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How To Spot An Honest Intellectual

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Friday, Feb 02, 2024 - 23:15
Two public intellectuals in 18th century garb.

Honest Intellectuals Versus Strivers

Regular readers may recall our friend Mocha's guest post last week about why Trump defeated DeSantis ("Everyone Hates Strivers"). 

In today's guest post, she extends her striver theory to public intellectuals, identifying a handy heuristic for determining which ones are honest: the ones who are willing to hold low class opinions. Following that, we'll close with a brief investing update related to today's big move in Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook). 

Authored by Mocha of The Temple of Friendship [Bracketed clarifications and emphasis ours].

The Importance Of Appearing Low Class

Both Eric and Bret Weinstein are uncool nerds: they take themselves too seriously, they are both unfunny and you can’t accuse them of having an abundance of charisma [Eric is a mathematical physicist and hedge fund director who used to work for Peter Thiel; Bret is a biologist]. But for some reason, everyone agrees that Bret is the better brother. Not coincidentally, he is also the brother that was willing to alienate his peers in academia by being lockdown and vaccine skeptic during the early period of Covid pandemic. Eric, of course, had to publicly disavow his own blood for his dangerous views and distance himself from unsophisticated people. I would argue that Bret’s willingness to take a position that has long been associated with an unintelligent and unsophisticated crowd is what makes him a better brother.

Bret Weinstein with Tucker Carlson.

Being able to hold low class views is a sign that you are confident in your cognitive abilities, more than willing to stand for something and don’t depend on approval of your peers.

That also explains why everyone seems to hate Richard Hanania [readers may recall Hanania was kind enough to let us excerpt one of his posts here last year]. One could say that people hate him because he is an annoying contrarian but so is Michael Tracey and his obnoxious takes do not seem to inspire so much discomfort in my entire being. Tracey is a contrarian because he is an Ellis Islander that never learned how to use fork, Hanania is contrarian because he wants to distance himself from views that people whose favor he seeks, deem stupid. Well, he is also an ethnic that wants to fit in [Tracey is an Irish-American while Hanania is a Palestinian American].

Hanania does not believe in anything. I was impressed by his ability to rise above his tribal loyalties after the October 7 massacre and disavow the violence that occurred. After all, how many Palestinians in the west were willing to do the same? [One notable ethnic Palestinian who disavowed Hamas's attack was El Salvador's Nayib Bukele]. People in that region are not exactly known for their ability to overcome their provincial sensibilities.

But it soon became apparent that he was performing. Hanania started advocating for ethnic cleansing of his own people because they were too hateful to co-exist with Jews but somehow not so hateful that they cannot be sent to America, Israel's biggest supporter and just as hated by people in the region. He also does not seem to think that Americans just like Israelis deserve the right to live in peace and choose who is allowed into their country, and calls people who are appalled by Biden’s open border polices, scared and racist.

Hanania is not exactly a stupid guy, so it is reasonable to expect some intellectual consistency from him. But that is not what he is after. He desperately wants to be accepted by respectable people. If that means advocating for more destructive bombing campaigns against his people or supporting policies that can actually make the country he currently resides in worse and less cohesive he would do it. Hanania needs to signal that he is not one of the “undesirables”, whether it is other Palestinians or Trump voters. He loves vaccines, open borders and Nikki Haley.

We can compare Hanania to Steve Sailer. Hanania is an immigrant striver who wants to be accepted, Steve Sailer is a man who is committed to truth. Sailer does not try to fit in, so he is able to be honest about everything, whereas Hanania has to pretend that there's no downside to mass immigration, or say that Republicans are stupid to flatter the sensibilities of the cosmopolitan left-of-center types who granted him respectability after his alt right shitposting career was exposed.

In a way, Hanania is similar to Sailer's most recent opponent Will Stencil, who is also a midwit striver.

But Hanania's striverism will also be his downfall. He is so desperate to fit in that he is incapable of noticing how trends have changed and now people like Elon Musk and  Bill Ackman are openly criticizing Biden's border policies: hardly an unsophisticated duo taking a position that was previously attributed to toothless hicks.

That brings me back to my original point: people who are unwilling to hold low class views are not to be trusted. I can never take one seriously as an intellectual unless they hold at least one unsophisticated opinion. Whether it is liking McDonald's and Michael Bay or believing that something was wrong with 2020 election, I need to know that you have enough confidence in yourself to believe in things that are unpopular with your peers. Only people who have a strong sense of self can afford to sound like a hick when the hicks are right.

Would You Like To Know More? 

You can follow Mocha on X here and check out her podcast here. 

You can follow Steve Sailer on X here and check out his book below.

Investing Update: Meta Platforms Soars

At the end of our previous post (America's Stealth Reparations), we shared our current top ten names holdings, one of which was Meta Platforms (META), and the returns of each since we bought them as part of our core strategy (Our core strategy is to buy equal dollar amounts of the Portfolio Armor web app’s top ten names, put trailing stops of 10%-15% on them, and replace them with names from the current week’s top ten when we get stopped out of a position.). 

Since then, META shot up 20.32% today, after crushing earnings estimates and initiating a quarterly dividend. Here is our updated top names performance, as of Friday's close. 

The big difference is we're now up 140% on META, versus being up about 100% on it yesterday. 

 

If You Want To Stay In Touch

You can scan for optimal hedges for individual securities, find our current top ten names, and create hedged portfolios on our website. You can also follow Portfolio Armor on Twitter here, or become a free subscriber to our trading Substack using the link below (we're using that for our occasional emails now).

 

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