4 PMSM Reports On Trump's Speech

link (via Insty)

Wait...Trump is stoking the culture war? 

   Again: I haven't watched the speech yet. But...we have literal mobs of anarcho-communist Blackshirts rampaging through cities instigating race riots, beating anyone who they think even might be on the other side, and destroying symbols of American culture... We have one political party that went all-in on a 2-year hoax/lie that aimed to undermine and overthrow a duly-elected President.... We have a press that colluded with them in that effort, and that's now covering up the information that that's what happened... And that's sorta just for starters... I'm trying to think of what Trump could say that would constitute unwarranted "stoking" of the culture war in this context...

   And as for "warning of a left-wing cultural revolution"...the left itself is doing exactly that. I mean...what world are these people living in? The left is entirely up front about its goal of a cultural revolution. The president ought to be warning of it. They're warning of it!

   See, that there, what they're doing, has a name--one of the few useful, sensible terms/concepts popularized by the left. That there is whatcha call yer gaslighting.

   Look--see how stupid I am? I'm still getting mad at this stuff. As if the press were even vaguely objective--as if they were still journalists. Instead of propagandists for the very totalitarian, Orwellian left that Trump is allegedly warning about. I hope he did warn about it. What do you think a president ought to do under these conditions? 

   Is the idea that he ought to be unifying...who? Both patriotic Americans and the psychotic anarcho-communist faction that aims at our destruction? We need a uniter not a divider!

   Maybe someone could try that under less-insane conditions. But it would be absurd under these conditions. The press is going to twist and undermine absolutely anything he does. Find one thing they've praised him for. The blue team simply issues accusations of racism as a matter of course--so no matter what he says or does, those accusations will continue to fly. That's their one-and-almost-only argument anymore. They've having astonishing success repeating this one crackpot lie over and over and over and over again at absolutely everyone they disagree with. They're not giving that up until they start paying a price for it--which isn't going to happen any time soon. The Dems will do and say anything to destroy him. And the Blackshirts and their supporters can't be reasoned with .

Seriously, man. Stop and look at this situation objectively. 

This is madness.

Stop pretending that it's Trump and his supporters who are the problem.

"To the World, We’re Now America the Racist and Pitiful"

Honest question:

Is there a political faction in the USA that has helped to promote this view?

You know my view of the matter.

AP: "Trump Pushes Racial Division, Flouts Virus Rules At Rushmore"

LOOOOOOOL

Gosh, I'm sure that's a 100% accurate and objective report on the events of last night. I can't believe even Bad Orange Man would go so far as to push racial division on (nearly) the 4th of July...and at Mt. Rushmore!!!  This is the last straw!!!!! 

   I didn't read the story. I'll read it after I watch the speech.

   I listened to only a bit of his speech and then crashed. I find it painful to listen to him speak, and I was just too tired for it. Best to wait until fast-forward is an option. 

But here's my prediction: the AP is poisonously full of shit, and, for all the Bad Orange Man's myriad flaws, I'll bet the speech is just fine...though probably filled with evil, evil patriotism.

   I've said this stuff before, but: when I was a kid, there were lots of old dudes who said things like: the left wants to invert the old hierarchy and make it permissible/obligatory to discriminate against whites and men...they hate America...their ideals have more in common with those of the USSR than the USA... I thought it all absurdly false at the time. And for decades. Until now. Maybe most predictions come true if you wait around long enough. Or maybe I've flipped my lid. But the objective evidence of this seems to be on parade every day...it's not like they're keeping it secret or anything... And it can be said in my favor that, so long as the left was even vaguely centrist, I judged those assertions to be false. And my judgment that they've become true coincides with objective evidence of the left's radicalization and rejection of fundamental principles of American liberalism. Of course I'm not in the best position to make judgments about the truth of my own judgments. 

Happy Independence Day!

(Thought I posted this last night. Oh well.)

Progressive Maoism vs. The Emancipation Memorial

The woketarian cult is a bunch of idiot totalitarian children whose heads have been filled with anti-American propaganda.

It is, perhaps, slightly more complicated than that...but not a lot.

A $750 Ham

That must be some ham.

Biden: Statues Should Be Protected

Blogger sucks, and the formatting is screwed up on this post. Blogger refuses to undo the formatting, and I'm not going to retype it.

.

Well that's kind of a surprise.
I mean, it's such a complete no-brainer that no one gets credit for thinking or saying it...but still...it's kind of a surprise. He might lose the lunatic vote...which the Dems can't do without.
Here's a largely nonsensical quote:

I think there is a distinction between...reminders and remembrances of history, and recovering from history," Biden said. He cited former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu who said of Confederate statues in 2017, "There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it

 

.":

The Goal Of The PC Left Is To Ensure That Politically Incorrect Truths Can't Be Expressed *Anywhere*

Universities are supposed to be the places where the pursuit of truth is paramount. Thus if a faction can take them over and make sure that politically incorrect truths cannot be expressed there, it will have struck a grievous blow against inquiry. If that faction can also take over the press and other institutions that normally facilitate the dissemination of truth--in our time that includes sectors of the internet, including "social media"--that would constitute another dire injury. Having taken control of vast swaths of all these institutions, the PC left is farther along toward its goal of suppressing inconvenient truths than anyone could have guessed they would be by this point. 

   And, of course, they aren't merely suppressing politically incorrect truths, they're far along toward brainwashing society with politically correct falsehoods--like the open season myth. These are really flip sides of each other. There's no surprise that they tend to go together. 

   Once upon a time there was some hope that big tech would produce some kind of alternative to universities (and the press). It used to be largely libertarian. Its informal motto used to be "information wants to be free." Today, nothing could be farther from the truth.

   This shouldn't come as a surprise. It was always stupid for the voxish pseudonerds on the not-quite-insanely-radical internet left to pretend that universities didn't count. Why they think you can impose totalitarian thought control at universities without it affecting society more generally has never been clear. They seem to have not read their Lenin...which comes as quite a surprise given their views. It's rather like finding out that Jerry Falwell hadn't read the Bible.

   Bottom line: don't think that the totalitarian left's control of universities is something isolated to just one institution. It isn't. It's the most important institution to control, and they control it. Not only is it the institution that's supposed to inquire and disseminate truth, it's an institution that forms people's thoughts while they're young, and sends them out to take leading roles in other institutions. And so controlling it is a means to controlling those other institutions. 

   Universities are controlled by a lunatic cult. That cult spins out a web of delusions that aims, among other things, to bring down the United States and the West, replacing it with a totalitarian, antirational, antiliberal culture based on that web of delusions.

   Stop sitting back and pretending that this isn't happening. Stop pretending that it's guaranteed to fail. Neither of those things is true.

Trump and Biden: Both Full Of Shit On Flag-Burning

link

Trump's against it...well...I'm against it, too...but Trump has suggested that it should be illegal. Biden apparently has a long history of diligently trying to make it illegal--I did not know that. But now that psychotic hoards of leftist Blackshirts are cavorting across the country destroying artefacts of American culture, burning down buildings, beating non-leftists en masse, killing people, and burning flags...Biden's for it.

The Democrats in general, it seems, are for all of it. They're certainly not against it.

So, basically, Biden was wrong about it, but now has changed his mind in order to get political support from violent, anti-American totalitarian shitheads...coming to the right position for the very worst of reasons.

Fortunately, Trump's words aren't that consequential. This likely isn't what you'd call a carefully-considered position of his. That's one of his few saving graces--most of what he says is just the bullshit of the moment. Trump's casual bullshitting needn't be taken too seriously. He's not going to push for it, and could, undoubtedly be made to change his mind and move on to the next thing. The Biden business is much more sinister, IMO. 

   I'll fight anti-flag-burning legislation to my last breath...but...not necessarily right now. When you've got neo-Maoists stampeding through your cities, you've got to make some choices about how to spend your energies. The harm they would do to free speech makes just about all other threats to the First Amendment pale by comparison.

Postmodernism A CIA Plot To Make The Left Look Stupid?

That's not actually a terrible hypothesis.

"America In 2020 Not Much Different For Blacks Than In 1852"; Or: What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

Actually the claim in quotes above is the title RCP put on the piece; the title at the Seattle Times is "Check Your Patriotism." 

Anyway:

   I know, I know: Many of you think this an exaggeration. How could anyone claim, with even a shred of credibility, you ask, that much hasn’t improved since the antebellum period? What leaps immediately to mind is that we had a Black president. Surely, that counts as progress, does it not? One might well add that at least slavery and Jim Crow, times during which Black lives clearly had little value, are long gone.   

   Yes, slavery and Jim Crow, as historical periods, are long gone. Even so, how much has the relative worth of Black lives really changed since 1852?

But aside from the aquaducts, the sanitation, the roads, the irrigation, medicine, wine, the public baths, education, public order...

   But--hyperbolic as Parker's thesis is--I've long argued that American blacks have had way more loyalty to this country than they have any obligation to have. To point to just one example and not the worst one: they fought for this country in WWII and came back to Jim Crow. For all the nonsense about pervasive institutional racism, "privilege," the open season myth and all that...there's what, according to me, is a strong point in there. (Of course the ridiculous "privilege" language and the "checking" language has to go...but no need to make a big deal out of it right now.) 

   So anyway...no, it's not true that the country isn't much different than it was in 1852. It's radically different. Though, with respect to race, we might have hoped it'd be a bit more different.

"The Agenda of Black Lives Matter Is Different Than The Slogan"

I made these points recently, too.

IMO they're very important ones.

The slogan is one thing. The exoteric doctrines are another: they are the Open Season myths--that police and whites are murdering blacks indiscriminately and with impunity. The esoteric doctrines are something else: Marxism/anticapitalism, including the long-sought dissolution/re-engineering/communalization of the nuclear family. 

Then there's the link with M4BL, that has an even more extensive leftist agenda.

All this stuff is right there, out on the table. It's the sort of stuff that an even minimally responsible, honest and objective press would have unearthed and reported on within about a week. And yet it remains unreported on and almost entirely unknown. The drawing of the relevant inference is left as an exercise for the reader.

Reparations?

No.

   I agonized over this for a couple of years, and eventually concluded that it was a no-go for roughly practical reasons--e.g. that it would generate resentment among poor non-blacks. 

   But my view now is: do not give in to the cult on anything, no matter what. Oppose everything they try to do. Fight them on every point. Don't even consider any of their initiatives. Refuse to concede even the smallest point to them until the madness passes. Force them to expend the maximum amount of effort and political capital to achieve even the tiniest bit of their agenda. 

Baby Bonds: A Race-Neutral Way To Close The Racial Wealth Gap?

See, the racial wealth gap, unlike the Open Season myth, is an actual problem, and we know this because that claim is supported by actual evidence. 

Are "baby bonds" a race-neutral way to close the gap? Because that's what we need.

Well, this piece is a bit of cheerleading for such bonds, but we're told toward the end that it wouldn't be enough, and that we'd also need the other items on the contemporary progressive wish list, including elimination of college debt, "rationalizing" health care (i.e.: some kind of socialist program--Medicare for all or whatevs), ending mass incarceration, and...not making this up...ending poverty ("as measured by income"). 

Oh, and: it'll cost a mere $80 billion / year! Only 10% as much as the (massive, unsustainable) cost of Social Security...

And these are just the problems that emerge from an extremely friendly story about the idea.

Oh and: Orange Man's "opportunity zones" are bad and awful! Weird, huh?

Anyway, the racial wealth gap, unlike the imaginary problems currently destabilizing the country, is real, and I think it's important we address it--and in a race-neutral way. So I'm certainly willing to listen to more arguments about this idea.

More On Steve Hsu's Firing As VP For Research At MSU: Maoism Trumps Liberalism And Objective Inquiry In Progressive Academia

America has gone insane; academia has led the way.

Jobs Report: Economy Adds...."Better Than Expected"...???....4.8 Million Jobs...?

Really?

"Better than expected"?

Would you say that's a genuinely accurate representation?

But of course there's still really terrible news!...Bat Flu! Orange Man! RUN AWAAAAAYYY!!!!!!!

MSU Prof E-Mobbed, Forced To Resign As VP Of Research For Linking To Evidence Of Genetic Racial Differences, Falsehood Of The Open Season Myth

So, he did what I've done--linked to discussions of politically incorrect facts. There are biological differences between the races, and BLM's central theses are false.

And yet the remnants of American liberalism continues to support the radical progressive left...

Gun Record Checks Hit Record High In June

A small sign that America may still exist out there somewhere, and that it may be unwilling to simply roll over for the neo-Jacobin mob.

And speaking of gun purchases, maybe it's time for that Saiga 20 I've been thinking bout...

Twitter Removes Trump's "They're Not After Me, They're After You" Meme

This has gotten so ridiculous that there's nothing left for people like me to do.

There is nothing I can possibly say that will make the insanity any clearer than it already is prima facie.

(via Free Republic)

Hundreds Ambush, Injure Tampa Cops

Anybody see this covered by the PMSM?

Des Moines Police Officers Attacked By Swarm Of Leftist Rioters

Stupid children. 

I rather wanted to see the cops start laying em out with their batons. 

One cop is wrestled to the ground in a kind of semi-chokehold, and has his gun taken.

This won't show up anywhere in the national media.

But we will, of course, see a lot of Orange Man Bad and Bat Flu hysteria well into the future.

(via Free Republic)

Heather Mac Donald: The Unwinding Of Law And Order Happened In Our Cities With Stunning Speed; NYT And WaPo Are All BatFlu Hysteria And Orange Man Bad

HMD's latest is depressing as hell. A sample:

   Instead [of addressing skyrocketing black-on-black violence], the Black Lives Matter movement is tweeting about police defunding, last weekend’s gay pride marches, and NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace, the subject of yet another hate-crime hoax. DeRay Mckesson, an early BLM organizer in Ferguson, is retweeting about whether homophobes are secretly gay. Activist Shaun King, who recently called for vandals to destroy stained-glass windows portraying the Baby Jesus and Mary, is retweeting that Mount Rushmore is an act of vandalism. Ja’Mal Green, a Black Lives Matter organizer in Chicago who was arrested in 2016 for assaulting and attempting to disarm an officer, offered a $5,000 reward on Saturday for information on the killing of the one-year-old boy in Chicago, but coupled that offer with another call to defund the police. Since then, Green has been tweeting about abortion rights and the extradition of President Trump to Iran. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is tweeting about abortion rights, gay pride, and Trump’s culpability for the coronavirus epidemic. The Vera Institute for Justice, a liberal criminal-justice think tank, announced on Monday that “now is the time to spend less on policing” in order to “create safer communities for Black people.”
   Actually, now would seem not to be the time to spend less on policing, with gunslingers retaking control of urban streets. The timing of the defund movement was always a puzzle, coming as it did after weeks of destructive riots during which law enforcement was wildly overmatched. Such a demonstration of the violence that lies just beneath the surface of civilization would not, one might think, be the best opening pitch for an argument to shrink police manpower and resources further. Yet the defund idea took off, with the media making sure that the looting and arson became a hazy memory (at least for those whose life’s work did not go up in flames) while alleged police racism remained in the headlines. The establishment, in further proof of the elite betrayal of the principle of law, was happy to forgive and forget the riots as an understandable release of black rage. And now, the self-described champions of black lives are pressing ahead with their anti-cop campaign, with a breezy indifference to countervailing evidence.
   While 307 people have been murdered this year in Chicago, the Chicago police have killed three suspects, all armed and dangerous. In 2018, the New York Police Department recorded its lowest number of fatal civilian shootings—five—since records were first kept in 1971. (Data from 2019 have not been published.) All five victims were threatening or appeared to be threatening officers with guns or knives.
   The Minneapolis Effect will not be confined to intra-racial gang violence. Sadistic and gratuitous attacks on elderly citizens have been accelerating in recent weeks—a 78-year-old woman punched casually on the head in Brooklyn; an 80-year-old man knocked to the ground, dragged, and robbed in the Bronx; and a 92-year-old woman slammed into a fire hydrant in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park. The high-volume delegitimization of American justice and the incessant drumbeat about white supremacy will likely result in an increase in black-on-white violence, which already accounts for 85 percent of all interracial attacks between blacks and whites.

I barely even look at the NYT or WaPo anymore. Their lunacy, lies, hysteria and TDS are off the scale. I find it disorienting and depressing and not worth it even to keep my finger on the pulse of the Maoist left. But after reading Mac Donald's piece, I went and glanced at both... My God...those used to be two of the finest newspapers in the world. And now they're nothing but leftist delusions and propaganda. It was all Orange Man Bad and Bat Flu hysteria...which is Orange Man Bad...except for a few predictable bits of crazy like a Paul Krugman piece called something like "Why Do The Rich Have So Much Power?" 

   The country's falling apart, and the news media has given its all to make that happen...and now it's doing its best to keep the unraveling out of sight.

The Stonewall Jackson Inn To Change It's Name

Down, down, down the memory hole with everything unPC

The NYT Flips The Modicum Of Shit It Still Possesses; And Yes, The Neo-Jacobins Are Coming For Mt. Rushmore

link

And what remains of the center-left just keeps reading and defending and supporting and ignoring as a last resort...

Woke White Girl Tries To Spook Police Horse; Hilarity Ensues

This video brought me more joy that anything else I've seen in, oh, four months or so.

I liked the faceplant best.

VA Cops Will Ask About Race And "Gender" At Traffic Stops?

link

And by 'gender', they mean some indeterminate nothing that is neither sex nor actual gender.

If the OD doesn't kick the lunatic Democrats out of power asap we deserve to be governed by these jackass morons.

W&L On Trajectory To "Sever Ties" To Lee

link

Then all they'll need to do is remove his body and pretend that Lee Chapel isn't Lee Chapel.

But is that really enough? They really ought to raze it.

Hell, why not the whole place? It all reeks of the evil, evil South.

And why are we being coy about Washington? Everybody knows he's next. Just like everybody knows that James Madison's name will get the boot from JMU...then there's George Mason at GMU...then there's GWU... Mr. Jefferson's soon to be purged from UVa, of course... Monticello should get the torch, I'd think, by the principles now being applied.

And we haven't even begun to talk about purging every reference to everything and everyone associated with harm to American Indians...

Then we'll need to address anything that might involve an insufficiently critical reference to the role of women before about 1970...

Every shred of a reference to our imperfect, unprogressive past must go.

Year Zero, here we come.

Stonewall Jackson Statue Removed--Probably Illegally--From Monument Avenue

link

Ostensibly out of fear of violence, and a fear that "something will happen to one of our citizens"...y'know...if they try to illegally pull it down...

I don't know whether they should be removed. I'm more skeptical than I used to be, basically because this is a clear case of giving in to mob rule. Which the Dems are happy to do, so long as its their mob, hence their rule. 

Even if they should be removed, they shouldn't be removed now. This is the absolute worst time to do so. I'm still partial to the idea of removing them from the pedestals. This is really a question for citizens of the Commonwealth who are the descendants of slaves. I'd commit to abiding by their collective judgment. 

I'm not wild about a decision that's mainly driven by white progressives, however.

Also, just aesthetically, the monuments are great, IMO. I'll miss them on those grounds alone. Maybe I'd better get down there and see 'em one last time--if I can even make it down there before they're Year Zeroed...and it sounds like I might not be able to.

VA Dems Want To Reduce Assault On A Police Officer To A Misdemeanor Offence

And I have to hear about this on Instapundit??

I can't believe I was supporting these idiots three years ago.

African Immigrants Doing Well In The USA

Happy to hear it.

But also: yet another puzzle for the "institutional racism" tale:

   The Michigan State University study showed that black African immigrant men had earnings increases of 79 percent from 1990 to 2010, making an average of $45,343 in 2010.
   White men born in the United States earned an average of $49,478. Black men born in the United States earned just $24,000 in 2010, according to the study.
   Black African male immigrants are highly educated, according to Nawyn. They have a far higher percentage of college education — 52 percent — compared to 30 percent of white men born in the United States, and 13 percent of black men born in the United States, according to the study. Thirty-seven percent of black African female immigrants have a college education, the study said, compared to 27 percent of white women born in the United States and 17 percent of black, U.S.-born women.

Vote-By-Mail Is Already Producing Massive Fraud

But that's the point of the thing, of course.

CHAZ: The Summer Of Unrequited Love

WSJ:

   City officials on Tuesday began removing the barricades surrounding Seattle’s self-styled Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP, potentially spelling the end of that three-week experiment in alternative urban living. Supporters lost no time identifying the malign force responsible for that fledgling nation’s quick descent into lawlessness and violence: “capitalism.”
   So declared City Council member Kshama Sawant, in response to four shootings in 10 days within CHOP, a six-block area in Seattle that occupiers had cordoned off and blocked police from entering. The most recent shooting, on Monday, killed a 16-year-old boy and left a 14-year-old in critical condition.

Hong Kong: What Good Protests And Bad Police Actually Look Like

While progressive protestors in the U.S. riot in support of an antiliberal cause built on lies, protestors in HK are putting their freedom on the line for something that much more closely resembles actual American values.

Indeed, we live in clown world.

Media Ignores BLM Rioter Shooting Motorist

I don't know what to think about people who drive through such protests. We know the protestors to be violent. I'd say that there's a reasonable expectation of danger if they try to block forward progress of a vehicle. But I'm not exactly all that objective about this BS anymore. I'm sure the law has the best take on this. 

At any rate, the protestors could easily have gotten out of the way...y'know...instead of shooting the driver...

At any rate: of course the PMSM is ignoring the shooting.

Massive Saharan Dust Plume...IT'S HEADING RIGHT FOR US!!!!!

cool

Turley's Testimony On The Lafayette Park Incident

Pretty damn persuasive.

The Bulwark Is Full Of Shit

sigh

I can't even believe the state of our public discussion.

Seattle Police Clear Out The SPAZ...er...CHAZ...er...CHOP...er...Whatever

It's hard for me to resist the paranoid suggestion that Seattle's mayor decided that it had to go because it was a PR disaster for the left. In addition to rapes and gang violence and shakedown rackets, there have been two murders and various other shootings there in two weeks...whereas there were two in the whole area in all of 2019...

But this is no surprise. The area was taken over by a lunatic cult. Why would it be any surprise that it all went to hell pretty much immediately?

Don't miss Ms. Mayor's claim that this is democracy and we shouldn't fear it! 

This is "democracy" like any mob is "democracy." 

Look: there's no sense pretending that "defunding"/eliminating police is anything other than insane. Increased violence is the inevitable result of such lunacy.

Progressitarian Delusions: LaFayette Square: "The Second Battle of Charlottesville"

I try. 

I do try.

I know I could do better. Undoubtedly more patient people than me do better.

But just about every time I try to read stuff from the progressive-left in order to get some perspective (note that I didn't say: keep), it's just flat-out nuts. It just drives me further away.

The Atlantic is a publication I used to love. I hard-copy-subscribed for years. 

But now it's just propagandistic bullshit. 

Take this, by Jonathan Karl, for example, which, as is so often the case, I couldn't even finish.

First, the f*cking faction-aggrandizing delusion of referring to the events surrounding the Unite The Right rally as a battle--"the battle of Charlottesville," fer Chrissake… The brawl--or, more properly, the antiliberal leftist attack against the UtR people--was an unconstitutional violation of their First Amendment rights facilitated by the City of Charlottesville and the police. The city tried to illegally stop the event, and the police pushed the participants into the teeth of the leftist mob--where it was met, among other things, by urine-and-feces bombs and aerosol-can flamethrowers. The participants may have been racist assholes--but racist assholes have First Amendment rights just like everybody else. And virtually no one anywhere near the left complained about this. Fields was a nut--but that's a different story that has nothing to do with any of the above.

Read more »

Russians...UNDER MY BED! 2.0!

It's freaking me out that people are still willing to believe this same basic story. This is basically the remnants of Russiagate in noseglasses. Jeez...these guys can't even be bothered to make up a new lie.

The PC / Progressive Left Strategy: Strive To Win The Debate Before It Starts By Shutting Down Criticism

The standard liberal/conservative method for winning acceptance of policies and social changes involves honing arguments and swaying opinion via public reasoning. The PC / progressive left seeks to win by shutting down opposing views. You could say: they don't seek to win the debate: they seek to shut it down. Or you could say: they seek to win it before it really starts, by shutting it down. 

   This is a smart--though evil--tactic. 

   It's particularly suited to a radical movement because (a) as its positions become more and more radical and insane, they become more and more difficult to defend in open debate, and (b) as their supporters become more and more radical, they become more and more willing to shout down, threaten and physically assault the opposition.

   So...from a purely tactical perspective, you've kinda gotta hand it to 'em.

BLM Protestors Storm Beverly Hills Neighborhood Chanting "Eat The Rich"

Two hilarious things about this:

First: the leftist autophagy it portends. When you're preparing for BatFlu 2: Fall Freakout, don't forget to lay in some popcorn...

Second: That picture. O.M.G. that picture. That particular picture is worth a couple thousand words at minimum. That posing tells you a lot of what you need to know about the social role of this BS among the kids.

How Bad Is The Leftist Cultification Of Philosophy?

I'll put it this way:

I don't go to any philosophy blogs or sites that tend to discuss political shit going on in the profession. It's so bad that even I, with my fairly high tolerance for news of the cult, can't stand it. 

That's me wimping out--but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

Philosophers think their methods give them some special immunity to groupthink and mass hysteria. But if, so, that's not evident from the way things have gone down in the profession over the past decade or so. The crazies are in control, and what sane people there are are keeping their heads down, apparently afraid to speak out.

A few people are standing up to the cult--but damn few.

Is This Harvard Student Threatening To Stab People Who Say "All Lives Matter"?

Meh.

If a big dude said that, it might be taken seriously. Or maybe a woman who was actually waving around a knife. Instead of a water bottle. But I don't really see it here. 

She seems to be trying to make the familiar point about an alleged error involved in responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter." I think there's a decent helping of truth in that criticism...but it's a bit complicated.

I mean, she's acting crazy...but almost all of them act crazy. Crazy is the guiding characteristic of the contemporary left. Though I'm not sure whether or how that affects the argument for the conclusion that she's threatening to stab people.

It doesn't help that violence against non-progressives is a real and common tendency and ideal on the progressive left...

Obviously if someone on the right said something like this, the left and its institutions would freak out...but we're better than them. 

Anyway, I'm going with: not a real threat, though not entirely without some threatening tendencies.

"White Fragility" And The Race Hustlers

I just want to point again to this Taibbi piece.

And to say again:

First, props to him for busting out of the progressive web of delusions.

   But second: contrary to one of his main conclusions, Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility is not the stupidest book/thing ever written. That stuff is par for the course on the quasi-intellectual left. DiAngelo deserves ridicule...but she's just following the basic method on the left: free-associative pseudo-intellectual interpretation/pseudo-hypothesizing, all ultimate based on and in the service of progressive-left political preferences and myths. It's free association that is subject to basically no rational standards other than: use the fashionable jargon, pay obeisance to the right demigods (Foucault et al.), and arrive at a (pre-ordained) leftist conclusion.

   The method of inquiry used on the progressive left is irrational--or antirational. It's based in the postpostmodern (or cultural Marxist or whatever you want to call it--it doesn't have an standard name) philosophy or pseudophilosophy that reigns on the intellectual left.

   Philosophy matters--but I'm not sure it should. It tends, IMO, to break through and influence practical matters only when it's bad. And the pseudophilosophy that matters on the left is utter shit.

   This is an important time. Remember what's happening. Write it down. Because if we defeat this lunatic movement, they'll try to cram it down the memory hole. And if they win...well...decades or centuries hence, the survivors who want to construct or reconstruct Western civilization or its successor will want to know what killed it. 

Michael Shellenberger: On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

This stuff is all consistent with my current best guesses based on the stuff readily available to a reasonably intelligent and interested layperson like me:

• Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
  
• The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
  
• Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
  
• Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
  
• The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
  
• The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
  
• Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
  
• Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level
  
• We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
  
• Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
  
• Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
  
• Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
  

Where Are BLM and Progressitarianism On This Trajectory?

Just a wee reminder:

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

-- Eric Hoffer

Nigerians Are Kicking Ass in The USA

I did not know this, but it warms the ol' heart to hear. Good on you guys, Nigerians fellow 'Mericans.

(Unfortunately there's some gratuitous anti-Trump / racism! BS in there, too... 

Not to spoil this happy moment with political bickering, but: that's a strike against the "institutional racism" yarn...

Happy Birthday Thomas Sowell

My current favorite public intellectual by far.

Intellectuals and Society gave me an ass-kicking that I sorely needed.

New Swine Flu With "Pandemic Potential" Discovered...Where? Guess. Go on...Guess!

That's right...

Can we even say this anymore? Making up stories about why we're not allowed to call it 'China flu' is just one step away from making up stories about why we can't say that it came from China.

Refining Orwell A Bit / Something Orwell Didn't Consider

Here's a suggestion about Orwell:

In an important way, he didn't give us a clean case in 1984. The strongarm authoritarianism and brutality of the 1984-state in a sense prejudices the case against his intellectual political target. What we'd need, in order to get a better fix on the contemporary left, is a picture of an irrationalist, alethic relativist-or-nihilist faction that doesn't brutally wield total power. That's what we're on a trajectory toward right now, it seems. Though the Gulags and the mass killings and the secret police and suchlike lie just a bit further down that trajectory, I guess... But what if they didn't? What if we were only talking about the soft totalitarianism of shrieking and "shaming" (man, I have come to hate that word)?

   Also consider prosperity. 

   I've often wondered how much of liberal democracy's victory over Communist totalitarianism had to do with prosperity. If they'd been the prosperous ones and we had been impoverished, would liberal democracy have won? (Of course many would argue that that's the thing about central planning: it's never going to win out, in general and in the long run, against people making their own decisions. But let's bracket that point.)

   In a way, we're kind of running that experiment now: the rich seem to be mostly lining up on the side of the thought-police. There's an important sense in which blue America is more prosperous than red--more poverty, but also more wealth. 

   Anyway. I'm afraid I know the answer to these questions. Soft totalitarianism has already been more successful--and more rapidly--than I'd ever have guessed. Even if people come to their senses tomorrow--and, of course, they won't--I fear permanent damage has already been done. And even if we win this time, all it might take is a little bit more crazy next time. 

   Conservatives often note that one of progressivism's main errors is thinking that progress is inevitable. But a more serious error (shared by many liberals) is the idea that every move to the left is progress. This idea is, IMO, part of what keeps moderate lefties from seeing that they have more in common with the center-right than they do with the radical left.

The Russian "Bounty" Story Is Bullshit

I don't know that. But I'd bet significant money on it.

It's got the bullshitty ring of anti-Trump bullshit all about it. 

It's not the kind of thing Trump would ignore--and the only people who think it is are blue-team types who still think he's some kind of pure egoist, driven only by self-interest or something--someone who doesn't actually care about the country and the troops. That's a downright delusional belief by this point...but such is contemporary progressivism: a vast web of fact-free delusions. And, of course, nobody's going to buy the story unless they still believe the Trump loves Putin nonsense...which no rational person should...but, again: progressivism. Because Mueller didn't exonerate him!

Anyway. Old me would advising that we investigate and wait and see and so on... But eventually, that becomes irrational.

I'll tell you what happened, and I'll bet on it, too: there's a torrential flood of intelligence all the time. Most of it's fragmentary, probably something like half of it is false, and much of it is downright contradictory. The TLAs have to pick out some of it to report to the President. That leaves much of it swirling around unreported, much of it hit only briefly or obliquely, much of it mentioned once with so many caveats that it might as well not have been, and so on. This was just one more bit of intel--or rumor as we outside the spy biz would say--swirling around in the maelstrom of rumors. 

There's nothing to this--or so damn little that it might as well be nothing.

I could be wrong but I'm not.

World B. Free Was Ahead Of His Time: NBA To Allow Players To Replace Names On Jersey's with "Social Justice" Statement

And "social justice" means: leftist.

And that means: bullshit.

Wonder what'd happen if someone demanded: Speech B. Free?

Washington Post Editor Issues Veiled Threat Against White Women

Karen Attiah says that white women are "lucky" that nonwhite(? black?) women aren't calling for revenge (obviously in the form of physical harm) against them. 

I've often railed against people falsely claiming that they were getting death threats--someone saying "I wish you were dead" is not, under any even vaguely normal circumstances, a death threat. 

But "you're lucky I'm not looking for revenge"...well...that's moving into veiled threat territory. It means, basically: You deserve to be on the receiving end of revenge...therefore you're fortunate that I choose not to seek it. Because I'd be justified in doing so...

Not an overt threat, obviously...but in a vicinity it ought not to be.

Again: I'm not one of the crazy left, and I'm not like the crazy left. If Attiah were to say, convincingly, that she made a mistake and that's not what she meant--well, people do make mistakes. 

But it looks pretty bad right now.

Funny how non-leftists can have their lives ruined for minor infelicities even in non-public statements...but people like Attiah and Sarah Jeong can make public anti-white statements--even statements containing vague incitements to violence--and it's just dandy.

The Candice Owens Show: Marc Lamont Hill

I've only watched about 20 minutes of this, but it's really good. They're both making good, reasonable points so far, and Owens is really impressive in two ways: first, remaining focused on what I take to be the most important point: that BLM's main theses are about police and whites killing blacks. Hill has also impressed me in that he's admitted from the get-to that those theses are false. He made no bones about that. But we've got be very clear that that's a huge concession--and one that BLM and the rioters have not publicly acknowledged. Anyway, it's really hard to stay focused and avoid being dragged off a point like that--but Owens is killing it. She's focused like a laser beam. Hill is right that, those theses having been refuted, it's time to turn our attention to corresponding theses about sub-lethal violence. Because that can be humiliating--and humiliation is extremely important when we're talking about agents of the state. Hill asserts that "a" study shows that policy are 50% more likely to use sublethal force against blacks and Hispanics; that's not my impression, and it doesn't seem to be e.g. John McWhorter's impression either. But that's the point we need to focus on, alright. Again, Owens is impressive in that she not only keeps all the bookkeeping straight, but she doesn't merely deny the point, nor try too hard to wiggle out of it--she just straight-up says that she hasn't seen the study. Though she adds--reasonably--that she's skeptical given the falsehood of the more straightforward theses about lethal violence.

   Anyway, pretty impressive on both sides IMO--and I'm pretty good at that stuff, so not easily impressed. I can't believe that this will continue to be this good--but it's a great start.

NYT Reports Trump Briefed On Russia Placing Bounties On U.S. Soldiers

I used to suspend judgment on all such reports until I'd looked into them at some length.

But by now, the pattern is too recognizable to be taken seriously.

Clearly BS.

But here's LI on it anyway.

St. Louis Couple Brandishes Firearms As BLM Protestors March By Their House; Or: Whose Yard? My Yard.

First I'll get the obvious out there: she's got serious muzzle-discipline problems... Dude with the AR is in more danger than anybody else in this scene.

Second, I'll guess that--with the help of the media--this will be more of a PR win for the lefties than for non-lefties / ordinary folk (aka "conservatives"). 

Third, props to them: this isn't the best way to save your own house--that would be to stay inside and lay low unless/until the mob moves onto your property with intent. But this is the kind of thing that would ordinarily help the neighborhood and the non-mob in general--you accept more risk yourself, but show that people in the community are willing to fight back. 

Fourth: get some optics on that gat, my man. You don't want to be stuck with nothing but iron sights should shit get real.

Fifth: brace for articles at Vox and the ComPost about pink polos as the new "white supremacist" "dog whistle"...

[No, wait--the BLM crowd was already on private property.]

Turley: Think Twice About Media's Attacks On Barr

I'm very pro-Barr. I realize that I don't know enough about law to deserve a very firm opinion...but there it is. To the extent that I've been able to understand the main controversies surrounding him, I've come away thinking he was basically righter than his progressive opponents. I also have to admit that I find his demeanor trustworthy--FWTW. 

The main point is that I have not found the majority of the main criticisms of him to be well-supported, overall, so far as I could tell.

Matt Taibbi Kicks The Crap Out Of The Premier "White Fragility" Race Hustler

Absolutely read this.

Thing is, what's-her-name isn't that notable. This is the same kind of post-postmodern bullshit that the PC left has been pushing for 30 years. They're not smart, they've immersed themselves in bullshit pseudophilosophy, and they live in a professional world that is filled to the brim with the same kind of people--people who are saturated in a kind of brainless, secular religion. They learn the linguistic forms, repeat them endlessly, and get famous by inventing some stupid new riffs on the old themes.

   If you can't smell the bullshit a mile away, you need to recalibrate your BS detector.

Taibbi:

   A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools in America since the early nineties was the view that individual rights, humanism, and the democratic process are all just stalking-horses for white supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like former corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (Amazon’s #1 seller!) reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions, to racial power contests.
   It’s been mind-boggling to watch White Fragility celebrated in recent weeks. When it surged past a Hunger Games book on bestseller lists, USA Today cheered, “American readers are more interested in combatting racism than in literary escapism.” When DiAngelo appeared on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon gushed, “I know… everyone wants to talk to you right now!” White Fragility has been pitched as an uncontroversial road-map for fighting racism, at a time when after the murder of George Floyd Americans are suddenly (and appropriately) interested in doing just that. Except this isn’t a straightforward book about examining one’s own prejudices. Have the people hyping this impressively crazy book actually read it?
   DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.
   If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”
   DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.
   DiAngelo’s writing style is pure pain. The lexicon favored by intersectional theorists of this type is built around the same principles as Orwell’s Newspeak: it banishes ambiguity, nuance, and feeling and structures itself around sterile word pairs, like racist and antiracist, platform and deplatform, center and silence, that reduce all thinking to a series of binary choices. Ironically, Donald Trump does something similar, only with words like “AMAZING!” and “SAD!” that are simultaneously more childish and livelier.
   Writers like DiAngelo like to make ugly verbs out of ugly nouns and ugly nouns out of ugly verbs (there are countless permutations on centering and privileging alone). In a world where only a few ideas are considered important, redundancy is encouraged, e.g. “To be less white is to break with white silence and white solidarity, to stop privileging the comfort of white people,” or “Ruth Frankenberg, a premier white scholar in the field of whiteness, describes whiteness as multidimensional…”
   DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly. “When there is disequilibrium in the habitus — when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital — we use strategies to regain our balance,” she says (“People taken out of their comfort zones find ways to deal,” according to Google Translate). Ideas that go through the English-DiAngelo translator usually end up significantly altered, as in this key part of the book when she addresses Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” speech:...

What's-her-name just piles bullshit on bullshit...one notable bit is her discussion of Jackie Robinson....which really is a monumental bit of bullshitting even by the standards of these people.

Read it read it read it.

The One Constant Is Hysteria: Your Journalism Narrative Has Been Updated Again

Last week everything was racist; now we're back to everyone's going to die.

The Cult Targets Target

Much mindless chanting ensues.

COVID Comparisons, Europe And U.S.: The America-As-A-Failure Reporting Has A Heavy Dose Of Partisanship

Yeah...that's rather an understatement...but understated is better than not stated at all--which is what you get in the PMSM.

   Scientists are studying why the coronavirus hasn’t had more of a resurgence in Europe after countries lifted their lockdowns while some U.S. states battle explosive outbreaks. But the epidemiologists in the media already know why: GOP Governors and President Trump ignored public-health guidelines and reopened too fast and too soon.“With Trump leading the way, record surge in new infections exposes failures in U.S. response,” the Washington Post wrote Sunday. Liberals are juxtaposing the U.S. with Europe, which ostensibly has the virus under control. The Trump Administration has sometimes been too sanguine, but much of this is partisan opportunism in an election year.

   Even with the latest outbreaks, the U.S. has recorded fewer deaths per 100,000 people (38) than the United Kingdom (66), Spain (61), Italy (57) and France (44). Death rates are a lagging indicator, but Arizona (21), Florida (15) and Texas (8) are still well below Europe. New York, which has opened up last and slowly, has a death rate per 100,000 of 161.

One of the most important claims in the story is one that ought to be obvious, but seems not to be: no one has done everything right. 

   I'd add: and most of the people who complain about Trump's handling of this know absolutely nothing about it. They don't really know what we did and didn't do, nor what other options we had, nor what a different administration would have done, nor how we stack up against other countries. All they know is that they heard on NPR that we had some bad tests, and the next thing you know...ORANGE MAN BAD!!!1111 This is how much "thinking," such as it is, about politics works. And that goes for me, too. Almost nobody knows very much at all about policy. People who consider themselves well-informed typically learn one or two fragments of information about something or other, leaving mostly gray area...and their political worldview closes the monumental gaps. 

   My only real conclusion about Trump's handling of the pandemic is that he clearly did some things right that the Dems would have gotten wrong--like throttling back on travel. He didn't do much that I'm sure was a lot worse than an average alternative administration would have done. That's about it. Other than that, all I really know about is the hysterical cloud of progressive Orange Man Baddery that was spewed into the air. Actually, if we'd have listened to Trump and reopened on Easter, we'd have been better off--and you know what? I'm fairly confident about that.

   At any rate, there's no doubt that the progressive media was largely engaged in anti-Trump propaganda, as usual. That headline above is an instance of one of the main headline-types: “With Trump leading the way, record surge in new infections exposes failures in U.S. response." Absolutely perfect. Clear suggestion that Trump's responsible without actually committing themselves to it. Then there were all the (not a quote) Trump holds rally amid COVID DEATH!!!111 headlines. Few or no analogous ones about the BLM race riots...

   Objectivity is often hard. But the PMSM simply doesn't even try anymore. Which shouldn't come as a surprise, given that the progressive left has adopted a semiofficial philosophy that denies the possibility of objectivity... And the main reasons people do that are: (a) they heard about it as an undergraduate and it sounded totally chic; and (b) they don't want to be objective anyway, so they adopt a philosophical view that entails that they have no obligation to be. Objectivity is, like, totally impossible, bro! And ought implies can... So there ya go.

Neo-Jacobins Target The Emancipation MemoREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEal

These people are disgusting.

The Prevalence Of Hate-Crime Hoaxes: The Demand For Racism Exceeds The Supply

Two or three years back, I'd have never posted a link to Breitbart.

Because I was still, well, kinda brainwashed. 

Then I would post links to them on rare occasion, with a warning.

But here's the deal now: conservatives speak about race much, much more honestly than progressives do. Progressives talk about race like they talk about most other things: they don't actually exactly talk about it...the thing itself...rather, they talk about a politically correct simulacrum of it. There are so many truths they aren't permitted to mention--or even acknowledge--and so many falsehoods they are required to mouth--or even believe--that they end up consistently talking about misrepresentations of the real things. This is kinda funny, actually, because one of their favorite, deeply confused, phrases is "social construct." That phrase rarely ever accurately represents anything...but it actually does do a decent job of capturing the things in the world of the Church of Progressitarianism: the "race" that they can speak of isn't actual race...it's a fabrication that kinda sorta resembles actual race...in a way acceptable to distorted progressive dogmas and sensibilities.

Conservatives know a lot more about progressive shibboleths because they see them and discuss them much more clearly, honestly and openly. 

Discussing race with progressives is like trying to discuss the historical Jesus with fanatical evangelicals. It simply isn't going to work. It's a waste of time.

At any rate, here's yet another thing that conservatives just look at straight on, but progressives are permitted to glimpse, if at all, only with occasional quick, sideways glances.

Shieldpods! THEY'RE SCIENCE!

PANIC-BUY THEM BEFORE THE RUSH TO PANIC-BUY THEM!!!

Everybody panic-buy shieldpods right now! And toilet paper!

Everybody stop buying shield pods, ok?
Just stop! sheildpods don't work against viruses!!! LISTEN TO US IT'S SCIENCE
Why won't you people listen to the experts?
Stop buying shieldpods! Doctors need them and they don't even work.
Ok, fine. But everybody knew we were lying. So it barely even counts.
Draping some plastic wrap over your head is just as good. Better, maybe.
BAD ORANGE MAN REFUSES TO MAKE MORE SHIELD PODS SO BRING US YOUR STASH.
Draping plastic wrap over your head won't work. Obvs. JUST FORGET ABOUT IT OK?
You'd better be draping plastic on your head if you ever hope to leave your house again.
Draping plastic wrap over your head might protect you...how do you know it doesn't? Or maybe it could protect you against something else.
Ok. We don't know whether it works or not.
Why do men and conservatives refuse to put plastic wrap on their head. IT'S SCIENCE! WHY ARE MEN AND CONSERVATIVES HATE DE SCIENZE?
Do not EVER leave your home without plastic wrap draped over your head! It's the LAW!
The most dangerous thing of all is if you say 'Kung Flu' because it is RACIST and RACISM is a literal virus that's worse than real viruses THIS IS SCIENCE.
SCIENCEtm shows that plastic wrap on your head will NOT protect you during pro-firearm or anti-lockdown protests! However it WILL protect you during anti-firearm and pro-lockdown protests.
Burning down buildings and destroying historical monuments are good sutstitutes for plastic wrap on your head so long as you are protesting because BLACK LIVES MATTER and ORANGE MAN BAD.
The very best measure against all viruses is reading The Communist Manifesto and prostrating yourself to pray for forgiveness for your filthy, filthy whiteness.
Just forget the fucking plastic wrap NOTHING WILL EVER BE NORMAL AGAIN SO JUST QUIT ASKING ITS SCIENCE BIGOT AND SHUT UP ABOUT SHIELDPODS.

Masks Could Help Stop Coronavirus. So Why Are They Still Controversial?

How, after the events of the last five months, could this possibly be a serious question?