Power is the ability to control other people. There are at least three major ways to control people: 1) winning hearts, 2) winning minds, and 3) winning wallets. Thus, there are at least three major elites in America: The popular elite (those with political capital), the cultural elite (those with cultural capital), and the financial elite (those with financial capital).

Thus in order to make a list of the 100ish most powerful people in America, I simply took the top few dozen from each category (a few elites belonged to more than one category). Of course this is greatly oversimplified, but it might give you a rough and ready idea of who runs the country.

The Popular Elite (the conventionally powerful)

The popular elite are those who have achieved their elite status through the power of the people. They are the people who have won America’s hearts. America claims to be a democracy and in a democracy popularity = power, so the popular elite is simply the few dozen most worshiped Americans (as identified by Gallup):

1. Barack Obama
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Oprah Winfrey
4. Condoleeza Rice
5. Bill Clinton
6. Michelle Obama
7. Rev. Billy Graham
8. George W. Bush
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Sarah Palin
11. Ben Carson
12. Bill Gates
13. Bill O’reilly
14. George H.W. Bush
15. Mitt Romney
16. Joel Olsteen
17. Elizabeth Warren
18. Laura Bush
19. Barbara Bush
20. Ellen DeGeneres
21. Beyonce Knowles
22. Scarlett Johanson
23. Thomas Monson
24. Donald Trump
25. Colin Powell
26. Jimmy Carter
27. Warren Buffet
28. Ted Cruz
29. Mike Huckabee
30. John McCain
31. Clint Eastwood
32. Glenn Beck
33. Brad Pitt
34. Newt Gingrich
35. Michelle Bachmann

The Cultural Elite (the intelligentsia)

The cultural elite are those who have achieved their elite status through the power of their ideas and arguments. They are the people who have won America’s minds, or at least the minds of the elites. According to Atlantic Monthly, these are the top columnists, bloggers and broadcast pundits who shape the national debate:

1. Paul Krugman
2. Rush Limbaugh
3. George Will
4. Thomas Friedman
5. David Brooks
6. Charles Krauthammer
7. Glenn Beck
8. Frank Rich
9. Andrew Sullivan
10. Karl Rove
11. Sean Hannity
12. David Broder
13. Peggy Noonan
14. Rachel Maddow
15. Arianna Huffington
16. Fareed Zakaria
17. Maureen Dowd
18. E.J. Dionne
19. Bill O’reilly
20. Keith Olbermann
21. Kathleen Parker
22. Glen Greenwald
23. Nicholas Kristof
24. William Kristol
25. Robert Samuelson
26. Dick Morris
27. Eugene Robinson
28. David Ignatius
29. Josh Marshal
30. Mark Levin
31. Holman Jenkins
32. Bill Moyers
33. Richard Cohen
34. Jonah Goldberg
35. Gail Collins

The Financial Elite (the rich)

Last but certainly not least, are the financial elites. They have the power to win America’s wallets. Thier campaign contribution can decide which popular elites can run for president and their ability to buy newspapers and cable networks determine which cultural elites get to have a platform and which popular elites get good publicity. Never underestimate the power of money. The financial elite are simply the few dozen richest billionaires in America according to authoritative Forbes magazine:

1. Bill Gates
2. Warren Buffet
3. Larry Ellison
4. Charles Koch
5. David Koch
6. Christy Walton & family
7. Jim Walton
8. Michael Bloomberg
9. Alice Walton
10. S. Robson Walton
11. Mark Zuckerberg
12. Sheldon Adelson
13. Larry Page
14. Sergery Brin
15. Jeff Bezos
16. Carl Icahn
17. George Soros
18. Steve Ballmer
19. Forest Mars Jr
20 Jacqueline Mars
21. John Mars
22. Len Blavatnik
23. Phil Knight
24. Harold Hamm
25. Michael Dell
26. Charles Ergen
27. Paul Allen
28. Laurence Powell Jobs & family
29. Anne Cox Chambers
30. Ray Dalio
31. Donald Bren
32. Ronald Perelman
33. Rupert Murdoch & family
34. Jack Taylor & family
35. John Paulson

Here’s an interesting article by journalist Daniel Seligman. If you read the article, let me know what you think his IQ is.

The reason I am asking you to estimate Seligman’s IQ is because many years ago, Seligman was administered the WAIS-R. He once published a lively description of what it was like to take the WAIS-R. Although he did not reveal his IQ score, he revealed enough information about how he did on a few subtests that an expert can approximate his IQ from a limited number of subtests he did mention.

But since 99.999% of us are not experts, his IQ is not publicly known, so please guess his IQ from the article he wrote, and I will see if anyone guesses close to the right number.

Lion of the Blogosphere has a good post up about the media’s double standard when it comes to calling out presidential candidates (and their families) for promoting pseudoscience. Perhaps there was no more glaring an example of this hypocrisy than the recent controversy over presidential candidates giving credence to the discredited alleged link between vaccines and autism. When Republican candidates like Governor Christie and Rand Paul expressed ambivalence about vaccines they were derided as anti-science loons and a menace to public health, but when far more influential Democratic candidates did the same thing, liberal elites were either silent, or claimed they were taken out of context.

For example in 2008 Hillary Clinton stated in a written response to the issue:

I am committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines

One of the few liberal publications that was honest enough to admit that candidates on both sides of the political spectrum have waffled on the vaccine issue is Ezra Klein’s Vox, which noted that in 2008, Barack Obama said the following:

We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included (gesturing to an audience member). The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.

So how did liberals react when they learned that their God Obama waffled on this all important issue. Similar to how they reacted to the news that their other God, Charles Darwin expressed pro-HBD views. By either outright denial blaming Vox for misrepresenting Obama, or my favorite, claiming Obama was taken out of context: “What he really meant was….”

Apparently, when Obama said “the science right now is inconclusive”, he only meant the science of what causes autism. He couldn’t possibly have meant the science of autism and vaccines, because suggesting a link between vaccines and autism would have made Obama as ignorant or as evil as a Republican, and that’s just not possible because he’s an elegant svelte Democrat who went to Harvard (and half-black to boot!), not an overweight prole Republican like Chris Christie or an uneducated playboy model like Jenny McCarthy. Only the latter two could genuinely be evil or ignorant enough to promote the pseudoscientific anti-vaccine movement, Democrats tell themselves, ignoring the fact that elite liberal regions of America are the most afflicted with anti-vaxxers.

But it should be obvious to any honest liberal that part of Obama’s genius is he’s able to make statements that are ambiguous enough that he can pander to one group at one time, but have plausible deniability if and when his liberal defenders need to cover for him.

Rating: 9/10

Recently I was looking for a good movie to watch.  I was about to order another Atom Egoyan movie on demand when I suddenly remembered that a commenter on this blog named “Mugabe” had repeatedly praised the movie Little Children as the best movie since it’s release in 2006, recently saying:

this movie is not entertainment.

it’s serious.

it’s adult…in the good sense.

too many with children are still children themselves however old they may be in years.

Since I like serious adult movies and was curious to see if someone who claims such a high IQ has good artistic taste, I searched the on demand movies to see if it was available and started watching.

The movie was about a group of suburban stay-at-home moms (and one stay-at-home dad) and the childish ways they behave.  As Mugabe implied, you think the title of the films refers to the children they are raising, but it may refer to the parents themselves.  But in the tradition of American Beauty, it’s also just about the deadness of suburbia.

It’s almost Darwinian in the sense that if life evolved to reproduce, then once we reproduce our lives become meaningless.  They are no longer about ourselves, but about our children.  Almost as if we start dying the moment our children are born.  They replace us.

And so the film is full of parents trying to recapture their youth.  There’s the stay-at-home dad (played by Patrick Wilson) who spends night after night watching teenagers skateboard hoping they will invite him to join, and even starts playing evening football with a bunch of cops because it reminds him of his glory days in high school.  There’s the stay-at-home mom (played by Kate Winslet) who has an affair because it brings excitement back into her life.  There’s the suburban book club, desperate to get younger women to join.

It’s an extremely powerful movie about how we give up our lives for our children.  In one case, literally.

[Update April 6, 2017:  For an alternative take on this topic, please see Dominance and Gender by Afrosapiens]

Since becoming a celebrity, I’m always looking at what other famous bloggers are writing about, and few bloggers are more famous than Chateau Heartiste. To countless men on the internet looking for love, Heartiste is God, and rightfully so. Of course skeptics think the type of dating tips found in the manosphere are useless because women are either physically attracted to you or they’re not, and there’s nothing you can do to manipulate them. But that’s only half true.

Recently Heartiste was blogging about the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey, a book turned movie about a woman who starts dating a very dominating man. Heartise writes:

I believe women are aroused by assholes qua assholes because assholes are, above all, INTERESTING men. They aren’t like the mediocre masses of rapidly feminizing beta males. You want masculine, virtuous men of the West? The path to that nirvana is blazed by the swashbuckling assholes.

I remember in university I was doing some presentation with a complete moron, who kept pestering me with stupid questions about when I was supposed to speak and when he was supposed to speak. Finally, I lost my temper and yelled and berated him for his utter incompetence in front of the entire class. But what I’ll never forget was how sexually aroused a female classmate was upon observing my act of dominance. The expression on her face is seared permanently into my brain. [update march 29, 2017:  One reader thought this was mean, but the guy was way too popular and over-confident to have been bothered by a nobody like me putting him in his place for one brief moment]

I believe that in prehistoric times, women who were sexually aroused by submissive men had fewer surviving offspring, because those men got dominated by other men, and thus couldn’t provide for their women and children. As a result, largely the genes of women who like dominant men, and thus like being dominated, got passed on. Similarly, men who like feeling dominant, also passed on more genes, because men who are dominant in all aspects of their lives acquire more resources and status, which in prehistoric times, meant more genetic fitness.

But there’s a dark side to this. Because so many women like being dominated, they are more likely to tolerate physical and emotional abuse in relationships, and are less likely to strive to positions of power in society. In some ways, to be sexually fulfilled, women must sacrifice their dignity.

There’s also a dark side for men. Because men are turned on by being dominant, they are more likely to engage in rape and other sadistic acts, because for some men, consensual sex is a turnoff. If the woman is agreeing to the sex, she’s not being dominated, which ruins the experience for a lot of men. The dark truth is that a lot of men are so evil, they go home every night and have sex with their wives, while fantasizing about jumping out of the bushes and raping some completely random lady on the street.

So how does understanding all this help men get women to be attracted to them? The trick is to make women feel dominated, but a man should never, under any circumstances, hit a woman, rape a woman, or cause her physical harm. You should also never play some disgusting S&M role playing game. For one thing, if a women is agreeing to be dominated, then by definition she’s not being dominated, since she’s getting what she wants, and she knows it, and more importantly, she knows you know it.

A man should never, ever, EVER, hit a woman or rape a woman, but that doesn’t mean you can’t show your superiority in other ways. Most women suck at video games, chess, and pocket billiards, so get her to play those games with you and obliterate her every time. Remind her that you’re better at math than she is, and you’re better at fixig things around the house. Be arrogant, but come across as sincere in your arrogance. But be subtle enough about it that she never catches on that you’re using some kind of strategy on her.

The other key is to never disrespect your girlfriend in front of others, especially family, coworkers, or friends. What you must understand is that women are multidimensional beings. Just because the sexual part of them wants to be dominated, doesn’t mean there aren’t other parts of her that want respect.

So give a woman plenty of respect, but never for any dominant traits. Never praise her intelligence, her income, her career; instead tell her how pretty she is, how sexy she is…praise her cooking, her cleaning, her body…tell her she’d make an excellent mother.

The problem is, if a man does all this, and it works, then he ends up with a woman who enjoys being dominated, which means that in the relationship, the man doesn’t get to fulfill his genetic need to dominate, because dominating a woman who wants to be dominated is by definition not domination.

When one of my heroes dies, it seems I always learn about it first on Steve Sailer’s blog. I considered Carr to be the best columnist in the New York Times; in fact whenever I found myself bashing the Times, a voice in the back of my head would say “David Carr writes there so it can’t be all crap.” Indeed I think a large part of the incredible prestige and influence of The New York Times is that they are able to hire the most talented writers.

Carr was absolutely brilliant, and the fact that he was a real American with a real background who lived a real life, and not some spoiled pampered Ivy League elite, made his rise to the pinnacle of the intelligentsia all the more impressive.