Mizzou Director Of Greek Life Who Harassed Journalist Put On Administrative Leave
Good.
Unfortunately, in her apology letter she says that she was trying to "protect students," which is patent bullshit.
I'm not advocating making too much of this...but I just don't think that what we saw from the faculty and staff involved can plausibly be construed as some kind of slip of the brain. I think that what we saw was probably an expression of their deep illiberal commitments. Those aren't grounds for firing someone. But they are grounds for rejecting any bogus excuses for inciting assault and (to some extent) battery.
Unfortunately, in her apology letter she says that she was trying to "protect students," which is patent bullshit.
I'm not advocating making too much of this...but I just don't think that what we saw from the faculty and staff involved can plausibly be construed as some kind of slip of the brain. I think that what we saw was probably an expression of their deep illiberal commitments. Those aren't grounds for firing someone. But they are grounds for rejecting any bogus excuses for inciting assault and (to some extent) battery.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:51 AM
2 Comments:
I didn't know where else to put this expose of "Facilitated Communication", but you need to check it out. It's like a crystallized, concentrated version of the PC institutional dynamic: the methodological sloppiness, ambiguity and weasel words, sock puppetry, magic interpretive powers, equation of skepticism with aggression, and the tight, nepotistic chain of citation and authority. It's all there, plus, inevitably, the exploitation of people for career and resources in the name of their protection. Enjoy a bitter little laugh when you see what the "Communication Facilitator" did for a career when not speaking for/sexually molesting palsy victims.
That was very interesting, Anonymous. Thanks for posting it. Rarely are the qualities you concisely enumerate so clearly associated with such direct and dire consequences as they are in "Facilitated Communication." I can't help but agree with your assessment of the relationship between this stuff and PC trash. There's some serious educational value in the FC debacle, if you ask me.
Both PC and FC prey on those who seem to want nothing more than escape from agony. From young adults struggling with their emotions to parents reeling from their children's afflictions, the offer of a clear way out of their problems is so powerfully enticing that they burrow into the proposed solution so deeply as to resist even the most straightforward and powerful expositions of said solution's incoherence or inadequacy. Any attempt at such an exposition is met with the hostility one might expect from someone whose safe house is under attack.
In fleeing from their distress, they've found groups of fellow refugees with whom they can share these sufficiently convoluted, opaque lies, and together they remember vividly their inability to find true escape prior to adopting the delusion. Such an understanding of these phenomena provides for an explanation of the behavior we see in both the PC and FC crowds: irrationally lashing out like wounded animals, crying out as though under physical attack in the face of disagreement with the delusion.
If they can just keep their minds shut down and refuse to turn their attention to the delusion, they can continue to believe they have been saved from their suffering. That's why they perceive disagreement as violence; in revealing the unreality of the delusion, the deluded are catapulted back to their suffering, and they blame the messengers.
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