Posted On: Saturday - May 20th 2023 2:10PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Race/Genetics
It's only due to our having posted a long "fisking" of one of his Substack articles that Peak Stupidity is writing anything more about pundit Richard Hananai. Keeping up with the thousands, maybe millions of pundits (anyone can be one - you're lookin' at him!) with interesting commentary does not fall under Peak Stupidity's business model. However, since we gave this pundit a hard time in Trump v DeSantis: Round 7 - Richard Hanania Substack post yesterday, we need to follow-up in the interest of fairness.
Before I wrote yesterday's post, I read this interview of Richard Hanania on a website called Daily Campus. It's from over a years and a half ago, keep in mind. Mr. Hanania was billed as "President of the Center for Study of Partisanship and Ideology". The description of this "center", which doesn't have to be an actual place, and probably isn't, is on the CSPI "About" page. The "team" consists of Mr. Hanania, 2 other professors, a PhD candidate, and a communications director. They dole out small grants. Make of that what you will. Anyone can run a "center". The site's home page lists the Center's policy issues and positions there-on. It seems pretty Conservative, and I have no problem with any of them.
About that interview, now: It's fairly short and readable. I'll mention just 2 points I disagree with, with a general take in between. As I noted in that previous post about him, with the excerpt of a Steve Sailer excerpt of him (whewww!), his opinion on big media is way off:
The media does a good job holding the left accountable for outrageous stuff. But most stuff they let slide. Right-wing media doesn’t work either. Republicans don’t hold themselves accountable either.First of all, whaaaa?! Secondly, uhhh, Republicans ≠ right-wing. OK, well, he's clueless on how the Establishment/Regime media works and who they work FOR.
However, in almost all of this interview, Richard Hanania tells the truth, with some good points that Peak Stupidity would have endorsed, or already has. He talks about quite a few issues. In his answers on the appropriate issues, he is Steve Sailer - light. Very light. In his answers on the appropriate issues, he is Ron Paul - light, also very light. For a Professor, this guy doesn't think very deeply... yet. Hopefully, that's "yet" because he's a young fellow.
I chalk up to Richard Hanania's youth and inexperience that he is clueless on the American politics involving Donald Trump's presidency and campaigns and his and Ron DeSantis' motivations.
Then, one last question appears at the end:
Tell me about your opinion on COVID. Explain what you mean by, “COVID is the new TSA.”I sure like that line - we've written pretty much the same, in COVID / TSA twin peaks of stupidity, 3 years ago! Our pundit-under-review's answer:
You have this vaccine. The vaccine solves the problem. The odds of death or hospitalization are basically zero. You have to move on with your life at some point. People should get vaccinated and move on with their lives.Or, not. We could move on with our lives without taking this vaccine. That solved my problem even before there was one. I moved on by mid-March of '20. Unfortunately, the country didn't.
In fairness again, here's the rest of his answer - good enough for me:
The TSA basically makes you take off your shoes. They don’t work, and people are able to get stuff past them. There are not many terrorists out there. As a result, the TSA is just making air travel unpleasant and take forever. Similarly, if this is like COVID, we may need to wear masks for the rest of our lives. It’s a tragedy that we don’t let people move on. Anything beyond that is hysteria.Very good. Finally, I usually want images at or near the tops of the posts, but I'll note that Mr. Hanania is very based when it comes to race. I don't know, but it sure seems like he's getting his opinion and facts straight off of Steve Sailer's writing.
Yeah, I put aside my basic principles and went to a (his) twitter page. There's a lot more there. So, Richard Hanania is one of the good guys, BUT, he doesn't have the wisdom and depth of the kind of pundit I want to read from.
Keep on writing, and keep on learning, Richard Hanania.
Comments:
Hail
Monday - May 22nd 2023 12:28PM MST
PS
- What is Hanania's game? -
I read the Hanania article (Peak-Stupidity #2612) a few days ago. It reconfirmed my views on the man. I cannot now remember the exact points that occurred to me, but a skeptical or critical reading of the man's output reveals him to be a fraud.
I think your attempted magnanimous follow-up evaluation of Hanania (that he is "one of the good guys" but is just immature) is wrong in that I don't think you have properly placed him as a player within the proper game.
Let me try to explain what I think that "game" is:
Richard Hanania is a smooth-operating "troll," in the sense of making points for some reason -other- than to honestly make the ostensible points and put them into the universe of ideas.
Hanania says the things he does sometimes to entertain himself, more often to get attention, and generally-always to exploit a market-niche. The phrase that emerged a few years ago, "Hot Takes," which was meant ironically from the start, is a milieu he fits in well.
Hanania also operates with the usual Semitic non-reverence for the social-mores with which he knows well that Western-Christian types operate amongst ourselves, which set the tone and shape the bounds of discourse in our native environment, and which for historical-inertia reasons still dominate U.S. culture in certain ways despite the population that created them being increasingly marginalized.
In other words, and to put it quite harshly, Richard Hanania is a species of intellectual-political parasite.
His game only works among a host population like the one he swims amongst. It would not work so well in his own native environment.
Also in other words, Richard Hanania thinks we're all stupid enough to be suckered into a bad deal at the bazaar, and that HE can sell us on the bad deal and take our money. But he is not in the business of directly overcharging for market-goods to naive outsiders; he is doing an intellectual-political equivalent. The Semitic market instinct, though, is there. I think that if you read Hanania's commentary with this in mind, you "can't un-see it."
You might also put it this way: Richard Hanania does homemade "boob-bait-for-bubbas," or whatever the 2020s-Internet version of that would be and aimed not exactly at bubbas in the left-half of the IQ bell-curve but some Internet-culture variant of that, which include lots of higher-IQ people (and necessarily so, as it's political writing).
That Hanania became popular in Internet commentary shows that he was (some combination of) good at exploiting that aforementioned "niche"; and that he has, or has had, powerful friends to promote him, many of whom know his game and approve of it. Many of his promoters and "handlers" probably also assume he is useful as a gatekeeper or political 'cordon-sanitaire' patroller in the wilds of Internet-troll culture, which in the mid-2010s became alarmingly right-wing and even ethnonationalist, an unexpected development from the Regime perspective.
Hanania's strategy is really interesting sociologically or socio-politicallt, to me. It is more-or-less common in our time; it is recognizably in use by non-Westerners in the West, often to great effect. The latest addition is this Vivek Ramaswamiey, who launched into a minor career about two years ago in politics. He pitched himself as a patriotic, foreign-origin "tech-millionaire," though no one had ever heard of him; he e claimed to be anti-Wokeness and listed all the right bullet points in his spiels. Then, out of nowhere, the man claims he has a right to the presidency to rule over the USA, just because he is anti-Wokeness and has the usual South Asian elite politics-playing skills. (Incidentally, "Vivek" has been endorsed by Scott Adams, who is species of troll in his own right; you never know what angle Scott Adams is playing, though he is not malicious).
My evaluation of Hanania is, alas, a lot more negative than yours.
Another interesting thing I have seen from occasional observations of Hanania over the past two years or so is that I have never once heard what seems like a good original idea from him. He is a product of the "social media" era in a bad way.
- What is Hanania's game? -
I read the Hanania article (Peak-Stupidity #2612) a few days ago. It reconfirmed my views on the man. I cannot now remember the exact points that occurred to me, but a skeptical or critical reading of the man's output reveals him to be a fraud.
I think your attempted magnanimous follow-up evaluation of Hanania (that he is "one of the good guys" but is just immature) is wrong in that I don't think you have properly placed him as a player within the proper game.
Let me try to explain what I think that "game" is:
Richard Hanania is a smooth-operating "troll," in the sense of making points for some reason -other- than to honestly make the ostensible points and put them into the universe of ideas.
Hanania says the things he does sometimes to entertain himself, more often to get attention, and generally-always to exploit a market-niche. The phrase that emerged a few years ago, "Hot Takes," which was meant ironically from the start, is a milieu he fits in well.
Hanania also operates with the usual Semitic non-reverence for the social-mores with which he knows well that Western-Christian types operate amongst ourselves, which set the tone and shape the bounds of discourse in our native environment, and which for historical-inertia reasons still dominate U.S. culture in certain ways despite the population that created them being increasingly marginalized.
In other words, and to put it quite harshly, Richard Hanania is a species of intellectual-political parasite.
His game only works among a host population like the one he swims amongst. It would not work so well in his own native environment.
Also in other words, Richard Hanania thinks we're all stupid enough to be suckered into a bad deal at the bazaar, and that HE can sell us on the bad deal and take our money. But he is not in the business of directly overcharging for market-goods to naive outsiders; he is doing an intellectual-political equivalent. The Semitic market instinct, though, is there. I think that if you read Hanania's commentary with this in mind, you "can't un-see it."
You might also put it this way: Richard Hanania does homemade "boob-bait-for-bubbas," or whatever the 2020s-Internet version of that would be and aimed not exactly at bubbas in the left-half of the IQ bell-curve but some Internet-culture variant of that, which include lots of higher-IQ people (and necessarily so, as it's political writing).
That Hanania became popular in Internet commentary shows that he was (some combination of) good at exploiting that aforementioned "niche"; and that he has, or has had, powerful friends to promote him, many of whom know his game and approve of it. Many of his promoters and "handlers" probably also assume he is useful as a gatekeeper or political 'cordon-sanitaire' patroller in the wilds of Internet-troll culture, which in the mid-2010s became alarmingly right-wing and even ethnonationalist, an unexpected development from the Regime perspective.
Hanania's strategy is really interesting sociologically or socio-politicallt, to me. It is more-or-less common in our time; it is recognizably in use by non-Westerners in the West, often to great effect. The latest addition is this Vivek Ramaswamiey, who launched into a minor career about two years ago in politics. He pitched himself as a patriotic, foreign-origin "tech-millionaire," though no one had ever heard of him; he e claimed to be anti-Wokeness and listed all the right bullet points in his spiels. Then, out of nowhere, the man claims he has a right to the presidency to rule over the USA, just because he is anti-Wokeness and has the usual South Asian elite politics-playing skills. (Incidentally, "Vivek" has been endorsed by Scott Adams, who is species of troll in his own right; you never know what angle Scott Adams is playing, though he is not malicious).
My evaluation of Hanania is, alas, a lot more negative than yours.
Another interesting thing I have seen from occasional observations of Hanania over the past two years or so is that I have never once heard what seems like a good original idea from him. He is a product of the "social media" era in a bad way.
Moderator
Sunday - May 21st 2023 6:05PM MST
PS: I wish that was all they were doing, PM. (Heard that one years go.)
Thanks for the comment, and have a good evening.
Thanks for the comment, and have a good evening.
possumman
Sunday - May 21st 2023 1:13PM MST
PS TSA Thousands Standing Around
I was about to mention that I think Richard Hanania is kind of "glomming" off of people like iSteve, rather than having a lots of original thoughts about our society. I can see that from his being perhaps too young to be wise enough but also meaning he's not followed the whole long political story in the country. His take on Trump v DeSantis makes me wonder if he even followed the American political scene in '15 when Trump was "discovered". If Trump hadn't have come out swinging against illegal immigration and the harm therefrom, he'd have gone nowhere. Hanania seems to know nothing about that.
Yes, Hanania has his niche. There are so many thousands or millions of pundits with left-wing views, and almost all the Lyin' Press leans that way, so he wouldn't have an easy time going in that direction. Being on this semi-pro-White, alt-right-light side may be, or at least look, courageous of him, but he's joining a host of others anyway. (Did Hanania head in this direction after Scott Adam's "talk"?) That's not saying Richard Hanania doesn't believe in what he's writing, but that's easy - Steve Sailer's and John Derbshire's points are all true.
No, I don't think I've read any original ideas from him.
As for Vivek, R., I don't trust him a bit to really care about traditional Americans. Also, it's just ridiculous that we somehow don't have enough White Men to do a job like trying to set the country back on a decent course because we will get called more and worse names than someone of a different color or sex, their having some built-in immunity to that.