Trayvon's Tragic Trajectory: An Ethnic Community in Trouble

Cross-posted from abu al-fin

The tragic shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida has exposed the sad trajectory of entire generations of African American youth. Like so many young blacks, Trayvon emerged from a broken home, in an atmosphere where gangsta rap and gangsta-ism are the most prominent influences on young and formative minds.

Here is one aspect of the US black community which is often overlooked: The epidemic of fatherlessness and lack of non-criminal role models --

• 70% of all black children are born out of wedlock.
• 65% of never-married black women have children, double that for white women.
• 22% of never-married black women with incomes over $75,000 have children, 10 times that of white women.
• 62% of black families with children are headed by a single parent.
• 85% of black children do not live in a home with their fathers.
• Only 15-20% of black children born today will grow up with 2 parents until age 16.
• Over 80% of long-term child poverty occurs in broken or never-married homes.
• 70% of [black] boys in the criminal justice system come from single-parent homes. _LaShawn Barber_quoting from _A Portrait of the Black Family 2007 (PDF)

Research has demonstrated that crime and delinquency rates among youth raised without fathers, or where the fathers' minds are elsewhere, will be significantly higher on average.

Children are not typically born gangsters. But if the conditions of child-raising push the child in that direction, the trajectory can seem inexorable in hindsight. Parents can be helpless in the undertow of dysfunctional popular and community culture, in these situations. Parental guilt, when things turn out poorly, can be turned to paradoxical and exaggerated behaviours in blaming the "other," for the failures that lie within the family and the community.

All too often, mercenary lawyers and rabble rousers step into such tragic circumstances, and attempt to tip the already unbalanced emotions of a community to their own profit. Such is the case in the Trayvon tragedy, where a fairly straightforward case of self-defense becomes twisted by lawyers, media, and professional rabble into a national cause celebre of purported "racist vigilantism." There is also a curious and illegal $1 million bounty placed on the head of George Zimmerman, the admitted shooter, by the New Black Panther Party militant racialist group.

US President Obama had hoped that this incident would play well in his ongoing campaign for re-election. As it turns out, only by twisting the facts beyond recognition can the US President fit this tragedy into his already absurdly fictional narrative, and continue to obscure the growing tragedy of the US black community under his presidency.

The Black Family ... City Journal

Culture of Poverty .... table of characteristics from Stanford

For things to get this bad, the government had to have been involved . . . Thomas Sowell

STDs including HIV haunt US black communities

Sad reality of "crime and the black community" being covered up despite the promise of an open national discussion on race by Obama

More: Should the entire discipline of statistics be declared racist by governments?

Who Needs Apocalypse When You've Got Detroit?

Why use explosives when you can achieve similar results through political means?

Image Source

Failure like this is not built overnight. Decades of corruption, sloth, bad hiring decisions, political cronyism and depraved indifference to the needs of the poor were required to bring things to such a pass. No doubt Detroit has a generous pension program for all the wastrels and incompetents whose combined efforts created this train wreck. These people somehow manage to protect themselves even as they blight the lives and hopes of the inner city kids they were hired to serve. _WalterRussellMead

Leftist crony policies of the US Democratic Party are on display in Detroit, Michigan. If this level of devastation were to occur almost anywhere else in the US, the place would be declared a state of emergency, placed under marshal law, and razed to the ground for reconstruction. But it is only business as usual in the poster child city of the true-blue Obamaesque world of the new US political triad: The Democratic Party, organised labour, and the mob.

It is hard to see how a city recovers when things have fallen this far. Detroit’s voters do not seem interested in good governance, either unwilling or unable to penalize incompetence at the polls; the political class spouts blue liberal slogans but appears to have the compassion and generosity of a pack of velociraptors; the city’s core institutions have been so corroded and degraded after decades of decline that there is little hope for improvement anytime soon. _WalterRussellMead

How do US Democratic Party-dominated governments respond when the going gets tough? They cut vital services.

Located [next to Detroit] in an area already plagued by high crime and widespread urban decay, Highland Park has essentially signed a proverbial death warrant by cutting public power. The city has already lost nearly half of its residents over the past two decades and is reportedly $58 million in debt -- but the elimination of its street lights basically ensures its continued downward spiral.

"How can you darken any city?" asked Victoria Dowdell, a resident of Highland Park who, along with her neighbors, must now deal with pitch-black public streets after dark. "I think that was a disgrace."

Detroit has also cut various city services over the years as it edges towards bankruptcy. Mike Shedlock from Business Insider wrote last December that "Motor City" has been headed towards financial insolvency for many years. An attempt to stave off collapse, city officials there have also cut major services like street repair, garbage collection, and police forces in some areas. _Michigan Third World America

As Michelle Obama so often tells her husband, referring to the ingrates who fail to worship the first couple of the US with sufficient adoration: let them eat cake -- if they can find it!

Okay, perhaps she only behaves as if she says such things, without actually saying them. At least in public.

Who needs apocalypse when you have Doombama?

More on turning out the lights in crime-ridden cities

More here

Adapted from an article published previously on abu al-fin

Can Argentina Survive the Kirchner Curse?

Economist

The sudden death of former Argentinian president and key power-broker Nestor Kirchner has triggered a surge in stocks and bonds trading within the Latin American nation. Kirchner is considered largely responsible for the anti-business policies of Argentina which helped depress the business climate there in recent years. But is it realistic to assume that Kirchner's death will change anything?

Argentine bonds posted big gains and stocks hit a new record high Thursday as markets anticipated a more business-friendly environment following the death of former president Nestor Kirchner.

While presidents from across the region and supporters filed past Kirchner's coffin to pay their last respects, Argentina's Merval Index of leading shares topped a new record, rising 1.17% to 2954.86 points.

The gains were led by power and gas providers amid speculation that the government of President Cristina Fernandez, Kirchner's wife, may consider easing rate controls following his death...

...Kirchner, who was president from May 2003 to December 2007, died of a heart attack at the age of 60 in his home province of Santa Cruz early Wednesday. His wife succeeded him in the presidency. However, Kirchner was thought to play an active role in crafting economic policies in his wife's government that were characterized by heavy state intervention in the economy and hostility toward the private sector.

Many political analysts had expected Kirchner to run in the October 2011 presidential election as a way for the husband-and-wife team to alternate in power and avoid constitutional restrictions on term limits.

Besides stocks, investors also snapped up Argentina's sovereign debt amid the positive sentiment. _WSJ

Leftist leaders such as Obama and Raul Castro have expressed their deepest condolences at the death of Kirchner, while businessmen and economic traders of Argentina secretly celebrate and not so secretly begin buying assets and making hopeful plans for the future.

The future of Argentina depends upon whether Kirchner's widow, President Cristina Fernandez, is able to change course from the suicidal anti-economic policies influenced by her husband. Cristina's plan to steal private pensions for use by the federal government is typical of the stupidity of the Kirchner - Fernandez coalition -- but even if Cristina cannot learn, perhaps the people of Argentina can outgrow their Cinderella fixations.

The video below suggests that the inconsistencies of the Argentinian populists may come back to bite them. (via Cato, in Spanish)...

in a 1973 speech, none other than Juan Perón emphatically condemns the nationalization of private pensions, calling it “theft” and referring to public pension systems as generally “inefficient” and “unsafe.” He describes a previous episode in Argentina when a government in need of money nationalized private pensions and depleted workers’ retirement funds, using them for other purposes. It was an “assault.” _Cato

If the uber-populist Peron condemned the federal theft of private pensions, Cristina (without Kirchner's backing) may find it difficult to push through such oppressive, fascist, anti-private sector policies. But her inner core -- such as it is -- is not likely to improve or grow wiser.

Closed Minded Investigators Circle Wagons Against Wild Truths

There is always a tension, as [AF: an investigator], between asking open-ended questions that allow an interview subject to explain something and pressing or challenging them on accuracy or details. But if you think you already know the subject, or already have a story angle half-formed in your head, it's easy to overlook the first part. _Atlantic

Pundits, journalists, and investigators and researchers of all types most frequently go wrong when they begin their investigation with a pre-conceived opinion, a pre-fabricated conclusion. This bias is most clear in mainstream climate science, but it is also abundantly clear in just about any mainstream media investigation of a politically charged topic. If the journalist assumes a person is stupid, their stories will display abundant evidence of the person's stupidity. If journalists consider a person brilliant, the story will be built around the "evident" brilliance of the subject. Bias, bigotry, inflexible prejudice. And these people are the gatekeepers of "the truth."

In his new book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer cites a research study done by U.C. Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock. Tetlock questioned 284 people who made their living "commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends," asking them to make predictions about future events. Over the course of the study, Tetlock collected quantitative data on over 82,000 predictions, as well as information from follow-up interviews with the subjects about the thought processes they'd used to come to those predictions.

His findings were surprising. Most of Tetlock's questions about the future events were put in the form of specific, multiple choice questions, with three possible answers. But for all their expertise, the pundits' predictions turned out to be correct less than 33% of the time. Which meant, as Lehrer puts it, that a "dart-throwing chimp" would have had a higher rate of success. Tetlock also found that the least accurate predictions were made by the most famous experts in the group.

Why was that? According to Lehrer,

"The central error diagnosed by Tetlock was the sin of certainty, which led the 'experts' to impose a top-down solution on their decision-making processes ... When pundits were convinced that they were right, they ignored any brain areas that implied they might be wrong."

Tetlock himself, Lehrer says, concluded that "The dominant danger [for pundits] remains hubris, the vice of closed-mindedness, of dismissing dissonant possibilities too quickly." _Atlantic

In part, this is the phenomenon of the True Believer.  Humans are social animals and like reassurance that they are considered a valued part of the group.  It is also a manifestation of mental laziness.  It takes effort to change one's mind.  A person's entire life and lifestyle may be overturned by a justified and seemingly simple change of opinion.  In addition, as individuals age, they sink more deeply into the mental architecture they have constructed.

Personal opinions are fortified to protect the individual from the wildness and unpredictable threat "outside."  Stray too far from the safe, warm confines of personal prejudice and cognitive dissonance will swiftly set in.  Most modern humans are unequipped to deal with high levels of cognitive dissonance.  They quickly retreat back to the familiar. (PDF) They circle the bandwagons against the wild and unruly truths that howl in the night.(PDF)

This is our world, a world where college professors indoctrinate rather than educate, where journalists roam as a pack and savage anyone who threatens the dominant social and political memes, where scientists latch onto a theme which is popular with grant agencies and publishers -- and run with it despite all objective reality.

What would you like to do about it?

H/T Chicago Boyz

America is Last in the Race to the Bottom

Russia is a poor country with a rapidly aging population and a bleak future. The productivity of Russian workers is lower than that of workers in Botswana. Russian experts project that over the next 15 years, Russia’s working-age population could collapse by 14 percent to 25 percent. _American.com_via_StaticNoise

Multi-talented blogger, writer, artist, IT guy, philosopher and proto-human renaissance man Craig Wilms, discusses the growing sense of malaise in the US. Is America declining? Is there hope for the future?

Even when you consider that we have huge and looming problems as a nation our starting point as compared to the rest of the world is our ace in the whole. It has been said that when America catches a cold the rest of the world gets pneumonia. I think this is mostly true considering that the subprime mortgage disaster that set off this economic tailspin occurred in the U.S. and has now affected the entire global economy. Amazingly America has prospered despite everything the Congress, the unions and big business has done to neuter our competitiveness with our foreign rivals. Of course there is only so much even the remarkable resilience of the American backbone can withstand. We may be buckling, but so is the rest of the world. _StaticNoise

It may be cold comfort to tell ourselves that we are doing well--at least compared to the rest of the world. But cold comfort is better than no comfort at all. Seriously, Craig is correct. The US founding fathers, and the US Constitution gave the upstart colonies a "rule of law", opportunity society that produced the most economically dynamic nation the world has ever seen. Like a wildfire, Capitalism naturally generates its own "weather." There will always be ups and downs -- sometimes in very dramatic turns.

The trick is not to cripple your capitalist dynamos, so that your economy can recover from the downturns naturally. Europe has made the critical mistake of crippling its own capitalism almost beyond recovery. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have been flirting with the same "point of no return," only to step back from the brink time and again. With the election of the Obama / Pelosi reich, the US has embarked upon the same quasi-suicidal course as most of the developed world. The US under Obama / Pelosi is threatening to starve itself of energy, and to cripple its capitalist and innovative energies beyond repair.

Demographically, the US may look better than Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and the rest. Economically, the US starts from a superior position, and has much farther to fall. But with the election of Obama / Pelosi, the US has taken a huge downward lunge that threatens to make up much of the difference.

The resilience of democracies lies in their ability to vote out dysfunctional politicians and governments. But the weak spot of democracies is when the electorate becomes "dumbed down" in a sinking spiral. The US media, and US educational institutions have been "dumbed down" for decades, and have exerted a considerable dumbing down influence on recent generations of students and the public. It is impossible to build a solid structure out of crumbling concrete, rotted timbers and corroded steel (as China is also discovering).

If the downward freefall of the US (Canada, NZ, Australia also) lags somewhat behind the fall of other developed nations, it is possible that immigration of productive persons from the rest of the doomed, previously developed nations into the Anglospheric diaspora, will help maintain the superior productivity of the Anglosphere. In addition, at least 10% of children inside the US (and Anglosphere) are being given solid academic, emotional, and ethical foundations which will allow them to use the neo-technological tools of productivity to sustain their societies.

Kurzweil looks for the Singularity to save society. Drexler and others look for salvation in nanotechnology. Venter looks to synthetic biology. Some look to space, and space resources.

Here at Al Fin, we believe that it is the maturation and enhancement of the human mind that will create the circumstances that will allow the rest of the cornucopian and quasi-utopian expectations of The Next Level to come to pass.

Is America doomed? Perhaps. Perhaps all nation-states as such are doomed. A collapse of nations such as is described in Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, may come to pass within the next few decades. The possibility looks more real with each passing year.

In the meantime, pay attention. Recent events in Mumbai (Bombay) suggest that it is easier to cause extended critical disruptions in civil society than many people may have thought. The chaos of the third world will not remain there. Chaos and violence have a busy travel schedule planned, around the world. No nation will be immune. In the race to the bottom, it is the loser who wins.

Following Zimbabwe Down

Americans look at images of Zimbabweans eating insects, secure in the knowledge that "it can't happen here." Widespread starvation is something that happens in Africa or Southeast Asia. The US government would never allow things to get so bad here--unless the US were controlled by a leadership as corrupt as Zimbabwe's.

Rebecca Chipika, a child of 9, prods a stick into a termite mound to draw out insects. She sweeps them into a bag for her family's evening meal.


These scenes from a food catastrophe are unfolding in Doma, a district of rural Zimbabwe where journalists rarely venture. It's a stronghold of President Robert Mugabe's party and his enforcers and informants are everywhere.


...Survival is the obsession.


Cell phones operate only sporadically. State radio has not been received since the district relay beacon broke down eight months ago.


Mhangura, a town of about 3,000 people, has had no running water for months. Power outages happen daily because of a lack of cash to maintain utilities. People walk about three miles to a dam to fill pails or gasoline cans.


Some of the scarce water is used to embalm the dead in wet sand, a centuries-old African tradition to preserve a body until family members gather for the burial.


"There's nothing here. People are dying of illness and hunger. Burial parties are going out every day," said Michael Zava, a trader in Mhangura.


The hospital that serves the district is closed, and so is its small morgue, so there's no way of telling how many are dying, Zava said. Children's hair is discoloring, a sign of malnutrition. Adults are wizened and dressed in rags — they have no cash for new clothes.


Zava said he has seen villagers plucking undigested corn kernels from cow dung to wash and eat. A slaughtered goat is eaten down to everything but hooves, bones and teeth. Crickets, cicadas and beetles also can make a meal. _Yahoo

The Republic of South Africa is on a similar trajectory, perhaps a decade or so behind Zimbabwe in its descent. Both Zimbabwe and South Africa were once booming and prosperous exceptions to a continent full of post-colonial hell. With a change in leadership in both countries came rising violence and discrimination against the market-dominant minorities that had created their booming economies. As oppression against productive members of society grew, prosperity declined, and infrastructure rotted close to collapse.

Similar decline occurred in Uganda under Idi Amin, when he forced his market-dominant minority populations out of the country. Indonesia almost made the same mistake recently.

Any government of a relatively prosperous nation needs to understand where the productivity and prosperity of the nation comes from. It does not come from the size of the government bureaucracy, from the size of the military, or from the amount of taxes collected. The country's prosperity comes from profits produced by market enterprises. Anything that reduces or chokes off market enterprise reduces prosperity.

Market dominant minorities exist in third world countries--and third world regions of first world countries--because the indigenous majorities in those countries and regions are unwilling or unable to generate enterprise as productive as that generated by the market dominant minority.

When a new leadership arises in a nation, it is tempting for the new leaders to consider impinging on the freedoms of productive groups--to increase taxes, prohibitions, and regulations far beyond what productive members consider tolerable. Whenever leaders consider such harsh measures, they should consider the examples of Zimbabwe and South Africa--nations that flogged and are flogging their productive classes out of their respective countries.

As the ongoing third worldification of the developed western world's populations continues, it would behoove governments of the west to maintain the somewhat libertarian freedoms of relative equality under the law that have allowed current levels of prosperity. If the bounds on western governments put in place by enlightened documents such as the US Constitution are loosened by populist demagogues such as those who have destroyed and are destroying much of the third world, the future of the west--and the US--may become a replay of the descent of Zimbabwe into hell.

H/T Carl Brannen

If We Are to Survive This Dark Time

There is only too much reason to fear that Western civilization, if not the whole world, is likely in the near future to go through a period of immense sorrow and suffering and pain--a period during which, if we are not careful to remember them, the things that we are attempting to preserve may be forgotten in bitterness and poverty and disorder. Courage, hope, and unshakable conviction will be necessary if we are to emerge from the dark time ...

It is not the first time that such disasters have threatened the Western world. The fall of Rome was another such time ...

Two very different conceptions of human life are struggling for mastery of the world. In the West we see man's greatness in the individual life. A great society for us is one which is composed of individuals who, as far as is humanly possible, are happy, free, and creative. We do not think that individuals should be alike. ... He should have his personal conscience and his personal aims, which he should be free to develop except where they can be shown to cause injury to others. ...

If bad times lie ahead of us, we should remember while they last the slow march of man, chequered in the past by devastations and retrogressions, but always resuming the movement toward progress. ...

It is to the possible achievements of man that our ultimate loyalty is due, and in that thought the brief troubles of our unquiet epoch become endurable. Much wisdom remains to be learned, and if it is only to be learned through adversity, we must endeavour to endure adversity with what fortitude we can command. But if we can acquire wisdom soon enough, adversity may not be necessary and the future of man may be happier than any part of his past.

Bertrand Russell essay, 1961, "If We Are to Survive This Dark Time"

It took many tens of thousands of years for the right men (and women) to come together to create the most enlightened document of political governance known to history, in Philadelphia of the 1780s. It may take only a few years for the most unenlightened of humans to destroy that document, and the brave national experiment it has guided for just over two centuries.

If other nations were prepared to accept the standard of freedom and protection of individual rights from the excesses of government, the loss would not be as great to mankind as a whole. Without such alternate standard-bearers, a destructive retrogression to a malignant growth of the state at the expense of individual liberties and potential is virtually guaranteed. Things were proceeding in that direction in fits and starts, regardless. With a simple turn of the screw on a US November day, all obstacles to the free flow of populist decadence can fall away.