?