Part II of Steve Sailer’s Speech: “The Secret History of the 21st Century: How It’s Been Hiding in Plain Sight All Along”

Re-posted by N.S.

[Video and transcript, Part I: here.

Part III;

Part IV;

Part V; and

Part VI, the Conclusion of Steve Sailer’s Speech.]

Indeed, that’s one excuse for why my essays often seem to end abruptly without me wrapping up all I have to say on the topic in one ringing Gettysburg Address–like conclusion. Because connected ideas never really reach an end, they just go on and on. So when it gets along toward dawn, I say, “Enough” and I stop writing… for now.

A bigger career problem with my all-truths-are-connected view is that it’s not very prudent. Many pundits enjoy fine careers by telling many truths… but not all truths.

It’s worth pointing out that I, despite sometimes being labeled, perhaps inaccurately, a contrarian or iconoclast, tend to take the conventional wisdom seriously.

For example, it’s widely stated that Diversity is important, that Diversity is a defining aspect of our age.

And I think that’s true. The increase in Diversity has all sorts of important ramifications. So Identity Politics are worth thinking hard about.

But taking anything seriously means assuming that it has both pros and cons, which you definitely are not supposed to do with Diversity. In polite society, Diversity, instead, is Good, with a capital G.

[N.S.: What would be the “pros” of so-called diversity?]

Over time, American discourse has become literally more childish. Just like in a Marvel movie, where there are the good guys, whom you can distinguish from the bad guys because they wear slightly different sets of tights, in contemporary thinking there are increasingly the Good Guys, whom you can pick out by whether their identities are those considered to be the Good Guys, and then there the Bad Guys, for whom nothing more needs to be said.

But while childish thinking is fun—Marvel movies make a lot of money—it’s not all that accurate for understanding reality.

So let’s take a brief tour through what I call the secret history of the 21st Century: events that take on a very different look when seen through my view that Diversity matters, for good and bad.

(That reminds me: I’m [sic] got an anthology of my articles from the last 30 years coming out in a number of months. The tentative title is Noticing.)

The weird thing about my secret history is that it’s been hiding in plain sight all the time. My thesis tonight is that in response to the growth of Diversity, the two major parties promoted pro-Diversity programs and ideologies that have had massive consequences, sometimes unfortunate.

[N.S.: When have the consequences of said programs not been unfortunate?]

Let’s start on September 11, 2001. I sat down that evening and wrote a news article that began:

Bush had called for laxer airport security

Ironically, in an attempt to appeal to the growing number of arab-American and muslim voters, exactly eleven months ago George W. Bush called for weakening airport security procedures aimed at deterring hijackers.

On Oct. 11, 2000, during the second presidential debate, the republican candidate … said …, “arab-Americans are racially profiled in what’s called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that.” … Bush went on, “My friend, Sen. Spence Abraham [the arab-American republican senator from michigan], is pushing a law to make sure that, you know, arab-Americans are treated with respect. So racial profiling isn’t just an issue at the local police forces. It’s an issue throughout our society. And as we become a diverse society, we’re going to have to deal with it more and more.” [UPI, not published until several days after September 11, 2001.]

There was nothing out of character about Bush’s attack on airport security profiling in the name of pleasing a growing immigrant group, which he tasked Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta with launching a few months before 9/11. The brains of the Bush operation, Karl Rove, often publicly declared that Republicans in 2000 would emulate Republicans in 1896, when William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryan by getting more immigrant voters.

Five years after 9/11, the airline ticket clerk who first checked in Mohammed Atta, a guy named Michael Tuohey, went on Oprah and said:

“I said to myself, ‘If this guy doesn’t look like an arab terrorist, then nothing does.’ Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it’s not nice to say things like this,” he said.… “I got an instant chill when I looked at [Atta]. I got this grip in my stomach and then, of course, I gave myself a Politically Correct slap.”

And he waved Atta through.

But of course nobody outside of this room noticed any of this at the time, much less remembers it now. It just doesn’t fit within anybody’s worldview. To Democrats, George W. Bush was a racist and to Republicans he was a hero, so nobody can learn anything from events, even events as memorable as 9/11.

[End of Part II.]